Mac v. PC?

[Derrel]

"a Windows-based laptop"

Rotsa ruck with that!!!! Ewwww, bad decision....

 

[Rekd]

In years past Macs have handled media better than PCs. I imagine they've still got an edge over PCs.

If it's dedicated to photography I'd go with a Mac.

 

[Derrel]

Macintosh. Why? Reliability and longevity. Apple makes the hardware from high-quality components, and also makes the operating system, so that the hardware and the operating system are integrated. Macs have a much lower incidence of problems with viruses. A lot of people like PCs, many of which are made from components sourced from the lowest bidder, to increase profit margins in the HUGELY-crowded market of Pee Cee makers. Sure, you can purchase a cheap PC. Anywhere. Cheap PC's are abundant. If you want a computer and a software system that is basically, 95% less-likely to be disabled by a virus, just buy a decent Mac. And use it. Hard. Every day. And not have all the 'issues" PC's are plagued with.

Look at total cost of ownership. Macs have less down time. Require fewer hours of tech support per seat in office situations. Fewer issues with viruses. Far fewer issues with hardware/OS incompatibility. If you like having a beater car that always needs to be worked on, and which sucks up weekends as you fit it with repair parts, and causes you to perform countless diagnostic and preventative maintenance routines, then buy a PC. If you want a reliable, modern "vehicle" that just works, buy a Mac. And get rid of the PC headaches and the dumb software system that Windoze is infamous for.

What kind of performance do you want here to have? Kia-like, or Mercedes-like?

Or you buy a good brand PC and not an Acer and even then your car comparison is stupid when you consider for the cost, you get equal or greater performance for less money with most PCs. Maybe a Camaro vs. your standard C230 Mercedes.

It's a nice post full of stereotypes, but when you look inside a Dell and find the same hardware components that are in an Apple, you start to look at things differently. Apple doesn't make anything, they assemble their computers and if you think every component in an Apple computer is a high end piece of techonological marvel, then you've definitely been drinking the Kool Aid. Ever hear of a company called Micron? They make memory for Macs and other manufactures. Toshiba? They make DVD drives you can find in Apple notebooks and other brands of pre built computers. LG makes Apple screens and Dell Screens.

You forgot that Apple is the ONLY mass-market computer company that also makes the operating system....and, obviously, you need help with reading comprehension. I did not suggest that Apple manufactures the components (like memory, hard drives, etc,etc) but that they "make" the hardware, ie, they make hardware, as in the computers they sell..."make the hardware" in the sense that they manufacture hardware...as well as software. No need for you to be a dumb-ass, nor a smart-ass Village Idiot; who would think that say, YOU, a Village Idiot, would "build a computer" and think that you would be the one building the memory modules, or the hard drives or the video cards used? I mean, you can barely construct an argument, let alone a memory module...

Equal or greater performance for less money from a Pee-Cee. I bet you're still drinking Boone's Farm wine and eating at McDonald's. Life's too short to use ****ty computers.

 

[Village Idiot]

Macintosh. Why? Reliability and longevity. Apple makes the hardware from high-quality components, and also makes the operating system, so that the hardware and the operating system are integrated. Macs have a much lower incidence of problems with viruses. A lot of people like PCs, many of which are made from components sourced from the lowest bidder, to increase profit margins in the HUGELY-crowded market of Pee Cee makers. Sure, you can purchase a cheap PC. Anywhere. Cheap PC's are abundant. If you want a computer and a software system that is basically, 95% less-likely to be disabled by a virus, just buy a decent Mac. And use it. Hard. Every day. And not have all the 'issues" PC's are plagued with.

Look at total cost of ownership. Macs have less down time. Require fewer hours of tech support per seat in office situations. Fewer issues with viruses. Far fewer issues with hardware/OS incompatibility. If you like having a beater car that always needs to be worked on, and which sucks up weekends as you fit it with repair parts, and causes you to perform countless diagnostic and preventative maintenance routines, then buy a PC. If you want a reliable, modern "vehicle" that just works, buy a Mac. And get rid of the PC headaches and the dumb software system that Windoze is infamous for.

What kind of performance do you want here to have? Kia-like, or Mercedes-like?

Or you buy a good brand PC and not an Acer and even then your car comparison is stupid when you consider for the cost, you get equal or greater performance for less money with most PCs. Maybe a Camaro vs. your standard C230 Mercedes.

It's a nice post full of stereotypes, but when you look inside a Dell and find the same hardware components that are in an Apple, you start to look at things differently. Apple doesn't make anything, they assemble their computers and if you think every component in an Apple computer is a high end piece of techonological marvel, then you've definitely been drinking the Kool Aid. Ever hear of a company called Micron? They make memory for Macs and other manufactures. Toshiba? They make DVD drives you can find in Apple notebooks and other brands of pre built computers. LG makes Apple screens and Dell Screens.

You forgot that Apple is the ONLY mass-market computer company that also makes the operating system....and, obviously, you need help with reading comprehension. I did not suggest that Apple manufactures the components (like memory, hard drives, etc,etc) but that they "make" the hardware, ie, they make hardware, as in the computers they sell..."make the hardware" in the sense that they manufacture hardware...as well as software. No need for you to be a dumb-ass, nor a smart-ass Village Idiot; who would think that say, YOU, a Village Idiot, would "build a computer" and think that you would be the one building the memory modules, or the hard drives or the video cards used? I mean, you can barely construct an argument, let alone a memory module...

Equal or greater performance for less money from a Pee-Cee. I bet you're still drinking Boone's Farm wine and eating at McDonald's. Life's too short to use ****ty computers.

If comes down to this: You said

Apple makes the hardware from high-quality components

and then put down Wintel machines for being utter crap when they use the same "high-quality" compontents.

You just can't ever admit to being wrong.

How much did you spend on your Mac? I have a computer I built that's going to be 3 in October. Go get the xbench software from www.xbench.com and I'll stack it up againt my computer that I built 3 years ago for $1700. That's $1700 which included a 1.8GB GPU that has still ran almost everything I've thrown at it on max settings at 2560x1600 resolution.

That is unless your computer is like your photography and is all talk.

 

[JClishe]

btw macs have less viruses then pcs for the same reason rossie odonald has less stalkers then angelina jolie.

OMG! I'll definitely be re-using that line!

 

[table1349]

PC + (a really great lens) = $XXX.XX = MacHonestly, a quality PC will last just as long and do everything a Mac will do. Even more actually when you consider all the software available for use no a PC that's not for a Mac. And there is no down time if you do regular maintenance (as with a car).

Actually it is the other way around. My Mac will run everything your Windows machine will since I can boot into Windows 7 if I need as well as running all Mac software. I can even run the two operating systems side by side if I choose to.

 

[Village Idiot]

PC + (a really great lens) = $XXX.XX = MacHonestly, a quality PC will last just as long and do everything a Mac will do. Even more actually when you consider all the software available for use no a PC that's not for a Mac. And there is no down time if you do regular maintenance (as with a car).

Actually it is the other way around. My Mac will run everything your Windows machine will since I can boot into Windows 7 if I need as well as running all Mac software. I can even run the two operating systems side by side if I choose to.

My self built desktop has OS X and Windows 7 on it. It'll run everything that a Mac will and faster than most of them.

 

[NikonME]

I like Coke over Pepsi, Chevy over Ford, Nikon over Canon, PC over Mac, Women over Men, Planes over Trains.. Let the carnage begin..

 

[fooby]

PC + (a really great lens) = $XXX.XX = MacHonestly, a quality PC will last just as long and do everything a Mac will do. Even more actually when you consider all the software available for use no a PC that's not for a Mac. And there is no down time if you do regular maintenance (as with a car).

Actually it is the other way around. My Mac will run everything your Windows machine will since I can boot into Windows 7 if I need as well as running all Mac software. I can even run the two operating systems side by side if I choose to.

This is the other great advantage. Technically you can run OS X on a Windows machine, but it's nothing but hassle. I love OS X because it works so much better than Windows, you don't have to worry so much about anti-virus and for people saying you can't run all the Windows software, you can run Windows itself either through boot camp or VMware. And as for Mac apps, there's a ton of them that aren't available on Windows, and I've found that free Mac apps tend to be ALLOT better than free Windows apps. It is all down to personal preference, but if you don't want to have to worry, buy a Mac. Every time I use a PC these days I end up getting annoyed with it because there's always something going wrong. And for price, buy used. Whilst Macs do hold their value very well you can still pick up a slightly older model for allot less that still does almost everything the new ones do, I picked up a MacBook Pro for £800 less than retail, and it was only a month old.

 

[Village Idiot]

PC + (a really great lens) = $XXX.XX = MacHonestly, a quality PC will last just as long and do everything a Mac will do. Even more actually when you consider all the software available for use no a PC that's not for a Mac. And there is no down time if you do regular maintenance (as with a car).

Actually it is the other way around. My Mac will run everything your Windows machine will since I can boot into Windows 7 if I need as well as running all Mac software. I can even run the two operating systems side by side if I choose to.

This is the other great advantage. Technically you can run OS X on a Windows machine, but it's nothing but hassle. I love OS X because it works so much better than Windows, you don't have to worry so much about anti-virus and for people saying you can't run all the Windows software, you can run Windows itself either through boot camp or VMware. And as for Mac apps, there's a ton of them that aren't available on Windows, and I've found that free Mac apps tend to be ALLOT better than free Windows apps. It is all down to personal preference, but if you don't want to have to worry, buy a Mac. Every time I use a PC these days I end up getting annoyed with it because there's always something going wrong. And for price, buy used. Whilst Macs do hold their value very well you can still pick up a slightly older model for allot less that still does almost everything the new ones do, I picked up a MacBook Pro for £800 less than retail, and it was only a month old.

Funny, I've never had problems with or had to reinstall Vista or Windows 7 since I've had them on my computers. I did have to reinstall OS X once when it booted up to the universal do not enter sign. That was scary. I was in the process of transferring files from a local computer to a server and this happened when I was only half way through. Fortunately I didn't lose anything and only had to waste time on reinstalling OS C on my MBP instead of also having to worry about recovering files.

 

[loopy]

Macintosh. Why? Reliability and longevity. Apple makes the hardware from high-quality components, and also makes the operating system, so that the hardware and the operating system are integrated. Macs have a much lower incidence of problems with viruses. A lot of people like PCs, many of which are made from components sourced from the lowest bidder, to increase profit margins in the HUGELY-crowded market of Pee Cee makers. Sure, you can purchase a cheap PC. Anywhere. Cheap PC's are abundant. If you want a computer and a software system that is basically, 95% less-likely to be disabled by a virus, just buy a decent Mac. And use it. Hard. Every day. And not have all the 'issues" PC's are plagued with.

Look at total cost of ownership. Macs have less down time. Require fewer hours of tech support per seat in office situations. Fewer issues with viruses. Far fewer issues with hardware/OS incompatibility. If you like having a beater car that always needs to be worked on, and which sucks up weekends as you fit it with repair parts, and causes you to perform countless diagnostic and preventative maintenance routines, then buy a PC. If you want a reliable, modern "vehicle" that just works, buy a Mac. And get rid of the PC headaches and the dumb software system that Windoze is infamous for.

What kind of performance do you want here to have? Kia-like, or Mercedes-like?

This post is a bunch of bull. To use your car analogy.... Mercedes parts are more expensive to fix. Same applies to a mac. If your going to compare PC to a car, compare it to a Chevy. 1) Easier to fix 2) cheaper parts 3) Will last if you maintain it properly. 4) Fast and sporty if you buy the right model.

 

[cedricb]

OS X is built on a UNIX platform which is inherently more secure than Windows. All the latest "viruses" from Apple you've heard of lately have been trojans and such where the user actually has to install the program for it to infect their computer.

And this is the worst recommendation in the world if the person has never seen the inside of a computer and I'm betting the OP has never built a computer before because if he had, then he probably wouldn't have even started this post.

Oh, and a GPU that "supports hardware acceleration"? That's the point of a video card. Hardware acceleration is the computer using hardware to perform a function instead of allowing the software and the CPU to control it. A GPU that doesn't support hardware acceleration is called a banana in your PCI-E slot. Where are you getting your information from?

Your screen name suits you well! First, being a Unix derivative does't mean it's more secure at all; it is still left open for various viruses and exploits depending on what services are running. As other have stated, OSX is not more secure because it's made by Apple; it's more secure because crackers aren't as interested in hacking it (less people use it and not as popular for enterprises).

With that out of the way, regarding my post... I never said to build his own PC, I said to get a custom PC; this can mean for various source, although building his own PC is very easy nowadays and can be done by a 10yr old.

As for hardware acceleration, what the video card is generally doing is called video processing. While it is a form a offloading, it is NOT hardware acceleration. What hardware acceleration is, it's a special API (such as CUDA) allowing the card to process bits of code that are runner much faster on parallel processing RISC cores. Not all cards support this kind of processing and not many applications can take advantage of his feature (it's a specific API) but one of them is the adobe suite.

Before accusing people of not knowing there stuff, I would consider doing some research. As far as to where I took my information, it's coming from my experience designing hardware and my previous designs of RISC pipelined cores.

 

[hxdrummerxc]

I may be new here, But I have been working on computers for years,
Ive built / repaired quite a few. I run Linux and Win 7 on my PC. And have used Mac OS quite a bit.
So im gonna chime in....


Like others have said, its all personal opinion. If you have the extra money and you like Mac, then get one.


To Derrel, who said that Apple makes the hardware and that its much better than the hardware inside PCs.... YOU ARE SO WRONG
Apple don't even make the internal hardware. They use Intel processors, and other name brand hardware that you can get in any pc. Which is exactly why people build their own Intel based PC and are able to install a legit copy of Mac OS on it (provided the hardware that you use, is supported)

The truth is, you can build a pc, for $1,500 that has so much power that it would cost $3,000-5,000 in a mac.
I am not knocking Mac. I won't say that one is better than the other.... but that it is all personal opinion.

I will say that my custom built PC will walk all over Derrel's "High quality components" Mac and for a lot less money.
So go ahead and call my "Pee Cee" ****y. But I guarantee you its got more power and reliability than your Mac can dream of.

Intel i7 quad core Overclocked to 4.3ghz
12gb DDR3 Tripple channel Ram
Two GTX 460 Graphics cards,
An OCZ Vertex 3 Max IOPS SSD drive (550mb/s read and write)
1tb Western Digital Black HDD
2tb Seagate HDD
And top all that off with a water cooling system....
Lets see you buy a Mac like that Derrel. Life's to short to spend all your monthly earnings on a MAC computer that's hardware is probably already outdated.


Anyways,
People say that you have a less chance of getting a Virus/Trojan with Macs. But its nothing that isn't repairable.

Its all personal opinion. Neither is really superior. It comes down to two main points.
1. How much money you want to spend
2. Which Operating System you like better

 

[tenthumbs]

I use both on a daily basis for work and personal. There is no correct answer to this question regardless of anything anyone says. There are pros and cons to both and there always will be. PC vs Mac discussion is the same as debating the best band or the best camera or the best wine. The best way to insure you make the right choice is to try them all and pick the one that makes you happy. Down the line your opinion may change but that's true for anything.

 

[AmazingGrace0385]

I currently use a PC, but since I'm getting more serious about my photography as a career myself, I plan to Mac eventually. I've heard it doesn't get viruses, runs faster, and is great for editing. Just my 2cents. My PC doesn't do a bad job! But I'm getting sucked down the Mac road.