The Pro's of a mac?

[digitaloracle]

I mean that the foundation for OS X, what makes it so excellent, is UNIX. Apple didn't design UNIX, so in truth they didn't design the whole OS. Pardon my semi-flame on Apple, but the only macs I have really worked on are pre-OSX iMacs (and POSs at that), so my opinion of Apple-designed OSs is somewhere below my opinion of slime mold.

 

[nak-1]

I mean that the foundation for OS X, what makes it so excellent, is UNIX.

Yes, but what makes it so usable is Apples undoubted skill at UI design and presenting a complete solution that just works.

Best of both worlds?

 

[horndude]

Thats debatable, that UI they use is one resource hungry thing like the PC market has never seen, which in turn significantly drives up the cost of their product for consumers while going out of their way to hide all the power available from a multiuser OS and unix based OS.

 

[digitaloracle]

I would assume that in the vast open-source linux world there are UI/GUIs that destroy apple's version. But the Mac desktop is definatly very animated.

 

[nak-1]

It's true it's resource hungry, but that's not really what I was talking about. I would agree that they need to shift the workload from the processors to the GPU on whatever card happens to be in the machine, a situation that won't be improved until the next iteration of OS X.

However it in no way pushes up the cost for the consumer, that's to do with market share and profit margins.

I would also say that most people buy a home PC as a single user machine. They have no need for a multi-user environment, but they do get all the stability benefits and also access to all that POSIX compliant OSS out there. Personally I have found that the volume of Mac build's available at places like Sourceforge have increased dramatically over the past couple of years which can only be a good thing for mac users.

The other benefit is that most users of a windoze or mac box have no interest in the CLI but should you want it on a mac it's there.

As for GUI's in the Linux world GNOME and KDE would be good examples. But both are built on top of the X11 X window system, which is by no means perfect and suffering from development direction issues.

These GUI's have only got better, but that's not really the problem. The problem is that OSS software, not the GUI technology itself, tends to be really good on software development and really bad at good UI design. You can have the best GUI features available ever, but if people use them in cruddy ways you lose all the benefit.

 

[Tuskatappaja]

There is only one thing I wouldn't change to MAC; price.
I can make a PC from very cheap parts and then install a free linux into it.
Then download all the necessary software (freeware) and presto, it's there.

 

[digitaloracle]

I agree that to say that the demands of a GUI drive up system costs is absurd.
As for the builds increaing for macs in recent times, might that have soemthing to do with the more mainstream structure of OSX? I would guess from a freinds attempts find apps for his OS9 system that few of those new builds are back-compatible with pre-X systems, as most programs on Windows are.

 

[mac_mogul]

I have a 14" iBook G4
1.2ghz G4 w 133mhz fsb
+1.25gb DDR (PC2700)
+32mb ATI Mobility RADEON
+CD-RW/DVD-ROM Combo Drive
+2 USB 2.0/1.0
+1 FireWire 400
+AirPort Extreme
+56k v.92 Modem
+10/100 T BASE Ethernet
+60gb 4200RPM HD
(roughly) $2,400.00 US

Not that bad when you think about what all you get with it.
OS X 10.3 Panther
iLife '04 (includes iTunes, iMovie, iDVD, GarageBand)
And all the other little apps and utilites.

The iBook G4, when equipped like that, can give even a G5 a run for it's money (not much money, but you understand what I mean )
It's a very dependable machine, it has great looks, and it usually makes others jealous (from my experience anyways )

And yes, you should go to an apple store and preview one before buying. But you shouldn't worry. Once you buy it, it comes with all the books and manuals you need to get the most out of it.

EDIT: Yes, you can build a cheap PC, but you can't use it on an airplane, or on your back porch, and you can't exactly take it to a nearby hotspot either

 

[waynejkruse10]

EDIT: Yes, you can build a cheap PC, but you can't use it on an airplane, or on your back porch, and you can't exactly take it to a nearby hotspot either

Well, with apple laptops, or any laptops you have limited power. Thats why i dislike laptops because of short battery life.