What are the real elements that separate a MAC from a PC? (1 Viewer)

[Ronald Epstein]

Mark,

Very good post.

Listen, I finally got some balls to do something different and
migrated to a Mac for a few reasons....

My $4k computer from Velocity Micro I bought almost 2 years
ago has been in the shop for over a month. The company is
trying to figure out blue screen problems.

I'm tired of PCs that constantly crash.

Next, I have two friends that recently bought Macbooks and
absolutely love them. Both have sworn that they will never
go back to a PC again. Those kind of remarks speak volumes.

Finally, I think I made an awfully good investment. I spent
another $4K for a Mac Pro with quad processor, 4 Gigs of ram
and 2 optical drives. I wanted a really powerful system so that
I could run Windows Vista inside Mac via Parallels with no slowdown
when I have a dozen programs open at once.

The big turning point here is that MAC now runs Windows Vista
via Parallels and that you can instantly switch between both
windows. Because of this, I'm not scared to buy a Mac. If
the impossible happens and I absolutely hate Macintosh, I still
have a computer that runs Vista.

My ultimate hope is to start strong with Windows via Parallels
and eventually phase that OS out altogether once I learn how
to master Macintosh.

I really feel that I have bought a solid computer with an
operating system (Mac OS) that is far more stable than Windows.

 

[JeremyErwin]

The strength in the PC lies in the fact that more choose to develop for that OS--particularly game developers.. The strength of Mac is that it has a more polished user interface. The strength of Linux is all the free source code-- unix and gnu generally make for very efficient programming environments.

 

[Carlo_M]

Good points Mark. I am actually more of a Windows expert than a Mac expert, because of my job and my newness to the Mac world. There are still some aspects of Mac UI that really irritate me, like not being able to window resize from any frame, you must use the right bottom corner.

Obviously the gaming side is far superior on Windows. And if you're an expert on Win, it can be a very stable system, because you know what dangers to steer away from, how to clean the registry, etc. And quite frankly, I blow away my XP system once every 18-24 months because the OS just needs it to operate best (all of those uninstallers miss and leave behind really add up not just in the registry but in your Windows folder).

You are correct in that it depends on what you need to do. If you're a hardcore gamer, get as far away from the Mac (at least OSX) as you can because it's not for you.

But what I learned in my private, non-work life, is that Mac has MS Office (which is compatible with the Windows version), so that took care of most of what I needed to do for work, while at home.

Meanwhile, I don't game much. But I do creative writing, and I'm a "font whore" - as in I like to use different fonts and I love the way Mac displays those fonts onscreen. Far superior to Windows. I'm also a big iPod/iTunes user. Well it's both on Win and Mac but the Mac version works smoother (unsurprisingly). And ever since formatting my iPod to HFS+, it's never had to be rebooted like it did when it was Windows formatted.

Also, I was getting into music recording. I bought Pro Tools which is cross platform, but again, the Mac version works better by most accounts. Also, GarageBand, which is part of iLife and came with my Macbook Pro, is a great "lite" version of Pro Tools and works with their peripherals.

I also dabble in screenwriting and use Moviemagic Screenwriter, which is cross platform but was designed (as a lot of the screenwriting software is) for a Mac first.

I do a lot of web browsing from home and while it's not perfect, I've found Safari to be a very satisfying browser alternative to IE, Firefox and Opera. Not perfect, but the way it displays fonts on a page (on a Mac) are unmatched.

I purposely held off on Adobe Creative Suite to wait for the Universal Binary version in the next rev, but users of Adobe always say the Mac version is superior to the Windows version. I will buy the UB version upon release.

My friends who are professional illustrators (one works for Dreamworks, the other used to but does children's book illustration now) and my friends who are in the music industry all use Macs. If you're interested in those fields, the Mac has all the software you need to be successful (though of course you'll have to pay, and in some cases dearly).

Handbrake makes putting my DVDs on my iPod a snap. It's freeware and way simpler and more reliable than anything I could find on the Windows side.

I like iChat more than AIM, and it works seamlessly with the iSight camera built in to my Macbook Pro. My friends elsewhere always struggle to make a 3rd party webcam work with their IM software.

Any third party peripheral I've tried to plug in (M-Audio firewire interface, external HDs both USB and Firewire 400, various printers, mice, keyboards, etc.) have just worked. Hardly any driver installs needed. The commercials don't like when they say "it just works". For most stuff it's true.

So now, given what I do in my personal life, moving over to Mac 6 months ago made perfect sense. In that time, the system hasn't even felt like it's starting to slow down, as Windows generally does. It's still as snappy as the day I fired it up. It's much easier to keep the OS clean, and though I'd like a defragmenter, they claim you don't need one (I know better) but I must say that HFS+ handles file fragmentation way better than XP/NTFS.

Actually it's real interesting, if you don't want to buy a defragger, they say one of the easiest ways to defrag is, if you have an external HD, drag all of your files over to it, delete them locally, and then drag them back. Apparently OSX lays down the files in a contiguous way that XP/NTFS doesn't. And for an 80GB amount of data it would take just about as long to do this as it would to run the defragger.

But I still haven't done this, and my HD is 90GB full (out of 111.8GB) and it still doesn't feel slow. Around this percentage (75%+) full on Windows and the system really starts dragging.

Sorry for the long post, but I felt I should illustrate why someone might be interested in the Mac side, and it has nothing with putting down Windows, but just that some things do work better for the Mac, and if you're interested in them, then take the plunge! I still work with Windows, and we still have a Win PC at home. But over the last 6 months, I've noticed that if I'm not at work or using a work/Windows specific application, I'm on the Mac.

Ron I look forward to hearing of your experience!

 

[Carlo_M]

One more thing:

Ron, you have killer, KILLER hardware. But be aware, Parallels is an emulator. Windows will not run at 100% speed there, and for now, Parallels doesn't support the 3D graphics (so gaming is not good), no matter how good your hardware.

If you really want to blaze and potentially game on XP/Vista, you need to use Apple's own Bootcamp (which is a free beta and slated to become part of OS 10.5 Leopard). That allows you to choose the OS at startup (so yes, there is no quick switching back and forth between OSes) but then your machine actually runs XP (and Vista I assume) natively, at full speed, with all hardware goodies turned on.

I have Bootcamped my Macbook Pro 2.33 Core 2 Duo, 2GB RAM, 256MB ATI x1600 card and it is my fastest Windows machine. Granted my work and home Windows machines are over a year old. But the point is, use Parallels if you can sacrifice some speed and gaming for the ability to quickly toggle between OSes. Use Bootcamp for full power on both.

The beauty is that Bootcamp Beta is free so if you've already bought Parallels you can do both (will require dual setup of Windows) and decide for yourself which you prefer. I know a lot of people prefer parallels, but I personally like Bootcamp. I don't game a lot, but it keeps my options openif I decide to.

 

[MarkHastings]

Ron, now that my original post is out of the way, I will tell you the great things about Macs (that aren't meant to be a slam against PC's)...I

Reliability of the OS: I've been running OSX 10.3 for a good solid 2 years straight and it has NEVER given me any kind of headache at all. No glitches, no crashes, no conflicts, etc. etc. It is very solid and the upkeep is very minimal.

Compatibility with new Hardware: It was mentioned earlier that Macs are expensive because there is no competition. While this is true, it's always said as a con. Well let me tell you why I see it as a Pro...Since there is no competition, you NEVER have to worry about conflicts. EVERYTHING works with EVERYTHING! And if you buy a new camera that needs firewire...no need to worry if your computer has a firewire card because all Macs comes standard with everything that you could possibly need. That's another reason why they are expensive - you really can't cheap out on a Mac...whether you want it or not, you're buying that firewire card. (which is a good thing when you finally realize you do need it) - I've never had to really "Add-on" anything to any of my Macs.

The "Artist" advantage (as I like to call it): Now maybe this is more of a personal preference than reality, but if I am to do any kind of artwork on a computer, it will be the Mac. There just seems to be better response on the Mac as far as mouse movements and fine details are concerned. I can't explain it, but the PC just feels a lot clunkier when I try to work in Photoshop.

Spyware/Viruses: I have been running my Mac (at work) for over 10 years without any kind of virus/spyware protection running and (knock on wood) I have NEVER had a virus.Yeah, that's a wonderful thing with the Mac software. You rarely ever have to worry about something not working with something else because the Mac OS is such a confined environment that there is no room for 3rd party vendors to right buggy software that can cause major conflicts with other apps. Again, this is not meant as a slam against PC's, but anytime I need to install new software on a PC, we have to do a ton of research to make sure it doesn't 'take out' the currently installed apps. If anyone has ever had a workstation set up with Video and other Artist apps, you'll know how one install can cause a whole SLEW of conflicts. With the Mac, you never really have to worry about conflicts.


And yes there are things that I can do on the PC that I wish I could do on the Mac, but again, neither is 100% perfect. You definitely need to find what suits you best. I only use a Mac at work. I have PC's at home because for my "home" computing, PC suits me best, but as far as work (i.e. where I do a TON of creative work), it's my Mac or nothing.

To conclude, I'll leave you with this one little fun observation. Whenever someone (who doesn't know Mac) tries to do something on my Mac, they get all frustrated and say things like "What the hell? On the PC, all I have to do is xxx xxx xxx, but on here you gotta....." - It's funny because it seems pretty obvious, but no one seems to understand the following: "The MAC is NOT A PC!!!" and nor should one expect it to perform the same way. Once you get over that hurdle, you'll love the Mac experience!!!

 

[MarkHastings]

Yeah, there are a bunch of little things (like that) that I wish worked like they do on the PC.

Have you ever used Photoshop or Illustrator on a Mac and a PC? Actually I think a lot of apps are like this, but the one thing I love about the Mac is, you don't have that grey background that covers the desktop. I do a lot of jumping between Photoshop and Illustrator (or Flash) and it's nice to have both files (i.e. one Photoshop file and one Illustrator file) next to each other and whenever I highlight one of the files, I jump right into that program - and the tools from the program (I just left) dissapear, but the file is still visible.

 

[Thomas Newton]

Why not use both? Boot Camp for games which need 3D graphics card support (which Parallels doesn't provide), Parallels for anything (including non-3D games) that you can run in a virtualization environment.

 

[Thomas Newton]

MacOS X comes with a free developer's toolkit and an X11 (as in X Window System, not Mac OS X) server. While Apple (and NeXTstep) provided their own drawing engine, UI, etc., many things are Mach-based and BSD-based.

So it's reasonably easy to take advantage of BSD, GNU, and Linux sources.

 

[Carlo_M]

Good question. I don't because of my Macbook Pro's HD space limit. It's only 111GB and I already spent 12GB on the Win partition via Bootcamp. If I also install parallels and XP through the normal OS, that's going to eat up another big chunk of HD.

Of course Ron and his killer Mac Pro should have zero problems with the space issue

 

[Thomas Newton]

Poor Ron, only able to expand to 3,000 GB before he has to make use of the FireWire ports, USB 2.0 ports, Gigabit Ethernets, wireless-attached storage, and internal card slots.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

That's actually the thing I hate most about Photoshop Mac (and MacOS in general, actually). I'm left-handed, so I use the mouse with my non-dominant hand. I've been computing for long enough that it's largely not an issue, but the occasional clumsy click still results every once in a while. I like maximizing my window to fill the entire screen (not just the entire width or height) so that I can focus on what I'm doing just in that program. I can switch back and forth between windows instantly with Alt+Tab (on the keyboard where the clumsiness issue disappears entirely) When I use Photoshop on a Mac, I often end up in Safari or some other random program when I'm working on the edge of an image because I click in the void. The grey background keeps me from having to Command+Tab back. That's absolutely a personal preference thing, though.

 

[JeremyErwin]

Oh, I'm well aware of that. I maintain a couple of fink ports. But the beauty of linux is that everything is open source.

However, I've found that Mac GUI applications are easier to program-- Cocoa is quite elegant.

 

[JeremyErwin]

Have you tried mousing with your left hand?

 

[Andrew Pratt]

Actually doesn't the newest version of parallels have the ability to use the BootCamp install of windows instead of having to have its own? I thought I over heard that the other day from one of the guys at work that has a MacBookPro.

Incidentally I'm presently using a new laptop (Asus W3J) that I got in August but I'm VERY seriously looking to sell it and buy a MacBookPro instead...its what I should have purchased before but didn't for a number of reasons. I love my Asus as its the most Mac like hardware I've seen from a PC vendor but at the end of the day like Ron I've been tempted for awhile now and it feels like its the right time to "just do it"

 

[Steve Tannehill]

Congrats on your purchase, Ron. You will love it!

I've got the Quad G5, 4.5 gigs of RAM, one Superdrive internal and one in a FireWire enclosure. I started using Macs in 1984 at school, but did not get one of my own until 1994. And the rest is history!

I run Parallels and Boot Camp on my Core Duo MacBook. Parallels does *almost* everything I need, it even works with my Spyder2 USB colorimeter. But when I upgraded to the i1 Pro USB spectrophotometer, Parallels would not recognize it. I had to install and use Boot Camp instead of running in emulation.

My point being, you should install Boot Camp first and Windows in Boot Camp. Then install Parallels and configure it to point to the Boot Camp partition. Thus, you will be able to share one partition with both programs, and if you run into any compatibility issues, or want to run native instead of emulated, you are a reboot away.

Something else to keep in mind...Apple just introduced Airport Extreme, which will be released at the end of February. Yes, the USB function on AirPort Express is cool, but it only allows printer sharing. Airport Extreme allows printer *and* hard disk sharing, thus you can plug in a USB hard drive and access common files across multiple computers. At least, that is the theory.

I currently serve my iTunes library off a hard drive plugged into my computer, as well as an internal hard drive. It will be very nice to offload that onto a separate wireless server.

Cheers,
Steve

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Yeah, but it's too late for that now. My left hand's been trained to operate the keyboard by memory while I'm using the mouse. If I use the mouse with my left hand, the right hand has to hunt and peck for the keys. Just one of those little personal quirks.

 

[Ronald Epstein]

Guys,

This has been a great read. Let me touch upon a few things...


I'm not a gamer. I use Windows exclusively for HTF. I also do
a lot of Photoshop work and CD/DVD burning.

I do not want to mess with Boot Camp. I am fine emulating
Windows in Parallels. I want to be able to instantly switch
windows into each operating system as need be instead of
having to boot each time I want to change OS.

From what I have read on the Mac forums, Windows runs
pretty damn fast under Parallels. In fact, with a system like
mine, most expect that it may run FASTER than my previous
computer. I specifically went with 4 Gigs so that I could allocate
250GB to Windows and 250GB to Mac.

Two questions...

Is the Macintosh vulnerable to Spyware?
When running Windows in Parallels do I need an antivirus or
does the Mac OS protect my system?

I'll ask about cool Mac programs in another thread. Wish
we had more Mac users here as I would encourage the start
of a Mac-exclusive forum.

 

[Christ Reynolds]

yep. windows is just as open, whether running on its own drive, or running in parallels. so you need to protect against spyware and viruses. of course, only your windows installation within parallels will be vulnerable to spyware (not your mac os installation), so you will still have to maintain your spyware/virus scanners if you want a clean windows installation.

CJ

 

[Thomas Newton]

Any computer has some vulnerability to spyware, but if you are talking about MacOS, spyware will have a hard time doing anything to system files. This is because under MacOS, a user who has administrative privileges normally runs as a peon who has the right to 'sudo' (run one command with superuser privileges after supplying the appropriate password). So a program that wants to mess up the system has to pop up the authentication dialog (very suspicious, if this happens at an unexpected time!) or otherwise get you to put in your password. If it doesn't, the OS blocks its access to system files.

I think I've read that when you work in a Windows account that has administrative privileges, you have them all the time. (And thus, so does any Web page program that wants to install nasty stuff behind your back.)

As for running Windows under Parallels, the virtual Windows system will be vulnerable to all of the spyware and viruses that can attack "real" Windows systems. Spyware and viruses on the virtual Windows system can attack any Macintosh disk volume to which they have access (though a Windows spyware or virus program is extremely unlikely to know how to successfully infect MacOS applications; the danger would be more from the DELETE *.* type viruses).

There are several aspects of your dual MacOS X/Windows system that you can put to good use:

1. Consider using Safari and Mail instead of MSIE and Outlook. Or at least, switch browsers on the Windows side.

2. If you've got enough hard disk space, set up two volumes for Windows: one for the OS and applications, one for user files. Once you've set up the OS/application volume, make a Finder copy or a .DMG backup of the virtual disk image file(s). Put that off somewhere where MacOS can access it but Windows can't (assuming Parallels gives you such control). If anything bad happens to your Windows volume (spyware, virus, registry corruption, etc.), recovering by copying the preconfigured backup volume may be much less painful than reinstalling Windows and all of your Windows apps one by one.

3. Back up any user files that Windows can see on a fairly regular basis -- maybe just by a folder copy to a volume that Windows can't see.

 

[MarkHastings]

At work, the IT person is always rolling her eyes whenever she tries to do things on my Mac because it asks for my password a lot. She'll say things like "I thought you were admin on this computer???" - But there again, her ignorance (as to how secure the Mac is) is what is making her think the Mac is more annoying (or faulty) than the PC - which you would think she would appreciate because she is constantly removing spyware and viruses from other peoples PCs.

The password thing may seem a little troublesome, but if it stops spyware.....well then why would anyone bitch about it?

Ron, are you starting to see why I can frustrated with Mac vs. PC debates and the reasons some people bring up that they think are legitimate gripes, when in fact, they are almost always the opposite.