Why I Went Mac But Still Keep My PC

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I ran Prime95 torture test on my overclocked AMD Athlon X2 4850e with a budget motherboard, and for 8 hours there wasn't a single error. The board, the CPU and 4GB DDR2-800 memory cost me less than $200, and the system is rebuilt on an old HP mATX case. That was run under Vista 64 Premium OEM that I bought from newegg for less than $100 on sale. ECC is not needed because modern semiconductors are so good that the error rate is as low as 10^-12. Even when error does happen, it still can be compensated by error correcting methods that are printed in every book on information theory since Shannon, or simple do-it-again solution. Contrary to the myth that Apple tries to instill into the public, XP and Vista don't crash randomly. If it does, it is usually improperly assembled hardware or faulty driver. It doesn't happen from out-of-Box Dell and HP, but it still happens with out-of-box Apple. OSX still can crash worse than Linux. OS from MS rarely crash since Windows 2000, and MS staff made a stride to improve security of their products. Usability and human interface remains deficient, but everything else is quite good. I will whip my children into writing shell script before they whine about bad human interface.

Honestly I can't defrag my XP and Vista machine since I usually stuff hard drive to their fullest, and I have yet to have a single hard drive failure due to fragmentation of file system. Defrag is not necessary for NTFS due to its nature. It is people who demand hard drive performance who need to defrag often. The other myth about Mac require less maintenance is also false. It still need to clean out of software trash now and then, as well as hardware trash. I've seen both thrown out Mac and PC with their ventilation stuck with dust. That'll never happen to my machines. People buy cars and know that they need to change engine oil at least every 6 month. People buy houses and maintain them all the time. Low maintenance of Mac are due to low intensity of abuse by the users.

And guess what, OS X has its own registry system, but the Apple wouldn't let you know how they do it. It's still there despite consumer knowledge. Windows registry is unfortunate necessity to boost OS performance, and the complexity reflects the nature of modern OS. Go find all the data under /etc and see if you can make sense out of it. Microsoft didn't invent registry system. Instead, it is born out of necessity. At least Microsoft is decent enough to put regedit.exe in every version of windows since 95.

I use computers for data acquisition, instrument control and numerical processing. I found Mac useless to me at my work, and I found Mac useless to me at home as well. I regard anything came from Apple since Apple IIe as over hyped products. Mercedes lived up to their hype, but Apple doesn't.
 
Actually, case design becomes all the more important when you look at Apple products, and it's not just about looking good. For instance, the aluminum iMac is an all-in-one enclosure that has no active cooling. It does this by using mobile processors and chipsets and very big heatsinks, as well as some very well designed cases that are able to use convection cooling to best effect.

The Mac Pro case is designed to provide maximum through airflow (cool air in front, hot air out the back, hence the cheese-grater brushed aluminum look) to each different component using the minimum of fans. The case is divided into several specific sections (processors, RAM, power supply, hard drives and peripherals) and the hardware monitors the ambient temperatures of each location and adjusts the speed of the fans appropriately to provide as much active cooling as is absolutely necessary for proper operation. This not only improves heat dissipation, but also improves the sound footprint, which I must admit, I have seen way too many PC boxen that sound like a 747 on the runway ready for takeoff.

I guess what I am trying to say, it's not just looking good. It's about looking good, but making sure the function is good first. Function before form, and let the function dictate how simple the form needs to be. Classic Jonathan Ives, who worships at the altar of KISS (that's Keep It Simple, Stupid, not the band).
 
[citation][nom]resonance451[/nom]Oh and once again, that's more of a GUI issue, and has nothing to do with actual hardware/software performance.[/citation]

Conclusion to this article

Mac = Lian Li case, with overpriced hardware. And A safe free OS to browse porn without the fear of being infected with viruses.
 
Houndsteeth, I am still waiting for the part where any of those features is not available on a PC, and for cheaper. What makes you think you can't find a good passive cooling solution with an aluminum case that uses the same sort of shell? I can easily quote you several cases.

PS - My CoolerMaster Stacker SE smacks the living crap out of a Mac Pro case, AND I can just as easily use passive cooling for the processor if I choose.
 
Ah, and as for adjustable temperatures, are you forgetting that the same exact hardware is used by PCs? Speedstep is an Intel feature, and it's available with AMD through Cool n' Quiet. And you can have temperature readers in a case and the BIOS has multiple options to dynamically change speeds of fans based on case temperature.

Once again, propaganda says "it's a Mac feature" when it's extremely easy to have that feature in a PC.
 
[citation][nom]resonance451[/nom]Ah, and as for adjustable temperatures, are you forgetting that the same exact hardware is used by PCs? Speedstep is an Intel feature, and it's available with AMD through Cool n' Quiet. And you can have temperature readers in a case and the BIOS has multiple options to dynamically change speeds of fans based on case temperature.Once again, propaganda says "it's a Mac feature" when it's extremely easy to have that feature in a PC.[/citation]
Yes, I'm very familiar with the features for active and passive cooling available for the PC. I'll just point out that Apple offers this with EVERY Mac Pro they build, and they have engineered it from tooth to tail to do this, without any user intervention required. The PC solutions you talk about either only control one part of the computer (Speedstep and Cool n' Quiet only affect CPU fan speed) or requires active intervention on the part of the user (from installing the system to begin with to actively monitoring system temp and then flipping a switch to turn the fan speed a step higher). Sure, you can get similar features on a PC, but they are either incomplete or require the user to install/activate.
 
[citation][nom]Houndsteeth[/nom]Yes, I'm very familiar with the features for active and passive cooling available for the PC. I'll just point out that Apple offers this with EVERY Mac Pro they build, and they have engineered it from tooth to tail to do this, without any user intervention required. The PC solutions you talk about either only control one part of the computer (Speedstep and Cool n' Quiet only affect CPU fan speed) or requires active intervention on the part of the user (from installing the system to begin with to actively monitoring system temp and then flipping a switch to turn the fan speed a step higher). Sure, you can get similar features on a PC, but they are either incomplete or require the user to install/activate.[/citation]

Let me put it like this, if apple gave out their license to other Companies to manufacture macs, I guarantee you they would not all be good cooling wise. You can't compare a mac to those low end gateways and dells, You can however compare it to the new high end HP Voodoo machines. Wich offer excellent cooling solutions and does not require user install, High end PC machines < Like macs> are for Users who don't know how to install RAM for example, and want it all setup out the box.
 
A lot of motherboard manufacturers provide fan speed control. What's the point here? Out-of-box Dell and HP don't sound like 747 and it's up to them to decide whether to put such a feature in. A lot of builders don't care about noise, so they buy cheapest fans with maximum air flow capacity to cool their systems. I built my system based on need for quite HTPC and it runs very quite with all the quite parts I bought. It does take some effort to bring noise control to your system, but not at Apple price. With that price, I can build two water-cooled Windows/linux machines of the same spec.
 
Wow, so Tom's is writing articles with absolutely no point these days...? Must be hard times. This was such a waste of time. We've used PC's, we've used Mac's--big f-ing deal...who cares? Why write on and on about it? Oh, and I'm no vista fanboy, but when the writer said that he could do anything with his XP machine that a vista machine could do, only faster--I HIGHLY doubt that unless he's running vista on a machine with 256MB of ram and integrated graphics or something stupid like that... I use XP almost exclusively (too much of a pain to migrate right now), but Vista by far runs faster and smoother than XP does in almost every respect.

Anyhoo, I'm so happy for this guy that he is able to use both a PC and a Mac--I think he deserves a medal or a parade or something...who's with me?!
 
[citation][nom]anonymouse[/nom]@Xuzial: there is need to talk crap you don't know. OS X is safer than windows, it's not just by the numbers. If you were right, it would have 7% the viruses that windows has, and it is nowhere near that.Do you know the benefits of ECC memory? Did you know all manufacturers stopped using ECC on 286/386s for cost savings? It was standard back then. Get to your system perfomance monitor (on Vista for example) and check out how many memory errors you get in A SECOND, then you'll realize what ECC is for.The point is some people don't want to or don't have time to defrag, configurate and caress their hardware like a baby. They want a useful machine, a solid tool for work that doesn't need fiddling with setups everytime you want something to just work. Macs are good for that, they are reliable and require less maintenance.And actually they charge you $3000 for $1500 hardware because you get the most amazing OS + tech support with real people at an Apple store. And show me how you're going to cram all that high-end stuff inside your LCD by yourself.@stm1185: my ass. Most artists use Macs because of the advantages I already stated. Heck, go check out "Googleplex" videos and you notice that coincidentally 90% of people in there have a MacBook Pro.It's not just "downloading malicious software". Windows crashes, windows hangs, windows doesn't like apps you install depending on what you have installed before. The registry is a big funky mess. You get errors that don't make sense all the time. You have a hard time killing a crashed app.If you knew anytyhing about engineering/computer science you would be praising macs, not the opposite. Please don't talk people off of it just because you don't know it.[/citation]

Wow rant more fanboy, but at the end of the day, I am working in Maya/Zbrush/3dsMax/Photoshop and playing Age of Conan/TF2/Crysis... on a $1000 PC from 2 years ago that has never died, never required putting in a system disk, never required talking to a support rep, and its been running 16+/7/365 for the whole time.

All these windows complaints are bullshit, and come from misconceptions caused by bad windows releases like 95/98. XP is a rock solid god, shit never crashes, never goes down; day in and day out it works.

Keep paying an extra $1500 so you can feel elite by buying an apple. A fool and his money...
 
[citation][nom]ChaohsiangChen[/nom]A lot of motherboard manufacturers provide fan speed control. What's the point here? Out-of-box Dell and HP don't sound like 747 and it's up to them to decide whether to put such a feature in. A lot of builders don't care about noise, so they buy cheapest fans with maximum air flow capacity to cool their systems. I built my system based on need for quite HTPC and it runs very quite with all the quite parts I bought. It does take some effort to bring noise control to your system, but not at Apple price. With that price, I can build two water-cooled Windows/linux machines of the same spec.[/citation]
What you fail to mention is the time and effort you put into building/customizing your computer. I would go sa far as to even say the time you take to engineer your system as well, since you have to select the parts, determine the amount of power supply and cooling your design will require, and design any additional cooling systems that are a part of your build. I know exactly how long this takes, since I spend an inordinate amount of my time building and overclocking custom water-cooled computers. I know good and well how much money I spend on PC parts, and I can tell you, that in billable hours (I usually bill at $120/hr for my time, btw), my home-built rigs would run upwards of $6,000 to $8,000 for parts and labor, and that is if I don't run into any issues. Time and time again, though, (and I know this is anecdotal) the Macs I have purchased for work have been like butter right out of the box, and the build quality is at or above the level of my custom-built gaming PCs.

And I can tell you that, since I work on both PCs and Macs, I spend a LOT less time refining my environment on my Mac than I ever do on my PC, and the only thing I really do on my PC is play games. That's why I don't spend work time fiddling with my systems, and I relegate my work to my Mac and play on my PC. It's only fair to my customers, and I spend lot fewer crunch hours futzing with my computer so I can actually get some work done.
 
Your comparison on labor cost is wrong. For computers at work, Dell and HP can run just fine right out of box. Fan control feature? Who needs that for $300 office desktop? I haven't seen a new Windows gaming machine that charged for $3000 doesn't come with water cooling and noise control. For your own computer, you pay the price, and there is no productivity related. You don't earn money from buying a home computer, and you don't lose money building your own. Money spent is money spent. Your time worth zero dollar if it isn't contributing to making money into your bank account.
 
Worst thing about Macs are the Mac users. OS X is soo great, but when you start pointing it's faults (for instance, who uses Finder?), the comment is always: "oh, but there is this great 3rd party program I pirated that fixes that"..

This was posted from my Mac, btw.
 
Mac is a Fisher Price toy. Not a serious piece of hardware.
Perhaps it's a good computer for Console kiddies, or those insecure people who want to fit in and look trendy.
 
[citation][nom]ChaohsiangChen[/nom]Your comparison on labor cost is wrong. For computers at work, Dell and HP can run just fine right out of box. Fan control feature? Who needs that for $300 office desktop? I haven't seen a new Windows gaming machine that charged for $3000 doesn't come with water cooling and noise control. For your own computer, you pay the price, and there is no productivity related. You don't earn money from buying a home computer, and you don't lose money building your own. Money spent is money spent. Your time worth zero dollar if it isn't contributing to making money into your bank account.[/citation]
But, you see, the problem is, right there...my time IS worth money. I don't spend my time working for a corporate employer who is willing to pay me an untold fortune to twiddle my thumbs and "work" on my computer to get it to work...I work for a much more strict employer, who has to worry about how much time I spend getting a project finished, and has a harder time explaining to the clients that I had to pad their invoice to cover for 8 hours of computer "maintenance"...I work for myself.

And no, a $300 office desk top from HP or Dell isn't going to cut it. I can't install nearly enough memory since my Mac is running OS X, Windows (XP, Vista and Server 2K8 via VMWare) as well as a variety of other guest operating systems as needed depending on the client, and each needs a memory footprint of at least 2GB, sometimes more if I need to run large tables. I do almost all my work in OS X, but I use the guest OS environments to test the end results. And sure, I could do a lot of this on a PC workstation or server (or over several boxes), but the Mac does it so much more elegantly than I have ever seen, and the environment is conducive to both programming and testing.

So my comparison of labor costs is NOT wrong. MY time is always priceless, not worthless. It is wrong if you don't value your time, or (as in my case with my gaming rigs) you actually enjoy spending your time doing this stuff. And is a detriment if you are under a time crunch and you are unable to meet a firm deadline because you had "computer issues" you had to deal with before you could work.
 
Once again, you're forgetting that similarly-priced systems from the best custom shops (remember, same price as a Mac or less) work "like butter" out of the box, every bit as much as a Mac.

And you say the "environment" is "conducive" to things... how so? For what reason? In terms of actual performance, the difference is often nil. So you're saying you enjoy the OSX GUI. I fail to see how that impacts your work so heavily that you rely almost completely on Apple systems. And I don't see how OSX is "elegant" either, and at one point that's a matter of opinion and is not a valid arguing point.

To compare systems properly, you must compare a Mac to a PC with similar specs and manufacturing pedigree, which there IS such a thing. The manufacturers that do the higher-end PCs comparable to a Mac's price have all the features a Mac does, except perhaps your preference of GUI. Wahh.

And you're using Vista and XP anyways!

What I'm saying is you can get an equivalent system, with same features and support and quality of construction... on both the PC and Mac platforms. Your arguments simply don't seem to have any basis. You use flowery descriptions to say how "elegant" the OS is, you say that PCs are by nature slower and require more work... when that's simply not true!

THE BOTTOM LINE: There is a FAR larger variation of PCs out there is of Mac systems, so you CANNOT logically compare lower-end systems to Macs, nor can you complain about building a system yourself when you don't have to exercise that option.

A Mac is a dressed up PC with different color panties on.

GET OVER IT.
 
[citation][nom]Houndsteeth[/nom]But, you see, the problem is, right there...my time IS worth money. I don't spend my time working for a corporate employer who is willing to pay me an untold fortune to twiddle my thumbs and "work" on my computer to get it to work...I work for a much more strict employer, who has to worry about how much time I spend getting a project finished, and has a harder time explaining to the clients that I had to pad their invoice to cover for 8 hours of computer "maintenance"...I work for myself.[/citation]

I know a guy who made his job done in 5 minutes, then spend next two weeks to figure out how much he should charge his client. His client was lazy and wouldn't do it by himself, so he paid the sucker's price for the guy's service. Business is business, money earned is money earned. Since you don't work for paycheck based on time you show up at work, money in and money out is the only thing that matters. Still your time worth zero dollar when it's not contributing to making money.

I don't feel like paying sucker's price, but maybe some people do.
 
Expose is sooo old. Sure I was disappointed with the Vista Aero interface and the whoop-dee-doo rolladex app switching, but mentioning expose as a oh-so-neat feature is giving too much credit. I was surprised to find that Compiz Fusion came enabled by default in Ubuntu Hardy Heron, and all I had to do was enable the "expose clone" on one of my mouse buttons. It has many other cool visual features such as transparency, blurring, desktop cube, and more if you're into that sort of thing.
The ONLY reason I don't switch entirely to linux is GAMES, GAMES, GAMES. At work it's now 100% linux for me.
 
By the way my turn to BRAG MY ARSE OFF! I like OSX and Windows XP and Vista Ultimate especially since I can "multi-boot" on a Mac Rigg with optimal hardware. Even better than that, I am able to run OSX on a custom "PC based" Beast as a triple boot with XP and Vista Ultimate no problem. No headaches involved if you don't count the one I got from playing FEAR in the dark on a 30 inch monitor and a "STUPID MAD CRUNKED UP" BOSE HEADSET! I still can't see too well at the moment but I am happy. Hellz Yeah!
 
Tuan,

I totally know where you're coming from. I used to be a hardcore windows / Irix user and now I'm mac at home and Linux at work. I have a game box running Vista at home that I put together recently (crazy SLI monster) and outside of playing a game or two it mostly collects dust. I wish I bit the bullet and bought a Mac Pro... but those window DIY box prices sucked me in. I bought a macbook right after apple changed over to Intel. It's really hard/impossible to get people that have been using windows for a long time to grasp the concept of why they wouldn't go back to a windows box. If you just look at a marketing/spec sheet, you just start asking questions like "Do you use it just because it looks better?" I think you really have to sit down with it for a couple of months to really understand how refined a product it is. Anyway, good luck getting bashed on this site by the know-it-alls.
 
I am a developer and can not imagine living without the .NET framework. Anyone who faces the stress of delivery quality software quickly understands that a strong framework for developing apps on is crucial. I prefer .NET because C# is my language of choice for many reasons I will not go into. Until I see .NET or ASP.NET support on the mac, I will never even think about trying the switch.
 
Wow. I am getting SO very sick of the PC vs. MAC stuff. It's like comparing a buffet restaurant to sushi bar. Retarded conversation.
 
Oh my God this is so amusing...

Some funny facts:
Mac hardware is VERY limited compared to pc hardware - fact
Mac hardware is overpriced - fact
Macs can't do anything a PC cannot - fact
PCs on the other hand, can do stuff that Macs can't (which is why they had to resort to that dual boot) - fact

Just with those 4 lines it's enough to conclude that Macs are not better than PCs, but they are more expensive. Think about it next time you waste your money, you are paying more for less!

Oh and, whoever posted that link to TopDesk... a big Thank you!. You've ruined the only excuse some "hardcore pc users" had to make the jump to Macs, lol! No, seriously, it works very, very well (and no, I do not get money for posting this, unfortunately), now I have Flip3D + expose + some other expose on my Windows XP (that has never crashed in 2 years, mind you)


 
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