Mac vs PC (yes, really) [Switched!]

[aeromech]

I don't know if this point has been made yet here because I grew weary reading all the posts but I'd like to make an important point if I can.

Apple isn't just a computer company any more. They build a suite of products. All of these products are made to work well together. The iPhone talks to the iMac which talks to the iPad which talks to the Apple TV, etc.

It's not an accident that virtually all smart phones now look like the iPhone which came out first. Remember all the jokes when the iPad appeared? Now everyone makes some kind of pad device. The point is that Apple innovates. All the others copy.

Lastly, someone mentioned the Microsoft store. They built one a couple doors down from the Apple Store in Fashion Valley. They copied the look and feel of the Apple store all the way down to how the employees wore their ID badges.

Apple Store


Ms Store

[pacifico23]

Macs ared a complete gimmick and overpriced compute rnowadays thats markted to the hipsters and the uneducated. People are willing to pay 2k for an i5 1tb comp just cause it comes with a thin screen. PC s are monster houses nowadays. And.. coming from the gun culture... WHY WOULDNT YOU WANT TO BUILD A PC?!?!?!?! Building pcs are the same as building AR's, AK's etc. It is so much fun! The same if not easier than building an AR, just as cheap and you can end up with a 1400 dollar PC for like 700. Right now to build a pc is the way to go. Finding deals and the sick upgrades you want is one of the best parts of pc building, just like rifle building.


I go to these sites as much as I go to slick guns etc.
reddit.com/r/battlestations.com
reddit.com/r/buildapc.com
reddit.com/buildapcsale.com

[cruising7388]

anyone that think the latest version of Windows is a great thing needs to have a psych exam ASAP.

Is there an app for that?

[like2angle]

A network administraor working in an educational environment. I work on 100s of Macs, PC,s and some Linux too.

The basic hardware is the same. The repair difficulty on a PC, easy. The repair difficultly on a Mac, Hard. Failure rate, the same.

It is true new PCs come with bloatware but unlike my cell phone it can removed.

PCs are cheaper But susceptible to viruses. They are far more backward compatible.

No difference as far as graphics anymore but if you spend a lot of time in Excel PCs do it much better.

When you talk servers, Windows server is night and day better than OSX server. I won't bore you with details here but I work on both.

Last point if you build Your own, you can build faster machine than you could ever buy and at half the price of a Mac or high end OEM which would have to be a PC.

If you learn Linux which OSX rides on you will learn what makes the tech world go around.

My quick thoughts,

Steve

[the86d]

...It's not an accident that virtually all smart phones now look like the iPhone which came out first. Remember all the jokes when the iPad appeared? Now everyone makes some kind of pad device. The point is that Apple innovates. All the others copy.

Mmmm-hmmm.


iOS* is Open Source BSD kernel based, right?

[like2angle]

To the comment that apple inovates. They buy out the real innovators and repackage as thier own. Jobs and Wozniac started out as hackers.
The subcontractors in China have the worst working conditions. Even the Chinese gov found them to have human rights violations by Chinese standards. When I was a kid we boycotted such companies...

[Cowboy T]

The reason Mac's are "less vulnerable" to viruses is because they make up such a small percentage of home computers. If you're going to attack computers in mass numbers, do you design a virus that will work on 80-90% of computers in the world, or the 10-20% that are Mac/Linux/Unix?

Mac's hardware is grossly overpriced (because the only people that make hardware for Mac is Apple), there are loads of software you can't run on a Mac (which is why so many people BootCamp Windows... defeating the whole purpose of running Mac OS anyway), and their computers are much more difficult to upgrade.

Windows has it's downsides as well, but if you run a decent anti-virus/malware program, and stop downloading free stuff illegally with shady P2P programs and websites, you're experience will be just fine with Windows. Windows 8... you can keep. You can still find 7... it's an excellent OS.

I heard something (somewhere) once, that was basically:
"Owning a Mac is like owning a car that gets 100 mpg, doesn't require any maintenance, will last over a million miles, but only runs on 5% of the roads".

You make a good point in the third paragraph (be careful what you install), and I totally agree with the second and fourth ones.

The first paragraph, though, presents only part of the story. The reason Macs don't get targeted as much is indeed because there aren't as many of them. But most of your Internet servers run Linux and Free/Net/OpenBSD, so that's a Big Fat Target (TM) right there. However, Linux and *BSD servers don't get compromised nearly to the degree that Microsoft Windows servers do. That's because Linux and *BSD are simply better designed under the hood. They're not as compromiseable by design. Therefore, it's just plain easier, from a technical aspect, to target Microsoft Windows OS's. They're just plain easier to "pwn", be they desktops or servers.

If I'm running a good OS on it, like Ubuntu or something similar, I have no problem whatsoever running a "PC", i. e. IBM-compatible, and actually prefer it somewhat. This is due to the reasons stated in kalimus's second and fourth paragraphs.

[Marinos]

I've owned many PCs. Most recently a Dell desktop base model and one Dell laptop that cost me about $1500. I can't remember the individual models because I turned them into targets. The problems never end with PCs. I don't even know where to start. I guess the straw that made me switch to Mac was Windows Vista. I switched to spite Microsoft and all of their products. It wasn't that I liked Macs, it was that I had just gotten soo fed up with Microsoft's lack of quality and their careless attitude. It was the best decision I ever made. I have since owned 2 Macbook Pros. Both still work and have NEVER had a problem. They still run as fast as the day I bought them. On top of this I dropped one of them from the second story on accident and it survey with a big dent in the aluminum. Talk about build quality. I'd like to see a PC do that. I run parallels and do not ever have any compatibility issues. I hardly use windows anymore as it seems everything is now Mac OS compatible.

[Cowboy T]

Mmmm-hmmm.
iOS* is Open Source BSD kernel based, right?

Kinda-sorta; it's the XNU kernel, which is basically the Mach microkernel with elements of FreeBSD bolted on top of it. That's why Apple hired several BSD hackers and where Darwin came from. But that's like saying Microsoft Windows is "Open Source BSD based" for having the BSD TCP/IP stack, which it's had for years. Doesn't mean it actually is Open Source; far from it.

In the specific case of iOS, i. e. the ARM port of Darwin, Apple have not released that as Open Source, to my knowledge; maybe that's changed recently and I just hadn't heard about it yet.

[JMP]

Apple is the Daniel Defense of electronics.

[Dutch3]

A network administraor working in an educational environment. I work on 100s of Macs, PC,s and some Linux too.

The basic hardware is the same. The repair difficulty on a PC, easy. The repair difficultly on a Mac, Hard. Failure rate, the same.

It is true new PCs come with bloatware but unlike my cell phone it can removed.

PCs are cheaper But susceptible to viruses. They are far more backward compatible.

That is the reason we are ditching the Macs in the K-8 district where I work. Every Mac OS X version update further reduces or eliminates compatibility with older hardware and software.

Since we are a low-budget district in an impoverished area, we only buy a few new computers at a time. We have a wide range of various Mac OS machines, and maintaining our student applications at a version that will run on all of them has become impossible.

Many applications are now online, and the older Macs won't run a recent web browser or current versions of Java and Flash. That makes them nearly useless in a school environment.

[the86d]

Apple is the Daniel Defense of electronics.

NOT with 100% success rate of NSA malware injection...

[like2angle]

As Dutch said not only do you have to regularly have to update OSX to be compatible but as he mentioned and I previously eluded to its not long before the computer is no longer supported and must be replaced. I too have to way that cost when purchasing computers at my school. We can upgrade our PCs and run them for 10 years.

[NYT]

I don't know if this point has been made yet here because I grew weary reading all the posts but I'd like to make an important point if I can.

Apple isn't just a computer company any more. They build a suite of products. All of these products are made to work well together. The iPhone talks to the iMac which talks to the iPad which talks to the Apple TV, etc.

It's not an accident that virtually all smart phones now look like the iPhone which came out first. Remember all the jokes when the iPad appeared? Now everyone makes some kind of pad device. The point is that Apple innovates. All the others copy.

Lastly, someone mentioned the Microsoft store. They built one a couple doors down from the Apple Store in Fashion Valley. They copied the look and feel of the Apple store all the way down to how the employees wore their ID badges.

that is a lot of ignorance in such a short post. im guessing you are new to the technology world and never used an ibm simon, nokia 9000, handspring, ipaq, palm treo, etc. almost 15 years later apple released the iphone.

Apple is the Daniel Defense of electronics.

that is an insult to DD. DD makes quality products at an extremely reasonable price point...

[kalimus]

I am not sure I have to justify my computer purchase to a random stranger but I will try.

In my case at least:

I wanted a Mac.

Then came a job:
"Do you know Mac and can you support it?" Answer, "Yes."
And because it was a challenge to see if I could use BootCamp, and to say I did, for a job.
Here is money and a new skill set.

Why would anyone want a Corvette if a cheap car would serve the purpose of getting from A to B?

Why would anyone buy a Rolex when a Timex would serve?

Why would anyone buy a mansion or a 72" tv?

Why would anyone buy an AR?

Short answer: They want one.

Not sure why you think asking a question is the same as asking for a justification. It's a legitimate question which none of your analogies properly compare to. Specifically I wanted to know why people bought Macs and dual booted them to Windows. That's not the same question as why would you buy a Rolex, Corvette, big screen, AR, etc (All of which have better responses than "Because I want to"). It's more along the lines of asking why you buy your AR and replace the charging handle, or why you add a quad rail, or why you replaced the trigger. "Because I want to" is a totally useless response that gives no helpful information, and doesn't help me to understand why people do this any more than I previously did. You installed BootCamp for work (or so I understand). That was the answer to my question. Anyway...

I completely understand why people buy Macs. That wasn't the source of my question. I don't understand why they buy Macs and put Windows on it, since Windows itself is the cause of the problems, not the hardware. Windows gets the viruses, Windows has the registry tweaks, Windows has the driver errors... or whatever other complaints people have about it. I totally get that. So those people buy a Mac. I get that too. Then people put Windows on their Mac, effectively making the most expensive Windows machine (for the money) possible, and bring onto themselves all the same problems the Windows machines have that drove them to buy a Mac in the first place.