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What can a Mac do a PC can't?

wilsonviz said:
Hi there
My company have announced they're scrapping our macs (boo hiss!):eek: As a dedicated lifer of macs, I know nothing, nada, squat about PCs.
I need to know what features are absolutely unique to a mac, to make a great case for getting mac upgrades.
The virus/stability argument won't wash with the company MD. I need to find other features. I think that multi-tasking is limited on a pc as is font management. Am I correct in saying this? And is there anything else anyone can chip in?
Thanks so much in advance. Save my life! :D
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Won't there be a huge training cost involved? And buying lots of licenses for software? I hope they take that into account. In UK law, your company director is personally responsible for making sure that you are not using any unlicensed software. And I mean _personally_. Lets say that running unlicensed software on your companies computer while at the same time upsetting your employees would be a most foolish move for any company director in the UK, so the move to PCs will have enormous cost involved.

I'd say your MD (is that managing director) is jumping on the PC bandwagon when everyone else is jumping off. Is he new at your company? Just arrived and thinks he has to make a lot of changes? I guess you would get all new PCs running Vista, right? Have fun. I'm feeling for you.

So I wouldn't argue about things that Macs can do and PCs can't, unless you are in a business like graphics, printing, web design and so on. I'd argue about total cost of ownership. New hardware, new software, training, adding support. Moving from Macs to PCs right now is just foolish.
 
clevin said:
well, its kinda correct, I mentioned before. for printers that are compatible with OSX, mac is extremely easy to set up (plug & play!). but for non-compatible printers (probably more than half in the market), its such a pain in the ... and might not work in the end after all

It will eventually come down to OP company's choices pf printers, I doubt installation of driver would be a significant concern tho...
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Here, the PC guys got a new printer. New Dell colour laser. They were all hanging around a PC, trying to figure out how to make it print. I looked at the floor port, wrote down the IP address, went to the Apple web site, Print Menu, Add Printer, typed in the IP address, gave it a name, and printed a lovely coloured page with the new Apple iPod Nanos. Everyone staring at the printer, they couldn't believe it was printing :D
 
gnasher729 said:
Here, the PC guys got a new printer. New Dell colour laser. They were all hanging around a PC, trying to figure out how to make it print. I looked at the floor port, wrote down the IP address, went to the Apple web site, Print Menu, Add Printer, typed in the IP address, gave it a name, and printed a lovely coloured page with the new Apple iPod Nanos. Everyone staring at the printer, they couldn't believe it was printing :D
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You need a new IT staff.
 
I was somewhat lucky,

I asked my people, Why would you buy a computer that only runs one OS?? they argued about price... I took them to the Dell site and we built a Dell baised on the MBP's spec's and it was $175 more... then I showed them the minimum specs for Vista...

My EX boss ended up conning them into buying 2 Dells at a closeout price (just after the Vista release) and running XP on them... Trouble is, he bought the software b/4 the computer... and now the systems crash at least 3 times a week. (He bought software optimized for Vista)

Now they want me to spec out 3 new macs

Don't you love spending other peoples money
 
I do wonder how much of this is made up and how much is real, because if I take it at face value, apparently some of you are staggeringly incompetent and so are your IT staff.
 
Seems to me, most users I encounter really don't have a clue what they're doing, or what the computer is doing for them.
 
don't know about anyone else but mine is true

What frustrates me and my IT staff about windoze is that we can buy 3 brand new identical boxes, with the same pre installed OS, (Dells usually) and turn them on and get two to work on the network and one not after intering the SAME network data in both. Windows just has no sane and repetable structure or procedures.

And try this out for size. Last week Apple came out with 10 updates for everything from iphoto to numbers. A total of 250 MB. Downloaded all and installed with one mouse click and when it was done i DID NOT have to reboot the computer to use them. By the way while they were downloading I was checking e-mail and surfing this site. You can't even install a new mouse driver in windows without a reboot.
 
jlefevre1@mac.c said:
And try this out for size. Last week Apple came out with 10 updates for everything from iphoto to numbers. A total of 250 MB. Downloaded all and installed with one mouse click and when it was done i DID NOT have to reboot the computer to use them. By the way while they were downloading I was checking e-mail and surfing this site. You can't even install a new mouse driver in windows without a reboot.
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You really cannot compare iLife updates to a Windows update. One updates applications and the other updates the OS. A more apt comparision would be an Apple Security Update which does require a reboot. I can update all of my Windows apps without a reboot as well.
 
XheartcoreboyX said:
i dont know about you but its a big huge underlined fact that windows computers freeze alot...my win xp intel core due 2 used to freeze alot for no reasons..and my friend's new computer with vista installed freezes even more..
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As much as I hate to admit it PCs do not freeze left right and center. They only barely freeze more than Macs.
 
In this thread, I've seen a lot of people put down Windows because of a bad experience with it. Then I see that they generally reference that they were using a Dell or some other pre-built. I'm sorry, but pretty much all of the pre-built computers (especially in the cheap range), are crap. They use crappy motherboards, crappy power supply units, crappy hard drives, and crappy memory modules. This is not the fault of Microsoft that you buy crappy hardware that just so happens to have Windows on it.

Then you move into drivers. A lot of errors are caused by a bad installation of drivers or driver incompatability with a program. The most common being video card drivers (and the video card drivers is what gave Vista a bad name). It's not Microsoft's responsibility to provide drivers for your hardware. That is the manufacturer's responsibility, whether it be AMD (ATi), NVidia, Creative, Logitech, ect. However, Windows, unrightfully, gets the blame when these manufacturers pump out poor excuses of drivers.

A lot of pre-built computers also come loaded with bloatware. It makes my mind boggle. This only slows down your computer, but it's generally easy to get rid of and disable.

I built a computer last year (no, not ordered one off the internet that I customized. I put it together piece by piece).

I loaded Windows XP on it, and have only had 2 crashes (due to drivers) since it was built.

I used Windows Vista when it was in RC1, and installed it Febuary 2nd, and since first being introduced to it in RC1 Last October to now, I have not had one computer crash.

I've done everything from run Maple, to games, to 3D Studio Max, to Paint Shop Pro 10, and none of them have caused one problem.

The only problem I have had was with Nvidia's poor excuse of what they call "drivers" for Windows Vista.

I bought a laptop around the same time I built my desktop computer. I haven't had one crash, and I have re-partitioned the hard drive at least 10 times. I am currently dual booting with XP and Vista, and have not had one problem with either one of them. I run Solidworks in XP, and haven't had one problem, except where Solidworks crashed when starting up, but the computer and OS itself stayed rock solid and it was a fault with Solidworks.

I can't see how people can make absurd claims that they can't use Windows for more than a day without crashing. In my experience, when this happens, it is either a hardware/software fault or a problem with the user.

While I don't like MS as a company, their operating system has come a long way since the old Windows 9x/Me and DOS days.
 
Vista is Ok. But XP is very unstable. I have to reinstall every 3 months. Mac is much more stable.

ivnj
 
ivnj said:
Vista is Ok. But XP is very unstable. I have to reinstall every 3 months. Mac is much more stable.
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Uh oh. Here we go again...

Please, previous posters, let's not repeat ourselves. We've got the idea (XP is stable in enterprise and other environments, however some "fools" end up with an unstable system b/c they're idiots. Mac OS X is overrated as far a stability.), although I don't agree...
 
Not-a-cliche said:
As much as I hate to admit it PCs do not freeze left right and center. They only barely freeze more than Macs.
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I find that applications freeze in equal amounts, but the system is brought down MUCH more often on Windows...I regularly use both OSs BTW...
 
psychofreak said:
I find that applications freeze in equal amounts, but the system is brought down MUCH more often on Windows...I regularly use both OSs BTW...
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If you mean an actual system crash (stop error or something) then I agree, but I find that OS X "freezes" much more often than Windows, especially when working with network drives.

I understand that it's apparantly fixed in Leopard, but come on, how can it have taken them 6 or so years to implement multi-threaded connections? It's the absolute most basic "feature" possible when accessing remote data streams and should have been implemented from day zero. If Finder is programmed properly then it should take literally minutes to implement anyway.

It's not really fair to blame Windows for system crashes anyway though. As someone above mentioned, the vast majority of Windows crashes are caused by either bad hardware or bad drivers, not the actual OS itself. I guess it's Windows' large driver base working against itself.
 
Unless your company is interested in Mac Pros, Apple offers no cost effective desktops. Mini and iMac use expensive laptop hardware so they are always more expensive then an equally powerful pc. Currently, the Mac Pro is not a very good buy because Apple has not reduced the price or bumped the specs.

As much as I enjoy OS X, until Apple offers a larger, and complete spectrum of hardware, companies should stick with PCs.
 
I find XP to be pretty darned stable since the advent of SP2.
Now.. if something goes wrong, it typically goes horribly wrong and it's all downhill from there.
I find Vista to be a pain in the ass. Almost a year old and it's still a pain in the ass to install and find the drivers for and use and support.
 
XheartcoreboyX said:
i dont know what the whole topic is,
but as i noticed, a mac can stay for a whole day with no freeze but a pc cannot stay for 10min without 1 atleast,seriously. XD
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i agree here i dont understand why companies are switching to the worse computers like pc's. Oh wait that's right they get a deal with the pc companies so its cheaper to use pc's. greedy idiots:apple::apple::apple::apple:
 
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