MAC or WINDOWS ( MAC 4 EVER)?

2007-03-28 20:08:29 UTC

I've been a Mac user since 1992, shortly after my daughter was accepted by MIT and wanted one for use there, and I looked it over and used it, and thought, "I gotta get myself one of those ..."

In the years since, I've known a lot of people who have to use Wintel at work, and bought Wintel for home use, mostly for compatibility or familiarity.

And, I've known a lot of people who use Wintel at work, because they have to, and are Mac at home, because they know compatibility is not that much of an issue. And they gripe about Windows, a lot.

My daughter only commutes to her office two days a week, and telecommutes the other three days, and says her home Mac runs what she needs to run faster thru her office Wintel, than the office Wintel runs it when she's in the office.

In my own experience, the student next door spent a lot of time on my Mac, and finally talked the parents into getting a computer. Despite my advice, and offer to help with the cost, as an "early" grad present for the student, and the student's own pleas, they went with cost and got an Acer. I still had the kid from next door on my Mac, a lot. A science project assignment came up, and the kid did all the work on the Acer. When it came time to print, the printer wouldn't work. I tried everything I could come up with, but it was no go. So, we copied all the files onto CD, and brought them over to my Mac, opened the files, imported them and published the whole thing. I gave the Acer files back, along with a CD of the files as the Mac finally saved them, and said, "Try to even open those files on your Acer."

But, I don't know of anyone who uses Mac at work and is Wintel at home. If you're familiar with Mac, Wintel just doesn't cut it ...

milkfilk

2007-03-26 20:29:42 UTC

Stating market share is the least-technical reason. 5% market share should have 5% viruses. But that's ok, not everyone in the mass media populus has the time to learn what 'sudo' is. How about this. Windows is open by default (create a file on C:) and Mac is closed by default. Vista copies Mac and so Vista fixes this (called UAC).

I own both. Who cares. I use Windows at work because I have to. I use Windows to game at home. There are many apps that don't exactly translate completely to Mac. Mac's don't always have the vast free library of freeware that PC's have but the quality of the apps you find is much greater because XCode is amazing.

Mac or Windows? Macs run Windows. I don't know what the point of this is.

Mac haters are everywhere, they often cite "no one cares about Macs, that's why there are no viruses". It's laughable. There are no viruses on Macs because of how it's designed. Vista will level the playing field a bit. Microsoft has a ton more legacy code to deal with and that will never change. They can't break compatibility, think about it, what would you do if you old apps stopped working? Wouldn't you think about switching? Maybe?

They won't pull the plug though. They'll have a compatibility layer like Apple did with Rosetta/Classic. Then they can do some major overhauling like getting rid of COM, getting rid of C: (what does C even mean? DOS legacy that's what.) and rearchitecting applications so that you can do what you can do on Mac, for example installing Firefox on a USB key. Or maybe moving apps around where you want them without getting the "are you sure you want to do this?" prompt that's caused by Windows registry design. Macs have special .application folders that are self-contained so you can move Firefox to the desktop, run it, move it to an external drive, run it and even move it to the Trash and run it. Once you get used to drag-and-drop installs, you don't want to go back to Setup.exe/Install.exe/InstallWizard.msi/Setup.msi or whatever other million ways that MS has piled up over the years.

On the other hand, I own both. Macs are NOT perfect. The hardware is 15% more. Crappy apps still crash (VLC). And gaming is pathetic. But it's a function of market share (not viruses), Apple can't command the vendors like MS can. Hopefully more people buy iPods and think "hmm, this is so much better than the Zune, maybe I should keep trying out stuff", which is happening to some extent. But nothing will really change.

Apple has the right idea, I'm rooting for them because they at least try to use open-standards but it's going to be a long way before all these fanboys get their dream of "Microsoft is going down!". It's just not in the cards. Apple will hopefully take over the home as a consumer product, simplify computers and make people stop saying "I hate computers" because what they really mean is "I hate Windows".

Macs aren't better. Macs just suck less.

chase.casey

2007-03-26 19:26:30 UTC

I am a heavy Windows User but lately Windows has been very backwards. I will never resort to Mac though, too much is incompatible to switch 100% over to mac.I do respect Mac for alot of the changes they have made to become more user friendly.

Final Verdict - Windows

Edit to youngdominic - man you should never be in sales because you are boring. I read your post and started laughing and after watching your clips it makes me laugh even more at the fact you think you cant do those things in windows. Its called a graphics card. But honestly the reason I laughed is for that to be your arguing point, do you think the average consumer would go "GIVE ME THAT" no because first thing they think of would be, what nerdy **** why would I want or need that. All I can think of would be a nerds bragging rights which dont equal much to the consumers. Correct me if I'm wrong

kirillbravo

2007-03-26 19:36:08 UTC

I personally support Windows all the way, because macs, well, they are slow and incompatible....

And you know how mac says that they have no viruses and winsdows has thousands? You know why? Because hackers, and people who create viruses target windows to humiliate them, and dont target macs because no one really cares about them. Windows rose so high that hackers want to bring it down, and throughout the years they can't succeed. Macs are too low for anyone to really care about them. Their only motivation is to give free computers to schools in order to get young kids to like them....

Sorry for all people who love macs out there, but that is the truth.

Edit to the next 2 responses:

Well you guys do make a good point, but there is only one difference. I try not to look at the level of user-friendliness of the certain OS because each one has its differences, good ones and bad ones. I try to look at the technical part, and with macs, thats a problem. They have a pretty good design, but as someone said, they are not as good when used for gaming. Also they have many bugs, and freeze frequently. And I want to point out that you see macs advertise their products, while windows does not. Why? Because macs are desperate to increase their popularity, and windows knows that there are so many loyal windows customers out there, that there is no need to advertise.

Now Linux, thats a different story. I am not going to say anything because I honestly don't know much about it. I bet it has many bugs and many good things too.

The point is that all of the operating systems have their advantages and disadvantages, and in my opinion Windows is best of all. Even though Windows Vista is very much like some version of Mac, Vista improved all of the features, making it, in my opinion, the best operating system of all.

2007-03-26 20:30:54 UTC

Mac is far, far better than PC.

But Linux is vastly superior to both of them - the bullet-proof architecture of Linux makes it completely immune to all viruses and malware. Good hackers have tried to write Linux viruses and failed. As long as a Linux user is running as user (not root) then basically there isn't anything out there which can cause harm - it's like trying to attack a tank with a pellet gun.

Vista STILL only has one desktop workspace. In Linux I have twenty (yes 20) which I can flip through effortlessly by spinning the scroll wheel on the workspaces selector. In Linux I have built-in support for a HUGE range of devices which a Windows PC needs extra drivers for. In Linux I have the stunning state-of-the-art 3D cube desktop interface which is years ahead of Vista Aero. That's just a few things - there are plenty more reasons to get Linux.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9ClklzJQ7k

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzyHoRklWLE