The poll about Macs and PCs

she resolutely refuses to learn anything about how OSX works

To be fair, resolutely refusing to learn anything about how PCs work is at the root of many people’s problems with PCs. That and of course the seemingly random grab-bag of often shoddy hardware that Apple usually manages to spare its users from.

So you purely buy a Mac because it looks nice?

I’m a PC user but to me that’s as good a reason as any.

To be fair, resolutely refusing to learn anything about how PCs work is at the root of many people’s problems with PCs.

Just don’t me started about the person at work who insisted macs were much more intuitive to use and that they had to buy themselves a macbook pro only to end up asking me how to do things.

Just don’t me started about the person at work who insisted macs were much more intuitive to use and that they had to buy themselves a macbook pro only to end up asking me how to do things.

That’s just stupidity, nothing to do with the Mac. All you have to do is Google it. Not hard…..

@ PP, iMac’s ain’t that heavy, you want to try carrying a Mac Pro far… They might as well be a solid billet of Aluminium, almost 30kg’s bare!!!

Anyway… People buy Mac’s for all sorts of reasons. Some purely for aesthetics, some cos they need to for using specific software, some cos they prefer the way they work etc etc. Any reason is valid in its own right, just that for many of us who don’t really care what a computer looks like cos (in my case) it sits in the corner of my bedroom under a desk, Mac hardware is pretty expensive. It is undoubtedly exceptionally well made, but I needed a lot of performance quite cheaply, and have to use OSX cos I need it for software that I use (I also have another PC running windows too). That’s the main reason I eventually just built myself a Hackintosh and learnt a lot more about how OSX works to boot… Would have loved a Mac Pro, but £2k for even a base version that’s no faster than the machine I built for £300!

All you have to do is Google it. Not hard…..

On a daily basis I find myself thinking this. Unfortunately every indication from the sample I have available to me is that this is not true and it is in fact really hard.

So you purely buy a Mac because it looks nice?

Nope, but if everything else is equal I don’t mind paying a premium for the aesthetics. My experience is that everything is far from equal. I’m not the first Mac and PC user to realise that PCs are better at some things and Macs are better at others. You pays yer money….

I built my hackintosh, as I’m learning how the ‘inner workings’ of OSX all fit together.

I find it more intuitive and easier to use than Win, which is strange, considering I’m fairly tech-savy about Windows stuff.

I got a Macbook Air a couple of weeks ago, ‘cos I wanted one and I could

I love it. Works very well, nice and light, looks so, so nice.

Using Aperture 3 rather than iPhoto. Taking a bit of getting used to, but getting used to it very, very quickly

Piedi, what does Aperture do that iPhoto can’t? I looked at the “headline” features on the App Store and couldn’t see much if any difference.

This has some of the differences shown

http://www.apple.com/aperture/iphoto-to-aperture/

I don’t see the appeal on Macs. I could just build a PC which is higher spec than a Mac and install iOS on it. Then it would be superior in everyway.

You could build a computer, a lot of people – me included – cannot, or are not confident to do so. And then once you’d done it, it still wouldn’t be a Mac. I remember when I had a Dell, when something went wrong and I looked for answers, there would always be discussion about what motherboard it had, what sort of bus, what other hardware configuration I had. A Mac is a Mac – and that’s a lot of variables eliminated when you look for problems. And anyway – unless you’re very skilled at metalwork, I din’t see you building an enclosure like a MacBook.

One of the reasons I originally went for a Mac was that I could then use all the UNIX commands I’d learned doing my thesis work in order to tinker, whereas DOS was a hidden code.

Aperture – that link is a good list of the main differences. Aperture is way more powerful, and quite cheap on the App Store. Also, using Aperture allows you to use a bunch of plugins (Photomatix HDR, Nik Software, Noise Ninja, etc) for more powerful editing.

The main reason I’m building a hackintosh is that Microsoft seem to have really jumped the shark since XP, and as snow leopard is lots cheaper than Win 7 it seems like the right thing to do. I would have though there was an OSX version of picasa though? Please?

^Oliverd not sure what you mean about Microsoft jumping the shark, Windows 7 is miles ahead of XP. I even prefer Vista to XP, I’m one of the few people who seemed to get along fine with it.

PP, do you not find the 27″ Mac a monster? That’s a big old screen

I had a “practical interview” using a 27″ iMac for Final Cut and it was so nice for that sort of thing. Loads of screen space stops big projects from getting cluttered. Going back home and using my 20″ monitor was horrible 😆

^Oliverd not sure what you mean about Microsoft jumping the shark, Windows 7 is miles ahead of XP. I even prefer Vista to XP, I’m one of the few people who seemed to get along fine with it.

I just find it horrendous I just want a nice, easy to navigate file structure and control panel accessed from the desktop. Oh and not having everyting in the hardrive duplicated to fill up my SSD would be nice too. It’s total bloatware, reminds me of prog rock.

Doesn’t take much to put a shortcut to the control panel on the desktop or task bar, does it? Plus the file structure is very simple. Documents -> your files…

Not sure what you mean about having everything duplicated though.

One of the reasons I originally went for a Mac was that I could then use all the UNIX commands I’d learned doing my thesis work in order to tinker, whereas DOS was a hidden code

Could’ve gone for Linux..?

Not sure what you mean about having everything duplicated though.

WinSXS folder[/url]

Oh that one.. yeah it’s not ideal, but I emptied mine out a few times.

Oh and not having everyting in the hardrive duplicated to fill up my SSD would be nice too.

Wait a sec…

The WinSxS folder is the only location that the component is found on the system, all other instances of the files that you see on the system are “projected” by hard linking from the component store. Let me repeat that last point – there is only one instance (or full data copy) of each version of each file in the OS, and that instance is located in the WinSxS folder.

I don’t understand 😳

I don’t understand

I don’t want to any more. That’s why I’m playing hackintosh.

PlopNofear – Member
So you purely buy a Mac because it looks nice?

Yup. Plus building any kind of computer like a Hackintosh is totally out of the question for me. My eight year old PowerBook needs a new battery, really, and upping it to 350Gb from 80 wouldn’t hurt. Still, it will only run 10.5.8, and my new Mac Mini does everything I need a computer to do that my iPhone can’t cope with. Having 1.1Tb of onboard storage and 4Gb of RAM doesn’t hurt, mind; £630 with BT keyboard and trackpad. Fits perfectly under one corner of the telly, too.

Well I now have an MacBook Pro bought in late 2009 using a student discount. I think with student discounts though you really save a lot of money on the software, not so much on hardware but it all helps.

I was really frustrated the first month which took a lot of shine out of the purchase, but that was me getting used to the OS again. I used a Mac at Uni in 1989 and in my first job from 92 – 96.

I was gutted that using a video camera can be dire – my camera “didn’t work” and you have to do all sorts of nonsense to get sound to work even on just the basic software. This got me really down, as I had bought the Mac thinking that it was meant to be good at media and video and stuff, but it just isn’t and the Apple helpline was hopeless in telling me how to get video to work.

Good things are that it is seriously fast to switch on, and I have never had a blue screen of death.

iTunes is just horrible horrible, but its not the end of the world.

I just wish I had a budget to but the MacBook with a larger screen, as it can be a bit frustrating at times say reading a pdf. I don’t have the budget to buy a large screen for when I am home.

I wanted to buy something that would last a long time. It seems great for the basics, and so far does not seem to be slowing down as many PCs do over time.

Overall I am very happy, apart from a few niggles on various bits of software.

Simon have you tried Songbird? I thought it was much nicer than iTunes. There was another one I tried as well but can’t remember what it’s called. Nice minimalistic layout.

I havent tried it but I normally try not to load too many apps onto the laptop.

Also, in my humble opinion, when I had my laptop, I bought a Zen tiny little player, and it just blew the ipod out of the water in terms of sound quality. To be honest, people rave about the ipods, but to my ears they sound tinny and terrible and I feel we have gone backwards in sound quality.

I remember my first sony walkman with tapes, and maybe I am wrong, but that was just awesome (minus the hiss) compared to digital music today.

Or maybe I am just grumpy and wrong!

I think you can up the quality of the recordings but that is no use now that I have done all my CDs!

Nah it’s quite well known that iPods don’t have the best sound quality. Lack of a customisable graphic EQ is really bad as well. Not sure if newer models have this (I only have an old mini) but I would hope so.

Just bought myself a MB air to replace a windows laptop that broke. Lion with the touch stuff and a big trackpad is really very good (get better touch tool though, apple firmware is shit), but the best thing is the size and the weight. All my other machines run Linux, but I think a laptop needs to be designed a bit more thoughtfully.

The only other mac i’ve had was an 8-core mac pro that cost the thick end of 10k a few years ago, which ended up running red hat linux.

i’ve got a fancy mac and a fancy pc, cos i can and I am great.