[Eug Wanker]

A Month with a Mac: A Die-Hard PC User's Perspective

(I haven't read the whole article yet, because it's frickin' huge, but what I've read so far seems pretty fair.)

[typoon]

Yeah it's a VERY partial review. It's well thought out well written and it's from expreience unlike Mr Thurot's articles. (SP)

[Eug Wanker]

Originally posted by typoon:
Yeah it's a VERY partial review. It's well thought out well written and it's from expreience unlike Mr Thurot's articles. (SP)

Do you mean impartial?

[brapper]

Originally posted by Eug Wanker:
Do you mean impartial?

...im thinking yes...

[SafariX]

This is a great article. Even showed my veteran mac-ass a few new key shortcuts and tricks!

[rozwado1]

I continue to feel that the folder structure under OS X is quite disorganized

eh?

[Millennium]

Originally posted by rozwado1:
eh?

Most likely, he's referring to the /Library versus /System/Library versus ~/Library situation. An easy mistake to make, if you don't understand what's really going on. I admit, it disappoints me that he wouldn't get this, though; normally he's smarter than that.

[rozwado1]

Originally posted by SafariX:
This is a great article. Even showed my veteran mac-ass a few new key shortcuts and tricks!

Yeah. cmd+tab then Q to quit? I never knew that...

[Landos Mustache]

He keeps rambling on that it costs $3000. Well, find me a PC with the same specs and tell me what it costs.

There are cheaper Mac's yet he comes off as if you have to spend $3000 if you want to switch.

[Spliff]

It's a great review: thoughtful and fair. But man, he really slags Safari's rendering speed (and Firefox is no better).

I really hope Dave Hyatt can comment on Apple's web browsing speed, which has always been slower than Windws.

And MS Office 2004 doesn't fair any better. Are the Windows versions of Office that much superior to the Mac version?

[Spliff]

I'll revise my initial praise. The article starts off strongly, but fades in the second half. It seems as if he was tired and rushed it without testing things more thoroughly. His comments on Mac gaming are short-sighted and poorly researched.

[kcmac]

He kills Office for the Mac and seems to sluff over who designed it. Key shortcuts don't work the same, speed is bad, doesn't look the same as mac apps. He says it but seems to equate this as a problem with the mac hardware.

Office apps are faster on the PC I use for work. Office for the Mac has some better features which I miss so I usually use my PB for office apps.

[ironknee]

not bad...overall a positive look at apple...and some good points about the shortcomings...

[Eug Wanker]

Originally posted by Landos Mustache:
He keeps rambling on that it costs $3000. Well, find me a PC with the same specs and tell me what it costs.

There are cheaper Mac's yet he comes off as if you have to spend $3000 if you want to switch.

Well, at the time, for a desktop it would have had to have been the iMac G4. Bleah.

Originally posted by Spliff:
And MS Office 2004 doesn't fair any better. Are the Windows versions of Office that much superior to the Mac version?

Superior? Well, not really, but I agree the Windows version is definitely faster. I like the notebook feature of Office Mac 2004 though, and the overall look and feel of Office Mac 2004.

[olePigeon]

Someone needs to carbonize Word 5.

[MacGorilla]

Originally posted by olePigeon:
Someone needs to carbonize Word 5.

wtf?

[Spliff]

Anyone have any theories why Mac web browsing has been consistently slower than on Windows over the years?

Microsoft must be doing something different than Apple that can account for this discrepancy.

[Spliff]

Originally posted by MacGorilla:
wtf?

Some people consider MS Word 5 the finest version of MS Word to ever grace a Mac (or PC, for that matter).

[Disgruntled Head of C-3PO]

Originally posted by Eug Wanker:
Well, at the time, for a desktop it would have had to have been the iMac G4. Bleah.

eMac and iBooks perhaps? Even if it was just an iMac they are not $3000 and come with a widescreen LCD.

[DeathMan]

Originally posted by Spliff:
Anyone have any theories why Mac web browsing has been consistently slower than on Windows over the years?

Microsoft must be doing something different than Apple that can account for this discrepancy.

Browsing speed also bothers me as well. I normally don't use a pc to browse, but at work for doing testing, my $600 (on a the same lan as my ibook) is noticibly fast. I can hit refresh on my browser, move over to my pc keyboard, hit f5 on the keyboard, and the pc will be refreshed before the mac has even started rendering the page.

This is with firefox. Hyatt is supposed to be speeding up rendering speeds (especially for javascript, which I write quite a bit of, thus the possible slow loading)

I never thought it was this bad, but its surfing the web is pretty inferior on the mac in a lot of ways still. Not to mention flash performance, and any kind of non quicktime streaming media.

Could you tell this is a sore spot for me? The web is my life (so to speak), and to have our web experience so weak comparatively, its just sad.

[olePigeon]

Originally posted by MacGorilla:
wtf?

Best version of MS Word.

[businezguy]

I switched to the Mac a couple of years ago, and I had a more enthusiastic take than he did. This was actually while using Jaguar, so things have only improved.

I think he underestimated the stability of Mac OS X, and he didn't emphasize how much better Mac OS X is at multitasking. He mentioned the great caching, etc, but this doesn't really say to what extent the Mac is better. Mac OS X multitasking is absolutely incredible. I can do it on an iBook running an 800 mhz G3 with ease.

I'm actually disappointed in the article. I don't think he really realizes how much better of a foundation the Mac is.

Also, why didn't he mention the lack of .dll files all over the place, along with no registry? Nope, I'm not impressed by the article at all.

[CRASH HARDDRIVE]

Huh? I must have missed something. He's done this at least once before. Yet this latest 'week with a Mac' seems to start off as if he's only used a Mac before 'mostly at schools', and it's all brand new to him (again).

So every time he wants to increase his hit counts on all the Mac sites, he 'rediscovers' the Mac all over again?

[Eug Wanker]

Originally posted by CRASH HARDDRIVE:
Huh? I must have missed something. He's done this at least once before. Yet this latest 'week with a Mac' seems to start off as if he's only used a Mac before 'mostly at schools', and it's all brand new to him (again).

So every time he wants to increase his hit counts on all the Mac sites, he 'rediscovers' the Mac all over again?

This is an article on the front page. The others were just blogs. It seems to me the article is almost like a summary of the blogs, for general consumption.

Originally posted by businezguy:
Also, why didn't he mention the lack of .dll files all over the place, along with no registry?

Maybe because it's cancelled out by the fact that OS X leaves unnecessarly ._ and .DS files all over servers?

[businezguy]

Originally posted by Eug Wanker:
Maybe because it's cancelled out by the fact that OS X leaves unnecessarly ._ and .DS files all over servers?

Eh. You can't compare that to the abomination that is the registry and .dll files.

[historylme]

Quite long and fair... the guys did try and highlighted most the best and worst of our platform.

[Link]

It's alright -- I think he tried to keep from getting flack from his friends for defending a "gay" computer.

[Luca Rescigno]

It's a really good article. I agree with just about everything he says. I can't think of any one area where I think he's way off base, and he's spot-on regarding OS X's advantages in multitasking and caching. He's also correct in saying that a $3000 computer should come with a better loadout of hardware than a 160 GB hard drive, 512 MB of RAM and a Radeon 9600. But I don't think he continually harps on the high price - he does mention a few times that the G5 is a bit expensive for a high end system, but he doesn't comment on the prices for the lower end Macs at all.

[dtriska]

Total cost of ownership might have been nice to see in the article, but otherwise it's alright. A little rushed and lacking in places, however.

[Lancer409]

Originally posted by SafariX:
This is a great article. Even showed my veteran mac-ass a few new key shortcuts and tricks!

great article!

[d.fine]

Good report, there's some truth in it

[Cadaver]

Originally posted by Link:
It's alright -- I think he tried to keep from getting flack from his friends for defending a "gay" computer.

Spot on.

[The Godfather]

Originally posted by Landos Mustache:
He keeps rambling on that it costs $3000. Well, find me a PC with the same specs and tell me what it costs.

There are cheaper Mac's yet he comes off as if you have to spend $3000 if you want to switch.

A $3000 Mac performs the same as a $2000 PC, and plays games like a $1000 PC.

[DeathMan]

Originally posted by The Godfather:
A $3000 Mac performs the same as a $2000 PC, and plays games like a $1000 PC.

Sounds about right.

/me loads up superbreakout

[Link]

Actually, if you ever read the blogs he said something about >2gb ram being NECESSARY on a mac, which is complete and utter BS.

I'm not one to doubt Anand's credibility on his reviews, but keep in mind when it comes to what's necessary and what's overkill, this guy is up to his eyeballs on money, has several rather spendy cars, and to go with that -- slightly modified definitions...

He considers 2 cinema displays literally indespensible for multitasking!

About the only thing I can agree on is that it takes a lot of time to get the hang of OS X's GUI -- simple things like the window controls being on the left, titlebars/palletes floating on the screen, and the menu being at the top of the screen, this not even speaking of the entirely different dock!

He's spot on with the OS though -- I think he takes it a bit far on the hardware! Many people could happily get away with an imac g4 or g5 loaded with >512mb of RAM, yet he makes it sound as if the (was at the time) $3000 powermac G5 is the ONLY way to use a mac.

Hrmm, building a machine with a nice case, top end motherboard, custom (not the power supply/fans that come with the case) cooling setup, etc gets costly fast. One of the biggest flaws in PC/Mac hardware comparisons lies right here:

PC argument: Get an antec case which includes pretty much everything and just throw the machine together.

Mac case = custom made, custom engineered designer case. Think Lian-Li with an enermax or zalman power supply, papst fans on a digitaldoc/fanbus, well routed cables and not those cheap PCI slot covers that you can knock out just by tapping on the back of the case

Yes, I know it's the small things people always mess up on.. whoops!

Anyway, not to rant but these guys forget to take a lot of things into consideration, which is fine. Even at equivilent specs/build quality, I doubt a custom built opteron box (single processor or say, 1.8 duals) would exceed $2500; But who wouldn't pay the extra $500 to use OS X?

(This taking into account a current dual 2ghz with radeon 9800/x800 and 512mb ram -- maybe).....

The only people would be the home market, for which there's still the emac which is excellent with enough RAM, and the imac g5 which will decline in price once it truly hits mass production.

[olePigeon]

Originally posted by The Godfather:
A $3000 Mac performs the same as a $2000 PC, and plays games like a $1000 PC.

Assuming the game is even available for the Mac or not some half-assed port.

[Eug Wanker]

Resolving the price issue

"I'm wondering if a good way of tackling the price issue is to do a month with an iMac G5?"