Design a computer...

[Zipper5 74]

I have more of an issue with Mac users than I do with the machines themselves. I still maintain that they are massively overpriced and this is purely due to the brand name and the hype that follows it.

Yes, I'm exactly the same. Apple products are always overhyped. The iPad is an excellent recent example. And they are always raving about how much more powerful Macs are than PCs... At least PC users have well-established facts to back them up.

[bangtail 0]

Yes, I'm exactly the same. Apple products are always overhyped. The iPad is an excellent recent example. And they are always raving about how much more powerful Macs are than PCs...

The iPad didn't meet with the kind of critical acclaim that most of their other stuff tends to garner, regardless of the quality or utility.

It's the first time in a while that one of their gadgets was not so well received.

[Madus_Maximus 0]

The iPad didn't meet with the kind of critical acclaim that most of their other stuff tends to garner, regardless of the quality or utility.

It's the first time in a while that one of their gadgets was not so well received.

The iPad wasn't recieved all that well because people overhyped it and it's not yet clear to most just where it'll fit within the market. Give it time and we'll see if it works or not. They expected it to be the second coming with God tagging along to say hi too. That's one of the problems with Apple (well, not Apple, but the community around it), they're forever expected to pull of miriacles every time they hold some sort of event.

The tech news world loves Apple news because they know it'll generate click throughs and give them ad money, so every little tiny peice of news and rumour is posted and then pulled apart and over analysed. Sometimes you get something that beats even the rumours, like the iPhone (say what you want about it, but there's no denying it's changed the entire mobile phone industry. Before the iPhone most UI's were made for buttons and were clutterd and confusing to use and had features that were either never used beyond the first try, or were just poorly implemented. Since the iPhone everyone and their dog has a touch screen phone with a more simple user friendly interface and everyone seems to be coming out with their own App Store).

At the end of the day it's personal preferance. You may think Macs are overpriced and useless, and for your needs, maybe they are, but to someone else they're the best solution. The media industry is a perfect example. Media creation is faster on a Mac, either literally so (as in things are processed faster within OSX than Windows even on the same machine) or the interface allows more efficient productivity. When I'm editing stuff in Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign and swapping between them all the time, you have no idea how god damn useful Exposé is until you don't have it. It's mostly about time saving and getting from A to B faster with as few clicks as possible.

On the gaming front. Nope, not as many games come out for Mac as PC, but then not many games come out for PC these days either. The days when a monster rig was a must have for gaming is going the way of the Dodo, instead those monster rigs will turn into media editing rigs to actually make use of that power, even then, an uber gaming rig still holds no candle to a Mac Pro in content creation. But then that's two different architectures and two different tools for different tasks.

A desktop is generic and can be used for gaming, a Mac Pro is a workstation and is more or less a server. It's more for high throughput over prolonged periods of time rather than bursts of performance used in gaming. Try doing the same workloads on an i7 rig as a Mac Pro. It'll do it, but the Mac Pro will be able to do it for longer and higher sustained rates (and a higher temp envelope too).

Use what you need, or use what you have and make the best of it. I'd never in a million years tell a hardcore gamer to get a Mac, unless there's one that will play all they want. Most people get Macs for the OS, not the hardware, just like most people (power users) prefer PC's for the hardware rather than the OS. It's interesting in these sort of debates how folk slam the Mac for the price/hardware and so on but rarely sing the praises of Windows lol. Not many to be sung though in my opinion.

EDIT:

Oh and yes, Macs can run Linux. Intel Macs can run any x86 software (assuming you have the required OS installed too, obviously). The old PowerPC Macs can run Linux too, assuming they're compiled for the PPC architecture. SUN do a PPC version of Solaris too methinks which will run on old Power Macs. Ubuntu has a PPC distro too, although I'm not sure what version that's at, I cant say I've checked for a while. A lot of people turn their old G3, G4 and G5 boxes into Linux file servers for their home network, they're pretty damn reliable too from what I gather.

Edited February 15, 2010 by Madus_Maximus

[bangtail 0]

The iPad wasn't recieved all that well because people overhyped it and it's not yet clear to most just where it'll fit within the market. Give it time and we'll see if it works or not. They expected it to be the second coming with God tagging along to say hi too. That's one of the problems with Apple (well, not Apple, but the community around it), they're forever expected to pull of miriacles every time they hold some sort of event.

The tech news world loves Apple news because they know it'll generate click throughs and give them ad money, so every little tiny peice of news and rumour is posted and then pulled apart and over analysed. Sometimes you get something that beats even the rumours, like the iPhone (say what you want about it, but there's no denying it's changed the entire mobile phone industry. Before the iPhone most UI's were made for buttons and were clutterd and confusing to use and had features that were either never used beyond the first try, or were just poorly implemented. Since the iPhone everyone and their dog has a touch screen phone with a more simple user friendly interface and everyone seems to be coming out with their own App Store).

At the end of the day it's personal preferance. You may think Macs are overpriced and useless, and for your needs, maybe they are, but to someone else they're the best solution. The media industry is a perfect example. Media creation is faster on a Mac, either literally so (as in things are processed faster within OSX than Windows even on the same machine) or the interface allows more efficient productivity. When I'm editing stuff in Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign and swapping between them all the time, you have no idea how god damn useful Exposé is until you don't have it. It's mostly about time saving and getting from A to B faster with as few clicks as possible.

On the gaming front. Nope, not as many games come out for Mac as PC, but then not many games come out for PC these days either. The days when a monster rig was a must have for gaming is going the way of the Dodo, instead those monster rigs will turn into media editing rigs to actually make use of that power, even then, an uber gaming rig still holds no candle to a Mac Pro in content creation. But then that's two different architectures and two different tools for different tasks.

They're forever expected to "pull off miracles" because they constantly claim that they can and they endlessly overhype their gear. It's no surprise that they have finally fallen on their iface.

Can't agree with you on the productivity front. That is an old argument that was definitely true once, but certainly is not anymore. It is a mainstay argument of Mac aficionados to this day however. Some people prefer to create content on Macs, others prefer PCs. There is no hard and fast rule there, and a Mac is certainly not any faster than a similarly equipped PC.

On the gaming front, again, I would have appreciated an out an out concession as opposed to a justification but I guess conceding anything to PC users is very difficult for you. Macs are not gaming machines and there are only a handful of games available for them.

I think you are woefully out of the loop when it comes to the power of modern PC hardware, it's all about the money you spend. One of my biggest customers is a photographer that used to swear by Macs until she saw Photoshop operating on my main box. Let's face it, they run the same basic hardware now but you have way more versatility in what you can buy and customize in terms of PC parts than you do with Mac. You mistakenly believe the Mac Pro is a faster box, but you forget it has 2 x 4 core Xeon CPUs as standard (most wIntel gaming boxes have 1 CPU with up to 4 cores), if you run the Mac Pro against a similarly equipped (and much cheaper) dual CPU wIntel system, the Mac won't be outperforming anything. I'll be picking up an EVGA W555 Dual CPU board as as soon as I can get my hands on one.

I should also point out that you can buy a dual Xeon CPU setup right now that will easily demolish a Mac Pro. The reason gamers stay away from the Dual Xeon Motherboards is that the chipsets aren't always so friendly with regards to gaming. The W555 is a dual CPU board designed for gamers. When you couple the W555 with 2 x 6 core Gulftowns, The performance gap will become even wider. I can't wait to see Photoshop (and many other threaded apps) on 12 cores (24 with HT).

Where we will agree is that it is definitely a case of "to each their own" :)

PS : Aero peek is way better than Expose, I've even heard Mac users admit that.

Edited February 19, 2010 by BangTail

[Herbal Influence 10]

Sorry, but don't see a big gap between Apple and Microsoft.

They do a little competing - but just for the show.

Look

, how Steve Jobs explains to the growling shareholders that he wants to cooperate with Microsoft not to go bankrucpt.

Since then they sure are close friends - Microsoft needs Apple not to get under pressure from the EU Commission and also the US Government (tried to divide Microsoft, but the head of the Antitrust Office somehow lost his job then .... ).

Microsoft befriends with Apple especially because they have a very serious and young (many academics, thereunder many informatic students) common enemy: Open Source Software (Linux etc.).

Get rid of your Apple/Microsoft-Stockholme Syndrome and end this stage-managed war and vote for freedom and innovation? :)

[echo1 0]

Microsoft befriends with Apple especially because they have a very serious and young (many academics, thereunder many informatic students) common enemy: Open Source Software (Linux etc.).

Get your facts right. Apple is a big open source supporter - the underlying Unix system of Mac OSX (Darwin) and the Webkit engine used in a wide variety of open source browsers (e.g. Chrome) are but two examples of things that they've opened to the community. Large chunks of their OS have come from various parts of the *nix community, particularly from BSD, and to the best of my knowledge they have their employees involved with the various projects that they depend on.

In fact, I really don't see why Apple and Open Source are automatically enemies. I know plenty of people who use Macs as a platform for the open source software they run. Furthermore, Apple is first and foremost a hardware company, and most of the software they develop is there to facilitate a pleasant hardware-software integration experience on the machines they make. Mac OS X is probably the main software product that Apple has for their laptops/desktops. People still want the nice hardware-software integration that Mac OS X provides, so Linux really isn't a threat to it (besides, if you want to run Linux, you're hardly going to buy a Mac). Beyond that, Apple depends too much on open source involvement, as does any company that gets involved in the *nix market. If they declared war on open source, they'd find themselves in a world of shit in rather rapid order.

Apple doesn't really compete with Microsoft because their marketing strategy is based around them being the trendy underdog. Ferrari and Ford both make cars, but you don't see Ferrari competing in Ford's market.

Edited March 6, 2010 by echo1

[Herbal Influence 10]

It's getting more and more modern to cry in public: "We are OpenSource!"

(The marketing experts advise so.)

Apple does so here.

And they list a lot "projects" which make you think they are their projects but most of it was a project long before Apple turned towards MacOSX.

They use it now because they need it after they decide to use Unix.

That's absolutely ok in terms of Open Source, but doesn't show they contribute because they want to contribute but for it is useful to do so.

Apple allows (!) you to see some part of the Unix-Kernel so that you can tell them where to fix bugs ... wow, what a freedom!

The next moment they do strictly forbid to install MacOS on other hardware than theirs and call the courts for help if you do - they did so in the past.

They decide which software is good for you - censoring Iphone-Apps.

They sure have taken and learned from OpenSource a lot indeed.

2007 they took a twenty year old technic used by Linuxers since long ("Virtual Desktops") and simply rebranded it, calling it "Spaces".

An Apple user told me: "Look - how innovative Apple is!"

I don't know, but sure they registered a trademark for it.

Like Microsoft does with "Windows" which was not invented by Apple or Microsoft and was a common term for a GUI technique in those days. But nowadays you are not allowed to use the word "windows" not even something similiar for your software - Microsoft immediately sues you though you are just using and naming quite a common technique.

That's the way they understand freedom.

I actually know old and young people working flawlessly with Linux after a 30 minute installation incl. OpenOffice.

But let's end this it'll be endless.

It's quite a basic kind of understanding freedom.

And it's derailing the thread.

[echo1 0]

They use it now because they need it after they decide to use Unix.

That's absolutely ok in terms of Open Source, but doesn't show they contribute because they want to contribute but for it is useful to do so.

And? So what? A lot of essential parts of Linux were implemented by the likes of IBM or Novell (to name two of the large number of examples). Of course they did it to benefit themselves (I know, it's crazy right... companies doing things to increase their own profit margin) , but who cares as long as their work is now in the public domain? I think you'll find that every successful open source project has had millions (if not billions) sunk it to it by multiple corporate sponsors. In fact, that's why it's good.

Apple allows (!) you to see some part of the Unix-Kernel so that you can tell them where to fix bugs ... wow, what a freedom!

The next moment they do strictly forbid to install MacOS on other hardware than theirs and call the courts for help if you do - they did so in the past.

I have installed Darwin on a non-Mac computer. Their GUI is not open source, and Mac OS X basically = Darwin + their own frontend.

Again, there's nothing wrong with using a proprietary front-end on an open source back end as long as they contribute whatever they did to open source part back to the community.

They decide which software is good for you - censoring Iphone-Apps.

I don't see what that has to do with open source but whatever. Apple's restriction of software released on it's platforms is a way of guaranteeing quality. Yes, it's a rather cynical way of doing it, but I can't really blame them.

2007 they took a twenty year old technic used by Linuxers since long ("Virtual Desktops") and simply rebranded it, calling it "Spaces".

An Apple user told me: "Look - how innovative Apple is!"

I don't know, but sure they registered a trademark for it.

A Unix variant using virtual desktops? No way!

It's called marketing. UNIX/Linux vendors do it too. No big deal. If they didn't do it, people like you would complain that they lack basic Unix features.

[Madus_Maximus 0]

ch_123, I think we should just give up. We're surrounded by ignorant people who'll hate everything Apple make simple becuse Apple make it. It's also ironic how the main arguments about why Apple are so evil is because they can't build their own machines and it's all about the hardware and so on. I've not seen many arguments that big up the awesomness of Windows, just the hardware they run on.

People don't seem to understand that the main reason people like Macs over Windows machines is the SOFTWARE! The OS is just nicer to use (in my opinion), it's more stable and more logically laid out in terms of UI and so on. The vast majority of 3rd party apps also follow the same UI design/concept rather than having their own as is often the case with Windows. Windows has more software, but I'd argue that Macs have more higher quality software, at least in my experience.

[bangtail 0]

ch_123, I think we should just give up. We're surrounded by ignorant people who'll hate everything Apple make simple becuse Apple make it. It's also ironic how the main arguments about why Apple are so evil is because they can't build their own machines and it's all about the hardware and so on. I've not seen many arguments that big up the awesomness of Windows, just the hardware they run on.

People don't seem to understand that the main reason people like Macs over Windows machines is the SOFTWARE! The OS is just nicer to use (in my opinion), it's more stable and more logically laid out in terms of UI and so on. The vast majority of 3rd party apps also follow the same UI design/concept rather than having their own as is often the case with Windows. Windows has more software, but I'd argue that Macs have more higher quality software, at least in my experience.

That's why Apple has such a HUGE (/sarcasm off) share of the PC market right? Windows has had its ups and downs but 7 is solid. In fact, it's easily the best Windows MS has produced.

Calling people ignorant because they don't agree with you is just plain pathetic. I don't care for Macs or Apple in general but I certainly don't think any less of anyone who happens to like them.

Edited March 6, 2010 by BangTail

[Zipper5 74]

I find that there aren't really Windows fanbois so much as there are Mac fanbois. Always resorting to "you hate it just because it's a Mac" and no other reason. Most of my friends at school use Macs, and I don't think any less of them for using them, but they think less of everyone else for using Windows.

Wow, this discussion has gone slightly offtopic... :D

[bangtail 0]

I find that there aren't really Windows fanbois so much as there are Mac fanbois. Always resorting to "you hate it just because it's a Mac" and no other reason. Most of my friends at school use Macs, and I don't think any less of them for using them, but they think less of everyone else for using Windows.

Wow, this discussion has gone slightly offtopic... :D

/QFT

Always looking down their noses at PC users. It's no wonder Apple users garner a negative reaction.

Edited March 6, 2010 by BangTail

[echo1 0]

I should probably reiterate that I'm not very pro-Mac. Rather, I find stupid arguments against Macs to be as annoying as stupid arguments for them. They are a nice idea and the hardware is right for those who want them. Sure they cost more than they're probably worth. Sure their platforms are subjected to quite stringent controls (and it is quite closed in a lot of ways). But in a strange sense, I understand why they do it, and I can see why some people buy into it. I just wouldn't do it myself.

Besides, we all know that FreeBSD fanboys are by far the most annoying...

[bangtail 0]

I should probably reiterate that I'm not very pro-Mac. Rather, I find stupid arguments against Macs to be as annoying as stupid arguments for them. They are a nice idea and the hardware is right for those who want them. Sure they cost more than they're probably worth. Sure their platforms are subjected to quite stringent controls (and it is quite closed in a lot of ways). But in a strange sense, I understand why they do it, and I can see why some people buy into it. I just wouldn't do it myself.

Besides, we all know that FreeBSD fanboys are by far the most annoying...

/QFT

Well said.

Edited March 7, 2010 by BangTail

[Herbal Influence 10]

Cogamers - it's me who inserted wrongly in here.

I am sorry.

It's not about facts - there are enough facts for everyone on each side.

I only wanted to deliver a positive message: I am fascinated by nowadays Linux, because I am fascinated of Openness and freedom.

Don't get me wrong - didn't want no dispute.

Just tell/remind of what Linux (Ubuntu) is today.

[ubascouser 0]

guys i got the I5 mac with the 4850 and the game runs great settings are normal to high with a 3d resolution off 100% i get 26 fps in the benchmark.

[echo1 0]

Not bad for running native res on a 27" screen.

[LJF 0]

I just don't like Apple, granted, I don't especially like Microsoft either, but Windows 7 is just so nice to use :) Having said that, I'd run Linux in a second if I wasn't so lazy and could play more games on it.