Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Singh on April 14, 2005, 01:58:41 am
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I just arrived at my uncle's house to discover that the good old windows 2k that I had installed had been removed....only to be replaced by..
A FRICKIN MACTINTOSH!!!
My uncle has unleashed an evil unlike any other, with a strange box with an apple symbol on it now lying in front of the PC and connected to teh computer below, probably sucking all the evil life force out of it. Its sitting there and denying me the ability to play any good games out of it's sheer spite for compatibility, and the desktop is unlike anything I have seen - producing a horrible sense of chaos to teh enire thing which I am unable to understand.
God help me from this evil thing!
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Don't worry, Freespace 2 has been ported to the Macintosh.
Or you can install Linux, and then Cedega, and then Windows games.
Just be glad he didn't buy an iPod Shuffle.
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Hey, don't you bash those Apples...Macs are cool....if you intend to work with them (although there ARE games availiable for the Mac). My father's PowerBook never crashed since he bought it....I want to see a Win2k machine achieve THAT;7. And the user interface of the Mac is better than the Window$ one IMHO....
....the Shuffle isn't that bad, either....
Oh...and...I like chaos..:devil:
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The Mac OS is infinitely better for work. It just sucks at games. Though, it does have Clan Lord/Arindal (which are being ported to Windows now anyway) and Project Magellan, which has some of the most addictive music I've heard.
I personally can't figure out why people have so many problems working operating systems they're not used to. I'd only ever used a mac until I was about 13 or something when I got my first PC, and had no trouble picking up Windows. The desktop of both OSes is practically identical anyway, except Mac's start menu is at the top and the HD icon is on the opposite side of the screen.
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Yes, it's great for work unless you're trying to compile Win32 applications for mass distribution.
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Macs are some kind of infernal machines from the neitherworld, luring people in with pretty colors and transparent cases, then devouring them, leaving only their shadow.
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I have now seen mac games being sold on the high street, which is a bit of a first in my experience - albeit they're at least a pav* more than the PC equivalent.
*pav=pavarotti=tenor=tenner=£10
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Theres loads of games for Macintosh...
Quake 2....
Warchraft 3....
...
Photoshop....
errr...
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I'll take Mac OS over Windows any day. Admittedly, I'm biased since I never had a Windows machine until I was 11 or so.
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It's the shortcut commands (or the lack thereof) that I find most annoying, not the admittedly polished graphical interface. By default, keyboard control is off on the new OS. I use the keyboard all the time, and not being able to use it to navigate a simple window when I want to just irks me. And the fact that Macs have never even paid lip service to the concept of backwards compatability is another annoyance. They're generally solid machines (I've actually seen a Mac crash on more than one occasion, and believe me, it's not pretty) but they are overpriced for a piece of hardware that doesn't interact with the rest of the computing world well.
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Originally posted by vyper
Yes, it's great for work unless you're trying to compile Win32 applications for mass distribution.
Can you compile Mac applications with Windows?
As far as games go, Mac does generally get the more popular ones ported 6 or 12 months after it was released on everything else and the sequel's already been announced (this did actually happen with Battlefield 1942). But hey, the entire Myst series supports it out of the box, so it can't be that bad.
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The only company I know of that releases their games for Mac and PC at the same time is Blizzard. They did so at least since D2. WoW works on Macintoshs, what else do you need? :D
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(http://ctrlaltdel-online.com/images/comics/20041011.jpg)
;7
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If you want to play all the latest games with top-notch graphics and reliability, then buy a friggin console. If you want to actually use your computer then get a Mac.
I am so friggin tired of how every time I minimize something, Windows takes ten minutes to redraw everything on the desktop. I'm also tired of having to take care of people who blitely run AIM, KaZaA, and other evil software whose computers are infested with viruses, adware, and spyware slowing their system to a crawl.
And don't talk to me about Linux. Yes, it's fantastic, but it's not new-user friendly and none of the software titles I use are available on it.
Next computer I get (2-3 years) is gonna be a top-of-the-line Mac.
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The only Mac i like is a Mac Gyver.
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:D :yes:
I'm also sick of people saying the same old things...
1. 'Macs are expensive' - Yes they cost more but in terms of the overall price you pay during the life of your computer, they actually work out cheaper.
2. 'There are no Mac games' - Wrong again! there are thousands of games - Doom 3, WoW, CoD, Quake 3, Sims, blah, blah, it may be nowhere near the number on PC, but usually only the best get ported/cross-platformed anyway, and they are usually bug-free...
2a. I have an XBox and PS2 as well, so :p
3. Viruses - I don't even have antivirus software installed....
4. Spyware - what's that?
5. Windows Service Packs - don't make me laugh, OSX gets regular updates which pretty much work, without the pages of 'this may cause problems' crap that you get from MS. And when there is a major upgrade - like the upcoming 10.4 'Tiger' you pay a reasonable amount for it....
6. Working - Less downtime = more productivity, that's a simple message for business.
7. 'Macs are not compatible' Another bit bull****, I use Office - 100% compatible with your version, Photoshop - again 100% Vectorworks (CAD) dual versions on the install CD, Firefox and IE browsers, GoLive, Illustrator, Imageready, Acrobat, Lightwave, Freehand, Quicktime and Windows Media Player, as well as iRC, ICQ, YIM, and other misc crap.
True you can't directly use Win programs without an emulator, but there's nothing I really need to do that would require that...
8. Keyboard shortcuts? wtf? there are more shortcuts and cool tricks with the keyboard than you can possibly remember.
9. Features - The Dock, it's just so much more than a program launcher, you can drag anything down there, programs, games, files, films, your whole HD and instantly retrieve it. If for instance you are playing a movie and minimise it to The Dock, you will see a tiny window of the movie playing down there which enlarges as the mouse moves over it. Titles are also retained, I can minimise this window and moving the mouse along pops up the title 'Hard Light Productions Forums - Hard Light' (In slick shaded text) In all, it's about the most easy and intuitive interface ever designed... and it can be placed left, right, or bottom of the screen. :p
Other cool stuff? there's loads, but the one I use most at work is the ability to create PDF files from anything it's soo easy - click 'Print' click 'Save as PDF' and you're done. That feature alone has probably saved thousands where I work..
10. Stability - It's very rare to have an issue, but the System will protect itself, say for instance you have a large Photoshop file which causes Photoshop itself to crash or hang, you can 'Force Quit' which shuts down Photoshop and leaves everything else unaffected, and you go on working with no problem.
11. Hardware - Macs use standard SATA drives, standard RAM, pretty much any USB device you can name, most printers, you can get gamepads, joysticks, tablets, external drives etc. etc. oh and iPods :D also the build quality of he case is the best, I mean solid aluminium panels, clean design internally (no cable clutter) and there are USB + Firewire ports on the front! who'd have thought?
Anyhoo, I starting to get too evangilistic now, so I'll STFU, but leave you with this; it's getting near to my 19th straight year of using Macs, and one hardware failure, yes one...
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I have nothing against macs myself, I just don't see a particularly compelling reason to buy one. Given that I don't spend money on anything other than games (and games are pricier on macs based on what I've seen on the high street - totally unfair on the purchaser but it's true), and that I can handle the various foibles of PC-dom, I don't want to spend the money on a mac.
That and AFAIK you can't get 3ds max for it..... there are as many reason to not buy a mac as there are to buy one; it's all a matter of perspective. I ****ing hate these stupid 'my dicks bigger than yours' arguements about consoles, games, types of computer, processors, graphics cards, joysticks.........
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Originally posted by Ransom Arceihn
Can you compile Mac applications with Windows?
As far as games go, Mac does generally get the more popular ones ported 6 or 12 months after it was released on everything else and the sequel's already been announced (this did actually happen with Battlefield 1942). But hey, the entire Myst series supports it out of the box, so it can't be that bad.
No, but since more home users have Windows (or so we're told) it doesn't matter too much.
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Originally posted by aldo_14
I have nothing against macs myself, I just don't see a particularly compelling reason to buy one. Given that I don't spend money on anything other than games (and games are pricier on macs based on what I've seen on the high street - totally unfair on the purchaser but it's true), and that I can handle the various foibles of PC-dom, I don't want to spend the money on a mac.
That and AFAIK you can't get 3ds max for it..... there are as many reason to not buy a max as there are to buy one; it's all a matter of perspective. I ****ing hate these stupid 'my dicks bigger than yours' arguements about consoles, games, types of computer, processors, graphics cards, joysticks.........
Agreed, and yeah, the 3DS Max thing really sucks - they could sell many thousands more copies if they bothered with a Mac version. In the meantime Lightwave is picking up the business....
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The only hardware failure I can remember is the MP3+5.1 card I bought that turned out to be completely incompatible with my motherboard, and two hard drive failures in the day that 200 MB was a helluva lot. (After a PSU replacement, no more problems)
I don't have any problems with excessive crashing in Windows, and (as someone pointed out), the lack of compatibility with macs is a serious drawback. In fact, the biggest problem I've noticed is slowdowns - probably from installing dozens to hundreds of tiny apps on my current setup that I would never have been able to even use on a Mac.
I'd also have to buy a replacement mouse if I wanted the same level of functionality as my current one.
I wouldn't mind having a mac, but by buying one I'd also commit myself to a very cultish portion of the computer world (ie a crapload of stuff wouldn't work on them.) And if I use Linux, then I might as well buy a PC for much less.
I'd much rather spend my money on an iPod + someone to develop musepack for ipodlinux, or upgrade my computer, rather than replace it with a mac. It's rare that I upgrade computers without using *any* components from my previous ones, too.
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LOL Most Macs I've seen run more smoothly than their PC counterparts running at twice the speed. I do actually quite like them, but I'm an old PC Hack now, I'd use a Mac, but a PC would be my computer of choice, simply because I am used to them. :)
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I think it's time to set somebody straight.
Originally posted by Clave
:D :yes:
I'm also sick of people saying the same old things...
1. 'Macs are expensive' - Yes they cost more but in terms of the overall price you pay during the life of your computer, they actually work out cheaper.
You pay for appearance, not hardware. The name and image means more than what's on the inside. And this 5 year old machine I paid $600 for works about as well as my friend's 5 year old G4 that he paid $1400 for.
2. 'There are no Mac games' - Wrong again! there are thousands of games - Doom 3, WoW, CoD, Quake 3, Sims, blah, blah, it may be nowhere near the number on PC, but usually only the best get ported/cross-platformed anyway, and they are usually bug-free...
I don't think you know the whole picture. The best games that are ported over are the ones who can afford to hire additional teams. Most games not designed specificly for the mac are just overhyped, not the best.
2a. I have an XBox and PS2 as well, so :p
3. Viruses - I don't even have antivirus software installed....
4. Spyware - what's that?
It doesn't have anything to do with MacOS being 'superior'. Simply put, if you were out to get people, would you go with the big crowd or the little one? Nature of the beast on that one. If Windows and MacOS were reversed in popularity, it would be MacOS that would have all the viruses and spyware.
5. Windows Service Packs - don't make me laugh, OSX gets regular updates which pretty much work, without the pages of 'this may cause problems' crap that you get from MS. And when there is a major upgrade - like the upcoming 10.4 'Tiger' you pay a reasonable amount for it....
Windows users don't pay for service packs.
6. Working - Less downtime = more productivity, that's a simple message for business.
Try again, pal. Unless you are talking about an 8 year old OS (win98), that statement is entirely false. There is something called NTOS, you might want to look into it. I constantly abuse Win2k and XP, neither has EVER crashed on me, except in one condition where a power surge killed my memory. As far as how things are now, the stability of MacOS over Windows is very slight.
7. 'Macs are not compatible' Another bit bull****, I use Office - 100% compatible with your version, Photoshop - again 100% Vectorworks (CAD) dual versions on the install CD, Firefox and IE browsers, GoLive, Illustrator, Imageready, Acrobat, Lightwave, Freehand, Quicktime and Windows Media Player, as well as iRC, ICQ, YIM, and other misc crap.
Good for you. You have stated that office applications have been ported over to MacOS. If it weren't that way in the beginning... Oh wait... it WAS that way in the beginning. Nothing special here.
True you can't directly use Win programs without an emulator, but there's nothing I really need to do that would require that...
8. Keyboard shortcuts? wtf? there are more shortcuts and cool tricks with the keyboard than you can possibly remember.
Aye, and most of them would be considered unneccessary. I find it easier to right click than to hold a combination of three seperate buttons in order to get some info on a file.
9. Features - The Dock, it's just so much more than a program launcher, you can drag anything down there, programs, games, files, films, your whole HD and instantly retrieve it. If for instance you are playing a movie and minimise it to The Dock, you will see a tiny window of the movie playing down there which enlarges as the mouse moves over it. Titles are also retained, I can minimise this window and moving the mouse along pops up the title 'Hard Light Productions Forums - Hard Light' (In slick shaded text) In all, it's about the most easy and intuitive interface ever designed... and it can be placed left, right, or bottom of the screen. :p
Are you familiar with the QuickLaunch bar? It does the same exact thing. Nothing special here.
Other cool stuff? there's loads, but the one I use most at work is the ability to create PDF files from anything it's soo easy - click 'Print' click 'Save as PDF' and you're done. That feature alone has probably saved thousands where I work...
This is an APPLICATION feature, not a MacOS feature. Having Acrobat installed doesn't make one platform better than the other. Again, you fail.
10. Stability - It's very rare to have an issue, but the System will protect itself, say for instance you have a large Photoshop file which causes Photoshop itself to crash or hang, you can 'Force Quit' which shuts down Photoshop and leaves everything else unaffected, and you go on working with no problem.
See above. We are not living in 1997 anymore. Also, Force quit doesn't always work. Matter of fact, force quit screwed the system up the majority of the time whenever I used it. And what happens when the system locks up? You get an error -2 and an image of a bomb. WOW!! Very descriptive of the problem! I wish I would have thought of that if I ever made an OS. Why give details of what module failed when you can display A PICTURE OF A FRIKKIN BOMB instead? It's brilliant! I'm taking that idea to the bank!
11. Hardware - Macs use standard SATA drives, standard RAM, pretty much any USB device you can name, most printers, you can get gamepads, joysticks, tablets, external drives etc. etc. oh and iPods :D also the build quality of he case is the best, I mean solid aluminium panels, clean design internally (no cable clutter) and there are USB + Firewire ports on the front! who'd have thought?
Good for that then. It's too bad your argument is entirely invalid for pre-G5 Tower. And as for the case, many other case manufacturers had USB in the front around the same time as an iMac G4.
Anyhoo, I starting to get too evangilistic now, so I'll STFU, but leave you with this; it's getting near to my 19th straight year of using Macs, and one hardware failure, yes one...
I bet you would have had alot more than one hardware failure if you were abusing the hell out of it like PC users do. Oh. And hardware failure is to be expected if an environmental issue was present. But not otherwise. To say you've only had one failure is obvious. I haven't had any, save one due to power surge.
Well, thank you for your list of invalid arguments regarding supremacy of Mac to PC. They were certainly amusing. Forgive me if I sound rude, but I absolutely hate it when people use the opponent's 10 year old technology and programming, and compare it to your preferred current technology and come to the conclusion that it is so much better. It is both hypocritical and cowardly.
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Scuddie: OS X is surprisingly more stable that Mac OS 9 (Well, 8, 9 was a joke.). Judging by your description of the force-quit thing, I'd say you're talking about pre-OS X versions of MacOS.
Honestly, I wish MS would put force-quit in Windows. It's a pain in the ass to have to open up task manager, which may not be possible as your app is in the middle of crashing and eating up all your memory in an infinite loop.
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It doesn't have anything to do with MacOS being 'superior'. Simply put, if you were out to get people, would you go with the big crowd or the little one? Nature of the beast on that one. If Windows and MacOS were reversed in popularity, it would be MacOS that would have all the viruses and spyware.
Not necessarily true. Apache is far more popular as an http server than IIS is, guess which has more exploits? I will also bet you that far more mac users don't use their admin accounts regularly. On Windows I have experienced cases where Microsoft software would not work without admin rights when it was totally unnecessary.
This is an APPLICATION feature, not a MacOS feature. Having Acrobat installed doesn't make one platform better than the other. Again, you fail.
Untrue. This is an API feature. Developing applications using Apple's APIs give programs a ton of features automatically.
See above. We are not living in 1997 anymore. Also, Force quit doesn't always work. Matter of fact, force quit screwed the system up the majority of the time whenever I used it. And what happens when the system locks up? You get an error -2 and an image of a bomb. WOW!! Very descriptive of the problem! I wish I would have thought of that if I ever made an OS. Why give details of what module failed when you can display A PICTURE OF A FRIKKIN BOMB instead? It's brilliant! I'm taking that idea to the bank!
Yeah, automatically restarting is much more informative (WinXP).
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Originally posted by Kamikaze
Not necessarily true. Apache is far more popular as an http server than IIS is, guess which has more exploits? I will also bet you that far more mac users don't use their admin accounts regularly. On Windows I have experienced cases where Microsoft software would not work without admin rights when it was totally unnecessary.
As for apache and IIS, fair enough. However, user error (or permissions error in this case) is no yard-stick for anything.
Untrue. This is an API feature. Developing applications using Apple's APIs give programs a ton of features automatically.
You are only somewhat correct. The API is used, yes, but the API is only pointing to the functioning of the application in question. The same thing is done on Windows. Except in Windows' case, it's called a wrapper instead of an alias or pointer.
Yeah, automatically restarting is much more informative (WinXP).
Again, user error (or preference) is no yard-stick for anything. It's not my fault that some people like to force reboot instead of BSOD, which was default on my XP installation.
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i hate macs, one day i will learn to use one properly..till then i will hate them because its such a pain for me to learn another OS :p
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Originally posted by Scuddie
Aye, and most of them would be considered unneccessary. I find it easier to right click than to hold a combination of three seperate buttons in order to get some info on a file.
This is one thing that really annoys me. Macs have supported two/three/million button mice since the first version of OS X. Apple just refuses to make their own mouse that features more than one button cause they're all crazy Marsh pathfinder hermits.
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Originally posted by Ransom Arceihn
Apple just refuses to make their own mouse that features more than one button cause they're all crazy Marsh pathfinder hermits.
Well, maybe. http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/03/16/135210
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I favor Windows, as I'm used to it and the fact that I'm prejudiced in favor of AMD chips.
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I really hate to follow a trend like this, but from personal experience I need to debunk a number of these statements.
Originally posted by Clave
:D :yes:
I'm also sick of people saying the same old things...
1. 'Macs are expensive' - Yes they cost more but in terms of the overall price you pay during the life of your computer, they actually work out cheaper.
That's a marketing ploy, nothing more. That's like saying the three-year warrenty from Dell is worth the cost. It's not; if you're competent inside a case then you only pay half as much in the event anything fails within the warrenty period anyway. Macs are more expensive, and their hardware has proven to be no more reliable.
2. 'There are no Mac games' - Wrong again! there are thousands of games - Doom 3, WoW, CoD, Quake 3, Sims, blah, blah, it may be nowhere near the number on PC, but usually only the best get ported/cross-platformed anyway, and they are usually bug-free...
I will admit that my experience with Mac games is limited and somewhat out of date, but every game I ever played on a Mac had issues of one kind or another that made them painfully unstable or downright unplayable. Though as I said, it has been a number of years since I was using a Mac for that purpose.
2a. I have an XBox and PS2 as well, so :p
3. Viruses - I don't even have antivirus software installed....
Probably not the best idea, actually. Macs are hardly invulnerable to viruses, and though while they are rare there are plenty of exploits that can be taken advantage of on a Mac. Granted, it's not the gaping hole of vulnerability that Windows can be, but then not much is.
4. Spyware - what's that?
5. Windows Service Packs - don't make me laugh, OSX gets regular updates which pretty much work, without the pages of 'this may cause problems' crap that you get from MS. And when there is a major upgrade - like the upcoming 10.4 'Tiger' you pay a reasonable amount for it....
You're kidding, right? Other than SP2, which is the exception, not the rule when it comes to MS service packs, I've never had a service pack break anything. I have seen Apple Updates cause other programs to stop working correctly. I've actually seen Apple updates completely bork the system. It's not worse than the Windows equivalent, I just don't think it's any better.
6. Working - Less downtime = more productivity, that's a simple message for business.
7. 'Macs are not compatible' Another bit bull****, I use Office - 100% compatible with your version, Photoshop - again 100% Vectorworks (CAD) dual versions on the install CD, Firefox and IE browsers, GoLive, Illustrator, Imageready, Acrobat, Lightwave, Freehand, Quicktime and Windows Media Player, as well as iRC, ICQ, YIM, and other misc crap.
IE Mac blows... so much that Microsoft discontinued development for it. Plus Macs hace a bit of a niche in the imaging industry, so naturally there are going to be more programs available on that platform to do that. But if you need a small app to perform some random one-off functionality, the odds of you being able to find something that isn't going to cost you an arm and a leg for probably a one-time use is slim.
But what most of us have said is "Macs are not backwards compatable", meaning there have been programs that simply would not work in a newer version of the MacOS. Sort of like pure DOS apps in WinNT/2k/XP, except only removed from the OS release by a year or so. This has gotten better post-OSX, but the whole existance of "classic mode" is a bit of a poster child for non-backwards comatability.
True you can't directly use Win programs without an emulator, but there's nothing I really need to do that would require that...
8. Keyboard shortcuts? wtf? there are more shortcuts and cool tricks with the keyboard than you can possibly remember.
And therein lies a problem. Keyboard commands should be functional first and cool second - Macs tend to put the "cool" shortcut keys on the easier mappings, and something like "get info" on something more obscure. Too much of a good thing can be a bad thing sometimes.
The lack of keyboard shortcuts though includes things like tab not automatically selecting the next push-box when you press it from the last text tab. I know you can turn it on, but I can't do that at 90% of the Macs I sit down to on a semi-regular basis. I use the keyboard a lot, and this one problem has driven me up walls.
9. Features - The Dock, it's just so much more than a program launcher, you can drag anything down there, programs, games, files, films, your whole HD and instantly retrieve it. If for instance you are playing a movie and minimise it to The Dock, you will see a tiny window of the movie playing down there which enlarges as the mouse moves over it. Titles are also retained, I can minimise this window and moving the mouse along pops up the title 'Hard Light Productions Forums - Hard Light' (In slick shaded text) In all, it's about the most easy and intuitive interface ever designed... and it can be placed left, right, or bottom of the screen. :p
And I have little boxes with the name of the current app in them so that I don't have to drag the mouse over each one.
Other cool stuff? there's loads, but the one I use most at work is the ability to create PDF files from anything it's soo easy - click 'Print' click 'Save as PDF' and you're done. That feature alone has probably saved thousands where I work..
10. Stability - It's very rare to have an issue, but the System will protect itself, say for instance you have a large Photoshop file which causes Photoshop itself to crash or hang, you can 'Force Quit' which shuts down Photoshop and leaves everything else unaffected, and you go on working with no problem.
This is a bit of a gripe for me. Since the days of Windows2k, I have seen more Mac BSODs than PC (yes I know it's not actually blue on a Mac. It's the bomb on OS9 and with certain errors on 10, or the transparent screen with "the machine needs to shut down" printed on it. Who thought that letting you see your work sitting there without letting you get back to it or save it was a good idea? What am I going to do? Take a picture?!?). And I work with far more PCs than Macs. I should also note that the Macs in my school's clusters are the most crash-prone systems in the history of graphical OS user interfaces. If you use one for anything over the network for more than 3 minutes, you are guaranteed to get a complete system failure. I don't blame Apple for this one because our OIT department seems incompetent most of the time, but the point still stands.
11. Hardware - Macs use standard SATA drives, standard RAM, pretty much any USB device you can name, most printers, you can get gamepads, joysticks, tablets, external drives etc. etc. oh and iPods :D also the build quality of he case is the best, I mean solid aluminium panels, clean design internally (no cable clutter) and there are USB + Firewire ports on the front! who'd have thought?
:wakka:
You're telling me that having the hard drive cables PERMANENTLY INTEGRATED INTO THE CASE is the mark of superior design? Especially since the case is a disposible item (it's the biggest fricking thing on the entire computer. Why? But it is) that the apple techs won't even touch if there's something wrong with it. So that means that if something ever happens to that SATA cable, you're buying a new case (or apple is, if it's being covered by warrenty). Tell me that makes sense. Or that if you ever need to change the power button - just the button, not the motherboard circuit that it controls - you have to completely disassemble the entire system (processers, disks, PSU, motherboard) just to get to the little screw holding it in place? The case looks cool, but that's image only.
Anyhoo, I starting to get too evangilistic now, so I'll STFU, but leave you with this; it's getting near to my 19th straight year of using Macs, and one hardware failure, yes one...
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Change your font colour, f00.
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It's light blue. Why doesn't it show up? :wtf:
EDIT: Nevermind. Fixed.
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The experience I've had with an older G4 which was a hand-me-down from some graphics company that used Mac's has been interesting. Since I know next to nothing about the mac stuff, and I'm nearly A+ certified on the PC side, I thought it would be easy to install a new hard drive, cdrom and upgrade the machine to Mac OS X. Well... it wasnt. To put a long story short, I had to reformat the hard drive upon setting up 10 (I refuse to call it X, due to some other GUI I have much more respect for...).
It has been a stable install, but there will be random times the computer will crash at random for no apparent reason. It'll even crash just sitting there, crash so hard you'll see the "BSD-ish" shell in the background, cutting through all the shiny, floofiness.
To sum it up, it's like the video called "crash different".
"I'm not using a mac as much as I'm sharing the Mac Experience. If I can get some work done while the Mac is willing... So much the better."
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Windows was made by a company-f*cking butthole, seeking to own all of computer marketing.
Apple was made by a respectable buisnessman, seeking to make computer users happier.
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Originally posted by Dark RevenantX
Windows was made by a company-f*cking butthole, seeking to own all of computer marketing.
Apple was made by a respectable buisnessman, seeking to make computer users happier.
That's taking dogma a bit far. Both Apple and Microsoft use dirty tactics.
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crap. First i wanted to mention that my uncle has an evil Mac and then it turned into a flame war. Well, to be expected I guess...pity i didnt see it sooner :p
Still, re-learing from scratch how to use my uncle's mac is going to be HELL. I'd rather just stay at home and use Win2k. At least there i can use FS2open.
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What you do Singh is format the hard drive and install Linux on it :) While Linux may not be Windows, it will work with the Mac hardware... and isn't Mac.
Then hook up a multi-button mouse to it ;)
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Anyway, am I the only one distrubed when seeing Mac ads which say:
"From the makers of the iPod: The Macintosh Computer!"
It's like they refuse to admit that they've actually made computers before... but now all of the sudden they're this tiny fashionable electronics company gone successful that's moving into computers.
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Originally posted by Ace
Anyway, am I the only one distrubed when seeing Mac ads which say:
"From the makers of the iPod: The Macintosh Computer!"
I'm actually surprised you're not joking.......
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Moving along before this gets locked...
1. 'Macs are expensive' - Yes they cost more but in terms of the overall price you pay during the life of your computer, they actually work out cheaper.
That's a marketing ploy, nothing more. That's like saying the three-year warrenty from Dell is worth the cost. It's not; if you're competent inside a case then you only pay half as much in the event anything fails within the warrenty period anyway. Macs are more expensive, and their hardware has proven to be no more reliable.
They are more reliable - in my experience...
2. 'There are no Mac games' - Wrong again! there are thousands of games - Doom 3, WoW, CoD, Quake 3, Sims, blah, blah, it may be nowhere near the number on PC, but usually only the best get ported/cross-platformed anyway, and they are usually bug-free...
I will admit that my experience with Mac games is limited and somewhat out of date, but every game I ever played on a Mac had issues of one kind or another that made them painfully unstable or downright unplayable. Though as I said, it has been a number of years since I was using a Mac for that purpose.
They work, basically you have the same cards - Radeon 9800 etc as the PC version
2a. I have an XBox and PS2 as well, so
3. Viruses - I don't even have antivirus software installed....
Probably not the best idea, actually. Macs are hardly invulnerable to viruses, and though while they are rare there are plenty of exploits that can be taken advantage of on a Mac. Granted, it's not the gaping hole of vulnerability that Windows can be, but then not much is.
People don't write viruses for OSX, it's hard to make them work inside the System
4. Spyware - what's that?
5. Windows Service Packs - don't make me laugh, OSX gets regular updates which pretty much work, without the pages of 'this may cause problems' crap that you get from MS. And when there is a major upgrade - like the upcoming 10.4 'Tiger' you pay a reasonable amount for it....
You're kidding, right? Other than SP2, which is the exception, not the rule when it comes to MS service packs, I've never had a service pack break anything. I have seen Apple Updates cause other programs to stop working correctly. I've actually seen Apple updates completely bork the system. It's not worse than the Windows equivalent, I just don't think it's any better.
SP2 is what I was talking about, and the jump from 4.2.2 to 95, and the jump from 95 to 98, and Win ME - Nothing is perfect, but Apple software changes have been progressive with one exception - OS9 to OSX, simply because that was a totally different OS, not based on the one before.
6. Working - Less downtime = more productivity, that's a simple message for business.
7. 'Macs are not compatible' Another bit bull****, I use Office - 100% compatible with your version, Photoshop - again 100% Vectorworks (CAD) dual versions on the install CD, Firefox and IE browsers, GoLive, Illustrator, Imageready, Acrobat, Lightwave, Freehand, Quicktime and Windows Media Player, as well as iRC, ICQ, YIM, and other misc crap.
IE Mac blows... so much that Microsoft discontinued development for it. Plus Macs hace a bit of a niche in the imaging industry, so naturally there are going to be more programs available on that platform to do that. But if you need a small app to perform some random one-off functionality, the odds of you being able to find something that isn't going to cost you an arm and a leg for probably a one-time use is slim.
But what most of us have said is "Macs are not backwards compatable", meaning there have been programs that simply would not work in a newer version of the MacOS. Sort of like pure DOS apps in WinNT/2k/XP, except only removed from the OS release by a year or so. This has gotten better post-OSX, but the whole existance of "classic mode" is a bit of a poster child for non-backwards comatability.
Maybe so, but there is some virtue in moving forward and having better applications that are OSX Native rather than moaning about old crap that wasn't all that good anyway.
True you can't directly use Win programs without an emulator, but there's nothing I really need to do that would require that...
8. Keyboard shortcuts? wtf? there are more shortcuts and cool tricks with the keyboard than you can possibly remember.
And therein lies a problem. Keyboard commands should be functional first and cool second - Macs tend to put the "cool" shortcut keys on the easier mappings, and something like "get info" on something more obscure. Too much of a good thing can be a bad thing sometimes.
The lack of keyboard shortcuts though includes things like tab not automatically selecting the next push-box when you press it from the last text tab. I know you can turn it on, but I can't do that at 90% of the Macs I sit down to on a semi-regular basis. I use the keyboard a lot, and this one problem has driven me up walls.
*shrug* That's more your problem than a software issue...
9. Features - The Dock, it's just so much more than a program launcher, you can drag anything down there, programs, games, files, films, your whole HD and instantly retrieve it. If for instance you are playing a movie and minimise it to The Dock, you will see a tiny window of the movie playing down there which enlarges as the mouse moves over it. Titles are also retained, I can minimise this window and moving the mouse along pops up the title 'Hard Light Productions Forums - Hard Light' (In slick shaded text) In all, it's about the most easy and intuitive interface ever designed... and it can be placed left, right, or bottom of the screen.
And I have little boxes with the name of the current app in them so that I don't have to drag the mouse over each one.
Other cool stuff? there's loads, but the one I use most at work is the ability to create PDF files from anything it's soo easy - click 'Print' click 'Save as PDF' and you're done. That feature alone has probably saved thousands where I work..
10. Stability - It's very rare to have an issue, but the System will protect itself, say for instance you have a large Photoshop file which causes Photoshop itself to crash or hang, you can 'Force Quit' which shuts down Photoshop and leaves everything else unaffected, and you go on working with no problem.
This is a bit of a gripe for me. Since the days of Windows2k, I have seen more Mac BSODs than PC (yes I know it's not actually blue on a Mac. It's the bomb on OS9 and with certain errors on 10, or the transparent screen with "the machine needs to shut down" printed on it. Who thought that letting you see your work sitting there without letting you get back to it or save it was a good idea? What am I going to do? Take a picture?!?). And I work with far more PCs than Macs. I should also note that the Macs in my school's clusters are the most crash-prone systems in the history of graphical OS user interfaces. If you use one for anything over the network for more than 3 minutes, you are guaranteed to get a complete system failure. I don't blame Apple for this one because our OIT department seems incompetent most of the time, but the point still stands.
11. Hardware - Macs use standard SATA drives, standard RAM, pretty much any USB device you can name, most printers, you can get gamepads, joysticks, tablets, external drives etc. etc. oh and iPods also the build quality of he case is the best, I mean solid aluminium panels, clean design internally (no cable clutter) and there are USB + Firewire ports on the front! who'd have thought?
You're telling me that having the hard drive cables PERMANENTLY INTEGRATED INTO THE CASE is the mark of superior design? Especially since the case is a disposible item (it's the biggest fricking thing on the entire computer. Why? But it is) that the apple techs won't even touch if there's something wrong with it. So that means that if something ever happens to that SATA cable, you're buying a new case (or apple is, if it's being covered by warrenty). Tell me that makes sense. Or that if you ever need to change the power button - just the button, not the motherboard circuit that it controls - you have to completely disassemble the entire system (processers, disks, PSU, motherboard) just to get to the little screw holding it in place? The case looks cool, but that's image only.
The case is NOT disposable! that's the whole point, you are buying something that has been designed, not just thrown together by some junkie in the far east...
Everything is easy to access, repair and replace. Next chance you get, actually take a look inside a G5, it's quite an eye-opener, it makes all other comps look like crap especially older Macs...
My point about ports on the front and back still stands, it's just a tiny feature that someone has actually put some thought into for a change.
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Originally posted by Clave
Moving along before this gets locked...
You're telling me that having the hard drive cables PERMANENTLY INTEGRATED INTO THE CASE is the mark of superior design? Especially since the case is a disposible item (it's the biggest fricking thing on the entire computer. Why? But it is) that the apple techs won't even touch if there's something wrong with it. So that means that if something ever happens to that SATA cable, you're buying a new case (or apple is, if it's being covered by warrenty). Tell me that makes sense. Or that if you ever need to change the power button - just the button, not the motherboard circuit that it controls - you have to completely disassemble the entire system (processers, disks, PSU, motherboard) just to get to the little screw holding it in place? The case looks cool, but that's image only.
The case is NOT disposable! that's the whole point, you are buying something that has been designed, not just thrown together by some junkie in the far east...
Everything is easy to access, repair and replace. Next chance you get, actually take a look inside a G5, it's quite an eye-opener, it makes all other comps look like crap especially older Macs...
My point about ports on the front and back still stands, it's just a tiny feature that someone has actually put some thought into for a change.
I take a little offense to that. I wouldn't post it unless I was going from prior experience. Yes, the case looks pretty on the inside. Yes, admittedly it has good airflow (and two absolutely gargantuan heatsinks). But if you've ever talked to an apple tech, the "easy to replace" garbage simply isn't true. It works well when everything is ok, but when something fails you have to take the entire system apart to get to it. And, if you call and ask a Mac tech, the case is listed as a disposable part. So if that embedded hard drive cable that I was telling you about goes, or anything else physically attached to the case, then you can't have it fixed.
And my PC has headphone, microphone, USB, and IEEE 1394 (firewire) ports on the front too. It's hardly a Mac exclusive.
EDIT: One major difference between the MacOS and Windows is what causes them to crash. Windows crashes from running some program that isn't necessarily well-written. Macs don't tend to let programs crash the system, but the system has ways of crashing itself. Both OS's have their strengths and weaknesses; Macs tend to focus on looks and "cool" features, whereas Windows focuses a little more on the ability to run program X. Even if program X is 10 years old.
Originally posted by Clave
3. Viruses - I don't even have antivirus software installed....
Probably not the best idea, actually. Macs are hardly invulnerable to viruses, and though while they are rare there are plenty of exploits that can be taken advantage of on a Mac. Granted, it's not the gaping hole of vulnerability that Windows can be, but then not much is.
People don't write viruses for OSX, it's hard to make them work inside the System
5. Windows Service Packs - don't make me laugh, OSX gets regular updates which pretty much work, without the pages of 'this may cause problems' crap that you get from MS. And when there is a major upgrade - like the upcoming 10.4 'Tiger' you pay a reasonable amount for it....
You're kidding, right? Other than SP2, which is the exception, not the rule when it comes to MS service packs, I've never had a service pack break anything. I have seen Apple Updates cause other programs to stop working correctly. I've actually seen Apple updates completely bork the system. It's not worse than the Windows equivalent, I just don't think it's any better.
SP2 is what I was talking about, and the jump from 4.2.2 to 95, and the jump from 95 to 98, and Win ME - Nothing is perfect, but Apple software changes have been progressive with one exception - OS9 to OSX, simply because that was a totally different OS, not based on the one before.
In order to make a virus that takes advantage of an exploitable unhandled case, one has to be aware of those exploits. Not only are Mac viruses less profitable/destructive from a sheer user base perspective, the exploits themselves aren't that widly known. The reason there aren't more known is precisely the same as the reason you don't see many Mac viruses - there aren't nearly as many Mac users as there are PC. It's only a strength for the mac as long as they are not extrememtly popular.
If you'll notice, a lot of pre OSX Mac software (and even some post-OSX) specifies the necessary operating system as a range, not a lower bound. This goes back to the backwards compatability issue; updates to the OS cause programs to not only develop extraneous behavior, they simply won't run. At least on a PC, with the exception of the Dos->WinNT transition, everything that worked on an older version is still supported into newer ones. The transitions you are talking about are actual OS changes, not upgrades, and most of those don't actually break anything. They just change the system performance for the OS, which is what every major iteration of the Mac OS has done. You expect things to change when you change your operating system, so the update argument doesn't apply.
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My company maker's comment was a little too far, but I was talking about in the beginning. Microsoft screws or buys out other companies whenever it feels it is the most effective thing to do, but Apple screws or buys out other companies whenever it feels that it is neccesary.
My 400mhz G4 works better than my Windows Duron 755mhz. Wow, almost 100% difference!
I can run programs fairly decently even when the minimum system requirements of that program list something 50% better than what i've got.
Did you pay for windows xp? Will someone pay for Tiger? Tiger not only adds a new look, but it adds EIGHT great features. Who could have thought of dashboard and its widgets?
What is with that alt-### crap? Macs obtion-character is better. Obtion-r=® Obtion-Shift-r=‰
Macs will always be hated and always be loved. All systems have one thing in common: there will always be idiots trying to screw everyone over.
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Originally posted by Dark RevenantX
My company maker's comment was a little too far, but I was talking about in the beginning. Microsoft screws or buys out other companies whenever it feels it is the most effective thing to do, but Apple screws or buys out other companies whenever it feels that it is neccesary.
That is only opinion. I could just as well say that MS buys out others to advance the progress of PCs, and apple buys out others to make themselves look more fashionable. It certainly seems true in my experiences, but I don't hold it to be true.
My 400mhz G4 works better than my Windows Duron 755mhz. Wow, almost 100% difference!
Ummm... Do you know that my PII 350 works better than a Duron 755? First, as we already know in AMDs case, clockspeed doesn't measure performance. Secondly, durons are crap. Uber crap. Don't compare a duron to a PPC, ever. Just don't
Did you pay for windows xp? Will someone pay for Tiger? Tiger not only adds a new look, but it adds EIGHT great features. Who could have thought of dashboard and its widgets?
Wow. A dashboard with widgets. Great feature. Really.
What is with that alt-### crap? Macs obtion-character is better. Obtion-r=® Obtion-Shift-r=‰
that 'alt-### crap' is direct ascii input. Hold down alt, then press the ID of the ascii number and you will get the character. True it isn't as 'easy' as hitting opt+8 for a bullet, but atleast you have access to every single ascii character in the fontset. AFAIK, OSX doesn't do that (could be wrong though)
Macs will always be hated and always be loved. All systems have one thing in common: there will always be idiots trying to screw everyone over.
Agreed, wholeheartedly.
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Originally posted by Dark RevenantX
Did you pay for windows xp? Will someone pay for Tiger? Tiger not only adds a new look, but it adds EIGHT great features. Who could have thought of dashboard and its widgets?
Uh... is that sarcasm? Tiger's dashboard thingy is a blatant rip off of an already existing third party add on for 10.3.
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As a film student, I regularly thrash the the hell out of the Macs we use, and Contrary to the popular belief that Macs never crash, I crash them alot.
Quite a bit actually.
But that said, Macs are awesome for what they're good at, IE: Video Editing, Graphics, etc. Give me a PC for my Gaming needs.
However, I wish good old commodore amiga was still around making new systems. that thing did everything pcs did in '94 back in '84. Man, i love that computer. :p
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And as a gamer, who usually assigns jump to his right click, and has frequently blown himself up in multiplayer Quake 2 on the Mac by attempting to jump whilst holding the rocket launcher and forgetting I'm on a Mac, I can only agree with Thor ;)
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Originally posted by Thor
However, I wish good old commodore amiga was still around making new systems. that thing did everything pcs did in '94 back in '84. Man, i love that computer. :p
heard of AmigaOne?
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Originally posted by Flipside
And as a gamer, who usually assigns jump to his right click, and has frequently blown himself up in multiplayer Quake 2 on the Mac by attempting to jump whilst holding the rocket launcher and forgetting I'm on a Mac, I can only agree with Thor ;)
Why don't you plug a two button mouse in, then?
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ALL SYSTEMS ARE BEST FOR WHAT THEY ARE DESIGNED FOR
Error: 404
This thread has become a flamewar, and locking is around the corner. Please lock the thread and end the endless waste of bandwidth and morality.
THIS THREAD IS GONE! BYE-BYE! ITS HISTORY!
(http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2005-3/969604/cuthere.gif)
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OhhhOOHOHOHHHHHHHhhhhhhh
I missed the flamewar.
No fair!
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Macs vs PCs
Intel vs AMD
Nvidia vs ATI
There will always be some for one, and some for others.
Personally i prefer PCs, with AMD and Nvidia. But i would not complain if i had to use a Mac, or if i got a nice Pentium 4, or an ATI card.
Just personal preference for the others...
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No, Dranon, not quite.
Macs and PCs are two entirely different platforms.
Intel and AMD have two entirely different architectures.
nVidia and ATi use two entirely different rendering methods.
It is not one vs another, but some people are too stubborn to see otherwise. Macs are wonderful media machines. Windows couldn't compare to the artisan capabilities that Macs have developed over the years. Windows is great at being an all-purpose OS, covering many areas where Macs rarely ever venture. Apples and oranges. Pun intended.
And thank you dark, that big bolded statement was one of the smartest things said in this thread. Although allcaps makes you look like you're yelling... Oh wait...
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Originally posted by Ransom Arceihn
Why don't you plug a two button mouse in, then?
Because it's not my Mac to go playing with the Hardware on, and the owner hated PC's so much he wouldn't let me plug a PC mouse in, so I know that pc owners aren't the only 'haters' around (as if this thread hadn't convinced me). Still, the game was still fun ;)