Gaming Why Mac?

[_Chaz_]

Alright, I know that the feud between Mac and PC is timeless and endless, but I would like to know something: What advantage does a Mac have over a PC?


Things I've noticed/have heard:

Spoiler

[titleerp]PC Hardware: Can be upgraded and customized, relatively reliable and easily replaced when it fails.

Mac Hardware: Cannot be upgraded, cannot be replaced (to my knowledge).


Windows: Simple to navigate, simple to use, customizable, and compatible with a lot of software.

Mac OS: Simple to navigate, simple to use, compatible with far less software.

I've noticed that the price tags on Macs are often significantly higher than those of PCs... why?



I'd appreciate it if fanboyism and trolling was left out of this.

 

[Matthew]

Apple tax

 

[HateBreed]

I think the only real advantages of a mac is the lack of viruses.. aside from that they're the same thing.. and only people trying to pirate get viruses.. other than that they have firewalls for that

 

[metamaster]

I'm not a mac fanboy in any way whatsoever, but I have noticed that stuff made by Apple are usually very high quality (the build), whereas computers with Windows aren't necessarily made by Microsoft, so they can be cheap. But even if it's high quality, it doesn't compensate for the Apple tax in my opinion.

 

[Nimbus]

Alright, I know that the feud between Mac and PC is timeless and endless, but I would like to know something: What advantage does a Mac have over a PC?


Things I've noticed/have heard:

Spoiler

[titleerp]PC Hardware: Can be upgraded and customized, relatively reliable and easily replaced when it fails.

Mac Hardware: Cannot be upgraded, cannot be replaced (to my knowledge).


Windows: Simple to navigate, simple to use, customizable, and compatible with a lot of software.

Mac OS: Simple to navigate, simple to use, compatible with far less software.

I've noticed that the price tags on Macs are often significantly higher than those of PCs... why?



I'd appreciate it if fanboyism and trolling was left out of this.

I hate to burst your bubble, but there are some components of a Mac that are user serviceable for the most part.

-RAM (Type varies depending on your model)
-Hard Drive (SATA 3)

However I believe the reasons why Macs cost more than PC's are.

-There are far less viruses for Mac OSX than Windows (Kinda pointless though, since Linux of any flavor gives you this same resistance. Neither give you immunity though)

-There are far less people that own Macs compared to PC's. Due to this Apple can get away with charging an Arm, a Leg, an Eye, Half of your right liver, and one of your other toes for any of their hardware. Had there been more Mac owners than PC owners, things likely would have played out the other way around.

There may be other reasons, but I cant seem to come up with any.

 

[Jamstruth]

Macs are insanely well designed ergonomically and aesthetically. The build quality is always high and with most macs you're buying it all in one unit which pushes the costs up a bit. They're lovely bits of tech but I will never bother buying one because I don't see the appeal aside from aesthetics.
There's nothing you can do on a Mac you can't do on a PC cheaper and easier. Macs have that option of running Windows in a virtual machine these days (forget the program name) but I see that as admitting defeat almost. Like, "Yeah we know we don't have many programs on our OS. here run our main competitor instead to perform your tasks".

 

[iFish]

By "customizable" do you mean hardware wise?
Since you can always upgrade the RAM yourself on the desktop models.

But one thing people like about Macs are how sexy they are.
But on the other hand you can make a really sexy PC as well, haha.

I think a Mac is better for editing video to an extent.
And graphic design.

 

[Nimbus]

By "customizable" do you mean hardware wise?
Since you can always upgrade the RAM yourself on the desktop models.

But one thing people like about Macs are how sexy they are.
But on the other hand you can make a really sexy PC as well, haha.

I think a Mac is better for editing video to an extent.
And graphic design.

You can upgrade the RAM easily on the laptop models as well. My Macbook is running 4GB RAM.

Hard drives are more or less just as easy.

I only bought my Macbook becuase I had wanted one for ages, I had $3000 (I only spent $1100 on the Mac alone), and I needed a new computer anyway. Now that I look at it, I likely could have bought a much beefier PC, slapped Ubuntu and a OSX theme on it and called it good. However, I still wanted a Mac since the day I got my first craptacular Compaq laptop.

 

[iFish]

By "customizable" do you mean hardware wise?
Since you can always upgrade the RAM yourself on the desktop models.

But one thing people like about Macs are how sexy they are.
But on the other hand you can make a really sexy PC as well, haha.

I think a Mac is better for editing video to an extent.
And graphic design.

You can upgrade the RAM easily on the laptop models as well. My Macbook is running 4GB RAM.

Hard drives are more or less just as easy.

I only bought my Macbook becuase I had wanted one for ages, I had $3000 (I only spent $1100 on the Mac alone), and I needed a new computer anyway. Now that I look at it, I likely could have bought a much beefier PC, slapped Ubuntu and a OSX theme on it and called it good. However, I still wanted a Mac since the day I got my first craptacular Compaq laptop.

You can?

I know it was possible, but it isn't an advertised feature.

Like, the Mac Mini, iMac and Mac Pro can all do it without voiding the warranty.

 

[nando]

apple is an engineering firm at heart. their hardware (not including stock parts like hard drives) is top notch design and manufacturing. my 17 inch laptop didn't close quite flush, it was hardly noticeable but i wanted perfect. i took it to the apple store and while the store people didn't agree with me that it was a defect, they agreed it wasn't quite perfect and it bothered me so they replaced it.

software wise, i haven't had the misfortune to work on a windows machine in a long time so i don't know. i'm sure there is nothing you can do on mac that you can't on windows. it all differs on the approach. for example, to force quit an app i can right click it's icon and tell it to quit. or i can invoke the for quit dialogue window. in windows ( i don't know if it's still the same) if i remember correctly you have to open up task manager which felt like having to log out, then choose to force quit the app. it's this little things that make up the bulk difference. it's a philosophy in how you do it and not in what in can do.

for example the new app store just launched today. that's a completely different approach on acquiring and installing software. it doesn't change the fact that you are doing the exact same thing as always - purchase + install, it changes how you do it.

the price tag goes back to the design/engineering aspect. design is an expensive premium. i'm an architect - i should know. as a designer i can do things for you on the cheap and do them well. they'll serve their purpose and if i'm a good designer i'll make them look as good as possible.

for a premium, i can get exceptional high quality that goes beyond look and function. for example, i can notch out your wall to insert a refrigerator so it doesn't stick out past the counters - this will cost extra money, but in the long run everytime you walk into a kitchen where the refrigerator sticks out, it will bug the shit out of you. go look now, you probably have one that sticks out.

for a little more premium, we can make the material a lot nicer than the standard white or stainless steel. as you may know, steel comes it different grades and qualities and while the look may be similar, it makes a difference in it's feel, like when you grab the handle. again, you'll notice other cheaper refrigerators may feel hollow and cheap where they have a thin veneer instead of constructed with sheets of steel

for a little more, i can make the fridge disappear and completely blend in with the kitchen. coordinate the veneer so it matches the cabinets finish for example. for a little more and you can go the extra mile and make sure the wood grain on your cabinets and refrigerator match end to end so it is completely seamless. that would cost a lot more because not only do you need custom finishing on all your surfaces, but the veneer needs to come from the same cut of tree.

anyway, the macs are the latter and i know this things aren't important to most people but with mac, you are getting them anyway and you do pay for them.

 

[Fireballo]

I don't see the reason for buying mac hardware anymore just build a PC, have a removable hd and you can build a hackintosh while still keeping the option for running windows and Lunux. The hardware is the same now and you can't tell me that you can't build a better MAC than what they sell at the Apple store.

 

[Originality]

Apple try to market themselves as a king of "premium" product, especially for multimedia. MacOS is supposed to be far more "intuitive" than Windows, and the Mac experience is supposed to be much richer and polished than what you get with the "WOW Factor" of Windows. Also the software suites (like Adobe, even though it's on both) are supposed to be more efficient and powerful on Macs than PCs, whilst delivered in a case (usually in ceramic white) that (arguably) looks so damn awesome. And it has an Apple on it, so you have to pay for that (whoever heard of paying extra to see DELL on the side?).

There's also the whole loyalism thing... people get an iPod and think "wow, Apple is awesome", then have to get an iPhone and an AirBook, etc, to match.

PCs on the other hand appeal with their flexibility and upgradability. The parts that make up a PC are easy to learn, so picking parts to put together and upgrade and actually doing the upgrading can be a fun process. Some parts in the market might shoot themselves in the feet for trying to be cheaper than the competitors (there are many bad quality products in the budget market), but on the other end of the scale you can get parts that are so powerful that Macs just seem feeble in comparison - and often the PC parts will still be cheaper.

PCs might not look so pretty, but you can build a PC for every purpose, whilst Macs are limited to only what they sell. Plus the price for fixing Apple products are often higher than the price of newer Apple products (like my Gen2 iPod), whilst PCs can often be relatively easy to diagnose the problems and fix.

As for viruses... if more people started using Macs, more viruses would be written for Mac. Mac can only pretend to be Virus free because so few people use Macs (in comparison). Using it as an argument for why Macs are superior... well that just seems silly.

 

[Nimbus]

Yep, on Macbooks, the RAM bays are behind a shielded frame-like door in the Battery Compartment, and if you look down the side of that battery compartment you'll see a tag, which if you pull on will remove the Hard Drive. There is a cover over it to protect it from EMI, this can be removed and placed on any SATA3 drive.

To add on to the ease of all this, you can even boot from your old hard drive if you put it into a SATA->USB enclosure. Macs use EFI Booting and natively support booting Mac OSX, and Linux (Seems like Windows wont boot from USB on any machine) from USB. You can then download carbon copy cloner while running off of your old enclosed drive, partition your new drive in disk utility, and clone everything back over onto it.

I guess EFI booting was another feature I meant to add. Of course more PC's will be using this feature in the not so distant future.

 

[Originality]

Apple use SATA3? I thought they were limited to SATA2.

 

[xakota]

 

[Nimbus]

Apple use SATA3? I thought they were limited to SATA2.

Nope, mine is defiantly using a SATA3.

 

[toguro_max]

Ok, here are my two cents, but before let me get some things cleared:

1) I do not own a mac;
2) I'm not a fanboy of any (PC or Mac);
3) Everything i'll say is based upon commentaries and readings.
4) Hardware "good looking" is not a factor for being superior.

Being this said, most of the time i hear someone saying mac is better than pc is because the mac is a "closed structure", i mean, the OS is specifically designed to work with that specific hardware, and because of this it works "better".

PC have, by nature, a "open structure", so the OSes must wokr with all kinds of hardware.

It's just like asm coding. It works wonderfully with the machine you coded it for, but it sucks for anything else. C, for the other side, works for a lot of machines, but the "fluidility" of it is worse than the asm.

So, in short, the idea is:

MAC: Better then the PC of it's time because it's hardware works as a real team.
PC: Is far more flexible, but it may cost you some stability.

When people complain about Windows not accepting their hardware, they must undestand that maybe the hardware manufacturer did not follow some instructions, and hence it will not work as it should. And this does not (i think) happend with the Mac.

 

[Urza]

On the software-side, the two companies maintain almost polar opposites in corporate methodology. Apple is "continually" breaking things through implementation of new technologies, while Microsoft focuses on maintaining the legacy. This is due to the fact that Microsoft has far more corporate machines in service, and breaking someone's software/hardware can lead to the loss of big clientele. This difference has several effects on the product:

1) Windows is convoluted.

Windows' directory structure makes very little sense. They maintain many obsolete PC concepts (legacy from the 90s) such as a singular registry for storing software information, and an (almost) monolithic kernel. Each version of Windows is tacking more and more layers of software and design paradigms onto the same product leaving it a mish-mash of potential usability.

2) Windows is insecure.

OSX is UNIX-based and conforms to UNIX principles. This gives it a robust permissions system and distinct kernel separation. Contrary to popular belief, the reason there is so few OSX malware is due to the fact that it's difficult to do damage, even when exploits present themselves. With Windows you can pretty much do whatever you want in user mode, making security a constant cat and mouse game.

3) OSX is well-designed.

Many aspects of Windows' UI are just bad. Take for example something as simple as a settings dialog. Three buttons generally present themselves: "Okay," "Cancel," and "Apply." This is an old design paradigm left over from when any sort of operation took some amount of time. In the modern world of computing these settings should be applied instantaneously. Thankfully in recent revisions of the platform the "Apply" button has been mostly dropped, which slightly improves the situation.

4) Apple strongly promotes their design guidelines.

Windows has more software of course, but OSX has much better designed software. This is due to Apple's SDK heavily supporting specific UX guidelines which leads to third-party software having far more intuitive UI and usability choices. On Windows virtually every piece of software takes it upon itself to reinvent the users' work-flow, making navigation between them a mess.

5) OSX is pretty.

Every element of OSX has been thoroughly inspected from not only a usability perspective, but an appearance perspective. Animations for even things as minor as dialog changes in the System Preferences are masterfully done. Microsoft took their good time implementing some sort of graphical revision (6 years), and Aero is alright, but it doesn't extend much past window borders and some sporadic menu animations, whereas on OSX it feels like a complete package.

Now for hardware, it depends. Personally I don't conform to the belief that a desktop PC needs to be aesthetically pleasing. If I have a good looking panel, and good input devices, that's all I need. For a laptop however, these things are all built-in, making the aesthetics of that hardware far more relevant. The recent Macbook Air revision, for instance, is an excellent piece of hardware that I've really enjoyed using (review unit). This distinction being made, the average person will need to buy a Mac to get OSX, which (as everyone here knows) requires a price premium over an off-the-shelf PC. The benefits that OSX brings over Windows is well-worth it though.

And for the record, I don't own any Macs. My primary desktop is a hackintosh.

 

[Originality]

First, I apologise if this sounds stupid. SATA3? As in, SATA 6Gbps SATA3? Not SATAII 3Gbps?

Second, Windows "not accepting their hardware"... did you have any specific hardware in mind? I thought the majority of the market designed their hardware for Windows first, because ~85% of the worlds computers (excluding server clusters) run Windows.

Lastly, nice post xakota

 

[toguro_max]

(...)
Second, Windows "not accepting their hardware"... did you have any specific hardware in mind? I thought the majority of the market designed their hardware for Windows first, because ~85% of the worlds computers (excluding server clusters) run Windows.
(...)

When i mentioned this I was thinkg on older hardwares on newer windows (Sound Blaster Live, for example). I've read a lot on forums throughout the 'nets people complaining that their hardware does not work as it was supposed to. But they forget that in most of the cases:
1) the hardware is old;
2) the very own hardware manufacturer did not make any driver for the new OS
3) it IS difficult to make every single piece of hardware to work friendly with every single other hardware.

For example: do you know that warning on some CDs/DVDs that says: "This disc is not garanteed to work on all readers"? Well, i have one disc (Duke Nukem Platinum Edition, btw) that did not work on my old CD reader (a sound blaster something, mind you), but worked flawlessly on any other reader.