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Why Macs are better than PC's?
- Thread starter tony3dd
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did you not state that performance is not necessary in the work you do? In which case a machine that has a higher benchmark has no impact on your workflow. And you are spot on.
I was just pointing out that if my workflow was encoding videos, a higher benchmarking machine = more money for me, as I can get more done in the Same time.
For me the main advantage of a hackintosh is the ability of over clock and get extra performance.
Or have I missed the point of the discussion, I may have .... I admit I did not read the whole thread from the start.
I find that Macs typically are more stable and consistent and just works in comparison. I say typically, because a PC can be any wintel machine so there are a lot of variation out there. You may be able to put one together yourself that performs very well and is stable, assuming you like the OS options available, but then I'd like to bring up the old joke that Linux if free if your time is worthless.
I also prefer the OS over Windows, although a personal preference, if you want or need a Unix system it's great, just get the machine out of the box, plug it in and get to work. For media related work, the OS comes with great pro frameworks and is made for the specific hardware that ships in the box, this makes them stable and reliable and offer a best in class latency accross the board out of the box.
For me, up until windows 7, macs just worked and were hassle free, the choice was a no brainier. Since windows 7 I found windows bridge the gab In a major way, I did not upgrade to windows 8 until 8.1 was out though. People might complain about windows 8, but it's very stable in my opinion.
That makes no sense. Macs are PCs, I assume you are only talking about design, as performance wise they have the same Lamborghini roadster internals....
I gotta agree with this. I've avoided Windows like the plague for YEARS (nearly a decade in fact).... but Windows 7 has been completely bug and blue screen free. I mostly game in my Windows partition, surf the web and use Skype to talk to my mom. I've also done some Java and web development as well as used it to root my HTC One S; all went without any issues. I still prefer OS X.... but yes, Windows 7 has definitely bridged the gap.
Siri and Cortana will have sexy time. Google Now will record it. The offspring will be the backbone of the world economy on top of which all our apps, smart devices and Internet of things will run in complete harmony. The offspring's name will be called Base. Internet memes will make fun of the name. It will send drones to kill meme authors.
Not aimed at the people on this thread, but I find a lot of people refuse to accept that macs are just PCs, they think they are made from superior internals. What they do not realise is this you can built a PC from components that are Superior to what goes into a Mac (desktop).
When it comes to building PC desktops, over clocking is a standard feature now days, so you get a free performance boost.
Macs major gimp factor is the GPU, top end is a 7970, which in PC terms is ancient......
And windows 10 is looking very promising.... Looks like a new 7 to me, so happy to give it a go.
It is leftovers from the PPC days when Apple faked all those demoes showing the G3/4/5 being 20 million times faster than an Intel chip. In the real world we knew better that there wasn't much difference. Still to this day if you ask the public many still think there's something different about the internals of a Mac.
Steve Jobs ran NextStep on off the shelf PC parts. He kept doing that with OSX in private development unit even when he was bragging about PPC in public. The first Intel developer kits Apple used were off the shelf PC parts stuffed into a cheese grater case. Apple itself was running their own "hackintosh" for those early Intel Macs. Officially NT4 was the last Windows to run on PPC. The first XBox 360 development kits were Power Mac G5s that Apple modded to allow Microsoft to run an updated Windows NT for PPC.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/1686/5
The people at the top are much more platform agnostic than they lead the public to believe.
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While towards the end of the PPC era intel caught up, the G3/4/5 were better chips than their intel counterparts of the same era. Just the G5 used too much power and they weren't able to get that or the heat down enough to get it in a laptop, and over time that allowed intel to catch up soon after which apple switched to them.
It's amazing that baits like this thread still work... 
Half that era the classic Mac OS before OSX was hobbled with poor multi processor support. Those dual CPU Macs were a sad state. Every test I threw at them that second CPU did almost nothing compared to multi processor Windows support. That's one of the reasons ...
'OS X has been living a double life for years' Steve Jobs
Well, there's some real mis-information and personal preferences in this thread.
Top and bottom - neither is better than the other.
This is like debating your favourite colour, sure you can make all the dots join up for black, red, blue, white or any other colour, but it's just "your" preference!
I'm running both, they both need maintenance, (in different ways) they both do something better than the other. Of late OS X has been more problematic than Win7 for me. To such an extent I moved over my iTunes library to windows and it does in my experience run smoother than on the Mac. I also have less crashes on windows (not had any), where's as on the Mac I've had a few.
I'm not tied to one brand, I don't give a damn about the fanboys, I'll be try windows 10 and not pre-judging and happy to stay using both.
Top and bottom - neither is better than the other.
This is like debating your favourite colour, sure you can make all the dots join up for black, red, blue, white or any other colour, but it's just "your" preference!
I'm running both, they both need maintenance, (in different ways) they both do something better than the other. Of late OS X has been more problematic than Win7 for me. To such an extent I moved over my iTunes library to windows and it does in my experience run smoother than on the Mac. I also have less crashes on windows (not had any), where's as on the Mac I've had a few.
I'm not tied to one brand, I don't give a damn about the fanboys, I'll be try windows 10 and not pre-judging and happy to stay using both.
my experience is the same as yours. I find that the yearly update cycles have impacted the most recent version of OSX. To be my favourite is still Snow leopard.
Though as you said, is a much of a muchness these days. Both platforms are as good as each other.
Long time Windows user here. I converted to Mac back in the Jaguar days. Then used Panther and Tiger then went back to Windows XP.
Things I hated about the Mac--like the OP said the inconsistent behavior of the Green Button. Couldn't resize windows from any corner. The Finder was horrible. Some programs like MS Office had uninstallers while some you just dragged to the trash icon.
Back then there was much less browser competition and a lot of sites didn't work properly with Safari. IE on Jaguar was awful! Upgraded to Panther--loved Expose. Upgraded to Tiger--loves Spotlight. But all this time surfing the web on a Mac was inferior. Adobe Flash was a huge resource hog, nothing optimized for Safari.
Office for Mac sucked! 2016 looks better, but my Mac days are behind me. It was stupid to have a pictures folder and a separate program for pictures--iPhoto which I never really liked. Could not cut and paste files like in Windows.
Mac had no Print Selection Option--there was a workaround but a hassle. Another thing I hated was the red button on windows in Mac. Sometimes it just closed the window--other times it closed the application. Unless you know the keyboard shortcut or File>Quit "Application" the applications is still running. Go into an Apple store and look at how many applications are open on any Mac. None Mac users don't know when they hit the red button they aren't actually closing the application--they are just closing the window.
Bouncing icons. Hard to tell which applications were open. In the trash can no option to restore files to original location.
But I think the thing that bothered me most was the most software was simply better (more optimized) for Windows than a Mac. Developers put most of their resources to the dominant platform. And Mac people always say markets hare doesn't matter--it does to developers. Take QuickBooks as an example.
Ironically Microsoft is on the opposite end of the stick today with Windows Phone. Even if they have an app--it's iOS or Android counterpart is superior.
iTunes was great and I think we can all agree--now it is a bloated mess. And on Windows it's even worse. I don't even have iTunes installed on my PC--it's such a resource hog. I don't have any dedicated music player. I can't find any good option.
So Windows XP was a great OS. A year and a half ago I got a Windows 7 computer. Personally Windows 7 is the best OS I have ever used. I love Aero. Then Microsoft ruined it with Windows 8. It maybe stable but horrendous UI and they removed Aero. I know all about Start 8, etc. but for now I am sticking with Win 7. Windows 10 so far looks better than Win 8, but not as good as Win 7. Glad they finally have the Expose copycat feature in Windows 10 and multiple desktops, but I am happy with Win 7.
It's funny because neither Apple nor Microsoft will be king of the OS in 10 years. Google Chrome is going to eat both of their lunches. Everything is going to the Cloud. I stopped using Google and Gmail because I don't trust them.
There will be documentaries on the 'Rise and Fall Microsoft'. Who would have ever thought that Internet Explorer would not only be surpassed, but discontinued? Other mistakes way late in the MP3 and then smartphone market. Steve Balmer was an awful CEO.
What the future holds for these tech giants is exciting and a bit scary at times. And I usually root for the underdog. I just don't know who the underdog is anymore?
Things I hated about the Mac--like the OP said the inconsistent behavior of the Green Button. Couldn't resize windows from any corner. The Finder was horrible. Some programs like MS Office had uninstallers while some you just dragged to the trash icon.
Back then there was much less browser competition and a lot of sites didn't work properly with Safari. IE on Jaguar was awful! Upgraded to Panther--loved Expose. Upgraded to Tiger--loves Spotlight. But all this time surfing the web on a Mac was inferior. Adobe Flash was a huge resource hog, nothing optimized for Safari.
Office for Mac sucked! 2016 looks better, but my Mac days are behind me. It was stupid to have a pictures folder and a separate program for pictures--iPhoto which I never really liked. Could not cut and paste files like in Windows.
Mac had no Print Selection Option--there was a workaround but a hassle. Another thing I hated was the red button on windows in Mac. Sometimes it just closed the window--other times it closed the application. Unless you know the keyboard shortcut or File>Quit "Application" the applications is still running. Go into an Apple store and look at how many applications are open on any Mac. None Mac users don't know when they hit the red button they aren't actually closing the application--they are just closing the window.
Bouncing icons. Hard to tell which applications were open. In the trash can no option to restore files to original location.
But I think the thing that bothered me most was the most software was simply better (more optimized) for Windows than a Mac. Developers put most of their resources to the dominant platform. And Mac people always say markets hare doesn't matter--it does to developers. Take QuickBooks as an example.
Ironically Microsoft is on the opposite end of the stick today with Windows Phone. Even if they have an app--it's iOS or Android counterpart is superior.
iTunes was great and I think we can all agree--now it is a bloated mess. And on Windows it's even worse. I don't even have iTunes installed on my PC--it's such a resource hog. I don't have any dedicated music player. I can't find any good option.
So Windows XP was a great OS. A year and a half ago I got a Windows 7 computer. Personally Windows 7 is the best OS I have ever used. I love Aero. Then Microsoft ruined it with Windows 8. It maybe stable but horrendous UI and they removed Aero. I know all about Start 8, etc. but for now I am sticking with Win 7. Windows 10 so far looks better than Win 8, but not as good as Win 7. Glad they finally have the Expose copycat feature in Windows 10 and multiple desktops, but I am happy with Win 7.
It's funny because neither Apple nor Microsoft will be king of the OS in 10 years. Google Chrome is going to eat both of their lunches. Everything is going to the Cloud. I stopped using Google and Gmail because I don't trust them.
There will be documentaries on the 'Rise and Fall Microsoft'. Who would have ever thought that Internet Explorer would not only be surpassed, but discontinued? Other mistakes way late in the MP3 and then smartphone market. Steve Balmer was an awful CEO.
What the future holds for these tech giants is exciting and a bit scary at times. And I usually root for the underdog. I just don't know who the underdog is anymore?
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That you can do similar things with Windows based PC is not the same as doing them in an easier, faster and better way.
For example, almost all Laptops have a trackpad, none of them works like an Apple trackpad.
Another "feature" they have is the keyboard illumination, not commonly not easy to find in the PC world.
Going to the past in this thread is useless unless there is real need to use your Mac to perform something useful.
Current Mac sales trend means those associated products are better, therefore the experience as user is better with a Mac than with a Windows based PC. More sales, more cash to the mothership, which enables more research and development therefore more things to come in the near future.
Sadly Apple marketing strategy slows the release of certain things.
I wish HomeKit and other development kits unleashed more products and applications to significantly change home automation, monitoring and control.
What about the other points not included in your answer?
bladerunner2000, my experience was the same, until my younger son's Windows 7 Ultimate (64 Bit) after years of use did produce several times the blue screen.
I checked the minidump files with NirSoft's BlueScreenView and it turned out that the problem was triggered by AMD Catalyst™ Display Driver. The installation of the new, beta driver solved the issue.
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Regarding gaming. If you have a PC and a Mac you can stream games from Windows to OSX via Steam. I tried it between the Mac Pro and a base rMBP 15 over wifi and was impressed. That was without AC WIFI card. To see GTAV with ultra settings on that slow MBP was fun.
Great gaming and marriage of platforms can be achieved in this way.
Great gaming and marriage of platforms can be achieved in this way.
It's mostly preference what OS you like-
Me.. I don't like OSX, basically I don't really like anything about the user interface at all, I like Mac hardware though so I have a Mac Pro 4.1 and a Mac Book Pro (the recent one) and luckily they both work perfectly with windows.
Me.. I don't like OSX, basically I don't really like anything about the user interface at all, I like Mac hardware though so I have a Mac Pro 4.1 and a Mac Book Pro (the recent one) and luckily they both work perfectly with windows.
As no doubt already mentioned in this thread there is no "best" among the computer brands. Apple isn't better than Linux or IBM-compatibles, and they aren't better than the others.
What is the best however, is what works for the individual. If the kid is a big Windows fan, that's great, there's nothing wrong with that. Gamer's are typically Window's people because it has a larger selection of games, endless capabilities for customization of hardware and so on.
If I were going over there and the kid started in on me I'd just be kind, nod my head in agreement and make some compliments on his rig, as he'd probably want to show it off. I'd avoid getting into the Mac vs. Windows debate because there isn't a winning side.
I like both platforms and my interest in the kids gaming rig, if that's what he has, would be genuine.
the original thing i said to bladrunner was regarding his emphasis being placed on performance per dollar ratio..
using osx dictionary, we have performance being defined as:
1) the action or process of carrying out or accomplishing an action, task, or function
2) the capabilities of a machine, vehicle, or product, especially when observed under particular conditions
my point is that #1, which in my mind is the actual goal, is not directly related to #2
if i increase performance #2, in all but very particular cases, #1 will not be affected.
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fwiw, i don't think i've stated #2 is not necessary for the work i do.. just that it ranks very low on the list as to what's important.. besides that, it's very easy to boost geekbench scores because all you have to do is spend money.. spending money is easy.. user performance is much more valuable and you can't simply buy it..
if i spend a decade mastering my craft/workflow, it's always such an insult (more like humor) for someone to start saying how benchmarks are the endallbeall of performance.. master some software, put out creative/unique work, and geekbench scores are going to become much less important as a measure of a computer's worth.
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not to mention.. the major performance boosts i've experienced along the way have never been hardware related.. it's always software.. the code/algorithms have been optimized to speed up the processes with zero dollars being spent by the user.. my rendering application is 20-30x faster than when i first bought it.. i paid $0 for that increase.. in contrast, i could focus on geekbench and spend 3x the money on hardware for 2x performance increase.. there are much better places to focus on if we're talking performance-dollar ratios.
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