[MarkTheMac]

Hi,

After browsing this forum a lot and visiting my Apple Retailer store I'm almost on the verge of going for Mac over a PC. I'm still not sure exactly what software I have available on the Mac that beats the PC but it's nice to have a choice with Boot Camp available.

Firstly what are the main advantages of Mac over a PC with regards to software?

Secondly, I will be using it for ASP.NET Web Development, Internet, Email (not sure if I can use hotmail through the email client on a mac?), Games, and music mainly.

So is the IMac the better solution here or the Mac Pro or Power Mac?

Thanks in advance.

[dimmer]

Mac software tends to be more consistent in the UI, which I find very useful. There's not a huge amount of Mac-only software (of course, Apple's software Final Cut, iWork, iLife, etc. are Mac only). But the mainstay applications (Office, Creative Suite, etc.) are available and cross platform happy.

One major piece of software that for now doesn't exist on the Mac is the spyware/trojan/virus stuff: that's a good thing!

Besides Bootcamp, you may want to consider a virtulisation software like VMware, Parallels, or Sun xVMbox (this latter one being free, which is nice. These would allow you to run your Windows stuff without having to reboot the system.

Hotmail should work with mail.app -- but I've not actually used it. I'll guess that the Microsoft Office mail application can access Hotmail as well.

Either of the two options (iMac or MacPro) would be a good fit (avoid anything with a PowerPC chip at this time) -- if you like to be able to mess around with hardware (drives, video cards, memory) the Mac Pro is best, if not then an iMac probably fits better.

Hope that helps.

[Veltliner]

The parts of a Mac computer are playing well together. They are made for each other. This takes away a lot of trouble that PCs have because of the incredible amount of different parts. There's always a chance a certain video card doesn't play well with a certain motherboard or a certain piece of software.

Also, while you can have trouble with a Mac, too, it's not that permanent headaches PC people have with constantly hunting down newest drivers and updates. And then there are the Windows security leaks.

A Mac is more operator friendly, so you can focus on your tasks more.

And not only the machines are looking better, the user interface is also much better to look at.

Mac Pro or iMac: depends on what you plan to do.

And on your budget.

For digital video and photography work a MacPro is just great (but don't forget to get a good display with it. You don't want a great computer and a crappy display).

If it is more for everyday computing or gaming, an iMac will be perfect.

[l008com]

If you don't know if you need a Mac Pro, you don't need a Mac Pro. The iMacs are very powerful and come with nice large monitors. The Mac Pros have a massive amount of power. An app like Photoshop still will only use one (of the eight) processors for performing most of it's tasks. Plus you can hook up a second monitor to an iMac. So you can have two 24" monitors with an iMac. Only downside... iMacs have glossy screens :-(

[OreoCookie]

A Mac Pro uses workstation hardware and things like RAM (FB-DIMM ECC RAM) or CPUs (Xeons) tend to be a lot more expensive than consumer-grade hardware. If compared to other, similar workstations, Mac Pros aren't expensive. If you compare them to `normal' towers, they seem expensive.

The iMac, on the other hand, is a great and sufficiently powerful machine, unless you are into gaming. (iMacs will be fine for occasional games.)

[Veltliner]

Originally Posted by OreoCookie 

A Mac Pro uses workstation hardware and things like RAM (FB-DIMM ECC RAM) or CPUs (Xeons) tend to be a lot more expensive than consumer-grade hardware. If compared to other, similar workstations, Mac Pros aren't expensive. If you compare them to `normal' towers, they seem expensive.

The iMac, on the other hand, is a great and sufficiently powerful machine, unless you are into gaming. (iMacs will be fine for occasional games.)

That wrong price argument, created by comparing Mac Pros with ordinary PC towers, is what certain PC fans still are using against the Mac. Many people don't know that quality PCs and Macs aren't, price-wise, far apart any more.

[Big Mac]

It would help if there were at least one normal consumer tower in Apple's lineup.

[SierraDragon]

Originally Posted by MarkTheMac 

...I will be using it for ASP.NET Web Development, Internet, Email (not sure if I can use hotmail through the email client on a mac?), Games, and music mainly. So is the IMac the better solution here or the Mac Pro or Power Mac?

Those are low end apps so the lower cost iMac will suffice very well. Forget Power Macs as legacy hardware; move forward not backward.

-Allen Wicks

[MarkTheMac]

Thanks for the replies.

I think my mind is made up now and the IMac is the way to go

[OreoCookie]

Originally Posted by Veltliner 

That wrong price argument, created by comparing Mac Pros with ordinary PC towers, is what certain PC fans still are using against the Mac. Many people don't know that quality PCs and Macs aren't, price-wise, far apart any more.

Well, they are used to non-workstation hardware and to be honest, for many uses, workstation-class hardware is overkill. Plus, PC users are used to towers and to the often theoretical possibility to install four harddrives, two optical drives and lots of PCIe cards.

[Veltliner]

Originally Posted by Big Mac 

It would help if there were at least one normal consumer tower in Apple's lineup.

Absolutely!

But they might fear it'll eat into their Mac Pro business.

[Veltliner]

Originally Posted by OreoCookie 

Well, they are used to non-workstation hardware and to be honest, for many uses, workstation-class hardware is overkill. Plus, PC users are used to towers and to the often theoretical possibility to install four harddrives, two optical drives and lots of PCIe cards.

Sounds sound.

I hope Apple hears your sound sounds, and gives us a tower, that lies between Mac Pro and iMac.

[Big Mac]

Until then, Pystar will get Apple's money.

[dimmer]

That'd be "Psystar" actually. Piss poor hardware, illegal OS installs, no customer support whatsoever -- wow, what a DEAL!

Anyone stupid enough to buy an "Open Computer" as anything more than a crappy Linux platform is going to be so, so sad.

[Big Mac]

They're running a much more professional operation - at least as far as external appearances go - than they were before. They scripted Software Update to go through their servers. I'll tell you, if I were in the market for a desktop I would strongly consider it. I don't think I would ever consider an iMac. And btw, if their hardware is "piss poor," what would Apple's be? Apple just puts a custom firmware on its motherboards and makes cool looking cases. Otherwise what you can buy off the shelf is identical is identical to what Apple provides.

[applesbiggestfan]

Definitely go with the iMac. It is super fast, it's all in one, and it has everything you need.

[Veltliner]

Originally Posted by Big Mac 

They're running a much more professional operation - at least as far as external appearances go - than they were before. They scripted Software Update to go through their servers. I'll tell you, if I were in the market for a desktop I would strongly consider it. I don't think I would ever consider an iMac. And btw, if their hardware is "piss poor," what would Apple's be? Apple just puts a custom firmware on its motherboards and makes cool looking cases. Otherwise what you can buy off the shelf is identical is identical to what Apple provides.

I'm also NOT shocked by Psyware.

The fact that they exist shows that Apple is ignoring part of its customer base.

I currently have a 24" iMac, but it'll be the last all-in-one I do. I want to choose freely what display I get, and I don't want to be limited to low RAM amounts.

I'm just not sure if I'd have the gambling instinct to get one of those non-official Macs. (Heard they aren't exactly cheap).

[kjbee]

Boot camp is no longer a part of the installed software, correct? So if you do want to run windows off your Mac, you'll have to buy another program. I use VMWare Fusion (about $75) on my work computer to run XP and it works great. No reboot required, it just runs within the Mac OS.

Thanks for the VirtualBox tip, dimmer. I may have to check that out for my home computer and use the XP install disc from my hubby's PC.

[dimmer]

Bootcamp is standard with 10.5: but you do need to bring your own Windows installation software. You only need another software item if you want to run Windows and Mac OS at the same time (note that any of the "Run Windows on your Mac!" apps need you to do the same.)

Apple just puts a custom firmware on its motherboards and makes cool looking cases. Otherwise what you can buy off the shelf is identical is identical to what Apple provides.

And provides drivers, and makes sure the hardware won't overheat, and ensures that the OS will run without (too many) issue(s). Apple's model of software and hardware integration is no different with the Intel CPU than it was with PowerPC. That hasn't changed.

Psystar uses whatever they can get for cheap on the day they build it. Not the same thing.

[sneezymarble]

Originally Posted by MarkTheMac 

Hi,

After browsing this forum a lot and visiting my Apple Retailer store I'm almost on the verge of going for Mac over a PC. I'm still not sure exactly what software I have available on the Mac that beats the PC but it's nice to have a choice with Boot Camp available.

Firstly what are the main advantages of Mac over a PC with regards to software?

Secondly, I will be using it for ASP.NET Web Development, Internet, Email (not sure if I can use hotmail through the email client on a mac?), Games, and music mainly.

So is the IMac the better solution here or the Mac Pro or Power Mac?

Thanks in advance.

The answer to your question depends a lot on how much money you're willing to spend and how much power you want. The iMac gets you an nice all around package with decent performance. The Mac Pro gets you a ton of performance and the possibility of future upgrades in RAM and hard drive space.

If it's performance you're after, you don't care about the Apple aesthetic, and you know how to build and service computers, then it's very difficult to recommend a Mac. The reason is that you can build a machine that will perform identically or even better than any iMac or Mac Pro and run OSX for significantly less.

For example, Mac Pros can come in quad-core or octo-core flavors. The cheapest Pro you can buy is going to be $2300. That's quad core, 2GBs of RAM, a single 320GB hard drive and an ATI2600XT 256MB video card. Suppose you just want a powerful quad-core machine that runs OSX. My current primary "workstation" running OSX Leopard has a single quad-core Intel CPU, 8GBs of RAM, over 1TB of hard drive space, and an nVidia 8800GTX 768MB video card. It cost me $1300 (with overnight shipping) last December to put this system together. In every scenario it beats the quad-core Mac Pro by a large margin and cost $1000 less than a far less equipped system. In fact, in some scenarios it comes close to, matches, and even beats the octo-core Mac Pro!

Suppose you want room to grow or you want to start out with an octo-core system that matches the performance of Apples baseline octo-core system. Intel has made it very easy to get Mac Pro performance out of a much less expensive machine. The Skulltrail motherboard from Intel was built based on the same server motherboard technology with dual socket support for 8 CPUs. The difference between the Mac Pro motherboard and Skulltrail is that the later has the ability to overclock your CPUs very easily. Right now you can build a system with 8 CPUs that will match the performance of Apples octo-core Mac Pros, with 4x as much RAM, nearly 3x as much hard drive space, and a better video card for less than the cost of Apples lowest spec octo-core Mac Pro. And you wouldn't even need any additional cooling.

Again, I think this is only worth it if you're capable and willing to service your own system. If not, and you really want a Mac, spend the money on a Mac.

[kjbee]

Originally Posted by dimmer 

Bootcamp is standard with 10.5: but you do need to bring your own Windows installation software. You only need another software item if you want to run Windows and Mac OS at the same time (note that any of the "Run Windows on your Mac!" apps need you to do the same.)

What am I thinking of then? I am fairly certain I don't have Boot Camp. Did they stop supporting it for a while or something? Hm. Anyway - running Windows in Leopard via Fusion has worked out great for me, so I recommend that. The Boot Camp setup with having to restart always seemed cumbersome anyway.

[sneezymarble]

Originally Posted by kjbee 

What am I thinking of then? I am fairly certain I don't have Boot Camp. Did they stop supporting it for a while or something? Hm. Anyway - running Windows in Leopard via Fusion has worked out great for me, so I recommend that. The Boot Camp setup with having to restart always seemed cumbersome anyway.

The benefit of Boot Camp is so that you can have all your hardware natively devoted to running Windows as opposed to being shared with OSX when running a virtual system. Using demanding Windows programs in a virtual machine either won't work or performance will be horrible.

[LEStudios]

Psystar is a bad Bootleg copy of a Mac.

[sneezymarble]

Originally Posted by LEStudios 

Psystar is a bad Bootleg copy of a Mac.

I wouldn't say that. If you don't care to have a Mac case their systems will perform identically or better than similarly configured iMacs in OSX. Not only that but you can get a fast quad core system, with 8GBs of RAM, a better video card, 2x as much hard drive space and a 24" LCD for the price of a dual core iMac, with 2GBs of RAM, a worse video card, and 2x less hard drive space. If you like Apple, want their support, appreciate their aesthetic, and want to spend the money, then you probably ought to buy a Mac. However, I don't see anything inherently "bad" about Psystars computers. Unless, by "bad" you have some ethical concerns in mind with respect to End User License Agreements or the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

[dimmer]

Did they stop supporting it for a while or something?

Nope. The beta version which ran on 10.4 was decommissioned with the release of 10.5 (something Apple had said would be the case since the beta was announced.)

You may want to look at Bootcamp Setup Assistant if you are interested/curious.

[a*ron]

24 inch is pretty big!

[Heavydevelopment]

To preface this I'm a web developer for a large company but before this I was a freelance contract/consultant and I owed a web dev company. Why not the MacBook Pro? If you are doing development, and you are like most developers, you'll either want to take your projects to and from work and home or take into a client's place of business. In this way you are portable (heck you could code at your local coffee house or on the road...which as a freelancer I did often).

I was a Windows guy for a long, long time (I can say I had a computer with DOS on it). I always admired the Mac but I always had programs and such that weren't available on Mac. But with BootCamp it changed everything (and, yes, kjbee BootCamp is a part of OS X 10.5). Now I have VMWare Fusion that automatically detects your BootCamp partition.

As a .NET dev you will need MS Visual Studio. You'll also probably need some flavor of MS SQL server too. So you'll be spending a lot of time in a Windows environment--just the nature of the beast. My MacBook Pro runs Windows XP better than any Wintel machine I've had before. The funny thing is that you start thing that open source is an option in that every copy of OS X has Apache, PHP, and other Linux web technologies available to you out of the box because OS X is based on FreeBSD. It's also easy to install MySql (there's even a MySql dashboard monitor).

But if you are going to get a desktop (iMac or Mac Pro) because you are truly sold, I'd say that you should go Mac Pro. But you have to be sold on Apple as a hardware and software solution. And, yes, you could go out and build an Intel box and run OS X. But here's the thing: you have to mess with getting everything configured properly--then you have to worry about the hardware going south on you and when it does you are out of luck if its out of the warranty. When you buy a Mac from Apple or an authorized dealer you get one year of Apple Care (this is also true of Apple's refurbed Macs). Get the two additional years of Apple Care, and at the end of 3 years you'll probably be looking to upgrade. I liken this to the 3 years and 50K maintenance/warranty you get with BMW. But if you do buy a Mac Pro get it with the least amount of ram and drives--buy the drives and memory aftermarket. If you have a problem you take it to your local Apple Store and a genius will take care of it (my only beef with apple is that if you have spent more than say $4K for a Mac Pro and a monitor you should get a higher priority than someone that bought a nano...but try going into a Dell expert and getting service...oh wait you can't)

As for software, here is something you don't get out of the box with Windows: 64-bit. Much of the software for Mac is now 64-bit (minus Adobe's apps...but they are working on it--next version of Photoshop will be....ironically 64-bit is available on Windows). What does that mean? Well it means that your software on a Mac will be able to address more than 4GBs of RAM. It also means that it will be able to utilize both physical CPUs. It means better performance. Apple is forcing everyone to develop in Cocoa so all of the software going forward will be 64-bit whereas with Windows that's not for certain.

Best of luck. For the record, I have a MacBook Pro 15" (looking to upgrade to the 'new' 17" next year) and a Dual 3.0 GHz Core Duo 8GB 4TB Mac Pro and 30" Cinema Display. I went all in earlier this year with the Mac Pro....but started with the MacBook Pro. It was fully worth it.

[Veltliner]

Originally Posted by dimmer 

Psystar uses whatever they can get for cheap on the day they build it. Not the same thing.

And this could mean hardware not playing well with otherwise stable software.

It's like having a Mac, but getting some of the Windows typical problems with it.

I'd rather get a refurbished Mac Pro than such a machine.

[P]

Originally Posted by Veltliner 

(Psystar)

The fact that they exist shows that Apple is ignoring part of its customer base.

Apple has tried to make models in that segment before - the latest example was the 1.8 GHz Mac Pro. It did not sell at the price Apple was willing to make it ($1500 - same as an equivalent performance iMac). All those slots, higher RAM ceiling and more HD bays was not enough to offset the lack of a display (and a so-so one at that). I guess they concluded that the market was not big enough to worry about.

[webraider]

Originally Posted by l008com 

Only downside... iMacs have glossy screens :-(

that's only a downside for you.. I love the glossy screen. I like matte too. Glossy gives sharper images and better color. Matte diffuses the Light. Glossy is actually a better quality picture.

[applesbiggestfan]

Originally Posted by webraider 

that's only a downside for you.. I love the glossy screen. I like matte too. Glossy gives sharper images and better color. Matte diffuses the Light. Glossy is actually a better quality picture.

I agree.

[sneezymarble]

Originally Posted by Veltliner 

And this could mean hardware not playing well with otherwise stable software.

It's like having a Mac, but getting some of the Windows typical problems with it.

I'd rather get a refurbished Mac Pro than such a machine.

I can't speak specifically to the quality of Psystar's machines but I can say that I've been running OSX on my own builds for well over a year with absolutely no problems at all. Not a single app has failed to run as it's intended to. The OS runs beautifully with sleep, restart, and shutdown working just fine.

If you just build any old machine and try to throw OSX on it you're more likely to have problems if you can get it installed at all. On the other hand, if you build machines with OSX in mind, in my experience, the machines will run just fine without "the hardware not playing well with the software" or "Windows typical problems."

In fact, so far, every Hackintosh I've built is up and running faster than I can get Windows up and running on the same machine. Additionally, performance is either identical to a similarly configured iMac or Mac Pro, or better. Significantly better in some cases and at a substantial cost savings.

Certainly, building a Hackintosh is not for everyone. You need to have some idea about what your doing and be comfortable and capable of dealing with any issues that might come up since you're obviously sacrificing Apple's service and warranties. Also, you have to be willing sacrifice the Apple aesthetic. But, if you can comfortably sacrifice service, warranties, and Apple's "look" it's a fact that you can get quite a bit of performance for much much less.

As I said, this isn't saying anything about Psystar's machines, except only by loose association by virtue of their machines being built from consumer components with OSX installed. But, a quick look around their websites doesn't reveal anything particularly alarming. I imagine their systems perform similarly to nice stable builds like mine. What's more is Psystar is currently offering a year of warranty and support. Granted, I'm sure the service isn't as nice as Apple's is but it's something. They're also currently packaging an OSX restore disc with the systems.

[Big Mac]

You're definitely taking a gamble buying Psystar, but if you're looking at Psystar it's because Apple's desktop offerings don't meet your needs. If Apple didn't have a huge hole in its desktop lineup, Psystar's business plan would be much less viable.

[Veltliner]

Originally Posted by sneezymarble 

I can't speak specifically to the quality of Psystar's machines but I can say that I've been running OSX on my own builds for well over a year with absolutely no problems at all. Not a single app has failed to run as it's intended to. The OS runs beautifully with sleep, restart, and shutdown working just fine.

If you just build any old machine and try to throw OSX on it you're more likely to have problems if you can get it installed at all. On the other hand, if you build machines with OSX in mind, in my experience, the machines will run just fine without "the hardware not playing well with the software" or "Windows typical problems."

In fact, so far, every Hackintosh I've built is up and running faster than I can get Windows up and running on the same machine. Additionally, performance is either identical to a similarly configured iMac or Mac Pro, or better. Significantly better in some cases and at a substantial cost savings.

Certainly, building a Hackintosh is not for everyone. You need to have some idea about what your doing and be comfortable and capable of dealing with any issues that might come up since you're obviously sacrificing Apple's service and warranties. Also, you have to be willing sacrifice the Apple aesthetic. But, if you can comfortably sacrifice service, warranties, and Apple's "look" it's a fact that you can get quite a bit of performance for much much less.

As I said, this isn't saying anything about Psystar's machines, except only by loose association by virtue of their machines being built from consumer components with OSX installed. But, a quick look around their websites doesn't reveal anything particularly alarming. I imagine their systems perform similarly to nice stable builds like mine. What's more is Psystar is currently offering a year of warranty and support. Granted, I'm sure the service isn't as nice as Apple's is but it's something. They're also currently packaging an OSX restore disc with the systems.

Congratulations to your successful builds!

But I guess you've the right tech background to do it.

I'm more on the artistic computer use side. But it would definitely interest me to build a computer on my own. But I guess it's not that you just screw parts together that you choose after some specifications, so I'll stay off it.

[Veltliner]

Originally Posted by Big Mac 

You're definitely taking a gamble buying Psystar, but if you're looking at Psystar it's because Apple's desktop offerings don't meet your needs. If Apple didn't have a huge hole in its desktop lineup, Psystar's business plan would be much less viable.

Yes, really!

That hole in the line-up.

If you want a Cinema display, you can pretty much only buy a Mac Pro (I don't like the options buying a MacBook Pro or just adding a cinema display as a second monitor to my 24"iMac.

Because I WANT MORE RAM RAM RAM!

[sneezymarble]

Originally Posted by Veltliner 

I'm more on the artistic computer use side. But it would definitely interest me to build a computer on my own. But I guess it's not that you just screw parts together that you choose after some specifications, so I'll stay off it.

To be perfectly honest, it really is just about that easy.

[applesbiggestfan]

Listen, go with the iMac.

it's fast, it has a good bright screen

great graphics, and 4GB of RAM is plenty enough.

I'm getting a Macbook either tomorrow or the day after because they are arriving to my country soon.

Toodles

[applesbiggestfan]

I regret saying Toodles.