Mac OX XV !!!

[MrRiplEy[H]]

Was mostly referring to OS X. Half those 'features' you listed are simple cloud services none of which were ground breaking. I was thinking of multitasking OS's with docks, widgets etc like X Windows, OS/2, and Workbench.

However, mobilewise, most of the early developers for iOS were Palm developers. I used Palm a lot.

My last "Palm" device was a Treo, it lasted 6 years. Outside of my phone calls it did automatic call recording; turn by turn GPS maps; push email; games; web browsing; sync'd with online services; Mp3 player with bluetooth A2DP support; tide tables; ballistics calculator; office doc's on the go; complete exchange sync; and many more apps. I only switched to Android just last year, that last Treo was a 6 year old device and could do things iphones still couldn't do.

As for it 'just works', I worked with an office full of apple people for 8 years including some highly qualified apple techs (enterprise stuff). Watching the pains of having to find 3rd party drivers for stuff like mopiers and 3G usb sticks was hilarious, or kernel panics, or the pains of the DNS bug that hit snow leopard for some users. Or how about that iOS 4 update for pre-iphone4's

It's a nice OS, but it's nothing special, nor innovative, just well marketed. Let's no forget apple are now totally dependent on the windows platform to drive new hardware development too

We can agree to disagree. You are correct some on the list were cloud services and as such nothing groundbreaking but where else can you enable them with a click and a login? No software installation, no background study, just click and use. THIS is the thing that appeals in Mac. Sure it costs, duh, even free software is not free since you have to invest your time with the BS it brings.

As what goes for office use, it seems that most of your 'pains' stemmed from using non-apple hardware. Instead of 3G USB dongle you could have enabled bluetooth on the iphone like we do. Couldn't be easyer. I don't know what mopiers is though. Kernel panics? Defective hardware most likely. DNS bug? No product is perfect. Are you saying your migration from 98 to XP and XP to Vista and Vista to 7 was absolutely flawless and you didn't do weeks and weeks of troubleshooting, hunting printer drivers and figuring out why software X now fails to work with several desktop users? That's what I thought too 

[mipoikel]

i use both mac and PC and like them both. There just isnt point to say which is better, they are both good enough.

Im just planning to order new laptop for work and propably it will be a new macbook pro.  

[saggs]

For me it all comes down to money.

Mac = $$$$$$$
PC = $$$

Before I built my last system I looked at Apple stuff a little.  I ended up building my own PC system, every part I ordered and put in it has at least a 3 year warranty.  I've got a quad core 2.6 ghz processor, 8GB RAM, 60GB SSD hard drive with OS and programs and 2 500GB drives in a mirrored RAID for data.  I put it together for < $700.

Looking at Macs with similar specs put me in the $1200-$1500 price range.  And even they were not the same as I could find none with mirrored hard drives which was a must for me.

I'm a Photographer and built this system with that in mind, and my PC with Windows 7 runs Adobe CS4, Lightroom 3, ACR 6 and Photomatix and many plug-ins with them all without any hiccups.  I'm sure they would work just as well on a Mac, and Macs are VERY popular with photographers.  I just can't see what I get in a Mac for nearly twice the price that justifies it. 

[MrRiplEy[H]]

For me it all comes down to money.

Mac = $$$$$$$
PC = $$$

Before I built my last system I looked at Apple stuff a little.  I ended up building my own PC system, every part I ordered and put in it has at least a 3 year warranty.  I've got a quad core 2.6 ghz processor, 8GB RAM, 60GB SSD hard drive with OS and programs and 2 500GB drives in a mirrored RAID for data.  I put it together for < $700.

Looking at Macs with similar specs put me in the $1200-$1500 price range.  And even they were not the same as I could find none with mirrored hard drives which was a must for me.

I'm a Photographer and built this system with that in mind, and my PC with Windows 7 runs Adobe CS4, Lightroom 3, ACR 6 and Photomatix and many plug-ins with them all without any hiccups.  I'm sure they would work just as well on a Mac, and Macs are VERY popular with photographers.  I just can't see what I get in a Mac for nearly twice the price that justifies it. 

Yes I can fully understand that. I and my company are on the other hand willing to invest into equipment that saves us working time. Our computer maintenance needs reduced by 90% after switching from XP based PC's to Macs.

[RTHolmes]

The fact that Win OS is ALMOST if not more stable than any apple OS while accepting almost every known piece of hardware out there speaks volumes.

 

[eagl]

Did that say "crossbread"?  fail

[Yossarian]

Did that say "crossbread"?  fail

indeed.

[gyrene81]

And if I had your quick ability to judge people without even trying to understand what the discussion was about I'd surely lose mine! If you wipe the hate induced spitter and foam from your monitor you'll notice that I was responding to a claim that stated all of this was available already on 90's and was not Apples innovation. Gyrene I'm sure you have a long experience but in many ways I think you're getting old and are stuck to old technology and old ideas. Computing tends to move forward so fast that unless you constantly learn something new you're outdated.

come on ripley...apple innovation? do you believe al gore invented the internet too?

i can tell you're fairly new to the apple world...few people remember the old days of apple before the switch to intel hardware platforms and the shiny new osx...apples days of "innovation" passed when they switched to the intel hardware platforms...as of right now, they aren't doing anything differently than microsoft, and people have been smack talking microsoft for more than a decade...buy out a technology or license it...incorporate it into the os or package it up with an application bundle the slap the apple logo on it...

first generation of g5's had a bad back plane capacitor that caused the mobos to fail...first generation of intel systems had 3 known hardware bugs that hit about 25% (that's from an apple hardware engineer) of the units from the first run, and apple front line technical support would not acknowledge the problems as existing from the factory...i'm not even going to delve into the myriad compatibility issues of the earlier systems...

osx 10.0 had as many bugs as windows vista...so did os 10.3...the most stable os for mac so far has been 10.5 snow leopard...5 full operating system versions (not just patches and upgrades) since 2002 versus 3 for microsoft since 2001...

apple systems have their uses...for high end graphics, a pc, even a very high end unit can't hold a candle...but that's about it.

[gpwurzel]

My take on the apple vs pc debate (which will rage for ever and ever and ever)

I play in a local band, produce flyers/graphics for local business and run my own (admittedly very small mobile repair service for pc's, macs, notebooks, netbooks, etc etc etc)

For recording, graphics etc, I'd love to have a mac for that part of my life - easier to set up, it just does it. I can record on my pc, but get a lot of background noise, which requires filters to stop it dropping into my recordings. This noise is generated by the components in my pc - one of the other guys in the band uses a mac, doesn't have this problem to the same extent.

For everything else, I'd use a pc - the rationale being that I can just install, configure and away I go. Sure, I can do that on a mac too, but I cant afford to have 2 different types of computer (basically, I dont want to drop the $$$$ for a mac as well).

Fwiw, the macs I support seem to be very intuitive - so far I've sorted out security issues (google is your friend for some of the obscure stuff). I have more experience on pc's (mcse, ccna, mcp etc etc - perks of working in IBM for over 10 years in a support role)

Horses for courses chaps, personal preference etc. For the record, I much prefer unix - once you get the hang of it, its easy.

Wurzel

[RTHolmes]

<< loves watching the apple haters (iPhobes?) getting their knickers in a twist 

[Vulcan]

We can agree to disagree. You are correct some on the list were cloud services and as such nothing groundbreaking but where else can you enable them with a click and a login? No software installation, no background study, just click and use. THIS is the thing that appeals in Mac. Sure it costs, duh, even free software is not free since you have to invest your time with the BS it brings.

As what goes for office use, it seems that most of your 'pains' stemmed from using non-apple hardware. Instead of 3G USB dongle you could have enabled bluetooth on the iphone like we do. Couldn't be easyer. I don't know what mopiers is though. Kernel panics? Defective hardware most likely. DNS bug? No product is perfect. Are you saying your migration from 98 to XP and XP to Vista and Vista to 7 was absolutely flawless and you didn't do weeks and weeks of troubleshooting, hunting printer drivers and figuring out why software X now fails to work with several desktop users? That's what I thought too 

The apple cloud services turn on without software install because the software is already installed by Apple. Microsoft have been blocked from doing this for "monopoly" reasons, eg Windows Live services. No background study is also a concern. For example Back To My Mac - easy to use right? Just one password to access all your mac cloud resources... but wait... what is "Back to my Mac" - it's a l2tp vpn tunnel back to the apple mothership. Sure it just works but it is a huge security concern.

The USB 3G dongle? At the tiime the iphone didn't or barely existed, and certainly did not support tethering.

As for the migrations, no I'm sure people have had problems with the migrations from 98 and so on. Same as apple (who completely drop support for some apps and hardware as they move forward), especially as they replaced standard BSD libraries with their own rewritten libraries as they customized and 64bit'd parts of OS X.

So yes, you're right - no product is perfect. The standard fall back statement for apple fans once someone who has experienced the apple short comings corners them with some facts. As I stated before OS X is nice, but nothing special nor innovative, and despite not being able to dictate apps and hardware I think Microsoft have done an outstanding job with Windows 7 (yes vista sucked).

[Vulcan]

Try Watching mac's kernel panic, and have upgrade issues, and develop hardware faults (lol at macbook pro's going 'off colour' due to overheating). Nothing is more satisfying than walking past a mac owner and saying "hey it just works right?" during those times

[RTHolmes]

yeah cus Ive never seen PCs kernel panic, and have upgrade issues, and develop hardware faults. just imagine that!

[Yossarian]

yeah cus Ive never seen PCs kernel panic, and have upgrade issues, and develop hardware faults. just imagine that!

More than that, I've never seen Macs have those problems either!

[gyrene81]

More than that, I've never seen Macs have those problems either!

gotta use it for more than just checking your email and surfing the web... 

fact is mac's are not immune to the same problems people condemn pc's for...the problems are just easier to ignore