another mac vs pc compare

[Smilin]

I happened to be flipping through the ltest MacMall junk mail sent to me here at work. I thought I'd throw this out there for you guys to get a laugh:

Dual G4 1.25Ghz processors
1GB memory
120GB hdd
120GB external firewire (what is with mac guys and external devices anyway???)
dvd-r/cd-rw drive
3 piece speaker system
17" LCD monitor
Avid Xpress software (normally about $1499)

ALL THIS CAN BE YOURS FOR THE LOW LOW PRICE OF JUST $6494.00!!!!

Jesus H. I can build THREE pc's that are TWICE as fast for the same money. WTF???

I've always liked apples. I call them the greatest computers I'll never own. If they went x86 you could drop the price on them by at least 1/3 right away. Too bad about the little endian/big endian problem that prevents this from happening.

 

[Adul]

Nikon NEF plug-in for Photoshop

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: Smilin
I happened to be flipping through the ltest MacMall junk mail sent to me here at work. I thought I'd throw this out there for you guys to get a laugh:

Dual G4 1.25Ghz processors
1GB memory
120GB hdd
120GB external firewire (what is with mac guys and external devices anyway???)
dvd-r/cd-rw drive
3 piece speaker system
17" LCD monitor
Avid Xpress software (normally about $1499)

ALL THIS CAN BE YOURS FOR THE LOW LOW PRICE OF JUST $6494.00!!!!

Jesus H. I can build THREE pc's that are TWICE as fast for the same money. WTF???

Including software?

I've always liked apples. I call them the greatest computers I'll never own. If they went x86 you could drop the price on them by at least 1/3 right away. Too bad about the little endian/big endian problem that prevents this from happening.

The price would stay the same. Developing firmware/motherboards for the processors is not cheap.

 

[Smilin]

I think its pathetic how much x86ers have to bash the Mac. It doesnt get 190fps in "wizbang 2: I need to get out of my parents basement, the REVENGE!" And they think that should matter to everyone. It gets old.

You don't get it. We're not bashing the Mac, we're bashing apple. We all love Macs (being honest, no bs at all here) but we're pissed that apple can't seem to get such a great machine to run at faster speeds and especially more affordable prices. And no we don't all care about what fps we get in whatever game we would just like to be able to do something simple like surf the fricken net a little bit faster than our 486's did. So save your Mac Schmac for someone else. I happen to like em.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: Smilin

I think its pathetic how much x86ers have to bash the Mac. It doesnt get 190fps in "wizbang 2: I need to get out of my parents basement, the REVENGE!" And they think that should matter to everyone. It gets old.

You don't get it. We're not bashing the Mac, we're bashing apple. We all love Macs (being honest, no bs at all here) but we're pissed that apple can't seem to get such a great machine to run at faster speeds and especially more affordable prices. And no we don't all care about what fps we get in whatever game we would just like to be able to do something simple like surf the fricken net a little bit faster than our 486's did. So save your Mac Schmac for someone else. I happen to like em.

I have no problems surfing the net from my Mac. I have no problems browsing the net on my Mac while ripping/encoding cds. Motorola has been a PITA as far as processor speeds. If apple goes with IBM across the board (the g3 Saharas are already IBM chips) they should be a lot better off. The g3 Sahara proved to be significantly faster than the Motorola equivilent. When they can fully support DDR or a comparable technology, they will be a lot better off also.

 

[Adul]

if you actually tread the forum thread
the author who wrote that article states this

On the Mac, it was as it always has been for me dealing with pro digital photography peripherals, whether in OS X or earlier iterations of the operating system. Some devices worked fine, though many required the manual installation of drivers, while some devices, and especially USB and FireWire card readers didn't work at all. Or required a driver for OS X 10.1, then a different one for 10.1.2, then a driver change again in OS X 10.1.3. Ugh. I've had fairly serious ongoing fights with my film scanner, so much so that I only use it on the PC now, where it just works. Where's the true plug and play in that?

nuff said

 

[Smilin]

Including software?

No, not including software. I believe my point is still made though.

I've always liked apples. I call them the greatest computers I'll never own. If they went x86 you could drop the price on them by at least 1/3 right away. Too bad about the little endian/big endian problem that prevents this from happening.

The price would stay the same. Developing firmware/motherboards for the processors is not cheap.[/quote]

I disagree but for the sake of argument lets say the price WOULD stay the same..then what about performance at that same given price?

This is quite frankly a silly argument. Mac's are expensive and slow. Period. In nearly every other respect they are superior to their x86 counterparts and this is the part that frustrates me...I WANT to buy a Mac but I don't want something expensive and slow...GRR!

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: Smilin

Including software?

No, not including software. I believe my point is still made though.

I've always liked apples. I call them the greatest computers I'll never own. If they went x86 you could drop the price on them by at least 1/3 right away. Too bad about the little endian/big endian problem that prevents this from happening.

The price would stay the same. Developing firmware/motherboards for the processors is not cheap.

I disagree but for the sake of argument lets say the price WOULD stay the same..then what about performance at that same given price?

This is quite frankly a silly argument. Mac's are expensive and slow. Period. In nearly every other respect they are superior to their x86 counterparts and this is the part that frustrates me...I WANT to buy a Mac but I don't want something expensive and slow...GRR![/quote]

Why would you disagree? Do you think developping motherboards for x86 is cheaper than for PPC?

 

[Smilin]

Yes I do think it's cheaper. Economies of scale are one MAJOR factor. You also have competing chipset manufacturers (VIA, SIS, IBM, Intel, even AMD). Apple and their business partners have to 'reinvent the wheel' every time and pay the full price. When VIA, for instance, 'reinvents the wheel' they can sell their chips to more buyers and spread the cost around.

What do you think an ASUS motherboard for an x86 would cost if they had to cover the development cost of the chipset all by themselves? It would be horrible. Thankfully the cost of the chipset R&D is absorbed by MSI, EPOX, Dell, HP, IBM, Micron etc etc..

This is all futile. Macs are slow and expensive. You can't win the argument.

If you want to give me the "either you get it or you don't" argument about the "feel" of Mac's I'll concede right away - I happen to be one that "gets it".

Enjoy your Mac - it's a great computer and I'm glad it meets your needs. I just wish it met mine.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: Smilin
Yes I do think it's cheaper. Economies of scale are one MAJOR factor. You also have competing chipset manufacturers (VIA, SIS, IBM, Intel, even AMD). Apple and their business partners have to 'reinvent the wheel' every time and pay the full price. When VIA, for instance, 'reinvents the wheel' they can sell their chips to more buyers and spread the cost around.

What do you think an ASUS motherboard for an x86 would cost if they had to cover the development cost of the chipset all by themselves? It would be horrible. Thankfully the cost of the chipset R&D is absorbed by MSI, EPOX, Dell, HP, IBM, Micron etc etc..

I dont think they share that much information. The stuff that they dont have to reinvent (in my estimation, but if you have an insider somewhere you would know much better than me) are standards anyhow (ie ATA 100). Apple uses those standards and even created some damn good ones themselves (ie firewire). Right now they can share information with IBM and Motorola. They also have previous work to base newer stuff on (much like how x86 is legacy hack upon legacy hack), and routinely remove old cruft.

I think it is similar to Sun. Sun probably shares information with Fujitsu (who makes sparc64 chips of their own) and vice versa. But I doubt they share enough information to totally offset the costs.

This is all futile. Macs are slow and expensive. You can't win the argument.

I do not think they are slow. Slow is a matter of opinion. They are slower than cheaper x86 based machines, I will give you that, but subjective standards cannot be used as objective statements.

If you want to give me the "either you get it or you don't" argument about the "feel" of Mac's I'll concede right away - I happen to be one that "gets it".

I think that arguement is a no brainer. Some people like red, others like blue, some cant make up their minds and get hurled into the canyon of death or whatever.

Enjoy your Mac - it's a great computer and I'm glad it meets your needs. I just wish it met mine.

It meets some of my needs. Much like my x86 hardware meets other needs, the SPARC4m fills yet others, and the sparc4u has its uses. Why should I limit my computing experience because of some stupid benchmarks that mean nothing to me?

 

[dannybin1742]

Just look at the serious graphics studios & scientific world and see how many powerPC/mac that they use to maximizes their productivity? Where uptime and development cycle it at a cutthroat rate

this is so true, in my xray lab we are constantly upgrading our viewing machines every 6 months, the latest boxes we have at p4 2.533ghz/1gb RDRAM

we are set to upgrade here in another month or two, these boxes come installed with the latest version of linux

the only apple's i've seen in the labs where i work are for word processing and internet browsing.

even our sequencing cluster is either alphas, suns, sgi or dell boxes. the only macs in that lab are used to control some of the older sequencers, but the actual computers doing the crunching at pcs

but that article about upgrading the computer systems in a scientific lab to apples is just rediculous, they have too much money to be throwing around and the computer users in the group must be apple users fromt he get go. I don't know many people in biological science fields that use apple boxes for number crunching, thats all handled by 64bit machines, or high clocked pc boxes, i can't imagine its all that different for other fields. Even in our NMR lab all the boxes were just upgraded with the exception of the controller computer and they are all dell boxes, and again the only mac in the lab is for word processing and internet related stuff

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: dannybin1742

Just look at the serious graphics studios & scientific world and see how many powerPC/mac that they use to maximizes their productivity? Where uptime and development cycle it at a cutthroat rate

this is so true, in my xray lab we are constantly upgrading our viewing machines every 6 months, the latest boxes we have at p4 2.533ghz/1gb RDRAM

we are set to upgrade here in another month or two, these boxes come installed with the latest version of linux

the only apple's i've seen in the labs where i work are for word processing and internet browsing.

even our sequencing cluster is either alphas, suns, sgi or dell boxes. the only macs in that lab are used to control some of the older sequencers, but the actual computers doing the crunching at pcs

but that article about upgrading the computer systems in a scientific lab to apples is just rediculous, they have too much money to be throwing around and the computer users in the group must be apple users fromt he get go. I don't know many people in biological science fields that use apple boxes for number crunching, thats all handled by 64bit machines, or high clocked pc boxes, i can't imagine its all that different for other fields. Even in our NMR lab all the boxes were just upgraded with the exception of the controller computer and they are all dell boxes, and again the only mac in the lab is for word processing and internet related stuff

The "velocity engine" can do wonders with some numbers. Alphas are dead and expensive. Sun machines have stengths in other fields. I agree that fast x86 based machines are a great asset, but Macs can crunch numbers damn well.

 

[dannybin1742]

yes but most biophysics and biochem computer research software scales very well with processor speed, and is optimised for pc architecture, just about everything i use is freeware, but its incredibly powerful, i have yet to see a mac that can do FFT: 2Fo-Fc on a 7k base protein while rotating one of the two images on the screen

 

[PCMarine]

Apple needs to learn from their mistakes =\

 

[LethalWolfe]

Originally posted by: Smilin
I've always liked apples. I call them the greatest computers I'll never own. If they went x86 you could drop the price on them by at least 1/3 right away. Too bad about the little endian/big endian problem that prevents this from happening.

The price wouldn't drop 'cause the boxes would still be closed tech, propriatary Apple hardware computers. The *only* difference would be they'd run an x86 proc instead of PPC. Apple's OSes will, in the foreseeable<sp?> future never run on any x86 rig like Windows does.

Like n0c said Apple isn't at fault for Mac's slow proc speeds anymore than Dell or MS is at fault when an Intel or AMD proc gets delayed. If you are looking to blame someone blame Moto for hanging Apple out to dry.

Just outta curiosity what do you need to do that a current Mac is too slow to do?


Lethal

 

[miniMUNCH]

compile NAMD (open source biochem simulation program) for PPC with "velocity engine" opitmizations turned....the performance is sweet.

 

[lowtech1]

Originally posted by: LethalWolfe

Originally posted by: lowtech

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey

Originally posted by: tart666

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey

XP is useless until I spend a while customizing it, and thats after the hours of patching. OS X is useful, for me, out of the box. How much is my time worth? Enough for me to purchase a laptop from Apple, for a reasonable price for what I get, and get support from the vendor for the software I want to use.

OK, I see. So on one side you would spend 3 hours patching XP, on the other side you would spend $120 for every minor version OS upgrade. Well, if your time is worth more than $50/hr after tax I understand.

I don?t pay anything for minor version upgrades. OS X 10.2 is a major upgrade. 10.1.5 was a minor upgrade from 10.1.4. XP was 5.1 when 2k was 5.0. I could have gotten 10.1 for free if I was more patient, but I spent some money on it instead of using 10.0 for a couple more days. So, you spoke out of your ass or just didn?t know. Either way, it wasn?t even funny FUD.

You have just confirm that Mac does cause trouble therefore it need to be patch/upgrade. It also cost money to upgrade like the MS camp.

Over all the comparison is on productivity, and I don't see why the majority or the user need to upgrade there system Mac/Windows when the only need a 486 power to do email & word.

As for the small number of the power user they will demand the best of technology therefore they have to live with the steep upgrade cycle which would be better spend on the x86 platform due to price/performance ratio.

Just look at the serious graphics studios & scientific world and see how many powerPC/Mac that they use to maximizes their productivity? Where uptime and development cycle it at a cutthroat rate.

Have you ever tried to run word or surf on a 486 machine? My parents P2 is so slow it's painful (I don't event want to imagine living on a 486). My P3 800 is snappy though. I think it's about as slow as I'd ever want to go.


Lethal

Yes I have done that. And, the local adult education center that I volunteer at for 2 years had a few that I built from donated parts.

MS Word 2.0a/Abiword & Netscape/IE 3.0 run perfectly fine on Win95 system.

 

[MercenaryForHire]

Originally posted by: Adul

Nikon NEF plug-in for Photoshop

So does that mean we can be NEFfing here on the AT forums now?

- M4H

 

[tart666]

Originally posted by: LethalWolfe[...]
Just outta curiosity what do you need to do that a current Mac is too slow to do?


Lethal

how about Photoshop / premiere / aftereffects ?

Seriously, what puzzles me the most about mac fans, is that they claim to be "graphics professionals", yet the only positive thing about Apple is the OS. A professional cares about how fast his work gets done (in photoshop or whatev) instead of how pretty the buttons are in the file manager window, no?

 

[Eug]

Originally posted by: tart666

Originally posted by: LethalWolfe[...]
Just outta curiosity what do you need to do that a current Mac is too slow to do?


Lethal

how about Photoshop / premiere / aftereffects ?

Seriously, what puzzles me the most about mac fans, is that they claim to be "graphics professionals", yet the only positive thing about Apple is the OS. A professional cares about how fast his work gets done (in photoshop or whatev) instead of how pretty the buttons are in the file manager window, no?

I'm no graphics pro, yet I'm a Mac laptop fan. Go figure.

And I find the arguments that a PowerMac isn't ideal for protein sequencing labs or whatever a bit odd. Different tasks require different computers. Your needs may need a fast P4, but that doesn't mean a fast P4 is what everyone needs. Hell, somebody might wonder why you're using a "lowly" P4 and not big iron CPUs. OTOH, if your needs were to make DVDs from wedding footage from MiniDV, I'd recommend a Mac in a sec. Hell, our lab information system only runs properly on NT, but that doesn't mean NT is what everyone in the world needs, even if they're gonna run a lab information system.

As for Photoshop, one of the things that Mac proponents seem to like is the ease of colour management on the Mac side, and some issues with workflow in a Mac-heavy environment. If you're a single computer owner using Photoshop though, it's a different story. Personally, I don't really care that much what I use. I have Photoshop on both PCs and Macs and quite frankly for the little stuff I do, it makes little difference which I use. (I get less driver issues with scanners on the Mac side though for some reason.) For basic consumer level video editing and DVD authoring though, I wouldn't touch a PC with a 10 foot pole. And I have PC with a DVD burner, too.

 

[LethalWolfe]

Originally posted by: tart666

Originally posted by: LethalWolfe[...]
Just outta curiosity what do you need to do that a current Mac is too slow to do?


Lethal

how about Photoshop / premiere / aftereffects ?

Seriously, what puzzles me the most about mac fans, is that they claim to be "graphics professionals", yet the only positive thing about Apple is the OS. A professional cares about how fast his work gets done (in photoshop or whatev) instead of how pretty the buttons are in the file manager window, no?

That Q was directed at Smilin 'cause he said he wanted Mac, but they were too slow for him. Besides not caring 'bout FPS in games, and the usual word/e-mail stuff he never mentioned what he did that a Mac would be too slow to do. So I was just curious.

PS and AE run fine on my Mac. Granted I don't spend all day on them (I use them to augment what I do in FCP), but I have no complaints. As for Premiere... well... if you spend that much time rendering instead of editing you probably should be using AE. Of course that's kinda beside the point 'cause if yer on a PC you should really check out Vegas Video 3 (or 4 if you don't mind public betas). And if yer on a Mac you should be slapped for not using FCP.


Lethal

 

[NOX]

OS X is a good OS! If it were out for the PC I would definitely buy it and do some kind of dual boot config with Win2k/XP. The only problem I have with mac?s are the hardware. The CPU is evidently dreadful when compared to AMD and Intel. The Imac G4 I used for about six months was good at first, but when we started installing more, and more programs it started to run slow and it was very noticeable, unlike the effect you get with a PC. IE for the mac was just slow period, the Internet was slow. Mac really needs to leave Motorola and get with AMD and Intel.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: NOX
OS X is a good OS! If it were out for the PC I would definitely buy it and do some kind of dual boot config with Win2k/XP. The only problem I have with mac?s are the hardware. The CPU is evidently dreadful when compared to AMD and Intel. The Imac G4 I used for about six months was good at first, but when we started installing more, and more programs it started to run slow and it was very noticeable, unlike the effect you get with a PC. IE for the mac was just slow period, the Internet was slow. Mac really needs to leave Motorola and get with AMD and Intel.

You mean IBM. Anyhow, even with x86 based machines, if you do not take care of your computer properly, it is going to get slower and slower.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Originally posted by: Smilin
I happened to be flipping through the ltest MacMall junk mail sent to me here at work. I thought I'd throw this out there for you guys to get a laugh:

Dual G4 1.25Ghz processors
1GB memory
120GB hdd
120GB external firewire (what is with mac guys and external devices anyway???)
dvd-r/cd-rw drive
3 piece speaker system
17" LCD monitor
Avid Xpress software (normally about $1499)

ALL THIS CAN BE YOURS FOR THE LOW LOW PRICE OF JUST $6494.00!!!!

Jesus H. I can build THREE pc's that are TWICE as fast for the same money. WTF???

I've always liked apples. I call them the greatest computers I'll never own. If they went x86 you could drop the price on them by at least 1/3 right away. Too bad about the little endian/big endian problem that prevents this from happening.

but those 3 pCs will still run windows and not have final cut pro or any of the extra stuff for sound editing that can be found. Trust me...if you do certain kinds of work YOU NEED A MAC. no nessing with software it just works for you and pays for itself. My PC hasn't made me any money, but my mac made me $5k last month

 

[cmdrdredd]

Originally posted by: Adul
if you actually tread the forum thread
the author who wrote that article states this

On the Mac, it was as it always has been for me dealing with pro digital photography peripherals, whether in OS X or earlier iterations of the operating system. Some devices worked fine, though many required the manual installation of drivers, while some devices, and especially USB and FireWire card readers didn't work at all. Or required a driver for OS X 10.1, then a different one for 10.1.2, then a driver change again in OS X 10.1.3. Ugh. I've had fairly serious ongoing fights with my film scanner, so much so that I only use it on the PC now, where it just works. Where's the true plug and play in that?

nuff said

but 10.2 is out now so 10.1.x is not even an issue. Go away