Switch Side Story

Is GOO Darth Vader? Read on and discuss here. (and please, you pc zealists, keep it constructive) You may actually learn something.



link to the article...

 

I feel like it would be my duty to be the first to shout "NOOOOOOOOOOO!", but I won't.

For the first time I believe this will give an opertunity to have a non biased option of Apple v. PC... Normally it's a case of "I've always used PC and it's the BEST FULL STOP", or the other way.


Let us know how it goes

 

To be honest I've been thinking the same thing for the last few month (it must be an age thing I'm a bit older than GOO) so I'll be following this with interest. It would be nice to see how the Mac will intergrate into a 2k4 AD domain.

 

Traitor I am looking forward to seeeing the results of your delves into the alternate computer realm. Oh, be sure to tell us how good Unreal Tournament 2004 runs

 

i was gonna buy a powerbook for pretty much the same reasons last year....

the only thing that put me off was the price. However the new ibook is faily well specced and not to expensive, so i might have to go and have another look.

 

I've been thinking about getting a fully loaded G5 after seeing one in action. For day to day tasks, it looks to be a joy to use (if for no other reason - the F9 feature of Expose!).

But what it really comes down to is that I could go buy a Cadillac and enjoy a nice smooth ride with a beautiful exterior, or I could trick out a '69 Chevelle SS, paint it high gloss Monaco Orange and the squeal the tires between 2 and 3rd gear as I'm racing some punk. Two very different machines with two very different goals.

It all depends on what your wanting to do with it.

 

how would u not know that doom 3 would also be on mac
lets not forget id, the best game co., is making it =)
they put q3 out for mac, so why woulnt they put out d3

=)

 

Well I suggest your use one for a few months before you spend all that cash. I am a new media student (not going to expain, look it up if your curious)

Anyways before I went to school I was thinking about getting a Mac, after all Mac claims that they are far supperior when it comes to things like photoshop. So there I was thinking about buying one well I decided to wait and see. After all my school uses about 80% macs.

So you can see I was going into this with an open mind. Really seeing how they were going to perform. Well after about 2 months my mind was made up. Macs are pure trash. We were running G4s at the time and I really couldnt believe how slow they were. It was really a shame cause doing any work at school was such a pain. Even the 1 button mouse just was garbage, the sensitivty/acceleration on it was completely shot. So I bring my own mouse (a lovely MX500) I just cant get used to the sensitivity issues. Well this is just a minor set back but after trying to browse the net on IE5:Mac edition i found it to be very unstable.

For a computer that is supposed to be rock solid I have never had so many hang ups and program errors. Sure the OS doesnt crash but just about every program I have used crashed atleast 1 time.

Now dont get me wrong I am not trying to convence everyone that Macs are trash I am just saying before you go believe Steve Jobs bull**** (fastests PC AHAHA/first 64bit computer AHAHAHA) go try one out yourselves.

Also the whole useablity Macs seem very disorganized to me... want a new window to popup using the full screen! haha good luck! want to get one of your older windows without moving everyother window or minimizing everying well good luck.

Anyways thats my post. I would just hate to see you buy into some Mac users BS and find yourself disapointed and out $2000

 

That's true. To that extent I've also never heard anything about OS X.

Good luck GOO, I wouldn't mind a nice G5 for my video/image/audio work, however can't justify the higher cost of the units, as well as switching all my stuff from a Windows/x86 architecture over to an OS X/PPC base; I have enough trouble juggling around Windows and Linux now.

Enjoy your new toy, let us know how it goes.

 

Here is the thing:

MSIE for mac = utter trash. Use Safari.
MSIntellipoint for mac = teh win. Get a wireless intellimouse explorer, customise the speeds, acceleration, buttons to your hearts content and forget the 1-button POS.

MS is utterly schizophrenic when it comes to mac.

 

Well.. as a photographer, I'm in an industry where you get funny looks if you use anything except a Mac, so I've had to use them regularly, and still do.

My own machines are PCs though.

There's nothing wrong with Macs, and OS-X is very nice, it's just that I honestly can't see where the extra cash is going. The G5 seems no faster, and probably a little slower than my Athlon 64. You cant overclock it. It's less customisable, less upgradeable. The case only has provision for one optical drive internally, which is utter pants!

One more thing... the look factor. Everyone reckons they look so cool... well, I can't agree there either. They all look the same... identical. My G5 will look like yours, which will look like everyone elses. Sure, you can mod it.. and after all, that's what this website is about, but at least with a PC you can choose your starting point. There is only so much you can do to a G5 case to make it look different than everyone else's, and you still end up with a modded G5. Imagine if everyone on here had to modify a Dell case as that's all you could buy? It would be crap wouldn't it!

Apple: Think Different. Different my arse.. what's so different about it? It's a computer in an alloy case, with PCI slots, an AGP slot, a SATA HD, slots for DDR RAM..... hang on... it's a PC!! Sure it uses a RISC CPU which is more efficient, but it's still not exactly as swooningly fast as Apple would have use believe (hence the ITC pulling the G5 TV ad before it even aired). I've used them, and I use them with Photoshop which I have on both machines, and more often than not, I'll be using the same file: Work on the Mac in the studio, then take the file home and carry on on the PC. Guess what? No faster at all, so I can only surmise that when I start to use a 64bit OS and optimised apps, I'll kick it's ass.

Ok.. so it's not all about speed either. Fair enough, I can accept that too... I still just can't see what I'm paying this huge premium for. If I pay so much more, why am I not getting so much more. Surely it would be reasonable to epect more speed, or more useability, or more.... something!! ?

G5s are lovely, don't get me wrong... I'm not just bashing Macs, as I really do think it's a very nice machine indeed, and if it was the same price as my PC I'd happily admit that it's every bit as good, and possibly better at certain things. But why pay all that money for something that these days, is not as fast, good looking, expandable/upgradeable or customiseable?

ANyway... Good luck with it all GOO. I hope you get along with your Mac. Nice machines... I just hope you get your money's worth.

 

Actually the claim was 'First 64bit Desktop Computer' and it was the first.

On that note, any more 'OMG MACS r T3H Su><!!111ONE' posts will get canned instantly. Consider this a final warning. Please discuss the artical at hand and do not let this descend into a Mac vs PC war.

*n

 

@ GOO

great article
wonderful style and right choice of words

im young i´m a PC enthusiast

maybe its really an age thing .......

maybe its my reading style or the atmosphere i read it in.

01:40 in the morning i read it...

it was like u had invited me to your house (classic furniture, old and big, a fire was giving the room a nice quiet relaxed feeling.)
i read it and nearly came to tears - not cos youre going to apple but the way you wrote that article so great words and all so "retired" ?!?!

anyway great article waiting for the next one BUT

"...NO....i will never go to the dark side of the Force..."

 

I hpe there will be some sort of progress reports and follow ups. SHould be interesting getting feedback from someone who's A) Not biased B)writes a good article, and C) also plays games (all Mac users I know would deem games beneath them.. LOL).

Looking forward to hearing more

 

I'm doing the same thing as kingston in my college, and the entire art department uses G4s and entry level G5s. Before actually attending these classes, I'd always been intrigued by them. So I was psyched to be able to test drive the Mac platform. Now, a year later I know all about OSX and Macs in general, and though I wanted to like them, I don't like them. At all.

OSX is exactly like windows, just nicer looking, and arranged a little differently. The "innovative" and "convenient" idock is a pain to deal with. It gets extremely aggravating when your working in a program like Lightwave, and accidently move your mouse pointer to the bottom of the screen just to have your little bar jump up and cover the button your trying to press forcing you to accidently launch a new application. Move it anywhere on your desktop, hide it, make the buttons stationary, and you get the same problem. It just wasn't designed well In my opinion. Another thing that annoys me is the way programs are executed. When you click the "x" like in windows, you may think the program's shut down but noo. You have to press "control + q" or physically exit out through drop down menus. Having a lot or programs open will severly slow down the computer.

You probably won't have this problem with your laptop, but the computers we use are excruciatingly slow, even the G5's. Going from a high end PC at home to one of these is a real eye opener.

My advice: test drive a Mac for a month or so before you buy it, or you may come down with a deadly case of buyers remourse.

 

Thanks for all the comments, guys. I will be doing follow up articles regaling you all with my slide into Macdom. I've already taken delivery of my Powerbook, and things are going smoothly for the moment.

How is it any different on x86 based platforms? Open a zillion apps, expect to crawl.

GOO

 

I'm a mac user, and have a couple of PCs mainly for games and a couple of apps i can't get for mac

for what i like doing, and need to do my G4 iMac (800Mhz)is faster than my PC (XP1700), not so much the apps load faster, but just the simple fact the OS works way better for me, and i'm thinking less about using it


Oh, and someone commented about IE5, reason for it being unstable is basically it hasn't been developed in a long time, and the OS and been updated alot, download Mozilla Firefox or something, or even use apples own Safari

 

I can see exactly where you're coming from GOO. I've got an AMD XP1900 and I'm tired of the boeing 747-like noises eminating from it.

It's cumbersome, and the stability resembles that of a three legged donkey.

As a video editor, I've noticed Macinstoshes are all the rage to video edit on, due to their designs being optimized for things like that. Although my next system will be a Pentium 4, As soon as I get the money, I will probably get a G5 or G5 Powerbook to run alongside. Although I must admit when I used a PowerMac 500, I wasn't entirely impressed - with the OS mainly.

I'm sure the OS X is much better than 9.1 which I used, and probably renders much easier.

I must agree, Macs are becoming much more tempting, especially on the video editing side.

 

huh, seems to me that the constant registry tweaks i have to do to my XP machine to stop explorer.exe from crashing when its checking the dimensions of a corrupt video file, can i make sweeping generalizations about an entire class of machines?

and about the mouse argument: its been said, congratulations on being the first to bitch about it here. now go outside and play.



and now for proof that this isnt a flame. I'm really happy to see a reputable site doing something like this and showing some journalistic integrity and going into it with out retarded misconceptions. I have both x86 and dual G4 machines, i use them both equally, i hope you're experience with your laptop goes well.

 

I "kinda" took the same approach as you GOO, tired of the extremely noisy Coolermaster case with all the dials and what not. I now have a simple sexy black Shuttle sitting on my desktop cooled by a single 120mm fan.. bliss..