I have been wondering what all the fuss is about macs and was thinking about dipping my toe in to the world of apple mac.

I was planning on using it at work, I mainly edit and resize photos with photoshop 6 and xara xtreme. Then use an ftp program to upload and edit files with notepad++. I also do a little html editing.

They are all tasks associated with running online retail websites, i also use office for word and excel.

I'm not really going to be using it for music or video (although I may setup itunes for my ipad) is it going to be overkill?

I am looking at an imac 27" system for around £1300 but for the same money I could get an amazing specification windows pc from dell, that will run a larger amount of programs?

Should I jump?

 

I got my first mac (MacBook pro) this year and never looked back. After seeing my mac mum has bought a mbp and sister bought a iMac 21" they love them .

 

I jumped a couple of years ago.

Now have two Macbooks for business and a Windows desktop as a office based machine/server.

Once I started using Mac I was a bit underwhelmed...

...until I go back to Windows. It is so clunky, slow and difficult to use compared to the Mac. I will never buy another Windows machine.

I run Vista under Parallels as a VM on my Mac. Runs better than most native machines and it can be left tucked away unless I have to use it.

 

I am sure that Mac is good but I don't really see any point in changing everything all around now.

Les

 

I got my imac 27" a few weeks ago and love it! I got mine for music production and have not had my pc on since!


The wife loves it for photo and video editing and we now find ourselves fighting to use it!.



Do it!


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A mac could be overkill for what you want to do. Yes, it'll do it, but as you say, you can get a very decent PC setup for the same price. I've used Macs for 18 years now and so know the in's and out's pretty well (I started off as a typesetter, then moved into a tech support role for 14 years, now a QA for an iOS team).

OS X *is* different from Windows and it will take a little getting used to. Some things aren't as intuitive as they could be. One could argue that is because Windows does things the wrong way and Apple doesn't, but that isn't true all the time.

The actual switching over should be simple enough, you can if you wish use BootCamp to dual boot your machine (one partition for OS X, another for XP / Vista / 7) so you won't have to give up windows altogether. If you need to run a windows app at the same time as a Mac app, there are virtual machine apps, VMWare Fusion and Parallels Desktop for Mac being the two main ones.

 

Markus is right. OSX has always been a document centric OS and windows was always an application centric one.

that's why in OSX when you kill a document, the app stays active. the concept is that you will want to work on another document using that app and you gain productive speed having the app still wired in memory.

windows is clunky because, well before vista anyway, when you kill a window it was traditionally the main application window and the app would be closed. want to edit another word doc? well you have to start Word again

Now windows is a poor combination of the 2 paradigms. OSX is a far better OS. well designed UI and based on UNIX.

you might have to shell out for a few bits of software, but you will be able to edit all your documents

if you need to take your mac out and about, consider a macbook pro + an external monitor. MBPs are very capable machines on their own.

 

I have gone to Ubuntu on my Laptop and its serving me well, I hated Vista, it was crap, slow, buggy and generally useless, Windows 7 is a revalation.

I have used Macs and they have been nice but to me, sometimes for home users seem more of a style statement, like a Dualit Toaster or poncy Coffee maker rather than an informed choice, there does seem to be a slavish Apple mentality with some people, ok, its nice to use but so is Windows now (and XP was fine ages ago), Apple only do Desktop stuff and gadgets, MS do Server O/S's, Database, Desktop O/S, Mail Servers, the premier gaming platform etc etc, there are a lot of MS haters but to be honest I think they do a damn fine job.

 

*cough* Mac OS X Server *cough*
You do have a point though, the server side of things isn't a big apple thing, they really only pay lip service to it. Take, for example ther equiv of AD policies. It is ok, but not fantastic, which is a good thing as we created one of be main alternatives to it

I also agree there is a "look at me" type deal with some Apple users. I don't loathe windows, it is useful and there are some things a Mac is not good at, gaming being a prime example

 

i used to advise my g/f to get mac hardware and then she could have proper choice of OS.

it's moot now as she doesn't really like windows anymore.

 

Come on,Apple is great for people which don't want hassle with OS...
But if you are really professional(3D) like me,only one option is Windows,MacOSX don't support 3DS Max,Catia,Maya and many more(yes at this time Mac support the AutoCad),but that's it.
Yes is easy to understand but i no prepare pay £2k for Mac Pro,due this i have Hackitosh which run MacOSX just as Digital Audio Workstation(Logic Pro 9),that's it,Photoshop i run on my w7 or Premiere Pro i use for editing my Video's,due support the CUDA.
But switching all my programs to boot camp,not really or switching just for Mac is for me not possible.

 

I'd be surprised if you got a virus on osx it's not windows

I don't use av on my mac as there never has been a need, unless you download or visit dodgy sites you won't need it.

 

http://www.sophos.com/pressoffice/ne...nti-virus.html

 

switched this summer, purely because of imovie!

 

remember there are microsoft codecs to play avi/wmv in quick time and I found one the other day to play mkv in quicktime too.

 

Just download vlc player that's what I use for playback no need for codecs.

B2z, I see your point each to their own I suppose.

 

I'd never recommend not running AV, some people insist on being a administrator then say yes to anything, human nature.

 

thanks for this i'll give it go

 

I made a Hackintosh, better to use than a real Mac I tried. But also pointless as far as I can tell except to code for iOS, hardly use it. I prefer Windows 7. "Unnecessarily different" could be a good slogan.

 

Free AV you say? Try this.

 

Can I install any version of pc windows on an imac? 32 or 64 bit?

 

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1846

 

As a Macbook user it doesn't really bother me that MS is great at making servers.

Microsoft does make good software - I use Office most days (on my Macbook ) - but the overall experience is not as good as my Mac experience.

Also, to be fair, I have not used Windoze 7 which I know is based on Mac user interface so it might be quite good

 

It is quite good. I run it via Virtual Box on my Macbook. It was the only way I could export my old emails, bloody Microsoft and it's proprietary formats always holding the user back.