Discussion: Why Mac?

This is just my opinion but Macs can still have viruses. This is also the same with Linux. Windows is just so easy for hackers to get into since the security and code isn't built that good. I would never use a Mac because they are strict on what you can do with it and not to mention the cost. For me Windows is very mixed. There is things that I like about it and things that you must do to make sure the computer is in shape. Though the OS I do truly like is Ubuntu Linux. Sure you have to go use the terminal and grab drivers but the pros far outweigh the cons for me. I find the interface a whole lot more simpler and there is no need to run maintenance except for cleaning the computer of dust. Of course it lacks support from video game developers(why would they make a game for 1-2% of the computer market) and lacks video editing software. That why I would dual boot Windows and Linux so I can get the best of both worlds.

Sorry that I was just ranting here just to get it off of my chest.
 
irnbrutwinturbo
There isn't a single distinct major reason why OSX is better than Windows if and only if you know how to treat windows well, especially since windows vista/7 took a lot of 'ideas' from OSX.

Its all the little things that make the difference.

Build quality.
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BS.. Build Quality is no better than a well put together PC..

irnbrutwinturbo
No stupid startup procedures to worry about.
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No - God forbid the user had anything to say - More BS.

irnbrutwinturbo
No messy registry and 'program files' folder to be concerned about.
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Instead of storing info in registry - It's still there in INI files etc. BS.

And on - You don't have a silly folder called "Program Files" - instead you get
  • /bin
  • /sbin
  • /usr/bin
  • /usr/sbin
and the list goes on...

<snipped more fanboyism>

irnbrutwinturbo
oh, and it just works.
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So does my 64bit W7 box... :rolleyes:
 
nick09
This is just my opinion but Macs can still have viruses. This is also the same with Linux. Windows is just so easy for hackers to get into since the security and code isn't built that good.
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Unfortunately we can't let you disclaim something (red) behind the shield of an "opinion" and then let you go and make spurious claims (blue) about something without backing it up. Microsoft has some of the best software engineers in the world, who are releasing constant security updates. Windows is vulnerable because they have the entire hacker/malware market directed against it, with similarly skilled engineers working against it.

As Mac's market presence increases, so too shall the penetration of viruses and malware. They'll probably be disguised as that hip, new, audio mixing program.

StigNumbers
Why a Mac? I've only seen two reasons to get a Mac:

1. You like the media software that they can get.

2. You don't like the way a PC works.

If I'm not mistaken, the latest Windows OSs, while Vista was slow, it was at the very least reliable. Windows 7 should be a similar story, without the slow part. There's the whole thing about viruses on PCs, but it's easy to protect yourself, even if you want to go for free programs.
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Red: This seems to re-affirm my theory.

Blue: And this is not a PC's fault. I never use virus protection, and I don't have a firewall enabled. I haven't had a virus since 2005, which was on my previous PC.

Dazzla
I have a Mac, and I'll be replacing it with a PC in the next few months.

Pros:
- No viruses, no problems
- OS is beautiful and so is the computer

Cons:
- Bit pricey in terms of hardware for dollar spent
- Couple of things on it that you can't do

For me the one thing that's kind of annoying about the Mac is that it just seems kinda basic to use. I use mine for absolutely basic stuff, word processing, photo management, and browsing. So for me I think spending extra on owning a Mac doesn't make sense. I just wish there was a better selection in 13-inch PC laptops.
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This seems to be the #1 . . . complaint(?) that I've heard, as reported by former PC users. And if it's not illusory, then its' appeal must boil down to the 'casual', ie. not me, PC user. The trend, it seems, is that it's spiffy looking, easy to use/basic, and generally does what people usually do with PCs, but not everything.
 
i for one cannot fault my mac after using Windows for over 14 years and using macs for around 6 months........ firstly, i love OS X compared to windows for a variety of reasons but mainly its simplicity and dock interface, i know windows 7 has a mac like taskbar, but i cant judge on this as ive only used the Windows 7 RC. Secondly, i cannot fault apples customer service, my iMac had a few dead pixels which were really annoying me, but i just boxed it up and took it to Apple, and had a brand new LCD screen put in with no questions asked and in less than 24 hours, my idea or quality service. the two main reasons id buy a mac over a Dell or most windows based PCs. i do also run linux and win XP in VMWare fusions.
 
It runs better. I'm sorry, but it's true. Apple's closure works in this aspect - it ensures that every piece of software react beautifully with the hardware and with each other.

The only reason Windows dominates the market share is traced back to a deal with IBM in the 80's. I could ask, why Windows?
 
*ibo* S3 Racer
Give me your number and i lock it for you.lol


- The tech inside is old crap and overpriced to the moon.
They use very cheap componants (foxconn!) and some outdated tech and still ask a price if you would have the newest tech inside

(ipads cpu is the old gen of netbook processors, their are newer one much more powerful.) This for me is the second big NO.
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1) I'd give you my number for you to do this, but who knows what you'd do with the number afterwards.

2) You know nothing at all about Foxconn. They're one of the biggest chip makers in the world. A huge majority of hardware is manufactured by them.

3) So the Apple A4 is used in Netbooks, eh? Enough said.

I'm not going to bother with the rest of your idiocy.
 
Kubalivre
The only reason Windows dominates the market share is traced back to a deal with IBM in the 80's. I could ask, why Windows?
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You can do pretty much anything with them including gaming. Plus you can upgrade your hardware.
 
Yeah I wouldn't buy a mac.

Pro's, it's pretty. (But not in a great way)

Con's. expensive, restricted, not a great community.

I dual boot Ubuntu and Windows 7, Ubuntu boots extremely quick, browses web very fast and I can do what I do 90% of the time very easily. Plus it's fun and completely free. Then I use Windows for Photoshop and advance film editing.

So essentially I have gained many things from Ubuntu to add to Windows that makes it a better system, and it cost me about 1/3 of the price!!!

But it can be a bit of an effort sometimes and it is easier if you know about technology and computers. But no harder than trying to earn all that money.
 
Public'sTwin
Honestly people, I'm not looking for analogies. I know windows inside and out. I've customized my registry to provide previously unavailable options when right-clicking, etc.
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There lies a problem. As for my mac-owning friends, typically all you can get is analogies because they don't understand the actual reasons one might be better than the other in certain situations. I don't think you even can customize a Mac's registry to allow extra options, and many Mac users would probably view that customizability as a nuisance anyway as they'd rather the computer already have all that stuff laid out for them. It's a general stereotype based on my personal experiences. It seems many people who spend lots of time on internet forums like this one typically are more in-depth with their machines, however.

I've used my friend's last-gen Macbook Pro quite a lot so I can see why people would like them. One thing that gets me every time is how he can put the thing in sleep mode over and over and over again, for seemingly months at a time, and it always starts up immediately, it always can run more than a couple programs at a time, it always runs smoothly, it always seems like it has been freshly booted. He's got lots of stuff on there, the thing is terribly unorganized, and yet it still works with only a rare hiccup. In contrast, my fairly new and readily maintained PC will refuse to wake up from a sleep once every week or two, forcing me to shut the power and turn it on again. Every time it does that it messes up something in the registry, on the hard disk, or whatever, so the worse it gets the quicker it gets worse.

I like the interface on the Mac, it looks good and the details are clever. Sometimes it has more viewing options than the PC, but then sometimes it doesn't and I get frustrated. Neither system is perfect in its presentation or design in that regard.

I don't think it even has a fan? I don't understand how you can set the thing on a pillow and it not shut off on you from overheating after hours of use. I've seen numerous Windows laptops die specifically from overheating, it seems to be very very common.

I've got the K-lite codec pack on my PC so I'm spoiled by being able to play basically anything, so when I took my Top Gear .mkvs over to play them on the Mac and was shot down I got all confused. I thought this thing would do anything? Turns out my buddy had never even heard of an .mkv file, so I had to get on that thing and research how to get a Mac to play these files. I found VLC. Then I had to research how to install a program on a Mac. I eventually figured it out, and about a half hour later we were watching Top Gear and enjoying some pizza. The Windows guy had to fiddle with the Mac because the Mac guy had no idea what I was talking about.

The only real benefit over Windows I see is the seemingly non-existent slowdown over time because of registry issues like Windows gets, and the instant startups from sleep that just go on and on. But is that worth the price premium? Not for me it isn't, not when you factor in all the other customizable options on Windows that aren't even considered for a Mac.
 
Eric.
The centralized part is the problem.
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Depends on the environment really though doesn't it? If say application data was stored with software in the program directory (C:\Program Files), it would be completely useless in a large corporate environment (Like where I work) where users only have Read Access to that directory.

Also when you have to fix something site wide, it's so much easier to find and work things when they're all in a hierarchically, like how all of Microsoft is under \Software\Microsoft makes some things a breeze.

It also makes things pretty speedy, if you don't fill it up with junk,as registry is always stored in RAM.

Mac's aren't that easy to deal with in actual fact. As soon as you get beyond basic usage the difficultly level rises almost in a straight line. We support over 5000 PCs onsite and approximately 400-500 Macs. When time comes around to package and roll out software, I probably spend about 70% of my time on Macs and they are also the ones that also cause the most problems at a software level.
 
Eric.
1) I'd give you my number for you to do this, but who knows what you'd do with the number afterwards.
Don't need to. (not os4)
Just password your phone and all your data on it. Now turn it off. Connect to the pc. start your phone. And voila on a win based pc you can see all what on the phone.👍 (after 2-3 try's it should work)

2) You know nothing at all about Foxconn. They're one of the biggest chip makers in the world. A huge majority of hardware is manufactured by them.
I never said they were a little unkown company. Just they made low value hardware. Not the cheapest, but not the best either. DFI is worse, but there is alot better like asus, evga, msi,...


3) So the Apple A4 is used in Netbooks, eh? Enough said.
Never said that either. And due to the close system they have comparing them is pretty useless, and apple doesn't give out a lot on technical information about their chipsets either and that would made me wonder as costumer. Or do you buy everything blind? Our proverb for that is : buying cats in a bag! But to give you a rough idea:



I'm not going to bother with the rest of your idiocy.
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Sure thing man don't bother.
All i read here is all subjective opinions :me likey, easy, no virus, blabla
Not one could really answer the question from the thread opener.
If he would have asked what sucks on Windows, i also could right negative things,... but fanboyism omg
 
Keef
There lies a problem. As for my mac-owning friends, typically all you can get is analogies because they don't understand the actual reasons one might be better than the other in certain situations. I don't think you even can customize a Mac's registry to allow extra options, and many Mac users would probably view that customizability as a nuisance anyway as they'd rather the computer already have all that stuff laid out for them. It's a general stereotype based on my personal experiences. It seems many people who spend lots of time on internet forums like this one typically are more in-depth with their machines, however.
Click to expand...

Nail, head, hit.

I'm not remotely interested in playing about with the registry, so I don't really mind that I can't. Mostly because I've never really needed to (even on the countless Windows machines I've had), in much the same way that I wouldn't open up my car bonnet and fiddle about with the ECU. I would imagine most Mac users would say the same thing - well the ones that walk into Apple stores and come out with £1300 laptops, anyway.

Having said that, of the countless people I know with Windows machines, I can safely say that not one of them will be delving into their registry anytime soon either.
 
*ibo* S3 Racer
Sure thing man don't bother.
All i read here is all subjective opinions :me likey, easy, no virus, blabla
Not one could really answer the question from the thread opener.
If he would have asked what sucks on Windows, i also could right negative things,... but fanboyism omg
Click to expand...

Just so you know, I don't own a Mac and never have. I do have a 3G iPhone. I did as you said, and as usual, you can only see the photos from the PC.

I'm not going to defend the iPad, that's not worth anyone's time. If I was rich I might have one just to play around with outside while my butler fetches me a drink. More importantly though is that the Apple A4 is also inside the iPhone 4, coupled with half a gig of RAM.

Re: Foxconn
wikipedia
Foxconn is the largest manufacturer of electronics and computer components worldwide and mainly manufactures on contract to other companies. Among other things, Foxconn produces the Mac mini, the iPod, the iPad, and the iPhone for Apple Inc.; Intel-branded motherboards for Intel Corp.; various orders for American computer manufacturers Dell and Hewlett-Packard; motherboards for UK computer manufacturer Zoostorm; the PlayStation 2 and PlayStation 3 for Sony; the Wii for Nintendo; the Xbox 360 for Microsoft; cellular phones for Motorola and Nokia; the Amazon Kindle; and Cisco equipment.
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The argument about the registry is amusing. The registry was developed as a new feature in Windows NT 3.51 to replace the splatter of .INI files that Windows used up to that point. The centralization (it's all in one place) was regarded as a Good Thing. You knew where to look for settings for an application or driver, rather than looking in Windows, Windows\System, or the root of your drive to find the right INI file to edit. Saying that the Mac is better because it lacks the complexity or vulnerability of a registry is like saying the splatter of configuration information in text files all over the system is superior. UNIX uses that splatter. So does OSX.

That is not to say that all Windows users need to know how to use the registry, any more than they had to know how to use the INI files back in the day, or that all Mac users need to know how to find and fix CFG files wherever thay may have landed.

The virus issue is also amusing. The very first personal computer viruses happened on Macs back in the mid-80's because they were so easy to transmit. The first thing a Mac does when you insert a floppy is read the boot sector and directory, so it could present the disk in the Finder. The other thing it did was load any code it found there! Granted, things have changed since then, but I like hearing people say there's no virus problem on the Macs, when viruses were practically invented on the Macs.

As for which is better, the answer is (get ready, it's a simple answer, and has nothing to do with OS or hardware):

Whichever one runs the application you have to have to do your work.
 
I play games so i have a PC.

If i needed a business laptop then i might consider a Mac, though id probably rather a Sony Vaio.
 
I think the debate can be solved by looking at the fact that Microsoft's last two Operating systems have been...umm...semi-Unix based. That is, they were developed using Unix and then stupidly tossed onto a Windows based PC. This is why both Vista and 7 run better on a Mac.

And as to the justification of buying a Mac: Well, think about it: for $1400 you can get a Mac, iLife, iWorks and the AppleCare thingy. For $800 you only get the PC. If you want to buy an equivilant PC, you need to buy office (about $200-$300), anti-virus software, music software (as iLife comes with Garageband), a decent website builder (iWeb comes with iLife, as well) and a few other things. When you add everything up, to buy an equivilantly featured PC, you'd spend about as much as a Mac...and a Mac is more reliable, it's uses less energy and has a longer battery life than any PC. In my opinion, it's not even a question. (Plus, Pages is WAY better than Word and Keynote is WAY better than PowerPoint...that's why....umm...Microsoft uses "keynote" presentations)
 
Ok I will lay it on the line, I used to be a fanboy of windows I used windows 2000 for my main computer for three years at university and as I've already stated I moved to Mac and OSX. I used to rib (make fun of) my friends who used OS and Mac. Once I moved to OSX I haven't looked back in my home we have 3 iPods an iMac a Macbook 3 iPhones and an iPad. I also have a Samsung net book running Meebo. The net book is collecting dust and has been used sparingly and the rest get used daily.

I love Mac products and computing in general; PC's blow Mac's out of the water in gaming and come in so many various guises you would need many sticks to shake at them, but I don't play games on PC anymore, I have tried steam for Mac and my iMac is so under supported by Apple it can't even play source engine games like Portal, but if I was so desperate to play them then I could just dual boot.

The hardware Apple put out to consumers is dross wrapped in shiny aluminium with no buttons on the front. They have proved to the world that you can pollish a turd. So much so it makes people go crazy for the next defecation to be buffed to a glossy shine.

For me the OS is the meat and for me that makes me sit up and hand over my hard earned cash, Apple innovate where Microsoft seem to stagnate, other companies try so hard to emulate the look and feel of an Apple product it becomes so sad to watch them flounder and fail. I've also seen so many people who buy PC's with hashed up facia's and cobbled UI's made to feel Apple'ish and be stung by the lack of quality it's truly un-cool.

Take a gentalman I know who asked for my opinion on this very subject here, he has been using Windows based machines for a long time, he needed a new computer for his home as the main family hub for jobs like, Internet, picures, music, phone, video. I offered my opinion on the matter and even let him use my iMac and MacBook, but in the end a windows vista machine won out, this machine was an all in one HP with touch screen and so much bloatware it was fit to burst, I works fine for what they need, but it's so slow and poor that I cringed when I had to try and fix it, yes thats right what was supposed to be plug and play camcorder software didn't work and forced windows to BSOD and also forced a restore time after time till we gave up and the £600 camcorder I not used.

Next person to ask my opinion was a friend of my dads who wanted a laptop for playing online poker, again he used the Mac and chose a Samsung with windows 7. He has had it a month and so far he hasn't installed the poker software due to compatibility issues and also has two trojen's.

It's all well and good if you can use a PC and know how to keep it on the go, I learn't allot from a PC my parents got me, not because it run perfectly but because it consistanly crashed and bugged out. For the people out in the real world a Mac is a more sane choice because of the lack of need to edit registry files and constanly run AV checkers, Mac users maybe tied into Apple's walled garden but boy is it nice and easy here. I don't have to worry about if my computer will run today it just does. I know I sound like a Mac advert but it's for good reason "I'm a happy blind sheep"
 
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SuperShouden
I think the debate can be solved by looking at the fact that Microsoft's last two Operating systems have been...umm...semi-Unix based. That is, they were developed using Unix and then stupidly tossed onto a Windows based PC. This is why both Vista and 7 run better on a Mac.
Click to expand...

That's some serious WTF right there!..

Since Macs these days run on x86 hardware, same as Windows, would you care to elaborate?....

Also, the Unix part is very interesting, I would like an explanation on that statement as well..
 
All of the operating systems we use today is due to Unix and they are built off of Unix in some form.
 

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