Question for the faithful--

[Chemical Ollie]

I played CIV 1 and CIV 2 on Macs. CIV1 on a Powerbook 100 that I had with me anywhere I went, even to the lavatory taking a dump. Most of the GOOD games comes to Mac too, just a little later in some cases. I played Warcraft II, Worms, CIV1, CIV2, Conquest of the New World, Warlords II, Command & Conquer, and lots of other good games on Mac. The only game I would be missing if I had a Mac is Counter-Strike. And perhaps AoE (don't know if there is a Mac version for it).

However four years ago, I switched to PC because my employer gave me one at very reduced price. I don't regret it. The OS of Mac was much better before Win95 but now I think Windows is better. And ALL games are out there. I can also try the cracked versions before I buy them, as all my friends have PCs.

[ChaotikVisions]

I'll never ceased to be amazed at the people who switch to Macs after using PCs talk about "having to reinstall your OS and drivers to run that killer app." Or having problems while doing normal things. It seems these people are just morons, which is how those switch commercials are aimed. I mean the last one I saw the guy talks about switching to Mac being an amazing deal because when he went to find a cord for his digital camera he couldn't, and the people at the "pc store" didn't know what he was talking about. It goes on to say they suggested that was a "hollywood thing".

Yeah, right. Then theres other switch commercials like the one where the guy speant -HOURS- downloading a driver for his camera. What, was he running off a 2400 baud? No offense to you Mac users, but when it seems like you're morons. You get overcharged for what you buy and lose out in games unless they're popular. And btw the way just because a game is popular doesn't make it good, and not all good games are wildly popular.

OSX is quickly maturing into a strong platform that allows users from a wide set of circumstances to employ the OS as best benefits their requirements. My nine year old has been playing her games and doing her school research via a Win2000 account for the last couple of years. Each time she logs into her account, I am besieged with a variety of requests for help. I was astounded upon our first visit to an Apple retailer to discover her quietly enthralled behind the wheel of brand new iMac. She was happily amusing herself by looking through the OSX environment and shuttling through online web pages at an amazing rate. Hey, they're cute too!

Take this, it sounds reasonable but in all reality the guys probably a moron. 10 to 1 he probably had her as a seperate account and some things she was doing was requiring her to be administrator. Easily fixed, unless of course you don't try. Unless its just normal computer questions, but then they're still morons.

Some of my favourite recurring events were Win98's Plug'n'Play periodically disassociating itself from the mouse and the keyboard. I've actually had this happen between keystrokes while the hardware was plugged in and accessible. I eventually traced the problem to its source and quickly resolved the issue. However, it is my opinion that in our time limited world not everyone has the desire or patience to endure yet another hardware/ software conflict, when all they fancy is to print out a simple Word document. Even in the world of Windows, Win98 is considered far from a stable environment. In moving from Win98 to OSX, you will see an marked increase in OS speed and stability. I am assuming at this point due to your request for a comparison between the G4 and an x486 processor, that you are actually running in an x486 environment. Hence, the statement that you will experience a distinct increase in speed.

Plug and play ceasing to work for short periods of time? I used Win98 for a few years and never saw any of this. Be interesting to hear just what the problem was, but oh well. It isn't that difficult to fix problems if just work on it and actually know what the hell you're doing. As for Win98 not being that stable i'll agree, though on my old comp I could run it for a week to two weeks at time now and then, mostly it was 2-3 days. But compared to Win2k or my current os WinXP it isn't half as stable.


Anyway, it just annoys me. Every time I see one of those stupid switch commercials with people who went out and paid a couple thousand because they couldn't figure out how to plug the power cord in, ugh. If you just know what you're doing or failing that, don't do what you don't know, it'll run fine. Admittedly on Win9x there were some problems such as the memory leak, but now with Win2k/WinXP they're pretty much gone. But thats just my thoughts.

No offense to you Mac users out there, but these commercials and "testimonials" really make you guys sound like idiots. Its always some guy who can't find the power button because it "wasn't a bright blue" and then goes out to buy a Mac.

[lateralis]

Originally posted by Olaf HÃ¥rfagre
I played CIV 1 and CIV 2 on Macs. CIV1 on a Powerbook 100 that I had with me anywhere I went, even to the lavatory taking a dump.

I am sitting, taking a dump right now while reading this on my tibook 800! priceless!!!!

lateralis

[Alex]

Hm. Ok, I was misunderstood. When I said that "macs are cool, so cool that you can't play popular games on it", I was making a joke about the fact that I think macs are sooo damn cool that I would be embarassed to run stupid things like The Sims on it.

I like macs. I just don't have money for them.

[candybo]

Briefly, I promise. My first computer was an Apple IIe, and I attended a trade show introducing the ORIGINAL Mac (I was there for Lisa, too, but nevermind). Anyway, other than that, I've used pc's almost exclusively for the last 20 years, and will most likely never buy a Mac. That said, I think the reason many people go for Macs is pretty much the same reason so many Civvers are upset with Firaxis/Infogrames right now: Consumers reasonably expect something to work right the first time, right out of the box. Without HAVING to to be a technophile. Its an example of the technology NOT being fully matured. Is the home computer a gadget, similar to a ham radio set, or an appliance, like a tv? You don't expect to have to fiddle with circuit boards and jumpers, etc. in a tv, right?
As for me, I actually kind of enjoy the hobbyist aspects of computing, so its not an issue . That's my two cents, thanks for playing. We have some wonderful parting gifts for you...

[MiloMilo]

Wow, lots of responses. For what it's worth, here's what I think about the whole thing:

Supporting underdogs is definitely one of my priorities. Right now I use a compaq with an AMD processor and winXP. Going to the mac platform would mean taking that support away from AMD, but it would also take money away from microsoft.

I gotta say, I'm not sure why there are so many complaints about windows. With winXP Home for the last year and a half, I've seen virtually no crashes, great plugnplay, easy basic networking... I honestly have zero complaints with this os, aside from who manufactures it.

That said, from what I've heard, osX seems as good or better. I have no particular allegiance to windows, and I think I can get used to osX without any difficulty. (I'll miss right-clicking, but I'll get over it.) So in looking at the os, all I can conclude is that there's no reason NOT to switch.

I've been looking at prices, and I think the bit about macs being overpriced is overblown. I'm specifically interested in a laptop, and there doesn't seem to be any difference between pcs and macs. What's more, pc companies charge more for smaller, lighter systems, whereas the smallest, lightest ibooks are actually the cheapest offered by Macintosh.

I don't care much about software offerings; I don't have much time for games, civ3 is the only one I play. The only thing that bothers me software-wise (and it's a big gripe) is that corel stopped making wordperfect for macs, which means I'd be stuck with MS Word. Yuck.

Anyway, I don't know that I'm much closer to a decision, but I appreciate all the input. It's funny to see how people get so riled up about this stuff.

[Chemical Ollie]

Originally posted by lateralis


I am sitting, taking a dump right now while reading this on my tibook 800! priceless!!!!

lateralis

Wow! Wireless LAN? Perhaps I should get that and a laptop so I could pornosurf without having my wife watching over my shoulder.

One thing with Mac that no PC manufacturer yet have accomplished is to make the box look like a cool and estetic piece of furniture. Why do all PCs look the same, and so ugly?

[lateralis]

Originally posted by MiloMilo
and I think I can get used to osX without any difficulty. (I'll miss right-clicking, but I'll get over it.)

why? multi-button support is built in to osx. true, apple doesn't make a multi-button mouse, but any USB (and i stress ANY USB) mouse will work with OSX, and all your buttons will work. I personally use a logitech optical, wireless, 2-button, scroll wheel mouse.

Wow! Wireless LAN?

ah yes, gotta love airport (another thing apple was first to market for consumers!!! wireless home networking with 802.11b, add that to the list with dvd-burning, blutooth support, the 'windowed' interface, USB, Firewire, and the CD-ROM drive)

lateralis

[Mad Bomber]

I Love Mac's, I have to admit it. No fatal errors, less crashing, and far friendlier for the average computer user. Thir only drawback is the price. A mac will generally run you double the cost at half of the performance hardware, and it has less software support too. Personally I find the software issue a small issue, as you can buy a very cheap program called Virtual PC, which will allow you to run PC software on Mac's.

Windows XP is the best OS Microsoft has released, but I still get a lot of crashes, especially when playing CIV 3.

Why am I using Windows XP? My compaq cost me $600, the same system from Apple would have run me $1200- 1300. Macintosh will never be as popular as PC's without allowing them to be cloned.

[lateralis]

Originally posted by Mad Bomber
Macintosh will never be as popular as PC's without allowing them to be cloned.

Unfortunatley, one thing that the early 90's proved is that the 'cloning' concept could only work once. Mac were cloned for several years in there and it almost killed the platform. . lucky for use steve jobs came back into the fold, canceled the licenses to the cloners and released the iMac.

lateralis

[Arrian]

Funny, I haven't had any Mac experience for years, but the ones I did have experience with (never owned one, though) were always giving their owners problems: crashing constantly, etc. Now perhaps that had more to do with my College Campus' intranet setup than the Macs themselves, I dunno. I had an ancient PC (386) that faithfully chugged along for 8 years (1991-1999) without incident. I now have a simple Gateway 400mhz machine that has yet to give me trouble in the 3 1/2 yrs. I've owned it.

To each their own, I guess. All I know is that the Mac users have more trouble getting games/patches... and even if they get them, they have to wait longer.

Frankly, I never really understood the obsession with the Mac-style operating system (aka Windows). I was fine with DOS. It worked and it didn't eat memory like a bunch of stoners in 7-Eleven.

-Arrian

[Mad Bomber]

Lateralis:

unfortunately they took the wrong approach to cloning; they gave lisences to only one or two companies, the result was still no competition between the cloners, and prices still remained over those of PC's. Mac needs to sign cloning agreements with as many companies as possible, with companies that know how to build computers, Dell, gateway, compaq...

Arrian:

Dos is the most reliable OS, but who knows how to run it, I am sure there are a few computer geeks out there, but for the most of us DOS is the same as greek. I always wanted to learn DOS but I have never had the time.

[vmxa1]

I always view the macs adds as I people confessing to not know how to use a given opsys and going with one that requires less of you. That is fine, since I have been in computers since 1963, I do not need help via interfaces. Anything you have to do to make it easier to be use cost you system resources, now a days that is not a problem. IBM made a mainframe opsys to help people, it is called MVS, it is very expensive in terms of over head and money. That works for many companies as hard core systems programmers became hard to find and expensive as well.

[GreyRandall]

To start off, I'm a Mac user at home. I've been an Apple user since the Apple ][ (Still have 3 of them in wokring order) While the other half and the kids are all on Windows machines. At work, I'm a PC user (Windows programmer)

I've always believed there's a job for every tool, and a tool for every job. If you're going to make a decision about which platform to be on, there's one thing you need to consider: What am I using this for?

If you're just looking for a glorified game console, then you'd better stick with a PC. They're cheaper, thus more available, thus more games are out there for them.

If you're using it as a multipurpose tool, you can go with either platform.

Microsoft Office, Internet Explorer, AOL, AIM, IRC, ICQ, Netscape, Dreamweaver, Flash, Director, Fireworks, Freehand, PageMaker, Illustrator, FileMaker Pro, Timbuktu, VNC, Quicktime, Canvas, Premier, Photoshop, ImageReady, FrontPage, dBase, PHP, Apache, MySQL, JAVA, JavaScript, Palm Desktop, MasterCook, Acrobat, Ray Dream Studio, Poser, Eudora Internet Mail.

Either currently, or at least at one point, everything listed above was available on both Macs and Windows PCs, so you really can't go wrong with either one.

Pros and Cons
PCs
Pros:
Backwards Compatibility Even though things are rarely put out on floppy diskettes, or printers are switching to Network and USB interfaces, you'll notice that the floppy drive and serial ports are still supported on the PC platform. Additionally, the latest Windows operating systems still provide support for very early (in other words ancient boat anchors) printers. Like the LaserJet IID
Lower CostWhen I purchased my iBook, I noticed that for the purchase price, I could have brought home, or had delivered to my home 2 PCs with monitors, printers, and a CD burner installed.
Cons:
Incompatible Drivers and Software Who would have thought that something like the driver for a Yahama Sound Card would cause a conflict with a coding software application? Or that Norton Antivirus Engine causes conflicts with some server software?
IRQ Conflicts, SCSI drivers that don't work correctly with other items? Ever thing that installing a USB CD Burner, and the software for burning CDs would cause so many conflicts with your installation of Windows 2000 that you couldn't boot? and repair didn't work, and in order not to wipe your whole hard drive, you had to install a SECOND copy of Windows 2000 in another directory?
Nebulous Error Messages Unless you're a serious propeller head, the average person isn't going to understand half of what the BSoD is telling them... Let alone what the General Fault Protection error actually means.
Power Management Conflicts Many PCs now come with Power Management as part of the motherboard BIOS. However, Windows 98 and above also comes with Power Management. Depending on the Motherboard, the BIOS, and the OS, conflicts actually occur which freeze the computer up, create damage on the hard disk, or just unexpectedly cause the computer to shut off or reboot.
Permissions Some things need certain priviledges to run/install applications. Fine if you know what you're doing, not so good if the user happens to be one of your children. Do you really want your 9 year old to have Administrator rights? What about your teenager? Do you want to have to stop what you're doing to install or run things for them? That's going to vary from person to person.
Virus Vulnerability It's far too easy to write a Virus for a Windows based machine, look at the number of Virus alerts out there. Compare the number that affect PCs vs Macs. At home I have two Web Servers, on is running IIS under Windows NT, the other a PowerMac 7200 running WebStar. Not a single successful attempt in 3 years was made on the Mac. The WinNT box got hit by NIMDA, and I've got documentation on a six failed attack attempts

Macintosh
Pros:
Stable OS I'll admit, in the early days of System 6,7, and 8 that there were quite a few bombs when I was running things. However, since the arrival of OS9 and OSX, there haven't been any problems on any of my macs running either OS.
No IRQ Configurations You don't have to worry if your SCSI card conflicts with your NIC, or your Sound Card, or your Video Card, or your Mouse/Joystic/Drawing Tablet, etc.
Built In Sound and Graphics No need to go out to buy a video card or a sound card, and hope it works with everything you've got.
Cons:
Backwards Compatibility Not a major issue if you are purchasing a brand new Macintosh... but for those of us that can't quite afford to do so, this is a major problem, and a major pet peeve of mine. Yes, few people use floppy drives. Few people use serial connected printers and digital cameras. However there are still people out there that have this equipment, still use it, but the latest Macintosh OS has no support or capability built in for this. Unless you have a supported USB or Network capable printer, you cannot print from your older Macintosh if it is running OSX. Unless you download and install a very slow third party utility, you will also have to deal with no floppy... Some people still think it's practical to use a floppy, rather than burn a CD or use a Zip/Jaz disk to store something less than a Meg in size.
Price Though in my personal opinion, the Macintosh is a more superior machine, it's very expensive. I have several Macs. Unfortunately, I cannot afford to upgrade them as fast as people in the PC world can. I'm currently sitting on hold with a Gossamer G3/233. Granted, it can hold it's own against my other half's PC... a 1.5 GHz windows machine that I put together for her. There's no difference in performance, and in some cases, my trusty G3 still does things in Photoshop faster than her speed demon can. But from the days of the Mac II's they've been bloody expensive to upgrade. This is in my opinion why the Performa didn't perform so well. Places like Sears, Price Club/Costco/BJ's stopped carrying them because they were too costly. Would I love one of the latest G4's... You bet. Economy however is in the dumper, jobs aren't paying what they were about two years ago. I'd rather pay my bills and buy groceries every month than upgrade at the moment.
Software availability Mac users, in my opinion, are treated like the red-headed stepchildren of the computer world. Tons of great software out there, lots of demand for it, but it takes bloody forever, if at all for it to get ported over to the Mac. A good example is AOL... Probably the most popular way to connect to the internet, particularly among new computer users.

AOL's ugrade to 4.0 for the PC happened 18 months before the Mac upgrade was even available. the Mac upgrade to 5.0 took even longer.
PC users are now on AOL 8.0 Macintosh users are still languishing with 5.0

Part of the backwards compatibility issue, but drivers... I've seen drivers in Windows 2000 and Windows XP for peripherals that are on display in the Smithsonian. Why? Because these things STILL work!!! I commend the folks at Microsoft for at least keeping that in mind. However, even for these legacy printers that are network capable, you would think that Apple's latest OS would support them. No, it doesn't. And unfortunately, neither will the manufacturers. I'll give two examples.

Epson. Stylus Photo 700... Printer was discontinued, though still a quality piece of equipment. OS 9 as a USB driver for this printer, so you can use it with a USB to parallel cable attached. OSX will see this printer, but only as an unsupported printer. And no. Epson has clearly stated in no way at all will that USB driver be brought over to OSX. HP DeskJet 1600CM Great printer! Works nicely, has a MIO card in it, it can see my appletalk network at home. However does OSX support it? No. Will HP provide support for OSX for it? No. You'll have to use Jim Derry's Printing to Networked Injets fix... and then you won't have control of print quality, or anything else.

Just a side note... you'd think that these companies would remember that keeping customers, particularly the one's that can't afford the upgrades right away, satisfied would keep them as lyal customers... and more likely to come back with money in hand as soon as they are able to upgrade... Nope.. they'd rather leave a lot of people felling shut out, bitter, and going to the competition. Not a wise thing in today's economy and job market, if you ask me.
Permissions Yup, you guessed it... the same problem actually exists on both machines. You need to be the root/Administrator on your OS X mac in order to install some software. I don't want my kids having Administrator level rights to my Mac.
Nebulous Error Messages Yes, another thing they have in common. Some will understand what those characters and numbers mean when a kernel panic happens. And for the previous Mac OS users, the bombs with a numbered error message were often frustrating, particularly to someone that didn't know where to go to find out what those messages meant.


A con for both platforms: RESOURCE HOGGING!!!!
It would seem that nature abhors empty disk space and extra ram. Seems like as the hard drives inside computers got bigger, and that RAM became less expensive and came in higher sizes, that the OS started taking up more space, and more RAM

Both platforms have their good sides, both have their bad sides. Everyone here can give you their opinions... and you know what they say about opinions.

Heh. I'll give you mine.

It's been my experience that the cons in windows, particularly the IRQ and driver conflicts, and unexplained starts and stops, occur more frequently than they do in the Mac. My other half usually has to reboot her PC at least 3 times a day due to memory and resource losses. Unless there's a power failure or one of the teenagers accidentally turns off the outlet switch, I haven't had to restart my Mac unless I was performing a software update, or installing hardware/software.

Think carefully before you make a switch from one platform to another, or an initial purchase. Everyone's mileage may vary from mine when it comes to errors, conflicts, etc. As will yours. You really need to decide what you want, how much you want to pay for it, and how much attention/meaintenance you want to give, and on how regular a basis.

[Txurce]

I have used a Mac since the early 80s, switching from a Kaypro, because I hated IBM. I stuck with them because I had no reason to change. It's the de facto computer for creative types, and that says everything good and bad about it. I miss not playing in the strategy forum tourneys because I'm stuck with 1.21, but the relative isolation has made me a strong deity player. The last two patches didn't visibly affect game play - the main difference seems to boil down to techs being more expensive to buy in 1.29. If that doesn't tempt you into buying a PC, then I wouldn't. I don't hate IBM anymore. Now I hate Microsoft.