woolfgang said:
I, and most mac users do not go to PC forums and talk s%%% about PC's and why the PC is not as good, etc. Why do so many do it here? Thou doth protest too much.
BGil is not "talking s%%%" as you so eloquently put it, he is raising valid points and engaging in an unbiased open discussion, citing pros and cons of both PC and Mac platforms, which in my opinion is excellent to see. It's always good to hear all viewpoints on a subject and it also helps keep the Mac Zealots in check.
BGil, once again, thanks for the detailed response, I appreciate it.
BGil said:
In terms of what I recommend for other people I value iLife a lot. The iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD combo is great for the type of productions that most people do. GB is very cool and I've seen more than a few guitar players who are enamored with it.
This is why I like it as well. The software is still fairly basic and simple, yet powerful in its own respect, and good enough and easy enough to use for Joe user.
BGil said:
For myself, I do a ton of video and audio editing and iLife just doesn't cut it. I learned to edit on FCP 3 and Adobe Premiere so stepping down to iMovie feels like trying to eat a steak with a spork. iDVD is even worse. I use Reason, Soundtrack Pro, Logic, Acid, Vegas, and Soundforge all the time so I have little need for the resource hungry GB (although some of it's features like notation are very very cool).
Fair enough. The only pseudo-pro work I do is with Sound Studio to edit audio files, so I can totally appreciate that for a Pro user, those apps simply dont cut it that goes without saying.
BGil said:
Mail-- never really used it enough to care. Never really used Outlook Express either. I've always used Outlook, Netscape mail (years ago), Entourage, or Groupwise.
Mail just works for me. Thats all I need it to do, so it suits the purpose...
BGil said:
iWork vs Powerpoint and Word
I hate word processors with a passion. They all suck as do presentaion programs. OneNote, Photoshop, Illustrator, and Acrylic are the way to go IMO.
Agree with you here. I have Office v.X on my Mac and get by with Excel and Word. I cannot say Im a fan of iWork whatsoever, they need to do some serious iWork to the suite before Id think about buying it.
BGil said:
I understand that position.
I got Nero 6 Suite with my DVD burner for free and it comes with many computers (including all emachines).
Picasa/Photoshop Album, WMP10, Notepad2, TabletPC Experience Pack (awesoem BTW), WMM2, Irfranview, Acrylic, Paint.Net, Acid Xprress, and Windows Desktop Search are usually the free Windows software programs that I recommend for people interested in that stuff. I build them into my deployment images so when I (re)install Windows on someone's machine those programs are installed by default. Some are better than their free Apple supplied equivalents (Acrylic, Paint.Net, Irfranview, Maxthon) but others are not (GB2 versus Acid Xpress for example). ShellExtenstion City has a ton of cool programs that extend the functionality of the Windows Shell. You can get all that Mac specific stuff like omni-present spell checking and a bunch of other stuff there for free.
Good insight actually, I never really thought of all the Windows-equivalent apps which you can use for free as well which are comparable to the Mac versions.
BGil said:
I have Mac images too. I'm waiting for Apple to update the Mini before I order my Mini from freeMacMinis.com. My Mac images basically remove all of iLife except iTunes and replace them with FCP5, Soundtrack Pro, Motion 2, Logic 6 and 7, some IM other than iChat, Office 2004, Adobe CS2, Subethaedit, mPlayer, Audacity, Unsanity skinning software, and a bunch of free stuff I found on Apple.com. Needless to say my 10.3.9 image was like 70GB's or so.
Impressive.
BGil said:
In short, I have little need for the bundle software that comes with Macs or PC's because I create my own packages and use a lot of third-party software. I do recognize that Apple has by far the best software package of any OEM.
Fair enough. And I appreciate that as you are obviously a Pro user, and have more demanding needs from your software than, lets say, a granny who just wants to surf, check e-mail, look at digital photos and listen to some tunes. Or me for instance, as I dont use any of those Pro apps myself. If I did, I would probably be (and have every right to be) more demanding and selective when it comes to the software situation with the respective platforms.
These are all very valid points when it comes to software, but another component, and a more major one in my opinion, is the OS itself, which you never really commented on. I put a lot of weight into the fact that, to me, OS X is superior to Windows (subjective statement of course, I realize, nonetheless the users experience/perception is all that matters in most cases) which is a big advantage to me in using a Mac over a Windows PC. I have no issues per se with Windows, as it runs fine for me on my work PC (XP Pro) and my server at home (Win2k3 Enterprise) so I am definitely not one of the many Window smashers or anti-MS fanatics you sometimes see on the Forums here who blindly hate MS just cuz, but I do simply find OS X to be superior to Windows. Plain and simple. Ease of use, security (UNIX), no viruses/spyware and no need for software to block these things, stability, responsiveness, no registry, simple... I could go on...
Any thoughts specifically pertaining to the OS?