EggXpert

This is the thread in which we shall end the everlasting war/fight between mac and pc. Please feel free to add facts, seperate them from myths, leave your ideas about better OS, and try to make a list like mine (pluses and minuses of your own experiences.) But please leave linux out of this... for now. Don't forget to rate this thread, too.

Here are some unbiased points to start with:

MAC

+ Safe (Supposedly)

+ Easy (Very much so)

+ Fast (Supposedly)

+ Good programs come bundled

- Small amount of freeware avaiable

- Not upgradeable (Excluding the G4 and G5 desktops)

- More expensive than a cheap PC

 

PC

+ Very customizable/ lots of choices (Many manufactures make them, you can build one yourself)

+ More freeware and game support

+ Cheap

- Low-end pcs are slower than low-end macs

- More vunerable to bad-things (easily fixable though)

 

I'm going to comment on your points too:

ExtremeCoolness:

MAC

+ Safe (Supposedly)  ---- Since fewer people use MACs, there are less hackers and virus-writers out there, meaning less people trying to break it.

+ Easy (Very much so)  ---- Can't argue here.  Plug and play, but this is more because its much less customizable.

+ Fast (Supposedly) ---- Uses Intel Core2 processors, but system software architecture may allow faster operation.

+ Good programs come bundled  ---- Microsoft bundles and gets sued.

- Small amount of freeware avaiable  ---- Gotta pay to play in Apple's world (from a developer side of things too).

- Not upgradeable (Excluding the G4 and G5 desktops) ---- Apple is the most proprietary company out there.  From connectors to peripherals, they decide how they want their system to behave, and don't let anyone else play in their sandbox.

- More expensive than a cheap PC

 

PC

+ Very customizable/ lots of choices (Many manufactures make them, you can build one yourself) ---- Yes, though this adds to complexity.

+ More freeware and game support ---- game support comes from that fact that more people use it.  freeware comes from the fact that there are more tools to program with, again, because more people use it.

+ Cheap ---- starts cheap yes, gets expensive fast.

- Low-end pcs are slower than low-end macs ---- well, what do you want it to do?  email and Word don't need a lot.  You get what you pay for, but sometimes it's too much.

- More vunerable to bad-things (easily fixable though) ---- more people hacking away at Windows means more vulnerabilities are discovered.  Apple is just as proprietary and comes with even more stuff bundled in.

Macs have very large negatives. And the lack of software (particularly gaming) and lack of upgradeability can be a big red flag. I don't even think the G4 and G5s have that much of leg room when it comes to upgrading. I also think that so called advantage that Macs had in graphics is now pretty much... gone.

I think PCs are much faster and you can customize their looks. So many different cases. The look edge the Macs have is now gone. I've seen some very pretty attractive PC cases in Fry's last (an acrylic case, though that is not too practical as it doesn't conduct heat well, but it's very nice).

I don't see much of a war going on. Macs are always isolated to a small portion of the market. Macs are vastly overpriced. The laptops are even worse. I don't know how a college student can afford it, unless they have super rich parents.

Anyways, if Macs somehow had more of the market share (and that's not gonna happen), it would experience more attacks.

Apple tried the budget thing with that ridiculous Mac Mini garbage. One thing they didn't tell you is the charge horrendous amounts on the keyboard, monitor and the other stuff. Complexity aside, a PC really does win. And a PC doesn't have to be complex... you can get just a pre-built model. 

Just a bit of discussion on this matter... 

but the only way it would be un-biased is if only people who've never owned one posted !  LOL

PC all the way !   I make my living fixing them when they break, (or their owners break them !)

errrrrr......that's not biased....is it ???

 

 

 

Why is Linux missing from this? It has upsides from both Mac and PC. Also the downsides of not much game support, that's starting to change, though.

Macs are great in the fact that they're with you for the long haul. They're sturdy, solid machines. The new OS versions are $~130, much less than windows, but they release a new one every year and a half or so. My 400mhz G3 iMac with 384mb of ram and 100gb hd is still hanging with most apple apps, including OS X Panther. The machine is old, yet it still hums along. PC of the month, Mac of the year pretty much. Mac's are upgradable, with regular ram or video cards that could be used in pc's. It's been that way for a few years now. Thing is, mac's are more expensive, by far. For 2500 i can get a decent mac, or a war-machine of a pc. Mac mini enters around $500, but for that price, you can get a mid level pc, monitor, keyboard, mouse, and printer. The mac mini comes with a power cord... Gaming seems to have a strangle-hold on the pc market, the most popular games are there for pc, but not for mac, such as Half-life 2 series, WoW, and other popular games, to drive gamers to the pc market, plus since you can get a pc able to play these games for much less than you can get a mac, and most gamers are young or poor(or both), the gaming market is going to select the config to code for that will get them the highest number of sales.

It's an age-old battle, and while mac is struggling with the computer market, i can see them dropping out and going mainstream towards the mp3/mp4/portable electronic market in the next 10 years. 

Most of my friends have macs, Whoa a built-in webcam, how useful! Macs have 9% of the market and linux has 1% while microsoft pwns everyone! Also are there touchscreen macs? NO, but there are pcs with touchscreens. The thing you say about cases may differ because of the person, and I like how they once said on the apple website, that the G5 could hold 2TB of storage! Whoa, if you used all 6 sata ports on a pc for a TB drive each that would be 3x the macs storage. PCs have nothing to prove and I hate those mac vs pc commercials. Pcs you can fix, while macs you have to get a replacement. Pcs are definately not for whatever people apple says there for, they're avaiable to everyone. Unlike an expensive mac, where I only see in OFFICES! Kinda biased though

ExtremeCoolness:

Most of my friends have macs, Whoa a built-in webcam, how useful! Macs have 9% of the market and linux has 1% while microsoft pwns everyone! Also are there touchscreen macs? NO, but there are pcs with touchscreens. The thing you say about cases may differ because of the person, and I like how they once said on the apple website, that the G5 could hold 2TB of storage! Whoa, if you used all 6 sata ports on a pc for a TB drive each that would be 3x the macs storage. PCs have nothing to prove and I hate those mac vs pc commercials. Pcs you can fix, while macs you have to get a replacement. Pcs are definately not for whatever people apple says there for, they're avaiable to everyone. Unlike an expensive mac, where I only see in OFFICES! Kinda biased though

9% seems a little overestimated... last I checked it was around 3-4%, and stable. PCs don't need commercials like those, and I'm glad you are with me on that one. I have to flip the channel every time one of those comes on. I mean they even have $100 PC laptops (not very powerful at all) but available for those in the developing world, sponsored by microsoft i think.. or intel. I can't remember. 

Its actually 6% mac, .7 % linux, and 92.93% windows

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operating_system

They should start to do some pc commercials degradin g macs further like apple did but vice versa. Who names an OS after a kitty anyway?

 

I like how Macs are nice to look at.  They are very appealing to the eye and easy for anyone to use.  They are innovative.  For example, LED screens...Genius! Couple that screen with a better battery, and it would have crazy battery life.

  I've never owned a Mac, but if I had a chance to get my hands on a MacBook Pro...then I'm game.

ExtremeCoolness:

Its actually 6% mac, .7 % linux, and 92.93% windows

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operating_system

They should start to do some pc commercials degradin g macs further like apple did but vice versa. Who names an OS after a kitty anyway?

 

Ah thought we were talking about the world wide market because that's what I'm talking about.

http://www.macnn.com/articles/07/01/18/mac.market.share.declines/ - This says the world wide market share for macs is less than 2.5%.

And your source shows that the Mac share in the US is declining. It fell -.46% in one month, from may to june.

MeiLing:

PCs are the main steam and Mac and others OSs make up the other 10% or less.  So that means all the software and games "I" want are made for the PC.  That is why "I" finely gave up on Macs and Linux and run only XP now. 

A thread like this can never be un-biased and the opinions will fly about what system is better at this or that and most of those opinions will not be based on empirical data of any kind, just what that person wants to be true.

 I know, this is a very far reach into the debumped world, however, I did want to comment on what you just said here. You said that a thread like this can never be unbiased. This is true to an extent. If you keep a forum only open to people who love to know the computer inside and out, rather than allowing the biased consumer youngsters in here, there can be formed a way of pointing out which operating system is actually better.

Mac is mainly opinion-based because that is how it is advertised. One large Mac opinion is that PC is very vulnerable to viruses and trojans while Mac is not. I'm not saying this isn't true, but how can it be true if it is untested? I'm thinking of Mac computers as a part of a single Apple web, where one virus can spread far too easily. PC has so many rooms and windows (go figure) that you can eliminate problems quite individually. Again, I am not stating that their opinion is false, but that it is only an opinion, and not as observable as people make it out to be.

The only people who should be speaking about whether PC or Mac is better in actuality are the people who design computers. Which is more efficient? Which is more powerful? When I think of what I'm trying to say here, the Matrix (mainly the Renaissance story or birth of the robots) is continuously popping up in my head. Those robots were constantly updating themselves to make sure they had the best for every situation. It was not about brand against brand to them. They were "one" because they knew the flaws of individuality. We can speak about the flaws of Macs and PCs as if they either exist or don't exist, but a true computer enthusiast will always choose what computer will do its job best, and if that means having to buy both a Mac-operated system, Linux-operated system, and a Windows-operated system, then that is how it happens.

Opinions don't matter much when there is real progression ongoing.

My buddy and I were discussing this earlier today. He and I both used to be avid Mac-haters (I blame OS 8 and 9 that I used to use in school back in the 90s-- wow-- I just realized after nine years of living in this decade that I can now talk about what I remember about the 90s to people younger than I am-- I feel special... anyway). When his household eventually got a Mac somewhere in this 10.x era, he quickly "converted." I'm a lot more passive these days whether it's Windows, Linux, or Macintosh, but I still normally use Windows. I've used Mac enough to not like it for these reasons:

The Finder is impossible. It's abhorrently clunky to use. This, of course, is more opinion than fact because there are plenty of people who love the Finder and think Windows Explorer is for Neanderthals.

In my experience, at least, which has been mainly with 10.3 and 10.5, the networking with Macs is also impossible. Maybe I didn't caress the mouse the right way, but I researched and tried and failed multiple times to get file and printer sharing to work; it was so temperamental that once I finally made the connections after hours of trying, I had to go through all of the steps again and again each time the computer restarted and I wanted to access the shared printer or shared files. As far as my research went, the computers I worked with ought to have responded much kindlier to me, but they never did. I also often had troubles connecting to a local WiFi connection in the facility they were in. Sometimes they'd work without hiccups while at other times they may or may not have been able to even detect the network and may or may not be able to connect to it while other computers around them could. That's a hazy area, but probably more opinion and personal experience than actual fact.

Lastly, I would hate not being able to build exactly what I want. I know it's possible to put together a Hackintosh, but then you have to have the right parts. Much of the internal hardware that Windows and Linux support without even blinking Macintosh has no drivers for. This is fact but it depends on personal preference. Many people don't care about building their computers themselves or wouldn't have a clue how to start with it.

On the upside, the system seems to work pretty well and they usually have pretty hardware and GUI designs... but then that's pretty much opinion, too. Some people still prefer CLI and don't care at all about how "pretty" and shiny the GUI is.

In the long run, I agree that it's really quite impossible to keep a conversation like this unbiased. Windows, Mac, and Linux are all pretty similar when it's boiled down to the bone. They all do pretty much the same thing even though the software differs. Each has its own advantages and disadvantages. I think when it comes to systems as mature as Windows and Mac, it's really just a matter of personal preference and what clicks with one's mind better. There are some niches generally for different businesses that seem to do better on specific systems, too.

Macs are nice to look at, but other than that, they need to just stay to the mp3 market.  They did great with the Itouch/Iphone and the new Nano.  They need to learn their place, and keep there.  It will be better for them and MS.

I've noticed a few new Mac vs PC commercials where the only argument Apple has is their better customer service. It's true enough, but I don't think a Mac vs PC is a proper comparison: it's (to use a cliche) apples to oranges. In my mind, I couldn't properly justify spending nearly $1000 for an every-day laptop just to surf the web, watch movies, and use Office. My wife has one, and I do those things on her computer, but she also uses it for GarageBand, Syballeus, and other music programs. It's in this way that Macs are better than PCs: from the software that I've used, I think that Macs are better than PCs for digtal media processing (broad term, but I'm including audio, video, and photo).

Macs used to hold the crown when it came to photo processing, because Adobe was only Mac, but now that Adobe came to the PC, I think the fields are even. But I don't think Premier is as easy to use as Final Cut Pro or iMovie, but this could be because I had classes on the latter two. And for audio/music, Syballeus can be installed on PCs, but I don't know of anything as handy as GarageBand that actually comes free with a computer.

Now, to go back to my CS comment, some people can justify the extra money to get top-of-the-line CS. And sure, it's worth extra money to have good CS; it's like buying an extended warranty for your new car. And Apple does put better hardware in their computers: I've yet to find a decent 12-13 inch Windows-based computer with specs similar to a MacBook.

I think another problem is that there are so many brands of PC. Only Apple sells Macs, but there are dozens of companies that sell PCs, and I think it scares people because it's a daunting task trying to find which brand is best.

But when it boils down to it, I don't think one type is entirely better than any other. Macs crash just as much as PCs do, but people tend to brush it off as nothing major, but if a PC crashes, it's the end of the world. And sometimes, those crashes aren't the PCs fault: companies put so much garbage freeware on their computer that it ca cause a crash. You don't get that with a Mac.

Mac vs PC -->Mac and PC

Both of them are very good and if I have money to burn I will have both of them and enjoy myself.

The main issue I see is software support. I can do so much more (including gaming) on a PC than I can on a Mac. If I was a GFX person, then I'd probably use a Mac, but for now I'll stick to Windows.

(Plus there's the fact that every Mac I've every played with for more than 5-10 minutes has crashed. No, seriously. I used to work on Macs as part of an IT job I had at a university, and I'd always end up crashing the professors' Macs.)