Thinking about ditching my PC for a Mac

[ratfink]

slightly surprised by references to high grade materials in macs. lately i've been looking at 2007 macbooks and almost all of them have splinters off the edges of the body or cracks in the casing here and there - glad i never bought one new. there's also a number with logic board faults so they can't charge, and plenty with defective cd/dvd drives. and the use of nvidia graphics options in later ones led to the same kind of issues as dell xps's. absolute bloody minefield i think.

not trying to dig at apple especially - i've had macs going back to the se/30 - just making the point that their quality varies like everyone else's.

they also have their fair share of poor design, cynical business decisions that leave customers high and dry or forced down particular paths, etc.

 

[moijk]

Some of the software is patchy and to make a # character you have to use the combination alt + 3 as it is a character that the keyboard lacks, which doesn't always work. Most notably in RDP

Isn't it shift-3 as virtually any pc and mac has? Works perfectly well in RDP here too. on my intel mac that is.

Apple did right by doing the PPC to Intel transformation in my eyes. Now it is only the wii u of the new breed of consumer hardware that uses it.

---------- Post added at 10:54 ---------- Previous post was at 10:39 ----------

slightly surprised by references to high grade materials in macs. lately i've been looking at 2007 macbooks

Apple haven't made several ranges of computers without ever encountering reliability issues. Just like other mfg regarded for their quality haven't. Before I went Mac, I used high end Thinkpads. The GPU of my early 2000 thinkpad died after four years of daily use. Still, i regard the high end thinkpads as workhorses like the macbook pros. My 2008 macbook pro unibody and 2007 thinkpad t61p both works perfectly well till this day.

 

[ratfink]

My 2008 macbook pro unibody and 2007 thinkpad t61p both works perfectly well till this day.

That's good to know. I'm still very tempted by some sort of macbook [will have to be 2007-2009 due to prices], maybe I'll focus on the pro.

 

[AndyLandy]

My 2008 macbook pro unibody and 2007 thinkpad t61p both works perfectly well till this day.

That's good to know. I'm still very tempted by some sort of macbook [will have to be 2007-2009 due to prices], maybe I'll focus on the pro.

Without wishing to deteriorate too far into price-driving territory, it still amazes me the outrageously high prices being asked for second-hand Mac hardware! I searched eBay for Mac Minis recently, and as far as I could tell, every last one was overpriced, given the cost of a new one.

But yeah, I'd seriously think about saving a few extra pennies to get a new one, unless you can nab a particularly good deal on a second-hand one.

 

[moijk]

Without wishing to deteriorate too far into price-driving territory, it still amazes me the outrageously high prices being asked for second-hand Mac hardware! I searched eBay for Mac Minis recently, and as far as I could tell, every last one was overpriced, given the cost of a new one.

Just as prices on amiga hardware doesn't reflect the age, prices on old mac stuff doesn't either. It is all about desirability, supply and demand. Just as the used price on a kia vs the new price much lower than the used price of a vw vs the new price. (at least here in norway).

If you want a cheap mac (and wave away any official support plus welcome heaps of problems/challenges) - build a hackintosh.

Or you could just buy a new one, and enjoy a higher resale value...

 

[AmiNeo]

Here's something that may sooth a few souls...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSt5jxQc5eg

 

[WonkeyDonkey]

My 2008 macbook pro unibody and 2007 thinkpad t61p both works perfectly well till this day.

That's good to know. I'm still very tempted by some sort of macbook [will have to be 2007-2009 due to prices], maybe I'll focus on the pro.

Without wishing to deteriorate too far into price-driving territory, it still amazes me the outrageously high prices being asked for second-hand Mac hardware! I searched eBay for Mac Minis recently, and as far as I could tell, every last one was overpriced, given the cost of a new one.

But yeah, I'd seriously think about saving a few extra pennies to get a new one, unless you can nab a particularly good deal on a second-hand one.

This is sometimes true but keep looking I would say.

I picked up a mid 2011 mac mini for a very reasonable BIN on ebay.

This is unique amongst the mini models because it is the only mini model which has both thunderbolt and a discrete GPU, meaning the monitor is not driven by the crappy Intel HDx000 built in graphics. If you happen to have a thunderbolt monitor, its a great combination.



Edit : I may be placing a newer model mac mini up for sale soon too, I'll post it on here first to give our community first dibs. (Hope this isnt against the rules for adding this bit!)

 

[AmiNeo]

If on ebay, I'd say hang in the auctions rather than BIN. Watch a few and see what they finish at. There may be lots of overpriced ones on there but it may not reflect how many of them sell at those prices first time.

 

[ColourWheel64]

Isn't it shift-3 as virtually any pc and mac has? Works perfectly well in RDP here too. on my intel mac that is.

http://www.wheresthehashkeyonamac.co.uk/

Apple did right by doing the PPC to Intel transformation in my eyes. Now it is only the wii u of the new breed of consumer hardware that uses it.

It was done to make Apple more money, because Intel are more popular they can sell their chips for a cheaper cost. Not only do I have a problem with decisions being made for the sake of making money, but the IA-32/64 instruction set is a bloated mess. I'm no machine code expert, but as a hobbyist I much prefer the 68k.

I haven't used PPC beyond clicking around my mac, but I have it on good authority that it is a far nicer architecture than the Intels.

Why are you so pro Intel Mojik?

 

[ColourWheel64]

Isn't it shift-3 as virtually any pc and mac has?

Doh!

I figured it out.

What happened was that we both fell into the trap of forgetting that other countries exist other than our own. (See! Its your fault too! *points*)

The UK layout is stupidly missing a # key, and Apple's work around is the Alt + 3 hack.

Ridiculous

 

[AndyLandy]

Apple did right by doing the PPC to Intel transformation in my eyes. Now it is only the wii u of the new breed of consumer hardware that uses it.

It was done to make Apple more money, because Intel are more popular they can sell their chips for a cheaper cost.

I heard it was done because IBM were unable to make a laptop version of the G5. The G4 was positively ancient by the end of PPC, they were running out of speed-bumps for it and Apple's flagship PowerBook line was sorely in need of something new, and Intel provided.

 

[edd_jedi]

I heard it was done because IBM were unable to make a laptop version of the G5. The G4 was positively ancient by the end of PPC, they were running out of speed-bumps for it and Apple's flagship PowerBook line was sorely in need of something new, and Intel provided.

Correct, the G5 ran too hot even in the tower/Mac Pro, the faster models needed liquid cooling so there was no chance of a G5 iMac or laptop.

I was terrified when I heard that Apple more moving to Intel, but 7 years later and with hindsight, it was a good move. There was quite a long software transition period though - I still haven't found an audio editor I prefer to Peak on the PPC Macs!

 

[ColourWheel64]

I heard it was done because IBM were unable to make a laptop version of the G5. The G4 was positively ancient by the end of PPC, they were running out of speed-bumps for it and Apple's flagship PowerBook line was sorely in need of something new, and Intel provided.

I don't really understand the need to rush from the G4, but I trust you. If you say it was in the name of progress then so be it.

After all, my main computer is an 030 amiga

 

[aZtOcKdOg]

I could never ditch the Windows machine totally due to priceower ratio but seriously need a rock solid notebook / portable for my live music rig. Have been contemplating it for many years but obviously price has been a huge factor.

Am finally in a position to say yay or nay for real...and still find myself hesitant... Similar pro-level Windows notebooks have a very close price tag to the MacBook Pro... Is the combo of OSX and chosen hardware really THAT rock solid?! I cross my fingers.

Hmmmm....

.aZtOcKdOg | .Key-J FReeLY

 

[Harrison]

MacBook Pros have some of the most solid and nice chassis, and the retina screen ones also look great. However, consider that Apple have now gone down the root of directly soldering everything to the motherboard, including the ram, so nothing is upgradable in the current ones. For that price it puts me right off. For the Air I can fully see the reasons for doing this as it reduces component and build costs, and also allows then to minimise size. But for the full on Pro models their owners want the ability to upgrade later.

I'm however not 100% which PC laptop/ultrabook I would recommend at the moment though. I do like the top end Sony laptops, and the Lenovo's are really nice too, with some very solid cases. And Dells XPS top end laptops are quite nice.

Or how about a Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition, which is directly Linux supported with none of the usual PC driver issues.

 

[AndyLandy]

MacBook Pros have some of the most solid and nice chassis, and the retina screen ones also look great. However, consider that Apple have now gone down the root of directly soldering everything to the motherboard, including the ram, so nothing is upgradable in the current ones. For that price it puts me right off. For the Air I can fully see the reasons for doing this as it reduces component and build costs, and also allows then to minimise size. But for the full on Pro models their owners want the ability to upgrade later.

This is genuinely annoying, but it's only about an extra £100 to bump the machine from 8GB to 16GB. Well worth doing IMO, if you're expecting to get any longevity out of the machine.

Apple seem to go round in circles with things like that. The older generation of Mac Minis have to be fully disassembled to get at the RAM slots, and it voids the warranty to do so, but the newer models just have a twist-off base so users can upgrade the RAM. Bizarre.

 

[edd_jedi]

Apple have now gone down the root of directly soldering everything to the motherboard, including the ram, so nothing is upgradeable in the current ones. .

Yep as much as I love Macs, that is one thing that puts me off upgrading my current one. But it's a trade off for the small size/low weight and incredible build quality. The machine's would have to be considerably bigger and have trapdoors etc if they were to be user serviceable. They obviously aren't aimed at everybody, there are pros and cons to any computer.

 

[AmiNeo]

MacBook Pros have some of the most solid and nice chassis, and the retina screen ones also look great. However, consider that Apple have now gone down the root of directly soldering everything to the motherboard, including the ram, so nothing is upgradable in the current ones. For that price it puts me right off.

This is the reason I went for the mid2012 13" model Macbook Pro. It's just as fast as the retina model, and everything can still be upgraded by the user except for processor.

Mine now has a 128GB SSD in it and 10GB RAM and nothing slows it down. The only thing it doesn't have is a ton of graphical performance. For games it still runs most on low settings though with Intels HD4000. I just wish It had dedicated graphics for some better frame rates on more modern games between studying. Otherwise though, I can't fault it.


To me, and I've said this before, Mac OS feels like a more stable version of Ubuntu or Debian. It is still software at the end of the day so wont be completely error free. It does seem a lot more stable than Windows however and seems much better at recovering itself when things occasionally do hick up. If anything crashes its working again in a few seconds, and much like with Linux, the lack of registry in its design means it doesn't slow down over time with usage the way Windows does.

 

[aZtOcKdOg]

There's no doubt, the Apple OSX is nice (I am not a fan of iOS tho- it just doesn't do it for me, sometimes you can have 'too much of a good thing') ...

I agree that it is a bit if a gamble on both sides (Win/Mac) at the moment... Dell make reliable notebooks definitely.... But once you factor in the premium models and extras all systems are pretty neck and neck.... I like the custom route but here in Aus very limited!

.aZtOcKdOg | .Key-J FReeLY

 

[AndyLandy]

If you're still unsure, you could always try doing a Hackintosh build on a PC, see how you get on. I don't know how good it is, but it might be worth a look?