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Windows PC users' reasons why Macs suck, and why they really don't.All computer platforms have their zealots, fans who are blind to anything else available. The Apple world suffers from Mac Zealots, Linux from Linux Zealots, Windows PC from Windows PC zealots, and they're all the same. "Our favourite platform is the best!", "There is nothing else!" and many other often derogatory comments. I myself used to be an Amiga Zealot. Some zealots, in the best Internet Troll traditions, do this purely for effect, I know no-one able to disregard a zealot-attack. Others do it because they cannot admit their platform of choice has faults, or that other platforms may be good also, or purely out of ignorance. My main beef is currently with Windows PC zealots who know nothing about Macs, have never seriously used one, and continually expel Windows PC 'zealot-ry' rubbish:
The list goes on... I have been a Windows PC user since the 486DX100 was available, and mostly an exclusive Windows user since I moved from my Amigas to a K6-200. I have to admit I was never a fan of Windows and I occasionally tried other, non-Windows, operating systems: OS2 Warp4 (very nice) and various versions and flavours of Linux. Remember, I was spoiled by the Amiga's OS! OS2 Warp4 stayed on my machine for some time, it could run most windows software also. Every time I tried Linux (on an almost yearly basis) I gave up after a month, it was just too painful. The problem was not that I had trouble with Unix but that nothing "gelled" as well as it should. That's when MacOS X appeared! But that's another story, this is about anti-Mac Windows PC zealots. I am relating my answers (or arguments) to the above mentioned anti-Mac comments mostly to laptops.
Macs are too expensive!I recently moved from a Thinkpad 1.6GHz Pentium M T40p running Windows XP Pro to a 15" G4 1.5GHz Powerbook running MacOS X.3.4. I bought an Apple Powerbook (G4 1.5GHz 167MHz FSB, 15" 1280x854, 512MB DDR333 RAM, 128MB ATI 9700, 80GB 5400RPM Hard-drive, DVD Writer, Gigabit LAN, Wireless B/G, Bluetooth, 2.5Kg, 1.1" Thick) for just over $4000 AU. I bought it to replace a 9 month old Thinkpad T40p (1.6GHz Pentium M ???MHz FSB, 14" 1400x1050, 512MB DDR266 RAM, 40GB 5400RPM Hard-drive, CD Writer DVD Reader, Gigabit LAN, Wireless A/B, Bluetooth, 2.5Kg, 1" Thick) which cost just under $5000 AU. Equivalent Thinkpads today are: T42p, which cost $6349 AU (Pentium M 1.8GHz 400MHz FSB(an extra $250 for 2GHz), 15" 1600x1200, ATI FireGL T2 128MB (9600/9700?), 1GB DDR333 RAM, 60GB 7200RPM Hard-drive, DVD Writer, Gigabit LAN, Wireless A/B/G, Bluetooth, Over 2.8Kg, 1.2" Thick) T41p (1.7GHz Pentium M 400MHz FSB, 14" 1400x1050, ATI FireGL T2 128MB, 512MB DDR266 RAM, Gigabit LAN, Wireless A/B/G, Bluetooth, Over 2.4Kg, 1.1" Thick) Macs are more expensive? Compare like with like (i.e. brand name with brand name) and you'll find the Mac costs the same or less. Granted, you can't go to your local parts supplier and build your own cheap box, it's a definite issue. You can still upgrade the RAM, hard-drive Video cards in the desktops (PowerMac range) by going to a parts dealer so it's not all bad. In the past several manufacturers also created CPU upgrade cards.
Macs look stupid!This is of course personal taste. However when you take a good objective look at the design of most Apples you'll see they are very well engineered machines! G4 towers and earlier tower Macs had a simple method to open the case: pull out the "lever" and guide the side of the case to the desk, resulting in very easy access to all the major exchangeable parts. Take a look at the new iMac. The new iMac uses almost no desk space, it has a VESA compliant mounting method, you can hang it on the wall if you want! It has a slot loading CD/DVD drive, nicely hidden on the side. In my opinion it looks great. Think of people in small apartments who can't buy a laptop (too expensive) and don't have the space for a tower, people who are not technically inclined enough to build their own, people who need a computer to be a computer, not a monster gaming machine, an iMac is perfect for these people! When a Windows PC zealot says Macs look stupid ask them to look at how many Windows PC users buy cases that are Apple knock-offs of the latest Mac cases and colours? At the end of it all, it's down to personal taste. You may not like white, you may not like aluminium.
Macs can't play any games!This is simply an untruth. Looking at hardware performance alone the Mac can handle anything you might want to throw at it! There are many games available for the Mac, just take a look at Apple's games site where you can see what has been released and what will be released. Apple does not have an exhaustive list, check the Apple games sites for more. Most popular games are released on the Mac, but usually a few months, and in some cases many months, later. Almost all Quake3 and Unreal/1/2 engine based games are released on the Mac: Quake 3, UT2004, Doom 3 (soon), Star Wars Jedi Knight 1 & 2, Jedi Academy, Star Trek Elite Forces 1 & 2... Some other games (from memory) are XIII (Thirteen), Homeworld 2, Black Hawk Down, Harry Potter, Never Winter Nights, Battlefield 1942, Spiderman 2, Age of Empires... Games perform very well. Just like in the Windows PC world the higher the machine specification the better a game will run. Doom 3 on a dual G5 2.5GHz with 2GB of RAM and an Nvidia GeForce 6800 DDL will look very good, on an eMac G4 it won't look so good. Just like it won't look too good on a Pentium 4/1.6GHz and a GeForce 4. On my 15" G4 1.5GHz Powerbook with an ATI 9700/128 mobility the games I like to play run very well: Jedi Knight 2, Jedi Academy and UT2004 for example. On the negative side there are cases where some very popular games are not released for the Mac. The most important of these being Half-Life (including Counter Strike and Team Fortress Classic) and more recently Farcry. A lot of these publisher or developer decisions will depend on what deals they may have made with other companies. Who is to say that Sierra may not have made a deal with another company to ensure that Half-Life was only released on platforms of that third company's choosing? You never know, and it sucks for Mac gamers.
Macs don't use Windows, and OSX is horrible!Correct on one count: Macs do not use Windows, and thank God for that! Security holes, viruses, spy ware and other horrors like file, OS or disk corruptions. Take a look at the registry, some people think it is actually an advantage Windows has over other operating systems. Corrupt the registry and your machine may not even start! I cannot count the number of file or disk problems I've had with Windows (from 3.11 to XP Pro). I have been lucky in that I am a habitual backup taker. I do not know of any one who has had their entire Mac destroyed by the OS, but I know plenty who have had to re-install windows on a freshly formatted drive. Windows XP is much better than previous Windows incarnations. It is more user-friendly, quicker and looks better than before, but still does not beat OSX when it comes to usability and stability. I have had 1 lockup each on my two Powerbooks. With Windows I had to recover from lockups and various other system crashes almost daily. I have never had to install a driver for any of my hardware for the Mac, but I had to do this for everything I attached to my Windows machines. Now the only time when I reboot my machine it is because a system update or software installation requires it.
No software available for the Mac!Almost everything required is available, bar some CAD programs and the 3D Studio series. Microsoft Access is not available, but this is probably a blessing, use Filemaker (or MySQL solutions) instead. Powerpoint, Word, Excel Photoshop, Lightwave, Maya, Illustrator, Quark, InDesign and Macromedia's suite are all available. There are many more. There are plenty of office suites available: Open Office, Microsoft Office, Appleworks and more. Many Open Source projects are also available. OSX has an implementation of X available which allows easy porting of any UNIX or Linux software. Some of the large applications taken across include Open Office and the Gimp. There are still many legacy systems used by companies that run only on Windows, many of these are developed in-house so won't make an appearance on the Mac. A lost of the new software development is built around web services and Java which means that an increasing amount of in-house developed software will be platform agnostic, and therefore available to run on Mac as well.
Macs suxors Windows!There is no such word as "suxors". Please go away now.
They're only X GHz, My PC is Y GHz!A 1.6GHz Pentium M performs, depending on application, equivalent to a 2.4 GHz Pentium 4 desktop. A 1GHz 15" Powerbook outperformed the T40p on most of my tests . The only test it performed significantly slower was in UT2004. My 1.5GHz G4 has outperformed the T40p in every way. The Pentium M range proves it's not just about MHz or GHz. Intel's Pentium M outperforms a significantly higher clocked Pentium 4.
They're not compatible with any hardware!Couldn't be more wrong. Apple computers all have USB and Firewire, the towers have AGP, PCI or PCI-X slots and can be upgraded to include WiFi and Bluetooth. All these standards are available and peripherals that follow the standard will work. Devices I have personally tried and that are working without problems are:
Macs can't network with Windows!The 15" Powerbook has been successfully connected to the following network types, without problems:
The one network problem I have is that I cannot make Mac OS X use the corporate Exchange mail server. It is possible, I can see the server, I can connect to it, and all email programs I have tried can connect, but cannot log on. Not even Microsoft's own Entourage for Mac OS X works here. This is only due to the IS department's refusal to enable the IMAP service on the Exchange server, one little tick box. The machine that needs Exchange access is using Microsoft's client for Mac OS 9, which is part of Microsoft Office for Mac OS 9.
You can't add/remove/upgrade parts.I have recently added an extra hard-drive to a G4 tower, happens the same way with a Windows PC. Adding or changing a CD/DVD drive is the same. Adding a PCI card or changing the AGP video card works the same as on a windows PC. Adding RAM, well, again, same as on a Windows PC. The slots and connectors are the same everywhere.
Some general comparisons between Powerbooks and Thinkpads.Weight.IBM quotes weight without the optical drive in the removable bay, it is replaced by a plastic dummy device. Apple does not have a removable device bay. The IBM Ultrabay removable device bay can be used for other things such as PDA cradles and secondary hard-drives. Screen resolutions.Apple's screen resolution is lower, no argument, but my main physical complaint with my T40p was that the resolution was too high, I always had it set to "Large Fonts" mode. Take a long look at text on a 14" screen at 1400x1050, it's tiny and my eyes are in great shape! When you connect an external monitor, they all perform at the same high resolutions. If laptop LCD resolutions were twice the dimensions of the 15" Powerbook I would be very happy: I would set my text to the same dimensions but everything would look much sharper. Screen quality.The Powerbook screens are a dream to look at, excellent brightness and colour, much better than the Thinkpads. The lowest brightness setting on the Powerbooks is much brighter than the Thinkpads'. When the Powerbooks are on their minimum brightness they are still bright enough to read, with the Thinkpads this was not the case, most likely something to do with the resolution differences since the Thinkpad screens were not actually bad screens. Keyboard.Thinkpad keyboards are the best in the business. Apple's is certainly not bad, it's very good, but just short of the IBMs. Graphics chips.My T40p had an ATI FireGL 9000, which is an ATI Radeon 9000 with certified OpenGL drivers, performance is the same. The FireGL T2 seems to be based on the Radeon 9600. The Powerbook 17" G4 1.33GHz has a 64MB Radeon 9600 Mobility and the Powerbook 15" G4 1.5GHz has a 128MB Radeon 9700 Mobility. Hard-drive.The Powerbooks and my T40p all have 5400RPM Hard-drives. The T42p has a 7200RPM drive and the T41p most likely also has a 7200RPM drive. The faster hard-drives are the best way to improve performance on a laptop. When I replaced the 4200RPM drive in the A31 Thinkpad with a 5400RPM drive, the machines performance improved greatly, it as basically a new machine! Why Apple does not include a 7200RPM drive in their top machines is a mystery. do know that the 7200RPM drives were very difficult to get hold of about 6 months ago. The hard-drive in the Powerbooks can be upgraded to a 7200RPM drive, just not as a built to order option. To replace the 5400RPM drive with a 7200RPM drive would add about $350 AU to the cost of the laptop. Sound.I am not much of a sound guy, so I can't comment. They all play sound, and no laptop is good at playing music through the internal speakers. Use headphones or a proper amplifier and speaker combination. Ripping music.Music ripping is faster on my Powerbook 15" than my T40p, no question. The newer Thinkpads with DVD Writers and faster CPUs may compete, but I have not had the chance to test the T42p or T41p. My work desktop PC (Dell 3.06GHz HT, 2GB RAM, 7200RPM hard-drive, CD Writer) cannot rip as fast as the Powerbook either. Some things are better on a Windows PC.There are more games, if you care about that, and I do... I'm going to miss Half-Life 2, and I already miss Counter-Strike. Xcode is very good and has it's advantages over Visual Studio.NET, but Visual Studio is still the king of IDEs. Microsoft Access is important to a large number of people and it is not available for the Mac. In my case I just run MySQL, others may want to look at Filemaker.
At the end of it all...There's a reason a software engineer, a website creator, an occasional artist and self-confessed gamer like myself switched to Mac. It's just a better computing experience, I am happy using a computer again, and that's something I haven't really been since the Amiga days. A free quality IDE supported by the OS and hardware manufacturer (Xcode), free and decent graphic editing software (GraphicConverter), lack of viruses, spyware, worms and other malicious bits of software and above all: a system that does not get in the way, a system I do not have to take care of too much. Yes, I could have just switched to GNU/Linux at a much lower cost and received the free IDE and free graphics program and the power of Unix (-like). I've tried, really tried, GNU/Linux on a few occasions and it's just not for me. I know I will get hate mail for this, but in my opinion GNU/Linux is just not finished yet, it doesn't offer the end-user environment I want, and already had with the Amiga. When it is, it will most likely be the first or second most popular OS. It's already the most popular server OS. Currently Apple just offers the best integrated hardware/software system there is, not GNU/Linux, not Microsoft. In a few days I will post a conclusion to my switch experience, but for now you can read about my switch in my blog. |
email jeroen Other MonthsApril 2006September 2004 August 2004 July 2004 June 2004 May 2004 April 2004
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