Windows or Mac
 

choose your pick.. and explain pls...

i need to know the pros and cons...

installers is the problem for Mac while Virus for windows...

what else???

|headbang|

I think Macs are better for graphic programs such as PhotoShop and such.
I've been a professional graphic designer for over 17 years, and I've yet to work at any company that uses PC's in ther art/graphics department.

I also love that I'm pretty much impervious to any viruses going around.

Bill

I haven't crashed or had to do any maintenance other then software upgrades in years. I never ever shut down my Mac, it just works.

Here is a good article on the Mac experience written by a switcher.
http://www.anandtech.com/mac/showdoc.aspx?i=2232

thanks...

and whats good in mac is that it doesnt depreciate that quick.. right??

is there a lot of forums for mac and apple users that will give us guides on where to download free softwares online????

Just do a google search for Mac Users.

Here's something I found:
http://www.batnet.com/wombat/links/maclinks.html

Bill

Macs are good machines, but I prefer PC's for three reasons. Price, software availability, and the fact that about 95% of my target audience are also using PC's.

http://www.macworld.com/news/todays_summary/
http://www.macnn.com/
http://www.macosxhints.com/
http://www.macsurfer.com/
http://www.macintouch.com/index.shtml
http://www.macfixit.com/
http://www.versiontracker.com/
http://www.macslash.org/
http://apple.slashdot.org/
http://www.macrumors.com/
http://www.appleinsider.com/
http://thinksecret.com/
http://forums.macnn.com/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=90
http://discussions.info.apple.com/

For buying hardware,
http://eshop.macsales.com/
http://www.macmall.com/
http://www.cdwg.com/shop/hubs/defaul...dware/mac.html
http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPL...ts/AppleStore/
http://www.smalldog.com/

Mac for sure.. Cleo I am impressed :)

Windows of course

I must admit that I haven't used a mac other than some cursory play in front of one. Since it is basically a BSD variant running Xwindows with Mac's stylish interface, I think it is a pretty good choice.

Personally, I use Linux as my desktop machine simply as I have a portable development machine. I can run all of the applications that I need to do any development, and, Linux itself has been pretty good for me. It is not as polished as Mac OS/X, but, on the same hardware, it appears faster than XP is. There's a ton of software out there for it and with Wine, Crossover Office or VMWare you can retain the ability to run Windows if you need to. You can also set up a dual boot system so you can switch between the two.

Gimp is supposedly very similar to Photoshop. OpenOffice.org is like Microsoft Office (less the 'accessdb' portion -- if you need that, you need to buy StarOffice. OpenOffice & StarOffice also run on Windows & Mac), there is GNUCash which is very much like Quicken, Firefox (which runs on multiple platforms), etc.

Unless you're a bit technical, except for Xandros or one of the Retail/Consumer Linux versions out there, Linux can be a slight hinderance for people that are used to working in a certain way. There is a certain pleasure in knowing that 99% of the viruses out there can't really do much -- although if you are running IE in crossover Office, and IE is compromised, Linux/Crossover certainly won't stop the spyware from running. :)

I'm gonna be moving to the Mac/PC combo soon. I'm getting a Mac for the desktop and am going to convert this PC into a server. I'll probably load Ubantu or FreeBSD on the server and keep all my data on it. Connect the two wirelessly. Right now money is holding me back and I dont want to jump ship and waste all this PC hardware (3200 Athlon XP, Radeon 9700 Pro, etc).

Everything depends on how you're using your PC. If you're a power user that uses tons of commercial software and time saving is your goal - go Mac. If you need a flexible multimedia environment that you can run anything on it - go Windows, just because there's software to run everything on Windows, thus that's not the same for all other OS or it requires more time than one would afford.

I personally, if I had the time to switch, would use Linux, but wasting time on tunning up an OS is not the best choice right now. I need to move so much data, backup, prepare software, etc, etc... it's not worthy. Although it's the best OS for me, since I can use a good scripting environment.

-- Andrew

if i were to choose, prefer MAC because it's a good machine and they are really advanced when it comes to softwares compared to Windows.

I really don't care - have been working on macs and pcs ever since... just get what's available ;)

linux :)

Depends on what you're using it for really. My personal choice is PC...its just a better value in the long run. It's:

A. Cheaper to purchase and way cheaper if you build your own.

B. Software...almost anything you need to do in a windows environment you can find dozens of programs to do the same task. Some freeware, some cheap shareware, some expensive, but you have more options.

C. Once you buy a Mac, you're pretty much stuck with it. If you buy a PC you can try different operating systems for different tasks. Linux, BSD, Windows, etc. (Mac does have a working version of OSX that will work on PC's but they don't want to release it as they like having the ability to overcharge for hardware).

D. Scalability of hardware. Once a Mac gets old you bury it. PC's you can easily upgrade mobo, processors, etc.

Mac's do run photoshop better...but it depends on how heavily you're going to need it for graphics. Website design and even some high end work, etc, windows can handle it. The only area where you might need a mac over pc is if you're editing absofuckingluty huge image files.

Without knowing your needs the question is not easy to answer.

Macs have an integrated design where the operating system is designed by the same people that design the hardware.

Windows offers a huge selection of software. I odn't know many Mac people that don't run some sort of emulation in order to use Windows based software.

If the Mac has all the native software that you will ever use then it may be a good choice. If you're going to be sharing a lot of files with Windows customers and using emulation mode a lot then Windows may be better for you.

The Mac design may be sweet but the market is mostly Windows for a lot of good reasons.

I personally don't know any Mac users that run Windows stuff in emulation on their Macs. You can using VirtualPC but being that it is emulation it is really slow. For the same price as VitualPC you can just buy a really cheap PC box.

Macs run Mac OS X these days. They can also run all the older Mac Classic software in the Classic environment and Linux software in the X11 environment. Both of these are not emulators and are just as fast as the Mac OS X environment. Also you can just open up Terminal for those *nix people who "don't understand why the mouse was invented when it just takes your hand off of the perfectly good input device known as the keyboard."

For non lovers of the unix command line like myself you can use Fink to install unix applications like Gimp and Open Office.
http://fink.sourceforge.net/
http://finkcommander.sourceforge.net/about/#screenshots
http://gimp.org/screenshots/macosx_screenshot1.png

Macs also come with Apache, MySQL, PHP, and all much of the other common *nix stuff that you find on your web server installed and ready to run right out of the box.
http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/unix/

there are good points an bad points on both OS. this arguement has gone for years. Me I perfer MS over Mac because thats just me. Mac has really good stable systems but they cost you and the software is not all there and repair if needed is not as easy to find. MS with xp has been really stable. I think once longhorn is out the OS will just get more rock solid. they are truly making leaps and bounds in their security issues. as far as macs are concerned i remember not long ago, about 1 year a virus did come out that affected mac users and symantecs made a boat load off of it. to many mac users felt they were safe. but in fact all it takes is one bright little AHole to write the code and mac is just as effected as MS or Linux. only reason more viruses on MS is simple. people have more access to an ms box and thus write the code for it. also ms is so intergrated with explorer IE office uses explorer, desktop uses it, there networking touches a part of it etc etc. and worse yet everything is placed in one central place. IE the registry (which is a nightmare in itself when it comes to os code) linux did it right in making everything a text file based. this way if a user does not have access permissions to a certain file then the virus can not spread like on windows. that problem with MS comes from the explorer kernal. anyway im going crazy with this and will leave it. lol.

Macs sound pretty cool, I'd be willing to try one out someday, but how is the software availabilty now? Are most PC applications available for Mac now? That's about the only thing I'd be concerned about for myself.

Much of the design software was writen for the Mac first.

Apple's page on 3rd party software
http://guide.apple.com/index.lasso

Couple of places that I buy software from. Amazon has been having good prices lately too.
http://www.macmall.com/macmall/shop/...e/category.asp
http://www.clubmac.com/clubmac/shop/...e/category.asp


Here is something that will move all your PC files to a Mac for you.
http://www.apple.com/switch/howto/move2mac/

http://pearpc.sourceforge.net/

You could always run this if you are on an X86 architecture. :)

A friend of mine gave me her 15 inch Powerbook G4 (she got a new smaller one)
and I've been playing with it for the past few days.
It's actually kinda cool..Saw my network immediately, and I was able to load some of my shared folders as volumes within 5 minutes of connecting to the network. Figured out how to install remote desktop to control my big pc and have been playing with that and assorted other things. I kinda like it and will probably use it for reviews and such, as it's only a 550 cpu but not before I get some kind of trojan or anti virus program set up..unless I have no need for them?
It has Tiger installed as well as office 2004. I'm looking into adobe stuff but it only has a 20 gig hard drive so I'd have to upgrade both hard drive and memory to run those efficiently. and that's a bit expensive unless one goes the ebay way.

There isn't any Mac OS X viruses. The virus software itself does cause problems so way run it? I personally do not run any kind of anti virus software and don't know anyone that does.

If you are a really paranoid about it just create a non admin account and login under it. I have a non admin account on my machine for when a friend uses it so that they can't fuckup anything or see my info.

any OS can get the work done i suppose ...
but i m a mac user since late 80's and i ll just stick to it because their so damn beautiful.
beatiful hardware and nice clean interface and a g5 is burning fast, not only for graphic applications. and whatever is said about incompatibility with other systems or lack of software is just a big misunderstanding.
you may have guessed i am a big macfan |bow|

Saw this while surfing this morning.
More than half of Amazon's top selling computers are Macs
http://www.appleinsider.com/article.php?id=1067

I remember hearing a while back that Windows was an idea derived from the old Mac OS. Does anyone know if that's true or not?

Bill

Kewl..I didnt think so and was not sure..This baby saw my bluetooth dongle immediately, not like the wondows pc which needed drivers..Gonna tru to get it to see my printer and scanner next

Yes, that's essentially true. Windows was Microsoft's response to the Macintosh.

However, it should also be pointed out that Steve Jobs got the idea for the Macintosh GUI from Xerox after a visit to their Palo Alto Research Center.

Yeah but Apple did it with Xerox's cooperation where Microsoft stole the idea and spent years in the courts with Apple suing them, but Apple did loose in the end.

Mac OS X is actually NeXT OpenStep that Apple bought from Steve Jobs which was the OS his company created when Apple fired him back in the early eighties and has been made to look and work somewhat like the old Mac Classic OS.

If you Google around you can find info.

this topic overlooks something important: what do you want to do with the system?
 

I think this section from the FreeBSD FAQ sums it up:

Basically PC and MAC are just hardware platforms. What you can do on it depends on your operating system. You can buy a "PC" platform, but run more than just Windows *cough* virus magnet *cough* on it. However, what you will be doing next on that system depends on what underlying OS you are running because only so many applications are available for a particular operating system (lets stay out of the architecture part for now).

Windows has lots and lots of applications, but, realistically, how many of them are you going to use on a business system? You are just trying to do graphics and web design right? Lets see: Netscape, GIMP, and Emacs or Vi (*NIX text editors). If you're not gaming then who cares if you are not using Windows?

Saying that it has always been Mac and Windows forgets Commodore, Amiga (yes, there was a difference!), Atari, and a few others here and there (DEC Alpha anyone?). I remember people used to (and some still do) swear by Amiga for video. For those thinking that Amiga is dead I present this link. Then there is also IRIX by SGI (which I used on my Indigo2) for virtual reality, video, and graphics design. However, as time goes on, the PC platform continues to dominate because of two reasons: price and performance.

My advice? Go with a PC platform. The parts are cheaper than pretty much anything else out there making changing out defective or obsolete components easier (and less expensive) than any other platform. Anything other than a PC platform (including Mac [since Apple still controls it to a T no matter who they try to fool]) should be considered proprietary and destined for obsolescence (lets see one design team controlling the whole core architecture [Apple, Sun, SGI, etc.]...or two companies [AMD and Intel] controlling design and development of the core components [the CPUs and general motherboard specifications] with a million other companies designing and developing practically everything else).

The advantage of a proprietary platform is that the hardware has been generally of better quality (in some case by a very wide margin) and the OS (Mac, Solaris, IRIX, AmigaOS) has been more stable due to less devices madness. However, even with that said, support contracts still were sold because no one can guarantee a 100% fail proof system (components will always wear out eventually). The trade off, of course, between a highly reliable proprietary platform and a PC has been the price. However, people seem to always forget the saying: you get what you pay for.

Sticking with the PC platform for a sec...what would you feel more comfortable betting your business on: cheap no-name components or high-endian branded components? Of course you probably could get two, three, or four of the knock off components for the price of that high-end component, but can you afford the downtime and frustration of swapping out those components? There is a million more thoughts I could add, but I see that I am getting long winded.

Best advice:
Buy a PC platform for the reasons of price/performance and parts availability.
If you're not going to run games, then look into an OS other than windows (I prefer a *BSD, but Linux is attracting more commercial software vendors).

Windows

Linux! :D

X Windows under Windows
 

better: turn your windows box into an X compatible system to use X programs on your *NIX colo'd server.

Install Cygwin, SSH, and X on your windows box

SSH and whatever X programs you want to use on your colo server.

Now you can use Netscape for *NIX, Gimp, and every other free *NIX software package without abandoning Winslows.

See here for more info.

Enjoy!

I'm surprised that this hasn't been mentioned.

One thing that Macs have that Windows or Linux does not have is Labels. They work just like the colored labels that you would get at an office supply to use on your files and folders.

You can label files and folders so as to keep track of what has been submitted, what needs to be archived, what pics from a set you have used, etc.

Here is a screen grab of one of my job folders with the Label prefs open.

That's probably my favorite "bonus" right now. It's great to have a fully functional development server on a laptop when I need one.

One thing I can add is that I've been a Mac user since the 1984 Superbowl commercial, and while I've helped a ton of people switch to the Mac platform, I don't personally know anyone who's done more than add a Windows machine for compatability testing needs.

I'm not saying no one switches the other way. (Not that there's anything wrong with that.) I'm just saying I don't personally know any.

Simon

My Mac broke down about a month ago. I have not been able to get back into the same groove on my sites as I was with the Mac.

I am a Mac lover to the fullest and I cannot wait to get back on one.

In fact... a friend of mine was having this same discussion only days ago. He tried using the whole software argument on me... that didn't last too long.

He says that in any of the computer sections he has visited in the stores lately might have 3 rows of PC software, and only 1 or so for Mac. My argument was this... everything you see on the shelf for PC (minus the game titles) is mostly included in the Macs OS to begin with, whereas the PC has no such software. Most titles for the PC in these sections are sanctioned to the following tasks.

For example...

Anti-Virus - Mac simply does not need to be protected, and if you feel unsafe there is a title or two out there you can purchase... but not NEEDED

Media Player - Windows media player may handle some file formats that mac will not, however the iTunes software and the built in DVD Player are incredibly stable and packed with features that Windows Media Player does not have.

Browser - Mac does come equipped with IE... but the default browser is Safari, which has built in RSS Reading and will read PDF and PSD files. Without a 3rd party app or plug-in.

Calculators of all magnitudes... math, science, graphic, standard and 10 digit (extended)

The preview app on the mac is much like the image viewer on the PC only it will show previews of MANY MANY file formats as opposed to PC... AND it has a slideshow which was only available on PC using ACDsee or similar apps...

Much more, but this reply is LONG.

My opinion is that with OS X.4 and Adobe CS and Macromedia Studio MX 2004, there is nothing you will ever need in this biz, except maybe the occasional Autosubmitter, which seem to only be created in the.exe formats... blah.

Murderous

That all goes back to the simple question: what do you want to do with your system? As the FAQ that I quoted said "people work with applications not operating systems." If you are looking to do something other than games then requiring Windows is not a mandatory thing. Most of the major free OS' run on a myriad of underlying hardware arcitectures, but compile and run software just the same regardless (yes, linux will run on a Mac instead of using MacOS). That can be a huge benefit in a company with a heterogenous hardware buying scheme (a mixture SPARC and i386 based servers for instance). However, it all boils down to one thing: what applications do you want to run on a regular basis?

One of the bonus' of running a free OS (Linux, *BSD, whatever) is the sheer volume of free software available that can be used. Commercial stuff is nice for someone that wants to get something running fast. However, the payoff with the free stuff (GIMP, Apache, PHP, OpenOffice, Firefox, etc) is that upgrades are free, compatibility with newer versions of your free OS is pretty much always (dependencies are the only real gotchas and that's resolveable), and none of that nasty licensing nightmare which is core to commercial stuff. You can always used Wine to emulate windows if you need to use a windows to do some of your business with a windows app.

I agree with all of that... even as a simple family PC, I would much rather be on my mac... and virtualPC is good enough for what little bit of windows gear I run.

Murderous

I have a copy of VirtualPC on my Mac, one word, SLOW, but it does let me test a web page or something like that. Plus since it is nothing but an application I can duplicate its drive image and use the duplicate if my "PC" gets messed up. The drive image is just a single large file that gets loaded as drive C when I open VirtualPC. You can also do save state when you quit out of VirtualPC so that next time you need it you don't have to wait for Windows to boot inside of the emulator. Also since it is just an application you can work on other stuff on your Mac while you are waiting for it to do whatever.