What makes Mac better?

[Justin]

+1, they may look good, but so does the HP envy

it looks like a Macbook Pro.

 

[Ethan3.14159]

i would say windows is easier. installing programs is a breeze, just press next, next ,next, finish. and with windows 7 automatically downloading drivers for whatever you plug into it, well, that just makes it pretty darn simple

like stated above, mac is just glorified linux, with a huge price tag.



+1, they may look good, but so does the HP envy

And that's more expensive that the comparable Macbook Pro. Without the ISP monitor, backlight LED keyboard, and no multitouch... well, it tries, but fails hard. Talk about inflated prices. Plus you get all of HP's lovely bloatware. :good:

I hated Mac's for ages, and ranted about them a few times here. Then I took a mandatory Apple training course, and I fell in love with how well the hardware is integrated with the software. Not to mention you can do the exact same things you do on Windows, but in half the time. I mean, there is nothing Windows has that compares to iPhoto, Garageband, and iMovie right out of the box. I love my PC, and I don't mind putting the work in to organize everything and so on, but I really just want to open my laptop and have everything there. Without putting hours of work into organizing everything.

 

[MacBook]

I hated Mac's for ages, and ranted about them a few times here. Then I took a mandatory Apple training course, and I fell in love with how well the hardware is integrated with the software. Not to mention you can do the exact same things you do on Windows, but in half the time. I mean, there is nothing Windows has that compares to iPhoto, Garageband, and iMovie right out of the box. I love my PC, and I don't mind putting the work in to organize everything and so on, but I really just want to open my laptop and have everything there. Without putting hours of work into organizing everything.

Same here, I used to think they were overpriced and useless because nothing would run on them, now that I have a MacBook I feel the same way you do. Mac's come with some great software, no bloatware, and is very user friendly.

 

[speedyink]

Two words.

Personal. Preference.

It doesn't take a genius to know I hate macs, though I'm forever trying to be opened minded and find ways to like them. I haven't turned my mac on in a couple weeks now, though, so thats not going so well.

Whoever said mac is easier is full of crap. It's very much on par.

I've never dealt with such a narrow support path. software supporting 10.2, but not 10.1, and 10.3 but not 10.2 or 10.4 but not 10.3. What the hell? Why can't 10.1 use firefox?? What is it missing?

Crashing..oh man I hate mac crashes. No error message telling you what f**ked up, no odd chance that you can save your work, nope, you get to see your 2 hours of video editing disappear only to be greeted by "This program has unexpectedly quit". Well guess what Mr iMac, you've unexpectedly been thrown out the window.

On the plus side, I love how applications are installed, but some software makers like Adobe have to make it difficult and not completely delete when you delete the applications folder.

 

[MacBook]

Whoever said mac is easier is full of crap. It's very much on par.

Crashing..oh man I hate mac crashes. No error message telling you what f**ked up, no odd chance that you can save your work, nope, you get to see your 2 hours of video editing disappear only to be greeted by "This program has unexpectedly quit". Well guess what Mr iMac, you've unexpectedly been thrown out the window.

Buy a PC and Mac laptop, turn them on, and see which one is easier to setup and get going. Windows 7 makes it easier, but Vista was a real PAIN.

Same thing with Windows crashes, you get either the blue screen or sometimes an app will just hang and you will be forced to kill the process. That's why you save work as you go

 

[speedyink]

Buy a PC and Mac laptop, turn them on, and see which one is easier to setup and get going. Windows 7 makes it easier, but Vista was a real PAIN.

Same thing with Windows crashes, you get either the blue screen or sometimes an app will just hang and you will be forced to kill the process. That's why you save work as you go

They're both easy. My Dell laptop with Vista was easy, just turn it on and enter your info. What you do beyond that can be difficult for both systems, ie customizing it the way you like.

Sometimes if you move the error aside you'll still be able to access your program in windows. I also find Tiger and prior usually crash a lot more than windows. At least in my experience. Dunno about leopard and up, haven't used them.
And yes, I know know when using a mac to save my work at least every 10 mins.

 

[MacBook]

They're both easy. My Dell laptop with Vista was easy, just turn it on and enter your info. What you do beyond that can be difficult for both systems, ie customizing it the way you like.

I find that hard to believe, because with Vista by default it has UAC enabled so it bugs you every 5 seconds to confirm something, it automatically loads the sidebar and welcome screen, and the start menu is full of useless programs that no one will ever use.

 

[gamblingman]

if i have to......ugh

Well I hate the way mac looks. I dont like the look of the OS, its too shiny and tween-ish. I like a more mature desktop apperance to my computer. Mac feels like a toy, whats up with that mouse? I hate the mac mouse, I want a right click and a scroll wheel, I dont want touch sensitive scrolling. And the white shiny look of the cases is too sterile and boring. Mac's are as drab and boring as the old 90's compaq cases, and they were really ugly.

I also REALLY hate how small everything on a mac screen is. I dont have the best eyes, and I have to use larger fonts online for example. And on a mac I can barely see the minimize/close/maximize buttons at the top of the window, let alone anything else.

I also dont want that crummy mini-laptop sized keyboard that comes with the mac desktops. Why do the keyboards have to be so small, thin and cheap feeling. There is almost no key movement!

I've used pc's all my life, and I remember when I was a kid, about 8 or so, and me an my brothers were dragged to some cousins house. They had a mac. At the time I only had a vague idea of what mac's were. But once I used it, I HATED IT. It was so awful then, and they haven't changed in all those years. They are still incredibly annoying, they cost too much and they arent natively compatable with any software worth using.

If mac is so great, then there would be a big section for software targeting it, and not pc's. I want to be able to buy and use a program without having to use some annoying, troublesome middle-man program like Wine. (I know you dont use wine, but you have to use similar programs just to get PC software to work. How is that helping?)

Ahhhhhh ok, theres my diatribe raving rant. Im ok for another year.

But really, I could really care less about which one is "better", so to speak. I just wish the economy would improve.

 

[canivari]

Macs are better for video/foto encoding or program rendering because the OS it self
is very light,as allready some users allready said here.
But got one big incoviniente is that doesnt support so many platforms as PC does.
Why he doesnt hav so many bugs like PCs? same awnser (The OS doesnt support so many virtualized stuff as PC
so giving him less stuff t handle but limited at the same time)
I like Mac and PC but when it comes to use in normal days (not using or video/foto encoding or program rendering) i prefer PC.
Hope that helps

 

[Ethan3.14159]

Well I hate the way mac looks. I dont like the look of the OS, its too shiny and tween-ish. I like a more mature desktop apperance to my computer. Mac feels like a toy, whats up with that mouse? I hate the mac mouse, I want a right click and a scroll wheel, I dont want touch sensitive scrolling. And the white shiny look of the cases is too sterile and boring. Mac's are as drab and boring as the old 90's compaq cases, and they were really ugly.

I also REALLY hate how small everything on a mac screen is. I dont have the best eyes, and I have to use larger fonts online for example. And on a mac I can barely see the minimize/close/maximize buttons at the top of the window, let alone anything else.

I also dont want that crummy mini-laptop sized keyboard that comes with the mac desktops. Why do the keyboards have to be so small, thin and cheap feeling. There is almost no key movement!

I've used pc's all my life, and I remember when I was a kid, about 8 or so, and me an my brothers were dragged to some cousins house. They had a mac. At the time I only had a vague idea of what mac's were. But once I used it, I HATED IT. It was so awful then, and they haven't changed in all those years. They are still incredibly annoying, they cost too much and they arent natively compatable with any software worth using.

If mac is so great, then there would be a big section for software targeting it, and not pc's. I want to be able to buy and use a program without having to use some annoying, troublesome middle-man program like Wine. (I know you dont use wine, but you have to use similar programs just to get PC software to work. How is that helping?)

Ahhhhhh ok, theres my diatribe raving rant. Im ok for another year.

But really, I could really care less about which one is "better", so to speak. I just wish the economy would improve.

You can turn off all of the cartoon-ish stuff. That's what I did. Plus the very basic Mighty Mouse has right click and scrolling. And all of the icon and text sizes are completely adjustable. Not to mention the keyboard shortcuts for everything are quicker than moving the mouse all about to close and minimize things.

The style of the Mac and Macbook's is minimalistic, there's no waste in ridiculous and tacky design. Some hate it, I love it. A lot of the things you're ranting about can be changed in 5-10 minutes. Just like how you tweak Windows when you first start up. And like when you first started using Windows it takes time to get used to.

 

[Drenlin]

Macs are better for video/foto encoding or program rendering because the OS it self
is very light,as allready some users allready said here.
But got one big incoviniente is that doesnt support so many platforms as PC does.
Why he doesnt hav so many bugs like PCs? same awnser (The OS doesnt support so many virtualized stuff as PC
so giving him less stuff t handle but limited at the same time)
I like Mac and PC but when it comes to use in normal days (not using or video/foto encoding or program rendering) i prefer PC.
Hope that helps

The difference in resource usage between them isn't enough to make a big difference there at all. Maybe in years gone by, but not now.

 

[Ethan3.14159]

The difference in resource usage between them isn't enough to make a big difference there at all. Maybe in years gone by, but not now.

Yes, but software like Photoshop and Adobe Premier run much faster on Mac OS X than on Windows. The OS is much lighter, and has less processes running in the background. One of it's main advantages is longevity over Windows.

 

[MacBook]

Mac's do have a right click, just FYI.

 

[canivari]

The difference in resource usage between them isn't enough to make a big difference there at all. Maybe in years gone by, but not now.

Well,is not about resources that i talking about.The problem is that the Windows OS Programing (the C++ language it self) still is too much ambiguous for PCs asking for the same resources to do a task as a MAC but taking more time.
I really enjoy Windows and MAC (and Unix..) but thats the reality..

 

[tlarkin]

wow, so much crap in this thread....I really refrained from posting, but hardly anyone has got their facts straight.

First off, and for the last time hopefully, you cannot build a PC that is equal to a mac part for part spec for spec and feature to feature that is cheaper. It cannot be done. For one, all Apple laptops are higher resolution, LED back lit screens that support IPS technology.

Just look at a google shopping search for IPS (in-plan switching) support LCD monitors. On average a 21" is going to cost you over $600.

http://www.google.com/products?q=IPS+LCD+monitor&hl=en&aq=f

Almost all PC laptops have crappy resolution compared to Mac laptops. That is just a fact.

As for resource management, it is pretty widely accepted as fact in the world of computing Unix does a way better job than Windows. Which is why Unix pretty much runs the Internet and other major networks. Windows servers are really only good for managing Windows clients. I will give MS credit on this, as their back end products (Exchange, Active Directory) are pretty robust and do a good job of what they are suppose to do.

Here is an example. My iMac at work, which is a production machine for me, which I do all my work on, which includes but is not exclusive to:

* package creation
* coding scripts
* multi session terminal windows
* email client
* iTunes
* web browser
* Text editors
* Casper Suite
* ARD Amin
* Server Tools
* chat client

I have minimum all those apps running at once all day every day, sometimes more. I only have 1 gig of RAM in my iMac and it is snappy, never lags, opens everything up at once, and the only the fly memory management works great. Even when firefox is being a punk and memory leaks it still runs great.

My PC at home likes to lock up when it sleeps a lot and when I get home from work I have to power cycle it. I haven't upgraded to Windows 7 yet though and am still running vista, with all the newest patches and service packs. My PC has 4 gigs of RAM and on occasion when I get memory leaks I have to reboot it. Typically from seeding too many torrents, my torrent client likes to eat up tons of RAM and along with Firefox, it can get messy.

It all comes down to personal preference, but on a technical level the Apple platform in general performs better. When you have a closed system, and you can design and specify your hardware to exact specs for your Operating System, it gives you so much control. There is hardly any third party involved. Which means there is more quality control over it.

I have seen brand new, high spec, custom built PCs run like absolute dog crap because of a third party driver that just hosed the system, or the fact that Windows did not like the driver update, or your certain configuration doesn't play well with another device in your system.

I am not dogging on PCs here, because I like my PC at home, but what I am getting at is this. When you bring in the world of custom third party hardware from all over the place you are tossing quality control out the window (no pun intended) as well as configuration compatibility with performance. Yes, custom built PCs can run at awesome speeds, but if you nix out windows and load say Unix or Linux your performance would boost even more.

The problem with most people is, they have no desire to learn anything new. They don't care what their computer is and they just want it to work. Nowadays, with the standard that Microsoft has set with BSOD, crashes, and so forth people have come to just expect computers to fail. When you expect them to fail, you are disregarding the root of the problem.

I can qualify my thoughts with my work experience. At my current job I managed 8,000 Macs and about 33 Xserves. We also have about 9,000 or so PCs at my work, which I don't oversee, but help maintain. I get to see side by side how they work.

Of course they both break, and they both crash, that is not really an issue. However, on the PC side we have to use deep freeze to manage them, because before we were ridden with so many viruses, malware and spyware that it just overwhelmed our small work force. To me that is a pain in the butt.

Also, there is no such things as a Mac being incompatible as a Mac can run all Windows apps, Windows itself, and there is almost always either a mac version of said software or a Mac alternative.

 

[speedyink]

I find that hard to believe, because with Vista by default it has UAC enabled so it bugs you every 5 seconds to confirm something, it automatically loads the sidebar and welcome screen, and the start menu is full of useless programs that no one will ever use.

All that which is about just as hard as changing the scrolling options, installing firefox (safari is useless), And deleting all the garbage from the dock on a mac.

Like I said, both machines are easy to get going, it's customizing it that takes the time.

 

[tlarkin]

All that which is about just as hard as changing the scrolling options, installing firefox (safari is useless), And deleting all the garbage from the dock on a mac.

Like I said, both machines are easy to get going, it's customizing it that takes the time.

I will give you one thing, OS X has a bit of a higher learning curve when it comes to customizing the innards of the OS. You see, everything in OS X is stored in an XML property list and read from for the OS. You can customize and configure just about everything. From automounts, network mounts, how the system looks and operates, permissions, program arguments, launch daemons, and so forth. XML is really a pain to read, it even bothers me. I understand the reasoning behind it, and it makes it awesome for developers to customize things.

Now there are GUI based customizations which are super easy to do, but when you get into the advanced, for lack of a better term - "hacking your OS," I would put OS X a bit higher learning curve. I think the registry is just as confusing but the XML files just are really hard to read.

Here is a very smiple one, from the airport daemon (airportd)

bash-3.2# cat /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.airportd.plist 
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
	<key>Label</key>
	<string>com.apple.airportd</string>
	<key>ProgramArguments</key>
	<array>
		<string>/usr/libexec/airportd</string>
	</array>
	<key>MachServices</key>
	<dict>
			<key>com.apple.airportd</key>
			<true/>
	</dict>
	<key>ServiceIPC</key>
	<true/>
	<key>ThrottleInterval</key>
	<integer>0</integer>
	<key>OnDemand</key>
	<true/>
</dict>
</plist>
bash-3.2#

That one is simple, there are ones that have 100s of lines. Applications also have these so you can customize them as well, and it is all self contained so if you botch one up (unlike the windows registry) you don't botch the whole system. The plist I gave is a system level one, so it should never be fussed with.

 

[hjahmad]

you just gotta try it sometime. a 5 minute test at an apple store wont cut it. use it for about a week and youll get the hang of it and then decide what you like. i use both daily. they arent all that different anymore. with the internet everything has become more universal. before everything was different making macs and pcs incompatable, but now it doesnt matter. yeah some things do run better on one over the other but, that just something youll have to figure out to see what you like

 

[tlarkin]

you just gotta try it sometime. a 5 minute test at an apple store wont cut it. use it for about a week and youll get the hang of it and then decide what you like. i use both daily. they arent all that different anymore. with the internet everything has become more universal. before everything was different making macs and pcs incompatable, but now it doesnt matter. yeah some things do run better on one over the other but, that just something youll have to figure out to see what you like

I don't know man, I used PCs and Windows for about 5 years before I ever touched a mac and it was what I first learned on. So, it took me even more time to learn a mac because of the PC mentality was engraved in my brain.

I say to be honest, you need 6 months to a year of steady use to really fully being to understand how an OS works. I mean, I doubt anyone on here even knows or understand how Apple uses preference files on each user account. The simple methodology makes it, by practice better than Windows because it makes more sense. In return, Windows is adopting a more Unix-like user environment over each release. Notice how in Vista, the \Documents and Settings\ folder got removed and now everything is under \Users? MS is making that shift, and I bet Windows 8 is even closer to a Unix-like OS on the user level. Of course 95% of the people out there would have no clue what I am even talking about.

It takes time. You can't learn Linux in a few weeks, you gotta keep at it for a while and really want to learn. Otherwise you will just go back to Windows every time because that was your first experience. I bet if I started a user out on Linux or Unix they would find Windows very odd, and probably go back to what they first learned.

 

[hjahmad]

I don't know man, I used PCs and Windows for about 5 years before I ever touched a mac and it was what I first learned on. So, it took me even more time to learn a mac because of the PC mentality was engraved in my brain.

I say to be honest, you need 6 months to a year of steady use to really fully being to understand how an OS works. I mean, I doubt anyone on here even knows or understand how Apple uses preference files on each user account. The simple methodology makes it, by practice better than Windows because it makes more sense. In return, Windows is adopting a more Unix-like user environment over each release. Notice how in Vista, the \Documents and Settings\ folder got removed and now everything is under \Users? MS is making that shift, and I bet Windows 8 is even closer to a Unix-like OS on the user level. Of course 95% of the people out there would have no clue what I am even talking about.

It takes time. You can't learn Linux in a few weeks, you gotta keep at it for a while and really want to learn. Otherwise you will just go back to Windows every time because that was your first experience. I bet if I started a user out on Linux or Unix they would find Windows very odd, and probably go back to what they first learned.

i get what your saying. but general users wont even notice things like that.
i was all pc for as long as i can remember. i joined a high school club and they were all about macs. there was the fun division and constant arguing between the two just as there always is. and i was so against mac at that time. i did a pc project for graduation. but that club converted one of my friends over to mac and he got a powerbook. we ended up going to the same school, and me being the computer guy, he would always ask me for help on how to do things on a mac. id use it, look it up and help him for whatever it was. and that usage led me to buy and ibook. and today i have a brand new macbook pro and i love it. but i still love windows (not vista).
i used boot camp and installed vista, and windows 7 beta on my mac and it ran much smoother than it did on my dad's brand new dell.
even though macs and pc all have intel processors now, macs hardware is usually of higher quality. the specs maybe be the same, but the macs to me seem to use higher quality parts.