Modding How to Make a Mac Killer

I own a 24" iMac and a self built gaming PC (Q9550 @ 3.6Ghz / 260 Graphics Card / 4GB mem)

Two very different computers. The speed of my iMac is 3.06Ghz... and it doesnt matter in the slightest. I love that iMac. Its quiet (silent), and has the best screen on any computer Ive used. OSX is just perfect compared to Vista (in my opinion).

The only reason I have the PC is for gaming, which it performs very well at.

The thing to remember about people who buy these macs.... PRICE is not their primary concern. (It wasnt for me). I wanted something stylish, usable without any of the windows headaches (I sound like that Lauren woman from Laptop Hunters!), and silent with a great screen. I could have bought/made a PC, but to be honest.. why bother when Apple does such a great job. Same with their laptops... their new 13" macbook pro stomps on PC laptops for both style / power / and now price.

Also I paid less than £1200 for my iMac 24" ... not the crazy new prices (about £1600). The previous top end models are almost as good as massively cheaper now, thanks to Apple hiking the price of the new models.

I liked the article though and remember reading about it in the Custom PC magazine a while back.

 

I'm not sure I agree with your final paragraph saying that OS X is better than Vista. Surely its based solely on personal opinion, as I for one can't STAND OS X.

I also have to wonder wether your watercooling kit was worth it. I'd either want to cool the GPU aswell, or spend the money elsewhere on good air coolers or better hardware.

But im glad you've drawn attention to how awful the Mac's display really is.

 

Sorry if this has been mentioned before but there's a pricing error on RAM:

4GB Corsair TwinX PC2-6400 £23.74 (inc. VAT)

 

Corrected, thanks

 

erm i dunno about you guys, but most of the pictures are broken. i dunno if its my internet or something.

 

not fair comparison, you should have tried to build all-in-one computer, using smallest case available (shuttle) as iMac is using laptop components. and yes, mac is about mac os that's something you don't get on win machine so there's no point to build mac killer if you don't run mac os/hackintosh os on it. but nice article, but not fair

 

Clearly, you have not read the article you noob.

Great article guys, personally I would have opted for all-in-one for more fair comparison but you did it bit-tech-style I suppose.

Photos work fine for me

 

Your article hits the nail on the head early on, the software isn't comparable; Apple are light years ahead of windows - comparing garage band to audacity? The hardware side of things was interesting but its really got nothing todo with the 'comptetion' you were trying to compete.

 

Did you use the same OS on both computers while testing this?

OS X renders font in a more realistic (how they would look if printed) way than windows.

" The primary difference is that Microsoft try to align everything to whole pixels vertically and sub-pixels horizontally.
Apple just scale the font naturally - sometimes it fits into whole pixels other times it doesn't.
This means Windows looks sharper at the expense of not actually being a very accurate representation of the text. The Mac with it's design/DTP background is a much more accurate representation and scales more naturally than Windows which consequently jumps around a lot vertically."

From: http://damieng.com/blog/2007/06/13/font-rendering-philosophies-of-windows-and-mac-os-x

 

Great great article!

I am really happy to see such a nice article on modding because the modding comunity need a shake! Congrats staff.

BTW, I can't see lots of the photos on the article.

 

RE: Pics. We've had a look and it's not us, the internets must be broken sorry.

 

Greetings!

Well, someone has to post this. Might as well be me:

 

Not really, there are multiple ways you can build a 'mac killer': 1. An as powerful machine for less. 2. A more powerful machine for the same money. 3. As close to the hardware and style as possible. On top of that you can argue about using hackintosh for any of the builds. There's no wrong way to go about it though.

It's an interesting point the article makes about the fact the appeal of the iMac wears off. Certainly I know quite a few mac users that have replaced their keyboard and mouse after a while, which instantly takes some of the flashy polish away. Equally most people buy decent speakers. Obviously you still get quite a sleak setup but it's not as amazing as it first seems.

Meh, could witter for ages about potential for a company to build PC 'versions' of macs with nice looking screens and custom cases etc but I've got work to do.

Oh, one last thing. Water cooling?! Seriously?

 

well, if you compare to imac, build an imac clone, as simple as that. still, i would go for mac, that's for sure, btw, working on mac, win, linux and at home got vista, win 7 and hackintosh and win is just for games and the rest i do is on hackintosh, no way i'm going back to win for normal work (coding, photoshop...) that's just waste of my time and nerves. next computer will be macbook pro

 

Ubuntu and XP. Its all I need. Why buy OSX, when you can get similar FREE open source software?

 

Can a qualified Mac/Windows support tech put in his professional 2-cents worth? Because I'd be happy never to see another PC again, they are a total support nightmare compared to Macs.

Macs have never been gaming machines per-se. Yes, they have games, but rather than saying what is available, it's easier to mention what isn't available - Crysis, FEAR, Half-Life 2 - to illustrate the lean Mac gaming has away from the hardcore end of the spectrum. Microsoft has gaming all sown up with DirectX. It's that simple.

I also object to anyone who says Macs are behind the performance curve. That's a sweeping generalization that just isn't true. Okay, the 3D graphics performance is a trifle lacking, thanks to software and hardware deficiencies, but OS X's ability to read, move and cache data around a system is light-speed compared to Windows, and that makes a very big difference when working with databases and large graphics files (eg: multi-gig Photoshop projects).

Hmm, databases and large graphics files. Could that, along with the simplified support, be the reason the creative community couldn't give a stuff about Windows machines?

 

Is it me or is almost every single photo broken. I was really looking forward to see them!

 

Far more than 50% of the appeal of an iMac (desktop pc that is easy to use) is software, im not joining the retarded fanboy flamewars because I use both OS at home and at work and they both have a purpose but whether you blame Apple for having a 'closed' hardware support or whatever; the article is ultimately flawed because unless you spend a load of money on different software (much like the different sources on hardware) you not going to come close to the software offerings from Apple.

 

because you cannot run photoshop on ubuntu