Mac

I've owned two mac laptop computers both with no problems. Never owned a desktop though. I bought my first laptop in 2005 and did nothing with it but listen to music, surf the web, and watch porn. Not a single problem in the 6 years i used it.

The one i'm using now i got last year and i regret buying it. I've had no problems, it looks good, everything works, its also very fast...but, I feel i wasted my money because of how much i would have saved if i built one. It would be a desktop and with windows though. The specs on the computer would be amazing.

All of Apples products are way over priced. They fit in with the rest of Americas corporations when it comes to taking advantage of cheap labor for maximum profits. I won't buy a mac again but i will always have an ipod.

 

Computers are expensive. You generally (unless you are rich) have to spend a lot of time saving up for them. So $1000 is a lot, but if you save up for it over a period of 6 months or something, it is manageable.

As for the argument that Macs are 'superior', I don't believe such a thing, although I DO think Apple makes an above-average-quality product. I wouldn't say they are the greatest computer maker though. You could probably build your own computer of equal quality to Apple for less money, but, in these times when time is of the essence, most people will bit the bullet and fork out the big money for convenience.

 

My imac G5 ran great for about 4 years. I eventually migrated to linux on my gaming PC for daily work as well as play because the imac was just so slow and old. Orison used to have a gif in his signature, of that squirrel in a commercial, that picks up an acorn, screams, and the guy swerves to avoid it at the last second.... that thing would freeze my computer for minutes on end every time I loaded a page orison posted on. Drove me nuts, was the last straw.

But it was long-obselete by then anyway. And it still works nicely, I reinstalled because I'd fucked the old OS to shit over and over, and will probably use it to run my USB security cameras in the future.

As far as the physical quality of macs, like any long standing company apple's made some great products and some total shit. But in large, apple products are good quality but not worth quite what they charge. You're paying for the OS, and their software does tend to be worth it.

If you're computer savvy, buy a mac, you can do so much more.... if you're computer illiterate, buy a mac, it's easy to jump in with the nice GUI's. If you don't really know shit but think you're a computer badass, whine about macs and how they're too pretty for you, and how osX is totally stupid, d00d.

Or go linux, and have frustrating fun for free.

*edit* also, my powerbook G4 was in my backpack when it went down at least one flight of stairs, and took other abuse of that sort daily in high school, chugged along for a long time, until it bit the bullet in my history class a year and a half ago.

 

^ I like that post. It does seem that the biggest "Mac-haters" are people in their late teens and early twenties who probably don't know too much about real computer programming, but think they are hot-shots because they can navigate Windows with ease. Then they all say "I'm going Unix/Linux" and end up completely lost and unable to use it because they are faced with the reality of their lack of computer programming skills.

I don't claim to be good at computer programming by the way. This is just an observation I have made. I enjoy PCs, Macs, and Unix operating systems. I know enough to get by on all of them, and enough to do a few 'cool' things, but I am not qualified as a knowledgeable person with computers. But being a Mathematician, I encounter computer ego-maniacs on a daily basis. It makes for good people-watching/entertainment.

 

Uhhm, all you guys do realize that "Macs" actually don't exist any longer, don't you?

Motorola quit making the PowerPC processors a while ago and now Macs are all intel cpu's and nvidia graphics.
So Macs lost the edge in graphic processing which was their real forte' for a long time, they lost the "less virus risk" as well because the software now has to work with intel cpu's and thus opens the door for malware. Haven't seen a big surge in mac virus's, but they are increasing rapidly.

So when you look under the hood and compare apples to oranges, you will discover that the apples are actually oranges in disguise.
Any more it really comes down to personal preference rather than any "real" differences in the actual hardware.

If you are needing to run any Microsloth software such as office, save yourself the headaches and cash and get a PC instead of a Mac, because Macs have to run Windows software in an emulation mode and it creates a huge performance hit, and since it's all the same hardware underneath, are you really gaining anything by purchasing a Mac nowadays?

 

Time out, champ.

Apple had used another architecture before powerPC, PPC was not inherently linked to the mac or anything. It was designed partly for apple and with apple's help, but only as a vehicle for apple.

Apple has used nvidia and ATI graphics for years. There was quartz or whatever that on-chip acceleration was with PPC, but graphics chips are already so much more powerful, and so are CPU's, that the current hardware far outstrips the PPC macs.

PPC chips are not magically immune to malware, I made a PPC trojan for my school back in the day, for their emac labs. Made the things beep forever and be impossible to shut down or log off, required pulling the plug or using the terminal (which the genius admin had locked off )

There where very few pieces of malware for PPC mac because of the market share, and because of the UNIX based operating system. It doesn't matter if a virus is compiled for X86 windows, it won't run on UNIX, so it's not a mac threat. Apple had viruses way back in the day too, before they handed the market off to M$. They will again, but never so badly as windows, with the UNIX system (which apple seems in a hurry to ditch in favor of weak phone interfaces)

I don't even know if the still make office for mac, I hope not. But if they do, it will NOT need to emulate, it's a UNIX version of office. Not to mention there are dozens of alternatives that do the same, only better, either for cheap or free, as most UNIX/linux users can tell you. If you "need" office, buying a mac is the least of your problems, cause you're stupid.

Paying for PPC hardware was never the reason you'd buy a mac, there was nothing special about it. It was just another CPU arcetecture, and it's one that fell behind because IBM had no interest at all in helping apple, or working with them. They started out as apple desktop CPU's, but evolved, now they're supercomputer CPU's, and no longer designed for how apple was using them. Paths split.

Also, it's an IBM thing now, motorola might still make PPC related chips, but they hadn't made apples for a long time.

I can run my linux on a powerPC mac, a SPARC, x86, x86-64(which I am, now), and all manner of RISC and other processors. It's still linux, same damn thing. Apple makes money off of hardware, but it's just a vehicle for their OS, which is what they're REALLY selling you.

 

your so predictable roorshack, I love it.

 

Predictably here to point out when somebody has no clue what they're talking about:love:

The tl;dr of that is: apple made a flawless transition, the hardware under the OS is irrelevant, once the shit's compiled.

 

Well I guess that depends on your perspective now doesn't it?
I have been playing with/building/servicing computers since you were born and have a few associates who have been doing it professionally for over 25 years that would disagree with your opinion.

But you can still always be counted on to "set everyone straight" no matter what the topic is because your just so goddamn brilliant, aren't you now?

 

How would they disagree with me?

There's no question that mac hardware is now x86 IBM PC compatable hardware. But that has nothing to do with "being a mac", if your people have been servicing shit so long they should remember apples OTHER big CPU switch.

The OS being compiled right and having the right drivers is all that matters, as far as it running right goes.

It's a fact that modern PC's (and as such, macs) are much more powerful (on the order of dozens of times, sometimes) than the last generation of PPC macs, in graphics and everything else.

It's a fact that windows executables (read: "viruses") won't run under OSX, the CPU is irrelevant, unless you TRY to make it run.

So what do you disagree with? What do they disagree with? I'm not talking about opinion, these are facts.

When apple acquired next, the plan was to take it slow, make one transition at a time, get people used to a stable UNIX os without stirring up too much, and ride out PPC as long as possible, with parallel x86 development. When the time became ripe, they would switch, if the time became ripe. And when it became ripe, they switched, at exactly the right time. If the reverse happened, they could go back, or sideways, anytime they want. I'm sure OSX is still running on PPC in cupertino, and I'm sure it's also running on other architectures, ready to roll out.

You seem to have plenty to say about me, calling into question what I know or how I know it, but you don't seem to have addressed anything that I said, while I addressed everything you said and then some.

 

I think the difference is between the textbook presentation you are giving, which is spot on, and real world, day-in day-out use, which is what my friends and to a lesser extent I have experience in.
Bottom line, IMHO and experience, in a complex real world networked environment, pc's win hands down. That opinion is based on a couple decades of working in real world applications of both pc's and macs.
I agree that for the most part it does revolve around the OS, but you can not disregard the hardware aspect either.
Maybe that is the difference in our viewpoints, mine is based on a lot of business applications of hardware and software, and I'm assuming yours are based more on personal usage and not on say a 50 seat networking environment.

Big difference.

I'm sorry but no amount of textbook learning and IT certs is the same as dealing with this crap in real life. I have seen more "IT Professionals" completely fuck-up, misconfigure, and otherwise destroy business networks, but by god they sure had that certificate from ITT.


p.s. When you gonna put up the next verse in your sig. Maxwell is getting tired of always seeing that one.

 

Here's some old Apple propaganda against Intel P4's back when they were sell Motorola Power PC's. Aside from being very biased and deliberately misleading, funny as hell now that they've gone with Intel!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKF9GOE2q38"]The Megahertz Myth - YouTube

 

Not really propaganda and the information is accurate. The Motorola cpu's were better and faster than Intel cpu's at certain functions, most notably in graphic applications, as were AMD cpu's. They both calculated floating point operations faster than Intel processors. That is the reason why for a long time Apple was the preferred choice for the graphic design industry and video rendering and why AMD came to the forefront in gaming applications. ( a simplified answer, I know)

BUT, that isn't the only thing computers are used for. In mainstream day to day usage, Intel was and still is the better processor for your money.
In mainstream business and database apps, both fell short of Intel's performance. I have seen this demonstrated first hand.

The only thing even remotely misleading in that presentation is the lack of any mention of Intel's use of hyper-threading which was Intel's answer to the whole pipeline issue, creating multiple processing threads for each cycle/task helped eliminate that bottleneck. With hyper-threading the cpu can complete two instructions per cycle as opposed to only one in a non-multi-threaded environment.

But that was yesterday and yesterday's gone (isn't there a song like that?), today the only difference is in the operating systems, plain and simple. Mac's are all Intel architecture now, same as PC's.

Apple could have been the leader if they didn't have the proprietary hardware early on. What killed them was the fact that I could go and buy the specific components I wanted and build my own custom IBM based PC system. Couldn't build your own Mac or even service it yourself.
THAT is what killed Apple in the small computing business, not the capabilities of the hardware.

 

Not true. The Motorola cpu's were never good at graphic applications. That's not the reason Macs were preferred by graphic pros. It's because Macs were far superior at supporting large, multiple color monitors, had FireWire and the OS was easier to use and had fewer problems.

 

You say a lot of things that aren't true.

First of all, what makes a Mac a Mac is the great industrial design and quality and above all, Max OS X. This is why the Mac market share is growing so fast in a recession, while PCs are just stagnating and so many people are still running XP.

There has been a tiny, tiny increase in malware on Macs. So tiny that hardly anybody needs to run virus software.

Motorola chips were never good at graphics.

Apple uses both AMD and Nvidia for graphics now.

Windows does run on Macs, but it runs natively, not in emulation. There is not a huge performance hit.

 

The Motorola CPUs are doing a good job running graphics apps. I say "are" because I'm still running Adobe CS 4 on my old Powerbook G4 1.76 Ghz and everything is just as smooth as butter.

I don't have the technical background to discuss sheer numbers but I have to say that OS X has always been more stable and reliable for me. And that includes heavy lifting like editing HD video (on that same old Powerbook). I have used PCs before I switched - and I continue to use them for work reasons - but I'd never buy another one.

 

That'll be why my ODD had to replaced, why my fan is always on and really loud and why my the bottom of my screen turns black if the fan is on too long.

Mac=fail

 

Your experience isn't typical.

 

Nope.

He just don't know his way around the machine.

 

Well, I'm glad you're satisfied with it. But keep in mind that your graphics are not being run by your CPU. You've got an ATI Mobility Radeon chip for graphics. But I want to say that the Motorola G4 and G5 were huge disappointments to the Mac community. They never ran as fast as we expected. If you were to purchase a modern Mac, you'd be blown away at the speed increase.