Whats so good about MAC laptops?

danish pasterys

Dont wanna start a big heated arguement here because I know how serious people take this stuff, but I just want to know why an apple mac laptop is supposedly so much better than other laptops other than there nice sleek look dosent it do the same thing as another laptop with the same specs

Why are they so much more expensive?
Fare enough if they last alot alot longer than other laptops, are they the fastest laptop on the market ?

VincentLeB

If another laptop has the same specs, then yes, they are more or less the same. It just comes down to whether you like the software on a Mac compared to Windows.

But even if a laptop has similar specs, there are some things which are pretty unique to Apple. The build quality is just so much better. Like pick up most laptops and they'll bend slightly and the plastic will creak and stuff. With Apple, you have a whole metal body in one piece that has been cut out of aluminium. If you don't need this — fine — but you'd pay the same price from another manufacturer if they did a unibody construction.

The keyboard and the trackpad are really, really good too. Like the trackpad is all glass and it's ridiculously smooth. Try spending a few weeks with the trackpad on a Mac laptop and you'll go mad trying to use one on another computer.

So to answer your questions: Macs are not that much more expensive than laptops which have similar specs. And if they are, it is probably because the build quality is a bit better. The point being: Apple don't make cheap laptops. They're not really more expensive — they just don't cater for the lower end.

But having said that, Macbook Airs are better than anything you'll get in their class or price range. They have TWELVE hours of battery life in something that is so light, sturdy, thin and beautiful. They have all flash SSDs, which means they have much less moving parts than comparable laptops with spinning hard drives.

yer man!

I often think a windows fanatic views apple a lot like this

For the record I think they're great. I Bought mine for college and for the reason that it was slim and had amazing battery life. 3 years on and my MacBook Pro still gets 7 hours of life on single charge is is more than fast enough for what I need right now.

Torqay

danish pasterys wrote: »

Fare enough if they last alot alot longer than other laptops, are they the fastest laptop on the market ?

They don't last longer than other laptops.

They're far from being the fastest laptops on the market. On the contrary, the best graphics you'll get with a MacBook Pro is a 1GB Nvidia GT 650M, which is, well, rubbish.

VincentLeB

Torqay wrote: »

They don't last longer than other laptops.

They're far from being the fastest laptops on the market. On the contrary, the best graphics you'll get with a MacBook Pro is a 1GB Nvidia GT 650M, which is, well, rubbish.

Funnily enough, when most people talk about things being fast, they're talking about the user experience, not some arbitrary graphics spec. People do the same thing when it comes to iPhones vs. Android phones. But when it comes down to user experience (as in, touch latency), the iPhone, even with it's pettier RAM and slower processor wins out in actual experience and speed.

And even if we were to look at specs to determine how fast something is, we'd come to the RAM, processor, and SSD before we'd get to the graphics card unless we're talking about graphics-heavy stuff.

What's even funnier, though, is that Macbook Pros are the laptops of choice for people doing graphics-intensive stuff. So looks like it's a moot point no matter what way you look at it.

Akrasia

Apples only have one mouse button, therefore, they're annoying as hell to work with.

I'm including the laptops, desktops and Iphones in this.

I had to use an Imac in college a few years ago and the mouse just pissed me off. They tried to pretend they had one mouse button but they had workarounds (to zoom in you could cover two bits on both sides of the mouse, how is that not worse than just pressing the middle mouse button???)

Graham

You will also find a mac laptop has something else that almost no other laptop has. A residual value.

stimpson

Akrasia wrote: »

Apples only have one mouse button, therefore, they're annoying as hell to work with.

I'm including the laptops, desktops and Iphones in this.

I had to use an Imac in college a few years ago and the mouse just pissed me off. They tried to pretend they had one mouse button but they had workarounds (to zoom in you could cover two bits on both sides of the mouse, how is that not worse than just pressing the middle mouse button???)

Your sig is apt. The Magic Mouse has 1 button, but it works like 2 depending on the finger you use to click. Plus it's an entire touch surface. You can do some pretty impressive things with 3rd party apps.

As for them lasting longer, my 4 year old unibody MacBook runs 10.8. Looks like it will run Mavericks too. Last year I sold a 5 year old Mac Mini for €250. They definitely last longer and hold their value better.

Akrasia

stimpson wrote: »

Your sig is apt. The Magic Mouse has 1 button, but it works like 2 depending on the finger you use to click. Plus it's an entire touch surface. You can do some pretty impressive things with 3rd party apps.

And Chun Lee can do lots of cool moves, but most people who pick her just do the kick kick kick. The standard 2 or 3 button mouse works extremely well. Having a second button on a touchpad/phone/mouse allows one button for selecting objects, and the other for interacting with them. That is better than having to learn off a load of gestures to do the same thing as a simple 'right click'

Apple put style over usability sometimes and I don't like it. Other people do, but I don't.

Graham

Akrasia wrote: »

The standard 2 or 3 button mouse works extremely well. Having a second button on a touchpad/phone/mouse allows one button for selecting objects, and the other for interacting with them. That is better than having to learn off a load of gestures to do the same thing as a simple 'right click'

Apple put style over usability sometimes and I don't like it. Other people do, but I don't.

Good point, extra buttons always work better. Just ask Nokia/Blackberry, ohhhhh wait. :pac:

Akrasia

Graham wrote: »

Good point, extra buttons always work better. Just ask Nokia/Blackberry, ohhhhh wait.

You can have too many buttons, and you can have two few buttons. I like to use machines with just the right number of buttons

stimpson

Akrasia wrote: »

And Chun Lee can do lots of cool moves, but most people who pick her just do the kick kick kick. The standard 2 or 3 button mouse works extremely well. Having a second button on a touchpad/phone/mouse allows one button for selecting objects, and the other for interacting with them. That is better than having to learn off a load of gestures to do the same thing as a simple 'right click'

Apple put style over usability sometimes and I don't like it. Other people do, but I don't.

You can use it as a 2 button mouse by clicking on the left side of the button. I don't know why you have such difficulty with it.

Graham

Akrasia wrote: »

You can have too many buttons, and you can have two few buttons. I like to use machines with just the right number of buttons

stimpson wrote: »

I don't know why you have such difficulty with it.

The extra buttons are probably required to make Chun Lee go kick kick kick.

For real work though, I find a trackpad more comfortable. Each to their own I guess.

Getting back to the OP, after a day or two of use you won't find the trackpad vastly different to similar trackpads on any modern laptop other than multi-touch is implemented well.

Tony EH

danish pasterys wrote: »

Dont wanna start a big heated arguement here because I know how serious people take this stuff, but I just want to know why an apple mac laptop is supposedly so much better than other laptops other than there nice sleek look dosent it do the same thing as another laptop with the same specs

Why are they so much more expensive?
Fare enough if they last alot alot longer than other laptops, are they the fastest laptop on the market ?

Because Apple make them. That's all.

If you're thinking of getting a laptop, be sure it'll suit your needs. If you want to surf the web and look at email and join the "kewl" gang, then by all means get a mac.

But if you want to actually do some work and be able to share that work with others, to move files between different types of machines without hassle and to generally be more compatable with others you are working with, then get a windows based machine.

Also, they don't last a lot longer than "other" laptops and they are hideously overpriced.

In their defence, they are made well and they do look nice, but if I have to do work of any kind, I'll choose a windows machine any day of the week.

stimpson

Tony EH wrote: »

But if you want to actually do some work and be able to share that work with others, to move files between different types of machines without hassle and to generally be more compatable with others you are working with, then get a windows based machine.

What work can you do that you can't on OSX?

I have Macs and windows boxes at home and I have no problem sharing between them. You obviously haven't used a Mac in some time.

Akrasia

Tony EH wrote: »

But if you want to actually do some work and be able to share that work with others, to move files between different types of machines without hassle and to generally be more compatable with others you are working with, then get a windows based machine.

I don't know if they've fixed this now, but when I was handing in my Masters dissertation to the printers (in 2008), a 50,000 word document that was prepared on the Apple version of MS Word, the formatting was all incompatable with the Windows version of MS Word so the pages didn't print right.

At the last minute, I had to basically re-edit the entire document on a windows machine to make sure the page numbers, footers, diagrams and charts etc were all in the right place.

It was very stressful

Dubdude

Akrasia wrote: »

I don't know if they've fixed this now, but when I was handing in my Masters dissertation to the printers, a 50,000 word document that was prepared on the Apple version of MS Word, the formatting was all incompatable with the Windows version of MS Word so the pages didn't print right.

At the last minute, I had to basically re-edit the entire document on a windows machine to make sure the page numbers, footers, diagrams and charts etc were all in the right place.

It was very stressful

Why didn't you just create a pdf of it??

JoseyMosey

What gets me about a Mac laptop is the incredible prices you have to pay here in Ireland. Even with the postage, there's a huge saving just looking on Ebay at the UK prices compared to what you can buy them for retail here. Shop around.
They are nice bits of kit though.

pistolpetes11

Torqay wrote: »

They don't last longer than other laptops.

They're far from being the fastest laptops on the market. On the contrary, the best graphics you'll get with a MacBook Pro is a 1GB Nvidia GT 650M, which is, well, rubbish.

Ive used PC's most of my life until 7 years ago , Well I still do to an extent but 90% of my usage would be on a Mac,

I do live visual graphics shows using a program called Arkaos or Resolume ,

I Cant remember the exact model numbers but I got a top of the Range Acer Machine about 8 years ago to run my shows , and it was brilliant , so good I got a second one to mix across.

Both machines after around 8 months started to give a lot of trouble , constant warranty repairs from motherboards to fans and screens, after 12 months they would not entertain the machines any more and they both packed in one after the other.

A friend told me to try the MacBook Pro ,it was dam expensive for what it was spec wise ,

7 years on and that Macbook has now been retired to home use and he indoors still uses it on a daily basis with out any hassle ,

Now the build quality may have been bad on the Acer Model I got and you will get everyone with good and bad stories but for me, for Professional work (A/V work) I would not look past a Mac ,

For a simple home use machine I think they are a bit if a luxury.

Tony EH

stimpson wrote: »

What work can you do that you can't on OSX?

I have Macs and windows boxes at home and I have no problem sharing between them. You obviously haven't used a Mac in some time.

Not since last year no, but I doubt that they've changed much in that time, wouldn't you.

In short, they're just awkward. I had endless problems with sending files to PC users. I had to use a zip cleaner before I sent any zips. Files would be incompatible if created on the macbook and then sent to PC users in some other office.

The half assed versions of the Office suite was a bit of a joke too and considering I was working with a lot of documents, under hefty time constraints, it made life hell.

Plus "Finder" is, in short a load of bollocks. It's nowhere near the tool that "Explorer" is.

On the whole, it was just a pain in the arse.

Macs appeal to the "It looks nice" and the "Anti-Microsoft" brigade, but I certainly wouldn't use one out of choice, not for any kind of intensive work, that's for sure.

stimpson

It's a little more than ironic that you both complain about Office for Mac, which is a Microsoft product (FWIW, I'm not anti-MS - I use a Win 8 machine in work). Pages works better than Word on the Mac and will provide better compatibility with Word. In fairness, I've had formatting issues on different Windows versions of Word.

Like I said, I've had no issues on my home setup transferring between Mac and PC - the current implementation of Samba works pretty well on the Mac.

If you think Explorer is a well engineered piece of software then you have bigger problems. It has improved considerably in Win7/8, but I've still had it hang for 5-10 seconds while doing things like trying to connect to a network share, invoke a context menu etc. I use Total Commander on Windows because Explorer sucks so bad. I'm not crazy about Finder either, but it's head and shoulders above Explorer for general usability.

Torqay

VincentLeB wrote: »

What's even funnier, though, is that Macbook Pros are the laptops of choice for people doing graphics-intensive stuff.

Surely you do not mean 3D modelling or gaming, because such "intensive stuff" requires graphics power a Macbook simply does not possess.

This argument was only true in the days when the Macintosh with Quark Xpress was the King of the DTP-Hill... a time long bygone.

Tony EH

stimpson wrote: »

It's a little more than ironic that you both complain about Office for Mac, which is a Microsoft product (FWIW, I'm not anti-MS - I use a Win 8 machine in work). Pages works better than Word on the Mac and will provide better compatibility with Word. In fairness, I've had formatting issues on different Windows versions of Word.

Like I said, I've had no issues on my home setup transferring between Mac and PC - the current implementation of Samba works pretty well on the Mac.

If you think Explorer is a well engineered piece of software then you have bigger problems. It has improved considerably in Win7/8, but I've still had it hang for 5-10 seconds while doing things like trying to connect to a network share, invoke a context menu etc. I use Total Commander on Windows because Explorer sucks so bad. I'm not crazy about Finder either, but it's head and shoulders above Explorer for general usability.

Nonsense. Finder is a fraction of what Explorer is, warts and all. There's no competition whatsoever.

And of course Office is a Microsoft product, so what? The fact is, is that the vast majority of the worlds businesses uses microsoft's suites, so when people are working, regardless of which hardware they're using, they'll be in contact with those microsoft suites, whether they like it or not. I'm sitting here in front of an Excel sheet and I can't say I'm too happy about it.

But what I am happy about is that it's on a Windows 7 PC.

Because I know that when I send it off to someone else, I won't have to worry about whether they can use it or not.

Tony EH

Originally Posted by VincentLe
What's even funnier, though, is that Macbook Pros are the laptops of choice for people doing graphics-intensive stuff.

Torqay wrote: »

Surely you do not mean 3D modelling or gaming, because such "intensive stuff" requires graphics power a Macbook simply does not possess.

This argument was only true in the days when the Macintosh with Quark Xpress was the King of the DTP-Hill... a time long bygone.

This hoary old cliche gets dragged out time and time again and falls flat on its face every time it comes into contact with someone who knows what they're talking about.

There's NOTHING a mac can do that a PC can't.

MadYaker

I like the user interface, maybe I'm just used to using macs but I find it much more intuitive than windows, and I have a windows PC at home. I also like the build quality.

Torqay

pistolpetes11 wrote: »

A friend told me to try the MacBook Pro ,it was dam expensive for what it was spec wise ,

7 years on and that Macbook has now been retired to home use and he indoors still uses it on a daily basis with out any hassle ,

Now the build quality may have been bad on the Acer Model I got and you will get everyone with good and bad stories but for me, for Professional work (A/V work) I would not look past a Mac

So? I have a 10 year old Dell Latitude in pristine condition here, 1440x900 WXGA display, Pentium M 2.1 GHz, 1 GB RAM, 64 GB PATA SSD, the works... a real trooper.

Personally, I wouldn't touch anything Acer with a 12 ft barge pole but there are PC makers who build quality and longevity that even surpasses Apple (and are still cheaper).

bobjohn82

I am not an apple fan boy at all - I don't like the iPhone one bit, but when it comes to the MacBook, I personally think it's way ahead. My overall experience is it just feels faster. When it boots you can use it instantly, unlike windows where you have to spend 3 minutes watching the desktop in that pretend ready state. I have a decent spec windows laptop too (HP dv7) and the comparison is night and day. After 18 months the battery is dead and it has to be plugged in all the time. Everything is laggy. On the mac when you start a program it starts instantly. It's just ready and you can start working. I'm not a gamer, so I can't comment on that but I am a software developer and I have never had any performance issues. The MacBook Pro I have is about 4 years old too. I never got that long out of a windows machine.

I don't think software wise there is any transition really. Most stuff is there on the mac with a similar interface. Design wise I don't have a preference over OS X / Windows (though I haven't try win 8 yet). I would just go with the MacBook for speed (not better hardware - actual responsiveness you can notice immediately).

Having said all that, maybe I've just been very unlucky with all the windows machines I've had. But I don't intend to spend another grand finding out.

stimpson

Tony EH wrote: »

There's NOTHING a mac can do that a PC can't.

Off the top of my head:

- run OSX and Windows natively
- develop for iOS devices
- run without anti virus software
- run without constantly hanging
- automate common desktop tasks
- run spell check and dictionary from any edit box in any app
- retrieve any old version of any file
- instantly view the contents of a file in Finder
- make voice or video calls to any other mac or iOS device out of the box
- create an encrypted file store anywhere in the file system
- create a PDF from any app you can print from


Sorry it took me so long to reply. IE crashed and it had to be killed in Task Manager, which itself took 20 seconds to wake up from (Not Responding)...

Tony EH

stimpson wrote: »

Off the top of my head:

- run OSX and Windows natively
- develop for iOS devices
- run without anti virus software
- run without constantly hanging
- automate common desktop tasks
- run spell check and dictionary from any edit box in any app
- retrieve any old version of any file
- instantly view the contents of a file in Finder
- make voice or video calls to any other mac or iOS device out of the box
- create an encrypted file store anywhere in the file system
- create a PDF from any app you can print from

Sorry it took me so long to reply. IE crashed and it had to be killed in Task Manager, which itself took 20 seconds to wake up from (Not Responding)...Yeh right

- run OSX and Windows natively <---- Big deal
- develop for iOS devices <---- Big deal and thats only because it's locked down by apple.

- run without anti virus software <---- Big deal, get an antivirus program (some are free. I use Avast and have never had a virus on any machine I use)

- run without constantly hanging <---- Not true
- automate common desktop tasks <---- I'm sure if I was bothered to look into it, I could find the same for PCs. There are plenty of automated tasks happening right now on my PC.

- run spell check and dictionary from any edit box in any app<---- PCs can do this too, I have a spellchecker running for this site.

- retrieve any old version of any file <---- eh?

- instantly view the contents of a file in Finder <---- Big deal

- make voice or video calls to any other mac or iOS device out of the box <---- Big deal

- create an encrypted file store anywhere in the file system <---- PCs can't do this?

- create a PDF from any app you can print from <----PCs can't do this?

Nothing above is earth shattering and I'd wonder if half of what you've listed is nonsense.

Besides, I was talking in context about "people doing graphics-intensive stuff" which was the comment being remarked upon.

stimpson

Tony EH wrote: »

- run OSX and Windows natively <---- Big deal
- develop for iOS devices <---- Big deal and thats only because it's locked down by apple.

- run without anti virus software <---- Big deal, get an antivirus program (some are free. I use Avast and have never had a virus on any machine I use)

- run without constantly hanging <---- Not true
- automate common desktop tasks <---- I'm sure if I was bothered to look into it, I could find the same for PCs. There are plenty of automated tasks happening right now on my PC.

- run spell check and dictionary from any edit box in any app<---- PCs can do this too, I have a spellchecker running for this site.

- retrieve any old version of any file <---- eh?

- instantly view the contents of a file in Finder <---- Big deal

- make voice or video calls to any other mac or iOS device out of the box <---- Big deal

- create an encrypted file store anywhere in the file system <---- PCs can't do this?

- create a PDF from any app you can print from <----PCs can't do this?

Nothing above is earth shattering and I'd wonder if half of what you've listed is nonsense.

Besides, I was talking in context about "people doing graphics-intensive stuff" which was the comment being remarked upon.

Just because you say you don't want a function doesn't mean it's not important to other people. The fact that you don't know about Time Machine makes me wonder how long it's been since you used a Mac.

And let's be clear - you said there was NOTHING a Mac could do that a PC couldn't, which is obviously nonsense. All that stuff is done out of the box with no additional software required.

Most of the artists I worked with (I used to be in games and have developed for Mac, Windows, iOS and Android) use Macs for 2D stuff and DTP. 3D modelling was done in ZBrush with a desktop PC, loads of RAM and an expensive graphics card because it was cheaper, but it's also available on OSX. I know an Artist who works for MS and has a Mac on his desk.

mathepac

Tony EH wrote: »

... But if you want to actually do some work and be able to share that work with others, to move files between different types of machines without hassle and to generally be more compatable with others you are working with, then get a windows based machine. ...

Sorry, but those statements make it sound like you don't know much about anything.