macs suck., pcs rule. Options

[sadolakced acid]

well, really, it's just a friendly mac v pc thread, and i know it's been posted before, but really, more people will click here if i name it 'macs suck'

my beef with macs-

i used mac OS way back when. bad experiences. not too much a legitimate reason today, but a reason none the less.

but the major one:

proprietary.

i don't know about now, but i know before that everything apple makes, they make it proprietary if they can.

for example, a PC owner can easily upgrade thier optical drive. they could pop in some more memory, or add in a new sound card.

now, sure, mac hardware may be good already, but you won't deny it's not the best, that would be much too expensive.

and as time goes by, it means the only way to upgrade is with a totally new computer.

i mean, sure, it works fine for people who don't want to be bothered to upgrade thier computers, and for the average user, macs are probably pretty good.

but i can't be hassled to buy a new comptuer if i want a CD burner and don't have one.

now, maybe apple has changed and i'm not up with the times. but irregardlessly, i severly dislike and avoid any company that insists on proprietary measures at any time.

which is why i do, and probably always will, hate apple.

[*mipadi*]

Justin, your point about personalization is valid, and I reiterate: If tinkering with the hardware of your computer is a priority, then a Mac is not for you. But I think you're amiss in arguing that raw specs are the only way to personalize a computer. In fact, I say who cares? Who cares if your specs are a bit different than mine? In the PC world, you're probably running Windows and Office, and have WMP and IE on your computer, anyway. It's not exactly "different" or original to own a PC. Owning a Wintel computer doesn't exactly make for a lot of personal expression per se--it's pretty vanilla. There're ways to mod the hardware, maybe add some lights, but in the end, it's still a PC, just like 90% of the other home computers.

Of course, I also don't see the point in using a particular type of computer to "be different" or "original", but that's just me. If that's a priority of yours, then more power to you, but again, I wonder how you consider using a PC to be "different" or unique. I'm not really that concerned if I see another person with a computer identical to mine.

Besides, the real customization, and personality, of computers lies on the inside. You pointed out the extensibility of Firefox, perhaps one of its greatest strengths. Extensibility is great--and OS X applications are generally much more extensible than Windows applications. OS X's application framework (called Cocoa) allows for the easy implementation of plug-ins for applications (I am, in fact, part of an open-source effort to develop a framework that will allow the implementation of virtually any IM protocol, past, present, and future, using a plugin architecture), and applications are hackable in many other "unsanctioned" ways, thanks to the dynamic runtime abilities of Cocoa. Then there's AppleScript, which allows for even more abilities to enhance applications. John Gruber over at Daring Fireball explains this a lot better, but suffice it to say that applications on OS X are pretty personalizable. And then, of course, there's a rich bed of open-source development in OS X (more so, it seems to me, than in the Windows world), which opens up a lot more room for extensibility.

And there is, of course, the point that your specific example--Firefox--is available for OS X, as is its close cousin, Camino, a Firefox derivative.

I think many of these debates are pretty pointless. I'm not that concerned with platform choice. I'm happy using OS X. I'm sure many people are happy using Windows. You have to choose the platform that suits your style and needs. If you want to hack hardware, no, the Macintosh is not a great platform. But there's a lot of ignorance out there about the supposed limitations of the Macintosh and OS X, many of which simply are not true.