Mac Or Pc

[Willy]

This is was of those im pondering a new laptop with all the money im about to get.

So as it sais really, a mac or a pc.

For and against arguments please. Not just one sided arguments.

Willy

ps are macs still the leader for photo and video editing (new hobby of mine) and are they paticuraly any better or worse at website creation (dont see why they would be any better or worse but hay still might aswell ask)

[poopipe]

ps are macs still the leader for photo and video editing (new hobby of mine) and are they paticuraly any better or worse at website creation (dont see why they would be any better or worse but hay still might aswell ask)

No and No

I dislike macs on principle but I'll try to be objective

If you want a wide choice of lots of different applications and games you want a PC.

If you know exactly which applications you want to run, they're definitely available on Mac and you don't think you'll want to try anything new then a Mac would be perfect.

I'm not even going into the money - we're talking about laptops here so youll get raped either way

[Ash-Kennard]

macs are for spacs

pc is where its at

[Tomm]

I am one of those Mac users who appreciates the differences between Macs and PCs, and chose the Mac. And I'm not a complete idiot either, I just prefer the way Macs work, how they feel, how they look. Try one and see - if you can get to an Apple shop then go and have a play. I'm not going to try and convince you, because I don't really care what you do. I'm sure you can use google for different opinions anyway.

Just don't be blinded by the fact that 95% of people on here will use a PC, and they will never have used a Mac properly. For some reason, everyone seems to think they're qualified to talk about how rubbish Macs are - See this dumbass here:

macs are for spacs

pc is where its at

You're right, I never thought of it like that

[Willy]

Ive had the pleasure of using a mac as 3 of my close friends have them, I must say I was surprised at how they felt to mess around on.

Poopipe I've been researching your claims on the compatibility issues and must say all applications I use now on a my desktop are available on a mac.

I'm not trying to cause an argument here, but is there anything that you can do on a PC that isnt compatible with a mac, all PC games im interested in by the way are available on a mac, just cost more.

Leave money out of the equation here by the way.

Willy

[Tomm]

Ive had the pleasure of using a mac as 3 of my close friends have them, I must say I was surprised at how they felt to mess around on.

Poopipe I've been researching your claims on the compatibility issues and must say all applications I use now on a my desktop are available on a mac.

I'm not trying to cause an argument here, but is there anything that you can do on a PC that isnt compatible with a mac, all PC games im interested in by the way are available on a mac, just cost more.

Leave money out of the equation here by the way.

Willy

If you want games you should probably just get a PC. Although I'm not sure many laptops are any good for games, I am sure that Mac laptops are even worse. Personally I never really play games - only internet ones and that xmoto game so my Mac is perfect. But for anything more than that I'd get a PC.

[Fixed Pants™]

Macs for efficiency, non f**king up (most of the time?) and non compatibility.

Windows for shitness, f**king up and compatibility

Edited February 18, 2007 by Fat Pants

[poopipe]

Just don't be blinded by the fact that 95% of people on here will use a PC, and they will never have used a Mac properly. For some reason, everyone seems to think they're qualified to talk about how rubbish Macs are (See the dumbass below).

har

I'm one of the 5% - before I get ignored. I've been semi-regularly using one of the top of the range "quad xeon in a shiny aluminium case" macs at work for a few months now under both XP (with bootcamp) and OSX. I like the look & feel of OSX a lot but I couldn't move over to it as a main machine because of the lack of application support.

edit:: everyone posted while i was rambling

missing app wise...

3ds max would be the one I missed the most - Maya's available on Mac but the modelling tools are shite.

I use a lot of other small 3d tools that aren't available on Mac as well so it'd bugger my working day up a fair bit. To be fair, most of the stuff I do is realtime 3d graphics related so it's fairly specialist and techy - the available graphics engines and stuff are almost all windows based - as are most of the export tools to go with them.

Edited February 18, 2007 by poopipe

[Nuke Bowel]

macs are for spacs

pc is where its at

Thats really quite funny.

Mac ***.

mac will own pc every time.

You are true in saying mac is leading the photo industry.

The way I look at it...

if you want an average computer to do basic stuff get a pc.

If you want a computer that will actually work and do the job properly buy a mac.

Photo, music, video... you name it mac owns.

And...

If you buy a newer one you can just boot up in windows for games and shit.

Personally i wont touch it, because I have not trust in xp.

Edited February 18, 2007 by ilukeee

[Tomm]

har

I'm one of the 5% - before I get ignored. I've been semi-regularly using one of the top of the range "quad xeon in a shiny aluminium case" macs at work for a few months now under both XP (with bootcamp) and OSX. I like the look & feel of OSX a lot but I couldn't move over to it as a main machine because of the lack of application support.

edit:: everyone posted while i was rambling

Yeah I seem to remember you posting about how you had to admin some Macs + bootcamp so I guess you know your way around them. In which case your opinion is valid

I use my mac for just the usual stuff - internet, music, watching DVDs occasionally, MSN, downloading stuff. Oh and I do my work on MS Word:Mac. Unless you're into some wierd stuff then there's a mac alternative to just about every program - And some unique ones too (Quicksilver). But like I say - Macs aren't really made for games. Having said that, the couple of games I have played have been decent for the shitty old fx5200 card that's in my aging Powerbook. So it's just the lack of support for games rather than any hardware limitations etc.

[Nuke Bowel]

p.s

If your going to buy one and your in school, college uni... or whatever, make sure you buy it through the education store.

You will get a shit load knocked off.

Well... my'n with my upgrades should have cost just over £1200 but with the student discount I got it for around £920

[poopipe]

You are true in saying mac is leading the photo industry.

From my experience with a fair number of production houses in both London and LA that just isn't true. Not to say that they don't use Macs or a mix of the two (because they do) but the majority of places these days seem to be generally PC based - reasons include money (Mac = expensive), software support, hardware support (no expensive graphics cards for Macs) and technical support (windows Admins are a lot easier to find)

ten years ago it was almost all Mac - which is where the reputation comes from.

[beigemaster]

Sorry dont want to steal the thread but I was just wandering what people thought of Vaio's? IMO they look the sh1t and heard they are also pretty sweet for photo/video editing but are they on par with Macs? oh and we're obviously talking about their laptops.

[craigjames]

a vaio is just sony's brand name for there pc's and laptops. ive got a 17" vaio laptop and the screen is incredible, really bright and really crisp, high resolution for a laptop too 1900x1200. the screens are the best bits about vaio's imo, mines been reliabel, solidly built, its taken a few tumbles and its never done me wrong. i would say sony are closest to coming to the style that the macs have, again only my opinion.

but really if you cant afford a high spec one theyre not very good value for money and you can get better hardware spec elsewhere if your not so bothered by screen quality.

back on macs, i always used to love using them for photo work in college nice and easy to use and oh so importantly they were pretty looking, but i got a pc purely because i couldnt find the software i wanted to use at uni for a mac. they're defo more stable and the screens once again are great. but im going to wait until the sp1 has come out for vista and get a higher spec pc, most of the stability issues should be sorted, theyre not a lot if any slower than macs any more and the compatibility issue for em is the main thing.

[poopipe]

I've got a really old Vaio and even that screen is really good quality - the whole thing is still holding up after about 5 years so no complaints about build quality either.

you do pay a premium for having sony written on them though - just like you do with Apples

I would hazard a guess that you won't get such a wide choice of hardware when you buy from fancy brand names - they'll have big contracts with certain manufacturers n stuff

Edited February 19, 2007 by poopipe

[JonMack]

missing app wise...

3ds max would be the one I missed the most - Maya's available on Mac but the modelling tools are shite.

I use a lot of other small 3d tools that aren't available on Mac as well so it'd bugger my working day up a fair bit. To be fair, most of the stuff I do is realtime 3d graphics related so it's fairly specialist and techy - the available graphics engines and stuff are almost all windows based - as are most of the export tools to go with them.

A friend of mine who does MA Animation at my uni (well, used to, he got employed half way through his degree so moved back to Iran) uses a 17" MBP dual booting with XP purely for XPs 3D application support, because OS X just doesnt have it.

Based on personal experience, I've got Macs, and can never see myself going back to PCs. I got my first Mac (G3 iBook) in September 2003, traded that in and got a 20" iMac in January 2005 and at that point my dad got rid of his PC and got himself an eMac and hasnt looked back sinde, then in July I got myself a 15" MacBook Pro and my sister got a MacBook, and she loves it. My two PC using housemates who I live with in uni are planning on getting Macs in the not too distant future because theyre fed up with PCs being "shit", the other two housemates have already got Macs.

[Dai the Socket]

Depends on the money available, really.

I'm a mac boy. I've never owned a PC in my life or had one in the house which was owned by us in my lifetime. So yeah. I have however used my friend's PC's and those at school so I know how they work. Shame windoze is such a crap platform I guess.

Im not gonna argue, cos this is old school stuff when it was Me, Jon MacK and a couple of others VS the world on here, defending the mac's! haha.

I prefer OsX and I like how apple stuff looks and you know everything works. If you want XP programs or games use bootcamp and run Vista. Macs are expensive for what they are. I mean the 20" cinema screen I bought is still £500 on education price which is the same spec as loads of £350 dell ones but it just looks pretty and is really slim / tidy.

I dont play games and have no desire to so I've no problems with that. Adobe CS works perfect and the boot-up time is about 4 seconds until I can surf the net - which I like. I'm looking at selling my Mac Mini in summer and buying a MacBook Pro for Uni, which should be nice.

[Janson]

i really like my mac. i used PCs for all my life but when i moved out i couldn't take the computer with me, so i had to buy one.

i bought a macbook. the screen is not the best ive seen, it does look good, but you can tell that the backlight is not 100% even when you watch movies with very dark night scenes for example. can't say i notice it other times.

the mac works really well for me. i do mostly basic stuff like internet/music/msn/films but it works fine with matlab, and ive got final cut pro up and running too. lovely little machine.

some things bother me though.. like that you cant cut files in finder (equivalent of windows explorer) so you have to copy and then delete, or drag and drop, which annoys me a little. and the fact that there is no decent cad software out, but if i really want to i can just walk 5 minutes to uni, or remote access a pc from college over the internets with the magic of the unix terminal and x11.</geek>.

i bought mine because it looked nice and i had heard good things about macs. and i never play games...

[Willy]

i bought mine because it looked nice and i had heard good things about macs. and i never play games...

I always play, but have a desktop PC for that, I want a laptop that looks the dogs (mac), works for basics, and lets me do school work on it.

As I say, money isnt really a problem, so a mac ticks all the boxes for me

[Has anyone seen my shoe?]

I dont see why you would spend extra money just cos its a mac, dont get me wrong, id love a mac but you can get better laptops for the same or less amount of money.

Its like the King V Hope thing, why pay £350 for a king when a hope does you fine, even better in some cases.

[Janson]

you can get so much more pc for the money of a mac. it's not the same though, cos you don't need a super duper graphics card to run osx, or most of the software avaliable anyways.

also, the macbook is a sweet computer. 13" screen and fairly thin means it's easy to bring to wherever you wanna use it.. charger is nicer than any of the pc ones i've seen too, magnetic connector so you can trip on the cord and not break the charger/computer too..

oh and you can haxx in the unix terminalz. also there is like 1 virus for macs, and no spyware. i only restart my mac when it has updated something that requires rebooting.. stays on for weeks at the time, and never feels sluggish like the pcs ive used before. maybe the newer ones are better, but i doubt it.

[Krisboats]

If your looking at getting a mac have a look at the price. Then go out and have a look at pc's at the same price.... you get a lot more fore your money with a pc.

I'm actually not going to give my opinion on which is better, its been said and done far too many times already. I'm just going to give you a few buying pointers.

With mac, your mostly paying for the name. The systems can be reliable, but sometimes can be completely idiotic, same as a pc, and generally theres no worries with virus's etc. If your going to be using it for decent games released within the past 18 months then a mac laptop is a no-no. If your going to use it primarily for surfing the internet, downloading music and going on msn etc then, besides the extortional branding rate, it would be a decent computer. Most mac users don't upgrade them either, they just buy one and upgrade it all in a few years.

A half decent laptop pc on the other hand will play recent games, and should play them well. You'll get more for your money with a pc but due to the sheer number of them available theres more virus's and spware etc (which isn't a problem so long as you use decent firewall/anti-virus and keep it updated). It'll do all the stuff a mac will, only with more options avalable (third party programs etc). Pc's are easily upgradeable, and if you feel you want a faster graphics card, more ram etc, then theres plenty of makes and components, that you can generally just plug in and use. Windows usually needs to be re-installed every year or so as it gets cluttered with crap.

If your going for a laptop you need:

• Light weight
• Decent screen size
• Clear and bright screen with accurate colour representation (seeing as its not changeable like a desktop, buying a laptop with a poor screen isn't a good idea)
• Connectability (4 usb sockets, wireless adapters etc)
• Decent processor
• decent amount of ram
• some kind of coverage/insurance... laptops are far more prone to being dropped than a desktop
• Dvd Rw/dvd player combi drive

Edited February 19, 2007 by Krisboats

[Dai the Socket]

• Connectability (4 usb sockets, wireless adapters etc)
• some kind of coverage/insurance... laptops are far more prone to being dropped than a desktop

Apple's come with wireless built in so you're fine there.

Also all the MacBook and MBP range have a 'Sudden Motion Sensor to help protect data in the event of a drop'. Which means the system disengages the disk drive heads from the hard disk platters so that it doesn't wipe your HD

[Janson]

Thing is, it's piss easy to change ram/hdd in the macbooks. no real need to upgrade anything else.

also, remember you're paying for mac osx. stuff like dashboard and exposé is pure genious, can't live without them now that i've gotten used to them.

i do agree you're paying for the name and the white plastic, but many people overlook the fact that osx is so much nicer than windows. also the macbooks have the nicest keyboard i've ever tried...

[Krisboats]

Apple's come with wireless built in so you're fine there.

Also all the MacBook and MBP range have a 'Sudden Motion Sensor to help protect data in the event of a drop'. Which means the system disengages the disk drive heads from the hard disk platters so that it doesn't wipe your HD

Good thing mac are finally with the times... my 4 year old music player has that to protect its hard drive Besides, a hard disk protection system won't stop the screen cracking.

Edited February 19, 2007 by Krisboats