More interesting points, thanks.

Strange as it may be in this day and age (and especially from a Scot Swiss ) the cost isn't the overriding factor for me.

I've been a windows user since day 1 (giving away the age there..lol..) and continue to do so. However, as above, I was really impressed with everything about the iMac, from the asthetics of the machine to the user interface, to the bundled software.

The reliability point, and not having to run so much security in the background all the time (never had a virus) all stack up in its favour.

Now, from a layman's point of view, and I could be totally off the mark on this, it seems that due to fundimental OS differences, the mac's don't need to be as highly specced as a PC to perform similarly?

Thoughts?

The only downside I can see is cost, tbh. And when I look at comparable spec PC's with big monitors and software, its not as big a gap as it first appears.

My first laptop (provided by an employer) cost nearly £4,000. Makes an Imac at £1,500 look positively cheap by comparison.

 

Very true. Just as there are people who will defend Macs like rabid fanboys

I've no problem with the machines themselves. They look good and work well. The problem I have is the cost. As already mentioned, you can get a non-Apple machine of the same specification, using the same components, for much cheaper than if you buy from Apple (sometimes less than half the price for the basic machines, and there is an even bigger gap when you get to the higher levels of performance).

If all you want it for is web browsing, email, office stuff, and a bit of photo editing (i.e. typical home tasks), then you don't even have to use Windows. Ubuntu will do the job very nicely, and it's free.

I just recently built myself a new PC (quad core with GT285 gfx, 1TB disc space, 2 monitors etc). The whole lot came to around £1500. I've just used the Apple website to build a similarly specced Mac Pro (which in fact is not quite as powerful), and it came to £3899!!!!

Macs, value for money?

 

Iain, was your motherboard single socket?

the mac pros use xeon and dual socket mobos which aren't cheap.

DD, i think you'll be very please with your choice - i only have a mac mini and it's a great little machine.

 

You could run Ubuntu on a PC instead of OSX on a Mac. No risk of viruses, and personally I think it is a better OS

Not true. It all depends on how well the software has been written (and what type of software you are using). For stuff that relies on a lot of operating system features (such as a desktop publishing program for example which will use lots of OS API calls), then the OS can make a difference to performance. Simialrly, if it's an application which does a lot of hard drive thrashing then the speed of the OS IO routines can have an impact. Generally speaking though, the effects / differences are minimal.

What the speed differences boil down to is really the programming of the software you are using. One of the programs I use regularly is Lightwave (3d rendering software) and there are both PC and Mac versions available. In the benchmarks, on similarly specced machines, the PC version generally renders scenes 30-40% faster than the Mac version (they are just about to release a linux version as well, so it will be interesting to compare that).

So in summary, for processor intensive tasks, you can get double the performance for half the price if you go with a PC.

My laptop cost under a grand and is just as fast as an IMac. Doesn;t look as pretty though

 

Double post...

 

All that fancy speed and self build obviously doesnt stop you from double posting

Bloody PC's



I dont think Umbungo will be up DD' street. I think, by the sounds of it, he has enough problems dealing with an etch-a-sketch let alone an interface which is all strange

 

Posted from one of my Linux boxes at work actually. Not sure if it's scoobynet or the internet connection here, but the forum seems to be really acting up today...

 

**** off

etch-a-sketch indeed

I have no issues mastering software and user interface, but I have no interest in what goes on behind the scenes, so to speak.

Now, would PS or DPP run on Ubuntu though? Or would I be restricted to MS paint? That could give me problems processing raw image files

 

PS etc won;t run in Ubuntu, but you can use GIMP (which does 99% of what PS does). With the appropriate (free) plugins it can read most RAW file formats these days.

 

Iain,

Cheers for that. Question was a little tounge in cheek

It will take more than a couple of hundered quid saved to stop me using DPP as a raw convertor for the time being.

PS - not even going to try searching for GIMP from my work connection

 

Lol

 

How? What 3D Mark Scores are you reading? Apple, their marketing machine, and their fans have spent a lifetime trying to convince people it's about actual use, not benchmarks, so how can you be so sure?

I used this to test my Mac..

http://www.primatelabs.ca/geekbench/

 

I took ST's comment to be about the graphics industry and by that I would infer typesetting and graphic design, rather than graphics cards.

 

Certain portions of the graphics industry certainly are ruled by the mac. Others however (3d animation for example) certainly aren't.

Out of interest, are there any Mac applications taking advantage of CUDA yet?

 

Yes sorry, I meant the graphic design/DTP industry, not graphics as in cards.
Iain is correct in mentioning the 3D side.

 

DTP? Dee Tee Pee! Wash your bladdy mouth out! DTP is something you do at home using Word, it's for amateurs. If you handle Report & Accounts, magazines, newspapers, or any other serious layout then it is Typesetting

 

NO Typsetting is what you do with with potatoes and ink

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

 

No viruses on a Mac?

Search Results: osx


anyway - I've always said:

 

I think you will find that in reality many of those are proof of concept however that is splitting hairs

 

Iain

On the topic of money and why are they more expensive.
Here is an interesting article. http://www.ndpta.com/files/AppleTax.pdf

Please note on the first page who the sponser is

However the same article has been taken apart slightly here

 

 

For an average user (Me) the lack of upkeep is a major factor. With windows every Tuesday night was Anti Virus, Anti spyware and update night. Now it's just turn on, tune in and surf. (or play with photos, listen to podcasts, ect, ect) It's very liberating!!

Right,

Mac 62 results.

Same question for XP? 15500 results.

Vista? 3680.

Anyone seeing a pattern here?

Sorry went Mac 4 months ago and (so far) I'm never going back.

 

On the mac virus front. I think that the majority of those items are NOT silent, ie; do not require user interaction, in fact, I think they require you to enter your local admin username and password, which then allows them to use privilege escalation to execute commands as the root user (via the sudo command). Now, as with any platform, if you enter your username and password without really checking into what you are installing, you're asking for trouble.
If you run an app that you have downloaded then BEFORE it actually executes (this is on 10.5.x btw) then the OS will alert you that you're opening an item downloaded from the internet, and are you sure you want to open it, I think it mentions that it could contain malicious code (am not at home, am using XP, so cannot check on OS X right now as to exactly what it says), thus you are given a warning.

I would be more concerned about a mac virus if it were able to silently install and escalate privileges, that would be a problem.

I don't run AV on OS X and have not run AV on my systems, apart from testing compatibility with our products (some AV solutions seem to dislike some of the things our software does and believe it's a virus) for many years. If did run AV then I'd use something like clamAVx (or whatever the OS X version of clam av is). It's free, and not bloatware like some of the Mac AV solutions out there.
I am fully aware that the main reason for Mac AV is to prevent you from sending on infected files to PC users, which could include yourself if you use Windows.

The one exception I'd grant are word macro viruses, which can probably be removed by some AV software, I've not looked into it that much, so I don't know for sure.

 

Most windows users don't realise that a virus only has the same privilege as the user logged in. If they're running Administrator level when they don't need to, then they are opening themselves up for trouble.