Mac vs. PC and no, this is not a poll, kinda

[Baby Tea]

....If Macs are so well built why do their performance suck for gaming? They can't program drivers for shit.

Because they don't care about gaming. Apple isn't super keen on making Macs a 'gaming' machine as you see it. The OS, as is, runs better than windows in every other way. It boots faster, handles memory better, and doesn't suck energy like an old car sucks gas.

Windows 7 is compatible. Macs are not. Macs generally are merely Linux for housewives and children as it does not promote terminal.

Windows 7 is compatible? Macs are not? What does that even mean?
My best friend is a Mac fanatic, and uses his Mac for everything he needs it for. He doesn't dual-boot for any reason. Everything he needs, his Mac does. And he works as an editor for a TV station. That that isn't just his 'home' stuff, but also his work. His wife also play games and uses the computer with great success for everything she needs it to.

There is no compatibility issue.

So what does that mean? Do you use, say, AutoCAD? Or is this just games related?

 

[tunderball]

Both have their major plus points but I've always been and always will be a Windows PC man.

I love the Mac OS and the general designs for everything to do with them, it could sit in any house and look cool. I'm also in love with the apple products they are some of the best in the world; Iphone, Ipad and so on...
However the PC just has so much flexibility with what you can use on it, somebody mentioned games and yes that is a major thing but I've got a weirder example. I use a lot of animation and 3D modelling software for my work (maya, 3DSmax, Mudbox, etc) and these will barely run on a Mac, Which I find really weird since Steve Jobs was essential in getting a little company called 'Pixar' off the ground.

So yeah they are both great and I wouldn't knock anybody for owning either but I personally prefer the PC.

 

[Thaliur]

OK, although I usually am quite a vicious enemy of Apple products, the Mac PCs are actualy pretty good.
The hardware, that is. They are comparable to relatively powerful notebooks, abeit at about twice the cost.

The main problem for me is the software. Almost every single program available on Mac has a Windows counterpart, while many programs I often need are only available on Windows.
Examples:
Almost every CAD software.
MS Office (OK, it's available on Mac, but has a horrible interface and actually doesn't include many features of Office I regularly use. And no, OpenOffice doesn't have them either. Also, OO runs as if I'm using an ARM processor on any system...)
Games, of course, although more and more games are available on Mac OS, too.

ANd finally, and almost most importantly: A proper Windows and files manager.
The Mac OS interface looks slightly better than Windows, but if you often have more than two windows open at the same time, exposé doesn't stand a chance against the taskbar. Also, Mac OS has no proper Start menu for launching applications. THey are trying to correct that mistake now with the App Launcher thing in their newest Service Pack (Lion, I think), but again, they put looks above funtionality.
Also, I can maximise my Windows on Windows PCs, while the according button on Mac OS just does something weird with the window.

Windows7's new Superbar is a better Mac Dock-like thing than the Mac Dock itself, since it also incorporates the age-old taskbar functionality.

And a minor problem I have with Mac OS: There is no proper (or easy-to-use) filesystem maintenance. It doesn't defragment large files, and has no counterpart to Scandisk. It has something similar, but that has to be run from a backup drive, and can't really fix any errors it finds.

I stand by my view that unless you need terminal, there is no need for a Mac.

Even then, you can just either use the Command line interface integrated in Windows, or the SuperShell, which is almost the same as a Linux terminal, and is also integrated in Windows.

And if you need Unix components, there's always a Linux Distribution available for free, and you can even install andLinux inside a running Windows system

 

[EvilMaggot]

Mac is for the College Student, PC for the gamer

 

[deadxero]

From a tech professional.... There have always been two real differences between Mac and PC, aside from Mac's generally being overpriced. The first is that Win PC has always had much better software support. The second is that Mac's were never a real malware target.

Today, Mac's are still overpriced, they do have better software support, but finally have a large enough market share to be a target for virus designers. Add to that they fact that Mac owners, and security software, is aren't prepared to deal with this new threat and it's a mess.

IMO there is no real reason to pick a Mac at this point ,unless you really like their hardware. That said, I know a number of people that run Linux/Window on Mac hardware, so that's always an option as well.

 

[OutofMind634]

Mac is for the College Student, PC for the gamer

Well damn. College is just around the corner.

 

[WanderingFool]

My main problem with Macs is the price. My mother once contemplated buying me a Macbook for college, the book in question being almost $2200. I baught a ASUS gaming Laptop for almost half the price. This may seem like a rather poor excuse to dislike the Macs, but I dont care to spend more money than I need to for a computer that will do the same thing as a computer for less money.

Also, I dont do much in the way of multimedia, and if I did, PC would be just fine for me.

 

[OutofMind634]

My main problem with Macs is the price. My mother once contemplated buying me a Macbook for college, the book in question being almost $2200. I baught a ASUS gaming Laptop for almost half the price. This may seem like a rather poor excuse to dislike the Macs, but I dont care to spend more money than I need to for a computer that will do the same thing as a computer for less money.

Also, I dont do much in the way of multimedia, and if I did, PC would be just fine for me.

How is the ASUS? I asked for a quality gaming laptop at Best Buy and was shown the ASUS. Do you like it?

 

[6037084]

Macs are like eating at an expensive chain restaurant where you always know what you get and it's expensive but you know you can trust it

PCs are everything else but for the PC gaming crowd it's mainly like home cooking, if you don't know what you're doing you can end up with a mess but if you're a good chef you can make something that's a lot better than what you can get at any restaurant for much much cheaper

it's basically like that

 

[GLo Jones]

I was brought up using Windows. I've tried so hard to get into the swing of the Mac's OS, and it just doesn't work for me.

Spoiler: A simple google search retrieves this image, it explains my perspective. Warning, content could be interpreted as a bit graphic.

 

[WanderingFool]

My main problem with Macs is the price. My mother once contemplated buying me a Macbook for college, the book in question being almost $2200. I baught a ASUS gaming Laptop for almost half the price. This may seem like a rather poor excuse to dislike the Macs, but I dont care to spend more money than I need to for a computer that will do the same thing as a computer for less money.

Also, I dont do much in the way of multimedia, and if I did, PC would be just fine for me.

How is the ASUS? I asked for a quality gaming laptop at Best Buy and was shown the ASUS. Do you like it?

Im not sure about anybody elses expeirence with ASUS, but I Love it. I can still play a good deal of the games released for PC. Just a bit of advice, buy a cooling pad, though, you should have a cooling pad with all laptops. I would have prefered a desktop, but I needed a college computer thats capable of travel, and didnt feel like lugging a desktop around from place to place.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

Ah, dangerous thread indeed.

Ok, your first and less dangerous question, I like my PC better because I still have some semblance of control. I can change out parts and mess around with it if I wish which is brilliant, because I brought the damn thing.

Aside from that, my computer can currently run every game ever on max settings and its only cost me £400. If I want this kind of power from a mac, i'm looking at the very least a £200 markup.

Your second question? I don't think mac sucks, I think most of its users do. I have a teacher who will laugh at all the windows users in his class all the time while talking about his mac and how he got snow leopard or something like that (can't really remember the name). When asked what was so different about it, he just told me that it just is. It was really childish.

This same guy went on to tell me to grow up for thinking I could go to uni. Prick.

ah this, very much so, my old roommate was a mac fanatic and me and my other roommate are "proficient" pc gamers, and he would go on and on all the damn time about his annoying ass mac laptop (which we got his mom to tell us, she spent 3000 dollars on the damn thing, while me and my other friend only spent 800-100 dollars on ours and just speed wise, for rendering and such, ours still ran better) and he would do the SAME damn thing with leopard...god the one time he had an error and his mac failed like a fat kid running track, we gave him so much shit that he actually got knocked down a peg or two on the mac scale to "somewhat snotty, but normal enough to see mac isn't the end all be all"

My main problem with Macs is the price. My mother once contemplated buying me a Macbook for college, the book in question being almost $2200. I baught a ASUS gaming Laptop for almost half the price. This may seem like a rather poor excuse to dislike the Macs, but I dont care to spend more money than I need to for a computer that will do the same thing as a computer for less money.

Also, I dont do much in the way of multimedia, and if I did, PC would be just fine for me.

How is the ASUS? I asked for a quality gaming laptop at Best Buy and was shown the ASUS. Do you like it?

al please don't buy a laptop from your average store! buy it online (such as newegg, tigerdirect, ibuypower,etc..) and if you will not be on the move CONSTANTLY don't even get a laptop, it's next to useless compared to what you can get for the same price in a pc(gaming one obviously)

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

Mac Hardware is the only hardware that can stably run Mac OSX for an extended time.

There is no such thing as Mac hardware....They use other companies for all their hardware e.g. AMD, Intel, Nvidia, Western Digital etc.

Wrong.

The chip-sets are the same, not the physical boards. They are all manufactured specifically for Macs. Go take a look at a Mac motherboard. That isn't something you can buy on the shelf to build yourself a PC.

There is a lot of people in this thread who have zero idea of what they are talking about.

I'm a Linux guy first, a Windows guy second, and a Mac guy very last, but unless you're totally ignorant about the engineering and construction of a Mac, then nobody can say they aren't great machines. Not only does OSX have far less overhead then that bloated whale known as Windows, but the physical engineering built into their machines is just brilliant. You can't make a Macbook Air or iMac with out that excellent engineering.

People are complaining about price, but that engineering is what you're paying for. Brand? Yeah, sure some 'brand cost' is in there, but the size and stability (uniform cases, baby) is where the big chunk of money comes from.

Yes, you can go build yourself a PC for $800 USD and slap it all together into a fat ATX case.
Knock yourself out. I did that for years.

But not everyone either A) has the ability to do that, or B) wants to bother.
And OEM or Brand PC systems? Don't make me laugh. I worked for years in computer sales. I watched brand new 'high end' HPs, Sony Vaio's, Toshiba's, etc. fry in a week. High end my ass.

If you want to talk about cheaping out on computer parts, go buy an HP or something form a big box store. Or go build a computer from the cheapest parts you can find. Then watch the whole thing fall apart after a years or two of real use (Cue 'that guy' replying to me saying how his works awesome after many years, therefore they all do).

That all isn't taking into account how much Windows just sucks the power from your system.
What a bloated mess. Windows 7 is better, but still not great.

The bottom line is that Mac, from the OS to the physical machine, are well built, fast machines. People like them for a reason, and no: That reason isn't always 'they just don't know any better'. If you honestly think that, you have no idea what you're talking about.

not making a stab at you, but i always figured this as a "der", because if this wasn't true, then i'm pretty sure leopard and any other bit of mac software would have been reworked for windows in no time (not legally of course, like steve jobs would ever allow something like that to happen) and updating the hardware yourself wouldn't be possible by your average bear

 

[Kathinka]

crappyer hardware for twice the price? no, thank you, pc is the way to go for me.

 

[Aprilgold]

Windows is better then Macs, reason, freedom. I'm sorry, but it IS true, Mac's limit you off of certain things that work better then what the Mac can provide

 

[Killclaw Kilrathi]

My main problem with Macs is the price. My mother once contemplated buying me a Macbook for college, the book in question being almost $2200. I baught a ASUS gaming Laptop for almost half the price. This may seem like a rather poor excuse to dislike the Macs, but I dont care to spend more money than I need to for a computer that will do the same thing as a computer for less money.

Also, I dont do much in the way of multimedia, and if I did, PC would be just fine for me.

How is the ASUS? I asked for a quality gaming laptop at Best Buy and was shown the ASUS. Do you like it?

I might spark off a new argument here, but I usually look for ASUS parts when building a PC. My personal experience is that they're probably some of the most stable components you can get. Not to be confused with Acer, which is actually one of the most fault-prone.

 

[Baby Tea]

Compatible means I can watch avi's on my PC without it throwing a hissy fit unlike the last film I tried watching on a Mac. Also I can run almost any program I'd wish to on a PC whether it's gaming or not.

So you didn't have a codec (Also can be a windows problem) and you blame the machine? Reasonable.

And yes, more programs are developed for Windows because it has a bigger marketing share. But I can't think of a single program that I use regularly (Even irregularly) that I can't get the same or equivalent on Mac.

Your friend is wasting his time. If he does video editing he could probably shave hours off the edit time by getting better hardware that is not found in Macs.

Wrong.
Objectively wrong. A proper Mac editing machine is more then enough hardware to do the job.
Even a 'regular' Mac has plenty of hardware for editing.

I stand by my view that unless you need terminal, there is no need for a Mac.

Not for you, no.
Not for me either!

But to say there is 'no need' for them is wrong.
It's like saying there is no need for any car but one.

 

[funguy2121]

I'm sure people have asked this before but lets hear what a new batch of people have to say.

I'm a Mac user. Have been all my life but now I want a change so I'm going PC. Now the big reason is to play games but besides that not much else. And since I'm going to make this switch I just want to ask:

What do you prefer and why?

And a better question:

Why do many people consider that Macs suck and PCs are superior?

Have fun.

Macs are known to be much more user-friendly, and Mac owners really don't have to deal with malware.