Thinking about switching

[Sobe4me]

I have been seriously thinking about switching to a Mac. Is OS X any good? I would appreciate any feedback.

 

[drag]

I like it. Computers that I would like to use are out of my price range, and I am not going to downgrade from my current proccessing power to ones I can afford. The dual g4's would be the ticket for me, if I decided to get one today. Or maybe one of those laptops.

I worked for several months as a tech support/admin assistant person for a community college that taught graphic arts using Macs and my experiances maintain them (over 200 powerG4's) were mostly possitive.

Only had to reinstall once or twice, which is suprising since the computers were abused by the students. (turning them off at the power strip, randomly moving system files, storing stuff in the wrong places, deleting applications by mistake. etc etc) I didn't like it how every one was logged in automaticly as admin, but it worked out.

Several older g4's were upgraded to OS 9 to OS X to OS 10.2 etc etc over the years and they still worked just fine.

A couple tips. If you need classic mode (if your getting a g4), install os 9 on a seperate partition. Use the disk utility and do a permission check to fix changes that third party programs try to inflict on the OS X enviroment time to time. If you have any issues or geekyness to your install boot up with the Install CD and do a disk repair and then a permissions repair.

Aviod updating with major system updates for a month or so until they get well tested by enthusisists. Security updates are usually OK though. Some app updates are deceptive, like one update in particular that turned off your ability to stream/share(?) iTune stuff to the internet.

Other then that I don't anticipate any issues. All in all, Macs work out generally very well.

 

[n0cmonkey]

I dig my iBook.

 

[Sunner]

I'm no full time user, I just play with Macs whenever I get the chance, and OS-X is awfully nice.
The hardware isn't as fast or cheap as x86 stuff, but for someone who needs usability above performance, it's very kickassofistic. 🙂

 

[Megatomic]

I LOVE OSX myself. At work I'm forced to use HP-UX 11.11 and CDE. Ugly, clunky, and not very user friendly. When I got a chance to play around with OSX I was amazed. God I wish we ditch our B2600s in favor of the G5s. 🙁

 

[Nothinman]

The price isn't worth it, IMO.

 

[KF]

Since I have never owned a Mac, I should probably butt out, since I'm liable to slip into thread-crapping. But I will try to restrain myself.

My experience with Macs consists of trying them out in stores. I have done this going back to the cute, itty-bitty black-and-white-screened original. I couldn't figure them out. I just blunder around until something works. Now that is no doubt because I am unfamiliar with them, but it does show that so-called intuitive interfaces are not very intuitive. They just seem like it after you get to know them.

It is mostly computer geeks, who know computers in depth, that find the Mac interface magnetic, not casual users. That should tell you something. Namely: it is not especially easier to use than Windows. What it is is "COOL," and you have to have a touch of the geek to appreciate why.

One thing I missed in Macs is that feeling of speed and power you get when you use, or try out, a very expensive computer. You would think that something so "COOL" looking, and with pretty decent specs, would do considerably better.

What gives average users grief is not so much Windows itself, but the frustration of attempting to make applications do what the user wants them to do. This a problem with the programs design, not the computer or the OS. And I really have a difficult time believing that Mac programs, so long as they are in a similar price range, are any better designed than Windows programs. But I have used a few very expensive applications (on PCs), and they are better worked out than cheaper programs I am more familiar with. It is easier to do more complicated things. It is not altogether clear to me why some of the most noteworthy expensive specialty apps are pitched toward Macs, but if you need some of this type of software, getting a Mac is the easy route.

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

Originally posted by: KF
It is mostly computer geeks, who know computers in depth, that find the Mac interface magnetic, not casual users. That should tell you something. Namely: it is not especially easier to use than Windows. What it is is "COOL," and you have to have a touch of the geek to appreciate why.

I went to a mac users group meeting, and it consisted of 95% OLD people. Teachers and whatnot. These people are not geeks nor do they even have the concept of being a geek that you do. These are *very* unsavvy users. They don't understand how a website works, they don't understand how email works, etc. They do, however, like mac os much more than windows. *shrug*

 

[Nothinman]

It is mostly computer geeks, who know computers in depth, that find the Mac interface magnetic, not casual users. That should tell you something. Namely: it is not especially easier to use than Windows. What it is is "COOL," and you have to have a touch of the geek to appreciate why.

All the people I know that use Macs are most certainly not computer geeks, most of them are design geeks that only really know how to use the few apps they need to do their job.

And I really have a difficult time believing that Mac programs, so long as they are in a similar price range, are any better designed than Windows programs.

You obviously havn't used iMovie or iDVD then, they're infinitely simpler than anything on the PC that I've seen and for home users looking to make DVDs out of some home movies they're more than adequate.

It is not altogether clear to me why some of the most noteworthy expensive specialty apps are pitched toward Macs, but if you need some of this type of software, getting a Mac is the easy route.

Probably because years ago when deciding to write apps for either DOS/Win31 or Mac OS it was a no-brainer because MacOS was generally a better OS and it probably just stuck. Obviously that's not true any more everything atleast has a Win32 port even if it's second to the Mac port but then a lot of apps still aren't even ported to OS X because it basically requires a rewrite of a lot of the program.

Now Macs are just PCs with a different CPU, the rest of the hardware is exactly the same, same video cards, same disk drives, same memory, etc. When you buy a Mac you get a PPC CPU and OS X and you pay a high premium for it. The best part is that Apple is touting the G5 as the best 64-bit workstation around and the software isn't even running in 64-bit mode yet, it's all still 32-bit and on top of it it gets trounced by the Opteron in benchmarks.

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

Originally posted by: Nothinman
When you buy a Mac you get a PPC CPU and OS X

And a cool case 😉

 

[CTho9305]

Originally posted by: BingBongWongFooey

Originally posted by: KF
It is mostly computer geeks, who know computers in depth, that find the Mac interface magnetic, not casual users. That should tell you something. Namely: it is not especially easier to use than Windows. What it is is "COOL," and you have to have a touch of the geek to appreciate why.

I went to a mac users group meeting, and it consisted of 95% OLD people. Teachers and whatnot. These people are not geeks nor do they even have the concept of being a geek that you do. These are *very* unsavvy users. They don't understand how a website works, they don't understand how email works, etc. They do, however, like mac os much more than windows. *shrug*

They probably find it easier because they're told it's easy.