The closest equivalent to the MacPro graphics cards are w7000, 8000 and 9000 afaik, now the w7100 is better than w7000, but closer to the w7000 than the w7000 is to w2100.
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Why Macs are better than PC's?
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The closest equivalent to the MacPro graphics cards are w7000, 8000 and 9000 afaik, now the w7100 is better than w7000, but closer to the w7000 than the w7000 is to w2100.
I wasn't really just trying to spec for spec outside of TB just trying illustrate a get in the door point because people always seem to think PC are cheaper and that's not really the case though it can be.
Can't say I've come to the same conclusion using a Surface Pro the past 7 months. I've thrown a lot at this thing. From working with 18mp RAW photos and many layered comps in Photoshop, some fairly complex motion graphics in After Effects, to some pretty high poly modeling and sculpting in C4D, Maya, and Mudbox, I've really been impressed with what I've been able to get done. I wouldn't do any serious rendering on it, but I've pushed out some impressive renders just to see what it could do and I've also been using to test some Vray and Renderman shaders.
Sure, it's not going to come close to replacing my workstation and I surely wouldn't expect similar performance on my 2010 Macbook Air, but it's impressive nonetheless.
So much ignorance and misinformation on this rant, my brain hurt a little.
Interesting reading when it comes to the arguments of which is better. Didn't expect this to go to 255 post replies. Maybe I should of known. 
You missed the point entirely. No one—using Windows or OS X—can claim for certain that they have no viruses...especially when they haven't even checked.
Viruses aren't a serious problem for any of the modern operating systems.
The problem is "malware" - like the keylogger that was installed on your Apple due to a Safari buffer overflow bug that was exploited by an ad on a legitimate web page. A key logger that captures your login info when you log into your bank account. Like the rootkit that's on your IOS device, tracking all your traffic and movements,....
Many of these trick the user into installing them.
has been identified in Mac OS X, which could allow attackers to open or create arbitrary files owned by the root user anywhere in the file system
First seen in the US last year, the scam uses fake iOS crash reports
Apple updates address several issues that could have let attackers execute arbitrary code, in OSX and IOS
Define "nice" (subjective), "advanced" (you seem to be talking more about freaking plastic CASES than actual hardware like say an advanced GPU or more recently, Apple's decision to DOWNGRADE their hard drives in the iMac from solid-state by default to old fashioned moving parts drives that are a fraction of the speed. What about Apple taking a nice version of the Mac Mini from 2012 that had easy access to upgrade ram and hard drives (including having a 2nd hard drive, which the server model had standard and offered a quad-i7 even while now you can only get a dual i5 at best) and put in soldered ram and made it nigh near impossible to have more than one internal drive. What's so advanced about that?
This is pure supposition. You are somehow comparing dozens of manufacturers of PC hardware over the years to ONE company (Apple) who outsources most of their major components to the some of the SAME people (e.g. Apple typically uses Intel manufactured motherboards; are you going to tell me Intel's PC motherboards are crap by comparison to the ones they manufacture for Apple?)
I don't think you've seen very many PCs. There are all-in-ones out there in the PC world. They are simply not popular because you can't get high-end desktop grade components in a two-inch thick monitor case. You usually have to use at least some mobile parts...except an iMac isn't "mobile". A Mac Mini might be small and easy to transport, but it's supposed to be a flipping DESKTOP so why do they compromise PERFORMANCE in order to make an extra small case whose size doesn't matter one whit in a desktop environment??? Sorry, but your utter illogic here destroys your argument entirely.
Again, there are many manufacturers out there and many different motherboards and case styles. Your utterly pathetic attempts to shoe-horn ALL PCs into a box labeled "a barebones piece of trash" doesn't impress except possibly to young people who have never used anything but a Mac.
What the hell is a "real" audio jack? My 2008 Macbook Pro has SEPARATE jacks for audio out/headphones and a microphone. WTF would you want them to share a single two-way jack? How the hell can you use a microphone and a headphone at the same time if you only have ONE jack? It's pathetic and yet you treat their DOWNGRADE (offering one jack where there used to be two) as a "feature" rather than the clumsy joke it actually is. Besides, in my world of music recording and playback, my definition of a "real" audio jack are multiple inputs obtained through firewire, usb or thunderbolt devices with balanced XLR microphone inputs, full size RCA jacks and 1/4" instrument inputs, not some cheesy little dual-purpose mini-jack. A "real" computer designed for audio use is connected to quality full range speakers for that matter, not tiny terrible sounding speakers featured on things like Apple notebooks. There are notebooks out there that at least attempt to produce better quality audio than a typical notebook built-in but they aren't made by Apple.
I'm sure the person that "gifted" it to you for FREE is pleased to hear you call their gift a piece of "sh*t".
Again, WTF are you talking about? WHAT laptop? There's only been just short of a gazillion laptops made over the years for the Windows operating system. You comparison of a G4 notebook to a generic 'Windows' laptop that's supposed to represent every single one of them every made is absurd. You are doing yourself no favors with such comparisons.
You mean odds and ends like Blu-Ray burners built-in, gaming graphics cards or in the case of the Surface, the ability to be a tablet and a notebook in one???
And how many have you tried, pray tell?
Fanboys? I got confused there for a second as I typically associate that word with Macintosh fanatics, not PC ones.
In case you didn't notice, the Mac OS from 1984 has virtually nothing in common with OSX. I personally wouldn't have touched a "Mac" with a ten foot pole until OSX came out. I had a Commodore 64 and then an Amiga in the 1980s and an Amiga 3000 in the '90s. I found Classic Mac OS and MS-Dos and Windows 3.1 to all be horrible. Windows 98 was clunky as hell, but it was a step in the right direction for Microsoft and sad to say still beat the pants off OS8 and OS9 in the areas that matter (ability to multi-task, for example). In short, I wouldn't make those comparisons if I were you. They do you no favors from those that know about computers and lived through those decades rather than the kids today that read about it on Wikipedia.
The idea of such a concept is abstract and frankly, it simply didn't happen that way. Windows didn't just one day appear. Windows 3.1 was run on top of a full MS-Dos install. Even Win95, 98 and ME were still sitting on top of MS-Dos. The idea that MS-Dos was popular because it was awesome is laughable. It was popular because it was used by business. IBM made computers acceptable for business. No one that was into something like gaming or demos or music used a PC in the 1980s. NO ONE. We all had Commodore 64s, Atari 800s and even Apple IIs. Later it was the Atari ST and Amiga. Those were computers used for music and/or graphics. Not until 1987 did VGA even show up and it wasn't widespread until the early 1990s. THAT is when PCs started to be used for graphics and more music applications (thanks to cards like Soundblaster). Apple had good market penetration for desktop publishing on the Mac at the time and the Commodore Amiga cleaned house for desktop video editing when the NewTek Video Toaster came out in 1990 (announced in 1987).
So again, I don't know who these supposed people were that supposedly said the original Mac was for idiots and that PCs ruled or something. PCs sucked until higher quality games came out in the 1990s for them and even then they were a royal PITA until Windows95 came out (and even THEN, really) with all the IRQ conflicts and other issues. It's a small wonder Nintendo was able to clean house at the time as it was actually easy to use for gaming. The Internet was just a pipe dream mostly for Universities until around the mid 1990s and until the Web really came out in force around 1993, there wasn't much to do networking-wise for a home user beyond newsgroups, email and FTP for file transfers. Most of us were still using BBSes (Bulletin Board Services) with external modems (I remember my first 14.4kbps modem in the early 1990s and how awesome it was compared to my 2400 baud Amiga modem and my 300 baud C64 modem). It's a joke now, but trying to compare 1993 or even 1996 (when I had my first web site go pubilc, the "Audiophile Asylum") to today's computers and Internet makes the differences seem rather odd to even try and compare at that level.
I wouldn't know. I rarely use OSX "utilities". I have 3rd party ones that are far more advanced for things like backing up the computer (Carbon Copy Cloner) or editing photos (Photoshop). Disk Utility is probably the only Apple "utility" I ever use.
If it's rhetorical, then I won't bother answering it. Suffice to say, the user bases are a bit larger (something on the order of 90% more) than the OSX market and based on the number of security upgrades I had to do on my mother's MBP recently (from Adobe Flash and Reader to a NVRam update to another Security Update), the Mac is hardly free from potential for hacking or malware. UNIX is far more difficult to exploit a true virus, but not all malware is a virus.
Admittedly, OSX is pretty stable these days, but it wasn't always so. I used to get "kernel panics" (the OSX equivalent of the blue screen of death) fairly regularly in some of the OSX releases (and particularly some versions of iTunes for the PPC was to blame for regular kernel panics). OTOH, I don't see newer versions of Windows crashing anywhere NEAR the amount Windows98 and early XP versions used to crash. I've seen software in OSX and Windows crash quite often without taking either OS down. In other words, I think OSX is more stable overall than Windows, but it's not quite what it used to be. True, many Windows Updates have required reboots and hte fact they get a LOT of security updates makes that more frequent, but the last time I checked, security updates for OSX (and some Safari updates and other things as well) ALSO required a reboot for OSX (something you'd almost never see in Linux). So I wouldn't want to exaggerate a bit too much.
Didn't that particular model come in one of those horrible horrible giant metal cases that you claimed earlier to hate so much of PC Towers? Or is the cheese grater metal front the difference that makes it SOOOO much "better" than a PC that uses a mere "plastic" front (like most Macbooks were made of for so many years)? Hmmmm?
This thread was posted today morning and it already has 11 pages. Ah, how I love [hate] fanboys!
What a mouthful... I see some arguments where you have misinterpreted what I said. However, I'd like to ask you the following question: Are you discerning enough to see the difference in build quality between Macs and other vendor PCs? Don't give me this motherboard crap. I am talking about the manner in which the machine is constructed, and what kind of materials are used. It should be obvious when you're dealing with a non-Apple PC. I have never been impressed by any other computer manufacturers' products, and I have tested/seen many different kinds of 'Windows PCs'; heck, I own dozens of 'Windows PCs'. Don't accuse me of being someone who hasn't touched anything besides a Mac.
I am very familiar with Windows and its utilities; its utilities are fairly poor and not too flexible.
That's false too and I say that as someone that prefers OS X. Face it, Apple enforces the walled garden approach on its customers. The success and popularity of it is dependant on consumers liking it enough or not. For me, apart from the bonehead green button full screen crap, OS X is almost spot on. But theres NO way its more flexible than Windows. To say that is deliberately fooling yourself.
When will people stop with the argument that gaming is better on PC. It is not. Gaming is better on Windows. There is a difference. So my 2010 Mac Pro with a GTX 980 will perform less on gaming than a $200 Dell PC? Since PCs are better than Macs for gaming right? Stop with that argument. Macs can do gaming just fine. An Intel is an Intel.
When people say gaming is better on PC, they mean Windows. And not because Windows is better than MacOS, but because it has amazing support since it's the most dominant desktop OS. Plus you can build a beast of a gaming machine for $1.5-2k. You won't get that with a Mac.
Macs are not built for gaming. They play games just fine though. The entire argument that Macs suck at gaming is just completely 100% false. Just like an older video card doesn't suck at gaming, you just need to play it at the appropriate resolution and settings. You know there are people out there that do not need to play games at maximum quality at 4K resolution. Even my older iMac still plays games very well under Windows at medium settings. Everything is relative. Somebody obsessed with 4K gaming will say a single GTX 980 sucks at gaming. People obsessed with triple SLI will say any single video card sucks at gaming.
Also, stop comparing custom builds to Macs. You know it is still cheaper to custom build vs buying from Dell, HP, Lenovo, ... Why are Macs to blame here? Doing things yourself is ALWAYS cheaper, not just with computers.
This is ALWAYS the argument. "Macs suck, I can build a better system for X money!!!" Well of course! Compare it with a Dell too. Building your own computer is ALWAYS cheaper. I never understand why people pick on Apple for this. Are they just trying to be cool?
When I first got my 2010 Mac Pro, I had somebody argue with me that they could build a better system for $600. At the time, the processors in the Mac Pro alone were about $1,000 on NewEgg.
Taking building out of the equation, can you get a $1,000 Dell that is better than the Mac Pro? When you stop comparing Macs to custom builds, the price point of competitive products are not that much different.
So no, Macs are not better than Windows PC. And Windows PCs are not better than Macs. They are the same. Though it is irritating that Windows PC manufacturers are still putting in extremely slow HDD in the i5 and i7 builds (Dell!!!!). A brand new i7 system feels extremely slow because of the extremely slow HDD they keep using. SSDs should become the standard. The 850 Evos are not very expensive.
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What do you mean? You said this:
"Plus you can build a beast of a gaming machine for $1.5-2k. You won't get that with a Mac."
What don't I get about that? You CAN'T build a system better than a Dell for a cheaper price? Why are you strictly picking on Macs with that argument? Is the below statement false?
"Plus you can build a beast of a gaming machine for $1.5-2k. You won't get that with a Dell."
Believe it or not, a lot of times I have seen desktops from Dell, Asus, and HP that were cheaper than if you were to build it yourself.
I priced the parts from Neweeg and they came in at around $1000 when the Dell and Lenovo were on sale for $800.
It's not always true that you can build it cheaper than a manufacturer.
I priced the parts from Neweeg and they came in at around $1000 when the Dell and Lenovo were on sale for $800.
It's not always true that you can build it cheaper than a manufacturer.
Then you probably don't want that system to begin with. They probably used crappy power supplies and other crappy parts to make the price lower to where you can't even build one yourself cheaper. I have ALWAYS found it to be true where you can always build a cheaper system. Also, sales do not really count. You can build the system for months while you wait for similar sales on the individual components.
But that argument really needs to stop. Of course you can build a better system cheaper. If I get an Alienware for $3,000, you would be saying the same thing. So why is that ALWAYS the argument with Macs?
Also, do not forget, you are building with consumer parts (most of the time with these comparisons). the Mac Pro is a workstation, containing Xeon and ECC memory. Whether you need that or not is not the point. Those processors do cost a bit more.
http://www.costco.com/Dell-XPS-8700-Desktop-|-Intel-Core-i7-|-4GB-Graphics.product.100176921.html
Go to Newegg and price all the parts that this tower has and tell me how much it would cost you to build it instead of buying it pre-built.
Go to Newegg and price all the parts that this tower has and tell me how much it would cost you to build it instead of buying it pre-built.
How is it false? Have you ever f*cked around with Disk Manager or Windows' entire networking approach? It's horrendous. Even Linux, in all its barbarity, has better system managers than Windows does. I've had plenty of experience dealing with Windows and Windows machines. In fact, my first computer was a Windows PC (utter piece of garbage), and I currently own over a dozen of them.
Processor on that alone costs $310. GPU on that machine is useless, but goes for $100. 16GB of RAM should go for around $80. Big question is the motherboard (cost is likely around $100). Then all the other parts (PSU, cooling, optical drive, mouse, keyboard, case, etc). What Dell is charging is actually a fair price.
I'd still rather build my own, and glad I did, my PC/Hackintosh build runs almost completely silent.
Like I said, that is on sale. I can spend a whole year building one that is cheaper if I get the individual parts on sale too.
Plus, I have had XPS systems in the past like that. They are not very well built. I had a couple that had power supplies pop and smoke.