i'm a win2k user. winxp is too bloated for me, but there are a few features that i like (taskbar/system tray grouping.) i work with databases a lot (mainly SQL) and the PC wins hands down there (at least when you're only comparing PC and Mac.) filemaker just doesn't cut it. it does a lot of things (i'm running some apple scripts with it right now) but it doesn't compare anywhere near with the speed of SQL Server. i haven't tried mySQL on OS X yet so i can't say anything. i have tried photoshop on a PC (1.6GHz/1GB) compared with a G4 (1GHz/1GB) and the Mac performs all speed tests noticebly faster. we run final cut pro on the mac and it's sweet. the PC programs do really well but they are kind of clunky to start with. media cleaner runs great on both machines, depending on what you export as. since the Mac can't export WMV8, we can only use a PC. vitural pc on a G4 (1Ghz/1GB) is still pretty slow, although it get's the job done. as far as uptime on OS X, it's amazing compared to OS 9. our 9's crash several times a day (running Quark/PS/Illustrator) while our OS X machines crash once or twice a week. however, out PCs need to reboot (but don't crash) once a month or so.

right now, we can't find any support for OS X and raid 5, so we're looking at moving our servers from Mac to PC since we need to upgrade them soon. i think jobs is kinda screwing the mac community by not offering an upgrade price for previous OS X 1.1/1.0 users, especially for server with unlimited users which will set you back another $1,000.

i think the biggest difference between the 2 worlds is that when you buy a PC you give all the specs (OS, hard drive, proc(s), ram, drives.) on the mac you just say i got the new 800 Mhz one, or the i-Mac with the burner. you can customize a little, but not a lot. but that's fine for the Mac community and i respect that. i personally like to have control over my purchase that's why i custom build, but that's just me. i also know that a lot of mac users buy the brand ( i work for a marketing firm.) when the x-serve came out, our mac users were drooling, even though NAS's have existed for a long time (even *nix based ones.) but the fact that it was an OS X NAS made it better. however, a lot of people are having problems with the x-serves right now.

conclusion, OS X is going to be a great OS, but it has a lot further to go. the fact that Apple considers 10.2 big enough to sell on it's own should give everyone a clue. unfortunately OS X has a lot to go. it's still very new. yes, UNIX has been around for quite a while, but this is a new face on the GUI, not to mention the hybrid backend. NT 5, however, is a rebuild on NT 4 which has been around for a while (although not as long as UNIX.) NT 5 builds on NT 4 so you still have the same stable core. yes, NT 6 is on SP6a and NT 5 is about to come out with SP3 soon. mac did the same thing with 9, they just choose to call them 9.1, 9.2.2 and so forth.

so which is better? it's really up to you. gamers will probably choose PC just because the games come out sooner. designers will probably choose Mac because of the speed of the apps (and as a note: just because a platform has the same/more apps, doesn't make it better.) if you're looking at DB design, probably PC. if you're looking at the ability to just plug it in and work, then the Mac. i personally prefer the PC (grew up on an Apple IIE and a Commodore 64) although i'm really impressed with OS X (i hate OS 9.2.2 though.)

Someone explain to me why OS X is not the dominant OS in the World? I just went through Mac OS X for Dummies and can now understand why all the Mac-Freaks exisit. It's stable, fast (on a 1 GHz G4 and 512 MB of Ram), and by far the easiest to use. Doesn't have all the bells and whistle of XP Pro but really doesn't need them. Now that I have had it for almost a month, I have to pay for .Mac and upgrades to the programming problems in my version? Well, maybe I just answered why they can't get passed the 5% mark...lol

You were able to determine the stability of an operating system by reading the Dummies book for it? Impressive ...

nah...the book was a general introduction...I went after it myself...did things to it that would make xp cry...

sicked the antitrust lawyers on it?

.MAC.. how very creative...

Mac is a great compnay...
It's just that Windows is a bit too dominating.

If you talk about graphics though (not game, but making graphics), I think Mac still got the better one.

I hate to say this, but no, they don't.

Windows has all the Adobe products, Maya, 3D Studio Max, etc.....

Yet many (if not most) designers and design firms prefer Macs. The applications aren't everything. Colors are handled much better on Macs (which is very important for designers) and support for design hardware (tablets, pens, etc.) is still better on Macs.

Support for tablets and pens? Please, every tablet that is on the market that I've ever seen supports both.

Handles color better in what way? It's still just a maximum of 256 color settings for Red, Green, and blue.

However, now we have things like Prehelia and the new Radeon 9700 which both support 10-bit DACs, which allow for much greatt color settings within each RGB, both of which are not available on the Mac.

hmm... Mac has all those apps... i know becose i have one, the only thing thats better by PC´s is that all the new games that come out are only for PC... Windows will never get where Mac OS is, Never... and Macs are far better when your working with grafics. Photoshop, Studio Max.. Poser 4, etc...

Actually, it's not the same. The shades are quite different. A yellow may look darker on one monitor and lighter on another. The Mac OS can handle this difference with ColorSync. It makes the yellow look the same shade on all monitors, printers and scanners along with the other colors. And there are even greater differences between LCDs and CRTs showing light and dark colors.

There are a ton of design and engineering apps that never had been available for the MAC and probably never will (Solidworks, Autodesk Mech. Desktop/Inventor, SDRC Ideas, CATIA, Pro/E) so please stop posting these ridiculos claims that MAC's are the ultimate platforms for these apps.

plain wrong, my friend. i should known, cause i'm a graphic designer.

besides everything my distinguished colleges write under and above my statement, here's a tiny example: maya 4 for mac was more limited than the pc version. now, regarding version 4.5 (just out)...try to find the fluids lab in the mac version. shure, the mac version seems to have more stuff but it's just because they are playing catch up. mac os x is finally a reason to make things better and take apple more seriously. but that doesn't make it invencible, as you quite honestly sound.

I'm wondering... I've been hearing a lot lately that you can do things on a MAC that you cannot do on a PC. Can anyone give me some examples of some? I'm not trying to start a flame war, I'm honestly just asking.

Thanks,

USS

The truth is, everything you can do on a Mac you can do on a PC. Not everything you can do on a PC you can do on a Mac. Nuf said!

Yeah. And most things that you can do on a Mac, you can do on a PC 10 times faster for 10 times less money.

there is only ONE single thing. and that is run OS X *lol* but since its so slow and process consumeing, why would we really even want it on IBM anyways? sure it has good graphics, but what do we want? graphics or speed? u decide

I figured that it was just a marketing ploy, but I wanted to be sure.

Thanks!

USS

Yeah, because FreeBSD is such a slow operating system.

But seriously, remarks like that are so useless these days. What hardware are your referencing when you say it's slow? Windows XP is slow if you run it on a Pentium 300, just as OS X is slow if you run it on the lowest G3 with little RAM.

But with hardware so cheap these days and computers so fast, faulting software just because your computer is too slow is pretty dumb. Why run software that doesn't provide as many features or as good an experience simply because you don't feel like shelling out $50 for some extra RAM? Makes no sense.

Don't listen to the opinions of a few people who probably never used a Mac and make assumptions. That just keeps the ignorance spreading.

There are a lot of things you can do with a Mac that you can't do with Windows and coversely a lot of things you can do with Windows that you can't do on a Mac. Want to play the latest games, use Windows. Want to take advantage of advanced graphic design hardware and applications, get a Mac. Want to build your own PC, use Windows. Want to run UNIX without dealing wth Linux but still take advantage of stable software like Apache, get a Mac.

But don't listen to me either. Go investigate for yourself and decide which OS is better for you. In almost all cases you can find a way to do what you need on either system. It's all about personal preference. Don't let someone else tell you how to use a computer.

Nate, I use Mac OS X on an iMac at my girlfriend's house quite a bit. It's actually the ONLY reason I'd buy a Mac, but they're too expensive for what you're getting.

And as for "advanced graphic design hardware", could you give me an example? Because Macs use ATI OEM graphic solutions, and their "Fastest" Dual 1-ghz box for $2,999 without monitor comes with a GeForce4 MX, which you can get for PC's as well.

Or you can get the "Ultimate" with a GeForce4 Titanium (4200? 4600? Dunno) for only $4,099 w/out monitor.

The only thing Macs have over a PC is their CPU design and architecture, with a true 128-bit CPU.

I'm not saying Macs are crap, I actually love OS X! But there's no way you could get me to buy a Mac right now, when for a lot less money I *can* do just as much on my PC as I can on a Mac. The box just may not look as nice :P

This, I fully agree with.

NO, it is not a 128bit CPU.

It DOES however, have a 128bit data pathway to the l2 cache.

Sorry sorry, I know! That's what I meant. Gimme a break, I work 3rd s*** and I'm really tired :)

I did know that, though.

As someone else pointed out, both Mac and PC now use the same graphics hardware and have the same graphics software so that is not really an issue anymore. Also, I have apache running on my Windows machine and it runs great. It runs even better on my slackware box. I am obviously not going to go out and by a Mac so I can run Apache in a "UNIX" environment. Finally, Mac is as much UNIX as Windows 9X was DOS. Both DOS and UNIX are very solid on their own. When you add GUI though that is where you run into problems. That really is where the Linux fanatics are falling short X Windows and the common Window managers (KDE and Gnome) have no advantages over Windows in stability or usability. As for Mac vs Windows, the two have become so similar that is almost silly to even talk about it.

I was referring to graphic design hardware. Such as tablets, pens, and other tools used by graphics designers. Their support is far better under Mac.

A lot of people who don't know much about graphic design just assume that because you have the same applications and graphics cards, that you can do just as much on a PC, but that's not necessarily the case.

I was talking about design hardware like tablets, pens, etc, not graphics cards.

I mostly agree with you, although XFree86 doesn't take up hundreds of megs of RAM to run. But as I mentioned earlier, so what if it uses less RAM to the point that you're sacrificing features and usability. Also, for a lot of people that do network administration (like myself) having a native UNIX box right below the surface is a great feature. If Apache runs better on your Windows box than slackware, you need some configuration help :)

Although you're right that Macs and Windows machines are so similar these days - it's what about you want to use. You can pretty much do everything you need on whichever system you want.

I run a TiBook 500mhz, 512 ram for Digital Video editing and streaming. Try doing a 24fps stream on a PC with 16bit stereo audio @ 44khz. It won't happen easily. Yes, each platform has its pros and cons. YES, PC's are cheaper for a lot of people and thus will have their staunch supporters. I work in a mixed environment of UNIX, Wintel and Mac. Personal preference is for Mac because of the superior DVD playback and my TiBook provides 5 hrs of continuous power vs 2-3 hrs on a PC. If you want to get a PC laptop with good power consumption, look for one with a CRUSOE processor from Transmeta Corporation. [http://www.crusoe.com] No, I'm not an employee or associated with them. You can also connect Mac's together via their firewire ports if necessary... which is standard on all of their machines... good luck trying to find that on PC's as STANDARD... and also the 4 pin "I-Link" port found on the SONY Vaio does not provide power to any peripherals compared to the 6pin Firewire port available on the Macs.

Cheers

It doesn't come standard, but there is firewire networking hardware available at places like CompUSA.

"Try doing a 24fps stream on a PC with 16bit stereo audio @ 44khz. It won't happen easily."

Huh? x86 processors have been shown to blow G4s away at encoding in many different formats. Either you are using some crappy PCs or very Mac-sided software.

Comparison of a G4 500 mhz procesor vs a PIII 733 Laptop.. Sorry, I should've been more specific. Sorenson Broadcaster for Live streaming, not encoding. Previous versions of Broadcaster were only for Mac and I was trying to compare Windows Media Player vs Quicktime streaming.

Whilst I agree with you in principal nate, I don't think that you can always fault the user's hardware for software running slowly. I know that I do not want to go out and buy newer hardware because some programmer decided to write s***ty software regardless of how cheap that hardware is. Obviously developers shouldn't be trying to target a P100 when writing software, but saying 'just buy new hardware' is giving an excuse to all those VB programmers out there than write 2Meg plus programs that do a little more than display 'Hello World'.

Oh OK that makes sense.

Agreed, though I was talking about professionally developed software. Of course developers can write terrible programs that suck up any computer resources and bring a system to a halt. But the people who complain that ICQ takes 10 megs of RAM, or that Windows XP takes up more memory than Windows 2000 really need to fork up $20 for an extra 128 megs of ram. If you want to take advantage of the latest software, then you're going to have to make an effort to run hardware newer than 4 years old - that's just how it is.

Excuse me... i hate it when people talk s*** about Macs and Mac OS when they dont know s*** about it... you dont have to hate Mac just becose you got a PC... i have bouth and iam in the Design Buisness, at the work we only have Macs... and Mac OS is far better Operationg system then windows... its not slower. ?!.. what the hell it only need like 60 mb of ram and 200 Mhz and it will run nicely... try xp on that, my PC has 512mb of ram and windows will use like 250 when iam not doing s***... so dont come saying it slower when you havent tryed it !::.. and Is Mac OS there is no way some app will just terminate or windows will freeze...

You must have a TON of startup programs. A fresh boot of my XP system running Norton AV, Linksys Itough Keyboard and Windows Messenger: 96 Megs of Ram. Where do you get 200??!!

yes but to run the latest windows you should have to buy new hardware from the last year should you ;)

edit for my last post: SHOULDNT

we REALLY need an edit feature!

"what the hell it only need like 60 mb of ram and 200 Mhz and it will run nicely"

OS 7.6.1 maybe. OS X definitely not.

"Huh? x86 processors have been shown to blow G4s away at encoding in many different formats. Either you are using some crappy PCs or very Mac-sided software."

and just wait some months, because x86 COULD REALLY become macontosh's inner arquitecture! this is getting stronger every day!

OK yeah yeah yeah, i work with PC's at work. I have a mac G4, and a PC laptop, and about 6 PCs all at home. I use them all.

Pc's have millions of applications because most of them are little utils etc etc.

So lets put it this way, windows and PC's may have millions of appllications, but what does that matter when the few ones PC users want are on a mac? Such as iDVD, iMOVIE, iTUNES, iCAL, iSYNC, etc etc. I am of course not targeting professionals like me who use Adobe, macromedia, etc etc.

I am a new media designer, have used both systems, and as with most things in life each have pros and cons. I personally prefer mac for pretty much everything apart from when you go searching for a little util to do something like convert a graphic that you would find in seconds on google or download.com

The main difference is the amount of people/geeks that write programs. Think about how many GOOD official apps there are, i think a pretty even ammount. Then think about the useability of the PC and Mac versions.

I rest my case

Dave

By the way, I said Apache runs better ON my slackware box not THEN.

If I had $2,000 to spend, I would just assume get one of the G4 towers that I would actually be able to upgrade piece-by-piece in the futre. And they RAISED 15-inch iMac prices by $100 a couple of months ago, so we're back to square one, really. So I'll stick to my AthlonXP 1800+ for now.

That *is*, however, cool, about the iPods being reduced by $100 .. Those are damn nice players.

I have noticed an increase in Apple news on this website. As a longtime PC user using a mac more often I think it's great! Having Mac and PC stuff at the same site is great. Now, if only we can have a betanews that follows Mac software I would be in heaven. Thanks for the work so far!

yeah it would be nice to have mac software also. I use mac more than i do PC at work as OSX is very powerful and much faster at some things that on a Win32 platform. Nate what do you think?

I think Apple offers an excellent platform for both developers and users with OS X. In some areas it is better than Windows, in some areas it's not. But I think overall it's a viable alternative to a lot of people and Apple has done a great job with it.

I am seriously considering a PowerBook for my next computer purchase. It may be a bit more expensive, but I think the investment will be worth it in the long run. Windows XP is great, but recently I've found myself having more fun with (and in turn being more productive) on an iBook I am borrowing. Mac Office is wonderful, Apple's built in mail client does what I need it to do, and the many Web browsers for OS X are excellent.

Plus, you cant beat being able to pop open a UNIX terminal right on your laptop :)

Apple has taken the time to make sure their video drivers are optimized (much better than the "XFree" drivers generally are...) but that also causes other problems. Apple SHOULD have xfree compatibility so that many of the X11 apps would nativly run without having to jump through major hoops.

The Titanium box I've used from time to time has a nicely sized LCD screen, and the system seems pretty stable... though a friend who was playing WCIII on his said something about instability and crashing problems after running WCIII for a long period of time.

IF your really excited about running a Unix shell natively, you COULD look at something like VMWare... or one of the other similar products...

Because OS X isn't truly open source, its more difficult to grab software that's been independently developed and utilize it.

i think that would be a very good idea Nate! Apple's support their hardware alot longer than Windows support X86 systems, Windows XP *can* run on a very low spec P2 with about 64MB RAM however it runs like a 3 legged dog with 2 legs in plaster! I have used OS X on a G3 with 128MB RAM and it has run great, i admit some things like the "genie" minimize/maximize effects are a little slow but when they are disabled the system is easily usable, even running old applications in OS 9.2 environments (which is so cool isnt it!?, would be great if you could run Windows 98 within Windows XP without having to buy VMWare!) is great and they all run fast and are stable. Also the UNIX side of things are great, it is nice to have it there for when you need it, i cant say i have needed it much as i have a SPARCstation 5 right next to my Mac but it is handy :)

I think you would be very wise to get an Apple Laptop, all in all they are very similar however i have found that Mac system last longer than most x86 systems do these days, 18 months and you need to buy a new system really (that is mainly if you play games and want the latest OS though!), macs last ages, like i said i am still using an old G3 with 128MB and a 5 GB HDD!

"would be great if you could run Windows 98 within Windows XP without having to buy VMWare"

Right Click (gasp) -> Properties -> Compatability
Funny, I didn't buy VMWare and I have that functionality without eating up loads of resources to boot.

And in OS X don't all the applications running in OS 9.2 get the same pool of protected memory so they can take out eachother, but not OS X?

so far compatibility mode hasn't worked where it counts. we were really looking forward to a migration to OS X but we're still waiting for Quark, Outlook and our time reporting software to port over. so far, neither of these work well in emulation and require a full reboor into OS 9

oi, you, nooo, he said run "WINDOWS 98" in XP, not windows 98 programms. grrrr