Whats so good about MAC laptops?

Tony EH · 22-10-2013 9:55pm

stimpson wrote: »

The instances of malware on OSX is vanishingly small compared to Windows. It's built on inherently more secure foundations and is less of a target for hackers. I remember one exploit coming to light last year and it was quickly patched.

It has nothing to do with being "built on inherently more secure foundations", it's because there are vastly higher numbers of people using windows based machines.

mathepac · 22-10-2013 10:06pm

Tony EH wrote: »

... there are vastly higher numbers of people using windows based machines.

There are lots more people driving Nissan Micras than Porsche Carreras, so what?

galwayjohn89 · 22-10-2013 10:09pm

mathepac wrote: »

There are lots more people driving Nissan Micras than Porsche Carreras, so what?

It's more worthwhile to try develop hacks and virus for Windows machines instead of Macs or Linuxs as there are far more potential victims.

Tony EH · 22-10-2013 10:16pm

bbk wrote: »

We are now in a situation where the use of Apple and the program I was talking about is more out of badge snobbery rather than an objective assessment...

This is the problem with macs and their people full stop. The iZombies are some of most brain-dead gobshites you'll ever come across.

It's also not just an issue limited to the Audio world, the design world also has its share of snobs, who will swear blind that Photoshop runs better on a mac, despite the fact that this hasn't been the case for decades!

Macs are built well and they do look nice, but as I said earlier, if I want to do work, I'll choose a PC, especially if I have to share that work with multiple groups.

As one of the posters said above, it's Apples disgusting business model that stymies the mac. I'd be singing their praises if the were more open.

If I had money to burn and all I wanted to do was dick about on the web and get Bub to email aunt Alicia, then I'd get a mac...no problem.

Tony EH · 22-10-2013 10:19pm

mathepac wrote: »

There are lots more people driving Nissan Micras than Porsche Carreras, so what?

The reason for the existence of a virus is to infect as much as it can.

Computer viruses are no different.

stimpson · 22-10-2013 10:28pm

Tony EH wrote: »

It has nothing to do with being "built on inherently more secure foundations", it's because there are vastly higher numbers of people using windows based machines.

You really don't know much about it, do you?

Tony EH · 22-10-2013 10:33pm

What a typical fanboi response.

DesperateDan · 22-10-2013 10:37pm

stimpson wrote: »

You really don't know much about it, do you?

I would take that more seriously if your own words which were quoted there weren't so vague :pac:, but I really don't know much about the differences in security between Win/Mac OSs.

I do personally believe if as many people targeted Macs with virus' and other nasties that the OS would falter but that's wild conjecture on my part.

John_Rambo · 22-10-2013 10:46pm

Some serious knowledge here, most of you know more than I do about this sort of stuff, so I'm certainly not going to get involved in a row about graphics, speed RAM etc...

But, here's my personal experience.

Me - worked in graphics all my life in the creative field, used Apple Macintosh's. Only use pc's for RIPS or servers.

Wife - accountant, used pc's all her life. Never used Mac's.

We got a PC, I hated it, wife thought it was fine.
We got a Macbook Pro, I love it, wife loves it, think's the pc is shyte now.

So, for us, Mac's are better.

Torqay · 22-10-2013 10:51pm

Mac! More than just a computer. It saved Rambo's marriage.

Tony EH · 22-10-2013 10:54pm

It's a pity we can't post images on this forum. That's just crying out for a meme...

stimpson · 22-10-2013 11:01pm

Tony EH wrote: »

What a typical fanboi response.

You're the one going on about iZombies and calling people brain dead gob****es.

Tony EH · 22-10-2013 11:18pm

Your reply doesn't even make any sense.

Torqay · 22-10-2013 11:19pm

Neither does this thread...

mathepac · 23-10-2013 1:35am

The Last Word ...

https://www.dropbox.com/s/s7y54ir4d9hxb1y/MacGod.png

Overheal · 23-10-2013 3:56am

mathepac wrote: »

There are lots more people driving Nissan Micras than Porsche Carreras, so what?

Not a correct analogy.

The hacker doesn't care about whether the laptop your browsing on is made of byro-plastic or gold-plated anodized aluminium.

He's in china. He cares about wallets. And everyone has one.

Arguably a mac user might have more disposable cash than the average windows user, but thats discriminatory: someone with a lot of disposable cash might spend it on coke, hookers, and a blackberry, and might have a piece of **** windows xp computer, while someone who is a starving artist might own a mac. Not everyone who is rich will really give a **** about their PC. I've seen people that run their hands through a quarter million of annual revenue use nothing more than a $200 netbook.

Fact is there are substantially more windows machines to infect: http://www.cultofmac.com/243465/windows-8-finally-passes-os-x-in-market-share/ if you go digging around online for the numbers you'll probably find there are over a billion active licenses of windows, not including any illegitimate copies. Thats a LOT of targets. Its a question of - literraly - writing a piece of malware that can give you a chance to pilfer 672 of every 10,000 wallets, or, write a piece of malware that can let you take a stab at 9,081 out of 10,000 wallets; and then spread that ratio across a Billion active targets. So really we're talking about 67,200,000 wallets against 908,100,000. And when you're talking about that scale of theft, the numbers really do matter. So fcuk writing a virus for a mac. Thats not to say it can't be done; it's simply to say that hackers cannot be arsed to burst your white fuzzy anodized bubble. If Tim Cook came out against same sex marriage or something there'd be a mac trojan in the wild by sunday.

Amirani · 23-10-2013 4:20am

John_Rambo wrote: »

Some serious knowledge here, most of you know more than I do about this sort of stuff, so I'm certainly not going to get involved in a row about graphics, speed RAM etc...

But, here's my personal experience.

Me - worked in graphics all my life in the creative field, used Apple Macintosh's. Only use pc's for RIPS or servers.

Wife - accountant, used pc's all her life. Never used Mac's.

We got a PC, I hated it, wife thought it was fine.
We got a Macbook Pro, I love it, wife loves it, think's the pc is shyte now.

So, for us, Mac's are better.

How much did you pay for the PC versus the Mac?

MyPeopleDrankTheSoup · 23-10-2013 4:55am

stimpson wrote: »

Off the top of my head:
<snip>
- run without constantly hanging
</snip>

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)...

well you must have better luck than me, i got a mac mini purely for iOS development and it's always beachballing on me. though i only use (and really like) xcode which could be the only cause. my €700 custom-built Windows PC hasn't bluescreened since I built it and only Adobe Flash gives me problems.

But I love the build quality of a macbook and can't seem to find the same for a PC laptop. I got an Acer and it's an absolute POS. I really don't want to custom assemble a laptop like my desktop so what's the Windows people version of a high-quality Windows laptop? I absolutely 100% require an SSD drive.

John_Rambo · 23-10-2013 7:41am

NiallSparky wrote: »

How much did you pay for the PC versus the Mac?

The difference in price was substantial. Not too sure, but the mac was about €400 more. Then again, if I'd just bought the mac in the first place I'd have saved money. The mac has helped me make money too.

The_Honeybadger · 23-10-2013 7:50am

georgiecasey wrote: »

well you must have better luck than me, i got a mac mini purely for iOS development and it's always beachballing on me. though i only use (and really like) xcode which could be the only cause. my €700 custom-built Windows PC hasn't bluescreened since I built it and only Adobe Flash gives me problems.

But I love the build quality of a macbook and can't seem to find the same for a PC laptop. I got an Acer and it's an absolute POS. I really don't want to custom assemble a laptop like my desktop so what's the Windows people version of a high-quality Windows laptop? I absolutely 100% require an SSD drive.

Dell precision, lenova t range, any of the high end business laptops are about equal in terms of build and most can be customized to include an ssd, you should get more spec for your money and they will last years. None of them look as good as a mac however which is what clinches the deal for most people.

excollier · 23-10-2013 8:18am

When I was a motorbike courier in England and in Belfast (early 90's pre internet take up) I was always moving floppy disks between offices. To the very last one, they all used Macs back then - not sure what they would use now though.

jester77 · 23-10-2013 8:24am

excollier wrote: »

When I was a motorbike courier in England and in Belfast (early 90's pre internet take up) I was always moving floppy disks between offices. To the very last one, they all used Macs back then - not sure what they would use now though.

Probably USB sticks.

mathepac · 23-10-2013 9:44am

excollier wrote: »

... not sure what they would use now though.

The internet

stimpson · 23-10-2013 9:50am

georgiecasey wrote: »

well you must have better luck than me, i got a mac mini purely for iOS development and it's always beachballing on me. though i only use (and really like) xcode which could be the only cause.

How much RAM are you running? XCode is a bit of a hog.

Graham · 23-10-2013 10:28am

mickeyk wrote: »

Dell precision, lenova t range, any of the high end business laptops are about equal in terms of build and most can be customized to include an ssd, you should get more spec for your money and they will last years. None of them look as good as a mac however which is what clinches the deal for most people.

The resale value of a used Dell/Lenovo is also about €0 after a couple of years use. This is a real cost of owning one that should also be taken into account.

Personally, I don't mind paying a premium for a Mac knowing that in a couple of years it's going to have a resale value around 60%-70% of its original cost. This actually works out cheaper in the long run than any of the other "premium" laptops/desktops.

Torqay · 23-10-2013 10:53am

Graham wrote: »

The resale value of a used Dell/Lenovo is also about €0 after a couple of years use. This is a real cost of owning one that should also be taken into account.

Personally, I don't mind paying a premium for a Mac knowing that in a couple of years it's going to have a resale value around 60%-70% of its original cost. This actually works out cheaper in the long run than any of the other "premium" laptops/desktops.

Define a "couple of years". After 4 or 5 years a Macbook is just as outdated and useless for serious productivity as their PC cousins. Of course, there are always some poor souls who are so excited to become a member of the Mac community and don't mind an old clunker as long as it has their worshipped logo on the lid. But that does not make it a rational purchase.

Graham · 23-10-2013 11:08am

Torqay wrote: »

Define a "couple of years". After 4 or 5 years a Macbook is just as outdated and useless for serious productivity as their PC cousins. Of course, there are always some poor souls who are so excited to become a member of the Mac community and don't mind an old clunker as long as it has their worshipped logo on the lid. But that does not make it a rational purchase.

Nice rant, you almost managed to completely obfuscate the facts.

Most mac laptops have an economic value long after purchase because they're more expensive and so can afford to be built to a higher standard.
Most Windows laptops (with the very odd exception) are built to be cheap/disposable commodity machines.

Ultimately it's down to a potential purchaser to decide which fits their requirements. Nothing necessarily wrong with either approach.

Torqay · 23-10-2013 11:23am

Graham wrote: »

Nice rant, you almost managed to completely obfuscate the facts.

Most mac laptops have an economic value long after purchase because they're more expensive and so can afford to be built to a higher standard.
Most Windows laptops (with the very odd exception) are built to be cheap/disposable commodity machines.

Ultimately it's down to a potential purchaser to decide which fits their requirements. Nothing necessarily wrong with either approach.

Economic value is a concept very different to technical value.

For the sake of argument, let's take a Dell Precision. Priced similar to a to a top-of-the-range Macbook Pro. The build quality is far beyond Apple as is the performance and indeed the technical support (NBD). These are premium machines and last for ages and yet they're usually replaced after 3-4 years, not because they're falling apart but because they just don't match the latest requirements. Of course, nobody in their right mind would buy a second hand Precision as a lifestyle object.

stimpson · 23-10-2013 11:59am

Torqay wrote: »

Define a "couple of years". After 4 or 5 years a Macbook is just as outdated and useless for serious productivity as their PC cousins. Of course, there are always some poor souls who are so excited to become a member of the Mac community and don't mind an old clunker as long as it has their worshipped logo on the lid. But that does not make it a rational purchase.

An old clunker Mac has far more value than an old clunker Dell.

My 4 year MacBook will run Mavericks just fine, still gets used for "serious productivity" and even gets a minor speed bump due to the new Memory Compression in Mavericks.

The simple fact is that the useful life of a Mac is far longer than that of a PC and therefore has a higher residual value. If you don't take that into account when buying new kit then that is not a "rational purchase" as you put it.

Edit: Actually, my MacBook is 5 years old, not 4

Graham · 23-10-2013 12:11pm

Torqay wrote: »

For the sake of argument, let's take a Dell Precision. Priced similar to a to a top-of-the-range Macbook Pro. The build quality is far beyond Apple as is the performance and indeed the technical support (NBD). These are premium machines and last for ages and yet they're usually replaced after 3-4 years, not because they're falling apart but because they just don't match the latest requirements. Of course, nobody in their right mind would buy a second hand Precision as a lifestyle object.

I'm not sure I'd agree that the build quality of a Dell Precision laptop is far beyond that on an Apple laptop. But that's neither here nor there.

Most of Dells laptops sold are not Precision Laptops. They're the cheap plastic laptops that compare with all of the other cheap plastic laptops on the market. Dells reputation for cheap plastic laptops also drags down the resale value of their premium products.

Given a choice between an €1800 Apple Laptop, and an €1800 Dell laptop, I'd go for the Apple every time. Why, because it still holds onto a substantial part of its value after a couple of years use. The Dell is likely to end up in the back of an IT Department cupboard or at the bottom of a landfill even though both machines might broadly be comparable spec wise.

That's without discussing the pros/cons of Windows/OS X which is largely a personal preference/familiarity thing.

Whats so good about MAC laptops?

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