PC vs Mac thread #12124154

[menorton]

So, my poor college friends needs a new computer in the upcoming months and is having the mac or pc. My main arguement against the mac has always been that they are fully owned by Apple, so all CPU, motherboard, graphics card, sound card, monitor upgrades are all done thru apple. So not only are you limited to their supply, you are limited to their prices. You cant take out the GPU of an apple and put in a new one, can you? I thought they were more or less 'closed boxes'.

All he will be doing is gaming, movies, songs, and internet. He wont use the mac to its content creation abilities.

PC Thoughts:
Cheaper
Fully customizable
Better with games

Mac Pro:
More Expensive
Better OS, browsing
Easier upkeep since apple owns whole ecosystem

Whats are AT's thoughts?

 

[vj8usa]

First of all, if your friend games a lot, this is a no brainer: most games today run a lot worse if at all on OS X, and if you're using Windows as your main OS on a Mac, there's no real point in buying the Mac (especially considering it's a Mac Pro).

But, if he only games occasionally...
If your friend really likes OS X and money is no object, then the Mac Pro would make sense. However, if he wants to get the most of his money and is considering incrementally upgrading, you can't beat building a PC. It's a lot cheaper, and you know exactly what's in it and can upgrade it later as needed.

edit: to answer your question, you can upgrade the GPU of the Mac Pro, but (last I checked) they use cards with different BIOSes than the regular version of the card, so you have to buy an expensive Mac version of the card. You can use standard PC parts to upgrade RAM/CPU/HDD/optical drives/etc., though. The Mac Pros aren't "closed boxes"; they're full towers. You might be thinking of the iMac, which is a lot harder to upgrade.

http://www.anandtech.com/mac/showdoc.aspx?i=2832&p=1

 

[Roguestar]

"All he will be doing is gaming, movies, songs, and internet. He wont use the mac to its content creation abilities."
Considering this, why on earth would you recommend a mac?

"Better OS, better browsing" is open to massive amounts of argument, and I hope this thread doesn't blow up (your fault for such a honeypot thread), but OS and browser are a matter of personal choice. Bear in mind that Vista has DX10 and that you can get Safari on windows (if you feel like doing that to yourself).

 

[Slugbait]

One of the biggest negatives about Apple's operating systems is backward compatibility...there isn't any. For example, my BIL works in advertising, so naturally he has always owned a Mac. But when he upgraded from OS8 to OS9, he found that many of his apps such as Photoshop were not supported...he had to spend a couple-thousand dollars upgrading all of his business applications as well. And the APIs that Mac OS X inherited from OpenStep are not backward compatible with earlier versions of Mac OS. Expect more of the same with the next OS version.

As an aside, this also resulted in a mountain of apps available for Windows as compared to the Mac. Sure, he can find an app that will do the same thing as a favorite app he used with Windows, but there aren't many choices out there.

"Better OS" is more of an opinion than fact. For example, if "better" equals "more secure" in your opinion, time to stop drinking the Apple Kool-Aid...it's not more secure. No OS is secure. Look at the 30 vulnerability patches released just for QuickTime over the last year, and things look pretty scary for Apple's development capabilities.

On the other hand, they are beautiful boxes. They are also high-profile targets for theft, since they have a considerably higher sale value than an IBM-compatible box. If he feels his machine would be safe (doesn't live in a dorm, etc), then that would be a moot point, I suppose.

 

[0roo0roo]

i doubt it. the positive is theres less of the legacy clutter that plagues windows. the negative is that older applications got left behind to run in emulation. but really, do you think mac is going to jump to another platform anytime soon? unless ibm/motorolla kick out an awesome chip and intel really fumbles the ball you'll see them stick with intel for quite some time. no worries on that.