Jay Farrell wrote:
I gotta ask myself WHY I'd want another PC.....no viruses or spyware, and all I do is web and Photoshop anyhow....seems like the more logical choice....the  only drawback I hear of is lack of business software, which doesn't really apply to me....any other reasons NOT to go Mac?

Price.

Hamza wrote:
Mac is 'NOT' the only computer company using the new Pentium 2 Duo Chip, it's just the most expensive!  The Mac's don't have the PCMCIA card to go mobile nationwide wireless!

The strength of the Macplatform is not the weak Intel processors that they are using (and you are right, that in going to Intel, the Mac has compromised its Photoshop performance to the level of the high end PC), but the power of the OS.  OSX is a fantastic operatiing system that has powerful features not found in Windows machines.

studio kgm inc wrote:
im a long time pc user and a current mac enthusiest.  i really believe that each has its merits.  pcs crash regularly and ms knows this.  so they built it so that its easy to fix when it does screw up.  macs put a lot of work into building a machine that shouldnt crash.  however, when you have a gift for crashing machines like i do, its a lot more difficult to fix.

of course, it wasnt until i had to reinstall osx after a terrible crash that i was finally comfortable using macs.  i guess that probably speaks more about my personality than anything.

My good friend has two master's degrees: one in Biology and one in Computer Science. When discussing PC crashes (I use a PC and I haven't had a crash in years) she just smiled at me and said "Mac's" crash, too.  She uses both machines; a Mac at work. A PC at home.  She uses more software that is available in the 'current' version on a PC (which, she said, is usually a one version old PC version sold as the current Mac version). 

I learned on both and we have both where I work - and I just like the double click mouse on the PC, real speed (not hype speed), and price. 

I biased, perhaps, but I learned on the old IBM XTs (no hard drive), then the AT.  I loved Basic programming and creating my own software.  I also love how my Sony's look (I have two) and one Sony monitor and one Dell monitor. I choose to use what I like, and so should everyone else.

That said, I can do anything on my PC that anyone else can do on a Mac - it's all in the software (and now that Mac's gone Intel, not much help in the processor and related coprocessor areas).

Tim

W.G. Rowland wrote:
If you want simple and relatively trouble free:

Select your applications.

Buy your machine.

Install your applications.

Use your applications.

Back up your data.

Do not screw with this formula.

I don't care if it's a Mac or a PC.  The key to screwing up a computer is letting it bloat.  The more apps you install.  The more widgets you say yes to.  The more things you don't know.  The more certain you can be that your computer will break on you and you won't know why.

You want to TRUST what's going on in your computer.. Learn how computers work.

You want to be a computer USER and just get on with your life.  Figure out what you want the computer to do, don't treat it like a junk drawer.

Amen.

CYC Young wrote:
the mac is really by far the stronger platform.

Why?

RoadRunner Photography wrote:
Bought the first one about 5 years ago, bought an iBook 3 years ago, and a G5 this year...  Love 'em...  And if you need business software, drop me a line and I will try and point you in the right direction.

As a side note ~ added memory and a second hard drive to the G5 tonite ~ took me about 6 minutes to do both.  Turn the machine on and it instantly recognized both.  The hard drive = take side panel off, take 4 screws stored inside and place in hard drive, slide drive in slot and lock, plug in cables, put side panel back on.  done.  It don't get any easier...

Sounds exactally like my Sony PC.  Case clips off, pulls back, new hard drive slides in, clamps into place, plugs in, Window recognizes it .... and I'm off and running.  Oh, and then slide panel back on.

W.G. Rowland wrote:
*subliminal undercurrent*

join us.. join us.. join us.. join us.. join us.. Jobs is god.. join us.. join us.. join us..

LOL .... Doesn't [ ]Nikon  [ ]Canon (Choose only one) use the same subliminal messaging?

Now, should I use a Nikon with Mac, or Canon with PC or ...... damn digital all the hell; I'm going back to film, if there's any left.

Hamza wrote:
Holy Shit!

Verizon just came out with this!

http://www.verizonwireless.com/b2c/stor … oneId=2407

So to update my previous posts...


Mac Advantage: Apple Software
Mac Disadvantage: Gaming/Business/Internet Software; Price

PC Advantage: Gaming/Business/Internet Software; Price
PC Disadvantage: Lack of Apple Software

Mr. Gates...please stop...

Hamza wrote:
Holy Shit!

Verizon just came out with this!

http://www.verizonwireless.com/b2c/stor … oneId=2407

So to update my previous posts...


Mac Advantage: Apple Software
Mac Disadvantage: Gaming/Business/Internet Software; Price

PC Advantage: Gaming/Business/Internet Software; Price
PC Disadvantage: Lack of Apple Software

'
This is perfect in so many ways.  BTW, I'm not entirely sure what I overheard at CompUSA the other day but one salesman said he was glad to hear the new CS3 PS was finally coming out - he said 'maybe the Mac customers will finally quit complaining how slow it is ... mentioning something about the current PS C2S being built on a Rachael Platform which I know nothing about.

Daguerre wrote:

The strength of the Macplatform is not the weak Intel processors that they are using (and you are right, that in going to Intel, the Mac has compromised its Photoshop performance to the level of the high end PC), but the power of the OS.  OSX is a fantastic operatiing system that has powerful features not found in Windows machines.

Such as?  And will these also be absent from Vistas?

Hamza wrote:
Other than APPLE programs, what can you do on a MAC that you can't do on a PC?

Such as...

One of the best features of the Mac platform is the ability to boot from any hard drive partition visible to the operating system.  Just go to the startup disk control panel, select your drive, and reboot to that partition.  Makes troubleshooting nice and simple.

Should you lose your primary hard drive, the Mac will AUTOMATICALLY find another viable system volume and boot from it.  Windows will not do that.  In a business environment, keeping your system up and running even in the face of a catastrophic drive failure can be immeasurably important.

I currently have 4 Boot partitions:  a primary system partition that I normally boot from, a backup system volume, should I lose my main drive, and 2 more for testing purposes-- because we don't want to replace the last OS until the brand new one proves to be stable with all of our apps.

Performance is another concern.  My 2 year old G5 will open a 1Gb file in 4.9 seconds.  It will move data between my primary data volume and my backup volume at a rate of 24 GB/ minute.  100Gb moves in around 4 minutes.

My G5 currently has 26 SATA hard drives attached to it.  I have also 8 firewire devices and several USB2 devices as well as 60GB of loaded Software.  The system is stable with all this stuff.  Now this is not a discussion about why I need all the devices, but it is a discussion about stability.  And with all this, the system is stable.  When Mr. Baker successfully works with 40 devices attached directly to his PC, he can let us know about it.

I am not a Windows basher by any means-- I was given a $15,000 top of the line PC designed for graphics apps, just to get my feedback and suggestions for making it faster.  There have been times (though not many) when having this PC came in handy.

One very important thing that the newest Macs can do is run Windows simultaneous with OSX, with native performance in each.

Each platform has its advantages, but on Intel hardware, you can't have them both.

Daguerre wrote:
One very important thing that the newest Macs can do is run Windows simultaneous with OSX, with native performance in each.

That's the part that generally gets lost in the shuffle.

McKenzie Bros Photo wrote:
Trash 80???  OMG---thats soooooo old!  What era are you from?

Not THAT one! I just heard the rumors.

Marko Cecic-Karuzic wrote:
That's the part that generally gets lost in the shuffle.

Why would anyone want to? This suggests to me that over time the OS system is going away and Windows or Vista (whatever system they have out at the time) will become as one.  Remember, Microsoft owns 20 percent of Apple.

Jay Farrell wrote:
I gotta ask myself WHY I'd want another PC.....no viruses or spyware, and all I do is web and Photoshop anyhow....seems like the more logical choice....the  only drawback I hear of is lack of business software, which doesn't really apply to me....any other reasons NOT to go Mac?

Tim Baker wrote:
Price.

If you're running your business as a hobby, or looking for a PS3 varient, perhaps price is a consideration.  But when it comes to running our businesses, the price of computer hardware, either platform, is cheap.

My clients know that they can call with a ridiculous turnaround time-- the SELF mag ad for instance, where the call from the ad agency gave me 2 hours to set up, shoot and produce the ad, AND deliver it to them.

My investment in my systems is worth every penny.  It keeps my clients safe.

Tim Baker wrote:
Why would anyone want to? This suggests to me that over time the OS system is going away and Windows or Vista (whatever system they have out at the time) will become as one.  Remember, Microsoft owns 20 percent of Apple.

Microsoft does not own 20% of Apple Computer.

Mark Sebastian wrote:
Parallels is developing freakishly fast, with major updates every week. We have a quad-core intel at work which is running Parallels.. now you can launch Windows apps directly on OS X without the Windows interface! And the windows performance is equivilant to a 3ghz intel processor

You are talking about the 'discontinued' G5 Quad correct? That 'was' a great machine!  The G5 was an amazing processor, Jobs sold Mac down the river to switch to Intel for financial reasons...

Steve Jobs said for many years, "Intel is the enemy, Intel is the enemy, (Steve Jobs got greedy), Intel is our friend!

Daguerre wrote:
Microsoft does not own 20% of Apple Computer.

Unless Gates sold the stock, they did, and I've heard nothing to the contrary - it's what kept Apple alive during the 80s before Jobs came back.

PBS, 1997

MARGARET WARNER: In Boston this morning at conference of Macintosh computer users and software developers, Apple Computer, Inc., founder Stephen Jobs made a surprising announcement. He said that Microsoft Corporation had agreed to invest $150 million in its longtime software rival, Apple.

STEVE JOBS, Co-Founder, Apple Computer: The era of setting this up as a competition between Apple and Microsoft is over, as far as I'm concerned. This is about getting Apple healthy, and this is about Apple being able to make incredibly great contributions to the industry to get healthy and prosper again.

Link: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/cyberspa … _8-6a.html

Class Act Photography wrote:
My Commodore 64 smokes all you guys.

Don't bring that kick-ass system into this.

Mark Sebastian wrote:
Parallels is developing freakishly fast, with major updates every week. We have a quad-core intel at work which is running Parallels.. now you can launch Windows apps directly on OS X without the Windows interface! And the windows performance is equivilant to a 3ghz intel processor

Hamza wrote:
...You are talking about the 'discontinued' G5 Quad correct? That 'was' a great machine!  The G5 was an amazing processor, Jobs sold Mac down the river to switch to Intel for financial reasons...

Hamza, you do not know what you are talkin about!

Parallels will not run on a G5 anything.  It is designed for the Mac/Intel hardward platform-- the Mac Core systems and the Mac Xeon systems to allow you to run OSX and Windows systems simultaneously.

Daguerre wrote:
There are no Pentiums in any Mac computers.

Not TOTALLY true in that the Core 2 Duo is a P3 Base chip. As for reason not to buy a Mac/ Well I had one for 8 months (Dul Proccessor G5 with 4.5 Gigs RAM) and it cost 2X what my self built PCs did and ran ALMOST as fast as my PCs. Now with "Intel Inside" the speed problems should be fixed. Prices seem to have come down a bit in comparison too. And now REAL PCXpress as opposed to mine which had Mac's PCX which was slower and limited my choice of Video cards. I sold it to my Mac friend for his render farm. When you hook 4 of them together they seem really fast. LOL! But assuming the OP is not building his own PC then Mac will be fine. And yes, I do pay $40 a year to a virus protection company to keep all 5 of my PCs clean.

Daguerre wrote:

Don't bring that kick-ass system into this.

Well, I used to have a TI99.  Now, THERE, was one smokin' computer.

CYC Young wrote:
the mac is really by far the stronger platform.

Exactly.. EVERY programmer would rather write code for a MAC than a PC any day but the money is in PC software because of market saturation.

MAC's are the only true mutli tasking machines, there is not a pc on the planet that does..

MAC's make better use of memory space, Unlike PC's which still look at memory from a DOS based standpoint.

MAC's cost more because their hardware architecture is more expensive to build.

I dont own one but spent years in 'IT' servicing MAC labs and our hardware guys had to be MAC certified so we had to learn all the inner workings of both platforms.

Too many people confuse the software that a machine runs with the MACHINE..

I build my own machines and I can build three PC's for the cost of buying one MAC, but the reality that they are better built machines and the software is what Microsoft has been trying to duplicate since day one cant be argued..

If APPLE wouldnt have been so arrogant in the beginning, we may not know who Bill Gates is..

Tim Baker wrote:

Unless Gates sold the stock, they did, and I've heard nothing to the contrary - it's what kept Apple alive during the 80s before Jobs came back.

You heard wrong.  The link you supplied showed the 5 year deal in 1997 that has been long over.  5 million dollars is most certainly not 20% of a multi-Billion dollar company. It was a token gesture.

But this has nothing to do with the discussion of platform differentiation.

UIPHOTOS wrote:
Exactly.. EVERY programmer would rather write code for a MAC than a PC any day but the money is in PC software because of market saturation.

MAC's are the only true mutli tasking machines, there is not a pc on the planet that does..

MAC's make better use of memory space, Unlike PC's which still look at memory from a DOS based standpoint.

You can't say that.

Windows is a great environment to write software for.

PC's will multi-task just like an OSX machine.

OSX does use a much more efficient memory scheme than WindowsXP.

Brian Diaz wrote:
Here's my major complaint about Apple:

They don't give you a right mouse button standard, and on a laptop, standard is the only option you have (aside from an external mouse).

On the left is a Mac of some sort.  There are a lot that look just like this.  On the right is my laptop's touchpad.  Notice that the right button is worn much more than the right button because I use it so much.

For that reason alone, I will not purchase a Mac.  I will not support such a company that ignores its customers needs so flagrantly.

And there is nothing more fair than that!

Hamza wrote:
Other than APPLE programs, what can you do on a MAC that you can't do on a PC?

Daguerre wrote:
One of the best features of the Mac platform is the ability to boot from any hard drive partition visible to the operating system.  Just go to the startup disk control panel, select your drive, and reboot to that partition.  Makes troubleshooting nice and simple.

Should you lose your primary hard drive, the Mac will AUTOMATICALLY find another viable system volume and boot from it.  Windows will not do that.  In a business environment, keeping your system up and running even in the face of a catastrophic drive failure can be immeasurably important.

I currently have 4 Boot partitions:  a primary system partition that I normally boot from, a backup system volume, should I lose my main drive, and 2 more for testing purposes-- because we don't want to replace the last OS until the brand new one proves to be stable with all of our apps.

Daguerre wrote:
You can't say that.

Windows is a great environment to write software for.

PC's will multi-task just like an OSX machine.

OSX does use a much more efficient memory scheme than WindowsXP.

I see where you are going but the HARDWARE wont allow TRUE multitasking.. PC's work on ONE application at a time and switch back and forth between them to give the illusion of multitasking. where a Mac actually works on multiple applications simultaneously because of the way the HARDWARE extracts data from the harddrive.

again, not only because of they way they allocate memory space but because of different hardware configurations.

That is why historically a MAC with the same speed chip was faster than a pc.. that is why a mac could have less memory installed and be as efficient as a pc..

again, dont mix what the software does with what the actual MACHINE is capable of doing.. I know these days they are spoken of like a three headed monester, but those of us who had to repair them knew better..  LOL

EDIT:  Servers and MAC's used SCSI drives up until 2000 when I quit working on them, that may have changed since then so I dont know.. but again, my points are architecturally, not software driven..

Hardware, operating system and virtual machine

In relation to hardware, platform often describes the set of hardware components that make up the computer itself, that the software is written to target (often just described as "written for an architecture"). Pure assembly language can be run on this hardware platform, but most commonly, operating system software is written to target it. But in doing so, it becomes a platform in itself, facilitating the running of other software that is used to target the operating system, and likewise the hardware architecture. Furthermore, software that is written for the operating system can be used to support the running of other software: for example a virtual machine (which targets a certain operating system/hardware) that is used to run other programs that are written for it, which constitutes another platform

Daguerre wrote:
'Pentium 2 Duo bullshit whatever' isn't really computer language that inspires us to believe that your MacBook Pro has a competant operator sitting behind the wheel.  Perhaps reading the MacBook manual duhickey thing will help you out...

If you have a problem with my usage of computer terms, I guess you are the one with issues...

'2.33 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo', happy now?  It's all hype!  The Intel Core 2 Duo is still 'Pentium' based...  I was a computer science major out of UCLA, beta tested Final Cut Pro when it came out, Mac User for almost 10 years, I believe that makes me pretty competent with a Mac don't you think? 

Manual? I don't need no stinking manual!

Marko Cecic-Karuzic wrote:
They're expensive, everything for them is expensive, when Apple decides it's time to radically switch technologies they just up and leave everybody in the dust and very quickly the whole mac world abandons the technology that you have unless you upgrade to the new stuff.

That's what I'm talking about!

If you just bought a G5 Quad Core fully blown $16,000.00 computer and a couple of weeks later Apple announces they are switching to Intel Chips, I'm pretty sure you'd be really fucking pissed!  I actually know 4 people that happened to them!  Thank God I held off on my G5 Quad!  Had that happened to me, Steve Jobs would have my foot in his ass right about now!

Daguerre wrote:
Performance is another concern.  My 2 year old G5 will open a 1Gb file in 4.9 seconds.   Each platform has its advantages, but on Intel hardware, you can't have them both.

Apple has abandoned your 'OLD' G5 technology.  Your computer will go by the wayside like the old G4.  I'd be very pissed at Apple if I were you...

----------------

Mark Sebastian wrote:
Parallels is developing freakishly fast, with major updates every week. We have a quad-core intel at work which is running Parallels.. now you can launch Windows apps directly on OS X without the Windows interface! And the windows performance is equivilant to a 3ghz intel processor

Hamza wrote:
...You are talking about the 'discontinued' G5 Quad correct? That 'was' a great machine!  The G5 was an amazing processor, Jobs sold Mac down the river to switch to Intel for financial reasons...

Daguerre wrote:
Hamza, you do not know what you are talkin about!

Parallels will not run on a G5 anything.  It is designed for the Mac/Intel hardward platform-- the Mac Core systems and the Mac Xeon systems to allow you to run OSX and Windows systems simultaneously.

Stop misquoting me dude...  No shit Sherlock, Parallels won't run on a G5.  Get off your high-house already!  Core Duo is Pentium based, hence the Pentium reference earlier.  Get your facts straight before you attempt at sounding superior.

Daguerre wrote:

Microsoft does not own 20% of Apple Computer.

You're right.  All that information is public and freely available.

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/mh?s=AAPL

W.G. Rowland wrote:
If you want simple and relatively trouble free:

Select your applications.

Buy your machine.

Install your applications.

Use your applications.

Back up your data.

Do not screw with this formula.

I don't care if it's a Mac or a PC.  The key to screwing up a computer is letting it bloat.  The more apps you install.  The more widgets you say yes to.  The more things you don't know.  The more certain you can be that your computer will break on you and you won't know why.

You want to TRUST what's going on in your computer.. Learn how computers work.

You want to be a computer USER and just get on with your life.  Figure out what you want the computer to do, don't treat it like a junk drawer.

I agree 100%...