Mac or PC? Options

[Mr.Scruff]

title pretty much explains this topic. give me your input why you like which one more, etc.

[steel]

I'm sorta floored that this topic would come up, it's typically just a catalyst for a forum war. Por tem..

I've been using both from the beginning of their inception, as well as UNIX machines and I have a home-brew Linux machine that I tinker with as well. Going farther back, I was a big Amiga fan until it finally finally died. Actually, I first worked with an Interdata 8/16 and did my first real programming on a PDP-11. But I digress....

My choice in a home computer is the pc. I build all of my home computers from scratch, and in a pc, I can make it exactly how I want it with the knowledge that still some 90+% of all components, apps and utilities will work on it.

I built a home-brew Mac a few years back and found that my only real choice was to build a "franken-Mac" - meaning, from pieces from other Macs, there really wasn't an alternative to built the machine from scratch.

There's also some basic feeling I have that I can't get as deeply under the hood with a Mac as I can with a pc. I'm reminded of all the trouble I had trying to debug a problem with a Powerbook Pismo battery recharging problem I tried to solve a couple of years ago, I mean, I couldn't get into the code at all. It was like, I either had to find something that I could point-click-install and it runs and works, or else, I was hosed. In this case, I was hosed. I didn't/don't like that feeling.

On top of this is the expense. You've really got to buy whatever the basic Mac is that you want to use off-the-shelf, you can't build it, and it's all expensive compared to what you can do with a pc. That's not freedom in my book, that's somebody controlling what my technology is going to do at the price-point they set. I'm not comfortable with that.

And one other thing I'll mention. In my line of work, as an engineer who does tech-writing, those in my career field who only know Macs are looked down upon in the industry as not having too many technical smarts. This may not be fair, but it's professionally true, so I don't ever want to put myself in that position in my career field.

I have one particular co-worker who I feel is perfectly great in her work, but she has insisted on using a Mac for her whole nearly 20 years with my company. She has been passed over for promotions and raises endlessly and I know it's because she insists on that Mac. I've discussed it with her a ton of times, but she's dug in her heels about it. And what's worse, I know that on those times when she's needed to use a pc for lab work or demos, she's not been able to "get under the hood" the way we sometimes have to, to solve last minute problems. In other words, she's crippled her own career because of her Mac, and she's got a Masters in Electrical Engineering from UT!!!

So yes, I like the new Macs, my friend mentioned above has shown me the latest-greatest ones, she always has a full suite of them and all their gadgets and so forth. Nice. Great that it can act like a pc now, but not exactly, and etc. Wonderful. She's still never going to get promoted or get a raise.

So yeah, I'm pc for the most part.

[HammaTime]

Ah, the PDP-11. I remember that one fondly! I worked in the mid-80's as a systems analyst for major brokerage firms on Wall Street. My brother and I started our own company and our software helped build the first over the counter trading systems. It was an amazing experience. We wrote our code on Stratus mainframe computers via a T1 to NYC until we coughed up $60,000 each for our flashy Apollo DN300's. These had a whopping 60MB hard drive that we simply couldn't imagine being able to fill with data!

My personal computer at the time was the flashy "portable" Osborne 1 which weighed an ungainly 25lbs! In 1984 we bought one of the original Macintosh 128K machines for our receptionist. I'd put in a long day of work and then quickly move over to the Mac to play games all night long, sleeping on my office couch for an hour or two before heading back to "work." I've kept that little Mac all these years because it was more than just a computer, it seemingly had a life and personality of its own.

A couple of years later I abandoned my cloistered computer office life to return to my first love, photojournalism, but the Macs stayed with me. I had the opposite career impetus as you, Steel, with the advent of digital imaging, it was the Windows world that was a career dampener. Every newspaper I worked at used Macs as well as every one of my freelance clients which included ad agencies, magazines and graphic designers. Today I manage my large collection of digital images (I work as a freelance photographer for a national magazine and several regional publications) using just the tools that come with the Mac OS. I used to have to invest in costly yearly upgrades for my asset management software, now with Apple's amazing Spotlight feature I can search instantly for any image by simply entering a couple of keywords. Not only does it find my images, it finds my invoices, emails and any other data corresponding with that particular job. It is truly mind blowing! Here is a search feature, built into the OS that will search embedded cutlines (the descriptive text under a photo) in every photo stored on my multiple hard drives and it returns the results in a literal blink of an eye!

Today I'm working on the 12th Apple computer I've owned - a dual processor G5 Tower with a 23" Cinema display. I've always had Windows machines of various forms and I have to admit, Microsoft has come a long ways. They've done well to steal incorporate the designs that Apple originally put in their machines, but one of the many things that keeps me solidly in the Mac corner is the outstanding security model they've put in place. In all these years I've never had a single virus on one of my machines. I don't even own an anti-virus program. Apple designed a secure platform back in the days when Microsoft was designing a system that was so full of holes it practically invited the viruses and spyware to walk right in.

There is that mistaken belief that today's Apple purchasers are stuck with off-the-shelf options. Take a look at the Apple store to see that you can easily have a machine custom-built : http://store.apple.com Now, I'm sure there aren't the myriad of options available that an expert such as yourself demands, but I suspect that our friend Mr. Scruff is looking for simplicity.

As for the cost comparison issue, a close examination of similar machines belies the old claim that Apple is more expensive. Take a look at this comparison for example: http://www.macworld.com/news/2006/02/13/pr...rison/index.php

Granted, some other comparisons of similar machines will obviously tilt against Apple, but they do hold on to the top spot for customer satisfaction. That's got to be worth a little extra.

As a programmer, the Intel-based Apple OS X is a dream machine. I'd highly recommend that you pick up one of the new iMacs, Steel and play with it a bit. I guarantee you'll be mighty impressed. Dive under the hood and play with UNIX, power up XCode and tell me this isn't an amazing platform. Take a look at that 24" iMac with the Intel Core 2 duo processor. That baby rocks and it is only $1999!! One really cool feature that goes largely unnoticed is that is largely user serviceable. Most all of the essential components are designed to be user replacable, from the power supply to the fans. If you have a power supply that goes kaput, you just unsnap it and Apple sends you a replacement that pops in. No wonder their users are so satisfied!