[Closed] Help me decide to buy a Mac, Lifelong PC user what do I need to know !!!!!!!

I'd just stick to pc, there's not really any need for you to switch, it'll not give you any tangible benefits tbh.

btw, mac files system is HFS+ usually, and you can work around reading and writing to either file system from mac or pc.

My PC is 4 years old and is struggling. I am just so sick and tired of windows performance issues. I should of done this a while ago.

don't quote me on this but you'll probably just be ok. I converted for music a few years back and just copied my external data HD straight onto my MAcbook and didn't look back.

best computer move i ever made - couldn't believe how much less faffing there was on a Mac compared to Windows XP. I had hardware that I had literally never managed to get fully working on the PC, after god knows how many re-installs and driver updates etc, which all suddenly worked the second i plugged them into a macbook. Saved me so much time and hassle over the years, which obviously is all the more important when you're self employed...

The WD drive is plugged into my sky router, so will it be as simple as mapping a network drive. Can things be that simple, it never usually is with me. Its just I have seen Mac and PC versions of the same drive on WD's site. I will contact them.

OSX and NAS storage can be troublesome

OSX and NAS storage can be troublesome? really how so? osx can talk all network file protocols and more then windows so can't really see how this is possible.

what do I need to know !!!!!!!

not much it's just a computer end of the day

I think you need to locate a shop, check your bank account and get on and buy a Mac.

Once you have it, almost everything else can be resolved.

My PC is 4 years old and is struggling. I am just so sick and tired of windows performance issues.

Mine's eight years old and just fine. How much memory is in it?

If you want a Mac then fill your boots, but do it for the right reasons. As a tool for a professional photographer there's arguably nothing better, but if your buying it solely because of "Windows performance issues" I'd be trying to resolve those issues before I spunked a grand on something shiny.

[url= http://www.apple.com/uk/imac-with-retina/ ]You need one of these – you won't want to stop editing images on this display....[/url]

The mac will read the PC drives just fine.

THe mac and PC versions are just what format they come as, NTFS or HFS+.

Macs read either, though HFS+ is preferred.

Ditto Cougar's advice though. If you're just mostly using Adobe tools + web etc, any real reason to switch? (Devil's advocate: no reason not to switch, and you probably get nicer hardware, e.g. retina imac)

Switched to OSX 10 years ago, still use windows/linux professionally though. Still not found anything my mac won't do that a PC can. The reverse isn't true though. I'm unusually tech-literate though, YMMV.

If you do switch I recommend you gradually move away from NTFS and FAT32. OSX can't write to NTFS without third party software or some hacks, and FAT32 is a terrible file system to use for anything other than temporary storage or non-critical data.

I would ask why Windows is driving you crazy? OSX is not some mystical land of wonder and can and likely will also drive you crazy from time to time.

I've found plenty of things that I can do on my PC that I can't do on my mac, but I suspect my work and hobbies are somewhat different to IA 🙂

If you do buy a Mac I recommend buying Cloner and learning how to use it to create a rescue boot disk and backup of work docs. Fantastic software which has saved me a lot of pain. EDIT - thats Carbon Copy Cloner.

Mac and PC are exactly the same. Both run similarly on similar hardware. Neither OS has a huge advantage over the other. I'm running both and have no problem reading drives etc.

Still not found anything my mac won't do that a PC can. The reverse isn't true though.

4 year old PC? I would stick with it and put a clean install of windows (probably 7) onto a new Solid State Drive. No more hassle than switching everything to a new PC - just connect your old HDD as a slave in a separate bay and transfer any local documents/music/images you need over, then get rid of or format the old HDD to use as a second drive if required. Use [url= https://ninite.com/ ]ninite[/url] to put any software you need back on quite easily and quickly.

I reckon you'll see performance increases above those you would on a new Mac, and save many £££. Cost for a 512Gb SSD is £150, plus a copy of windows if required.

You don't even need to spend that much. The SSD I bought recently was about £60. Granted it was only 120Gb, but that was more than enough for my needs.

Incidentally, as a photographer, you haven't [i]just [/i]got all your photos stored on one drive, have you? So in a worst-case scenario if you got a Mac and the WD drives weren't readable, you could just wipe one, format it, restore the files from the backup and then do the same with the backup drive.

What does a mac do that a pc can't?

Ok, so it depends whether you mean windows or linux pc, you kinda get the best of both with a mac, which is a big deal to me. And there's "do relatively easily" and "within the realm of human endeavour"...it's all probably possible if you're being pedantic.

Some things that stand/stood out for me:

Less so nowadays, but back pre-win7 there was a HUGE difference in system responsiveness/ui performance on equivalent hardware. Especially under heavy load, XP just died a death. Still the case with win7 and a very heavily loaded system, linux does fine though.

Fix and continue in C++ with xcode. Not a big deal for me nowadays but was a game changer for me 9 years ago.

Being able to build and run X apps.

"proper" GCC support (yes, you can build posix/gcc stuff on windows but it's a ballache for various reason. And yes, pedantry-fans OSX is clang based now etc.)

Texshop/bibdesk/omnigraffle- three apps with no good alternative on other platforms, and I've looked hard. YMMV of course, and you may think different tools to do the same job are fine.

Record the screen (built in and dead easy/high performance in OSX, ball ache in linux/windows).

Booting off another mac in target disk mode.

Booting off a clone of the drive in an external bay as if nothing's different.

Being able to quickly hack up things in automator/applescript etc.

Spotlight for launching stuff (I do admit windows and unity at least on *nix have caught up here)

Easy saving to PDF everywhere.

Battery life - the only equivalent hardware that matches OSX for battery life is one of the sony vaios.

Time machine (easy, automated versioned backups)

Good (compared to most other stuff) built in photo and video apps (iPhoto and iMovie)

Installing/removing software, a world of difference.

I could go on...

And seriously, good PC alternative to any of the above things welcomed! As I say, I use a mac personally (as well as a linux box or two) but linux and win7 professionally.

Anyway, way OT. Ditto cougar again. Why a new machine, would an upgrade not do? And very much ditto on the backup point!

For balance there are a few PC only benefits:

A laptop with more than 16Gb of RAM. A big deal for me work wise and why I couldn't use a mac.

Better cutting edge GPU support.

I love snapping windows to screen edges, I've knocked up applescript to do the same with a shortcut but it's not the same.

Office - a necessary evil. The mac version would probably do me, but I suspect it's better on windows.

Oh, a mac plus on the hardware side is full size firewire ports. That's proper niche though!

Thanks for the help, now still don't know what to do, the 27" monitor looks fantastic and will be easier to calibrate more accurately than my present set up. Just checked on the box, my WD NAS drive is compatible with both so the mac will read and write straight to it.
Now do I get a new one with 5K display or buy the reduced one in John Lewis.

Present PC has 8gb ram, quad core Phenom, windows 7. ATI Radeon HD5670 graphics.

It does need a fresh install, can't afford the downtime to do it. Not had a full day off including weekends since Augusts The joys of self employment.

I just get sick of lightroom, outlook etc having a mind of its own. Sick of seeing "Not responding at the top of my screen"

thanks for you help.

can't afford the downtime to do it.

But can you afford the downtime getting used to a new system?

Oh what have I started. Very interesting reading, and this is why I came to this forum first.

ust checked on the box, my WD NAS drive is compatible with both so the mac will read and write straight to it.

Hard drives are hard drives, USB is USB(*), if it works on one it'll work on the other. The issues you may have will be at a file system level, which is software-fixable.

(* - unless it's Firewire or something exotic like Thunderbolt.)

Oh new one with 5K retina display is £1999, as apposed to £1599, is the newest and latest worth the extra 400 quid

Present PC has 8gb ram, quad core Phenom, windows 7. ATI Radeon HD5670 graphics.

I just get sick of lightroom, outlook etc having a mind of its own. Sick of seeing "Not responding at the top of my screen"

Something's wrong there, but I expect it's fixable. Memtest to check the RAM is sound, bang an SSD in it as previously discussed and do a clean install to that; if it goes west for whatever reason you can just swap back to the old drive rather than risking being stuck with an unusable system for days. With a bit of forward planning your 'downtime' will be a couple of hours.

Or, you could buy a Mac. It sounds like you really want to. Can I have your PC?

Oh new one with 5K retina display is £1999, as apposed to £1599, is the newest and latest worth the extra 400 quid

Could be worth it for photo editing, although my 27" non retina iMac (2560x1440) still has a great display and I do a fair bit of photo editing on it without issue. FWIW I have both a retina and non-retina macbook pro and although the retina display is certainly better side by side, in reality you don't really notice much difference when using them in isolation. I suspect the same could be true with the iMac displays. I guess you would have to visit a store to check them out and decide for yourself.

Office - a necessary evil. The mac version would probably do me, but I suspect it's better on windows.

Been using MS Office on macs for years. It's just as shit as the PC version!

but still better then open office / libra

May have to swing by the apple store tomorrow at the trafford centre, Shame I can't teleport straight in and out avoiding everything else.

Sorry Cougar PC will get used elsewhere, may just use it for office stuff and keep the Mac for all my editing.

Oh new one with 5K retina display is £1999, as apposed to £1599, is the newest and latest worth the extra 400 quid

Retina screens may be great for viewing images but they are compromised for retouching and colour balancing, you should be using an Eizo CG/NEC spectraview for that. The pixel pitch is so fine on the retina's that 100% view is too small to retouch and the 'true' size means pixel doubling/interpretation so any sharpening/detail can't be shown properly. The bigger pixel pitch of an HD/24in monitor is far easier to work on. The iMac/macbook screens lack the wide gamut of a proper graphics monitor and are too contrasty for critical work.

Money is better spent on a retina MBP and a separate monitor IMHO

I wouldn't worry about getting a mac and having problems acsessing drives. There is always a work around and they are free.

As for what mac to get, is your work mostly studio or location? If studio get a 27 imac, non retina. If you shoot location go for a loaded MBP and as mrsmith has said, a decent monitor for processing images at home.

The iMac screens are not perfect but if you know what you are doing (you can always go by the numbers) it's propely calibrated and you keep the brightness at 50% they are fine. I work with one and when I see my work in print I don't find myself having to review my work flow.

As for lightroom...have you tried capture one pro? We use P25's, P30's and IQ260's so it makes sense but we also use 5d's and which ever way we work capture one is fab. You can use pro on trial for 60 days. Capture one DB is free to use but will only work with thier backs.

Hope you find a solution, yes there is a perfect of way doing things but it is also very costly and being self employed that probably won't be an option so do loads of research and find what works for you.

For the last 10'years I've used windows at work and Mac at home. I've had three windows laptops at about £900-1000 each and two macs at about £800 each. They both get about 8 hrs use per day.

In my view Mac is more cost effective. The hardware lasts longer. Mac is a nicer place to work in. Everything feels a bit more polished. Definitely far less problems with Mac, but they do occasionally have problems. Office is defiantly faster on Mac. I've got a souped up windows laptop for GIS work but it still struggles with complex word documents. It flies with Mac.

If it was my money I'd buy Mac. But if I was given a free windows box is keep the windows box.

The hardware lasts longer

My current laptop is six years old and still rapid. The previous desktop workhorse it replaced was ten years old when I retired it. My OH's desktop PC which is now acting as a file / media server is well over ten years old (around 13 at a guess).

How long are your Macs lasting? 😯

Power book G3 for 5 years, Power mac G4 for 14 years. My "modern imac" is about 7. Might get a new one soon. Might not. Thats only 3 computers since before the birth of the internet.

I think non technical PC users can't do the housekeeping to keep them going and give up and get new one after 2 or 3 years when it goes slow.

You're almost certainly right, IME. "Windows is a bit slow after I installed loads of shite, I'll buy a new one." It's like buying a new car when you run out of oil.

I'm typing on a 2007 macbook which was bottom of the range at the time (620 quid) and has been used roughly 10 hours a day, 6 days a week ever since, and has been on any number of flights, trains and coaches. Still on the original battery (which does need replacing, admittedly).

compared to the Dell i used before this, which lasted barely 3 years, the difference was like night and day! it does have a bit of gaffa tape on it, mind

Conclusion: PCs and Macs both can last quite some time if you take a little care of them.

retired and sold on my PowerBook G4 about a year ago - maybe two - so that was 8 years. Mac mini got sold around the same time, year newer so 9 years.

MBP that replaced both died through water damage early this year. My only Windows laptop was really pretty duff and creaking after 4 years and got sold for postage only..

I strongly recommend using Ubuntu as when I changed from XP to Ubuntu years ago all the hassle and problems with the sub standard xp went away. Windows 7 may have improved compared to XP but I find no need to use windows. If you have a mac you can partition on the fly and have mountain lion and ubunutu on the same hardrive. It may be easy enough to add windwows on a separate partition if you were desperate to use it, although I don't know how well it would work to have three operating systems on the same hard drive.

Got my first mac (macbook pro) last month. Utterly love it - amazing battery live, amazing screen, funky light-up keyboard, wish I got one ages ago 🙂

I also run Ubuntu at work / home, so it's not too different - for me, it's just the hardware. Top notch! 🙂

a Mac is no better (or worse) than a decent PC. Depends if you like OSX or Windows. Personally I prefer Windows (I have a macbook and a desktop PC).

Present PC has 8gb ram, quad core Phenom, windows 7. ATI Radeon HD5670 graphics.

Bang in a modern graphics card and up the RAM to 16gb for peanuts and then clean up windows. Job done, spend the change on a nice groupset or something

Try a Mac before you commit. I just cannot get used to OSX at all-nothing makes sense to me and I just want to smash my mum's iMac to pieces.

A new PC, spec'd out to the max for photo editing will imho destroy a Mac and you will be actually be able to do stuff like upgrade it. It will be cheaper too.

Agree as well a Retina display is not what you want for serious photo work.

Finally Win 10 is looking really nice and works supremely well even in its current beta guise.

I love snapping windows to screen edges,

Try Better Snap Tool. I can't remember if it's on the App Store but it's a good addition to a Mac if you like the way Windows snap to the edge of the screen and size themselves. With Yosemite reducing the title bar size for grabbing and moving windows it also provides a neat "grab anywhere" solution.

Conclusion: PCs and Macs both can last quite some time if you take a little care of them.

In my experience it requires more regular maintenance to achieve this on Windows than a Mac.

As to the OP, do try and spend some time with a Mac to make sure you'll get on with it. There's lots to love but you may find "the Apple way" not to your liking. For example 3 years in with a Mac and I still think the OSX Finder (including save/open dialogues) a ball ache compared to Explorer in Windows. For my needs I have found myself using Google Drive more and more, largely due to the ease of use and cross-platform support. It'll be interesting to see if iCloud Drive has caught up or whether Apple are still struggling in this arena.

I like my Mac because it looks nice and is a joy to use.

The argument that macs last longer than PC's is an almost pointless, good quality PC hardware lasts just as long, cheap hardware does not - you pay your money...

Even arguing that Windows needs more maintenance is a subjective argument. I frequently come across very busy and important servers that were racked up 8-10 years ago running Windows Server 2003 (in effect XP). Sometimes I struggle to persuade IT managers they should be replaced - they are running their country wide point-of-sale system on something with less processing grunt than a modern smartphone on an out of support OS but their view is 'it just works'.

Anyway back to the OP. Your machine is 4 years old and in effect a good desktop not a proper workstation. For a machine I earn money with I would invest in some new hardware, even after a fresh Windows 7 install and more memory a modern workstation (Mac or PC) would offer a lot more graphics and CPU grunt.

If you want to dabble with a Mac to start off with, look for a 2012 Mac Mini with a core i7 CPU. Those things are great, two drive bays and up to 16GB of RAM with a powerful 4 core/8 thread CPU.

Try Better Snap Tool. I can't remember if it's on the App Store but it's a good addition to a Mac if you like the way Windows snap to the edge of the screen and size themselves. With Yosemite reducing the title bar size for grabbing and moving windows it also provides a neat "grab anywhere" solution.

Use BetterTouchTool instead. Same dev, but app is free, includes the basic window snapping which is all most would need, and has a 99 boatload more functionality.

http://www.boastr.net/

I had a look at Better Touch Tool when I got my Mac but for whatever reason went with the Better Snap Tool. I might give it another look. Cheers Jamie

For a machine I earn money with I would invest in some new hardware,

And do it every 2-3 years.
I sell my laptops on and lose very little as the VAT off and a discount means 27% cheaper for starters plus high residuals when selling on.
File sizes and camera sensors get bigger all the time so you need to be up to date to keep your working time down with no waiting time while a computer chugs away, when I did my last upgrade I gained about an hour a day with gains in read/write time and processing time.
People seem to go on about the costs of a mac but if that extra cost is eared in the first day of using it means it's irrelevant, and having attempted to use my parents PC I don't care you can self build one faster/cheaper because it's an exercise in frustration.

I would get a maxed out retina15in from the refurb store and the best Eizo screen you can afford.

they are running their country wide point-of-sale system on something with less processing grunt than a modern smartphone on an out of support OS but their view is 'it just works'.

Hmm I wonder what their merchant services provider is going to do next PCI scan time? Their processing costs are due to rise quite substantially.

I made the switch about 5 years ago when my windows PC finally gave up the ghost after about 3yrs and many rebuilds and many hours of maintenance to keep it chugging along with some level of usefulness. I got a base spec Macbook and it is still going strong 6yrs on, with absolutely no intervention from me in terms of maintenance or fixing it. In all that time its never frozen, crashed or got a virus (i'm not running any protection other than the OSX firewall). I've kept unto date with all the latest OSX updates and it has not negatively affected its performance other than boot up and shut down times, which are still a fraction of Windows 7 PC's i've used. Granted i'm not doing anything particularly challenging with it, i'm certainly not video or picture editing.

So i'd say go for it but.....OSX works completely different to Windows. You have to completely re-learn. The intuitiveness is different to Windows and does take time getting used to. You can tweak it so it behaves more Windows like, but i personally wanted to learn the OSX way. It has pros- and cons relative to Window's but on balance its pretty slick once you've got used to it.

To those who say why change, i'd say why not? Windows is not the only gig in town and has always been hugely flawed since day 1. It staggers me how people withstand such a poor quality product, if windows was a car you'd soon have dumped it back on the dealership forecourt and demanded your money back.

SO if you're willing to pay the Apple premium then go for it. Actually though Apple products are expensive they do last so over time work out to be cost effective. I dread to think how many windows PCs i'd have got through over the last 6 yrs.

The argument that macs last longer than PC's is an almost pointless, good quality PC hardware lasts just as long, cheap hardware does not - you pay your money...

Exactly this. Comparing a £1500 Mac to a £300 PC is apples and oranges, it's an unfair comparison.

Even arguing that Windows needs more maintenance is a subjective argument.

In the six years I've owned this laptop, it's been rebuilt twice; once to upgrade from Vista to Windows 7, and once more when I bought an SSD because I wanted to change from 32-bit to 64-bit Windows at the same time. In fact, technically that's only once, the Vista upgrade was in-place rather than a wipe and rebuild. It didn't even need rebuilding when the original hard disk failed; Vista was robust enough to cope with the multiple failures and hard reboots caused by bad sectors on the drive and survived a cloning to its replacement drive. The installation of XP on my OH's desktop is easily ten years old. When I decommissioned its predecessor circa 2006 it was running the same installation of Windows 98 SE I'd built it with.

So what exactly is this time consuming maintenance, then? What the hell are you all doing to the poor things? I'll concede that Macs may well be more intuitive or forgiving for users who aren't particularly technical, I don't really know as I've not really used one in anger but this seems to be what people assert. But I reject this prevailing attitude that some people seem to have where they wear their own ineptness like a badge of honour. Learn. You don't have to become an engineer, but everything I've mentioned here is basic stuff, it's not hard and the Internet is dripping with helpful people if you're not sure. You wouldn't jump into a car, stove it into a wall and then jump out laughing "oh, I know sod all about cars, me." You don't need to be a mechanic to take a few driving lessons and learn where you need to put the oil when the little orange light comes on.

And take ****ing backups.

But I reject this prevailing attitude that some people seem to have where they wear their own ineptness like a badge of honour. Learn. You don't have to become an engineer, but everything I've mentioned here is basic stuff

I have had to use terminal once or twice (in 15 years of mac use) but at the end of the day what's to learn? Just the basic folder structure and where the preferences live and how to trash them if needed plus what not to touch when digging around.
If you need to go beyond that then it's like employing a builder v DIY sometimes it's better to just earn the money and pay somebody to sort it.

@cougar

definitely agree with parts of that - especially about comparing a cheap PC with an expensive Mac. But i think other things you mention - like AV being incorporated into Win8 will have to take time to filter through. Anyone (like me) who migrated to OSX and felt a weight lifted off their shoulders will probably still imagine 'Windows' as being 'Windows XP', still asking you what type of encryption the wireless network you're trying to connect to uses. Eventually people will start giving windows another chance, and maybe see the leaps and bounds in usability that it must have made? My only experience of Windows since XP was when my then-GF bought a brand new Lenovo with Vista which, about once a day, crashed so badly that you had to remove the battery to reboot it. So it will take time to rebuild people's trust!

Can't agree that 'learning a bit of technical knowledge' is such a minor thing though. The average non-technical user neither wants nor should need to know about file structure any more than a bus passenger needs to know about internal combustion. And some people just aren't technically minded. I rapidly realised that I actively enjoyed not having to think about all these extraneous factors when i just wanted to write music. If you add in that a lot of people buy a Mac for work (like all the photographers in this thread!) then a day of figuring out a load of technical stuff effectively costs you a day's wages. And nobody wants to pay that!

The simple fact is that Windows is so full of legacy support the code is a warren of inefficiencies and potential exploits. Apple had the guts to bin off all legacy support years ago, Microsoft still suffer from it today in Windows 8. This is what separates the two OS's in my view, oh..and the fact that just about every Windows PC you ever buy from a high st retail outlet is subsidised by a ton of crap that has been installed that you do not need. I'm a total and utter IT expert me, binned Windows as soon as I could and will only ever run a unix kernel on my desktop or for my servers.

But I reject this prevailing attitude that some people seem to have where they wear their own ineptness like a badge of honour. Learn. You don't have to become an engineer, but everything I've mentioned here is basic stuff, it's not hard and the Internet is dripping with helpful people if you're not sure. You wouldn't jump into a car, stove it into a wall and then jump out laughing "oh, I know sod all about cars, me." You don't need to be a mechanic to take a few driving lessons and learn where you need to put the oil when the little orange light comes on.

x 100

As head of IT at my company (as well as my main duties) it is almost like people are being deliberately obtuse about their computers. They seem to refuse to take on board even the most basic tasks, despite the fact that they use computers 8 hours a day, five days a week. It's a bit like a chef not knowing how to use a knife, or an oven.

Every day I have to answer questions like: "how do I move this file?"; What do I do with this "update" message I keep getting?"; "how do I find a previous version of a file?" etc etc.

and the fact that just about every Windows PC you ever buy from a high st retail outlet is subsidised by a ton of crap that has been installed that you do not need.

Mum mum bought a £1k Sony Vaio. She rang me almost in tears saying all she wanted to do was go online, but things kept wanting to update, trial offers of software kept popping up etc.

Sent it back to Sony, and ordered an iMac for £1k.

Plugged it in, turned it on, created an Apple ID, and opened Safari. Took about 5 mins.

...given that Sony has binned it's laptop dept, temporarily at least, this may just be a Sony issue.

just about every Windows PC you ever buy from a high st retail outlet is subsidised by a ton of crap that has been installed that you do not need.

The simple fact is that Windows is so full of legacy support the code is a warren of inefficiencies and potential exploits. Apple had the guts to bin off all legacy support years ago,

Mum mum bought a £1k Sony Vaio. She rang me almost in tears saying all she wanted to do was go online, but things kept wanting to update, trial offers of software kept popping up etc.

A classic example of someone not knowing basic computer skills. All that stuff is so easy to deal with a get rid of it's ridiculous. Plus, it's not the fault of the OS.

Anyone (like me) who migrated to OSX and felt a weight lifted off their shoulders will probably still imagine 'Windows' as being 'Windows XP'

Sure, that was pretty much what I was getting at.

The average non-technical user neither wants nor should need to know about file structure any more than a bus passenger needs to know about internal combustion. And some people just aren't technically minded.

No, but, I'd expect your average bus passenger to know to wait to let people off before boarding, how to pay, where to sit, which bus to get on to go where they need to go etc etc rather than clambering out of the window going "ee, I know nowt about buses me," all proud of themselves.

Being technically minded is nothing to do with it. I have absolutely no problem with people not being technically minded, everyone has their own strengths and weaknesses; but some people just revel in their own incompetence, blaming the tools rather than wanting to learn how to use them effectively. Any other pastime, whether it's driving or playing golf or knitting or whatever, people would expect a learning curve; they'd ask friends, get coaching, read guides, look up instructions on YouTube. Why is using a computer effectively any different? But no, some folk are happy just to sit there going "well, this is shit."

If you add in that a lot of people buy a Mac for work (like all the photographers in this thread!) then a day of figuring out a load of technical stuff effectively costs you a day's wages.

a lot of people buy a Mac for work (like all the photographers in this thread!) then a day of figuring out a load of technical stuff effectively costs you a day's wages.

This is what I'm not understanding. What is there to figure out on a PC that there isn't on a Mac? I can only assume that sitting in front of OSX for the first time isn't wildly different from someone coming cold to (say) Windows 7. I should really give it a proper go myself at some point.

it is almost like people are being deliberately obtuse about their computers.

"It says 'press Enter to continue', what should I do?"

or the ever popular,

"I got an error message." Oh, ok, what does it say? "I don't know, I've closed it, I don't understand that technical stuff." Yes, but you don't have to understand it, you just have to tell me what it says. You can [i]read,[/i] can't you? (is what I'd like to answer)

A classic example of someone not knowing basic computer skills. All that stuff is so easy to deal with a get rid of it's ridiculous. Plus, it's not the fault of the OS.

That as may be, but I was simply responding to this comment:

and the fact that just about every Windows PC you ever buy from a high st retail outlet is subsidised by a ton of crap that has been installed that you do not need.

I ain't getting involved in this, predictably predictable, Apple vs Oranges vs PC vs Amstrad bunfight.

No, but, I'd expect your average bus passenger to know to wait to let people off before boarding, how to pay, where to sit, which bus to get on to go where they need to go etc etc rather than clambering out of the window going "ee, I know nowt about buses me," all proud of themselves.

😀 This is the Mac's strength - they cater for people like this. FOr most of the rest of us, they're a total waste of money.

A couple of weeks ago a friend rang me in panic, after I'd Linuxed her netbook. Trying to unmount a pendrive but got "Volume is busy" warning. "But I'm not listening to music", she explained.

rather than clambering out of the window going "ee, I know nowt about buses me," all proud of themselves.

😆

Excellent! May I steal that one?

A couple of weeks ago a friend rang me in panic, after I'd Linuxed her netbook. Trying to unmount a pendrive but got "Volume is busy" warning. "But I'm not listening to music", she explained.

That reminds me; years ago working in support I got a call from a woman who was both distraught and furious. She was demanding that we send a courier to collect her PC before the police arrived. Transpired, it was because it'd reported that "this program has performed an illegal operation."

Excellent! May I steal that one?

Fill your boots.

That reminds me; years ago working in support

your view of how people should interact with their computers is therefore skewed, not everyone wants to work in IT or be able to fix and maintain computers to the level of an IT support worker.
to many they are just a tool that every now and again doesn't function as it should so like a lot of equipment you turn it of and on again and if that doesn't work you call somebody. (like an IT support person 🙄 )

not everyone wants to work in IT or be able to fix and maintain computers to the level of an IT support worker.

And I don't expect them to. That wasn't what I was getting at. I'm talking about the very basic skills (and not being all smug and proud and arrogant if you don't have them). I wouldn't expect every car driver to be able to strip down a carburetor but I would expect them to know how to put petrol and oil in it (and find out if they didn't) rather than going "Fords are shit" the first time it runs dry.

You lot should search out the early keynote speech by Steve Jobs when he pretty firmly put down a room full of the sort of nerds who tell jokes about users who don't know what a busy drive means. ( I don't and I'm quite techy, suspect the average person doesn't and doesn't want to).
He basically told them if they were half as clever as they thought they were they would build machines that normal people could operate effectively.

Some of them got upset having nerd tantrums walking out etc and some stayed and built macs.

Maybe a daft question

but why haven't more people come forth building hardware designed/capitalised to work with Apple OS?

surely a cheaper device running OS-X is an obvious niche?

Maybe a daft question

but why haven't more people come forth building hardware designed/capitalised to work with Apple OS?

surely a cheaper device running OS-X is an obvious niche?

Because Apple won't let you. They have tight control on the BIOS and will come after you if you copy it. A clean reverse engineer of the BIOS would be possible but very expensive. (I think)

As I understand it (and it's not an area of expertise), OSX [i]expects[/i] Apple hardware; conversely Windows is designed to run on any old cobbled together tat with help from third-party drivers and software. The strength of the Mac is that it's a closed platform under full control of Apple, it's the same as the iPhone / Android situation.

An OEM would have to build clone hardware which pretended to OSX to be something it wasn't. By the time they've done that to the degree that the OS is stable, a) they'll have spent a fortune and b) you'll have defeated a big part of the point of having a Mac.

Arguably, if you want to run OSX on PC hardware, that's what Linux is for.

A clean reverse engineer of the BIOS would be possible but very expensive. (I think)

... which is exactly how we have IBM PC clones now. The IBM BIOS was copyrighted, so teams of people worked out what it did [i]without looking at the code[/i] and wrote their own code to do the same thing.

Conversely Apple do not sell their OS any more so it would be a nonsensical business model to make it open to any hardware. The argument is also that they have tighter control to ensure that it performs better, whereas put the wrong component/driver in a PC and windows performs like shite/crashes etc..

Thought Macs ran on the same intel chips as PCs nowadays? Or are there more differences?

Thought Macs ran on the same intel chips as PCs nowadays? Or are there more differences?

Same processors, and if you dig deep enough, same memory, i/o controllers, graphics chips, hard drives etc.
The difference is in the O/S (and BIOS).

Apple don't permit OSX to run on non-mac hardware but you can do it:[url= http://www.hackintosh.com/ ]Hackintosh guide[/url]

Macs don't have a BIOS exactly the same as a Windows PC as most of you are thinking of, they use a UEFI. If you are considering building a hackintosh you select components like an ASUS motherboard that has a UEFI and a UEFI enabled graphics cards. Windows 8 can also boot from UEFI so its slowly pushing out the BIOS of old.

As far as windows drivers causing crashes you are either thinking of the bad old days or are too keen and installing uncertified crap onto your systems. Even if you do the Windows kernel will no longer allow an unsigned driver to take down the whole system. I haven't seen a BSOD due to a driver issue since switching from XP to Vista. Since then I've had more Kernel panics on OSX than I have seen BSOD on Windows machines, and the ones I have seen have been down to faulty or incorrectly inserted RAM chips.

clambering out of the window going "ee, I know nowt about buses me," all proud of themselves.

heheheh nice
😆

Any other pastime, whether it's driving or playing golf or knitting or whatever, people would expect a learning curve;

i think this gets to the heart of it though - for many, computing isn't a pastime. The pastime is looking up their ancestry or photo editing or music making. And the computer is just a necessary evil, that at best offers very little resistance to this pastime, and at worst prevents them from doing the pastime until they have completed this learning curve.

but i couldn't agree more about people who just panic and click on everything in sight. just stop it and read for a second!

a lot of people buy a Mac for work (like all the photographers in this thread!) then a day of figuring out a load of technical stuff effectively costs you a day's wages.

This is what I'm not understanding. What is there to figure out on a PC that there isn't on a Mac? I can only assume that sitting in front of OSX for the first time isn't wildly different from someone coming cold to (say) Windows 7. I should really give it a proper go myself at some point.

it's not so much that it's [i]wildly[/i] different.

but from my own experience, I bought a 2nd hand music keyboard for my XP machine. Couldn't get it to work properly. Downloaded drivers, reinstalled it, downloaded firmware, looked on forums, downloaded manuals, fannyed about with IRQs and control panel - nothing worked. Every few weeks I'd sit down and go "This time i'm gonna crack it" before wasting half the afternoon to no effect. Then i got a Macbook, plugged it in, and it worked straight away. I was like "this can't be right - I haven't "installed the new hardware device" yet!" All that time spent trying to make it work on the PC was just pointlessly lost working hours. i was a convert there and then.

that said, the way the apple walled-garden has been going these last couple of years (and the direction of Logic X), i am seriously gonna do some headscratching as to whether my next computer should be a mac or not....

Macs don't have a BIOS exactly the same as a Windows PC as most of you are thinking of, they use a UEFI.

Ok, I'm learning now, so way can't you sell a Mac clone if it's just based around UEFI compatible bits?

Ok, I'm learning now, so way can't you sell a Mac clone if it's just based around UEFI compatible bits?

Well you can, but I wouldn't give it very long before the letters threatening legal action appeared if you included a copy of OSX 'hacked' to run on non apple hardware.

- OSX does a check to see what hardware it is being installed on, if its not official apple the install will not proceed, if you stick a mac HDD in a PC it will refuse to boot all the way. To get it to run a couple of files have to be 'modified'.