PC vs. Mac

A.Blackloch

Ok, I don't know why I post this here, but you've all seen the picture with grumpy old man with grey suit on (referred as PC) and the young relaxed guy (referred as Mac). The Internet is full of all kinds of variations of that picture and there's a playful war going on, which one is the best.

So far I've come into conclusion that PC is generally known as the "Gaming computer" and Mac is the "Professional working computer" for audio/video editors etc. Or at least that's what the users think and try to live with the image.

I'm not taking sides here, I think both systems have advantages if you are used to work with the computer. I personally am a PC user 100% and I've always found Macs really awkward to use.

Roaming somewhere in the depths of the Internet I once again found that grumpy old man and relaxed young guy in picture with a text "Macs are made for such a simple people that no-one even cares to make viruses for them" or something like that and I didn't get that.

Today at work I saw my buddy doing something on his work computer (PC) but he's got a Mac at home and does most of his work with it. I was just checking on him and asked:

"Hey man what's up? What are you doing?"

"Nothing. Just arranging my memory stick." while he kept scrolling through his memory stick.

I was just curious what was going on and  he was literally moving the files inside folders and organising them into straight lines and by file type.

I was about to explode with laughter. It really took some effort from me to calmly say:

"Hey you know with PC you can right click inside folder and choose "auto arrange" etc..."

He then stood up and gave me a brief "F*ck you smart ass" with a smile.

 

 

tvalentine

i agree with you, pc is for gaming and mac is for work/editing. But you will prolly get people saying mac is a gaming computer too and that the mac is soo much better ...... but if the mac is so much better, then why does it need a program (bootcamp is think its called) to run like a pc to play video games? Or even dual boot? If the mac is so great with gaming then they shouldnt need all that stuff.

Ecranomical

Macs are so overrated.

Most people who use them seem to be the ones who really don't know how to use a computer without breaking it, or have an interface that won't allow them to mess anything up.

And you usually hear "its more stable" Which is a load of crap. I've used PCs for everything - with exception to design class - and have only had the blue screen once; and it was mainly my fault. Macs (G5s are the ones I've used) are buggy and stutter. They only seem to handle editing programs because they've got about 8 gigs of ram. Nothing special.

And you hear them, mac users, saying "I can install windows if i want, and you can't do that..." Well then..it will basically be a PC at that point.

 

Lastly: Render Farms/ CG artists and the like use PCs, not macs. The less important stuff, adobe and the like, is done on macs (while i use a PC).

Nihilanth

Personally, I have a Windows desktop for gaming and a MacBook Pro for my laptop, which I use for most work/school related tasks (I'm typing this on a Mac).  To refute the idea that most people who like Macs only do because they're "easier to use" or "harder to fuck up," while this is in part true, it's not all-inclusive.  I use my Mac way more than my PC, and next year I'll be going to Georgia Tech with a major in Computer Science.  I know how to use a computer.

For me, as corny as it may sound, it comes down to more of an "experience" than anything else.  It's something that I think most Mac users are afraid to admit, but I don't think it's anything to be ashamed of.  Let me put it this way: 

When you buy a PC, it can come from any number of retailers in any number of cases and looks with any number of random features and software pre-packaged, whether you want them or not.  Or, you can build it yourself (which is what I did with my gaming desktop), but not really have any warranty or customer support.  For many people, those are good things.  It means there are a lot of different choices when you buy a PC, and you can really get exactly what you want.

When you buy a Mac on the other hand, there are far fewer choices.  When you buy a Mac, it's going to be made by Apple, plain and simple.  There's a very limited number of cases you can get for either a deskop or a laptop, and most of the time the specs you want determine exactly which look you get.  Most of the laptops have the same basic features (such as Webcam, built in Airport card, blah blah) and differ only in the hardware.  The software package is the same for basically all of them, and you don't get a lot of extra crap.  You get iLife, essentiall Mac software, and that's about it.

So then, those seem to be all negatives.  What's the benefit of a Mac?  Well, it's really ally superficial.  There is nothing you can do on a Mac that you can't do on a PC.  What you get is an extremely clean and polished environment to work in, a ton of handy interface features that do nothing big but come in very useful over the long run, an interface that is just nice to look at, a ton of backend support for almost every program on the system, the knowledge that almost everything on a Mac really does "just work," and a handful of other things that may seem unimportant to many people.  All of this adds up to a computing "experience" that after years of working on both Windows and Macs, a Windows machine just can't duplicate. 

And I'm not going to lie, there is some amount of pride in owning a Mac.  I love my laptop and have no problems showing it off to people who actually care (I do agree some Mac people get a little too eccentric.  Macs are not cheap.  Partly because it is such a unified device in that almost everything is made by the same people, the cost to performance ratio is much lower than that of a PC.  So, people who get Macs have to really want one.  They want the interface, the want the easy of use, they want the backend support, they want the performance, but perhaps most of all they simply want the knowledge that they're on a Mac.  To people like myself, that's really all that matters.

So in the end, no there's really no difference in terms of performance between a Mac and a Windows.  In fact, most logic would tell you that a Windows makes more sense because you can run games and some other programs that Macs can't run.  But the fact is, for Mac users who either a) don't care about games or b) have another computer for gaming, that doesn't matter.  There's plenty of support for most commercial programs on the Mac to make it a viable platform, so for us, it's all about the experience.

 

NOTE:  Oh btw, just want to throw this in:  Mac's CAN auto-arrange in grids, you know.  They've been able to for years.  It's just not default.

n25philly

The bottom line is that either a mac or a pc can do anything the other can, especially now that bootcamp is available.

 

Macs are supposedly known for being tops for graphic artists even though the company that sells the most computers to that sector is Dell.  Other than programs that are designed to only work on one OS they are basically the same and even when it comes to exclusive stuff there is always a different program that covers the same functionality even if it's not the big name for that type of program.

 

Now for my opinion, if Apple would stop trying to make OSX be the ultimate anti-windows and make a user interface that was somewhat usable it would be a winner, but until then it's just a clusterf**k of fail.

maskedweasel

A little backstory might be helpful.

A long time ago when PCs started becoming popular and the price began dropping on them they became way more accessible to consumers.

Macs had been around a while, but the problem was that their systems were always more expensive -- primarily because they were way ahead of the PC game.  Their systems were faster, and could do more things. 

When windows became mainstream and overall had more support, became even more accessible, and started making a tremendous impact on the market, Macs wondered why?

Well ultimately Macs continued building better, high priced systems, and in turn they could do things such as video editing, and the like because it took more system resources and could be done more effectively on a Mac.

So yes, Macs were for high end work.  These days its completely different though.  Macs don't show any overall performance differences from PCs except the operating system.  Even the processors are developed by Intel now.   Whereas Macs are supposed to be for "business" don't get that confused with what kind of businesses would use a Mac.  Most businesses would run on a Windows Server anywhere from 2000 to 2008 (I would suspect most on server 2003). And most of them run exchange.

It is possible to have Macs connect but it is much more difficult and you lose features when using the Mac OS X platform. 

So in the business world you'd be more apt to find a complete business of PCs then a complete business using only Mac unless they were something like a video editing company where only individuals worked.

Long story short, For personal use -- the PC is the way to go... for business use -- the PC is the way to go, For a different OS or enhanced standard features -- A PC with Linux is the way to go,  For a more expensive shinier version thats supported somewhat more then a Mac is the way to go.

maskedweasel

Originally posted by Nasica


 
My personal opinion on the matter shows my fustration at modern computing.

I strongly believe that
 
PC >> Mac 

BUT

macOS >> Windows
Unix is just an absolutely brilliant operating system that has stood the test of time for nearly 40 years now.

Windows is nothing but bloatware BS, while Unix is just.... elegant (to use a programmers term).
It is a shame that windows is such a dominant force, dominant purely because of a hyper-aggressive marketing strategy and numerous outright lies, like the claim that win95 was the first multitasking OS when it was neither the first or actually a multitasking operating system.
I have a lot of faith in bitcode and JIT compilers and hope one day these can be implemented at a hardware level so that we can actually have an actual choice in OS for once.

Everyone has a choice in OS.  There are many different versions of Unix, but they all run on a particular standard.  Linux is just a more graphical "Windowized" version of Unix.  Although Unix is more stable, it would be somewhat easier to use for someone like a programmer, but much tougher to use for someone such as home user that just wants to check e-mail.

I use AIX at our office, it runs one of our database programs on it.  I'm amazed at the longetevity Unix brings to the business world.  I could never see a home user ever using it though.

CleffyII

Mac isn't for professionals.  Its for the pompous.  Macs are expensive, and only real advantage is they are user friendly.  Every benefit people list about the mac, Linux can do but even better aside from the user friendly-ness.

I say if you know the insides of a computer, you really shouldn't use a Mac since it would be like locking all the doors to what you can do otherwise.  Also its grossly expensive for what you get.  Personally I prefer dual boot of Ubuntu and Windows.

RAWRG

I think if I were to switch over to mac, I'd miss window's quirks!

PCGamer for life