Apple Mac vs PC

[Mandrake]

I had a very quick look at Dell.com.au - you can buy a high end Dell desktop including a 3.4Ghz P4, 512mb of ram, 250GB of HD space, 256mb Radeon X800 video card, 17" flat panel monitor, 5.1 sound card and speakers for roughly $3500 - $100 less than that G5 that still comes with no speakers or monitor.

A Dual 2.5 GHz G5 that has roughly the same speed as that P4 goes for over $5000 AUD, and still includes no monitor or speakers. I really don't see why anyone would bother buying one for those ridiculous prices.

I'm going out now, but rest assured I will reply to the rest of this later on.

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[ianian]

dude.

you kidding me? your version of a branded PC is DELL!?

man..thats like saying Hyundai is the number 1 luxury car in the world..

Hey. you get what you pay for. You can go ahead, and grin happily at your Dell desktop, bundled with Wind-uh oh's XP , and continue grinning as you install the ton of service packs, and yes grab Norton Antivirus while you're at it, you'll need it, and don't forget to subscripe to live update.

lets talk about some hard facts. You are comparing Budget, DIY's or Dell PC"s to a Mac. why not a HP? After all, dell touts itself as being one of the BEST BUYS because they cut out the middleman (and many other things, but lets not go into that.) It's been proven on the guiness book of records that the iMac takes the shortest amount of time to set up. Yes. we all know with dell, you get a couple of power cables, your monitor cables, your oooh so seksay speaker cables and whee! a black dell keyboard and mouse (which i admit, looks rather spiffy, if not for the fact that it has a windows key smack on it). That only translates to about...20 cables? on a Mac, you have an average of 2 -3 cables. You plug in your power (duh) you plug in your speakers (yes, iMac's DO come with speakers) and you plug in your keyboard.

Ok. So lets go to Chip Architecture now. Your constant claims of the pentium chip owning the G4 is so unfounded. in raw clock speed, definitely, no one can deny that. Intel made the pentium chip to have an insane clock speed, because CLOCK SPEED SELLS. the G4e architecture was made to process different instructions at once, more then the Pentium design can handle. and the deep pipeline of the P4 STILL exists. No matter what intel claims, with a 90% branch prediction rate (suuuree), bubbles and mispredictions do exists. The pentium chip has a MINIMUM ( i say MINIMUM) penalty of 19 stages. The G4e has a minimum penalty of 7. Poof.

The G5 PowerMac gives you two chips. 64 bit processing. It's one of the first few PowerMac's sporting the G5 chip (i think its Rev B..correct me if i'm wrong). Most software don't even sport optimizations for the altivec processing, let alone 64 bit processing. go find a Dell PC that gives you two P4 chips. Suuuuree, everyone says that "but so? 2 chips and its still slower then one" WRONG. you're trying to compare two TOTALLY different architectures, with the G5 architecture being that of a NEWER architecture, leaning to the side of being capable to multi task BETTER and handle MORE operations at any given time, compared to a Pentium. What's more, you get TWO G5's. They can handle LOTS and LOTS more instructions per second compared to your single processor, black, er, dell unit.

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[Mandrake]

Well, if Dell PCs are so bad, please explain why Dell in the last quater sold roughly 18% of all PCs made, as opposed to the less than 2% Apple sold? I build my own PCs, but Dell is great for most people. If people truly do want a top-notch gaming rig, or just a luxury PC, then they'd go with Alienware or someone similar to them, not Apple.

Further more, I don't have a damn clue why you are saying Windows XP is bad for multi-tasking. My main PC has 512mb of ram, and I currently have Mozilla, Microsoft Word 2003, Microsoft Outlook 2003, Microsoft Excel 2003, Dreamweaver and Winamp 5 all open at once, and the system is still very responsive.

Since Mac OS X is so responsive, and great, and fast and all that - tell why this bloke from the Microsuck 'switched' to a PC running both Windows XP and Redhat Linux.

Here is the mesage he posted at the Microsuck forums: (Note that I have just censored some of the strong language he used)

F*ck Tiger.

I ditched OS X because Panther. I was liking where things were going with Jag. It was getting fast, slick, streamlined, stable.

Then Panther came along. It's flaky, sluggish, jerky, and buggy.

Oh, yeah, and I finally got sick of hearing from Apple that my 3 year old computer is a POS and can't even run their (formerly) free apps.

F*ck Apple, f*ck OS X. I spent $1200 on a computer in 2001, only for it to be marginalized the same year.

OS 9 was better. OPENSTEP was better. OS X is a bastard child that is a watered down derivative of the two.

I'm doing my part to make computing better with GenSTEP and I'll succeed by jingo.

My opinion is that OS X sucks now. I remember two years ago, everybody was like "OMG!!! MAC OS X!!! OMFG!!!"

Now everybody is back to saying "Apple is dead". Because now they are. Jobs is running Apple's computer business into the ground by intentionally snubbing the low-end out of spite (Apple started on the low end, and made their name there) and forcing bloat into the software.

OPENSTEP was an amazing OS, and it looked even better as it evolved into Rhapsody, and it looked amazing when they first unveiled OS X... but even back then people were telling them "this is slow... why is it slow?" Apple never did anything for the speed. EVER.

Apple's best days are gone. Now they're all about selling ugly ass, overpriced, underpowered, trendy computers, and their resource hog OS that hasn't seen real improvement since 10.2. They're the iPod company now. They should stop making computers before the only memory of the Macintosh is that elitist, overpriced, slow as sh*t box that everybody stopped using.

Viva Linux & Windows. I now run a computer of equal age, with Red Hat 9 and Windows XP and I have no speed problems. My iMac had AGP 4x video, but it was still sluggish, videos were nearly unwatchable, and trying to scroll was hopeless. Now I run a PCI vid card (a GeForce4, albiet) and have great video playback, amazing 3D, and no GUI sluggishness. What's that tell you?

Quartz sucks sh*t.

Just forget Apple.

(This post was made here)

I can understand why people like Linux, how it is all open-source and everything (I use SuSE Linux 9.1 myself) - but I never understood what is so great about Mac OS X.

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[ianian]

stop doing a faux pas over and over and over again. it gets rather silly after some time to see you contradicting yourself.

You constantly equate quantity for quality. Dell PC's are make of plastic stuff that come out from my backyard. I can see the Oooh-so-extravagant amount of industrial design going into your dell. Must've spent the whole year trying to design that fabulous CPU casing right?

Like you said, if they want a top end GAMING machine, they go get Alienware or Dell. Mac's aren't for gaming. We all know that. The software titles simply aren't as wide as the PC range. Of course, you must understand, that Macintosh is currently the creative industry standard. They were meant for computing. If you want to satisfy your 14 year old testosterone, yes, the Dell is perfect for you.

I would like to see you switch on your winamp, run Photoshop CS, render two files of about 50MB each, and try launching any other app, while resizing your windows. Oops. i forgot you don't have expose. Too hot for Microsoft to handle?

To that bloke who wrote that article. There's him...but i can show you a million microsoft equivalents (but they are quite unrefined, just like him.)

Snap out of it.people aren't switching to apple because they have been brought up on a Microsoft OS. they don't want to interrupt their workflow by switching to a Mac, because relearning a new OS, no matter how intuitive or easy, is enough to make a person hesitant. The real world around you, your magazines, Newspapers, Movies, Videos, advertising was built on a Mac OS based industry. UNIX servers are used to run the internet. If you would like to look for your fellow Windows community, go down to the nearest LAN cafe.

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[Antony]

A message to all SillyDog701 members,
Please ensure your language is clean, and no personal attacks of any form.

We would like to see good debate on the content itself, an intelligent debate.

Thanks,
Admin.

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[Drachan]

I would just like to say that having been a power user and builder of PCs for the last 7 yrs, as well as a trained Network administrator, I finally made the move to Mac.

My PC crapped out on me at the beginning of June, and I took this as an excuse to do the one thing I'd been craving to do for years... I bought a powerbook.

I can confirm that it does not SEEM to multitask quite as well as my PC did, however it has 2/3rds of the RAM that my pc did, also the reason it does not 'appear' to multitask so well is because it is multitasking evenly between programs, as opposed to Windows' obsession with focussing on the primary application in use and failing miserably to give enough power to tasks running alongside (effectively 'background' whether you like it or not...)

Let me make it clear that in the many years of running windows.. I have *always* scathingly slated Mac's OSes for not multitasking, and for appearing clumsy to me... OS X has completely wowed me.

To me, Windows will always be a functional but unpleasant way to run somewhat effective implementations of good programs (games exclusive of this.) OS X is a wonderful palette and drawing board, with a large suite of fantastic OS X and Linux apps to use when you're not busy just using the basic apps that come as standard (safari, mail, iChat, iLife etc.) OK so many of these programs are still third party but damnit they all seamlessly fit so well.

Windows is a menagerie of clumsily coded and entirely non-intuitive programs with no common theme. With OS X, almost every program I've thrown at it that was written for it exclusively just *works*. I've not read a single user manual since picking up this laptop, only the first two chapters of O'Reilly's Missing Manual (Panther) to familiarise myself with the basic OS workings.

IF you want to compare the Apple to a manufactured PC, then you bloody well should be comparing it to an Alienware... Alienware are about the best performing Intel PCs you can buy and are optimised for power. Powermacs are the same thing, but for G5.
One is optimised for games (High powered video and audio rendering) and the other for.. err.. High powered creative production (Video... audio... noticing a theme here.)

But again, the G series PPC are designed to multitask, so really we need to start multitasking for benchmarks.

I will never go back to Windows, not as long as Mac OS is this good.

Drachan (multitasking Safari, Mail, Snak, Yahoo IM (with webcam,) Fire, NetNewsWire, Azureus, Limewire and iTunes on 512 MB of ram Powerbook G4 1.5GHz with no slowdown and processor performance set to 'reduced.')

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[Don_HH2K]

I would definitely switch to a Mac anyday. There are two problems, however:
1) My ancient Wi-Fi hardware isn's exactly Mac-friendly and won't even work in Windows without an add-on client (yes, even in XP with integrated Wi-Fi),
2) I don't have $3000USD. And, on top of that, I'd have to buy Office again, and a copy of VirtualPC to run some of my software), and
3) I'd have to upgrade my entire network, as ZoneAlarm doesn't like to talk to computers with firewalls other than ZoneAlarm.

So I'm stuck with a non-Internet-enabled Mac OS10.1 machine @233MHz with some 64MB of RAM stuck in my basement doing absolutely nothing.

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[Antony]

Mandrake does have a point, Dell is the most popular branded PC sold in USA and worldwide.
However, I won't call Dell PCs as top PCs. I would consider PCs from HP or IBM are more into professional level.

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[ianian]

Generally speaking, we all agree that the PC will always have a higher clock speed then the Macintosh. However, don't bash the G5 down just because of that. the G5 is a relatively new chip, with a totally new PowerPc architecture, as compared to G4. IBM has already said that the architecture of the G5 will allow lots of room for improvement. Considering it is a 64 bit processor with very few apps for the average personal user optimised for the 64 bit, I think its safe to say that the G5 is a chip for the future.

So lets stop bashing the macintosh down because "it has a fancy OS, so its bloatish" or " the clock speed sucks. Intel trashes it every other day in benchmarks"

Apple's future looks good. And it looks slated to be ready to make an impact on the future of the personal computer. Be assured that Intel will soon be making 64 bit chips for the PC platform too.

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[upside27]

hi there. i like these type of discussions. ima just give you my opinion on how i feel about PC & MAC.

PC: to me windows has always came in with great features. I've used windows since i got my first PC. but my first computer was a MAC. back then windows 95, probably through NT, didnt have the features like windows 2000 through 2003 server. Back then windows mainly ran off of MS-DOS. thats why windows used to have all of those problems and you had to go through the CTRL + ALT + DEL situation. But since win 2000, it doesnt mainly use dos anymore. it goes through services wich is much better. but sometimes going through services, spyware can add on to the process tab in the CTRL + ALT + DEL window, which makes it kinda harder to find. and we all know that Windows NT wasnt the greatest part of the pie. If you notice, reading installation manuals off programs, they usually say supported OS: win 98, 2000, XP, ME, 2003, MAC OSX, and unsupported: Win NT, MAC OS 8x,9x. Basically ever since XP released, it has changed the way people use PC (even though XP is just win 2000 with design lol). Its more easy to use, devices nowadays dont even need driver installations, and explorer windows are more organized. But one thing I like about windows than mac, is that: when you have a folder with JPEGS only, they show the thumbnails on icons. (dont get me wrong, i only expiereinced OSX 10.0) MAC OSX has to copy the JPEG files and rename the copy with a underscore in front of the original name just to show the thumbnail. But from what i noticed that is completly redicoulus, is that windows to me, is being a little greedy with their products. for example, when you have small business network, microsoft will not let you install more than one WIN XP from the same cd. in other words, if you have 30 computers, your gonna need 30 XP cd's. Unlike win 2000, you can use the same CD. That is why most business only use 2000. I can understand prices for the OS and Office products, but buying more than one has crossed the line.

MAC OSX: now i've only experienced 9x through OSX 10.0. I have a G3 iBOOK, with a horrible ATI Radeon card. When i gotten my ibook, 9x (cant remember wich version) was on there. all the devices were working completly. all programs were running, and it the speed was smooth. I could get on the internet and everything. Then i decided to study more into MAC OS's and figure out for an upgrade. Then i finally installed OSX 10.0. When i used it, my whole computer just changed on me. I looked at desktop. It looked beautiful. the desgins were sleek, and the windows were organized. then i started seeing more problems. I found out that the built in MIC was deisabled. customer care even told me that the MIC would not work on OSX 10.0. I also learned about MAC classic, which was pretty cool to keep run my 9x applications (even though when i installed OSX the first time, it went through kernel error and formatted my hardrive!!!!!!!). and on top of that, when you run classic applications, you can see the icon starting up on the bottom of the dock, but when you highlight the dock to zoom in, you can see the ugly pixels of the old icons which brings a bad taste with the sleek design of OSX. and also I noticed that the design takes up majority of the memory, so newcomers, dont use a G3 for new OSX's. and also i found out that, ihad 256 MB ram (i had an 128 ram put in) and for some reason, it left out the 128 ram, so now i no longer have 256 of ram. the list goes on and on. I found out that my CD Rom will not open, until i go to the FINDER window and then eject. If im currently running a program, i have to minimize that and go to the desktop just to eject my cd rom. and why would you put the eject button on the keyboard instead of putting it on the cd rom itself? ever since i installed OSX 10.0, i lost my majority rights to this laptop. i even had bad thoughts about the new OSX's. but hey, if i had the chance to upgrade, i would definetly.

in overall, i would just stick to windows, cause even if i switched to mac, i would probably buy VIRTUAL PC anyway. sorry but i just cant leave PC alone. this is alotta information known from a 16 year old (maybe i should switch to Linspire or Redhat Linux lol)

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[upside27]

oh dont get me wrong. this isnt my real user agent. I typed this at work, i dont use Windows NT. I hate that OS lol. I only use 2000, or XP

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[Drachan]

Apple made it very clear that OS 10.0 was actually more like a Beta release and that they only really recommended that release for developers.



Try Jaguar or Panther for an hr and see a whole new world! Alternatively go to the Apple website and watch the keynote speech from the Apple WWDC for this year.. Mmm Tiger.

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[Don_HH2K]

Apple made it very clear that OS 10.0 was actually more like a Beta release and that they only really recommended that release for developers.

If that is the case, why was it marketed to all Mac users when it was released?

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[minion]

I nice thing about unix (& clones) is
that the GUI is entirely in user-space -
that is, just another program, not part
of the operating system. So... where
are all the alternative interfaces
for OS X? I realize that some configuration
of dock behaviour, etc., is possible,
but I haven't seen an OS X desktop yet
that was significantly different. Am
I just unaware of the alternatives?
(This is really an OS X -vs- Unix issue,
nothing to do with Windows.)

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[mrtrblmkr1]

I found this thread to be quite interesting, at least, up to around page 6. After page 6, I noticed that a few users here just signed up to SillyDog701 just to be a nuisance and destroy the main point of the thread, Mac vs. PC.

The thread is Mac vs. PC, not Apple vs. Microsoft, which is a major difference. A quick way to end the debate over the Apple vs. Microsoft topic is just to say this:

Microsoft makes software.
Apple makes software AND hardware.

More in-dept, Apple beats Microsoft with it's software in that Apple makes it's hardware, then developes it's software, which makes the process of writing the code pretty easy, they know what feature to incorporate into their OS, how to incorporate effeciently, and what to develope later on.

Microsoft just makes an OS, PC giants such as HP/Compaq, Sony, Toshiba, Dell, etc. make the PC that this OS runs on. This, however, does not mean that each PC is the same as we all know. Since PCs aren't alike, the OS can't run the same, unless it uses a general configuration, rendering optional features* each manufacture touts useless. Otherwise Microsoft would have to incorporate a technology that allows the OS to run the same across all hardware profiles, but with the added support of the optional features* that the companies add in. This is where device drivers come in, and because of these drivers, if one is made wrong, the OS, dependant on this driver, thus fails, or seperates it from it's core, and thus the feature fails.

Now if we were to go back to what the thread was about, Mac vs. PC, it's somewhat a tie, but to date, PC easily beats a Mac anytime, not considering the G5 since it's technology is relatively new and not widely supported as the older Macs are (when the YDL finishes with their version for the G5, that'll change.) PCs have many alternatives with almost any part needed, Macs don't feature this, you don't neccessarily see a Mac user take off a Mac's case, pull out the processor, and upgrade it with a faster one if the architecture supports it, as is the case with Intel and AMD chips (which surprisingly, I haven't really heard of or from in this thread.)

* Devices added in that the company basically owns patents to, or a company given a license by the parent company of the patent.

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