Okay, well I was spending a lot of time on 4chan's /g/ board (technology), and there's a lot of hate almost towards all OS's (even linux), but I use a Mac, so I only really cared about the mac arguments. I've come across these points from people who have likely never touched a mac in their life, and this is what I have to say about them. (I'm not really being a fan boy here, I like windows XP as much as my mac, but Vista got a lot more hate then leopard did.)

1) Yeah well you can't play games on a mac
Well, I don't really need to. I'm not a gamer, and I don't imagine you would get a Mac if you were! I still play C&C3 on here (Command and conquer 3) and it runs just fine! My friends plays Crysis on his ubuntu box, and many other games. He's a huge gamer and doesn't only use windows.

2) Mac's are way to expensive, and you can't even upgrade it!
Okay, so I have to spend about $1600 once . You spend let's say, $1000 on a PC, then you install vista and realize all your hardware is crap so immediately you spend another $500 fixing it up, let's not forget the occasional upgrades every year or two if you want some more RAM. With my mac, I don't have to worry about upgrading because it does what I want with the spec's it has. If I wanted item X Y Z I would build my own PC, (if I had the chance to build my own PC it would cost way more then a Mac)...so yes, at face value a Mac may be more expensive but it will work.

3) Mac's just...WORK!
This is a bad thing, right?

4) You can't do anything useful on a Mac, go make another slideshow!
Actually, this neat screenshot here shows the config file for the imageboard software I plan to be hosting on my site. (Since Apache was already installed on here.) So, um...yeah actually I can program in many languages. (I've done some Perl, CSS, PHP, HTML/XML from my nano editor ^_^)

http://i30.tinypic.com/2qcdvn9.png

I also have XCode, but I'm much to lazy to start it all up.

That's pretty much the only things that I've heard people complaining about. But, let me tell you the problems I do have with Mac. (Yeah, I dislike some features)

1) It's not customizable, unless you want to spend $20. (Shapeshifter by unsanity is a program that can change the look of things...but eh, it cost $20!)

2) Occasionally something might go wrong and if you view the error report it's a shit load of assembly. Literally, EAX's jumping off the screen everywhere. I've only had this happen about 5-6 times though. (I've had the comp for about 8 months)

3) It comes with a bunch of shit I don't care about, like iCalander or something. Some people might find it useful, but eh, not for me.

That's all I can really say. In the end it all comes down to preference, why do people argue so much about the OS's, and when they do- why do they make such retarded arguments?!?! It'd be like me saying windows crashes all the time. (It does crash, but not excessively. XP though, vista I'm not to sure about.)

If you have any question about Mac's, I'd be happy to answer from a user POV. Just, don't flame. I'm admitting that Mac's aren't perfect, thanks if you read the whole thing.

Wrong forum

Oh shit. I forgot we had those other ones...eh either way, Can we leave it here mod's? I want a general consensus, I don't want fan-boyism that I'll find in the Mac/Windows Forum.

How about the annoyingly custom hardware in Macs?

If my cat pisses on my Dell laptop's power supply, I can buy a new universal one for under the price of a DVD and carry on working.

Also, if a component - say, the motherboard - fries and dies on a Mac tower, you can't just go out to the shop and buy a new one. I imagine you have to buy the replacement OEM part from Apple direct, which isn't going to be cheaper than a white-box item from a retailer.

The inflexibility of Macbooks also really put me off. Whilst looking for a laptop, I did consider one but the offerings by Dell gave more flexibility for less money. A lot less money. I can whip out the CD drive with the press of a button and replace it with a second battery, space saving blank or a hard drive caddy. I frequently use this feature to "customise" my machine for the needs of that day - when I want to use it all day long for typing, in goes the second battery. Or if it's going to be lugged around in the car, used as a GPS, the blanking plate is used. Very handy.

And if I manage to kill the optical drive? £15 later and the click of a latch and I'm up and running again.

Macbooks also lack a docking station, something which I couldn't do without in a portable machine. I have a printer, big monitor, keyboard, power adaptor and a bunch of other stuff all connected up to the dock - just drop the laptop on the dock and bam, everything's connected up.

HP and IBM also have a similar system of interchangeable modules and docking stations - come on Apple, if you're so advanced, do it!

Cost and availability of parts is also awful on Macs. I dropped my Dell down a flight of hard wooden stairs (I'm an idiot, don't ever watch videos and walk at the same time), breaking a hinge. Cost to fix: £10 and 15 minutes work. Nice, easy-to-access screws, and the whole process is documented in the service manual downloadable from Dell's site. I've taken apart Macbooks and it's not pretty. They're made to look clean and screwless, not easily maintainable.

Heh...I wonder if a Macbook would have survived that 15 step plunge of death...

Macs are more expensive than PCs. I buy most things, including my computers, second hand as I don't need the most up-to-date power available. About a year and a half ago, my Dell D600 (1.6ghz P-M, 80gb HD, 1gb RAM) cost me £200 ($400) with two new batteries and a case from Ebay. I just had a look on the 'bay and a 1.4ghz iBook seems to run for just about twice what I paid - and that's a year on. It also doesn't have as much memory and the screen is lower resolution.

Note that I don't game on a PC - at all. I have a chipped Xbox for all night 4 player drunken Mario Kart matches and Halo when people are over, but I don't play on my own.

I'm sure macs support a fair share of newer games. Playing game on linux can take a lot of effort to get them to work, and you also have to rely on freelance programmers to write an emulator. Also too, I understand that Mac users like to boast about Macs being able to run Windows in parallel. We Windows users have no need to run Mac OS in parallel...

You can spend less than $1000 on a PC, and be able to run Vista alright. I could build a PC that will blow your $1600 mac away, for about the same price. I could probably also build a PC that is comparable, and maybe even slightly better than your Mac for less money.

If you're always using applications that demand everything your hardware has to offer, then you'll have to upgrade whenever your hardware becomes lacking, regardless of whether you're using a Mac or not. Mac OS does not magically upgrade your hardware for you, so that you can run the latest, most demanding applications. I usually do a ~$600 upgrade once every 18 months. However, I play the latest games that demand the most from my hardware.

I guess not, but frankly, I don't care to ever use a Mac. Windows "just works" most the time for me, and I'm computer-literate enough to fix whatever doesn't work, in a timely manner, without stressing out.

You're correct here. People wouldn't take time to write an OS, if nothing useful could be accomplished with it. However, there's very few things that can be done, exclusively on a Mac; everything a mac can do can be done equally as well, and just as easily on Windows, or even linux/BSD.

The number one application that I hear Mac users praise for being so easy, and exclusively for mac, is Garageband. I never used the program, and I won't doubt it's a good program, but with my technical abilities, I can get by using something like Cubase, or Soundforge, if I ever need to do any mixing.

For the most part, it does often boil down to user preference. However, since Windows-based systems dominate the market, if one wishes to be an IT professional, it's better to learn to use Windows, than Mac. Since every so often you find a mac or two in the professional arena, it's even better to be proficient with both OSes. And you are welcome.

here it is, this is all you need to know, yes disregard everything you have read/will read about mac's and PC's


Macs and PC's use the same core hardware

Macs are more expensive

Macs run a differnt opperating system


That is it.

Hm, I might argue that it would be better to even learn UNIX shell environments rather than windows, if you know UNIX/Linux you pretty much cover 3 major OS's (OS X, Unix and Linux).

Then windows could be picked up pretty easily. The university campus in my town uses Solaris for their servers, they have XP for the terminals and each student gets a UNIX account.

And about making the PC for under $1600, you can but the thing is you almost waste all that money just by putting Vista on it. I'm not going to lie, I think Vista was a big mistake. The Vista Transformation pack I put on my XP Box worked smoother than Vista.

Oh and you can run Windows on parallel, or you can get boot camp and have a dual boot.

@MonkeyQ, the thing is the Mac part's Don't break I'm sure there have been odd cases, but I haven't heard of it too much. Often times if you just take care of the computer it will work.

And maybe I just like fancy shit but I don't know what kind of computers you guys build, all of the things I've salivated over amount to over $3000. SLI...water cooling...fancy PSU's...lol, I like to dream. Maybe one day when I am rich =P I've never bought a bunch of individual parts for a computer so I can't speak to much for how exactly that works.

Here are my Mac Specs, the computer cost $1499.99 Pre-tax CAD.

And since I don't have a tower, only the monitor and keyboard + mouse...I think it's a pretty nice deal =P

EDIT: reidy, you're quite wrong unless you're willing to back that up.

This is your idea of a serious discussion? So deserving of our consideration that you want it to stay in T&T instead of going to Cult of Mac?

On my 266 G3 iMac, the only thing that has ever broken has been the PRAM battery. I had this thing forever, since it came out.
Need an extra battery? Just buy an extra one and when you get low on juice, just switch out the batteries. Buy an extra CD drive if you need it. Who needs 2 CD drives? They're cheap as hell now.
Oh, and ANY type of tech is not made to be thrown down a flight of stairs, so yeah. I hate these fucking Mac vs PC threads!

Peace.

Meh. Windows has its good points, and so does OSX.

I've got a Mac Pro which I triple-boot XP, 10.5.2, and Slackware on. I have no problems at all. Total cost was $2,600 Australian (the home of expensive technology).