theISHkid said:
1. Completely wrong about web design, not to mention that this is more of a software issue versus a mac/pc issue. In dreamweaver there are a few bugs such as scroll down behaviors acting funny on a mac, but if you know how to clean up your code you can eliminate most problems. Code is code... it might look slightly different (because you're looking at a different monitor) but that's just computer to computer, not mac to pc.
I was referring to the very real incompatibilities between browsers (mostly having to do with JavaScript/DHTML, at least in my experience... seriously, if you have ever done any design in that area, you know the headaches of which I speak). Most of these incompatibilities are
entirely the fault of Microsoft and its crappy IE; Safari is a far more standards-compliant browser. My point is simply that, like it or not, IE is what most people use, and you can't be sure that what you've tested in Safari is going to work right for your Windows clients. Again, I know this from personal experience. I wish I didn't have to cross-test between PC and Mac for this stuff, but I have no choice.
2. This isn't really fair to say... what problems are you having with which programs? We run pc/mac offices with pretty much the same software photoshop, studio mx 2004, quicktime, avid, etc. Not to mention certain games warcraft, sims 1 & 2. I've never really had too many problems with either platform. Sometimes installation is harder on windows because it can't find certain drivers or it's missing a .dll where "usually" as long as you have the requirements on the box with a mac we don't have any problems.
I've only really had problems with Office v.X -- I only use Photoshop on the Mac and I only use Quicktime on my PC, so I can't comment on those. But Office.. ugh. The Mac version does a lot of strange things like inserting little paragraph symbols all over Word documents, or refusing to open files that work just fine on the PC. It's also surprisingly slow compared to most of the other programs I use on the Mac. It's serviceable, but I've never had these problems with the Windows version. Like Point #1, this isn't the "fault" of Macs, it's just an unfortunate reality I've encountered.
3. I think this is one of the biggest myths in the mac community, that you cannot update your mac. Video cards, sound cards, modems, processors, memory, hard drives... it can all be done with a mac. "Technically" it is more expensive to upgrade a mac, but that's because they make you upgrade to a quality part that is tested to work with the mac. You can't just go pick up a $50 video card from walmart and plug it in like you can with a pc...
The last line pretty much sums up what I'm saying. People who are used to being able to do that are in for some disappointment. Again, different people, different expectations and priorities. But it will be a legitimate concern for some, and that's what this thread is about. Not everyone will be happy with less choice, and many simply cannot afford to be happy with the greater expense, even if it does mean guaranteed quality. I mean c'mon, the only tower they offer is their top of the line system... I'd love, for example, to get a cheap Mac I could later upgrade with a better video card (as I once did with my first PC), but that's literally impossible. I could get an expensive Mac and do that, or get a cheap one and live with whatever video system they give me. And I can only do the latter because of the Mini; 6 months ago I couldn't have even done that.
4. Check out a while back (might have been a year or so) a pcworld/macworld article comparing (as close as possible) dollar for dollar testing of mac vs pc. I will admit that the pc won 60 percent of the test but they were all very close (yes even the ones that the mac won, they did not blow each other away). Keep in mind this was dollar for dollar. Complain about macs being expensive... but if you want your pc to equal the mac you're gonna have to shell out the dough too.
I'll have to look out for that article. But just in terms of
base hardware specs, Apple (at the moment - until the Intel switch, that is) simply can't compete. Its design sense and stellar operating system are why I'm going to buy a Mac; I consider the less impressive hardware and higher relative price to be worth it, but I'm just not willing to kid myself about it, either. For the next year or two, buying from Apple will remain a kind of 'tradeoff' in the eyes of non-Mac users.
Now at the same time you got a great deal on your pc... my friend bought a 1000 dollar dell about 6 months ago that he is having so many problems with he is considering throwing away... this does not happen to everyone but what good is buying a cheaper computer if all you're getting is a "cheaper" computer.
True, it's easier to get burned buying a PC, with the 8 zillion manufacturers with as much variation in quality and cost. But it's also easier to find mindblowingly great deals. With Apple, you know exactly what you're getting, which can be a good thing and a bad thing.
You still hear people talking about using macs that are 7 and 8 years old because the things were built to last. Again I'm sure there are pc users that have the same old computers... but they don't brag about it.
Actually, I
do brag about it, check my sig
And check out the recent article posted on slashdot about Windows 2000's excellent performance on ancient hardware. Most Windows users don't bother doing that because PCs are cheap enough that they can afford new ones fairly regularly. I do it because I hate to waste hardware that still works, y'know? If I were getting a G5 or a PowerBook today, though, it would *have* to last whether I wanted it to or not, since there's no way I'm shelling out that kind of cash every few years. Another reason I consider the Mini a
very positive development.
Now here's what I find funny... you say it's easy to avoid spyware and viruses on a PC if you "completely ditch Internet Explorer and any program that uses the IE browser control"... aren't you the same person talking about how great IE is on a PC over a mac and that IE sucks on a mac, and how you can't design for IE on a mac yet you can on a PC? How are you gonna ditch the entire browser if it's so much better on a PC? And you say to avoid these problems you have to get rid of IE on the PC... well why do I not have to get rid of IE on my Mac? I don't have any viruses... hmmm. Maybe it's not just the browser but the coding and security issues of the pc. That's something to think about.
I already addressed that; I use IE to test *my own pages, on my own domain* for compatibility, not for ordinary surfing. Most people do not need to design for the web. Most people who don't design for the web, and who use PCs, use IE because they're not educated enough on how dangerous it is, despite all the spyware/adware problems. Actually, I'm consistently amazed at how many of the Mac users I work with still prefer IE (Mac edition, of course), despite its ugliness, outdatedness and tendency to choke on perfectly standards-compliant pages. It's like anybody who uses IE long enough, Win or Mac, loses all common sense...
6. Don't really have much to say here about backwards compatibility... I know I have tried to run some older games on a newer PC and usually have problems because the system runs the old game too fast. Classic runs older mac software just fine for me but maybe I'm not trying to run old enough software for the comparison. However this is not really even worth bringing up because a new user of any computer pc or mac is probably not going to go find software from 5 years ago that they would rather use.
New users, no, but I was really referring more generally to the priorities of Apple vs those of PC manufacturers and software companies. I use Macs at work, where we have a large library of old software which I've wanted to use to open old files, and the backwards compatibility thing has been just a tremendously major pain in the ass. Coming from my PC background, that was really something I had to get used to, because, just from experience, I literally
expected -- no,
demanded -- near total compatibility with older products. If something's 10 years old, yeah, ok, maybe I can accept that it won't work -- because the software is long gone, for instance. On the Macs, I've found, even a few years difference between versions of a program can be the difference between having and losing your data. There are other things, again astonishing to me -- like the fact that there are binary incompatibilities between Jaguar and Panther -- that convince me that the kind of respect for 'legacy' stuff that I had come to expect simply isn't a major consideration in the Mac world. That's a cultural issue I think, probably one longtime Mac users wouldn't even realize or consider problematic, but it might be for people unfamiliar with Macs.
