apple computers
 

Someone I know is looking at purchasing an Apple Laptop..can I get some opinions on laptops and the Apple Co. in general.

I'd also be interested to know if any graphic artists out there, or any multimedia experts in general (digital video production, digital audio, etc) that have used both pcs and macs have a preference and why.

I'm pretty biased, as you can see from my signature, but from what I've read and seen, Apple laptops are the best in the business. The build quality is superb, and I think the operating system is really grand. It really depends on what the computer is being used for though.

Macs are known for being used in the graphic/multimedia area like Sun Tzu said, but the gap between Macs and PCs in that area has closed drastically. For most uses, computer choice is down to a personal one.

I'm an interactive designer and I'ved used both mac and pc and personally prefer PCs. I think they're better at the getting the job done quickly and efficiently especially multi-tasking.

Standard questions:
What do you want to do.
How much are you willing to spend
Are you willing to put some time into learning a new system?

Mac are for people who place more emphasis on style than result.

They look real cool.
But spend the same money on a PC and it will do a lot more for your dollar, but won't look as cool.

I get plenty done on mine, so it's certainly possible to get as much done or more if you know the system. But that's an argument for another thread.

Re: apple computers
 

I'd recommend waiting for a few more months. Before Christmas (hopefully) they should finally be updating the 15" Powerbook, and probably the other two Powerbooks while they're are it.

Bang for the buck go PC... I love my ibook but I constantly wish I had the power and compatbility of a PC.

But nothing beats the design of the ibook/powerbook... just a joy to use when your surfing. It also has unix under the hood so it's easy to troubleshoot some things and do others.

When I same do a lot more for your dollar I mean spec wise, faster processor etc.

I had some time to kill in Chicago a few weeks ago so I wandered in to the new Apple Store. They've done an amazing job giving the entire apple brand this style that's super-compelling. Got me thinking - could I break free from the wintel prison and escape to Apple's utopia of smart design, simple GUI, and powerful unix back end? I wandered over to the sleek ibooks, lifted one up, and thought "maybe I should make my next laptop a mac, just to be free."

And then reality struck. I make a living helping businesses make smart, strategic decisions about their technology spending. Could I justify my purchase to Apple to my clients? Would I EVER be put in a situation where someone's telling me "I can't read that file you sent me"?

I really would like a Mac, but for all of the wrong reasons. Instead, I'm just going to stick with my boring windows machine (some of which are getting very stylish) and show my style with my ipod.

You will never have an "I can't read that file you sent" issue on a Mac, that's a thing of the past. PC and Mac have shared document formats since the beginning. For some strange reason mac developers decided to make the default option saving in incompatible formats, but that's all changed now.

I could go on and on about how much I love OSX, but I'd just sound like another Mac fanatic. I also have 2 FreeBSD machines, 2 XP machines and a Linux box.

Computers are just tools. You don't pound down nails with the end of a screwdriver ... unless that's all you have at your disposal and NEED to get that nail driven. Since I work with computers, I have a vested interest in having one of everything.

I think the average user needs one computer to handle handle everything they need. If you are going to have one computer, and one computer only, you are probably best suited with a Windows machine. Not because it's a great OS (it really isn't), but because it's the closest thing to a standard in a desktop you will find, and essential if you play games at all.

But if you are looking for a laptop to augment your desktop, a tibook is a great option. It's sleek, stable, powerful. You will quickly learn that its desktop paradigm is sound and well structured. Apple hardware is expensive, but you really do get what you pay for.

You still can't instal PC games :icare:

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You still can't instal PC games
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That is why they have MAC versions of them.

Yeah 5 years after they come out. I don't see a mac version of Half Life 2, GTA VC, Midnight Club 2, Final Fantasy XI, Battlefield 1942, etc.. the list goes on. :lol:

As much as us Mac guys yell that we get our games, the truth is we have 1/10 the amount of games of PCs. While 5 years is an extreme exaggeration, it does take some time for the port from PC to Mac. While this doesn't make me happy, I find that there are plenty of games available to keep me busy. I'm just one of those guys who doesn't have to _have_ the newest and prettiest games on my computer the day they come out. If this person is, they should go with a PC, txgirl.

Uh, I don't see a PC version of half-life 2. It's not even out yet. :P

Mac OSX is not for gamers. This isn't a shortcoming. The hardware control that Windows allows applications accounts for a large portion of its instability. Not everyone who needs a computer is into gaming. The only people that bitch about the lack of games on Mac are PC gamers.

If you want all the latest games, get a PC.

Alright. I'm giving you 12 hours to either bring this back on track and help txgirl or I'm locking it.

We're trying!

txgirl - I don't know the politics of your friend but some of us (by that I mean mostly just me) feel Microsoft is an evil company, has been for decades, and refuse to give them our money on moral grounds if nothing else. If the morality of a company is as issue, Apple wins easily (not to say Apple is perfect but not even in the same ballpark as MS).

Apple makes great laptops and their laptops are much more in line price / feature / performance wise with PC's than with their desktop lines.

I'm confused. This was her question:

Seems like this topic is dead-on. It's about the pros and cons of choosing Apple as your laptop.

Apple is not an evil company? :lol: I consider Apple a much more evil company than Microsoft. Apple makes you buy their overpriced proprietary hardware. You don't have the latest mac OS? Tough, you'll miss out on the latest software. Break something in your computer? You'll have to replace your entire machine.

All microsoft does is make a great OS. You don't have to use it if you want to. They don't force you to buy certain hardware. Don't like IE? Don't use it.

Mac laptops are nice but they're far from matching the performance and upgradebility of PCs.

We're also still waiting on the Mac versions of the MS Blaster worm, Code Red, the Autorooter worm, Yaha, Klez, Sobig, BugBear, Webber, and hundreds of other malware programs that flourish in the Windows OS.

While Mac users aren't immune the viri and worms, the number that can attack us is less than .1% of the malware "market", and most of those are MS Office Macros "viri" (Visual Basic scripts not really worth of the name virus), which can bother you only if you use MS Office.

This qualifies as a very good to consider Apple over the Wintel clones.

Pure, distilled, 100% ignorance.

If something breaks in a Mac, you can replace the broken component without a whole new machine; quite unlike some Gateway models from 2-3 years ago where you can't even upgrade the RAM. If you have a PowerMac tower, you can have most replacement jobs completed in the time it take for you to get the case off any unmodified Wintel machine.

As for the quality of Microsoft's OS, see here and here and even here.

Ever try to run any version of Windows on the minimum "required system"? It won't. You're forced to upgrade to use the product. MacOS's minimums can sometimes even be circumvented (eg, XpostFacto); and OSX can run (slowly) on an old 604e chip @120 MHz instead of the stated minimum G3 @ 233, if you have the minimum required RAM.

So far, it looks like the only legitmate argument against Apple is the price, unless you're a hard-core PC gamer that has to have this second's latest release. Going after used and refurbished Apple machines lowers the price gap a bit, and you can sometime score "free" programs that people forgot to remove before selling you the machine.

Hope this helps.

It seems you would not listen. Take your flames to the appropriate thread. Sorry txgirl, if you want answers PM me or check one of our many other threads. Folks can not stay on topic.