Whats so good about MAC laptops?

stimpson wrote: »

That's fine if you only keep your files in your user folder. Unfortunately for me, I can't do that due to the way I work. It's a stupid limitation anyway.

I'll look into this later. I do have the features enable but I feel like I can go to a folder's properties and enable this in non-standard file system locations but I am not certain of this.

Except if you try to open them on a non Windows platform

Correct. Compelling reason to buy a mac? no, but that's cool.

Both have 4GB of RAM, 0% fragmentation. RAM usage on my PC is currently 3.1GB in use, 171 MB free. I would have plenty of apps open on both machines. I think OSX memory management is just superior.

i'll give you that. I'm also watching the live stream of todays announcement. Mavericks further improves memory optimization using what they're calling "memory compression." They claim they can squeeze 6GB of virtual memory into 4GB of physical memory. Ooh, and Mavericks is just announced as Free swag for anyone as far back as a 2007 unit.

mathepac wrote: »

What the heck for? I assume that like most people I use my Mac to help me with work-related and socially-oriented tasks. Why would you suggest that someone take up a particular line of work because of the brand of lap-top they use?

My point, in case you missed it, is that I've encountered mac viruses. People bring them in for removal.

In the context of the current discussions it might be more appropriate to know when was the first time I've done any maintenance on my 2006 MacBook, my 2009 Mac mini or my 2012 Mac mini, in the absence of an IT department. The answer is never. Never ever. I have two original iMacs that still work and they have never had a spanner laid on them.

Apart from the late 2012 Mac mini, which I upgraded to 16GB RAM myself, the others were delivered with RAM maxed by Apple, so they've never needed to have the cases cracked.

The MacBook (white plastic bodied version) has travelled Europe and Ireland with me for almost 7 years getting attached to all sorts of AV equipment for presentations and lectures and has never missed a beat. I've used Nokia and Sony-Ericsson phones as remotes with it when the little white remote went MIA. I've run other people's AV stuff on it from USB sticks and DVD when their mighty "all-compatible" Windoze machines couldn't hook up to projectors or other on-site AV systems.

I met a man at a conference in Dublin whose whizz-bang failed and I ran his stuff for him on my MacBook. Two years later I met him in London and when his later and greater whizz-bang also failed, I duly obliged with the same MacBook.

I've travelled with a variety of power outlet adapters and AV connectors and never once has my MacBook failed me or others. We are both now just retired, but there's a few years life left in both of us yet.

You seem to have also obtusely misunderstood what I refer to as maintenance.

It is an interesting area. As an audio engineer I work in an industry that is very Apple-centric. I am different in that I am young enough (23) to have been come into the industry when things have changed dramatically.

Basically, one program has dominated digital audio for many years and it simply wasnt written for windows and then when it was, it ran better on Mac, it also did its audio processing out of the computer and in its own hardware since computer technology wasn't powerful enough. The Mac was purely to host the audio program.

Now, with the advent of dual and quad core processing, the processing that was done out of the computer can now be done in the computer itself. Windows has also gotten better and program writers now have audio programs that are genuinely multi-platform.

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 of the needs of the engineer and capabilities of the computer options. Audio people are not techy people entirely so have fallen into the same trap that Dr. Dre Beats headphones have done to the clueless general pubic.

An audio engineer (like myself) would never recommend the Beats headphones yet a lot of them would go out of their way to get a Mac when a PC could be cheaper and run the same software just as well if not better.

So, that is an informal insight into an Apple dominated industry.

Me? Well I have ordered an all metal Dell laptop for 1600 euro which would have cost me 2800 euro spec for spec with the new MacBook Pro. To be fair, I can not configure a standard 15" MacBook anymore. They have replaced it with a Retina only model. 1600 gets me a dual core, slow HDD, standard screen 13" model.

Macs are nice machines and I would have no issue on their build quality but they certainly do play on the human side of being human, which is pretty pathetic.

That said, I understand there may still be situations where certain programs work better on Macs and if the Mac is the price of using that program then I guess that is just how things have to be.

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 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 wrote: »

What a typical fanboi response.

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

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

Torqay wrote: »

Doesn't have to be a Dell, a Lenovo ThinkPad T with quad core processor, full HD display and enterprise-grade GPU is still cheaper than a MBP and yet it offers far better build quality and performance.

Indeed, though I just speced up the Lenovo ThinkPad thinking that I had overlooked it in my laptop search and once it got 400 quid more than the Dell I stopped.

It is a decent example of comparing a like for like machine, which is the main thrust of the debate against the Macbook. This is what I feel is not being appreciated by the pro Macbook people as we are getting comparisons of Macbook vs entry level Toshiba for instance.