Thinking about ditching my PC for a Mac

[mike_cc]

I have always been pretty down on macs, having gone from full time miggy user to full time pc user. In between times I used a mac at work at a couple of different jobs and hated them, although that might have been in the last millenium...

I'm not much of a producer of things, more a consumer, so perhaps I don't 'get' macs. Back then, they were generally more powerful machines graphically and were the choice of artistic power needers. My problem was the fluff they built in and the so-called simplicity. It felt patronising and pointless. Like one button mice and not being able to remove the floppy until the machine said so (whereas on pc it's your dumb if you remove a drive that's being accessed!).

These days, my favourite mac baiting tactic is when I'm in pc world or the like and have spare time on my hands. I find software that is available on both platforms, photograph them both together with the prices in clear view and show the pics to mac users.

My only wish at the moment is that microsoft would stop looking around at macs and linux boxes for inspiration for their next windows. I am using 7 for the first time these past few months and I'm not exactly overwhelmed. Not after how much is was built up for me. I've noticed a strong presence of the kind of things ubuntu (and perhaps other linux builds) offers. Some of it is very sensible, some feels overengineered and gimmicky.

But no matter what you say about windows or amd/intel etc, you can't justify buying an actual mac unless you have money to burn. Spec out a mac and then take what it will cost you and see what pc hardware it'll buy. Alternatively, see what you get for your i5 gaming rig and check how much of an equivalent powered mac you'll get. That ought to be a strong deciding factor.

Everyone gets p'd off with windoze but at least your in good company eh? The alternative is to cut your nose off to spite your face and end up shelling out hundreds extra for not much more capability.

But, you know, they do look nice.

 

[Justin]

well i like win7 so nurr

 

[djos]

Yeah win 7 when it works is pretty good, that said if I could afford a 27" thunderbolt monitor and Mac book pro I'd be in heaven, so much better than my stupid hp dock system!

 

[Harrison]

You could say the same about OSX. Not sure if this has been improved in the latest version, but a friend heavily into Macs buys every model and OS update, and I've seen him having to use the install discs to do a full OS recovery loads of times.

 

[quarkx]

everyone keeps saying that Mac's are expensive etc.
Well, I paid not too bad for my Imac, probably the exact same price if I built a I5 machine myself, and with no monitor.
My Dad (a week Before) bought an ASUS all in one system and paid a few dollars more than my iMac. he has a 24"touch screen and blue-ray, but the specs are almost the same. The build quality on the otherhand was just hands down Mac all the way. The ASUS seemed to be made of cheap plastic, the Mac -Aluminum.
All I can say is look at what is simular for the price, you will find the Mac an excellent value.
The Mac Mini is even better, for the price of a mini, you could only build a low end,very cheap computer. not even good brand name parts.
so, the argument that Macs are expensive holds no water.

 

[Justin]

hmmmm, pretty sure my i7 pc was a heck of a lot less than a mac i7

how much approx for a mac i7 2600k@4.4ghz, 16gb ram, and an Asus GTX560 Ti DCII Direct CU II?

if it is under £550 then you are correct, and i will have learnt something new today

 

[Nathanieltolbert]

I'm pretty certain that your i7 was significantly cheaper than an i7 mac. I don't know how much mac mini's cost in your area but that's about in line with purchasing a previous gen mac mini (cause, you know one pound obviously equals one dollar.). Granted, it's only a dual core and only has 2-4GB of RAM, but hey! It's a mac! As if that was ever a buying point for me. I will say that the aluminium cases are very nice and the machines look great sitting on a desk. I just hope everyone is happy when they announce the next line of machines and none of them have optical drives. Because Apple knows best, and Apple says the optical drive is dead.
What they are hiding from you with that statement is that the only way to purchase software or updates for your mac will be through the App store in iTunes.... of which they get a 30% cut. You thought Mac software is expensive now while you can purchase a disc version? Wait until they raise the price by more than 30% to compensate for Apple's cut. Of course companies are starting to bypass the App market and sell direct from their website, but not all companies have the bandwidth to do so.
The new mac mini already doesn't have an optical drive and the plans that are being whispered is this next gen of macs won't have optical drives where they can get away with it. So it's a reduction of cost to build, will you get it cheaper? No. It will be the same price or more than a similar machine from the previous generation, and that had an optical drive. The worst part of it? People who staunchly use Macs will be telling everyone else that optical drives are dead.oh: And they'll think they're right.
One more thing. About build quality.... Apple uses Foxconn almost exclusively for the manufacturing of pretty much all of their Apple products. If you want to read some horror stories, just look up reviews on Foxconn products.

*Please note that the opinions expressed in the above post are mine and solely mine. These opinions should not reflect on anyone else's opinions nor should it dissuade someone from purchasing a mac if they want to.

 

[djos]

I just hope everyone is happy when they announce the next line of machines and none of them have optical drives. Because Apple knows best, and Apple says the optical drive is dead.

Cause they were so wrong about the floppy drive and legacy ports, right?

 

[AmiNeo]

I'm with Nathaniel on this. With Apple you pay for the name. They're PCs for people with money to burn and aren't technical or at least don't want their PCs to be. If I had one as my main system I would likely get annoyed with it and sell it within a week. The build quality can't possibly be more superior than off the shelf PC brand parts, since they're full of off the shelf PC brand parts. And the custom stuff they have built for them is manufacturerd by FOXCONN as mentioned above who are hardly the worlds best hardware manufacturer.

When they ran on PowerPC architecture I could see the point, but these days you're paying hundreds extra for a name, the OS and an aluminium case.

The optical drive may be on its way out but it isn't dead yet and won't be for a while. Floppy drives were replaced, not removed. I don't see manufacturers issuing software on flash drives any time soon and online distribution hasn't quite made it as the standard yet. Apple appear to be removing them for profit.

As above, my opinion only, no offense intended to anyone.

 

[Nathanieltolbert]

Cause they were so wrong about the floppy drive and legacy ports, right?

And yet floppy drives and legacy ports are still manufactured on hardware for companies that need legacy connectivity and compatibility. As AmiNeo said, floppy drives were replaced, not removed, and the same goes for legacy ports. USB replaced legacy ports by being able to do everything they could through a unified bus. Also I have a newer Z68 motherboard, and it still has legacy serial ports on it, so apparently not everyone got the memo on parallel and serial being dead.

*My opinion, and mine alone, and should not reflect on anyone else so on and so forth

 

[Harrison]

Apple will come unstuck by heading completely down the consumer path. The latest OSX already saw a lot of professional users revert back to the last version, and the same with Final Cut Pro, where Apple dumbed down the new version too much for pro use, and actually removed features.

Apple will be losing not just the pro users, but also those who make the software, such as Adobe.

As has also been said, removing physical media is just Apple trying to control exclusive control over software sales and also what you are allowed to install. Something that is my business, not theirs. I don't want the hardware and OS makers of my computers knowing everything I do and controlling what I can and cannot use on it.

Users do need media to backup or recover files, as well as liking a physical copy of things like OS install discs. If you remove the drives how do you install an OS f.ex? Plus removing the drives discouraged people from backing up their files.

 

[commodorejohn]

Cause they were so wrong about the floppy drive and legacy ports, right?

Also I have a newer Z68 motherboard, and it still has legacy serial ports on it, so apparently not everyone got the memo on parallel and serial being dead.

They were damn wrong about legacy ports, that's for sure - the fact that PCI parallel/serial cards are still manufactured and sold today (and included in many motherboards) is a testament to that. You can hardly buy a consumer-level EEPROM programmer that doesn't require a functional parallel port, and RS-232 still sees plenty of use in business/infrastructure applications, to say nothing of its usefulness in transferring data to and from legacy systems (on which note, floppy drives are still wholly relevant as well.) You can argue that they're dead for general home-computer use, but that speaks only to the incredibly narrow focus of Apple's computer marketing.

 

[djos]

My latest AMD board has no legacy ports or floppy controller, it's one legacy connection is a standard IDE connector.

 

[commodorejohn]

My latest AMD board has no legacy ports or floppy controller, it's one legacy connection is a standard IDE connector.

And that's perfectly fine, assuming you will never under any circumstances need them. As they say, better to have and not need than need and not have...

 

[djos]

My latest AMD board has no legacy ports or floppy controller, it's one legacy connection is a standard IDE connector.

And that's perfectly fine, assuming you will never under any circumstances need them. As they say, better to have and not need than need and not have...

I just buy USB versions when I need them - I've found dual serial-USB units that work great and a USB-Floppy drive too. Fact is to most ppl dont need these anymore, us geeks are the exception.

 

[commodorejohn]

I just buy USB versions when I need them - I've found dual serial-USB units that work great and a USB-Floppy drive too.

Haven't tried USB serial myself, but my experience with USB floppies is that they're perfectly fine as long as you're only ever going to be reading and writing MS-DOS floppy disks and never, ever need sector-level access (for, say, reading or writing disk images or any other filesystem at all.) If you need that, you either get to spring for a full-fledged modern floppy controller (such as a Catweasel) or an intermediary legacy system that does have an integrated floppy controller. Not exactly seamless...

Fact is to most ppl dont need these anymore, us geeks are the exception.

This is perfectly true; however, as an excuse for dropping a buck's worth of connectors and a sliver of chipset die space, I don't buy it.

 

[djos]

Haven't tried USB serial myself, but my experience with USB floppies is that they're perfectly fine as long as you're only ever going to be reading and writing MS-DOS floppy disks and never, ever need sector-level access (for, say, reading or writing disk images or any other filesystem at all.) If you need that, you either get to spring for a full-fledged modern floppy controller (such as a Catweasel) or an intermediary legacy system that does have an integrated floppy controller.

True enuf but considering Amiga's will read MS-DOS floppies via cross-dos, USB floppies are perfectly fine for general sneaker-net duties assuming you have a HDD/CF in your system or dual disk drives.

 

[commodorejohn]

True enuf but considering Amiga's will read MS-DOS floppies via cross-dos, USB floppies are perfectly fine for general sneaker-net duties assuming you have a HDD/CF in your system or dual disk drives.

Yeah, but that requires:

1. An Amiga.
2. A hard drive and controller therein, or an additional disk drive. (Hard drive essentially mandatory if you want to write disk images, unless you have a write tool that can unpack on the fly.)
3. 1.44MB Amiga drives, if you want to access 1.44MB disks.
4. A USB floppy drive.

All that just to do disk imaging or access nonstandard filesystems! Even if you already have an Amiga that's a bit of a tall order; what if you're just some schmuck who wants to use or access data from an old Xenix install or something? Subtract the cost of all that stuff to the couple bucks it costs to maintain legacy support in a new motherboard and you have a dollar measure of the folly of hastily abandoning legacy standards.

 

[Hell_Labs]

As has also been said, removing physical media is just Apple trying to control exclusive control over software sales and also what you are allowed to install. Something that is my business, not theirs. I don't want the hardware and OS makers of my computers knowing everything I do and controlling what I can and cannot use on it.

Users do need media to backup or recover files, as well as liking a physical copy of things like OS install discs. If you remove the drives how do you install an OS f.ex? Plus removing the drives discouraged people from backing up their files.

They're getting rid of disc drives because they're completely obsolete. I removed my DVD burner over a year ago because everything else is better. Nobody buys software in shops, nobody lugs DVD films around with their laptop, nobody listens to CDs. They're useless.

You can install your OS from USB flash drive. Apple actually provide USB drives with the install disc on them for the mba.

There is no possible advantage to using DVD or Bluray for backups. Not only are they incredibly slow, the £50 or so you save buying that first spindle of discs over an external hard disc flies out the window the next couple backups you do.

And at the same time, the idea of them trying to lock down what you can and can't run on a mac is actually impossible. Half the OS is open source and terminal.app is right there.

Yeah, but that requires:

1. An Amiga.
2. A hard drive and controller therein, or an additional disk drive. (Hard drive essentially mandatory if you want to write disk images, unless you have a write tool that can unpack on the fly.)
3. 1.44MB Amiga drives, if you want to access 1.44MB disks.
4. A USB floppy drive.

All that just to do disk imaging or access nonstandard filesystems! Even if you already have an Amiga that's a bit of a tall order; what if you're just some schmuck who wants to use or access data from an old Xenix install or something? Subtract the cost of all that stuff to the couple bucks it costs to maintain legacy support in a new motherboard and you have a dollar measure of the folly of hastily abandoning legacy standards.

Edge cases are not what products are defined for. Of the billions of computers manufactured this year, how many will be used to connect to a legacy system like an Amiga?

 

[Powerpie5000]

E]They're getting rid of disc drives because they're completely obsolete. I removed my DVD burner over a year ago because everything else is better. Nobody buys software in shops, nobody lugs DVD films around with their laptop, nobody listens to CDs. They're useless.

How on earth did you come to that conclusion? Optical drives are very far from obselete! I can't agree that everything else is better (still not too keen on cloud storage at the moment) and there are still plenty of people who buy hard copy media from high street shops and online. I myself prefer to have hard copies of my software, but i still see myself (and others) being forced into solely using digital distribution at some point in the future

I rarely back things up on discs these days, but i'm sure their data retention will be better in the long run if stored safely... HDD's, SSD's, cloud storage and memory cards etc. can and probably will eventually fail over the years.