Modding How to Make a Mac Killer

I work at a school, we have much less Macs but they are alot 'easier' to fix, and if there is something you can't do with the Mac 'policies' then you have the seriously powerful unix underneath. Apple's remote desktop is pretty awesome too

 

Err, what was the final price of the final build?

 

Oh god no, that's nasty

 

I've always though of the iMac as a laptop, you can't overclock it and you have to pay over the odds to get half decent graphics.

 

Conclusion is, as always: If you want a mac, get a mac.

And the same works the other way: if you want a powerful desktop computer, get a powerful desktop computer.

It's such a HUGE nobrainer for me personally, I would never, ever get an Imac. An Apple laptop maybe or a power mac maybe... Those have atleast some merits in my eyes, while the imac is just an all-in-wonder solution for those who really WANT one.

EDIT: And oh, thanks for the great article, and the pics are working for me.

 

Not just graphics, performance all-around. You pay for the looks, the status, and the brand.




I don't hate Macs, but I just don't see a use for them in my lifestyle. That's not to say they're worthless, I just find my money is better spent on a Windows-based machine than an under-powered good looking slab of crafted aluminum.


Whether Windows/OSX is superior though I don't really see how one can claim. Both have their uses, cons & pros. Try taking a Mac to a large corporate network and see how long it takes you to connect to the active directory and have everything working exactly like with the Windows machines. /shrug


On the other hand, I absolutely love doing video editing with Final Cut Pro.

 

I'll take the iMac as well.

I lol'd at the Vista part. I'm sorry but Vista is like WinME, it fails. No computer with Vista can outdo anything, even a Mac. Thats not me being a fanboy, thats me being honest... and to be honest the whole thing seems biased, but whatever. I'm wondering why BT didnt pick the iMac with the 4850 over the GT120. Surely that would have given you a better run for your money... And what oasked said, you cant take an all in one and compete against it with a self build. If your going to compete do it by class or rank (ie, iMac vs Del XPS All in one), that way its an even match and not some fanboy review page.

 

agree and to be honest, how many games on mac do you have that you need powerful gpu? sims? and as i said before, it's all down to os so ppl who say that mac is underpowered don't actually know what they're talking about because if you work on mac or own one you know that last issue you'd have on mac is speed as everything is just very snappy and smooth and it just works, you don't think about it at all.

 

QFT. You dont really need anything powerful on the Mac to play Sims or anything in that category. Most people dont use Macs to game on anyway, and if they do, its in BootCamp or VM Fusion, which means its running under Windows. Macs are used for Music, Photo and Video editing primarily. Does Windows come iLife 09? I didnt think so. And OS X coming with bloatware or "as much software as PCs these days"? Might want to go and check yourself there, because OS X, has never to date contained bloatware, or any other crap, only the stuff that was either manufactured by Apple or bought by Apple and used in their releases. PCs on the other hand, well....

Therefore

 

tbh most mac users dotn play games though, id assume.

brilliant atricle, shame its been stolen from CPC now i see more and more articales coming on here, im going to end my subscription, but keep em coming on here please

 

Agree with that one, ARD is crazy powerful. We were fiddling with a monitor cailbration program, needed Admin mode to run. Then we figured out it just needed write access to the colorsync profiles so I changed the permissions for it on the 70 Macs in the studio by issuing one shell command through ARD. Took about 5 minutes in total.

OSX is what happens when you build a GUI on BSD and spend a decade and a half updating it. XP/Vista is what happens when you build a GUI on top of MSDOS and hack it for a decade and a half to fill in for all the features it's missing from OSX.

 

Yes, i read the same article in CPC magazine. If it's a case of more re-cycled articles i guess i'll stop buying the magazine.

 

QFT!!!!

 

I sort of enjoyed the article, but i really object to you guys summing up an afternoon of subjective experiences and then declaring a winner. I suspect some more work then that went into this, but that is exactly how the article reads.

I also don't think that you held true to your original premise. You wanted to beat Apple on every single point, but clearly abandoned all hope when it came to ease of use. IMHO, to be completely fair, you should have specced a machine from an etailer and have them assemble it for you. Even then you would have lost to the Mac, but at least you would have tried.

Another thing i havent seen you guys mention is that by the time you have your system up and running, you have voided warrantee on both the CPU (overclocking) and the case dremel.

I will forgive you for the modding, as Apple was allowed to design their case from the ground up in this competition, but i cannot help but think about what Apple could have squeezed into the package for the same price if they had abandoned the "ease of setup" requirement like you guys did.

Since you never bothered to sum everything up, i'll be so courteous for you

Code:

Category		Apple iMac	iMac Killer

Setup			++		DNF: ---
Looks			++		+
Core Spec		-		+
Display			-		++
2D Performance		-		+
Gaming			--		++
Warranty and Support	+		-
Noise			++		+
Power Consumption	+		-
Audio			-		+
Software		-		-
Satisfaction		+		++
Value			-		+

-----------------------------------------------------

Totals:			0		+6

I think i've been reasonably fair to the article here, please correct me if i got anything horribly wrong.
However, imho your iMac Killer is still disqualified for not competing on the first event

Now, aside from all that, i'll have the iMac Killer over the iMac any day of the week and most night too. This whole rant post was coming from soembody who is horribly PC-biased from the get-go

 

I saw 'Mac Killer' in the title and pictured a guy in a cowboy hat carrying a shovel and a bottle of Tequila.

 

I also can't see some of the pictures.

 

Oh the never ending story. Mac vs PC
I don't understand that "Mac killer" thing. PC can "kill" a Mac as much as a Mac can "kill" a PC

 

To be honest, though I like the amazingly sexy iMac, I'll take the Mac Killer. I've got a Mac Pro and I like the rig quite a bit. I've even helped my friends 'transition' from PC to Mac.

The Mac Killer looks pretty good and is customizable. For some odd reason, I don't trust a computer I can't get into and work on (and, yes, occasionally destroying.)

 

yeah that's exactly what people who buy mac's are expecting. Very clean... NOT!... a very good build, yes... a mac killer, no

I stick to the bit-tech machine... I would of chosen maybe a Lian Li case, but hell, that's just me

 

Sorry, I don't pay for brands, and my status doesn't go any higher when I carry something that looks like a toy.

Correction: Windows 7 is what happens when you create an OS from scratch and tweak & update it for nearly 20 years.

You are clearly confusing the 9x line with the NT line.