PC vs. Mac

In My Humble Opinion
1

Well I’m sure this has the potential to get ugly, but I would just like honest opinions from those who have used both.

Basically, my current computer is getting up there in age and I am considering giving in and purchasing a new computer. As a student I get a 10% discount in the apple store and through my university I have access to just about all mac software that is commonly used, including Microsoft Office 2004.

So basically I am looking for opinions on how difficult it is to switch from PC to Mac. The Mac Mini + LCD monitor is about equal in cost (with discount) to a similarly equipped Dell Desktop. I am pretty intrigued by the promised stability and such of OS X and I am an ipod addict. I don’t do any video editing and such; I’m a science major so any work I do will be in that area rather than graphic editing and such. I would hope that running a PC emulator on the mini would let me use any older programs I might need for my work that aren’t mac available.

I’m looking for opinions of those who have used both and those who recently converted from one to another re: ease of use, stability, reliability of the machine against breaking down, or anything else that might be involved.

Please mac people do not start a fight with the PC people.

Thanks!

2

I’m in transition. I’ve used PCs for years and years. But last June I bought a PowerBook G4. (The reason I got a Mac to replace my clunky old laptop is that I was involved in a studio that used Final Cut Pro.)

Mac people will have you believe that Macs don’t get the dreaded Blue Screen Of Death. Well, they don’t. But I have gotten a message saying I have to restart my computer twice! Actually, though, OS X Tiger has been very stable. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gotten the BSOD or and ‘illegal operation’ on the PC that forced me to do a hard reboot.

I like the Safari browser. I like how it has a bookmark bar on it so that I can put my favourite sites there and the less important sites in the bookmark folder. The only problem I have with it is that for some reason it takes forever to log into eBay. (I’m on a dial-up, so everything takes forever. But Safari is particularly slow on eBay sign-in.)

I like the clock. The clock on my PC will lose a couple minutes a day. The PowerBook connects to Apple so the clock remains accurate. (This is very useful for sniping on eBay. It’s usually only one or two seconds ahead of eBay time.)

I can go to the desktop simply by moving my cursor into the upper-right corner, or show all windows by mmoving to the upper-left. No clicking.

Last week I bought Office for Macs. Now I have Word and Excel (and PowerPoint, when I learn how to use it) as well as Final Cut Pro and Internet access. All in one small package.

The more I use my Mac, the more I prefer it to the PC. I like it so much I bought an old 450mHz iMac ‘Indigo’ PowerPC and, with the help of MacDopers, got it up and running with OS X 10.3.9 Panther and an AirPort card.

3

I used to do tech support for PC’s but ended up going back to film school which required me to get a mac.

Other than ease of use, there is one simple reason why I prefer Macs. It doesn’t really give me the opportunity to screw things up. I used to have a terrible habit of going into the registry and playing with things. I generally knew what I was doing but every once in a while it would be an educated guess - and i’d guess wrong. As far as i know, I can’t do that with a mac (and if I can for god sakes don’t tell me).

For me, macs are just more user friendly and I don’t really enjoy computer games so my inability to find those really isn’t an issue.

4

Double click on the clock, click the Internet Time tab, and click “Automatically synchronize with an internet time server.” That will automatically update your time, assuming you are on XP (it might be similar for other versions of Windows but I don’t know).

5

I am a casual user - I don’t program, I don’t write software, I’m just learing HTML. I websurf, play games, and dabble in digital photography. I have a Mac at home and I use a PC at work. I very much prefer the Mac for many reasons. Not the least of which is Macs are far less susceptable (tho not completely immune) to the most common and annoying of viruses. OSX is a much better platform for graphics programs, but spreadsheets and databases might work better on a PC. So it basically depends what your primary use will be.

6

The PC is on 98.

Really, the only thing I use the PC for is making webpages. I like Netscape Composer. And I have CuteFTP on it as well. I got a shareware FTP from the Apple site, but I haven’t used it yet. I don’t know if the Mac has a graphical webpage editor on it, or if there’s a free one out there.

Other than that, the PC has FreeCell, which is a good time-waster.

7

I switched to a Mac for my home computer in Dec 2003 and have generally been very happy. I expect to replace my current machine (a 1.25 GHz iMac flat screen with the chrome swiveling mount) with another Mac, though probably not for another year or two as it is still perfetly capable.

The biggest negative in switching has been software availability. There are comparably few games available for the Mac. When I switched, I went from Quicken for windows 2000 or so to Quicken for Mac 2004 - and took a huge leap backwards in functionality.

MS Office runs fine on the Mac and I’ve had zero compability problems sharing Office files with PCs.

The Pros:
I love both Firefox and Safari as browsers. IE is really a bad product IMO.

I love the iMac digital media offerings: iPhoto is great. iMovie is so incredibly simple to use, without reading any instructions whatsoever, I was able to assemble a nice DVD of a recent vacation with dubbed in music, still photos gracefully transitioning in and out and digital video.

Many on this board discount the aesthetics of the Mac, but my home computer sits on a desk in full view of my family room, kitchen and breakfast nook. I like the way the machine looks. If had a beige box PC, I would hide it away in the office and use it much less (or be away from the rest of the family much more).

Most things really do seem to work as simply as “hmmm, I ought to be able to just drag this over here and have it load into that document” and it works.

Stability has been much improved over windows as a home system, though I have to say my WinXP work laptop is just about as stable as my Mac, but it is patched weekly by the magic network download.

One unsolicited piece of advice - learn the mac keyboard shortcuts. They’re one of the not-intuitive aspects of the OS, and I wish I knew the better. They make things a LOT easier.

I’ve rambled on enough for now I think.

8

I’ve found this site to be very useful. Much easier than remembering ALT+###.

9

You didn’t say what science you’re in, but many of the software tools used in the sciences are written primarily for Unix operating systems, which means they’ll actually be easier to get to work on a Mac than on a (single-boot, Windows) PC. OSX is essentially Unix with a pretty user interface.

On the stability issue, I don’t have much experience with XP, but I can say that OSX is definitely much stabler than any pre-XP version of Windows. On average, I need to reboot each of my Macs about once every 6 months due to a crash of some sort (as opposed to, say, rebooting after a software update).

And, of course, the security is wonderful. I’ve never had to worry about any sort of malware on either of my Macs. It’s debateable how much of this is due to the smaller Mac userbase as opposed to the inherent security of the systems, but the end result is pretty clear. And really, who cares why Macs are more secure?

The only real drawback to a Mac is games. Very few games are released for Mac as quickly as they are for Windows. At the very least, you’re likely to be six months behind the curve, and for some games, it’s years or never. Ordinarily, I don’t mind this so much, since most of the games I play are several years old anyway, but it’s been tough waiting for Civilization 4. To be fair, there are also a few games written exclusively for Mac, but not nearly as many as for PCs, and they’re not necessarily as good.

10

Chemistry. It’s good to hear that availability wouldn’t be entirely limited in that regard.

11

I’ll be a voice of dissent (but do keep in mind that I’m primarily a Windows user).

I don’t need to use the Mac often, but when I do I quickly find myself frustrated. It’s not that I have any weird ideas about one OS being superior to another or anything like that (I really think they’re all pretty much the same, just with their own quirks), it’s because of the little differences. The little things. And these things frustrate me because I’m primarily a Windows user and am so familiar with Windows conventions.

For example, I get frustrated working on the Mac because programs don’t ever seem to close. I’ll click the little box in the corner, and the program will go away, but it doesn’t close. I’ll open the Finder and see all these programs that I thought I’d closed still running, and it drives me bananas. Now, in my brain I know that that little box minimizes on the Mac, not closes like on Windows, and that to close a program I either need to select Exit from the menu or press Open Apple + Q. Sadly, when I’m working on the Mac, it’s not my brain that’s running things, but my head or my intuition or something. So while I know that it’s different, I expect it to be the same, and I automatically treat it as such, and then get annoyed because the result isn’t what I thought it would be. Now, please don’t think I’m suggesting that Mac should be like Windows. Rather, it’s me that should adjust and remember and act accordingly when I’m working on the Mac. But I forget, and then remember how “intuitive” and “easy to use” the Mac is reported to be, and get more annoyed because I don’t find it so because I’m so indoctrinated to the metaphors Windows uses. You know what I mean? “Why isn’t it closing! That box should close!” Yeah, idiot, on Windows. Not on Mac. But still, happens to me every time.

The Mac we have at work is newish, but still has the one button mouse (I understand Mac now offers mice with multiple buttons?). Again, I’m so used to Windows conventions and shortcut menus that I make frequent use of the right mouse button. Can’t do that on Mac. Well, you can, but you need to press Ctrl or Open Apple or some button before you click to bring up the shortcut menu. Not a big deal. But again, I forget and get frustrated.

Petty? Absolutely. Easy to rectify? That too. But it does drive me up the wall when I have to work on it, simply because I find it unintuitive when compared to the Windows I’m used to working on. And that’s probably no one’s fault but my own.

12

Surprise!:

  1. There is a really good chance that you could do a lot better than the 10% discount at your college. As an ex-college prof. I had lots of such college-store discounts available to me over the years and none of them came close to what I could get elsewhere. 10% off a huge markup is usually still too much. Shop around.

  2. Things are looking quite favorable for Apple given the situation with MS Vista. Expect Apple’s market share to increase noticably in the next couple years. This means that more products for Apple’s will become available, etc. (Going from 2% to 4-6% may not seem like much in absolute terms, but in relative terms it is immense and that attracts the attention of the bottom line people.)

Snickers:

MS goes out of it’s way to make it’s software behave in a different manner from pre-existing software. The close vs. exit terminology is one of them. That means that MS got it wrong and that Apple merely uses the terminology in windowing environments that pre-dated MS-Windows. You’re complaining about the wrong people.

13

I use Windows and Linux at work, and a Mac and Windows at home.

For working, I prefer Linux. For personal use, I prefer the Mac. Windows stays around because I’m a Magic the Gathering addict, and there aren’t any good online Magic programs for any other platform.

There’s an joke about OSes that goes: “Linux makes it easy to do hard things and hard to do easy things. Windows makes it easy to do the easy things, and impossible to do the hard things.”

In my opinion, Macs make it easy to do the easy things and easy to do the hard things.

14

Okay this will probably be my most detailed post ever since I have a lot to add on this subject especially since I have done the same thing about a year ago, but luckily I can offer you a lot of advice here. Quick details, i’ve used computers since I was 12 (now 24) I’ve built them, etc, so I know my stuff on PCs. Then I switched to Mac about a year ago. FYI, I’m composing this in TextEdit, which has automatic spellcheck like all Mac programs do.

First of all the differences between the mini (what I have) and the bargain bin Dell PCs. First they are quiet. These cheapo things are loud as hell.

Regarding any kind of forced shutdown. I’ve never had one but its called a kernel panic and it has never happened to me. I have had it freeze up, but I’ve never had to do a hard power off.

Secondly, Office for Mac is a bit on the slow side, but this won’t matter because of a point I’ll get to later.

Drag and drop is the way to do things on a Mac. I’m often surprised at just how many things will work like this. Safari is good, but I don’t like the way it scrolls. This changed when i got the Mighty Mouse.

Also, nowadays, like PCs, you can plug in any USB mouse into a Mac and get all the functions you need
Right click works on them too.

Your comments about the PC emulator. This is one area in which you’ll be very lucky. Previously, the mac used the PowerPC line of processors (G3 G4 G5) and that was incompatible with windows. There is a solution for people like me. It is called VirtualPC by Microsoft and it allow you to run a copy of windows on your mac without dual booting. But the fact that it has to translate from the native language of an Intel processor to that of a PowerPC processor makes things very slow. I use windows 98 on my virtual PC. I use a simplified analogy but that’s a good way to explain it.

Now… Recently the new Macs have started using Intel processors. That’s the reason why they are 2 to 4x faster. Not because they are intel, but because they are simply that much better too. Anyways, it is now possible to dual boot Windows XP and Mac OS X. There is a website called On Mac that gives you detailed instructions on how to do it. It is very experimental now, but you can maybe figure it out and it will only get easier. This has happened in the last 2 weeks. The intel macs have been out since January. When you turn on the Mac you’ll get a choice between OSX and Windows. It should work pretty well. But if you choose to do this, you’ll need to do it before you load anything on to your new Mac because you’ll need to create new partitions. Secondly, Microsoft will create a version of VirtualPC for the new Intel macs and that will not suffer the performance hit that the current one does. On a G4 it is about 20 percent speed of a comparable PC, but on the new intels it should be around 70 at least. But virtual PC will probably not allow gaming. Although I hear that Apple is working on this as well. But the point I’m making is that there is a solution NOW for your necessary Chemistry programs. Finally if you wanna play windows games, the graphics card is functioning perfectly on the Mac Mini.

So that’s all I know about this stuff, if you have further questions feel free to ask more. I love talking about this stuff here.

Me, I am going to buy an iMac as soon as possible. I want to dual boot as well so I can play games and get those few crucial apps. That’s the problem with Macs, you really miss those few apps, but luckily this will be a thing of the past very soon.

15

I believe Surprise! means that Apple itself - not a campus book or technology store - is offering the discount. In fact, I got such a discount myself a month or so ago when I purchased my first mac. Everything was handled through store.apple.com.

As far as the difficulty of the switch, I echo the most common sentiments already expressed here. The window management paradigm is different, as are many of the shortcuts; but I find it more intuitive overall. Yes, clicking the ‘close’ button on the upper left corner of a window just closes the window and not the program, but that’s something you should get used to quickly, and is more consistent.

You’ll have better luck, of course, if you primarily use the mac - if you do not, e.g., split your computing time 50/50 between Windows and OS X.

As far as software … well, I don’t play games. I have everything I need in OS X and more. About the only thing I miss is a good free spreadsheet program (no, I don’t like Open/NeoOffice. Clumsy to use, clumsy to look at). If you plan to obtain MSOffice, of course, this isn’t as much of an issue.

Bear in mind that I primarily used Linux, not Windows, for the months preceding the switch. This may color my opinions.

16

I am also a science major and I switched to an iMac in February. Almost all the professors at my university in my major use Macs as their personal computers. I love it and the switch was super easy. I was confused a little for the first week, if even. Get a book called “Switching to Mac - the Missing Manual” if you are unsure. I got that book, but by the time I ordered it and had it shipped, I had most stuff figured out. It really is that easy.

Really? I bought my new Intel iMac at the Apple store and pretty much all stores I saw at the time were the same price, with the possible exception of eBay. I didn’t want to chance buying from a shady place, so I went for the Apple Store.

17

Well, I use both PCs and Macs, so I’ll list the pros and cons as I’ve seen them, and then some other insights of mine.

Pros:

There’s ALWAYS Macs available in the Student Computing Center at my college campus, no matter how busy it is.

As far as I can tell, they’re fully compatible with USB mice, so it’s easy enough to just plug in a correctly designed mouse to replace the single-button abomination Apple seems to insist on including with their computers.

It’s just so… friendly! Also, I do really dig being able to color-code the icon names on my desktop, so my thumbdrive is always highlighted as being blue on the desktop if I have to hunt for the icon.

Style: Let’s face it, Apple hardware just has a smooth polished look to it. Now if only it would come in a color other than iWhite.

Cons: I just don’t like the interface. Too many big pictures and goofy sound effects. That said, I love the eject key on the keyboard (even if it’s the most useless thing ever since I would STILL have to reach over to the CD drive to either remove or insert a disc). I want to set up a Mac to make a “Blah!” sound effect every time you open the drive though.

People tell me that Macs are more stable, but I’ve had them crash on me almost as much as XP computers (not counting times where I crashed my own PC due to some remarkably stupid thing on my part, such as that time I tried to install Linux). This could just be me being a jinx around Apple hardware though.

Style: I can’t stand that color. Can I get a black Mac? How about a midnight blue Mac?

Anyhow, my primary computer is a PC running XP, which I like a lot. I first had to use Macs a lot when I got a job for the campus newspaper, and pretty much everyone there hated it (except for the graphics people and the layout editors, who actually used their computers for anything other than Word and web browsing).

As I mentioned before, I seem to be a jinx for attracting weird freezes, program crashes, etc. on Macs, including having to reboot on a number of occassions. Also, I use a thumbdrive to carry my documents around on, and the Macs seem to leave weird files behind in all my directories, I think they’re some kind of directory index things. Just kind of annoying.

Overall, I’d swing towards PCs, but that’s what I’ve used pretty much all my life, and some of what I’ve heard about Vista is wigging me out a bit, so we’ll see.