Have you switched to Mac? (now just fighting over which is better)

Interesting topic,

I myself currently use PC and have done so for years, at uni we have both mac and pc, but when i try to use the mac im just lost, i guess its just because its something new to me.

Could someone list the good advantages of mac over pc?

Was using PCs for the last 12 years or so. Ive gone through about 4 PC laptops over the last few years. Recently got a Macbook Pro. I dont see myself ever going back to using PC. I still have 3 PCs in my house, and none of them have been used by me since I got my Macbook Pro. I have yet to run into a time where I said, damn, I need a PC to run this program, or damn that device is PC only. I installed Windows XP through Parallels on my Mac just to have on there, but I never run it, because I dont need to run Windows.

Mac, I use a Macbook (black) does double duty as my school comp and my photography comp, just hook it up to an external monitor for the photo editing work, Iphoto for managing photos and I've actually been using aperture (apple's photoediting software) more than photoshop, so I'd say mac, however thats what I've always used so I'm biased, but i've never had any reason to want to switch, personal preferance really.

Without getting into a flame war - I see that most people use macs here for a few reasons that have been stated that aren't really true. I use a PC, but I have used macs at school and friend's houses for 6-7 years. With that said...

1. "Mac's don't get viruses." False. As previously stated, coder's don't care enough to code viruses for macs (for the most part). Also, my family has had 3 computers over a span of 10 years and we have never (read never) gotten a virus. And I'm not super careful or anything - I just don't click on anything that is obviously not legitimate.

2. "You don't have to restart a mac as much as a pc." I honestly have no idea where this came from - both machines should be restarted once in a while just because it is good to give the system a fresh restart, but by all means if you want to leave your PC or mac on for 6+ months at a time, go for it. My PC is normally on for weeks at a time without any problems.

3. "It just works." Varies from person to person. Personally, it seems that whenever I use a mac it crashes on me. I will admit, my PC crashes sometimes too, but I can usually figure out why, and it doesn't happen much. I'd say both mac and pc are even in this department, but mac might have an edge (everyone says they dont crash at all...).

With this said, the mac is a very nice looking, sleek, standard, easy to use system. It is harder to upgrade, and I honestly don't understand the computer-in-a-monitor thing; I think something like the G5 with a normal tower is a much smarter idea.

I prefer the flexibilty and interface of a PC, but I do know that the mac has been the industry standard in graphics art and photoshop work forever. And it most likely will continue to be for a while, but the reaosn has changed from the mac being better to the mac being the system that everyone uses - so when someone goes out to buy a system for graphics design it is expected that it will be a mac. Both mac's and pc's will perform equally in this department. In the end choose whichever interface you like better and which features you prefer.

Also, those mac ads are 100% rubbish. This really annoys me, because I guess to an uneducated person they sound great.

Edit: Going to the apple site to listen to them I see this:
You probably need a new computer if you want to upgrade to vista. Perfect. Get a mac and live in a world that's simple, secure, and a lot more fun.

Haha. This is funny because
a) Probably not (needing new computer). To upgrade to vista on my laptop, I don't need anything. My laptop can run vista very well. To upgrade on my desktop, I need a new graphics card. Thats it. My desktop is 2 years old.

b) The apple ad campaign is based on insulting windows (kind of cheap and lame - windows doesnt have the same ad campaign towards mac), however every ad is flawed.

c) To upgrade to a new OS on mac, it is probably a lot more difficult because if you do need a new graphics card for example, you have to send the whole show back to apple and have them do it for lots of money (searching google I actually found that it is apparently not possible to upgrade - this is not verified information so I can't confirm it), or more likely buy a new computer. So their ad is actually backwards.

d) They make it sound like - hey don't get the new latest greatest from windows, instead stay with our old system because you know it. Or... just stay with XP?

Here is a reason on the mac site about why to use a mac instead of upgrading to vista (which doesn't make sense - if you don't want to upgrade to vista because of the cost of upgrading, why the hell would you go out and buy a mac??)

3. It’s simpler.
"No need to choose from the many (and expensive) flavors of Vista. Every Mac runs the same Mac OS X — with the full set of industry-leading features."

Oh great. So now we can pay extra money for features we don't need. Woohoo. Instead of being able to get the basic edition like you can with windows and save some money by not getting the features you don't want/need, I can pay extra money to get some useless stuff because there is only 1 option on what to get. At least I don't have to think.

P.S. This is not a shot at macs or mac users, but merely pointing out some common misconceptions and taking a quick rant at the apple ad campaign (sorry but its been annoying me for months and months now)

slappy sam wrote in post #2630124
1. "Mac's don't get viruses." False. As previously stated, coder's don't care enough to code viruses for macs (for the most part).

That's one thing that really bugs me, Apple always advertises how they focus on security so that they don't need to update later, they don't get viruses, etc. But the truth is that first of all, there are several thousand viruses for Mac - Not nearly as many as for PC which is in the tens of thousands, but still a considerable amount. And second, for a script kiddie who wants to do as much pointless damage as possible...are they going to make something to annoy 5% of users, or 95% of users? It's just a waste of time to them. Now, if somehow Mac took over the market and had 95% of users using, there would be far more viruses for them then for a PC.

The same goes for linux, which has even less market share than Apple, they can claim they're secure all they want, but really, everyone's just too lazy to go after them.

They can advertise what they want as its true. If it bugs you, then gutted, as for coders not being bothered, most prefer the challenge to prove apple wrong but in the end they just fail.

PC's are convenient and great is your 12 and still play computer games, but me who needs to run Indesign, Illustrator, Finalcut pro as well as my standard Itunes, Limewire and Internet without my computer slowing down or freezing, Macs are far superior. Argue all you want. Theres a reason the media industry use macs and its not cos they look pretty and don't show a stupid egg timer every 5 seconds.

aLFaDaRK wrote in post #2630170
But the truth is that first of all, there are several thousand viruses for Mac

Wow I didn't know that. Can you supply some more information on these please?

aLFaDaRK wrote in post #2630170
But the truth is that first of all, there are several thousand viruses for Mac)

OK, so are we talking about Mac OS X or are we talking about Mac OS 9 and older? As far as I know there's no known virus for Mac OS X. There is some troyans that was *made* by the virus security companies to scare people with. No evil hackers.

So lets keep the discussion to the truth here (and here we go with the Mac vs PC war again). Yes, there was about 40-45 viruses for the old Mac OS (9 and older) whilest there was 40-45,000 viruses for Windows. How many viruses there's for Windows now, I don't know, but probably not less than 5 years ago when Apple introduced Mac OS X on the market.

Now I'd like to see proof of those "thousands" of viruses you claim there's for Mac OS X, as there seem to have been an extremly increase since the old Mac OS, where there were less than hundred viruses.

Here's the difference between PC and Mac.

It all boils down to my Mother.

She has been using various Mac's for the last 8 years or so,. and yes they break just as often as any PC,.
BUT...

When she buys a USB wireless dongle for her Mac, or any other peripheral for that matter, she just un-boxes it, plugs it in, and it works.

With the new PC she just received for work stuff, when the linksys wireless USB adapter arrives, nothing works until I drive 45 minutes to her home and install everything, and then configure the wireless networking etc... I'll have to put in a solid three hours minimum including driving time. This is "Plug and Play" on the Windows OS.

As a die hard dedicated PC tweeker,. I am beginning to see the advantages of this whole "Mac thing"

People are passionate about Macs - they just get into your system, you feel creative just sitting in front of one.

I just convinced someone to buy a Mac for their office after their PC e-mail programme died for the 12th time in six months. They bought an iMac 20" Intel. You should hear them talk about how great it is and excited they are to work on the computer now. They never talked like this about the PC - all they did was moan how they had lost all their e-mail again and had had to spend hours reinstalling their back-up.

As for the virus stuff - there is no way there are thousands of viruses for the Mac.

Cheers,

Chris

Wedding Shooter wrote in post #2630722
As for the virus stuff - there is no way there are thousands of viruses for the Mac.

aLFaDaRK says there is. It must be true, surely?

I have been a PC user going back to the days of the IBM PC XT. Heck, I used vt52 terminals on DEC PDP 11/70s. Recently my 3 1/2 year old Acer laptop stated to show it's age (poor battery life, small HD etc.). I found a great deal on a Macbook Pro, For the price, it was a heck of a machine (Intel core duo 2 ghz, 802.11g, great screen, magnetic connection for power cord, bluetooth etc.). However, I need a few PC apps (accounting SW), but the photo stuff is fine on either platform. I had considered running XP on it exclusively on the Mac, but I started playing with Parallels Desktop. I now run OSX and XP at the same time. I run my PC Photoshop in XP, and lightroom beta in osx. It is much faster than my old machine while running both XP/OSX (the 2 GB of ram helps!). The mac apps (iphoto,iweb etc.) are cute, but slightly feature limited; They are very easy for someone getting started in the world of computers.

I did play with BootCamp, it is not a very elegant solution (rebooting etc.). However, BootCamp with the new Parallels RC is better if you can dedicate a chunk of HD space. With this setup, you can BootCamp into XP and have full use of all the machines goodies for gamers(ATI 1600 series video card, usb 2 etc.)

Rich

tommy_london wrote in post #2630782
aLFaDaRK says there is. It must be true, surely?

No its all ...*fails to think of suitable word without sounding insulting*, Either that or im well lucky, as I have been using Macs for 4 years never used anti virus software, download god knows how many programs and shareware and have never had a virus in my life.

the only problem I ever had with my mac, Is in game servers for americas army but end of day I don't buy a computer to play games, thats what dedicated game consoles are for.

canonboy wrote in post #2631004
No its all ...*fails to think of suitable word without sounding insulting*, Either that or im well lucky...

yeah I know, I was being sarcastic. I was implying that he was making it up. As various other posters have pointed out - there are not several thousands of mac viruses.

Started off my mac usage with a lowly LCIII (http://lowendmac.com/l​c/lciii.shtml) and i'm yet to suffer a virus.

canonboy wrote in post #2631004
No its all ...*fails to think of suitable word without sounding insulting*, Either that or im well lucky, as I have been using Macs for 4 years never used anti virus software, download god knows how many programs and shareware and have never had a virus in my life.

the only problem I ever had with my mac, Is in game servers for americas army but end of day I don't buy a computer to play games, thats what dedicated game consoles are for.

You are just lucky, as are most Mac users. The viruses made for Macs aren't very fast spreading due to the lack of users, and they're very rare in themselves. But yes, there are viruses for Mac OS X, and combined with older Mac OS's, there are several thousand. I forget where I found that statistic, but it was a website with stats for all different operating systems, windows, mac, linux, etc. It's not that virus programmers for Mac fail when trying to create viruses, they can do it, there's just no point if it will infect one computer and be fixed before the virus can find another Mac to spread to since they're not very common in comparison to PC's.

I think some of you took this as me insulting Mac, which is not true, I'm getting a Macbook Pro near the end of the year afterall.