Mac or PC?

[Cyan]

Rescently I have been bombareded with confrontations dealing with Mac's Vs. PC's. I'm not sure what the differences between the two are. Could somone help me out by outlining the differences in capabilities of the two. Also some of the shortcomings.

[radbasa]

The irritatingly undying PC vs MAC debate strikes again!

o different architecture CPUs thus inherently incompatible with each other (there is a windows emulator for Mac though)
o 1Ghz PC is not equal to 1Ghz Mac (accdg. to Job's speech about the G4, a ~700Mhz Mac can outperform a 1Ghz PC)
o different memory handling by their respective OSs
o both now use PCI, AGP(?), and SDRAM (i think)
o Macs use SCSI (do they IDE now?), PCs IDE hard drives
o Macs are a religion for graphics (photoshop) and video people
o more developers for PC thus more apps

In the end, they're more similar than they are different--they are both microcomputers. Just a matter of more software for the PC. And art deco designs for the Mac

[Warthog]

Rad has the basics down pretty well.

It's all in what you want:
- heavy duty graphics/video on Mac
- everything else on PC (thousands more games, software, peripherals, etc.)
http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif
Warthog

[daveleau]

Mac is now IDE, to lower their prices.

Mac is a 128bit processor and PC is 32 bit. That is why a Mac 500 MHz is as fast as a 1GHz PIII.

Mac OSX is a Unix bases OS and thus much more flexible.

Mac has a great deficiency in parts and software. It is hard to find.

Macs are easy to work on, which makes many think they are Mac Guru's when they really don't know a whole lot (at least that is what is going on here in Charleston)

PCs are easy to build and customize.

As for graphics, my fiancee (professional graphic designer) would rather use the Win2K dual PIII 750 with 384 MB ram and GeForce 2 than her G4 450 Mac at work... http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif

Dave

[Axel]

MAC has a rigid 10% of the market - mostly people doing graphics and design work. PC's have the remaining 90% of the market.

MAC pioneered the GUI ( Graphic user interface ) and was basically allowed to steal what later became the "mouse" from Xerox I think it was because they didn't see a use for it at the time.....

While PC's plodded for a decade through text based programming, MAC came out with icons and color screens almost immediately.

PC's were designed originally for programmers where MAC's were designed for ease of use and mass market appeal.

In comes Bill Gates and Microsoft with windows - that, on first presentation, didn't even work - it was a good fake of what they intended to build if they got the money to do so - and windows was started moving out of DOS - which Microsoft bought from another coder to license on IBM PC's early on.

What is better all depends on what you are using it for.

Because of market share, MAC's aren't always easy to find specialty software for. Also - only the most popular games come out with a MAC release.

In a few years, with processor speeds going up - RAM prices going down, and hard drive space becoming dirt cheap - we can expect to see more and more powerful desktop operating systems that can convert - read - and run almost anything you can put in them.

The only reason this isn't happening faster is the manufacturer's want you to buy new software and get rid of your old software - planned obsolescence - the lightbulb mentality - if you make it to last forever, eventually - you'll end up eliminating your own market - and businessmen want to keep you coming back.....

As it is - there are numerous MAC conversion utilities that re-write PC files to run. There is even a windows version for MAC.

So - that's the history lession -

I prefer PC's because there is more available for them - many many more manufacturers of equipment - so I have more options. Also - I don't do graphic design.

[DiscoLando]

Five years ago, I would have told you that a Mac was only really worth the money if you were into professional graphic design, but now I can't even say that anymore. The difference in Photoshop 6.0.1 on Mac or PC is negligable. In five more years, I wouldn't be surprised if the differnce in the entire architecture is negligable.

[Warthog]

Unforunately, I can't comment on the differences in speed when doing heavy graphics work - (a)I don't own a mac and (b) I don't do graphics http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif

So I have to rely on the couple members who do meet those requirements and trust their opinion.

Warthog

[NDC]

I would just like to add that G4 Motorola Processors are NOT 128bit processors. They just use a software engine they developed called the "Velocity Engine" which processes data in 128bit chunks rather than 32bit chunks. Keep in mind that the application must support this engine to utilize it...

[RayH]

If you've got to ask about what the difference between the two are--I'd suggest that you stick to PC! A PC is more practical.

Mac users know why they have Macs and are willing to put up with a lot of inconvienences owning one!

[NDC]

Well, it appears that Cyber has pretty much made up his mind on whether to get a PC or MAC...

http://www.sysopt.com/forum/Forum1/HTML/014392.html