Convince me to get a Mac

[Caesium]

Well I had a large post typed out and then my session expired, but it all boils down to me being a Windows user for pretty much my entire PC experience. I've dealt with Linux some, but not much more than I've had to over the years. I'm a software engineering student, and besides general text editors for embedded/web design (mostly PHP) I'm rooted in Visual Studio, so I need access to Windows. Boot Camp/Parallels is what I'm looking for, but I need more info about them. I know I can use my Boot Camp partition from Parallels, but I read that there are issues about backing up the partition from OS X in that case.

I'm considering getting the 24" iMac and upgrading the cpu to 2.8 and the ram to 2, will this be enough to virtualize Windows comfortably while multitasking? I'm also looking into using Garageband with a keyboard/guitar with many tracks at once, is this acceptable?

I'm just wondering if an iMac is worth my investment, and if switching from Windows to OS X is worth the trouble. I'm really interested in iLife/iWork/Omnigraffle, and the software engineer in me wants to play around with developing mac software.

 

[Boulderer2001]

Cant tell you much about running windows yet. I just switched from pc to mac. Purchased the 20" imac tonight and and all I can say is wow. You will not be disappointed.

 

[mashinhead]

get a mac.

 

[RainCityMacFan]

Please just switch, I went on that Yahoo Answers and spent hours answering questions (kind of addicting lol) why Mac is better... Ahhh... Crap..

Switch, you won't be disappointed.

Yes that would be enough... However with Vista you can never have enough RAM or video card ram lol...

 

[I'mAMac]

Bootcamp runs great. Ive got it on mine and ts just like the real thing. If your doing video though, why not just do it on the mac part? Its sooo much better.

 

[nigrunze]

Well I had a large post typed out and then my session expired, but it all boils down to me being a Windows user for pretty much my entire PC experience. I've dealt with Linux some, but not much more than I've had to over the years. I'm a software engineering student, and besides general text editors for embedded/web design (mostly PHP) I'm rooted in Visual Studio, so I need access to Windows. Boot Camp/Parallels is what I'm looking for, but I need more info about them. I know I can use my Boot Camp partition from Parallels, but I read that there are issues about backing up the partition from OS X in that case.

I'm considering getting the 24" iMac and upgrading the cpu to 2.8 and the ram to 2, will this be enough to virtualize Windows comfortably while multitasking? I'm also looking into using Garageband with a keyboard/guitar with many tracks at once, is this acceptable?

I'm just wondering if an iMac is worth my investment, and if switching from Windows to OS X is worth the trouble. I'm really interested in iLife/iWork/Omnigraffle, and the software engineer in me wants to play around with developing mac software.

VMware Fusion was released last Monday. I'd go with that if I were you. I've heard lots of good things about it. Supposedly it uses less of the CPU than Parallels Desktop does. Not that there's anything bad about Parallels but you can get a better program(VMware Fusion) for the same price.

I'd like to get the 20" 2.4 Ghz iMac as soon as the Apple Store gets them. I'm planning on installing Vista on Boot Camp so if you want I can let you know how it goes.

For the RAM, 2 GB is probably good, if you want to run Vista in a Virtual Machine, 2 GB would probably be the recommended minimum. The actual minimum is 1GB. Mac OS X(512MB I think) + Windows XP/Vista(64MB/512MB) =576MB/1GB. So if you're planning on running XP in VMware/Parallels, you'll be OK with 1GB of memory, but you should still probably have a bit more RAM than that for running a Virtual Machine. But, if you're gonna run Vista in VMware/Parallels, I'd go with 2GB. Vista's a pretty big memory hog.

Remember, if you're gonna share the Boot Camp partition with VMware/Parallels, you need to install Windows using Boot Camp first. Then you can use it in Parallels or VMware.

 

[shinji]

I think you are going to want more than 2 gb of RAM. I've got a Mac Pro, and I keep Photoshop, Dreamweaver, and Parallels open most of the day...didn't really become the computer I felt I paid for until I upgraded to 4 gb (crucial fbdimms). I still get some page outs but not nearly as many as when I was at 2 gb.

I will say though, my old pc was a Dell 2.8 ghz Xeon workstation and Parallels boots Windows faster than the Dell. I don't notice a difference in performance otherwise, but then I'm not running Visual Studio or pushing Windows to its limits. I switched back to mac earlier this year after a 6 year recess with XP, and I'm very happy with the move.

As far as Mac stuff interesting to developers...well there's Xcode, you can install fink/darwinports for all the open source software you want (so you can do sudo apt get blah blah), comes with apache, etc. Not sure what else- you mentioned text editors, I use smultron but textmate is good too. http://www.panic.com/coda is really nice too

And for iWork, I personally love Numbers, some people here think it's a disappointment- it is perfect for my needs.

Really I think you'll be happy if you switch to a mac, but I'd strongly suggest the extra RAM.

 

[Craiger]

Please Don't get a mac!!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_psychology

 

[pdra05]

You'll definitely love a Mac! I don't think I'll be shopping for another PC ever again...

 

[Columbo X]

Get a Mac!

At home I use both Mac and PC - PCs for development work (also with Visual Studio) and macs for everything else. Though I come from a die-hard mac user background, I tend to be a bit more pragmatic now. Windows isn't as bad as some make out but I prefer OS X and I would never go all PC - we'd always have a Mac at home.

iLife is great and Keynote is much better than Powerpoint (though I'm not sure yet if Numbers in iWork 08 will stop me using Excel).

As a developer, Visual Studio is excellent. I've not seen the new X-Code 3 yet, but the current version, though a great piece of software, isn't as feature complete as VS2005. As a software engineering student it would be worth looking at the mac because of the Cocoa libraries. I tend to work in C++ / C# and .NET on the PC and Objective-C and Cocoa on the Mac. I've learned a lot from both environments. I think Cocoa is light-years ahead of the .NET frameworks (particularly for multi-media development) with APIs like CoreVideo and the soon-to-be-released CoreAnimation. I do like some of the new language features in C#, and I hope Objective-C 2 addresses some of these (templates, or "generics" as C# calls them for example), but generally I do prefer Objective-C. Now you can install Windows you get the best of both worlds.

I think the only reason probably not to get a mac is if you buy into "hard core gaming" where you want max framerates and max resolutions and must use an SLI or Crossfire setup for maximum speed. On a hard-core gaming scale of 1 to 10, where 1 is "Minesweeper is awesome" and 10 is "I must play Crysis at maximum resolutions with all features turned on", I'd put myself around a 6 or a 7 and I've been more than happy playing games like Prey, Doom, Lego Starwars etc. on the previous generation iMac.

 

[Mgkwho]

Well I had a large post typed out and then my session expired, but it all boils down to me being a Windows user for pretty much my entire PC experience.

Safari would've saved the post if you hit your back button. Too bad you're on Windows, and I'm guessing are not using the beta of safari 3.

-=|Mgkwho

 

[Mgkwho]

Well I had a large post typed out and then my session expired, but it all boils down to me being a Windows user for pretty much my entire PC experience.

Safari would've saved the post if you hit your back button. Too bad you're on Windows, and I'm guessing are not using the beta of safari 3.

-=|Mgkwho

 

[Caesium]

Safari would've saved the post if you hit your back button. Too bad you're on Windows, and I'm guessing are not using the beta of safari 3.

-=|Mgkwho

Would it have? It was the new thread page of the forums that killed the post. If it went right back to the text box my text would have been there.

Thanks for all the replies everyone, but I'm still kind of sitting on the fence. If only the video card had a little more horse power I would be having an easier time laying down that much money.

 

[Gilfanon]

I'm still kind of sitting on the fence. If only the video card had a little more horse power I would be having an easier time laying down that much money.

I'm in exactly the same situation... I need to be able to run Windows in Parallels/VMWare/Bootcamp for work, and I want to be able to get some decent performance out of an iMac for gaming (not Alienware decent, just liveable on medium to high settings). At the moment I don't play anything too graphically challenging and I know the iMac will cope, but I want this iMac to last at least a few years, and I'm worried that the graphics card which already looks dated will be struggling with games and apps coming out in a year's time. With a non-replaceable graphics processor you'd think Apple would aim for top of the line for future-proofing, if they had this decision would be a complete no-brainer. As it is, I'm obsessively checking benchmark articles and umming and ahhhing...

 

[redshift20]

My advice as a software engineer of 12 years:

Get a mac.. then change your major

 

[nando2323]

Buy It Now You Will Not Be Dissapointed

Here is my summary on the new Imac!

I just purchased the 24" yesterday and this is after 10+ years using Wintel, also I am a Network Admin/SQL DBA working in a full MS and some Linux(VMWare ESX) shop with over 600 PC's and 60 Servers over 3 sites. And let me tell you this, this thing is amazing Apple really is way more advanced in it's OS and overall design and implementation. My first Apple product was the Iphone and I love it, it's the best product on the market to date hands down (owned a Treo 650, and Nokia E62 previously). Now I just fully converted to Apple with the purchase of the Imac, and it trully is stunning as far as a home pc goes it can do anything you throw at the thing. I was copying mp3's over from the Wintel about 15000 of them, installing something, playing wow in a window at 1920x1200 res, had like 2 safari windows open, Iphoto open with 5000+ pics in library, and that thing was not even twitching. I went from a P4 3.4GHZ Extreme Edition with 2GB RAM, 300 GB RAID 0 SATA II, Geforce 6800GT 256MB, Windows Vista Ultimate, etc etc... This thing outperforms my old PC with ease I swear when I was copying all my stuff over the network to the MAC I could hear Billy G crying that he lost another loyal customer to Apple. Well I just got sick of the crap they put out and I wanted to make a change to better. Thank you Apple I no longer have to see BSOD's and explorer crashing everything on my PC again (except at work) and the NIC and video problems because of the lack of vista drivers support. Apple you have just gained a new fanboy thats right I said it!!!!!

 

[paetrick]

Here is my summary on the new Imac!

I just purchased the 24" yesterday and this is after 10+ years using Wintel, also I am a Network Admin/SQL DBA working in a full MS and some Linux(VMWare ESX) shop with over 600 PC's and 60 Servers over 3 sites. And let me tell you this, this thing is amazing Apple really is way more advanced in it's OS and overall design and implementation. My first Apple product was the Iphone and I love it, it's the best product on the market to date hands down (owned a Treo 650, and Nokia E62 previously). Now I just fully converted to Apple with the purchase of the Imac, and it trully is stunning as far as a home pc goes it can do anything you throw at the thing. I was copying mp3's over from the Wintel about 15000 of them, installing something, playing wow in a window at 1920x1200 res, had like 2 safari windows open, Iphoto open with 5000+ pics in library, and that thing was not even twitching. I went from a P4 3.4GHZ Extreme Edition with 2GB RAM, 300 GB RAID 0 SATA II, Geforce 6800GT 256MB, Windows Vista Ultimate, etc etc... This thing outperforms my old PC with ease I swear when I was copying all my stuff over the network to the MAC I could hear Billy G crying that he lost another loyal customer to Apple. Well I just got sick of the crap they put out and I wanted to make a change to better. Thank you Apple I no longer have to see BSOD's and explorer crashing everything on my PC again (except at work) and the NIC and video problems because of the lack of vista drivers support. Apple you have just gained a new fanboy thats right I said it!!!!!

/love !

 

[CBAviator]

I agree with the above poster. I used to use Mac computers all through school until I graduated from high school. Back then, I was not a fan of them. I thought they were "too simple" to do everything I wanted. There wasn't a lot being offered for Macs in terms of software and Clarisworks just wasn't doing it for me! I swore never to buy an Apple computer for as long as I lived. But that has since changed.

Their success at design in both aethetics and operating system, as well as the much more abundant software choices have helped to convince me. Apple really has placed themselves ahead of the PC curve. They strive to be different. Whereas the PC world seems to be stuck in a groove, Apple is surpassing them on many levels. While PCs are still the masters at some tasks (gaming for example), they are slowly losing their grip to the innovations of Apple.

 

[MezicanGangxtah]

dude go for it that imac will be enough to suffice to your needs and like others have said 1gig will be goood enuff to run XP but 2gigs for vista (since windoze and microshaft have to make everything so damn complicated ) and by the way card on th new imac is actualy better than what most ppl say (idk why but apple marked there card as a 2600 HD PRO while the card ID clearly states its an underclocked radeon mobility 2600 HD XT which is better) so if u want ur gfx card to be faster go into windoze and use atitool to put the gfx card up to the sppeed it is supposed to be and wait for driver updates for the card ne ways go for it u wont be dissapointed