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Why would I want a Mac?/Why would I not?


Guest $iLk
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I know I'd be shooting myself in the foot were I to desire using it as a gaming rig.

But in terms of office, interoperability, connectivity, creativity, etc. - why would I - or would I not want to try out the Mac?

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well in my experience with macs and PC's I'd say just go with a pc.

Macs don't really do things any better than a pc in terms of speed from my point of view.

The biggest thing seems to be you pay big bucks for the design and OS eyecandy. It doesn't seem to be any more stable than XP (I have apps crash several times a day and a network failure leave the whole thing hanging)

Macs are good if you just want to have a nice looking system and want most things done for you but I just don't see the point of spening the money they want for them when you can get a comperable PC for less.

And yes I use a mac and a PC side by side every day of the week.

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I wanted it mainly for photo, movie, music use. I figured it could do most of the 'useful' oriented things and I could use my PC strictly for gaming (thus freeing up lots of space).

The iMac G5 or whatever that is like $1700 looks so pretty also.

Are there really any glaring compatibility issues I would run into using a Mac?

Such as maybe my Borland Delphi programming, or Visual C++ programming setups?

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quote:

Originally posted by $iLk:

I know I'd be shooting myself in the foot were I to desire using it as a gaming rig.

But in terms of office, interoperability, connectivity, creativity, etc. - why would I - or would I not want to try out the Mac?

It used to be that if you have a need for Graphics, the Mac's ability to handle large graphics files with ease, made it a clear winner when putting together graphics, such as ads and such. However, with the MAJOR graphics advances in the PC, that is no longer the case. Adobe Photoshop now runs faster on comparable PC's than they do in Macs. However, with the entrenched position of Macs in the Graphics world, if I want several companies to bid on my printing needs, then I had better have the graphics in Mac files. Even though files are "supposed" to be compatible between the two formats, many times certain fonts end up looking different or out of alignment when they are done on the PC and converted over to a Mac file for your printer. For this reason, we have Macs in the Office for the Graphics department and PC's for everyone else.

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You can buy an external drive that fits right under the Mac Mini from Lacie.

http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?pid=10475

If you want to get a cheap mac and have a lot of hard disk space, I'd actually recommend going this route, as getting a PowerMac and upgrading it will be costly. As for the iMac; unless they changed the playing field for the iMac G5, there is only one slot for a hard disk, so you'd probably have to get an external to upgrade it anyways.

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In my experience from student laptops I work on, every time someone brings in a mac laptop it takes about five minutes to get them set up for school. All ive got to do is install office and set up their wireless connection (should they have one) on their laptop.

Now compare this to a laptop running windows which takes at least 20 minutes to get it set up for school work (office, antivirus, updates, blah blah)--that is assuming the laptop is new and not something that had problems to begin with.

The only problem ive got with macs is one of their laptops a friend of mine recently bought costs twice what I paid for my CAR! If you are serious about having a machine for office use, get the mac.

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quote:

Originally posted by Carl Burning:

If you are serious about having a machine for office use, get the mac.

Now of course, if you will be actually using it for work, it may not be so easy. What happens if you need to run Quickbooks? Or Goldmine? or Act? Most productivity software is ONLY made for PC's so, it's not so easy to say yeah let's just run only Macs.

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That is indeed something that is a concern. Glaring compatibilty issues are a concern. I need to find appropriate alternative programs. I'm not worried about compatibility because I have a WIndows PC if it's necessary to open a certain file.

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I would wait. the new version of OSX on the way is going to run on Intel archatecture instead of Power PC which is going to make even more compatability isues with the old power pc stuff.

In my years of using macs and PC's side by side I have found almost nothing that would make me use a mac over a PC other than "it looks cooler" If you are desperate for the OSX interface wait a few months and build a PC that can dual boot both OSX and Windows or just mod you windows interface.

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quote:

Originally posted by Darkling:

Now of course, if you will be actually using it for work, it may not be so easy. What happens if you need to run Quickbooks? Or Goldmine? or Act? Most productivity software is ONLY made for PC's so, it's not so easy to say yeah let's just run only Macs.

Thats not true. Not nearly true at all. There are more than enough equivilents to cover ALL of those pieces of software. Quickbooks even has a Mac version out this very moment, in its 7th version as well. Depending on what you're doing, its extremely easy to say "let's just run only Macs." Education for example, gets a big boost when you use Macintosh.

Here at my college, our Mac labs need maintaining 3 or 4 times a year, and students prefer them because they work instantly... you don't have to deal with finding a computer that doesn't have a virus or spyware on it. The Dell labs are neglected by students for the most part, primarily becuase they'll be working for one week (after somebody goes in and fixes them) and an hour later they'll be infected again because some student doesn't know what the hell their doing. It hampers education; right now were fending off W32.Spybot and Norton Antivirus isn't doing its part very well.

quote:

Originally posted by $ilk:

I read that Apple was taking out non-proprietary hardware support?


I doubt it. The x86 PowerMac G5 we have at work actually has the same x800 video card that many of us wish we had. If they took out non-proprietary hardware support they'd kill a lot of their market.

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quote:

Originally posted by Cmdr. WeeGee:

=Thats not true. Not nearly true at all. There are more than enough equivilents to cover ALL of those pieces of software. Quickbooks even has a Mac version out this very moment, in its 7th version as well. Depending on what you're doing, its extremely easy to say "let's just run only Macs." Education for example, gets a big boost when you use Macintosh.

Sorry thinking about Linux when it comes to Quickbooks. Either way, a lot of my customers use things like Lotus Notes (Most Banks), Goldmine (Most Sales Organizations), Sales Logix (Again Sales Organizations) Accpac (Wholesalers). I could go on and on, there is no credible comparible software for Mac. Show me ONE program that could do everything that Goldmine or Lotus Notes can do? There isn't any. Most software vendors concentrate on Graphics programs for Macs, no getting around that. How many Enterprises have a fleet of Macs? No one and I'll tell you why. If I want to roll out an installation to 1000 PC's in a company, all I need to do is write an MSI package and a group policy to install it, but there's is no way to do that in a Mac, you have to go in there One by one to install the software. That is the reason why you will never see enterprises switching to Macs.

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Darkling... have you used a Mac using OSX for more than a week? For starters... most of the truly useful features of Notes are built into OS X, as with any UNIX OS currently. Notes is simply a nice looking wrapper for an LDAP client.

I don't know about the other programs; Goldmine I believe has a very popular Mac equivilent but I'm not sure. I need to research it further.

Macs are also in the Enterprise environment, they're just not as prevalent, mostly because of their cost. Their American Enterprise market is also extremely small because of Microsoft's dominance in the 1990's here.

There are package management systems for Macs, ones that were out there BEFORE Microsoft copied the UNIX and Mac world with the .MSI packages. Even here at school we don't use the .MSI system because its inheriently broken and has security vulnerabilites that make our resident paranoid have nightmares.

The group management for Macs is the same group management used with all BSD UNIX computers; again, which as an Administrator, I love compared to the crummy "Group Policy Manager" that comes with the NT line of Windows. Apple even includes a decent GUI for managing users, something BSD doesn't by default.

You USED to have to go one by one to install software... those days are long gone since OS X is BSD based. Application push has been in UNIX and Mac for years before Microsoft even dreamt of it.

Please, do a little more research before you start debunking something; I haven't debunked Windows nearly at all... just simply stated facts. The last thing this conversation needs to erupt into is a WINDOWS IS BETTER THAN MAC flame war.

EDIT: One last thing... Graphics Programs arn't the main concentration in OS X, they were for OS9 and earlier though. OS X has taken a much broader aspect on the Desktop, and now you can actually find some of the most powerful DataBase applications for it, some spectacular Programming Environments, and the entire Microsoft Office Suite even runs better on a Mac than on any of our PCs here.

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quote:

Originally posted by $iLk:

I dunno... MP3 collection + movies to edit + other user files...

Can it be upgraded you think?

I fill up my 120GB drive every few weeks.

Storage is always upgradeable, either replace the internal drive or go with an external firewire/USB drive.

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quote:

Originally posted by Cmdr. WeeGee:

Darkling... have you used a Mac using OSX for more than a week? For starters... most of the truly useful features of Notes are built into OS X, as with any UNIX OS currently. Notes is simply a nice looking wrapper for an LDAP client.

So what you're telling me is that Enterprises are paying me 10's of thousands of dollars to Implement Lotus Notes for them, when all they had to do was get a simple LDAP program. Boy I guess these guys are REALLY Stupid. Oh Wait, I forgot, the main reason they buy Lotus notes is because of the ability to log every transaction, every note change with a time and date stamp of the user that created it. So THIS is the reason that people buy it. Same thing with Goldmine. If you change a phone number on a contact, a history record is created that says that you changed the phone number from 123 to 456, whatever. Also, if I want to fax a document to my customer, I go to the Document center and right click on the document that I want and right click fax, BOOM, Goldmine uses a word template that automatically merges information into the document from the Contact that I'm working on, then passes it off to either Faxnow!, Faxrush, RightFax, or one of several other programs made to work with it. This is something you CAN'T do on a Mac, unless you're wiling to write all the code yourself.

quote:

Originally posted by Cmdr. WeeGee:

Please, do a little more research before you start debunking something; I haven't debunked Windows nearly at all... just simply stated facts. The last thing this conversation needs to erupt into is a WINDOWS IS BETTER THAN MAC flame war.

When did I say that Windows is better than Mac? OS/2 was FAR SUPERIOR to both Windows AND Mac's, did it make it the right computer to buy for Business? NO, because other than Notes, there was no REAL business software written for it. Of course I'm talking about generalities here, I'm not talking about individual circumstances. My Grandmother wanted a Computer to surf the web and check her email, so I bought her an inexpesive Lindows Machine, so she wouldn't have to worry about viruses. As I've said before, my graphics department uses Macs for building ads. To tell the truth, if I could find a good replacement for my Goldmine system, I would get rid of my Windows Machines for my salespeople, but the truth is, that there isn't ANYTHING like Goldmine Available for Mac's or Linux, Unix or anything else, unless again, I want to spend 100 grand writing a custom program. I even tried looking for something so I can simply run Linux clients off Terminal Servers, but there isn't any version of Remote Desktop for Linux that can redirect Printers, unless I want to upgrade to Citrix, which would cost me an additional $2000.00 in licensing. What do you think that I'm some kid in college, studying business, NO! I live in the REAL world, where you have to use what's available REGARDLESS of who makes it, Bill Gates included, because if you don't use that advantage, your competition sure as hell will and eat your lunch while they're at it.

quote:

Originally posted by Cmdr. WeeGee:

EDIT: One last thing... Graphics Programs arn't the main concentration in OS X, they were for OS9 and earlier though. OS X has taken a much broader aspect on the Desktop, and now you can actually find some of the most powerful DataBase applications for it, some spectacular Programming Environments, and the entire Microsoft Office Suite even runs better on a Mac than on any of our PCs here.

Well for someone who only needs MS Office to work, that's fantastic, but for everyone else, that doesn't really cut it. OSX will continue to be extremely strong in Graphics, because no one is going to stop producing the graphics programs that they've made for Macs for years, simply because the numbers on the OS has changed.

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quote:

Originally posted by Darkling:

So what you're telling me is that Enterprises are paying me 10's of thousands of dollars to Implement Lotus Notes for them, when all they had to do was get a simple LDAP program. Boy I guess these guys are REALLY Stupid. Oh Wait, I forgot, the main reason they buy Lotus notes is because of the ability to log every transaction, every note change with a time and date stamp of the user that created it. So THIS is the reason that people buy it. Same thing with Goldmine. If you change a phone number on a contact, a history record is created that says that you changed the phone number from 123 to 456, whatever. Also, if I want to fax a document to my customer, I go to the Document center and right click on the document that I want and right click fax, BOOM, Goldmine uses a word template that automatically merges information into the document from the Contact that I'm working on, then passes it off to either Faxnow!, Faxrush, RightFax, or one of several other programs made to work with it. This is something you CAN'T do on a Mac, unless you're wiling to write all the code yourself.

A lot of the reason for companies to buy Lotus Notes is A) The Support; basic LDAP is GREATLY unsupported and B) most LDAPs are extremely difficult to implement without a nice GUI like Notes offers. LDAPs for UNIX have logging that logs with everything else on a UNIX system, not quite sure about Windows LDAPs though. You can't find an efficient LDAP for Windows, unless you look at $10k+ software like Notes. It just can't be found.

Like I said though, I don't know enough about Goldmine, its not my field, but I'm still looking into alternatives. It sounds to me like its a Database working in tandem with a Office Suite, tailored specfically for managing customer data which there are viable solutions for Mac. 4D comes to mind; although 4D requires years of training as its nothing like any other Database you can find.

quote:

Originally posted by Darking:

When did I say that Windows is better than Mac? OS/2 was FAR SUPERIOR to both Windows AND Mac's, did it make it the right computer to buy for Business? NO, because other than Notes, there was no REAL business software written for it. Of course I'm talking about generalities here, I'm not talking about individual circumstances. [...] I even tried looking for something so I can simply run Linux clients off Terminal Servers, but there isn't any version of Remote Desktop for Linux that can redirect Printers, unless I want to upgrade to Citrix, which would cost me an additional $2000.00 in licensing. What do you think that I'm some kid in college, studying business, NO! I live in the REAL world, where you have to use what's available REGARDLESS of who makes it, Bill Gates included, because if you don't use that advantage, your competition sure as hell will and eat your lunch while they're at it.

I misunderstood your direction. Your original postings came off a bit as "Mac OS X sucks".

As for the printer thing with Linux Terminals, you might want to look into CUPS Networking a little further, but I'm pretty sure depending on your configuration you should be able to redirect to your printers rather easily, since printer selection can be set in a users group configuration. They just need to be CUPS supported. I know Sun Microsystems includes some extra software for doing just this... but migrating to a Sun thin-client system is equal to commiting ritual suicide unless you know what the hell your doing....... which even Sun Techs barely have a clue.

There are always alternatives, often they are too different for a massive change. It really depends on your network you'd be deploying to. I'm sure you'd find the Customer Management Software for 4D extremely different from Goldmine.

It all comes down to if you've gotten yourself comfortable or not. If your comfortable, don't switch; it'd be a dangerous move with your company to migrate to another system. The idea is getting companies when their starting, you'll have them forever. Microsoft, Sun, Novell... they all do it.

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That's not the only issue. When you have entrenched apps (Like Goldmine, Notes, Act, Accpac) and you want to bring in someone new, usually there's no problem finding replacement workers. Now, you have an exotic app running your business, EVERY person that walks in the door needs to be fully trained. Not just what's different from your installation, but the works. That can be VERY time consuming.

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