Why arn't mac's as popular as PC's?

[yosemite]

Sigh.

I am a Mac user who switched over from PCs about 3 years ago. I still own a PC, and I am planning to get another PC. (As a “secondary” machine, my G4 is my “main” machine.) I am not a zealous Mac person, I am a PC person who decided to give Macs a try, and discovered that I really liked them.

I can only speak for myself. I am not a rank newbie, but I’m not a power user, either. I never was when I was a Windows user, and I’m not now that I am a (primarily) Mac user.

The thing I know (from my own personal experience) is that I like the Mac OS letter. I like that hardware usually just installs, instead of having to install drivers and jump through hoops and reboot and all that. I like that it is sinfully easy to partition a hard drive. There are a jillion little tiny and not-so-tiny things that I really like about the Mac OS. Not that I hate Windows, though it does frustrate me greatly at times. But I don’t hate it. I just love Macs. The main thing I missed about Macs was the two button mouse, but as has already been mentioned here, that’s an easy problem to solve. My two-button mouse works about equally as effectively and efficiently as the Windows mouse.

I never noticed that Mac users were more aware of how their computers worked. But then again, I’ve not noticed that many people (Mac or PC) were aware of how their computers worked. I can’t say that I really know all that much. But at least I know what kind of computer I have, what its processor and RAM is, etc. etc., which is a helluva lot more than most people around me know about their computers.

And, to those of you who have not worked with OS X at all, or all that much, realize that you are talking out of ignorance on the Mac as it currently is. Personally, as soon as I realize you don’t know about OS X, in my opinion your credibility goes down when it comes to the subject of Macs. You are out of touch.

And don’t scoff Mac OS because it is an adaptation of Unix—that is the beauty of it. The first user-friendly, really consumer-friendly version of Unix. This is a tremendous thing, and from what I gather, a lot of die-hard geeks are getting interested in Macs because of OS X.

Oh, and a word about Photoshop. I am not rich. But I got Photoshop cheap, all legal and legitimate. Via eBay, you buy an older version (for cheap) register it, buy and upgrade, register that, and violà! You are now an owner of Photoshop. I was extremely fortunate—I got a killer (fully legitimate) deal on Photoshop. The current full version for about $120.

There is no reason to think that you have to pay full price for Photoshop. And if you want a “consumer level” version of PS, there’s always Photoshop Elements.

Regarding not having any software for Mac—well, there is not a lot of redundant software for Mac, but most of the important apps are available for Mac. I rarely find that I am missing out by using a Mac. I have a PC right over there on the table next to me, and it’s ready for me to turn it on if I need it to run something that won’t run on my Mac. And guess what? It’s been a LONG time since I had to turn it on because my Mac couldn’t do something.

And also, you do realize that there are a few apps (that are considered important to certain factions of computer users) that are NOT available on Windows? FinalCut Pro, for one. From what I hear, it’s the software to use for video editing. There are a few other “creative” type apps that I hear are Mac-only.

[Sdrawkcab]

Originally posted by yosemitebabe
The thing I know (from my own personal experience) is that I like the Mac OS letter.

Which one? Unlike an Apple mouse, an Apple keyboard does have the ‘standard’ number of buttons.

There are a jillion little tiny and not-so-tiny things that I really like about the Mac OS.

I believe it was Douglas Adams who wrote a scathing rebuke of the Windows 95 interface titled “The Death of a Thousand Stings.” Quite accurate.

And don’t scoff Mac OS because it is an adaptation of Unix—that is the beauty of it. The first user-friendly, really consumer-friendly version of Unix.

It is a very strange world we live in, where Apple Computer, Inc., is the planet’s largest distributer of Unix computers.

This is a tremendous thing, and from what I gather, a lot of die-hard geeks are getting interested in Macs because of OS X.

Yes. O’Reilly, the Unix book people with the animals on their covers, reports that their customers have gone crazy over Mac OS X, and that their last major conference was filled with PowerBook G4-toting Unix gurus. Mac OS X offers all the advantages of Unix over the old Mac OS and Windows, and all the advantages the Mac had over Unix – most notably, Microsoft Office and Adobe software support (yes, Adobe has a few “Unix” Unix programs out there, but now their entire catalogue – aside from the recent release of FrameMaker, strangely enough – runs on a Unix natively – Mac OS X).

O’Reilly has said that folks who used to have two machines – a Linux or Unix PC for their work, and a Windows PC for Office and Photoshop type stuff, are switching over to having just one computer… a Mac that does the work of both, and can do both at the same time.

This has been a huge boon for Apple. Companies that have long since written off the Mac like MatLab (Mathlab?), or Intuit’s QuickBooks division, or other science-software companies, are coming back on board. Plus, NextStep had a loyal and talented group of third party developers, all of whom are ecstatic about their products finally having a truly wide market potential. And then, aside from Aqua-bsed Cocoa and Carbon applications, there’s the Fink project and related endeavours that are bringing libraries worth of X-Window system software over to the Mac. It’s all very exciting and impressive.

There is no reason to think that you have to pay full price for Photoshop. And if you want a “consumer level” version of PS, there’s always Photoshop Elements.

Both are good programs. I use both PS and PSE for different tasks.

I have a PC right over there on the table next to me, and it’s ready for me to turn it on if I need it to run something that won’t run on my Mac. And guess what? It’s been a LONG time since I had to turn it on because my Mac couldn’t do something.

When I realized I hadn’t turned my Dell on in four months, I decided to get rid of it.

And also, you do realize that there are a few apps (that are considered important to certain factions of computer users) that are NOT available on Windows? FinalCut Pro, for one. From what I hear, it’s the software to use for video editing. There are a few other “creative” type apps that I hear are Mac-only.

Final Cut Pro is definitely an up and comer. So is DVD Studio Pro. Most of the iApps are fantastic for consumer-level stuff, too. Aside from the dismal iCal.

And as important as Mac-only programs are, there are also industries where programs on Windows, even though they exist, flat out just don’t work properly. Getting the Windows versions of QuarkXPress (the worst program ever written) to output proper PostScript data is a challenge that would stymie God. The lousiness of XPress is compounded by the lousiness of Windows’ color management, the sum of which is then multiplied by the lousiness of Windows’ PostScript support, resutling in unusable output for commercial grade printing, unless your systems are very carefully set up and maintained.

Even then, most print houses would rather PC-based publications (sadly, there are some) send them the raw Quark files, which they can then take and reflow on a Mac and output the PostScript from there.

PostScript support on the Mac is fabulous, particularly in OS X, where everything you see on the screen IS PostScript. Every image is a PDF graphic. That’s why OS X takes .pdf screenshots.

[Sdrawkcab]

Oops, I was wrong. Adams’ piece wasn’t titled “Death of a Thousand Stings.” That was Robert Jung’s piece.

A great quote from Adams:

The idea that Bill Gates has appeared like a knight in shining armour to lead all customers out of a mire of technological chaos neatly ignores the fact that it was he, by peddling second-rate technology, who led them into it in the first place.

God, I love Adams.

[Urban_Ranger]

*Originally posted by FDISK *
Sdrawkcab: Until you can go and assemble a Mac from off-the-shelf components, it’s non-standard.

I disagree. You can’t assemble a printer or a monitor. Following a standard does not mean you can build the object itself.

[Urban_Ranger]

*Originally posted by FDISK *
One thing I’d note is that I think PCs got a reputation for being unstable because users would buy the cheapest thing they could find, and then act surprised when it crashed often. Apple didn’t allow someone to cheap out and buy substandard hardware, thus users may have experienced fewer problems.

In fact, only Windows is unstable. NetWare and *nix are far more stable. The reason why cheap components are allowed to crash the computer are the inherent design flaws of Windows - otherwise those components will simply fail without taking down the whole computer, unless those are critical subsystems (CPU and memory).

[Urban_Ranger]

*Originally posted by Sdrawkcab *
I was a bit off, sorry. Windows NT was similar to VMS, with OS/2 compatibility tacked onto it. While NT wasn’t directly based on VMS, it features a very similar design.

David Cutler designed VMS, and was the lead designer for MS-OS/2 NT after shepherding VMS to version 5.0.

This article details the incestuos ties between VMS and WNT:

http://www.winntmag.com/Articles/Index.cfm?IssueID=97&ArticleID=4494

Not really. I have used both VMS and NT and they are not similar in both functionality and design at all. For example, VMS was designed to be in an insecure environment and there are all sorts of built-in security measures. NT is like a chicken house without a door. VMS is designed to be a multiuser system, NT attempted to be, but the profiles are a really big problem. VMS users can customise their environment (a bit like Unix), something not possible in NT. The list just goes on and on.

[istara]

*Originally posted by SmileyDeath *
**It’s not a debate over which is better, it’s over why one sells better. So, it seems obvoius that macs don’t sell as much as PC’s. Where’s the debate in that? **

Debate? I don’t know - you asked the question!

My point was that this subject usually gets very heated - witness TVEblen’s post above - and more often than not Mac vs PC (however the thread actually starts) ends up Pitwards. It’s not a criticism of your question, which is a valid one. You can see from the above posts that people are already arguing about the minutiae of OSs!

[DougC]

• • • I think it goes back to…* -me being right*. All this argument about kernel-this-and-that make me laugh: most users of home PC’s don’t do anything technically demanding: they surf/chat, send e-mail and maybe play a few games, they don’t know jack cheese about the detailed inner workings of their OS, couldn’t care less and don’t want to learn, and don’t want to have to learn. They buy PC’s because the initial prices are lower and there’s larger selections of PC’s and PC-related accessories & software easily available.
      …
• And to anyone who argues “this crashes less often than that”, try to get it into your thick head: NO operating system comes with a crash-proof money-back-guarantee, and there’s reasons for that.
  ~

[merge]

*Originally posted by Scupper *
**
merge:

**

Saying Virtual PC makes the point moot is simply not true. Try playing Morrowind on Virtual PC sometime. Virtual PC also isn’t free, nor is it bug-free, in my experience.

For every app. that I have ever needed to use under windows, it has worked…
I run AutoCad through Virtual PC with Windows 2000. It is not as fast as on my P4… but it does the job for a Laptop… I don’t really play video games… so I don’t care about that…

I was comparing OS 7.5 - 9.0 to windows 95, 98 and NT. On the balance, the Mac OS was less stable. Period.

I supported a MAC network for 3+ years… never did I see a type 10 error in OS9… I did in OS8 maybe 5 times…
the entire system never went down, a few users crashed because of a problem with quicken 2000… but that was it… that network was incredibly stable…

I have been supporting a NT network for a little over 6 months now, and it has crashed completely several times…

Suggesting that I buy a non-standard mouse and program it to do things for me in the Mac OS is a bit disingenuous when you just said people didn’t have to know how to use the Mac well to use it. Find an average user who can program a 3-button mouse to do everything it does in Windows on a Mac and I’ll be extremely surprised.

My point was… normal users don’t need another button… and if they do ever find a need for it… they are more than likely an advanced user and will be able to figure out how to use it…
Apple has made a Giant leap with OSX…
it is ashame you haven’t used it…

[scott_evil]

*Originally posted by Sdrawkcab *
**PostScript support on the Mac is fabulous, particularly in OS X, where everything you see on the screen IS PostScript. Every image is a PDF graphic. That’s why OS X takes .pdf screenshots. **

To the bane of tech writers everywhere, or at least this one.

[IMHO]The migration of Mac screen grabs to .pdf was ridiculous. Opening a PDF in Photoshop to convert it to TIFF (a real graphic format, thank-you-very-much) is, in my experience, a royal pain in the ass, as Photoshop has to “rasterize generic PDF format,” which takes far too long.

Luckily, the most recent version of GraphicConverter recognizes Apple’s blunder, and is PDF-compatible.

Who the hell inserts a PDF graphic into a document? Not anyone I know.[/IMHO]

[Sdrawkcab]

Scott,

There is a way to go into the command line, I believe, and smack OS X upside the head so that it goes back to saving screenshots as .tif. I believe Apple changed it in part because people who were unfamiliar with the Mac and publishing had no idea what a tiff was.

It would be nice if web pages could display tiffs, but the files tend to be rather big.

[TVeblen]

*Originally posted by DougC *
- - - I think it goes back to… -me being right.
…

• And to anyone who argues “this crashes less often than that”, try to get it into your thick head: NO
  ~ **

Moderator’s note:

Actually I think it all goes back to my being right: these dreary, endless Mac vs PC hissy fits are a pain.

DougC, now you get this through your thick head…I already asked once that people remain civil, because IMHO isn’t the place for flaming. You ignored it, so consider yourself warned.

This sucker is closed. We’ve had too many of these “platform war” threads go rancid in just about every forum. If anybody feels obligated to start yet another fight on this topic, take it to The Pit.

TVeblen,
IMHO Moderator