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Mac or PC?

Started by wolfiefrick, February 11, 2016, 08:36:49 PM

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What is your preference: Mac or PC?

Mac running OS X
PC running Windows
PC running Linux
Other

Thing 342

Quote from: wolfiefrick on February 14, 2016, 11:52:14 PM
Quote from: kkt on February 14, 2016, 11:03:47 PM
But a pain in the butt to get fixed if the hard drive, motherboard, or power supply goes out ...


I've owned a Mac for almost five years and used it very heavily and put it near and above its paces, and nothing has managed to break yet. I bet the stock hard drive inside of it has been formatted probably upwards of twenty times.
It's not about parts breaking, it's about being able to upgrade a component without having to replace the entire unit. To me, a $1000+ computer without the ability to upgrade the RAM or Hard Drive is completely unacceptable, and is the main reason why I don't use Macs.


jakeroot

Quote from: Thing 342 on February 15, 2016, 12:21:43 AM
Quote from: wolfiefrick on February 14, 2016, 11:52:14 PM
Quote from: kkt on February 14, 2016, 11:03:47 PM
But a pain in the butt to get fixed if the hard drive, motherboard, or power supply goes out ...

I've owned a Mac for almost five years and used it very heavily and put it near and above its paces, and nothing has managed to break yet. I bet the stock hard drive inside of it has been formatted probably upwards of twenty times.

It's not about parts breaking, it's about being able to upgrade a component without having to replace the entire unit. To me, a $1000+ computer without the ability to upgrade the RAM or Hard Drive is completely unacceptable, and is the main reason why I don't use Macs.

kkt's original comment included the words "get fixed" and "goes out", so "parts breaking" probably was his concern. As long as you have AppleCare, Apple will gladly replace any broken parts. But that's pretty rare, I've been told. Apple computers can last ten years, easy, without upgrading any parts (Apple does a really good job optimizing hardware).

kkt

Apple Care lasts 3 years, right?  I would hope an expensive computer would last a lot longer than that.  I buy a computer new, about 3-4 years in, I upgrade the memory and hard drive and maybe video card, then the computer can last another 4 years or so.  Even then the case and display can be reused with a new motherboard and CPU.  And meantime if any parts fail it's a quick and easy job to replace them.  Not a couple of hours with specialized tools, or several hundred dollars in labor plus parts that are priced 50% higher than comparable market.  An Imac is built more like a laptop, expected to be thrown away after 3-4 years.

1995hoo

Quote from: kkt on February 15, 2016, 12:26:50 PM
Apple Care lasts 3 years, right?  ....

I think they offer different amounts of time for different amounts of money, though that might not be the case for all products.
"You know, you never have a guaranteed spot until you have a spot guaranteed."
—Olaf Kolzig, as quoted in the Washington Times on March 28, 2003,
commenting on the Capitals clinching a playoff spot.

"That sounded stupid, didn't it?"
—Kolzig, to the same reporter a few seconds later.

freebrickproductions

I use Windows, both at home and at school.
At home I use Windows 7 and at school I use Windows 8.1.
It's all fun & games until someone summons Cthulhu and brings about the end of the world.

I also collect traffic lights, road signs, fans, and railroad crossing equipment.

(They/Them)

triplemultiplex

I don't like that "PC" = Windows.  If you mean "Microsoft Windows", say "Windows" because PC = "Personal Computer" which is a blanket term for literally every home computer.  A Mac is a personal computer.  An iPad is a personal computer.  You're DVR is a personal computer.  Your smart TV is a personal computer.  Your game console is a personal computer.
We are talking about operating systems as Windows vs. MacOS.  "PC" is an irrelevant term, not just in my opinion, but as a grammatical fact. /rant
"That's just like... your opinion, man."

Pete from Boston


Quote from: triplemultiplex on February 16, 2016, 10:33:10 PM
I don't like that "PC" = Windows.  If you mean "Microsoft Windows", say "Windows" because PC = "Personal Computer" which is a blanket term for literally every home computer.  A Mac is a personal computer.  An iPad is a personal computer.  You're DVR is a personal computer.  Your smart TV is a personal computer.  Your game console is a personal computer.
We are talking about operating systems as Windows vs. MacOS.  "PC" is an irrelevant term, not just in my opinion, but as a grammatical fact. /rant

But "PC" has strong historical association with the Wintel (IBM, DOS) world that literal meaning is what's irrelevant.  Commodore was making personal computers in the 1980s.  They weren't making PCs, in the way that anyone that cared understood the term. 

freebrickproductions

Quote from: Pete from Boston on February 16, 2016, 10:56:08 PM

Quote from: triplemultiplex on February 16, 2016, 10:33:10 PM
I don't like that "PC" = Windows.  If you mean "Microsoft Windows", say "Windows" because PC = "Personal Computer" which is a blanket term for literally every home computer.  A Mac is a personal computer.  An iPad is a personal computer.  You're DVR is a personal computer.  Your smart TV is a personal computer.  Your game console is a personal computer.
We are talking about operating systems as Windows vs. MacOS.  "PC" is an irrelevant term, not just in my opinion, but as a grammatical fact. /rant

But "PC" has strong historical association with the Wintel (IBM, DOS) world that literal meaning is what's irrelevant.  Commodore was making personal computers in the 1980s.  They weren't making PCs, in the way that anyone that cared understood the term. 
Plus, Apple ran those "Mac Vs. PC" adds to give the advantages Macs had over Windows, which probably helped associate the term "PC" with Windows even more, when referring to computers, that is.
It's all fun & games until someone summons Cthulhu and brings about the end of the world.

I also collect traffic lights, road signs, fans, and railroad crossing equipment.

(They/Them)

wolfiefrick

Quote from: jakeroot on February 15, 2016, 02:21:49 AM
Apple computers can last ten years, easy, without upgrading any parts (Apple does a really good job optimizing hardware).
I am the proud owner of a Macintosh SE with a 40 MB hard drive and a few megabytes of RAM from the year 1988, making it a good thirty years old. My father purchased it from the company he worked at before I was born and later gave it to me. Stock hard drive, stock RAM, stock 512x342 9" monochrome CRT display, never been serviced, original keyboard and mouse, and it still works beautifully. The one thing that was ever changed was the operating system, it's now running System 7.0, the latest version of the System Software that will run on that model.

Pete from Boston


Quote from: wolfiefrick on February 17, 2016, 02:16:57 PM
Quote from: jakeroot on February 15, 2016, 02:21:49 AM
Apple computers can last ten years, easy, without upgrading any parts (Apple does a really good job optimizing hardware).
I am the proud owner of a Macintosh SE with a 40 MB hard drive and a few megabytes of RAM from the year 1988, making it a good thirty years old. My father purchased it from the company he worked at before I was born and later gave it to me. Stock hard drive, stock RAM, stock 512x342 9" monochrome CRT display, never been serviced, original keyboard and mouse, and it still works beautifully. The one thing that was ever changed was the operating system, it's now running System 7.0, the latest version of the System Software that will run on that model.

You have given me the terrible idea of unpacking the PCjr in my basement (from its original box) and seeing if the dampness hasn't bricked it, and the good idea of immediately then putting the thing on eBay.


hbelkins

Quote from: triplemultiplex on February 16, 2016, 10:33:10 PM
I don't like that "PC" = Windows.  If you mean "Microsoft Windows", say "Windows" because PC = "Personal Computer" which is a blanket term for literally every home computer.  A Mac is a personal computer.  An iPad is a personal computer.  You're DVR is a personal computer.  Your smart TV is a personal computer.  Your game console is a personal computer.
We are talking about operating systems as Windows vs. MacOS.  "PC" is an irrelevant term, not just in my opinion, but as a grammatical fact. /rant

Slight disagreement. I would consider the iPad to be a tablet, not a personal computer.


Government would be tolerable if not for politicians and bureaucrats.

realjd

Quote from: Thing 342 on February 15, 2016, 12:21:43 AM
Quote from: wolfiefrick on February 14, 2016, 11:52:14 PM
Quote from: kkt on February 14, 2016, 11:03:47 PM
But a pain in the butt to get fixed if the hard drive, motherboard, or power supply goes out ...


I've owned a Mac for almost five years and used it very heavily and put it near and above its paces, and nothing has managed to break yet. I bet the stock hard drive inside of it has been formatted probably upwards of twenty times.
It's not about parts breaking, it's about being able to upgrade a component without having to replace the entire unit. To me, a $1000+ computer without the ability to upgrade the RAM or Hard Drive is completely unacceptable, and is the main reason why I don't use Macs.

If we're talking laptops, they're not always user serviceable even for non-Apple brands. And while the new Apple MacBooks do solder the RAM to the motherboard (they didn't always), the HD is easily upgradable. I just put a bigger SSD HD in my MacBook Pro just a few months ago.

With iMacs, stuff like RAM and HDs are replaceable. I'm not sure about the MacMini.

wolfiefrick

Quote from: realjd on February 22, 2016, 08:48:51 PM
With iMacs, stuff like RAM and HDs are replaceable. I'm not sure about the MacMini.
The iMacs are technically upgradable, but it takes a little workaround to get to the insides. As for the Mac mini, the older models were much more upgradable than the new model from 2014.

realjd

Quote from: triplemultiplex on February 16, 2016, 10:33:10 PM
I don't like that "PC" = Windows.  If you mean "Microsoft Windows", say "Windows" because PC = "Personal Computer" which is a blanket term for literally every home computer.  A Mac is a personal computer.  An iPad is a personal computer.  You're DVR is a personal computer.  Your smart TV is a personal computer.  Your game console is a personal computer.
We are talking about operating systems as Windows vs. MacOS.  "PC" is an irrelevant term, not just in my opinion, but as a grammatical fact. /rant

PC meaning Windows/Intel is just a marketing term and I agree completely about Macs being PCs. I disagree about the others being personal computers though. The iPad is a tablet. The DVR is a DVR. The smart TV is a TV. A game console is a game console. They may all have microprocessors at their core, but that doesn't make them PCs any more than my car or my thermostat are.

PC (and "computer" more generally) describes a type of product designed to allow users to run a variety of programs that do a variety of things. They're general purpose. Things like you mentioned aren't general purpose computing devices. They're designed to perform a small number of functions. From an engineering standpoint, even if they have similar hardware to a PC (which they usually don't), the system and software design is very different.

Tablets could be argued either way IMO.

Edit: grammatically, the dictionary also disagrees: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/personal-computer?s=t

Henry

Windows, for sure...although I do remember Macs from my school days. What I wouldn't give to play Oregon Trail again...
Go Cubs Go! Go Cubs Go! Hey Chicago, what do you say? The Cubs are gonna win today!

Rothman

Quote from: Henry on February 23, 2016, 10:35:25 AM
Windows, for sure...although I do remember Macs from my school days. What I wouldn't give to play Oregon Trail again...

*ahem*

https://archive.org/details/msdos_Oregon_Trail_The_1990
Please note: All comments here represent my own personal opinion and do not reflect the official position(s) of NYSDOT.

JoePCool14

I've only owned PCs, but my schools have had Macs in the past. I tend to watch a lot of tech videos, and I think I prefer Windows. And yes, i even like Windows 8, 8.1, and 10.

If I had a Mac, I would probably use it sometimes though.

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slorydn1

I've been in the PC camp since the mid 1980's, no reason for me to switch now, no matter how hard Microsoft tries to make me want to, LOL.

Please Note: All posts represent my personal opinions and do not represent those of any governmental agency, non-governmental agency, quasi-governmental agency or wanna be governmental agency

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US71

Prefer Windows PC for the most part, but occasionally use my dad's old Mac.
Like Alice I Try To Believe Three Impossible Things Before Breakfast

wolfiefrick

What I find so dumb about the OS X vs Windows war is that if someone is found to prefer OS X, they're likely to be bashed on for being a biased subject to Apple's reality distortion field who blindly fell into the traps Apple lays within their fine art of product marketing, simply because people have been told that Apple's tech is overpriced and insane. I disagree because I would much rather pay more for higher quality better made technology than pay for cheap electronics that will have to be tediously replaced every time it breaks. I'd be much better off buying a Mac with AppleCare because I get support for three years paying only a small deductible to get something replaced in the highly unlikely event that something breaks in my Mac then I would if I built a PC myself. If the video card breaks, you don't pay a small deductible to the company that made the computer to replace it for you because a company didn't build the computer - you did. So, the money to buy a new video card comes out of your pocket.


Windows has made leaps in bounds in terms of stability, but systemwide crashes are far less common in OS X. It has a rock sold UNIX core, and if something is to crash it's usually just the app you're running that is faulty. But, in Windows, if a program starts having trouble in terms of stability, the entire system becomes a lot more prone to a full crash; or the dreaded blue screen of death. This is because in Windows, the DLLs and remnants of the program are scattered throughout the system files manageable through the registry, a crazy convoluted mess that is supposed to manage the fine details of your computer and the programs installed on it - so if one app crashes, the faulty DLL or remnant is out in the open mixed with other files that pertain to other apps, and in certain cases, the system. On OS X, all the app files are contained within the app itself, labeled with the ever so clever file extension of ".app", so if anything goes wrong, the app will crash, but the faulty file cannot access any other system files because it is contained within the app itself.

Scott5114

Of course if you want Unix, there's a way to do that without paying for the overpriced Apple hardware...

Linux also has no central registry. Configuration data is mostly stored in text files. If the program breaks you can edit the config to fix it. Or you can usually delete it and the program, upon not finding the config file there, will generate a new one with the default values.

I can't say I've ever had a PC component other than a hard drive outright fail on me. Last hard drive I had managed to fail so gracefully that I kept it hobbling along for six months. Only symptom was that certain sectors of the hard drive were unreadable and would cause the drive to make a loud clacking noise whenever you tried to access those sectors. One happened to be the one that Firefox's config file lived in; whenever I started the browser it would take about a minute to start up and then it would start with default settings. I'm guessing that had that drive been in a Windows system it would have taken down the whole OS.
uncontrollable freak sardine salad chef

realjd

Quote from: wolfiefrick on February 27, 2016, 11:06:54 PM
What I find so dumb about the OS X vs Windows war is that if someone is found to prefer OS X, they're likely to be bashed on for being a biased subject to Apple's reality distortion field who blindly fell into the traps Apple lays within their fine art of product marketing, simply because people have been told that Apple's tech is overpriced and insane. I disagree because I would much rather pay more for higher quality better made technology than pay for cheap electronics that will have to be tediously replaced every time it breaks. I'd be much better off buying a Mac with AppleCare because I get support for three years paying only a small deductible to get something replaced in the highly unlikely event that something breaks in my Mac then I would if I built a PC myself. If the video card breaks, you don't pay a small deductible to the company that made the computer to replace it for you because a company didn't build the computer - you did. So, the money to buy a new video card comes out of your pocket.


Windows has made leaps in bounds in terms of stability, but systemwide crashes are far less common in OS X. It has a rock sold UNIX core, and if something is to crash it's usually just the app you're running that is faulty. But, in Windows, if a program starts having trouble in terms of stability, the entire system becomes a lot more prone to a full crash; or the dreaded blue screen of death. This is because in Windows, the DLLs and remnants of the program are scattered throughout the system files manageable through the registry, a crazy convoluted mess that is supposed to manage the fine details of your computer and the programs installed on it - so if one app crashes, the faulty DLL or remnant is out in the open mixed with other files that pertain to other apps, and in certain cases, the system. On OS X, all the app files are contained within the app itself, labeled with the ever so clever file extension of ".app", so if anything goes wrong, the app will crash, but the faulty file cannot access any other system files because it is contained within the app itself.

Go take a peek in your /var/lib folder on OSX. See all of those .dylib and .so files? Both are formats for dynamically loaded libraries, exactly like a Windows DLL. You'll find .so (shared objects) on Linux and UNIX also. Plenty of applications use them on Macs.

In the Windows registry, each application generally stores its own settings in its own area. What ends up bloating the registry are things like file associations, GUID types, and Explorer extensions, not general application use.



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