Anyone have a knockdown argument, either way?
Chicks dig Macs.
I've been tempted to get a Mac, too, but then I think of how it might be inconvenient to swap files between my work PC and the the Mac and decide it's just not worth it. Anyone have arguments against this reservation, too? I do like the idea of being able to drop into a UNIX command line, which you supposedly can do with the new Mac OS. (As you can see, I haven't bothered to do much homework on this.) Does anyone actually do that very often? (Sorry, Ogged, for totally mooching on your bleg.)
inconvenient to swap files
If you're using the same applications, it isn't any inconvenience. Totally transparent.
drop into a UNIX command line, which you supposedly can do
You can, but I never use it. IANAUnixGeek, though, and can't do anything except change directories from a command line.
Ogged, go to the Apple Store and play with the omnidirectional scrolling trackpads on the newer models. That's the bomb.
Regarding laptops specifically, when people talk about frying their computer, aren't they usually talking about laptops and not desktops?
This is an actual question, albeit a leading question. I personally don't know.
Now is probably the time to buy a PowerBook -- the latest G4's are sleek and relatively inexpensive and sometime soon they'll move to the Intel chips and the prudent will want to wait a model-generation or two before buying one of those.
I use Macs in an environment with lots of PCs. File compatibility is not a problem. Neither are shared networked volumes.
The underlying Unixity of the Mac OS has its principal benefit in the world of open-source software available to you. TeX, Emacs, all that stuff. You can go all CLI if you like that sort of thing, and it will help you do things the Mac GUI won't let you.
Regarding laptops specifically, when people talk about frying their computer, aren't they usually talking about laptops and not desktops?
Of course; it's harder to get a desktop onto the skillet.
Oh, and you should seriously consider the 12" PB. Very nice, very small and light-weight. If it's not your primary screen, why carry all that extra around with you?
Also: Keynote is teh r0xx0rz.
it's harder to get a desktop onto the skillet.
Yeah, you pretty much have to oven-roast a desktop, unless you have one of those big-ass turkey fryers.
you pretty much have to oven-roast a desktop
The secret is to brine it first.
heh. ass turkeys.
I'm still having an inordinate amount of fun on mine. If you really want to do your research, I'd say browse some mac books at the bookstore. I've been reading The Missing Manual, Tiger OS Edition, and would recommend it. You'll get an idea of the features of the Mac OS and how easy they are to use, and that should give you some idea of whether the mac is worth it to you. One possible downside is battery life. The G4 chips are older architecture, and consume more power than the new intel/Athalon processors.
Also, Amazon is offering a $200 rebate on powerbook 15".
heh. ass turkeys.
I'm still having an inordinate amount of fun on my powerbook. If you really want to do your research, I'd say browse some mac books at the bookstore. I've been reading The Missing Manual, Tiger OS Edition, and would recommend it. You'll get an idea of the features of the Mac OS and how easy they are to use, and that should give you some idea of whether the mac is worth it to you. One possible downside is battery life. The G4 chips are older architecture, and consume more power than the new intel/Athalon processors.
Also, Amazon is offering a $200 rebate on powerbook 15".
Plus, you can do the reconditioned thing. I saw a 15" reconditioned pb online a couple days ago for $1500. And a 12" for less than a thousand.
My department is PC/Mac, and there's rarely a problem with compatibility on basic software. Unless there's a specific application you need/like that's PC-only (read: computer games, some math geek type programs), there's no reason why you shouldn't consider the Powerbook.
Also, Spotlight. To my knowledge there is nothing like this under Windows. You have to play around with it to get why it's so amazing, but it's an always-on, nearly instantaneous, search-within-documents function. Never fuss over your file / folder hierarchy again. When the Mac OS began including this feature, I became vastly, vastly more productive.
I am a Mac convert too, and the price difference is not as big as it once was. I was a pure pc girl in highschool. I scoffed at the Mac owners in college, because they all seemed to have money to burn, but now I love my Mac. And Apple Care is amazing. 3-4 years (if you buy it as an education customer) of fix-anything support within just a couple of days.
The Powerbooks are amazing. Depending on how much you want to use an external monitor, an ibook might be good enough.
It is useless to resist us. Come to the Mac side!
slolernr--keynote seems so much easier to use than Powerpoint. Is it easy to transfer a keynote file into powerpoint?
bg -- Keynote will export files in PowerPoint format, but afaik PowerPoint can't import Keynote files. (Keynote can import PowerPoint files.) So you wouldn't want to use Keynote to make a presentation if you were going to have to present it in PowerPoint, only if you were going to present it in Keynote.
But then, I like Keynote not for its ease of use, but for its genuinely sleek features. Good handling of video / graphics, good transitions, excellent use of two monitors during presentations (see current / next slide, time elapsed / remaining, notes on your laptop screen while your slide is on the big screen; btw, apropos your earlier comment, last I looked the iBook's prohibition against using external monitors is purely a software implementation and can be defeated.)
A good source of current prices and bundles for PowerBooks:
http://www.macprices.com/g4tracker.shtml
Good discounts for educational pricing, if you can qualify.
When my wife needed a new laptop I talked her into trying a powerbook, and she loves it. She only does basic computing - writing, excel, web & email. She had some compatibility worries, but no problems have surfaced since she got the microsoft office package for it.
I like using her pbook now, and we're using it for all the photos from our new digital camera.
I do like the idea of being able to drop into a UNIX command line, which you supposedly can do with the new Mac OS.
Short of buying a Mac, you could download and check out Cygwin, the Linux shell that runs on top of Windows. It is not quite a fully functional UNIX operating system, but it gives the illusion very well. I've been really happy about it since I discovered it last year.
Have you ever wasted 2 hours trying to fix viruses and spyware from a Windows PC?
That, in my opinion, seals the deal.
It all comes down to your immortal soul. Don't sell it to the Great Satan Software Company.
Four current rules:
1) Wintel forever.
2) No Firefox.
3) I refuse to even listen to Sufjan Stevens, even tho I am so indie I have three cds of Jandek.
4) Whatever group might be partially tolerant of my presence, I must intentionally alienate in at least small ways.
Shorter mcmanus: cock jokes -- not funny.
Shorter mcmanus
Hey that was uncalled for. Casting aspersions on a fellow poster's length -- I like to think we're above that at the Mineshaft.
I wuv my Mac, which I've been using for about a year, and my wife just got a matching one. (What? Shut up! It's cute!)
The Unix-i-ness of the Mac is pretty damn awesome, although you can, indeed, approximate that with Cygwin on the PC. Cygwin is one of my can't-live-withouts under Windows.
My best argument for using a Mac is that things Just Work more often than they do on Windows, and they look gorgeous (both the software and the hardware).
By the by, we seem to be assuming that Ogged read the other should-i-get-a-powerbook? thread. Should we assume this? Do we fear to ask because we'd rather not know if Ogged doesn't actually read all the comments?
I've got a lengthy, whiney blog post brewing about this. For now, here's a length, whiney comment.
I've been using my new 15" powerbook for about two weeks. It's very nicely built and the OS is aesthetically pleasing (and I'm not saying that to be dismissive). But I do have a number of complaints.
A few things: most of the criticisms you will hear from Mac users about PCs should be ignored (no offense, guys). Slol is right that spotlight is nice, but it doesn't do anything that Google Desktop Search doesn't. Andrew is right that you don't have to waste hours removing spyware -- but if you run Firefox and know how to use the computer properly, you don't have to do that on Windows anyway. People who say Macs crash less haven't used Windows since Win2k was released. I've had to reboot the powerbook twice in two weeks (once, a hard reboot). That's about the same as a PC with reputable peripherals. And forget about the "I've never gotten a virus!" claims. They're true -- but I haven't gotten one on any of my PCs since 1998. And I was running a BBS on that one.
The biggest annoyances will only come up if you are a power user. If you primarily drive your windows machine via the keyboard, as I used to, you will be infuriated by macs. You MUST use the mouse, which, on the laptop, will be stupidly one-buttoned. You gain back some productivity by having a real CLI available, but it doesn't totally take away the sting of having to use the trackpad to access menus. I'm sure I'm missing out on some of the shortcuts that are available, but I've been asking my mac-expert coworkers, and many times they just shrug and say "you can't do that".
In general, the software is better than 90% of the Windows apps out there, but it's not the religious experience it's made out to be. And there is much less of it than in the PC space. That some of the biggest text editors (TextMate, TextWrangler) can't open arbitrarily large files without loading them entirely into memory is pretty pathetic. Some things (Mac Firefox, MS Office) are noticeably worse than their PC counterparts.
My experience is pretty positive, overall, but I bristle at Mac evangelism. The OS does a nice job of hiding things you don't really need to deal with, and simplifying things that are needlessly complex (for example, applications are a single file). And the build quality of the machines more or less justifies the price (although keyboard placement, missing keys, and the mouse button issue all make me significantly less pleased about an otherwise beautiful piece of tech).
Bottom line: if you're using Windows knowledgeably and to its potential, you're not really missing anything except the pretty vector graphics and a decent command line. It still wouldn't be a bad idea to buy a mac, but you will have to make some compromises in favor of gooey GUI goodness.
and yeah, Becks: the incompatible filesystem thing hasn't been an issue for years. Don't expect it to read NTFS USB disks (although in readonly it probly can); otherwise you're fine -- everything can read FAT. With the internet, how often do you need to worry about floppy formats, anyway?
Thanks, Tom. Looks like no Macs for me, though. This is a dealbreaker: If you primarily drive your windows machine via the keyboard, as I used to, you will be infuriated by macs.
I saw your post, Tom, and you're speaking my language. I've had to clean plenty of spyware for friends and family, but never on my own machine. Ditto viruses. And I honestly can't remember the last time I had to reboot this XP laptop because of a program failure. (I almost never use keyboard shortcuts though, so that's no problem for me.) Google Desktop Search is good, and X1, which I use at work, is even more similar to Spotlight, with it's find-as-you-type results.
But have you noticed if the Mac is noticeably faster (or slower) than PCs? Like I said, the guy on the plane impressed me. And I keep dreaming of a powerful note-taking/organizing program, of which there seem to be dozens for the Mac, but almost none for Windows.
Two of my friends have some pretty sweet laptops with Linux on. Grow some balls, ogged. Bonus: didn't have to pay for an OS when purchasing.
You can get X running under cygwin these days, I think, though I've never tried, since the last time I was using Windows for long enough to want to, it was win98, and cygwin just doesn't work so hot on 98.
And I keep dreaming of a powerful note-taking/organizing program, of which there seem to be dozens for the Mac, but almost none for Windows.
Emacs!
My big-balled Ben, I've actually run Linux for a while before, but honestly, give me a break: linux is for people who like mucking with their operating system--I seem to have outgrown that.
When did you last run it? You needn't muck as much anymore, if you get a more user-friendly distro.
You're going to be reasonable now? Ok. In fairness, I last ran it (as in, had it installed and used it fairly regularly) (SuSe) a few years ago. I tried Ubuntu's live cd last year, and it was much slicker. Still, you have to admit there's a fair amount of mucking required.
I'm not sure I need to admit any such thing, since I haven't used any of the distributions that tout themselves as light on the mucking. So for all I know, they're very light on the mucking. But you're probably right.
Can we simply all defer to tom on all tech related questions from now on? Tom, does this typeface make me look fat?
tom, not quite sure what you want to do from your keyboard that you can't, but you should try using Quicksilver (see Kieran on it here -- I was hoping he would show up and explain all this, as he's much more knowledgeable than I); I found that I could keep my hands on the keyboard with it installed.
I'm not trying to get all religious on you about the Mac. They're simply beautiful computers, and they work well. But I'm partly of ben's mind -- if I could get the time to do it properly, I'd rather run a linux machine. Which I did for a while with a Mac, too, but that's another story.
which, on the laptop, will be stupidly one-buttoned
This is true. I've gotten so used to hitting the ctrl key with my pinky while clicking (behaves like a right-click) that it's second nature, but getting used to it was a pain in the ass.
That does sound like a massive pain. On my laptop now, clicking in the lower left of the touchpad is right-click.
I thought you had some crazy 5000 buttoned mouse?
Indeed, but I don't use it on the laptop; different setups keep the RSI away...
Good note-taking programs for the PC -- onenote? the venerable, unsupported ecco pro is still the most versatile intelligent dustbin I have ever found.
Yahoo desktop search is more or less a free version of X1, and I find it much nicer than GDS.
But have you noticed if the Mac is noticeably faster (or slower) than PCs?
This machine hasn't yet been fully upgraded, so I've only got 512 MB of RAM in it right now. It does a very impressive job of memory management — I have to have a lot of stuff open before it starts thrashing around. My guess is that OS X can do more with less than Windows.
But if you get enough memory on either platform it probably won't be an issue. If there was a worldwide RAM shortage and they were never going to make anymore, you should probably go for the mac. Since you pay a premium for the hardware, though, you could just redirect some of that money to memory for a PC. Six of one...
For the few CPU intensive tasks I've put it through (mainly file compression/decompression) I haven't been blown away by the system's speed, although it's perfectly fine. I haven't run any benchmarks (not even sure how I would), but subjectively it doesn't seem much faster or slower.
I should maybe add, though, that this is more impressive when you consider the machine's power consumption -- it can go for a long time on its battery. In general, all the power management stuff is in a class by itself (suspend works perfectly and quickly); that's one area where I've never had a PC that can compete (although I think the mac may be missing a "hibernate" equivalent).
Power management can be a pretty key attribute for laptops. I'm happy enough with my ThinkPad but I haven't been super-demanding either. My last laptop (which I bought in 1993, I'm pretty sure) was a TI 486 and I was frequently unsatisfied with its power management capabilities.
Just one more vote for the powerbook.
tom compares Spotlight w/Google Desktop: Slol is right that spotlight is nice, but it doesn't do anything that Google Desktop Search doesn't.
This is simply false. Google Desktop can search through your files, yes. But Spotlight also lets you store searches, and use them as if they were folders. E.g., you can store this search:
- Has names of family members
- Is less than six months old
- Is of file type x, y, or z
And have it be a "folder" in the Finder, so you can go to it any time you want. Google Desktop, though it is a great addition to the Windows desktop, has nothing like that.
I'm a dedicated Mac user, but can we all at least agree that having to use a program called "the Finder" makes you feel kind of stupid and lame?
Not, I suppose, that "Explorer" is that much better, but still.
49: You can run and bookmark at least two of the three searches you specify with Google Desktop Search, and probably all three (I haven't had GDS installed for a while -- eats too much disk space). And the app will cache those search results, I believe, the same way spotlight would. Admittedly, the results won't show up as a folder. You *could* write a script to do dump the results into a folder, or maybe achieve the desired result using some active desktop weirdness. But yeah, if you badly want searches to be organized by folder, GDS won't hit the spot.
I'm a big enough nerd to think that filesystem hierarchies are good idea, though. I'm not really spotlight's target demographic.
And X1 allows saved searches; don't know if the Yahoo! version does as well.
I've worked in an all-Mac office since 1988, doing advanced GUI stuff when the PC world was still on DOS. Now things are more evened out. But for many years, there was no comparison.
We've not had ANY virus or spyware issues since 1991. Another organization in my building is all PC, as if my wife's CPA firm. Their support needs (and frustration level) are incredibly high, compared to ours (I do all support out of my hip pocket).
Some Mac pluses: iChat, Apple Mail, iCal, iPhoto (which I've been exploring a lot lately, and find it wonderful), the Dashboard. Get a Mac.com account, and lots of new worlds open up. Spotlight is incredible.
Most Macs now ship with a two-button mouse (finally!), though I've always used a multi-button third-party mouse anyway.
Coming in late...
If you primarily drive your windows machine via the keyboard, as I used to, you will be infuriated by macs. You MUST use the mouse, which, on the laptop, will be stupidly one-buttoned.
I used to think this was the case, but it's not. You can drive *everything* from the keyboard; if you go into System Preferences and click on "Keyboard & Mouse", then on "Keyboard Shortcuts", you can select "Turn on full keyboard access" which will do exactly what it says. You can also remap the default shortcuts.
Plus, as someone else said, if you use Quicksilver, that lets you drive the OS pretty well from the keyboard.
Josh, you might convince me yet -- we'll see. I was very excited about the "Tab Between All Controls" option, but it doesn't appear to work in Firefox.