How good is the Apple Mac?

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the price myth has been raging for years, and were disputed a long time ago, if one has read these articles:

http://www.macworld.com/article/52381/2 ... price.html

http://www.macworld.com/article/49403/2 ... ison2.html

and other article that followed (google is sometimes your friend… )




i doubt that since then the PC world has become that cheap again… as claimed by some.


@ oodian:

transforming a PC to a media powerhouse is somewhat hard… and often costly. it surely can be done… but you have to bypass the fundaments of a PC - mostly the operating system! - to do this. introducing an abundance of conflicts…. ending up with proprietary solutions that often do not exchange well. history in that particular industry has shown us this very well...

then what is the point of choosing a windows PC? in that case it would be more reasonable to use linux, since it scales/adapts much better, i would postulate!

problem linux has, is that most professional software is not available, and one is left with the communities alternatives… most of them not really on par with the industry-standards. unfortunately.

you mention two 3D apps… 3dsmax and blender…

none of them are precision solid modelers… which in my field is useless. their numerical precision is not good enough.. although they both make nice output…

i haven't had the time yet to look into the brand new blender interface… but i seems to address many of the problems it had. i hope so… and look forward to play with it soon…

in the 3D animation section it's all about apps like maya and the likes… and in the movie section it's all about final cut pro… etc.

BTW… autocad is back on the mac… for a reason… and not because they want to accommodate hipsters...

i agree that open source is very enticing…. but often *very expensive* in the need of someones expertise to maintain it…. or even to train others in it….

remember that human resources (time!! !) costs money… a lot of it… and that's where apples products often shine amongst others… they often just work and don't need a lot of these aforementioned resources and or mods. keeping the TCO lower than "comparable" PC's….

solidworks runs just fine on a windows machine today. there really is just a large difference from the best mac to the best single mb computer as there is from a mac to a year old pc, the hardware is by hardware standards old in a mac.

actually the price range given was for an imac from their danish shop and proshop.dk(midt data when i bought it)m with similar hardware, this is no myth i looked it up as i was writing my post, check what the upgrade costs are compared to the hardware alone here in denmark, there is at least a 70% increase in all major hardware, the hardware is in essence little different than pc hardware so it does in no way justify this cost.

the point of choosing a windows pc is selection and power thropugh it, also that i play a lot of games, something the mac still havent conquered properly, (in my mind it shouldnt, mac has a purpose)

there is no marked quality difference from a pc where one spends the same amount of resources as a macm, let's say it like that, it isnt inherently better, it might be better at some stuff (i know it is)

autocad ported back to mac just as much because of "hipsters" (there are probably more of those than "real" mac users) convincing very large companies to shift to mac in some departments suddenly making it a good deal.
calculation wise there is absolutely no difference, they use the same conceptualized physical functions no matter the platform.

i always found autocad oddly clunky compared to its newer brethren, though in some cases unbound complexity is what you need.

Years of my life? Are you joking? I can only remember ever once getting malware, and I was able to remove it manually with ease.


Dude, I have an apple laptop. I also grew up on System 7. I absolutely despise Mac OS X. Once again, Mac = Baby's first OS.

One can either make the argument that OSX is a Baby's first OS, or that someone needs to learn how to use the shell.

The Macbook is a good computer. If have enjoyed using it in the past (presuming you've tried it) get it. If you enjoy using a windows or linux computer more, get that instead.

As good as OSX...

Snow Leopard=Nice
Lion=FAIL

Proof that Steve Jobs is a freaking idiot.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/07/ ... 5726.shtml

Peoples even more intelligent understand that the iPad and the iPhone are the biggest current menace on the freedom of culture (You can only use what Apple allow you to use.) and must be stopped, somehow....


The pictures made on Blender seem quite good. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blender_%28software%29
What are you doing, that need such a precision?

I would guess CAD work. Autodesk is beginning to bring their CAD software over to the mac.

Steve Jobs is infinitely richer, more successful, and smarter than you will ever be. Where's your tech company? Is it a bigger computer company than Microsoft? Is it a bigger smartphone company than Nokia? Did it make $7.3 billion profit last quarter? Didn't think so.

I'll give you richer and more successful, but "smarter" is uncalled for. He is completely out of touch with the consumer market, but all the consumers of Apple products follow him so blindly that they fail to ever see that something is wrong here.

By the way, are you aspi-rant on a different account? You both seem very similar, with your inclination to insult others rather than have a civilized debate with facts of any kind.

He's very in touch with the consumer market, moreso than any other tech figure. That's why everyone else copies everything he does. Look at all the new Android tablets which didn't exist at all before the iPad for one example. And the iPod - he created the only MP3 player people actually wanted to use. And that is his trick, he knows that people want technology that's advanced but usable. He creates things that consumers want to use and are easily able to learn their way around. This insight is what made Apple so big. So, yes, he is very in touch with the consumer market. Very in touch. A good brand wouldn't be able to make up for bad products if what you were saying was true.

As for insulting others without having any facts... I presented facts. Hard statistics in my first post. And I just did it again. You can research all the stuff I'm saying if you want. Look up what marketshare the iPod has in the media player market if you feel it necessary.

Steve Jobs is a damn genius and calling him stupid without any facts whatsoever apart from some bulls**t article about buttons then saying I'm the one without any basis for my argument is very troll-like, sir.

And no, I'm not aspi-rant on a different account. I'm Asp-Z. Learn to read and stop making stupid accusations again.

You Apple fanboys are worse than the Microsoft ones.

its not a bad buy for a casual computer user. being that the operating system is BSDs forced to breed with each-other macks it somewhat homey for the Unix/Linus enthusiasts amongst us, while being user friendly to even my grandma. but for a server NO ill use FreeBSD thank you. it depends on your use for the computer and the level of technical stratification of the user. saying any OS is worthless is absurd. i would not recommend the Cisco 851W to my brother for a home router, neither will you ever see me with a basic Linksys on my rack. its all about the scope. if you are in digital-media then my all means get a mac.... if you wont.

Everything I said is entirely correct. As I said, look it all up. Can't argue with facts, so you call me pathetic names.

I'm not a "fanboy", however. I own Apple products alongside products from other tech companies such as HTC, RIM, Sony, Samsung, Nokia, and indeed Microsoft, among many others.

For the record, I wouldn't recommend an 851W (or *any* Cisco wireless product for that matter) for any use, whatsoever.

I don't particularly care what OS/hardware people want to buy, but I will say that I prefer OS X over any other OS for the following reasons:

1. The GUI. Apple is going the right direction with their GUI, with the goal of creating something that is intuitively operable with any kind of input device (mouse, trackpad, touchscreen). All other operating systems are either copying Apple blatantly, or coming up with absolute trash (have you seen Microsoft's new GUI idea for Windows 8? Talk about train-wreck).

2. The built-ins. If I want to create a smart-card secured VPN, I can do that - out of the box. If I want to start a DHCP server, run an HTTP server, TFTP server, DNS server, or mail server, I can do any of that out-of-the-box - it's all already installed. Which brings me to:

3. Standard tools. Most everything running under the hood of OS X is the same tools that run on Unix/Linux systems. That means I can modify the routing/arp table, the firewall, network interfaces, and virtually anything else the exact same way one would go about it on a unix system. The built-in http server is apache, the DNS server is bind, the mail server is postfix. All of them use the standard configuration syntax, and I can make modifications till I turn blue in the face. This lets me dig deeper into the OS level than apple's GUI tools are capable of, and it gives me all the flexibility I want.

4. Compatibility. I can interface with Windows, Linux, or OS X, in any combination, just as seamlessly as anything else. The built-in mail client has native support for Exchange, and it's the only client besides outlook (that I know of) that is fully-licensed from Microsoft. Incidentally, it works a whole hell of a lot better than outlook does. Beyond that, though, I have support for SMB, AFP, FTP, and NFS, all out of the box.

5. Hardware. You can make all kinds of arguments as to the performance of the hardware (what I would suggest is to take a good hard look at your actual usage and then come back and tell me that a mac can't do what you ask it to do). What you can't do, however, is open up any mac on the market, and say that there's a better *designed* PC out there. Apple spends a hell of a lot of money designing their systems to be as streamlined as possible. That directly translates into better longevity, and less problems down the road. Before I bought my mbp, I was literally going through laptops once every 1-2 years. The batteries would die, the hardware would fall apart, I'd end up not being able to actually use the system. I've had the same mbp now for 4+ years, without a single issue (the hard drive finally died about 2 months ago, which was something I was entirely expecting).

as can both windows and linux using free software, it doesnt get better by coming prepackaged.




the fact is they might spend 10 times the testing time on a specific setup but that means the hardware available in an official mac will always be older than that found in a regular desktop.
you pay almost twice the amount for the EXACT same hardware down to the serial number group (ie. production runs)


there are plenty of good things about macos just as there is any other operating system but they all serve each their purpose,
to me a mac has value in it's simplicity for editing video and audio (photos doesnt really matter anymore as there are plenty of open source software)
my pc is for gaming and most of my documents lie on a linux server (free, fast, lot's of features)

now i dont own a mac but my ubuntu and windows xp and 7 pc's all interface quite readily with centOS(i would have like to use opensuse as hp has official support for suse, dunno how the redhat/centos translates,)