PC vs MAC, TELL ME.! Options

[Jghelfi]

okay, i have always been wanting a mac since the first time i used the new Macbook in my 6th period at school, but i have a refurbished old 2001 PC desktop...

can somebody tell me what is good and bad between Macs and PCs..?!

i know that PCs Crash a lot
and that
Macs come with free software in the systems already..

so please somebody carify it for me!

[heyo-captain-jac...]

The main reason I got a fast internet connection is because I have two web servers, eight game servers, two Ventrilo servers, an IRC server, and mirror for the FacepunchStudios Distro that's in development.
Download is just an added bonus, I got that shit primarily for the upload speed.


I just don't think you get what I'm saying. For what it is, OS X is f*cking expensive. Solaris is UNIX, and it's only $30. OpenSolaris, FreeBSD, Fedora, all free. I don't see an open source version of OS X anywhere, but if I did, I would certainly have a copy.

And what can you do on OS X that you can't do just as easily (if not, easier) on an OS like Ubuntu?

It's not priorities, it's preference.

[mipadi]

I just don't think you get what I'm saying. For what it is, OS X is f*cking expensive. Solaris is UNIX, and it's only $30. OpenSolaris, FreeBSD, Fedora, all free. I don't see an open source version of OS X anywhere, but if I did, I would certainly have a copy.

And what can you do on OS X that you can't do just as easily (if not, easier) on an OS like Ubuntu?

It's not priorities, it's preference.

No, I get what you're saying. But you should refer to my earlier post, because you're still making an argument about capabilities that amounts to little more than a straw-man argument.

Let's look at your Internet connection issue again. Sure, you could run a couple web servers, a Ventrilo server, etc., from a cable connection -- but it wouldn't be very pleasant. Likewise, I could surf the Internet, write documents, program, etc., from a cheap laptop running Linux, but it wouldn't be as nice as doing it on a Mac.

Look at something as simple as instant messaging. On Linux, Windows, Solaris, BSD, etc., you can use Pidgin; on a Mac, Adium is the premier IM client. These two pieces of software even share a codebase, but no one mistakes one for the other, because pretty much everyone agrees that Adium is a much better piece of software. Each perform the same task, but Adium does it better.

Finally, to argue that OS X is basically the same as Solaris or Ubuntu because they're all Unix-like is a bit of a straw-man argument in and of itself. OS X has a lot of polish that's lacking in other Unix-like operating systems. It also includes a lot of libraries (Objective-C/Cocoa, for example) that aren't available on other platforms, which means that while OS X can fairly easily run software targeted at Linux, BSD, or Solaris, a lot of software targeted at OS X simply won't run on those other platforms. Looking at my Dock, frequent programs I use that only run on a Mac include Apple Mail, Newsfire, iCal, Apple Address Book, and TextMate.

(Actually, TextMate is another good example of something that's better on a Mac: it's written by a former Unix programmer who loved Emacs and wanted a better Emacs for the Mac. And TextMate follows a lot of the same design philosophy as Emacs, but is leaps and bounds ahead of anything Emacs is doing. Programmers who use both Emacs and TextMate almost universally agree that TextMate is way, way better than Emacs.)

So I think that your argument about capabilities, and your assertion that OS X is exactly like Linux and Solaris but more expensive, are both unfair because they gloss over the actual issues that illustrate differences between the platforms. Of course, aesthetics may not be important to you, but that doesn't mean they're not important at all, and you can't just write them off as trivial.

[Uronacid]

No, I get what you're saying. But you should refer to my earlier post, because you're still making an argument about capabilities that amounts to little more than a straw-man argument.

Let's look at your Internet connection issue again. Sure, you could run a couple web servers, a Ventrilo server, etc., from a cable connection -- but it wouldn't be very pleasant. Likewise, I could surf the Internet, write documents, program, etc., from a cheap laptop running Linux, but it wouldn't be as nice as doing it on a Mac.

I understand what you're saying. To be honest [ Vista | Ubuntu ] really doesn't look bad enough for me to justify spending 2x as much to get something that can do the same thing. Let's face it, Vista is not an ugly OS. At least in my opinion, OSX not as nice as it is expensive. Anyway, Apple doesn't kill you on the initial price of the computer. They hammer you with moolah when you decide to upgrade your MAC.

[illriginal]

I understand what you're saying. To be honest [ Vista | Ubuntu ] really doesn't look bad enough for me to justify spending 2x as much to get something that can do the same thing. Let's face it, Vista is not an ugly OS. At least in my opinion, OSX not as nice as it is expensive. Anyway, Apple doesn't kill you on the initial price of the computer. They hammer you with moolah when you decide to upgrade your MAC.

I just got shivers.


If they don't kill you with the cost of the computer... I would hate to see how much it costs to upgrade.

[mipadi]

I just got shivers.
If they don't kill you with the cost of the computer... I would hate to see how much it costs to upgrade.

Meh. I'm not even aware that you can really take a Mac to Apple for "upgrades". I've always just bought a hard drive/RAM/whatever from NewEgg and popped it in.

Unless Uronacid means the OS...in which case you generally have to pay for OS upgrades for commercial OSes, even in the Windows world. (Luckily, though, Apple doesn't release major upgrades on a yearly basis like they used to.)