why mac

[forgie]

Macs and PCs used to be different in terms of hardware.

Macs used PowerPC CPU chips, while PCs used Intel or AMD chips.



Now Macs use Intel, and the result is that there is no hardware difference between a Mac and a PC, other than minor cosmetics of the case.

A Mac is simply a PC that they allow to run OSX.

A PC could run OSX, but Apple doesn't want to allow that because it would kill their hardware sales.... turning Apple into a pure software company like Microsoft.

It's more than the look of the laptop, it's the feel of it and the design. Every time I use a Mac or Mac Pro it just oozes quality, it's actually fun to use. Apple hardware is light years beyond Dell or anything else.

Apple is actually behind Dell, in terms of the actual hardware inside. Example: Dell released Core 2 Duo laptops months before Apple had them.

How many Core 2 Duos did Dell actually ship on launch? Apple didn't want to do a "dry release" (ala PS3) of Core 2 Duo machines, so they waited until they had adequate supplies to launch their products properly. The other PC manufacturers all did a dry launch and said "we've got Core 2 Duo right now" and most people had to wait weeks/months to actually get their hardware. Which approach do you think is better?

In my course (Computer Science/Engineering), almost everyone I know are switching or already have switched to Mac. These are the people who study computers, both the hardware and the software. The experts are mostly using macs (or are about to switch) - what more do you need to know?

(That's not entirely true, some of the hardcore ideoligists in universities won't choose to use anything other then Linux!)

I have told my friends that use PCs that every time they call me for computer support I will give them shit for 5 minutes for not buying a mac before I help them. They still call me quite regularly even still.....

Maybe tech people evangelise macs because they are f$%#ng sick of helping their PC using friends.

[masta606]

Here's my two cents. I recently switched from a modeslty speced amd PC to a gen1 macbook black. It took me about 20 minutes to realise, there is no looking back.

Its in the OS. OSX just kings XP in almost every way for me. Things just work, XP makes so many things a ball ache that OSX just does right off the bat no fuss.
Dont get wrong, OSX can fall over, but most of the time, you point it in the right direction and it just goes. Especially for audio and visual work.

With bootcamp in the mix and lepoard round the corner? No competition.

[djmyke]

and this is odd.... i find xp stable in my macbook....


i dont get it

[SubFunk]

forgie wrote:

Maybe tech people evangelise macs because they are f$%#ng sick of helping their PC using friends.

amen!!

at least it is 100% my experience.

[subterFUSE]

I don't see the XP problems people claim on my computers.


Last night, I was working on my friend's G5 iMac. He turned it on.... it booted, and then locked up. He tried to restart, and it wouldn't respond. So he had to push and hold the power button to force it to power off. Then rebooted.... did it again. Third time was the charm, and it finally worked.

Well.... I don't know if you could call what this iMac did "working". It was so slow, you couldn't even scoll through the waveform to set warp markers. There was so much delay because the CPU was getting eaten up just from playing 1 clip with EQ4, in Repitch mode. I couldn't believe it. And he just got that computer at the beginning of 2006. It was effectively useless.

Then I went to a club and the guy DJing was using a new MacBook Pro with Live 6.0. He had 2 clips running, with a few other loops off to the side. A Remote SL controller... Focusrite Saffire. Anyway, every few minutes the audio would glitch badly. Basically, te CPU was getting eaten up to the point where the audio slowed down and glitched. The only time I ever heard that before was when I tried running too many tracks on my old Pentium 4 1.8 GHz desktop with 1 gig of RAM. It didn't look like he was running a whole lot, so I was baffled.

Both those instances were last night.


On another occassion, I have been in the Apple store and as soon as I touched an iMac, the computer froze. I had to ask a clerk for help.... and they had to unplug the thing to get it working again. In Apple's defense, the program I opened that caused the lockup was MS Word. But I was just standing there scratching my head.... thinking to myself... "I thought they said these things don't crash?"


Seems to me that Macs are loaded with problems, because every time I ever see one or touch one.... it fucks up.

Whereas I can use several computers with Windows XP for years and never encounter any of this.

The only major problem I ever had with Windows XP was when I got the Allen & Heath Xone 3D.... the drivers caused my computer to crash. It was the first time in my life I had ever seen a blue screen. But that was Allen & Heath's fault. Bad drivers.

[muscleandhate]

That's final then, XP is definitely more stable than OS X.

[subterFUSE]

That's final then, XP is definitely more stable than OS X.

I'm not really saying that.... just that I don't find Macs as problem-free as most of their fans claim.


Look at Sasha..... he decides to record a live set in Ableton during a gig... and his iMac takes a shit. It's on the recording. Doesn't he take more than one computer now, so that if he crashes he's got another one ready?


If Apples are truly so worry-free, I'm not seeing it.



I am going to be in the market for a new laptop soon, maybe after the new year. And I am considering a MacBook Pro.... but every time I go and touch a Mac, I get second thoughts about it. Just my experience.


Now... to be fair.... I see lots of people having Windows problems all the time. But, they are always problems I can fix in a heartbeat. At work, I was usually better at helping other people than our full-time IT guy. For some reason, Windows XP just obeys me. It does what I want, and never gives me trouble. I can't explain why. I guess I just know how to use it, and other people don't?

[kineticUk]

It does what I want, and never gives me trouble. I can't explain why. I guess I just know how to use it, and other people don't?

Yeah thats right. OSX and XP both have tons of class software. Both work.
I use OSX and I love it ... no problems I haven't been able to sort out myself. Before that I used XP ... again no problems I couldn't sort out myself.
I've got friends who are signed to formation, valve, etc. Making tunes for dnb labels using XP and Cubase, etc. So fuc*, they don't have problems nor do they have their computers rammed up their assholes causing them to spit make and models out everytime they open their mouths...my pc is uhhhhh apple ohhh core 2 ahhhhh. They get on with making tunes and stfu about boring computer shit. Thats why their tunes are class and its got nothing to do with the OS they use, its cause they make music and don't give a fuc*.
Problem free use comes down to who's using the computer...the tools are there, now go away and learn how to turn them on without crashing them.
When you're done, learn how to use the software and make some music that sounds decent.
Right rant over, now continue with the OS Nerd Bitch Wars...

[forgie]

That's final then, XP is definitely more stable than OS X.

I'm not really saying that.... just that I don't find Macs as problem-free as most of their fans claim.


Look at Sasha..... he decides to record a live set in Ableton during a gig... and his iMac takes a shit. It's on the recording. Doesn't he take more than one computer now, so that if he crashes he's got another one ready?


If Apples are truly so worry-free, I'm not seeing it.



I am going to be in the market for a new laptop soon, maybe after the new year. And I am considering a MacBook Pro.... but every time I go and touch a Mac, I get second thoughts about it. Just my experience.


Now... to be fair.... I see lots of people having Windows problems all the time. But, they are always problems I can fix in a heartbeat. At work, I was usually better at helping other people than our full-time IT guy. For some reason, Windows XP just obeys me. It does what I want, and never gives me trouble. I can't explain why. I guess I just know how to use it, and other people don't?

That's the thing right there: you have to go around helping people with their windows problems. OSX is much more of a smooth ride. It's not that XP crashes, it's more that after using OSX for a while, using XP feel like you're spending time with a really annoying high-school friend that you don't see much anymore. You just want to leave and talk to someone who you actually like. Like yourself, I know how to fix 1001 different XP problems - if you are a tech type person and you use windows, you learn how to "handle" XP pretty effectively. The wierd thing that happens when you start using OSX is, you won't have 1001 things that you know how to fix or adjust. You don't need that much knowledge to use OSX.

It sounds like you have seen the ass end of Apple's hardware. Personally I have never seen a mac just stop working like that when there wasn't a good reason (dead hard drive, power surge, cheap RAM etc.). (btw If your friend got a G5 iMac at the start of 2006, he got jibbed! Intel iMacs were out in Jan 2006.)

I have seen Macs in stores crash in ways that I find inexplicable. I know my way around OSX pretty damn well, and I cannot explain what has caused the "issues" I have seen in some stores I've been in. I can only assume that some asswipe has deliberately messed with something, since I saw several computers that had frozen up in a way that I've never witnessed elsewhere. The MS Word crash that you saw may have been related to the fact that it's not a Universal Binary, and there was a bug or two (that was fixed months ago) that caused some apps to crash under Rosetta.

Anyway, all these stories of macs performing badly don't quite add up. There must be SOMETHING going on - buffer sizes? Mac users often don't change their buffer sizes because they are used to not having to tweak everything. RAM? OSX is much more RAM hungry then XP, but it actually makes really good use of it. OSX caches heaps of things in RAM transparently, making your whole system faster. If you are trying to run Ableton on an old G5 with 512MB RAM you may struggle somewhat. From the sounds of it though, my 1.33Ghz G4 iBook can do better then your friends iMac, and that doesn't make much sense.

At the end of the day, no computer is going to be "worry free" - that's the nature of the consumer hardware/software product cycle. It's just that the worry involved (for me, and most mac users I know) in using a Mac is significantly less then using a PC.

[SUPERBANANBOMB]

I've used both XP and OSX extensively, and here's my thoughts:

XP does have its' share of problems, however anyone who knows anything about computers can solve said problems fairly easily. 9 times out of 10, when someone has an XP-related problem, it's due to their own dumbass fault. Viruses, spyware, malware, etc.

You MUST keep your music desktop/laptop DEDICATED.

That means don't use it for anything other than music!

If you want to download stuff, surf the web, play games, whatever... do it on another machine. I have several computers and my laptop is a dedicated music machine. I don't have anything installed on it other than what I NEED. Guess what? I have no problems at all.

OSX is a really nice operating system; however, in order to use OSX you have to buy a Mac. Therein lies the problem. Macs are expensive. I could piece together a PC that would blow away a Mac for far less cash. Macs are really just toys for elitist hipsters who have the money to blow.

HEY GUYS I DRIVE A VOLKSWAGEN JETTA, I HAVE A MACBOOK PRO, I MAKE MINIMAL TECHNO WITH ABLETON, I WEAR THICK RIMMED GLASSES AND ONLY DRINK DARK BEER BECAUSE IM TRENDY LOLOL

That's basically what it's like.

Don't get me wrong, I'd love to have a Macbook Pro. However, I can get a system that's a LOT doper for less money. I guess I just don't have as much money as you guys. I have to think about getting the most bang for my buck.

To me, Macs are a fashion accessory for technophile hipsters with too much money.

[kineticUk]

Yeah superbananbomb,
Totally agree with you,
But I'd rather have a golf gti than a jetta (And I don't think they are too trendy, just quality cars )
d.

[SUPERBANANBOMB]

I agree on the Golf as well.

[Adonis]

I've used both XP and OSX extensively, and here's my thoughts:

XP does have its' share of problems, however anyone who knows anything about computers can solve said problems fairly easily. 9 times out of 10, when someone has an XP-related problem, it's due to their own dumbass fault. Viruses, spyware, malware, etc.

You MUST keep your music desktop/laptop DEDICATED.

That means don't use it for anything other than music!

If you want to download stuff, surf the web, play games, whatever... do it on another machine. I have several computers and my laptop is a dedicated music machine. I don't have anything installed on it other than what I NEED. Guess what? I have no problems at all.

OSX is a really nice operating system; however, in order to use OSX you have to buy a Mac. Therein lies the problem. Macs are expensive. I could piece together a PC that would blow away a Mac for far less cash. Macs are really just toys for elitist hipsters who have the money to blow.

HEY GUYS I DRIVE A VOLKSWAGEN JETTA, I HAVE A MACBOOK PRO, I MAKE MINIMAL TECHNO WITH ABLETON, I WEAR THICK RIMMED GLASSES AND ONLY DRINK DARK BEER BECAUSE IM TRENDY LOLOL :?

That's basically what it's like.

Don't get me wrong, I'd love to have a Macbook Pro. However, I can get a system that's a LOT doper for less money. I guess I just don't have as much money as you guys. I have to think about getting the most bang for my buck.

To me, Macs are a fashion accessory for technophile hipsters with too much money.

that's funny and exactly what I needed to hear - ha!

I know a guy who is exactly like you called it - except he doesnt make or play music - he just posts on internet forums but feels he needs to most expensive trendy macintosh to do it

well put - most of the guys I know on labels putting stuff out are on PC's

but that's neither here nor there

it comes down to talent and if you have it doesn't matter what kind of medium you use to do it

I've had 'em both and only for the sheer fact there's more quality freeware vst's and what not out there I can't live with out I'm going PC

They both get the job done, who cares - it's your decision - make it wisely

peace


a

[forgie]

I know you're taking the piss (sort of... are you?) superbananbomb, but the consumer level macs are NOT that expensive. I've been over this 1001 times, but if you spec out a Macbook or an iMac and compare it to the exact same specs in a PC, the Mac comes at no more then 10-15% more expensive, and in many cases is cheaper. A Macbook Pro, however, does cost extra for the aluminium case/"cool factor"/whatever. No one is going to deny that.

The fact that you said you need to keep your computer dedicated to music..... here's something to think about: on a mac, you don't need to dedicate the computer to music. That's right, it's like having a free computer. Why buy 2 pc laptops (one for music, one for internet) when you could buy one mac laptop?

It amazes me that so many of the "criticisms" of macs are so clearly based on flawed logic. If you want a cheaper laptop that has the same horsepower as a Macbook, by all means get it. I have reached a stage in my life where I consider my time to be worth more then saving 10% on a laptop that I will find easier to use. That's just me. I used to tinker with cheap PCs and search for the cheapest components etc. etc. My time is worth more then that now.

(which is why I'm wasting it on this forum!)

Actually, I'm wasting time here because I have an exam in a few days that I'm procrastinating for.[/i]

[forgie]

I know a guy who is exactly like you called it - except he doesnt make or play music - he just posts on internet forums but feels he needs to most expensive trendy macintosh to do it

Knob jockeys come in all shapes and sizes!