What separates a Mac from a PC?

[Asher]

Originally posted by Agathon
Unless you are building your own the prices aren't that much different. If there is a difference it is that macs are rarely heavily discounted.

An equivalent Dell or Gateway is still much cheaper than a Mac...

And again, there is nothing awkward about it if you can use it properly.

Of course, if you get used to it and "use it properly", it's no longer awkward.

You know why Aqua is awkward? Sherlock is still way better on OS 9. The menu-bar-at-top-thing is counter-intuitive and counter-productive. The dock mixes both programs running and program launching which makes it very confusing to see which is which. The dock's default size and style is oversized and annoying as the buttons go and shrink in size (and therefore, their location changes on the screen) as you mouse-over. There's tons of wasted screen realestate.

One could say the same about a piece of Jap cr@p versus a BMW.

No, the difference being a BMW is rather powerful and generally a great car.

Apple would be like a Ford Focus on sale for $100,000 US.

[Asher]

Originally posted by faded glory
IMO your average Mac handles 3d applications (CAD programs etc..) way better than your average PC. OS 9/x is rock stable compared to windows running intensive applications.

Oh come on. The G4 sucks for CAD programs, it doesn't have the SIMD precision that SSE2 has, nor the regular FPU precision of x87... and the general lack of speed hurts it, badly, as well as the lack of system memory bandwidth. You can't even get a Quadro/FireGL to run on a Mac.

Not to mention that OS X is actually not as stable as Windows Server 2003 or Windows XP SP1, but they're getting there.

[Willem]

Originally posted by Agathon
I used to be a Windows user (I still think 3.1 was pretty good) but I got sick of the crashes and the other annoyances. The folks at work gave me a Power PC G3 and I found I worked a lot better on it.

That's changed quite a bit, XP is now a very stable system. I stopped wishing I had a Mac as soon as I installed it.

[Drake Tungsten]

You look at the hardware too much, Asher. Apple is obviously behind in this area; no one disagrees with you on this. The software area is where the Mac has the lead on the PC. Outside of games, the Mac competes well with and often surpasses PCs, thanks to all of Apple's wonderful software. If you aren't a gamer and want a stable, powerful OS with a plethora of top-notch programs, the Mac is for you. God forbid some people think that way.

[Willem]

Originally posted by Agathon


Windows is a mess, there's cr@p everywhere and that stupid registry causes untold problems, or so my Windows using friends tell me.

At least Windows doesn't suffer from extension conflicts. You run into more problems with those than you do with the registry.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten
You look at the hardware too much, Asher. Apple is obviously behind in this area; no one disagrees with you on this. The software area is where the Mac has the lead on the PC. Outside of games, the Mac competes well with and often surpasses PCs, thanks to all of Apple's wonderful software. If you aren't a gamer and want a stable, powerful OS with a plethora of top-notch programs, the Mac is for you. God forbid some people think that way.

The hardware is the computer, the software simply sits between the hardware and the user.

And I still think Apple's software is highly overrated. QuickTime is absolute crap, any Windows user who had to download it will tell you that. iTunes is definitely overrated, etc.

Give me Winamp over iTunes anyday.

[Drake Tungsten]

QuickTime is absolute crap, any Windows user who had to download it will tell you that.

Your problem is that you're running it on Windows. QuickTime on Mac is far better, as Apple actually has a decent OS to work with. Don't blame Apple for Windows' shortcomings.

We'll see how iTunes fares on Windows later this year. I doubt it will be as good as the Mac version, yet another reason to ditch MS.

[Drake Tungsten]

At least Windows doesn't suffer from extension conflicts. You run into more problems with those than you do with the registry.

Macs don't have extensions anymore. OS X got rid of them.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Willem

At least Windows doesn't suffer from extension conflicts. You run into more problems with those than you do with the registry.

Um - those are a thing of the past. OS X doesn't use them.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten
Your problem is that you're running it on Windows. QuickTime on Mac is far better, as Apple actually has a decent OS to work with. Don't blame Apple for Windows' shortcomings.

QuickTime's crappiness has nothing to do with Windows' "shortcomings" (it's funny that an OS with a far more extensive API and developer freedom has "shortcomings" compared to the rather kludgey Cocoa, etc. of OS X)

[Drake Tungsten]

QuickTime's crappiness has nothing to do with Windows' "shortcomings"

Then why is QuickTime awesome on the Mac platform but absolute ****e on Windows?

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Asher

An equivalent Dell or Gateway is still much cheaper than a Mac...

I wouldn't touch anything from those companies. Give me an IBM.

You know why Aqua is awkward? Sherlock is still way better on OS 9. The menu-bar-at-top-thing is counter-intuitive and counter-productive. The dock mixes both programs running and program launching which makes it very confusing to see which is which. The dock's default size and style is oversized and annoying as the buttons go and shrink in size (and therefore, their location changes on the screen) as you mouse-over. There's tons of wasted screen realestate.

Um - my dock hides until I move to the bottom of the screen to reveal it. You can see which programs are running because they are marked.

No one keeps the default size and style of the dock because it's just for show. I mean, when you install the system it is huge. But it takes a couple of clicks and one drag to fix that permanently.

I like the Dock. It took me a while to get used to it, but I couldn't live without it now.

No, the difference being a BMW is rather powerful and generally a great car.

The difference is style.

[Asher]

Then why is QuickTime awesome on the Mac platform but absolute ****e on Windows?

QuickTime is crappy because:
1) It attempts to hijack control over every media file type, even PNG (which removes control from Internet Explorer, which forces IE to load quicktime to render all PNG images, and QuickTime is ass-slow)
2) It's simply ugly. The menus look like they're Java Swing or something. They have a tendancy to flicker and have weird white-space around them.
3) It's slow, and bloaty.

Those are certainly not Windows problems. I don't know why QuickTime is "awesome" on the Mac and absolute ****e on Windows -- maybe Apple has simply incompetent software developers who don't know how to port software? At least MS' Mac software is quality.

[Drake Tungsten]

Why is Internet Explorer better on the Mac than on Windows? Why is Office better on the Mac than on Windows? It seems even MS programmers find OS X an easier OS to develop for.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten
Why is Internet Explorer better on the Mac than on Windows? Why is Office better on the Mac than on Windows? It seems even MS programmers find OS X an easier OS to develop for.

Office X is prettier but not as functional from my rather limited experience.

And Internet Explorer on the Mac isn't better, it's just a completely different product under the same name.

People mistake that for being better because when Windows IE vulnerabilities come out (since 95% of people use that vs 2% for Apple's IE or whatever), they said "Apple's version isn't affected! It is better!"

It's just used less.