Are you saying Mac’s hardware and software limitations are unverified? Further, are you saying that Apple does not have an approved list of hardware? Are you saying Apple provides support for hardware that is not on their support list?
Are you saying that Mac’s are easily administered remotely? Are you really? Have you ever tried remote administration? Especially with scripts?? Have you?
Are you saying the ~/Library folder doesn’t bloat itself for no obvious reason?
These are all gripes that are well documented. Very well documented. Can we get some reasons for why Macs are so great, other than they don’t get virii (stop downloading porn and warez) and are good for movie editing and they look pretty?
You want a gui friendly portable music studio? It’ll do that.
You want a GCC complaint X workstation where the vast majority of open source software is available pre-compiled? It’ll do that.
You want a Windows box? It’ll do that.
You want it to mingle in a heterogeneous network? It’ll do that.
Around our office, the litmus test is: Does the end user have a brain? If so, they’ll do fine with a Mac in our environment.
I am unaware of these software and hardware limitations. I AM aware that in similar hardware situations, OpenGL is twice as fast on my MBP 9600M GT as my PC with it’s 9800GTX+
I’m aware that my iBook happily used a generic Bluetooth dongle that nobody mentioned was compatible, that a cheap USB dongle was fairly easy to get running in a promiscuous mode, that my cameras and scanners worked without a hitch, that every monitor, projector and TV I plugged in worked with no effort. That my macs connect to WiFi AP’s when other computers wouldn’t.
I will say the multimedia suite that’s included in the price of admission is SUBSTANTIALLY better than what’s available on Windows.
I will say the MBP I used before this one, and this one are the best screwed together laptops to come into our office in the last 10-15 years.
I will admit printing isn’t fully baked, but it works well enough.
I will admit to not investigating Apple’s enterprise management suite as it’s not necessary in my environment. I will also add that Microsoft’s A/D infrastructure has it’s warts, and that administration via scripts in U*ix is a good way to go if you have the requisite learning curve under your belt.
I will end with: This is as fruitful a debate as talking politics or religion and ends up convincing just as many people.
Just as an observation:
I just got back from a week’s vacation in Manhattan (fantastic time, BTW). Just looking around one would never suspect that Macs only command single-digit marketshare. Everywhere I went, all I saw was people using MacBooks, iMacs in galleries, and iPhones by the thousands.
Not sure if you mean recording or playback but Linux and Windows are just as capable of running gui friendly portable music studios as Macs can.
Funny thing is, good luck getting all that GUI stuff to run off a script, since Macs are pretty dumb (actually, stupid) when it comes to handling a non-GUI configuration. Best of luck getting that long list of special provisions set up so it works properly.
If you require a GUI to handle all of your major tasks then Macs are great, no doubt, but that’s a bit ironic since the OS the Mac is built on is heavily reliant on command line and script functions and the entire purpose of automation is contrary to the entire purpose of a GUI interface.
SourceForge is pretty awesome at having executables and binaries and tars for Windows and certainly just about anything that’s precompiled for Mac will be available precompiled for Linux.
Really not sure what this has to do with anything other than to introduce the substance-lacking buzzword “Open Source.” All Open Source means is that its released with a special distribution license and people have access to the source code. Are you trying to imply to that only Macs can run Open Source software? Because I have all kinds of OSS on my Windows box and it seems to run fine.
Which begs another question? Where can I find me a copy of OSX’s kernel? Is it Open Source? I mean, other than the stuff that was Open Source before Mac came along and integrated it into their OS, which they now charge for?
Yah, and a PC can run OSX just fine too (well, actually, no, it can’t, since OSX is crippled and I wish you the best of luck finding compatible drivers for non-Apple supported hardware) other than the minor fact that 90% of PC hardware is unsupported by Apple. And realistically if you have a Windows box or a Linux box you are going to have zero need to do anything that OSX can do.
It’s really not that hard to get a computer to work great when you focus development and compatibility on a very small cross-section of the available hardware market.
Any OS these days is capable of hooking onto a LAN, what with the protocols having been standardized for years and years.
What are you trying to say here?
That’s probably because when something breaks you go to the Apple store and buy a piece of hardware that’s on Apple’s approved hardware list. You also overpay when you buy this hardware since demand is unnecessarily inflated. You also run software designed for Macs on your Mac, you know you can’t run Windows based code natively on your Mac. And when you want to run software that isn’t available for the Mac distro (which is apparently often enough that you know Macs can run virtual Windows machines now that they use Intel chips) you open a copy of Windows or Linux or whatever other OS you choose and run it there.
Interestingly enough, Microsoft hasn’t seen the need to add a Virtual Mac Box into their OS, but for some reason Apple feels the needs to add a Virtual Windows Box to satiate its users. This is obviously not coincidental.
You mean its onboard Bluetooth (which is a standards-based protocal-- not rocket science to implement) didn’t work and you have no problem overlooking it?
You know that Windows has had USB P&P compatibility for years right? Since rev 1? And I would love to know why someone would want to use USB for a monitor or TV, when DVI is the PC standard and HDMI is rapidly becoming the TV standard.
Of course it is not hard to make all of this happen when you are relegated to choosing hardware that Apple says you can use and Apple spends its time focusing development on that same subset of hardware.
Isn’t it unfortunate you can’t just mosey over to Newegg and buy the latest and greatest component and pop it in to your computer for a rapid upgrade? And at a reasonable price?
I really enjoy buying 4gigs of PC memory for the cost of 2 gigs of Apple memory.
Do you enjoy buying 2gigs of Apple memory for the cost of 4 gigs of PC memory?
Congratulations, is it worth the Mac costing twice what the Windows box costs? For a media program? When you have myriad free choices available for Windows? OK…
Again, that’s great. For the cost of a macbook pro I can buy a ruggedized Panasonic that is waterproof and weatherproof and can withstand a 3 foot fall. Good luck with that on your Macbook.
Oh yeah, and can you get a quad core processor for your MBP? How’s life with 2 onboard USB ports? Not bad for a laptop that caps out at over 3 grand…
Wow, they can’t get a simple function like printing to work, but you will easily and readily overlook this?
You should definitely look into it just so you can see how poorly implemented it is. It seems like a bunch of monkeys mashed keys on a typewriter until they came up with something that would compile.
Just the facts are necessary. People who buy Macs are generally not too concerned about facts anyway, they are happy with the status they think their Mac gives them.
Again, outside of specialized video production (that is a function of software more than hardware), what is it that a Mac does so much better than a PC or Linux box that justifies the exorbitant cost and gimped hardware selection and poor OS administration implementation?
I don’'t have time to respond to your entire rant, but if you believe the statement above to be true, you are surely delusional.
I’m an Electrical Engineer who uses a Mac has his primary computer. I don’t give a damn about the “status” that doing so conveys.
As if there was any.
I just use it because I find that it makes me more efficient. Simple as that.
I’ve used all kinds of OSs over the years, and IMHO, OS X is simply far more usable than Windows or Linux - and that usability is worth the miniscule price premium it commands.
While I’m sure there are some folks who bought MacBook Airs simply for the cool factor, most Mac users are just like me - they use Macs because they like them, not because of what someone else thinks of them for doing so.
Had you noticed my previous entries before Firing All Salvos, you’d notice I use most all the popular OS’s, on most all the popular hardware. I have for two decades.
But you’re not interested in that, you’re interested in Winning A Debate!
And My Humble Opinion differs from yours. Therefore, I can launch in to a multi-point response, of which you’ll ignore 75%, or I can choose not to play.
My opinion differs from yours. I have enough money to enjoy ALL the OS’s on ALL the hardware I care to. And I’m not particularly wealthy.
If you have to pick a single OS on a single platform, your needs are different.
You’ve been around computers for 20 years but you’re unaware of the hardware and software limitations of a Mac? And you are using a VM instance of windows on a mac? and :rolleyes:
OK, as long we are clear it is only your opinion that Macs are superior and that you concede it is only your opinion.
Obviously. If you didn’t have money you wouldn’t be using a Mac now would you?
Apparently you missed the point of this thread, I don’t see any poll options for “All of them”… do you?
Don’t be too sure. In my immediate circle of friends and aquaintances**, Macs are about as popular as Windows, with a few Linux & BSD machines thrown in as well. Of the people who own more than one machine, pretty much everyone has at least one Mac. (I just sold one of my macs, so I’m now down to 2 linux machines, one windows netbook and a macbook).
I’m Dutch, and we even pay a lot more for our Macs (and especially Adobe software): cheapest macbook pro in the Dutch apple store: € 1.149,00 - the US apple store has them for $1,199.00 - almost %30 less.
** Quite a few of them are either professional programmers or designers, so that will skew things a bit. You won’t believe the amount of macs you see at Java / Ruby / Perl conferences.
Funny. I said that in my earlier post. The one where I said I really liked Windows 7, and lean on Unix for really heavy duty log parsing.
We had this debate on the SDMB about two weeks ago, and when comparing a Mac Book Pro to an equally optioned Lenovo. The Lenovo was $200 more expensive. And didn’t come with the nifty additional software the Mac comes with.
Have YOU used a Mac for any period of time? Not as a loaner. Not in a store. I mean lived out of it?
I’m a back-end systems guy. I prefer closed source unix for DB servers, linux for front ends and mid tier, Windows for user management and printing. My desktop is usually windows based, at home because it has better games, and a cheaper upgrade path, at work, because I have enough unix/linux boxes, and I don’t like *nix guis. Macs are nice, but a pretty gui on BSD isn’t really that stunning. If they dropped prices, got more vendors involved, and got away from the annoying buttonless white look, I’d be all for them.
Holy wars need to be reserved for the ancient arguments, really: ed, vi, or being a pussy.
I’m using Ubuntu Jaunty, and Vista on a dual-boot lenovo machine, but just Ubuntu at work.
Macs are out of my price bracket, I’m afraid. And I’m ditching the Vista as soon as I’ve assembled all the software I want on the Ubuntu share. With Synaptic, I’m never looking back.
Windows at work, Debian at home. I don’t do anything that Mac’s are better at (than those two) so I don’t use one. My grandmother loves hers though. Also, I hate safari, and the fact that iTunes won’t serve UPnP, heck windows media player even does that and its absolute shit at everything else.
There’s a class of malware that likes to open up ports on your firewall using UPnP…click on that greeting card, then wonder where all your bandwidth is going.
and :rolleyes:
