Hello.
Before we begin, I would like to state that I am not anti microsoft, linux or apple.
I'd appreciate it if you didn't start filling this topic with groundless claims that any of these can do something one of the others can better or that your friends friend had one and it exploded, covering him in fire and burning him and leaving him deformed to such an extent that he hid away from the world and set to work trying to take down the evil that caused him such pain.
Anyway, I have used a computer for years, and I can't imagine life without one.
Even when I'm off of mine for any length of time, I always have my PSP or phone there which can connect me to the net in an instant (though it's my PSP 99% of the time sinc it's no more expencive than turning my PC on thanks to my broadband and WiFi network).
Anyway, I'm a gamer, but not a PC gamer for the most part (I have a ps2, xbox, psp and 360 for gaming), so I don't need a PC with a GPU that's got half a human brains worth of memory (since a human brain in a PC wouldn't need to control some of the stuff a human does, that would be a lot if it were possible) and I don't need some creative teeth rattler pro 9000 sound card.
The one thing I am though, is a geek.
I'll openly call myself one since there's little of the origional stigma surrounding that word in my opinion.
We have thinkgeek, which is just awesome for useless gear and we have stuff like sourceforge, where I get half my software from.
Speaking of software, that's something I am interested in.
I have been programming in Delphi, PHP and SQL for a few years now after learning to punch myself with QBasic many years ago and becoming somewhat proficient with web markup languages (HTML, XHTML, XML and CSS).
Most of my coding is done for web development purposes, so it's portable most of the time, which is fine and I don't do a hell of a lot of Delphi programming now since I tired of that (mainly due to the fact that the language is so simple that there's few challenges left for me).
Here's the horrible truth, I'm an XP user with a HP system (yeah, laugh all you want CBG, I'm cheap and I admit it, even my linux distro is free!).
Yes, I have linux as a dual boot OS (Ubuntu), but due to some hardware problems under linux, I can only actually get online with windows (which also means I have to fart about to get drivers for my spriner / scanner which aren't included with ubuntu).
I don't use windows purely by choice, it's virtually a requirement caused by linux not liking my gear despite the fact that it should work (tried the linux wlan drivers for prism 2.5 cards and ndiswrapper, neither work, not even with visual inerfaces doing the script work).
I prefer the linux desktop environments (mainly KDE and gnome), but linux is still in it's infancy when it comes to getting around the more technical side of things that I'd rather avoid when all I want to do is check my emails and a few forums.
The thing is, my current PC is a bit dated.
It's a few years old and there's almost none of the 40GB of HDD space free (I deleted over 2GB of apps and files a few weeks ago, but after downloading an avi file today and trying to unzip it, winzip told be that it couldn't fit it in anywhere).
True, 256MB of DDR is enough to keep it plodding along reasonably enough to run delphi 7 and scite, but it's not enough to prevent any more recent development environments from falling down dead and when coupled with a 2.5Ghz Celeron D CPU, XP is taking a while to get to a usable state where it's not firing up my virus scanner, network connection or some message telling me that it can't do something or that I should do something that I generaally don't need to.
When I consider my current problems with windows and linux, there's only two plausable options:
1) Upgrade to a better system.
2) Go down the shiny white road and buy a cheap mac.
This is where it gets somewhat iffy.
As I said, I have no anti apple feelings and I'm quite open minded.
My only real qualm with apple is the price issues that have been floating around for some time.
Many have said that apple's macs and power pc's lack the amount of software that bog standard x86 systems get and that you can get a faster system for the same price.
To some extent, I believe that they are correct.
Windows does have more applications than osx or linux and a windows PC can be cheaper for similar specs, but then I have to ask myself, how many of those applications are useless junk that will never be of any use... Loads I'd bet, and is that hardware going to be some generic low cost hardware rather than something like corsair, crucial, nvidia or seagate... possibly.
As an example, let me take a look at my system.
It's got the basics needed to run Sims 2 with it's 2.5Ghz CPU, 256Mb or RAM and 64Mb GPU (I know, laugh some more, please do unless you have less than 2Mb broadband), but still, Sims 2 ran unbearably slow and sim city 4 loads slow but is at least playable.
I found out why, and it's because I have an intel extreme GPU which doesn't actually support T&L and which leaches off of my RAM normally and when emulating T&L, it uses even more (ARGH!).
Now, I have had little contact with apple systems in the last few years.
The only place I really got near one was in college when they wanted us to design a poster advertising some health spa or something, but that was for a very short time, we were supervised and it was beyond old (we're talking grey box, not brightly coloured funky plastic, beefy hole filled steel or pretty white), not to mention that we could only actually get near photoshop 2 or something equally as low quality and those were classed as "special" systems that we couldn't mess around with like we could with the small HP satan in a small black desktop things.
From what I understand though, osx's interface is much closer to linux (actually, if you took the opened app bar out of my gnome setup and replaced it with a dock, it'd be identical) than it is to windows, which I just never found overly intuitive without needing to tinker (adding a dock with quick access to my apps or setting up the quick launch or a custom menu system via XP's desktop toolbar that you can put on the start bar).
For what I use a PC for, it'd be nice to have a system that starts up quickly, has my server (apache or similar) ready and waiting and doesn't end up with me mining through meny's to find out where the hell my applications are.
With linux, I get this, but as mentioned, I have some issues with it that would only really go away with upgrades.
With osx, I presume that I could set up the dock to contain my most used applications and that I would get the decent things Iget from Ubuntu such as it's ability to auto mount drives and such (ubuntu plops an icon on the desktop as soon as it finds a USB pen drive or a loaded optical drive).
I'm seriously considering a mac as XP crashes a fair bit (though it's better than older versions), it's not the fastest and I have a few other problems with it (apps closing sluggishly, apps opening sluggishly leading to me thinking I didn't start it and things like firefox starting to play up with scroll wheel use so I end up doing it manually).
The thing is, the fact that it'd be £800 for the iMac G5 which only has a 1.9Ghz CPU and isn't as flexible to upgrade does bother me a little.
I am now more serious about looking into buying a mac than ever now though and the inclusion of an inbuilt webcam, inbuilt bluetooth (I would make use of this as I do with my current bluetooth dongle), inbuilt 802.11b WiFi (my current network uses this kind of wireless networking) and that pretty, pretty mouse would offset those problems a bit.
Yes, there's the mini, but that's slower still, doesn't come with a keyboard, monitor or mouse and it's hard to dispose of a PC without those (unless I do what I did last time and give the old one to my grandad... his monitor is my old LG pro CRT, which was bigger than my curreny 15" LCD, but pretty much ate my desk).
The reason for me not considering the power mac series is that it's a fair bit bigger than the imac series because it's a full tower system and even so, with all the thermal zoning, I wouldn't imagine you could go overboard and fit extra optical drives and other stuff as easily as on a pc (note to self, actually removed hardware from current system but didn't add anything because it was put together in such a way that it made you cry).
The other thing about the power mac series is the price.
I don't have £1399 to spend on something like that, especially when I don't own 2 monitors, don't need it to be gaming capable and won't be using it to create sentient programs which will take over the internet and again with the no monitor and such.
PHP, CSS, XHTML, Delphi, Ruby on Rails & more.
Current project: CMS Object.
Most recent change: Theme support is up and running... So long as I use my theme resource loaders instead of that in the Rails plug-in.
Release date: NEVER!!!
Nuvo
Forum LeaderVPS - Virtual Prince of the Server
Comments
I know that apple is phasing out IBM's PowerPC based CPU's in favour of Intel's x86 architecture based cpu's (they are using intel chips and intel are the ones responcible for the x86 architecture, but I dunno if it's a straight pentium / itanium apple will use or something else) and they plan to have this done by next year, but apple also seems to be supporting current users via their universal binary system and they plan to support old PPC apps on their new hardware via rosetta, which will emulate older systems to run apps from before the switch over.
With this switch looming over head though, I have to ask, is it really worth buying a mac now?
A year down the line, am I going to think I have wasted £800 as every other mac user is whizzing by at the 3Ghz+ mark?
I know some of the people on here (CBG especially) use macs and I have some issues with turning into a "switcher", so I'd like to offer you the chance to give me your opinions based on your experience with macs, just so long as they aren't malicious "omg windoze sucks" styled comments.
P.S.
If too long and didn't read:
1) I SPENT OVER AN HOUR ON THIS, IT'S 1.5AM ARGH ARGH ARGH!!!
2) What do you thing of the imac G5?
Is it worth it or would you wait till next year for an intel one?
Current project: CMS Object.
Most recent change: Theme support is up and running... So long as I use my theme resource loaders instead of that in the Rails plug-in.
Release date: NEVER!!!
But right now I need to get back to my Maths.
I'll persuade you as soon as I can afford the time...
(btw: I'd call myself a geek too, purely because I'm a member of the 0.001% of the population that knows what Linux is and what a Command Line is... duh... Maybe also because I have only one life of any value, and it's not my real one. ._.)
- CBG
And to answer you heres my quick opinion...
A lot of people seem to be all against Windows and Microsoft in general but quite a lot of them dont really have valid reasons.. Thei reason is quite often something like "my friend had trouble with it so i dont like it" or things like that... So im equal, just like you when it comes to deciding between Apple and MS.
Personally If I had the money I would go out and buy a Mac but I would still keep a Windows system available. But basically to help you decide.. make a table with two columns and in each write down the advantages and disadvantages of having a MS system or an Apple system... Then come to your decision...
The Royal Ram
I have heard similar things in regards to consoles and other pieces of kit, but without real proof or a believable story, I tend to ignore it for the most part.
The fact is though, I have been having problems with my PC which runs on XP.
I had also thought of something quite similar to your idea.
I decided to see just how much more you'd end up paying for an iMac G5 over a standard PC with a similarly powered 64Bit CPU, the same RAM, HDD and such from PC World (in component form to be put together myself).
Including the CPU (2Ghz 64bit from AMD, not 1.9 from IBM),GPU (same type, but only an x300 with DDR1), a samsung SATA 160GB HDD, 512BM of DDR2 RAM, a wifi card, a 17" TFT screen, a camera, a mic, a usb mouse (mighty mouse :P) and keyboard, XP home install discs, Norton internet security (hello virii, I know it sucks but it's all they had), a decent case, a decent PSU and a DVD burner.
Current total (you could probably get less if you used lesser quality parts): £783.94 minus delivery and not including any extra software.
Also, Apple offers some means by which you can pay for their systems without paying all at once (like a loan, provided by MBNA).
After checking Macromedia:
Heh, Fireworks 8 requirements for windows:
800Mhz CPU, 256MB of RAM and 880MB of HDD space.
For mac: 600Mhz CPU, 256MB of RAM, 320MB of HDD space.
Now that's what I want to head as I like fireworks
Current project: CMS Object.
Most recent change: Theme support is up and running... So long as I use my theme resource loaders instead of that in the Rails plug-in.
Release date: NEVER!!!
Strange that... I could have sworn I was playing some games on here yesterday, and the day before... Well, pretty much everyday I've had the mac... Hmm...
I play BZFlag every spare moment I have.
It'll work on most any OS there is, and is free from sourceforge.
If you're gonna need software to program Delphi, for example, look to see if you can find such a piece of software for Mac.
I can't help with specifics. What i can tell you is this:
Not ONCE have I ever thought "Damn, I wish there was a program like "_____" for mac...!".
...
Next!
Again, you should look into this, but I know many distros will boot on Mac...
Macs may seem to cost an awful lot, but one thing is, they are High Quality!
They are like Nike boots compared to the crap Korean ones that don't even have a brand.
Yes, you may be able to get a higher spec. PC for the same price, but 1. That'll run Windows... I'm sure you will agree on this one thing: Mac OS beats Windows... Right?
2. It is much more likely to break. It won't last as long.
My family have apple machines around which are over 15 years old...
They never break... We've never thrown one out... Heh.
This could be true.
Though, I must say, never have I had any problems with my PPC.
However, the switch to Intel comes sometime this year. So, either way, you can't lose...
I said before that I've never thought "I wish there was a program like...... for Mac!" and Macs are High Quality. You DO get what you pay for.
So... at least 3 gen's old... heh.
In summary, I would think long and hard what app.s you use.
Do they have mac versions or equivalents for mac?
If so, I would probably wait for the x86 macs to come out this year.
Then review the line-up closely.
I would suggest waiting because the problem with old software on the new machines.
Apple are making an environment that app.s from the PPC can run on the x86, but, this may not be perfect. I personally wouldn't splash out on a PPC mac and software Now, to find that some stuff wont work in future...
(If you already had the software, it would be the other way around. Buy a PPC Mac...)
There are other benefits to waiting for the IntelMacs too, such as the claim that x86 is faster/better than PowerPC.
There.
I hope that helps, and sorry if any of it is a mess.
- CBG
P.S You may like to look at the software here: http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/
I also found a way to list all projects on SF.net that'll run on OS X: http://sourceforge.net/softwaremap/trove_list.php?form_cat=309
Some software I found neat (not necessarily from the links above):
Adium - IM Client (MSN, AIM, Jabber, Yahoo, etc, etc...)
Colloquy - IRC Client
CreaText - Simple HTML Editor
BZFlag - Awesome Game, imho.
All above are Free too.
I also find most of the Apple-Software that comes with their machines to be great too, including Safari, Mail, iTunes, iMovie, Preview, GarageBand, TextEdit, etc.
You should be looking at what you need from a computer, is it just browsing? graphic design? games? or a mixture?
once you decided what its main uses will be you can then decide what type of system you should be getting
I'm glad I didn't: http://www.apple.com/imac/
I knew Jobs was supposed to be announcing something big, and since the Intel thing was already out there, but no systems were available with intel chips, that Jobs would be releasing a new mac.
The thing is, many of the sites talking about intel mac rumblings at the macworld expo expected a new mini before the imac... wrong there then, but right about the laptops!
I'm glad they kept that stylish looking case for it, even if the G4 was slightly more awsome with it's desk lamp design (though to be honest, simple but beutiful > everything in terms of design).
2X the speed but a slower processor, that'll confuse the masses (it's dual core, so that's 2x 1.83Ghz over 1x 1.9Ghz).
The name MacBook Pro sounds less catchy than iBook or PowerBook, but just look at the power, it's 4 times more capable than a G4.
Current project: CMS Object.
Most recent change: Theme support is up and running... So long as I use my theme resource loaders instead of that in the Rails plug-in.
Release date: NEVER!!!
That's so not apple's style
Current project: CMS Object.
Most recent change: Theme support is up and running... So long as I use my theme resource loaders instead of that in the Rails plug-in.
Release date: NEVER!!!
And yes I think Macs are very modern and deffinately clean looking...
The Royal Ram