Why buy a Mac?

[RyanLilly]

I never said it was a bad choice. For laptops, you're absolutely correct. If you ever saw the heatsink for the G5, it's no wonder they had a hard time trying to fit the processor into a laptop. All I meant was that since OS X is now running on intel chipsets, there's no longer a functional hardware distinction, whereas before I would have said that a multi-processor G5 desktop was unequivocally better than a PC desktop for image editing.

True, Max, thank you for the clarification, I lusted over a dual G5 when they were just released, but now a can lust for a 8-core 3.0GHz intel

yeah the heat issues of the G5 were ridiculous, apple advertised "liquid cooled" as if it were a cool added feature, where in reality it was to keep your computer from bursting into flames.

 

[Iron Flatline]

i went from a windows user my whole life (19 years old) and just bought my first mac. I can say the OS is so much smoother and quicker to navigate. instead of going to "my computer then cdrive then my name then my documents to get to music" i just hit "finder > music" I didnt own vista this is straight from xp... Just so much more user friendly i think.

Only problem is lack of software for somethings

LOL, that means I bought my first Windows Laptop when you were 6 - in 1994.

 

[Atropine]

As long as you don't adapt the quite oppressive sarcastic attitude a lot of mac users tend to have, a mac might be a good choice. Being such a small group they sure make a lot of noise.

I've been working in win, dos, unix and mac environment in my profession and there are surely pros and cons with all os's. If you don't need the outstanding versatility offered by the worlds most spread os (xp, vista) I can see no problems buying a mac. Though I usually work in xp these days I have been considering an imac for home use, but every time I am about to buy one, I always stumble over a pc that offers more bang for the bucks.

 

[Garbz]

And for those of you REALLY into customizing your operating system there is LINUX!!!!!! Yey penguins!!!!! I'll have to say most Linux's are not for everybody Ubuntu is getting there but not yet. It has a lot of the same problems as MAC (software compatibility) but everything is YOUR choice if you want it to act a certain way you just need to be able to tell it how to and it will. Sorry but in a thread having to do with operating systems I figured the Linux crowd had to chime in.

You fail to mention the obvious problem that wine doesn't emulate photoshop or lightroom yet! Now I like linux, but it has it's place, and that's not on the desk of anyone who likes photography.

Mac users generally cry about their stability and all that, but in reality they are just like windows. Windows would be very secure if 95% of the world didn't use it. The fact is mac, linux, beos, etc has just as many problems it is just that the army of people out to make a massive botnet to take down servers and spam emails would rather write hacks that affect 95% of computers, not tiny mac or linux fanbase. Macs would need just as much fine tuning with AV software and firewalls if there were viruses for it.

So really it's just a personal and financial choice (macs come with the Apple tax applied to them because white paint is more expensive than beige).

 

[Amitay]

Mac is worth its money.
Every time I get impressed again when they bring some new product to the market.
Must Have!

 

[photogmatt]

Support Windows all day, come home to my macs at night. It's a beautiful thing knowing your computer will just work.

If you want a fast machine, that's not too pricey, get a new Macbook. The upgrade to 2 or 4gb of ram, and a 250gb drive is easy enough to do yourself (or have them do it) and cheap when you buy the parts on your own. Grab a 24" external monitor, and you have a nice desktop as well as portable.

That's just my take on it. Just don't use Vista, which is crap.

 

[usayit]

Garbz.. from my experience... Mac OS X is way more stable than Windows of any release.

But yeh... I mentioned up there that you have to protect your machine from virus no matter what platform you choose for the exact reasons you posted.

BUT there are a lot of UNIX'ism aspects that help MAC OS X

How many Windows users out there are running on an Administrator level account on a daily basis?

How many Mac OS X users are logging in as "root" on a daily basis?



Funny... the windows support at work is slowly becoming more Linux oriented with Mac users sprinkled in...

 

[Alpha]

True, Max, thank you for the clarification, I lusted over a dual G5 when they were just released, but now a can lust for a 8-core 3.0GHz intel

yeah the heat issues of the G5 were ridiculous, apple advertised "liquid cooled" as if it were a cool added feature, where in reality it was to keep your computer from bursting into flames.

I'm fortunate to be able to currently work on a quad-processor G5 with 2 gigs of ram on each processor. I've post-processed images upwards of 10 gigs

 

[Reel1]

yes dslrnoob , that WAS my opinion. I dont consider pushing more than one button right clicking. i like being able to RIGHT CLICK, its intuitive and every apple mouse i've used either has that feature turned off, or doesnt include it.

I have been using macs for about a year now. The right click button works perfectly, and no there is no need for pushing any extra buttons.

 

[shorty6049]

macs remind me of communism... in soviet russia, you dont OWN the mac, mac owns YOU!

 

[Allsmiles7282]

When my hubby and I got married, his PC had crapped out on him, while my mac of 5 years was still going strong. About a month after we got married he dropped my iBook and cracked the screen. So when deciding on a new computer there was much debate. My hubby plays games online that are on PC and all my photography programs and my very way of life was on a Mac. What to do? We bought an iMac partioned part of our hard drive off for windows and left the rest for mac. We can run both OS and they both run smoothly. I really feel like it is the best of both worlds.

However, I must mention that my hubby now only goes on the PC side for games and for no other reason and we have since bought a PowerBook because we both love Mac so much.

Plus they never crash. ever.

MAC ALL THE WAY!

 

[monkeykoder]

You fail to mention the obvious problem that wine doesn't emulate photoshop or lightroom yet! Now I like linux, but it has it's place, and that's not on the desk of anyone who likes photography.

Mac users generally cry about their stability and all that, but in reality they are just like windows. Windows would be very secure if 95% of the world didn't use it. The fact is mac, linux, beos, etc has just as many problems it is just that the army of people out to make a massive botnet to take down servers and spam emails would rather write hacks that affect 95% of computers, not tiny mac or linux fanbase. Macs would need just as much fine tuning with AV software and firewalls if there were viruses for it.

So really it's just a personal and financial choice (macs come with the Apple tax applied to them because white paint is more expensive than beige).

I have two things to say to this
1) GIMP may not be quite as good as Photoshop but it does everything an amateur would want it to and more.
2) While 95% of the desktop market is Windows based operating systems over 50% of of the server market is *nix based operating systems. Most people want to hack servers not someones desktop computer (at least the ones that can really hack). (my numbers might be off by a tad Apache doesn't only run on Linux) but Windows based servers have about a 36% market share and Apache has about 50%)

 

[domromer]

You fail to mention the obvious problem that wine doesn't emulate photoshop or lightroom yet! Now I like linux, but it has it's place, and that's not on the desk of anyone who likes photography.

Mac users generally cry about their stability and all that, but in reality they are just like windows. Windows would be very secure if 95% of the world didn't use it. The fact is mac, linux, beos, etc has just as many problems it is just that the army of people out to make a massive botnet to take down servers and spam emails would rather write hacks that affect 95% of computers, not tiny mac or linux fanbase. Macs would need just as much fine tuning with AV software and firewalls if there were viruses for it.

So really it's just a personal and financial choice (macs come with the Apple tax applied to them because white paint is more expensive than beige).

Wine works fine for photoshop. I running it right now with Gutsy Gibbon.

 

[RyanLilly]

I'm fortunate to be able to currently work on a quad-processor G5 with 2 gigs of ram on each processor. I've post-processed images upwards of 10 gigs

Nice!

I was very happy to see Mac come out with a quad processor mac with the G5, the last quad before it was a Motorola 603, or 604, now that I think about it, Im not sure that It was even Apple, I think It was a clone, DayStar, or something.

 

[usayit]

macs remind me of communism... in soviet russia, you dont OWN the mac, mac owns YOU!

Um... if anything Windows is less forgiving less flexible than Mac... In a mix UNIX and Windows production environment, Mac plays better in the sand box right out of the box.