Slashdot Mirror
The Ultimate MacDate
Hack Jandy writes "Anandtech - the PC hardware site - took the Apple challenge and tried a Mac out for a month. The result was the most indepth Macdate I have even seen. As quoted by Anand, 'In the end, Apple has developed a very strong platform.'"
Once you're under Windows,you want the Linux hackability, once you are on Linux, you miss the bells and whistles, since I switched, I got both and I am happy :)
Trolling using another account since 2005.
Because it works, very very well
It's nice to see a respected hardcore site like Anandtech confirm what we Mac users have known all along.
Apple created a very good operating system, which would actually probably be more to the liking of the average PC user - who just checks their email and surfs the web. They really should start advertising the usability and stability of Mac products, I see that as the quickest, and most effective way. The only downside to Macs really at this time is the lack of support for gaming, and I just don't see why more people don't switch, or at least give Macs a try.
This, my friends, is where Windows is seriously lacking as far as usability goes. He makes a good point. I for one can't stand more than about 4 Windows open at a time when I'm using windows, where as when I'm using Linux (I'm not a OSX guy) I usually have 20+ windows open on 6 virtual desktops.
Unix based window managers (along with others) have had virtual desktops for years, where did Microsoft drop the ball?
Slashdot = ((Technology + Politics) / Trolls) % Grammar Nazis
Yeah, I would say that the Windows way of installing apps leaves the user with less control. You don't necessarily have any idea where an installer is putting files, what it's overwriting, what it's messing up. OS X app bundles stay in one place.
Firefox/Mozilla gestures do not even close to compare to Opera's (well not last time I tried.
The only reason I dropped Opera is it didn't feel right on Linux (being QT, but not feeling as nice as Konquerer in the environment).
Maybe they fixed this in Mozilla, but opera has these gestures/shortcuts that I find great, and miss:
1) right mouse+mouse wheel (cycle tabs)
2)hold right mouse+tap left mouse (back)
3)revers of 2 for forward
4)CTRL+mousewheel for a supurb zooming, way better then any other zoom.
Also the ram ached forward and back buttons are blazing fast. Just amazing, even on older systems.
Fast foward and rewind was nice, but pretty much jusdt a gimmick.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Maybe what he was noticing was the result of some settings/preferences/whatever being copied to his library, which many applications will do on the first run, but not when you install them.
I think he's talking about the progress bar for long copies. That actually shows you the name of the files being copied. If one doesn't know any better, it might look like the files are being installed.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
After doing the necessary research to make sure that I could actually get work done on a Mac, I whipped out the trusty credit card and decided to give the experiment a try.
That single sentence gives quite a bit of insight into a very major reason that Windows is so popular. The very fact that one has to research into applications is a drawbridge for many would-be switchers. With Windows, you have no doubts that there is going to be an application out there, already written, somewhere in cyberland...all you need to do is download (or buy). Gamers and "specialists", who require either very today-trendy or very specific function software, are turned off by the belief (or disbelief, possibly) that Linux and Mac simply can't support their needs.
Then, of course, there is the whole hardware debate. Once again, for Windows...it's out there somewhere; go find it. For Linux, well, it's out there, but have fun finding drivers and getting Linux to be a happy landlord. For Mac, it's out there if Apple or an approved sales associate has decided you need to have it.
In short, very few users are debating the worthiness, usability, or power of an operating system these days. It's the flexibility that they want. That may sound like quite a trite argument to have in favor of Microsoft...but in the context of the applications and hardware discussed above, I think it's pretty appropriate.
12 pages, all of them slashdotted, the print command runs some MS-only WinOpen script that doesn't work in Safari, the email command runs some MS-only WinOpen script that doesn't work in Safari. Bah. Maybe he's got something useful to say, but I'll never get past the first page. At least it's not green on black like ArsTechnica.
Building it yourself is a very different proposition. You've paid less in dollars, but more in the requisite time, knowledge, effort, tools, parts acquisition, and additional responsibility for its functioning.
Which might very well be a worthwhile deal for you, nothing wrong with that. But it's not really meaningful to compare just the price in dollars for these two systems and pretend that the other costs don't exist.
I wonder if Apple ever intends to crack the gaming nut.. I think there is a huge community of gamers that would drop windows in a heartbeat if Apple even came -close- to being a competitive games platform. Gaming also drives hardware sales like nothing else imaginable. If I could play all the same games on a Mac that I do on a PC, I think I'd be willing to pay around $400 more for a similar powered computer without the wintel platform nuissance.
Actually, from my perspective, it's becoming too late. Whereas Windows 98 was pure hell in terms of usability, hardware compatibility, inconsistency, and stability, Windows XP massively shrunk the gap between itself and the overall Mac platform. By the time Apple would catch up, if ever, in the gaming market, the gap might be too small to bother a migration.
From reading the posts thus far, I have this nagging feeling:
Am I going to be one of those MacIdiots now? It's starting to look that way...
(I am imagining a world where my PC is mostly in my control. Very few viruses. Very little spyware. Things run as I expect them to. Actually, now that I think of it, very few problems at all. There seems to be very little to "fix". Shit, now what am I going to spend my time doing?)
Kissing some Karma goodbye...
;-)
I was a bit underwhelmed by the review. While there were some fair cops (video card underpowered, not enough RAM, game releases lagging behind, etc.), I was bugged by some of his comments.
A few examples:
It's iCal, not iCalendar. He seemed to have gotten it wrong more often than right. (If you use a program you can see its name in the menu bar.)
He didn't bother to check on how the drag-n-drop installs work. (Not good for a supposed hard core tech site.)
No, Macs aren't overpriced against other name-brand manufacturers. They are price competitive. (I'll grant you that if you build your own and zealously look for bargains you can build a slightly cheaper PC.)
Of course Windows is going to be more stable if you buy specific hardware for Windows servers as (is implied) using any old hardware for Linux.
He's used Unix at university and he still doesn't feel comfortable about the concept of home directories? Or the Unix hierarchy? (The names can be cryptic, but the hierarchy is pretty simple compared to Windows splatter approach.)
Unfortunately it is little glitches in reviews that leave you wondering just how technical the reviewer is in their other reviews. This one could have stood a little more fact-checking. I know I would hesitate before recommending this article to a knowledgeable Windows-using friend. I'd probably point them towards Ars Technica instead.
Funny note: I think he meant he's used Windows since 3.0, not 2.0. Using Win 2.0 would have been the act of a masochist.
"All the darkness in the world can not quench the light of one small candle."
In the end, Apple has developed a very strong platform.
Anyone that's USED one in the past 15 years will tell you that. There's no question that Apple has some good technology in their arsenal. The question is "Is Apple right for you?". For me it used to be, but now it's not.
There's no need to make it any more complicated than it needs to be.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
I'm glad to see that Anand is open to trying a new OS. I give him lots of credit for plunking down a few grand, buying a nice Mac, and giving it an honest go. And I'm glad that in the end he had a positive experience and continues to enjoy using his Mac.
It's pretty interesting to read the impressions of someone trying out MacOS X for the first time, particularly if that someone hasn't travelled outside the world of Windows. Anand writes:
The uniformity really extends far beyond keyboard shortcuts...a menubar always exists at the top of your screen in MacOS X, regardless of what application you're in.
Talk about getting down to basics, eh? I think that's a very interesting comment. It would never have occurred to me to explain that to a new Mac user, particularly one with extensive computing experience on another platform. Kudos to Anand for capturing the newness of it all.
That said, there are a number of things that bug be about the article. For one, it seems pretty ballsy to switch to an entirely different platform and think that you've learned enough in 30 days to write an article of this length (printed, it comes to 24 pages). He clearly is laboring under a number of misconceptions that probably would have been cleared up if he'd spent some more time with his system.
Another thing is that he seems to want his Mac to work the way Windows does. That's a pretty common thing with switchers, and it's totally understandable. But if you're going to review an OS you should really try to come to it with an open mind. To his credit, he's pretty up front about his bias being due to using Windows for so long, but his "the directory structure seems very foreign because it's different from Windows" comments make me want to choke him.
A good editor (human editor, not text editor) would really help this article. Anand tends to use 50 words where 7 are called for, and he even manages to contradict himself occasionally. Though it clearly was not, it should have been reviewed by a knowledgeable Mac user or two to clear up some of the obvious misconceptions.
Anand criticizes the price of the system he bought several times. He spent about $2700 on a top of the line, dual processor G5 because:
I knew that if I was going to give the platform a good chance, I needed to get the fastest system that Apple had to offer.
It's great that he knew what he wanted and all, but as a newcomer he wasn't really in a position to know whether he really needed that much power or whether he could have gotten along just fine with a G4 iMac. He never considered that something less than the fastest thing available could meet his needs, and he doesn't bother to try to find out. So it's a little unfair to whine about the price when something costing half as much very well might have performed acceptably.
Overall, I'm glad he wrote it and I'm glad he's happy with the Mac. Keep at it.
I too am a recent switcher (in fact I just typed up a long-winded, pro-mac thing on Eugenias propaganda machi- Er... OSNews), and love my Mac.
However there is one area that my Mac's a letdown: You cannot watch mpeg2 video in Quicktime without buying an addon. And then you still cannot edit an mpeg in any Quicktimes-based app (idvd, imovie, and so on).
It's just ridiculous that this "Media Machine" cannot perform even simple edits on one of the most common video formats around! Don't think that a Mac doesn't understand the mpeg format at all: Even those aforementioned iapps can output mpeg2. They have the ability to output mpeg2 for burning DVD's. But if you want to re-encode those videos, or simply chop off a commercial or something, you have to re-encode it as an avi or quicktime file. Or use some stopgap shareware solution (A seperate app that keeps numerical track of where I'm editing, and then I paste those numbers into Quicktime. What a pain in the ass!)
Again, I love my Mac, but I think it's so stupid that to chop up an mpeg file that I recorded, I have to switch over to my Pentium box to do so.
Stupid, stupid, stupid....
Since you work at Apple, maybe you can let them know why this particular switcher, and probably countless more amateur video editors, are unable to completely switch over from the PC platform.
I've found that a lot of people complain about the price they paid for their Apple hardware when confronted with software problems...
Yes, Apple hardware is expensive. However, OS X 10.3 (latest version) is MUCH cheaper per license than Windows XP.
Windows XP Pro (Upgrade): $189.99
Windows XP Pro (Full): $279.99
Mac OS X 10.3 (Full): $129.00
For an admittedly "better" operating system, Apple sure gives you a good deal, eh?
Note: I neglected to mention XP Home on purpose; the lack of configurability with regards to disabling default services with known security vulnerabilities (Messenger, UPnP, etc.) make it unadvisable as a real consumer OS.
"Life in every breath... that is bushido"
Wrong comparison, you're matching a uniprocessor system to a dual processor system. Here's the above comparison, but corrected for accuracy:
First, let's correct the Mac. Giving it an ATi 9600XT, and subtracting the modem (because you forgot), makes the price $1920.
Now for the PC:
MSI K8T Master2-FAR Dual Opteron motherboard $220
2 x AMD Opteron Model 144 - 1.8 GHz $422
Kingston ValueRAM 184 Pin 256MB(128MBx2) DDR PC-3200 $59
80 GB Serial ATA hard disk $64
SAPPHIRE ATI RADEON 9600XT Video Card, 128MB DDR $162
Logitech Deluxe Desktop (Deluxe Keyboard & Mouse) $11
Sony Beige 52X32X52X16 Combo Drive $38
Lian-Li Silver ATX Full Tower Case, Model "PC-V2000A" (much more comparable to the G5 case) $261
Fortron 530W Power Supply $76
Microsoft Windows XP Professional With Service Pack 2 -OEM $145
I'll assume that this will be a Windows machine, but this cost is optional, since there are a number of free operating systems.
In total, the equivalent PC (as equivalent as it can be purchased) comes out to $1,458 (including the cost of Windows).
However, this cost is for a bunch of boxes with parts in them, not a computer that's ready to go once you plug it in. How long will it take to get it ready? Assuming you're fairly speedy, it's at least a couple hours removing stuff from boxes and getting it all into the case in a tidy manner. Then add another hour for installing Windows, then another couple for installing drivers / configuring Windows. How much is your time worth?
Also an astronomer here. All I want to say to the previous 2 posts is YES, YES, YES, and YES.
I used to mess about with linux on a laptop and it gave me so many headaches and caused so much indigestion that I don't think I will ever do it again. It took me several days to _fail_ at getting a wireless card to work on linux, but it took me exactly 30 seconds to get 2 macs to talk to each other over an adhoc network. Never again. Linux is a fine server architecture, great for heavy crunching, wonderful for propellerheads who love computers for their own sake, but not a happy solution for a friendly desktop/laptop. And windoze, of course, is simply out of the question as a science platform.
Time is money. Every hour I waste is worth $30. Macs are very, very economical in this respect. Most of the apps I need (like IRAF, compilers, graphics libraries) are supported very easily through fink or plain old 'configure --prefix'. I don't have to bother the Sun admin people when I have a problem, I don't have to bother trying to translate Hungarian linux howtos, things just work.
Go to any hard science meeting, and you will be immersed in a sea of mac laptops. These people are smart, and they know what they are doing, and their time is precious - much more valuable than an extra few hundred spent on hardware.