Switch Side Story

I was thinking of going the shuttle route - but I was contemplating wether a P4 workstation would be better for video editing.

What do you think? lol

 

why not get a p4 shuttle? only drawback is HDD space, but you can use NAS or soemthing.



sorry for off topic...

 

Holy Sorry didnt mean for my post to come off as Macs suckorz. (well they do but thats my opion and i'm intitled to it. My opionion makes yours no less powerful... I hope that makes sense)

Anyways why is it when you bash one little thing about a mac A mac user will jump up and say ohh well pcs arent perfect. Well guess what no pc user in the world thinks pcs are perfect. Go ahead say windowsXP is trash and for the most part I will agree with you. But when I say I dont like one thing about OSX its like I have commited some crime in a mac users eyes.

And about IE5:Mac Well i did use firebired, netscape, oprea, and safari. I wasnt too pleased with any of them. They really just didnt compare to the speed of IE on a PC. I mean i want to check a website BAM the broswer is up before I can even release the button. (maybe a slight exaggeration)

I also agree with the dock. How many times have I been using photoshop and trying to hit a button on the bottom of the screen and the dock pops up and i accedently launch yet another application. I would really like to see it act more like the windows task bar. Have it up all the time using the full length of the screen.

And about all the programs open I think he was commenting on how you actually have to close most programs 2 times. I know alot of times i would get into class and there would be 5 programs up and running because someone thought clicking on the X (or red button) closes it when in fact it acts more like a minimize.

Now I do not mean to like undermine all your statements by throwing mine up here trying to prove I am right. I am just clarifying my statements.

And about the one mouse button holy **** sorry if i offended you.

 

Hmm, Macs are neat looking, efficient, but Ill just say this; Mac OS-9 was soooooooo slow! And internet explorer doesnt work worth didley... just my little bit of experience with the Mac. Then again, it was also a G-4 I am looking forward to finding out how well the new Macintosh works I want one of those huge LCDs...

 

I have had a little experience with macs in my short time here. I use to have a job editing newspaper ads that I used a G4 at. Then I volunteered at a YMCA helping them with their network. We had two really old macs for the marketing dept and I helped them get new G4's. Although there was a very strong debate about why they couldn't just use a Windows machine, they ended up with 17in studio displays and new G4's. Total cost? Right around 4 grand.

Suffice it to say, I was a little disappointed in the new macs. It dual booted 9 and OSX, and I couldn't talk the marketing people into trying OSX. They had used 9 for so many years they almost died when they thought they couldn't use it anymore. So anyway I played around in OSX and maybe the OS was a little ahead of its hardware, but I thought all the fancy stuff just slowed things down. I am all for good looking desktops, but not when it takes resources away from practical applications.

I still don't see the arguement that macs are better at graphical applications. Maybe back in the early 90's, but now? I think a lot of people are hanging on to claims made too long ago.

A friend of mine is a big mac guy and bought himself a powerbook and he loves it. I asked him about os9 and was giving him crap because it doesn't have a ping utility, and he said "Oh yeah, anything below OSX was crap." Now? He wouldn't trade his notebook for anything. I have asked him why he likes it so much better, and he was quite frank. He just does.

So I guess it comes down to taste. GOO, I hope you enjoy your test drive. I know I would gladly use a mac if I were given one, but not for the cost. I'd rather spend that extra cash on componets that I chose. Like why do I have to get a combo drive even though I know I will never burn cd's with it?

I realize this is getting to be a desktop discussion, so my apologies, but they're probably the more common macs that people use.

 

Sorry for the off-topicness GOO!!! HDD space isn't that much of a problem...
my shuttle has a 15GB Laptop HDD as the system drive, and a pair of Seagate 120GB drives running in Mirror Raid

 

About the RISC vs CISC thing, where have you gotten your info because it is not completly accurate. This is a good article outline the two technologies and their evolution.
I'll bet you didn't know that all x86 processors since the Pentium days break down their 'complex' CISC instructions into 'micro ops', many of which are completed in a single clock cycle.
What the PowerPC has as it's biggest advantage is not having the baggage of x86 processors. That reduces the overhead and design decisions that are compromises made for reverse compatability.

As for macs in general *shrugs* They're like any other computer. I personally am not fond of a number of Apple's OS conventions. A lack of useful context menus summoned by a right mouse click is really my biggest gripe, but a superfical one (Hey, I own one, I get a free gripe).

 

Hey GOO (and anyone else that has dabbled with a mac),

I've heard that when the mac hardware crashes, the whole system crashes hard. I also hear facts that disprove the 'myth', and yet I've seen no real evidence for either point.

Has anyone heard of any real truth to these claims?

 

Whenever I take part in one of these threads, I always feel like posting a disclaimer: "This is not a Mac bashing post - Please don't flame"


I use Macs all the time, but I'm far from an expert, as I don't use them at home: When at work, I'm too busy working. However, when they have crashed on me, I couldn't quit the app in question like I can on XP or NT - I had to reset the machine.

I've never noticed this legendary Mac stability either, and I've used both OS 9.1 and OS-X. I'm not saying it's unstable, as that would be ludicrous, but the Mac has crashed on me occasionally, and always spectacularly. This PC has never crashed once since I built it in January.. not once.. ever (excluding when overclocking too much).

I think we need to get this in perspective: Macs are all the same, so Apple can test a working machine, and then be confident that you are buying that very same spec of machine. A PC could be made from a collection of literally hundreds of different kinds of components, some of which may not be the best choice to use with one another. No one has control over this... not Intel, not AMD.. no one. You can buy what you want and use it with what you want. The result is that some PCs are crap. That's not an inherent fault of PCs, it's people making bad choices when they build them, and it's certainly not a problem with Windows.

 

***TRAITOR*** that is all I can say to you . . .


You are either with us or against us, so as of now you are against us . . . J/K, but why did you have to go and do this . . .

 

It's funny really. Over the years on the one hand it's been AMD vs Intel, Nvidia vs ATI, 98 vs ME vs NT vs XP vs 2000 vs Linux vs King King vs Godzilla... On the other side it's been 68k vs PPC, OS8 vs OS9 vs OSX, Nvidia vs ATI ad nauseum... Interestingly today, its the unspoken clash of the 'TRUE' dark sides... and I'm excited! (great thread...)

POV...

I've a vapo chilled A64 3400, 9800XT blablabla AND a dual G4 Mac. I've run both platforms since inception (how old am I?). For 20 years now I've found myself on both sides of almost all 'X' vs 'X' debates. While it's easy to be forward on most - one has such sacred, such sacrosanct, such religious roots, no credible fence sitter goes there - MAC vs PC...

Today I shall, and - deep breath - must say, have always considered the PC the dark side... To take my Mac would be akin to taking my right arm and my PC my left - they're my children (working on the sacred theme here ) The PC's my dark one, mischievous and forever in trouble, while the righteous Mac sits there 24/7 snubbing its 'Golden child' nose... And for good reason, the Mac's raid contains almost all my Mac files from over the last 20 years and most of my PC files from over the last 10 or so - I say 'most' because the 'dark child' being prone to tantrum has on many an occasion decided its priorities are higher than mine. (Can't help but love its evil little smile 'though!)

The Mac is a personality thing... Not mine, the machines. Anyone who updates PC's regularly will know the feeling of personality. We all fondly (and often not so) recall certain machines in our lives that made a mark... Well that sums the Mac - an incredible strength in PC personality. So why have both? - Again, an 'argument' in waiting... Why have kids? (actually the reasons for me are quite tangible - but hey, I wanna know why people have kids )

I've tried to avoid the more mundane comparisons - (yes, you put Apple mice in the bin, but then, I still need a floppy on a 2004 PC to install windows on a raid... avoid for good reason too... watch the flame about both the mouse and the floppy!) - There's not the scope in a thread like this to debate all properly with reasonable conclusion, fact is the Mac can be faster - and NOT. It does have better software - and NOT. It is more expensive - and NOT (my PC owes more than a new G5! True..). It's prettier - and NOT. It's more reliable, intuitive and easier to use - ahhh, well...

Where's your next installment GOO?

 

Thanks Pookehead, that post answered some other questions.

Oh, and I wasn't trying to come across bashing the macs...I'm actually looking into the notebooks

 

I'm really interested to know how well G5s do in a networked/school environment.

I've been using both macs and PCs since I was about 6 covering just about everything from DOS 6/Windows 3.11(on a 486 with a HUGE 4mb of RAM ) to a pre-release of longhorn and from Apple IIs to scratching the skin of OSX on a G4 powerbook (but not even an hour using it and definately nothing I could draw any conclusions from). I use linux on both desktops and servers on a regular basis.

My main use of macs has always been at school because I have PCs at home and that's just the way things are - I'm not opposed to macs, I just don't use them at home. My primary school had a piecemeal network of old macs - I think they had one or two of those hip new iMacs when I left. I really can't say anything fair about these computers as they had no-one but me who even really knew how to use them and couldn't afford any even half-decent software (Can you say "claris works"?).

At my current school I have used G3s for internet browsing (both IE and netscape), Word/office stuff + image and video editing. They only thing I could even stand doing on them was video editing. They just plain sucked at everything else - slowness, 2 or 3 hard crashes every lesson and mouse imput queueing (sp) - and for this the (imcompetent) admin(s) blamed the network saying that Macs just aren't suited to a networked environment. Are they right and would these computers have been just fine sitting at home on a desk? Or are our admins too useless to set them up properly (like they are with our windows boxes)? Or were/are G3s just crap?

To the point, if they were replaced with G5s (assuming the admins knew what they were doing which they don't) would this solve these problems?

I have to say, although my mac experience has been bad my experience with the PCs at school hasn't been any better. We have 2 rooms of new 2.6b P4s running windows XP slower than my P3 runs Debian. To add to that the (expensive) LCD monitors have dead pixels and strange interference problems, soft crashes become hard crashes because we can't access task manager and most contex menus have been disabled making the mice almost as bad as mac mice anyway.

 

Sounds like a case of people not knowing what they're doing to me. To say that apples are bad on a network is really dumb, as they've had more network support, both hardware, and OS for years. Even really old Macs had ethernet in-built.. I'm talking 10+ years ago here.

No.. that's nonsense.

My old college had PCs and Macs on the same network, and it was quite a huge network spanning several campuses... thousands of machines. The Macs were no better, or worse than the PCs.

 

I'm working on it, don't worry.

 

Ok here we go... no flaming please.

I am a mac person plain and simple. I also have a pc business, plain and simple so I know my way around pcs and macs. I am also A+ and applecare certified. here we go.

I have used macs since the 512k back in the early 1980's, and then we got a 486 and the mac was over in out house, until I grew up and got a sawtooth 450 MHz G4 and never looked back. I will not say that x86 or ppc are any better of worse than each other, I think they all do their work good. The main difference that keeps me mac is the os and programs, mainly final cut pro 4 and dvd studio 2, etc. I use them day in and day out and need them. I also need pc programs, autocad 2004, mathcad, and others.

OS X is rock solid and works nice, expecially panther. it works well with windows and sits on our win 2000 network fine. For a graphic designer it is awsome.

Now speed... yes macs are slow, characteristic of the os they run. Have you ever ran an incarnation of linux in graphical mode (KD DESKTOP), it is no speed demon either. Macs and unix love ram and apple neet oput at least 512 in their pro machienes, my 450 MHz ran flawlessly with 1.5 GB ram and it used it all the time. PCs do not need as much ram for windows but the complete slows down more than with other programs open than with mac.

I will leave it up to you but when the G5 gets to 3 GHz I am buying... but I pc I will always have.

Leave the dark side and join the mac revolution... good choice.

 

Ok.. maybe I'm missing something, but how can a OS.. any OS be better or worse for graphic design? If I'm missing something fundamental, forgive me.

By which time Prescotts will be running at insane speeds, thus overcoming the pipeline trade off; we'll be on PCI-Express, and bus speeds will have outweighed the DDR2 latency lags, and God only knows what AMD will be up to. Basically, your argument stands so long as PC development stands still... which it wont.

 

Interesting read....im sort-of in the same position, and can agree with many of the points you are making

I bought an old ibook, to try out os x etc.
Im a student, so its not always an age thing....! But it meant i was on a budget, hence the g3 based ibook.

I hope you enjoy the experience. I am, for the most part. Only little thing that bugged me was the os x anti-aliasing, it makes text look a bit diff from PC's - i guess you either like or dislike.

I have used windows since 3.1-xp, and still use xp/2k on a daily basis. However i have seriously thought of flogging my p4 desktop to buy an ibook ?

I'm looking forward to reading more of your articles, and hope this doesn't turn into a flame war.

 

Most people have to hard reset because they don't know the equivalent of the '3-finger-salute' on Windows. On Mac, Alt-Option-Escape brings up the Force Quit menu, equivalent to task manager.

 

Unfortunatly thats true, i had to teach that to the admins at my school because they are not very mac friendly at all...

Heres my 2 cents, feel free to do with it what you please, but its my opnion, so i dont care

Go Get Linux, and STFU


Ok, now in all seriousness, i'll join in on our little topic here:
I use and own both macs and PC's, new and old, all the time.
My primary computer is a PC, but while at school im on a Mac 95% of the
time, and im at school ALOT.
My school runs a Novel Client server, and the macs are happily connected to that. My Graphics department is the only area that runs macs, but thats where i am.
Im on the admin team for my school, so i see problems from both.

My opnion is this: Macs and PC's both do the same thing as for networking ability. They both run fine, they can both happily talk to eachother, and they both have their little problems here and there, but thats to be expected.

Macs dont show their age as much as PC's do. We run G3's, G4's, and G5's, and while the G4's and 5's are better then the 3's, the 3's are still up and running. All Macs are running Panther. While PC's require upgrades alot more to run XP/2000. However, PC's seem to be quicker at the stupid things, like opening up a Explorer window, and IE.

However, i do agree with the point that Macs are a little bit more stable then PC's. Im not fustrated as much with OSX then i am with XP, both clean and tweaked versions. However, the thing that really annoys me is that when a mac "crashes," it goes down HARD. Now, maybe its becasue the admins at my school (myself included, but to a lesser degree) dont know as much about macs, but they are ALOT harder to troubleshoot. Open-Firmware is pure ****, while BIOS reigns supreem. When a mac crashes, we have to reimage the drive 75% of the time, and i think that might be more towards the way the OS writes info, as they seem to get corrupt alot easier.

Bottom line: Both suck equaly. I think its the general masses ignorance towards macs that causes so much hate (notice my choice of words ).

Just remember: Had Job's licenced out Mac when Gates did with Win, we would all be using Macs now and saying that PC's suck the big one

(sorry about the long post, just got back from debate team )