Round 9! MAC vs PC

[sugarrey]

So Im gonna start a rumble here. But I want it to be an educational thread and not a dogfight.

My short story. I grew up on a TRS-80, then a Timex Sinclair, then Commodore 64, then a 128, then to PC's, then recently went to a Macbook Pro.

I just about had enough when Microsoft put out Vista and said they were going to discontinue support for XP. At that point I all but gave up on Microsoft and started looking at Mac's. First time I walked into the apple store it was a different experience than what I had been used to. It seemed as though everyone was willing to help, and the customer service I received was flawless in its presentation. I told them my story and the salesman spent over an hour with me explaining all things that were different.

After that I found a 2.4ghz 15" Macbook, 200gig HD with 4 gigs of ram on craigslist. I went and picked it up and I have been extremely happy. Just the feel of the laptop is sooo much better than even the Dell XPS's I have had. The feel of the keys, the lightness of the case, the aluminum construction, the lighted keys.....damn, I dont think I could be any happier.

Never had to worry about viruses, starts up everytime in less than 15 seconds. Can run windows and leopard on it. Runs vista and XP faster than a PC. What is there not to love.

I understand that each has its own opinions, I used to HATE macs and everything they stood for, but go get your hands around one, feel one....I just love it!!! Thats just me! Feel free to comment, I KNOW U WILL!!!!

[Canuck]

Welcome.
Everyone knows that I'm a Mac fanboy, but am not a fan of the Apple cult. The Apple store is a Love/Hate relationship with me. A good deal of the kids that work their annoy the shite out of me. Still much better than going to Worst Buy or some other store.
Apple products are not perfect, but much better than the rest of the 'Pack'.



This message brought to you from my iPhone.

[DevilsTonic]

I'm a windows systems administrator and recently bought one of the new 24" iMac machines. It's supposed to be delivered to my house on monday, so I'll let you know what I think.

I've put off trying the mac simply because I know windows machines pretty much inside and out and didn't want to take the time to learn something new. It's come time, I know that I can run vista in vmware fusion among any other OS that I could possibly want on the mac without suffering performance degredation. Most of what I use my home computer for is building websites so having a mac makes sense.....besides all the cool kids are doin it, i'm just going to conform and join the rest of the herd.

[sugarrey]

I am also going back to school for some microsoft certs and hopefully cisco certs as well. The good thing about Microsoft is that it needs people like us to keep it running right!!!

[Sean]

Mac's rule and PC's drool.

I switched over this year, and as it stands right now, I will never go back. There's no reason. It' a better, faster, more reliable machine. Sure, there are limitations, I just haven't run into any yet

[Devaclis]

Can you get apple to support you apple IIes? No. Leaving MS because they will no longer support an old OS is akin to never buying. Ford because they do not warrnty. 1971 Maverick. You know what apple does better than MS? Hardware. You know what MS does better? OS. There is a reason you do not see apple server farms. Hell I have seen linux outpace apple in both workstation and server use. Buy a mac so you can be different. Buy a pc so you can do whatever you want to do with your computer

[sugarrey]

To stop supporting an excellent OS (XP) to support their new OS (Vista) was just straight up ignorant (which is why they retracted it). Vista is a huge part of apples success these days.

Apple being able to run windows and leopard is genius.....

How big is that for apple to do that? Gotta love it.

[TurboGizzmo]

Just sold my old Macbook for ~$800 and was able to get a new one for ~$1000 very pleased with how the value holds up.

I have to learn all the OS's to keep up with customers...sooo...but OSX is what I personally use daily but I support 40 windows machines for my day job.

Like I say "I like Macs, but Windows machines pay the bills!"

[dm_gsxr]

My short story. I grew up on a TRS-80, then a Timex Sinclair, then Commodore 64, then a 128, then to PC's, then recently went to a Macbook Pro.

I started out on a Timex Sinclair, then Color Computer, then an IBM PC (1.0 DOS), then got a job programming on a Trash-80, Leading Sledge, and Franklin computer. At that job, I was exposed to one of the first Mac's on the east coast. We couldn't get our software working properly on it though (the software took surveying data and used an HP plotter to create plats; nothing graphical about the programs).

Programming to Network Admin (Novell 3.74 then Netware 2.0, 3Com 3+Share and 3+Open, Microsoft LAN Manager and Windows NT). Then to Unix admin (Solaris, Irix, HP-UX, Tru64, AIX, Linux).

But I've been using Dos and Windows for a long time. One of the real problems I've been having with Windows started even back when it became a hit. I'd spend several hours tuning the system (Windows 3.1) and then a new version would come out, negating all my work. With 95 I spent more time tuning and making it quick and again, an upgrade came out screwing things up. With 98 I stopped mucking with the system so much. Even less with XP.

I was also a hobby programmer, screwing around with the Sinclair, the color computer and then the PC. I learned a lot and had fun doing so. Windows programming took a lot of the fun out of hobby programming. I was doing C programming at the time and really didn't want to "go back" to basic on Windows and C programming on Windows wasn't a lot of fun. I did try, buying the first 3 or 4 editions of the Petzold book and whipping up several little programs.

I'd been screwing around with Linux here and there and liked shell scripting and perl. It brought back the original fun of programming. Learning all that got me a job as a Unix admin.

A few years back we had a windfall (screwball realtor issue cost him $2,500) and I bought a Mac laptop with OS X then took it to Greece with me (immersion training ). I like the nice gui on top of a unix back end. I have a web server and mysql running on it with php as an add in.

The Mac gave me a nice portable unix platform where I can screw around with programming. Plus, I've picked up php programming and am currently doing some Javascript stuff.

Windows changed from a geek toy to a "toaster". You could tinker but it wasn't necessary. It was cheaper to throw a bit of hardware at it, especially if you're a gamer (even a casual hard core gamer).

It's funny. I like XP and recommended it to lots of people who were running Windows 98. With Windows turning into a "toaster", Microsoft lost a lot of its geek base. When Vista came out, lots of the geeks that Microsoft depended on to go to Vista and help friends and relatives upgrade, had already gone to Macs or even Linux (or OpenSolaris which is very cool). XP works for my friends and family. Why do I want to stop what I'm doing with the Mac, Linux, or Solaris systems I'm currently on, learn Vista and then convince my F&F to convert?

One of the funniest things I've been told (and been told several times) is "just upgrade to Vista, you'll see how well it works." Why would I want to come off a platform that works well for my games (which is the main reason I use XP) to a system that doesn't support my older games (again, which is the main reason I use XP)?

I don't have a reason to upgrade to Vista _or_ Windows 7. A quick google search even now doesn't point me to a guide on what I should upgrade to (Vista Business or Ultimate) if I want to maintain the same functionality I have with XP Pro. And I'm certainly not paying $200 for an upgrade (not including where I might get a discount of course).

So I like my Mac. And my OpenBSD box. And my Mandrake box. And my Ubuntu box. And my Solaris box. And even my XP box. All for different reasons.

Wow, that was a long one. I'm not passionate, am I?

Carl

[sugarrey]

Yes I agree, the holding value on a mac is much better than a PC.

And yes I agree, PC's pay the bills (because they require so much work to maintain, not because they are breaking down, just because there are sooo many out there).

[Panman06]

I admit, I own/use both Macs (Cheetah to Leopard) and PCs. I got a lot of heat for adding Macs to my home infrastructure. I used to hate Macs with a passion until OS X came out. I was curious to see what bits of BSD and Unix were integrated into Cheetah.

[Snowman]

I heard the air in an Apple stores are being laced with a mild hallucinogenic.

[Think]

I hate Apple. I have a Macbook and a desktop PC. The Macbook's battery has died on me out of no where and the hard drive crashed on the god damn conclusion paragraph of an essay I was writing and I had to take a 0 for it.

[sugarrey]

I had almost the same thing happen to me on my XPS....Bought it new and 4 days after I bought it, it melted itself and ended up paying for a countertop and the carpet below it....thank God I came home shortly after. What a joke it was, then dealing with Dell afterwards was another reason why I left the PC world....Getting someone to speak fucking english that I could understand took me almost 2 weeks. In the apple world, everyone I ever talked to speaks english...

Shit does happen, Im with you on that. My macbook is about a year old, and my battery last a lil over 6 hours while Im using it.