Alright MacHeads, lets talk

[Gunnar]

've been a Mac user since 99. And its true, MacOS, though it had a lovely interface, was a pain in the ass to use, and it crashed, most horribly, all the time. Tradeoff, it was damned fast. Faster than any other operating system, because it didn't have the bells and whistles.

OSX was a boon for me. But I have found that it crashes from time to time (very rarely though, I have no mystery crashes). Mostly when I'm using a Java application (SWT based mostly), and when i am playing back a wonky video file that seems to lock up everything. If you have a second machine on the network that can ssh into your OSX box, you can kill the app and get it working, but from the machine itself, its gone.

Compare this to Windows? Win95, 98, and NT were real bad, depending on what hardware you ran. Win2k on the other hand was decent, and XP is mostly stable (though its godawful interface is a step backwards). I use windows on a daily basis at work, and considering the plethora of hardware it has to run on, it does a decent job. You also have to give some credit to Intel and the others for putting together better hardware than in the past. Microsoft really needs to work on application stability though. Too many times an application just mysteriously stops working (See inserting fields in Microsoft Word!).

Linux? Well, some of us like to tinker. I really do not want to come home to wrestle with yet another machine. Many a times i've had my mandrake install kill itself on an X upgrade (mysteriously murdered? wtf?). Its got a way to go, and I'd rather have a company behind the OS to go and fight for it (Apple, Microsoft, Sun, etc...).

In the end, OSX and the Mac have been good to me. I know Apple locks us in, and we overpay (until recently, now Apple has been aggressively pricing). But it really does live up to its name, everything just works. I've plugged in my dv camera, usb camera, firewire drives, installed various apps, and done my own development, and it just works.

My opinion, I've sacrificed speed and flexibility for convenience, and I'm satisfied (I own a 1Ghz Albook).

What are other mac user experiences? And anti-Mac user experiences (which is why I guess I am waiting for a flame here..)

 

[n0cmonkey]

Battery life was just better. I bought my iBook because it did what I wanted for a price that was reasonable at the time. Unlike the x86 based notebooks I found.

 

[dudeman007]

My dad bought the family a mac bout...hm 10 years ago? I grew up on this computer. I loved it and I still do. It was simple and yet powerful. I didn't have to worry about crashes that much or if my hardware could not support my software...ahh good days. Now that I look back over it, I feel you are somewhat limited to what you can do compared to windows. But put me on a g5 and I'm there.

 

[Cerb]

Windows: explorer is the interface problem.
Get a different shell and be in bliss...mostly
And I don't know what you mean about crashes. My Win2k install here is on it's second mobo (and chipset), third video card (fourth in a few days, NV->ATi->ATi->NV), third hard drive (8.4GB->20->160), and has yet to crash even once.

Linux: get Xandros 2; they have a free Torrent DL. Add some debian sources to the list, and you can get pretty much any app working fine. The new Xandros has all the snappiness of Slackware, and ease of use of SUSE (and then some!). Plain awesome. It's the first distro I'd say is truly ready for the desktop. Not a ways to go, not somewhat close, not very close, but truly ready.

OS X: I've only used demo machines (no extensive knowledge), but find it way too gaudy and wasteful...not a tinkerer's interface at all, despite easy access to bash .

 

[Eug]

MacOS, though it had a lovely interface, was a pain in the ass to use, and it crashed, most horribly, all the time.

Hmmm... I disliked the interface of OS 9. And the crashing made it exceptionally aggravating. I have friends still on it for work and despite years of tweaking their setups, they're still having to reboot several times a day.

For OS X, I don't think I've had a kernel panic in a year (although some apps will crash once in a while).

BTW, Anand is looking for suggestions for his upcoming Mac site.

 

[Wahsapa]

yes, os9 was gawd awful.... BUT compared to win95/98 it worked way more often.

my first mac was a preforma 6116 for my 10th birthday which was a decade ago, loved the thing to death(it did die but only after being kept on for 6 stright years)

6 solid years of usability couldnt be beat so i had to buy another mac... around the same time apple came out with the g4 cube and i used the student discount to get hooked up on a cube+crt(the monitor had dvi, which i dare you to find now adays, and it calibrated itself!)

its really hard for windows users to understand why macs are so appealing, they are not used to something that just works, and so they do not see the value in it. on windows something is always broken and needs fixing or some setting is always wrong and you spend so much time manipulating the system to give you what you want... mac os x either has what you want or doesnt, and if does then it works without question when you want it to.

 

[Kaido]

I used to have a mac...one of those grayscale laptops...I don't think it ever crashed on me, lol.

My girlfriend has decided to get one of those $800 eMacs. I'm really looking forward to playing with it...the GUI is just plain gorgeous. She likes it because it's a "cute" computer, and it doesn't take up a lot of space. All she does is check her email, use the Internet, and use Microsoft word.

 

[Eug]

Originally posted by: Kaido
I used to have a mac...one of those grayscale laptops...I don't think it ever crashed on me, lol.

My girlfriend has decided to get one of those $800 eMacs. I'm really looking forward to playing with it...the GUI is just plain gorgeous. She likes it because it's a "cute" computer, and it doesn't take up a lot of space. All she does is check her email, use the Internet, and use Microsoft word.

That $800 eMac is pretty basic.

A few random points:

1) $50 will get you a 40 -> 80 GB upgrade. If she stores anything like MP3s, the upgrade would be worth it. Plus I think the 40 GB may be a 5400 rpm drive. 80 GB is 7200 rpm.

2) 256 MB memory is insufficient. I'd recommend 256 MB more (eg. Crucial) at least.

3) Word will have to be purchased separately (Office). It comes with Appleworks which is fine for basic use, but it's no replacement for Word. There is an education version if you she's a student.

4) If she's a student, she can get an educational discount for the Mac too from Apple.

 

[Tostada]

Arguing that Macs are better because of stability is asinine. Those kinds of statements are always backed up by Mac people gloating that their $5000 Mac is more stable than a $499 Gateway.

People who start Mac threads seem to be ignorant of the difference between a good PC and a bad PC, therefore it is good that they have decided to go with Apple, a company that doesn't give you a choice.

Originally posted by: Gunnar
Compare this to Windows? Win95, 98, and NT were real bad, depending on what hardware you ran. Win2k on the other hand was decent, and XP is mostly stable

Blanket statements like that are useless. Windows NT is an excellent OS, and if it was supported I would still be running it today. Win95 was not "real bad." In 1994, Win95 was a more stable OS than Macs had until OSX. Everybody's seen Windows bluescreen, but anybody who's used a Mac for very long has seen that little bomb on the screen, or witnessed the whole thing freeze up to the point that it had to be unplugged. I've seen several G4's that were so unstable when they shipped that listening to an audio CD would make the whole machine twitchy, and I found several web pages that would freeze the entire system.

I've been running WinXP for two years on my main machine. The only time it has ever crashed is when Windows Media Player froze up explorer a couple times when I was playing a DivX file and then dragged it across three monitors on different video cards (with overlay)... and everybody knows Media Player sucks.

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: Eug

Originally posted by: Kaido
I used to have a mac...one of those grayscale laptops...I don't think it ever crashed on me, lol.

My girlfriend has decided to get one of those $800 eMacs. I'm really looking forward to playing with it...the GUI is just plain gorgeous. She likes it because it's a "cute" computer, and it doesn't take up a lot of space. All she does is check her email, use the Internet, and use Microsoft word.

That $800 eMac is pretty basic.

A few random points:

1) $50 will get you a 40 -> 80 GB upgrade. If she stores anything like MP3s, the upgrade would be worth it. Plus I think the 40 GB may be a 5400 rpm drive. 80 GB is 7200 rpm.

2) 256 MB memory is insufficient. I'd recommend 256 MB more (eg. Crucial) at least.

3) Word will have to be purchased separately (Office). It comes with Appleworks which is fine for basic use, but it's no replacement for Word. There is an education version if you she's a student.

4) If she's a student, she can get an educational discount for the Mac too from Apple.

Definately. After we visited the Mac store the other day (they have one in our mall, w00t!), we decided to upgrade from the 40 to 80gb hdd and upgrade the ram from 256 to 512mb. I had looked at Crucial, but I wasn't sure what the warranty is on opening Macs (it'd be way cheaper through Crucial tho). We also looked at Microsoft Office for teachers/students, which was around $120 or $130 iirc.

Educational discounts are cool...we're both in college. How do you go about getting it?

 

[Zugzwang152]

i am debating purchasing a powerbook or ibook simply because they are the sexiest machines available for sale. for simple email/web browsing/word processing, macs are great. anything else and lack of software options kills the platform.

 

[SithSolo1]

I had a G3 powerbook for work back in highschool. It was very nice, easy to use, and was great for editing my video projects. Only major problems I had were its weight(really heavy) and it couldn't play games as well as the Imacs around the office. Other than that I only managed to crash it three times.

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: Zugzwang152
i am debating purchasing a powerbook or ibook simply because they are the sexiest machines available for sale. for simple email/web browsing/word processing, macs are great. anything else and lack of software options kills the platform.

Haha yeah they are! My friend got a 12" PowerBook with his tax refund...sooooo hot. I want a twelver and a silver Logitech cordless notebook mouse...my bro got a blue one for his laptop, it's great - it'd match the silver case perfectly in color AND size

 

[haze03]

The lack of software options is an outdated argument. There is tons of software for OSX. The only area lacking is games. However, most computer users aren't gamers. I could see the lack of software argument in the past, but it was one of those things that no longer has validity that doesn't go away.

 

[Oyeve]

I use both and have various opinions on both. Mac, while it works fine, will ALWAYS get spanked by a comparible PC in just about every benchmark, yes, even photoshop. OSX is great, I love it, but when it goes bad it goes REAL bad. Cant get a decent video card for a mac and if you can whats the point? There are no kickbutt games for it. On the PC winxp side, yes, it crashes more but 9 out of 10 times you can figure out why. If something goes horribly wrong with the OS chances are better than with mac that it can be fixed. PCs have been plaqued as targets for viruses, trojans and all but its usually MS's fault . Either platform has its uses but I prefer and will always prefer a highend PC over a highend mac any day. But I like both.


One more thing. I really dislike Macs idea of a warranty. Whats with this after 90 days you have to pay for tech support unless you bought extra mac warranty crap? And why not sell OS 9 any more? You can still buy win2k and MS still supports it? Steve is an idiot and makes you upgrade faster than Bill!

 

[Wahsapa]

Originally posted by: Oyeve
On the PC winxp side, yes, it crashes more but 9 out of 10 times you can figure out why. If something goes horribly wrong with the OS chances are better than with mac that it can be fixed.

do you mean defragment and reinstall xp? because honestly that is the only way i have ever seen anybody 'fix' a pc. besides some hidden setting that needs to be turned on/off; "fixing" the OS is something that M$ cant even do.

 

[8ballcoupe]

do you mean defragment and reinstall xp? because honestly that is the only way i have ever seen anybody 'fix' a pc. besides some hidden setting that needs to be turned on/off; "fixing" the OS is something that M$ cant even do.

Hmmm. Can't imagine what you're talking about here. It's not really hard to knock a Windows 2000 installation past easy recovery. (I'm not sure I've ever seen an ERD work, but the Recover Console often does.) But I've tested a lot of WinXP Pro boxes to deliberate destruction. System Restore almost always fixes the worst problem (insisting on installing a bad device driver) you can give WinXP without actually causing hardware failure. No common non-hardware-related issue I've seen can force re-installation of Windows XP. To get there you have to do a LOT of things wrong.

That's not to say that end user's can't get there. But they do have to go looking for trouble. I've seen lots of posts about people who went to some Web site that told them how to turn off all of the "unnecessary" services and then wound up needing something like System Restore. It doesn't do you much good if it's turned off.

Ernie

Oh yeah. Wanted to add that I think that OSX is gorgeous-looking. I may grab a Mac just to try it out. I doubt that either OSX or WinXP is sad enough as an operating system to warrant disparaging remarks. You can get frustrated by the finest hardware and software under the right circumstances. That doesn't necessarily mean that the platform that pissed you off is worthless. It just means that you (or a hardware maker or a software vendor) pushed the edge of the envelope a little too far.

 

[manzana]

My first computer was a Mac. A Performa 5300, carried a huge (for those days) 1.2 GB harddisk and a 100Mhz cpu. Great thing, only thing is that the screen burned in playing Warcraft, so had to loose the thing for about 2 weeks :'(. But soon I found out that Mac OS isn't the platform for gamers. Now I use Windows, but there's still a special place for Apple. Still have a G4 400Mhz and an ancient Powerbook 180