LOL That is rich!

There still are a few programs and things that are made only for the Mac which is why I still use them along with PC's. Apart from Scenarist, I still think Apple has better DVD authoring programs. I just can't live without my Fusion system :)

Well, that's usually the best advice you can give anyone. Look for the software you want to run and then find the machine to run it.

Rob Mack

> These days, though, I think Apple tries to teach that it's special just because it intentionally goes out of its way to be different. Kind of like France. Which is fine, I guess.

Hey, it works for Sharper Image and it works for Apple. Snob appeal sells! You have to admire Apple. They invented the first commercially successful Personal Computer -- the Apple ][+. Then IBM got into the game and stole the market but Apple fought back with the simplicity of the Mac, which IMHO has not been matched in terms of ease-of-use on a PC platform until Windows XP some 20+ years later. (that’s a long time to catch up!)

They had to do something to differentiate themselves and I think they’ve done a great job. By only allowing one motherboard they eliminate a lot of the incompatibilities that many PC users experience. It’s this “perceived’ stability that sells a lot of Macs. I think any other company would have been history by now but Apple prevailed. Regardless of whether or not they used snobbery to accomplish it, they have a very dedicated following. Like I said, you have to admire that in a company.

Are we any better off taking whatever garbage Microsoft decides to throw into their operating system? (anyone install XP SP2 yet? Oh, that didn’t break too many applications!)

Don’t get me wrong. I’m a hard-core PC enthusiast. I would not buy a Mac because the software support is so limited. But if all software developers created both a PC and a Mac version of their programs, and the Mac wasn’t overpriced, I wonder how many of us would still be on a PC platform? There is one undeniably great thing about a Mac ...It doesn’t require Microsoft Windows! ;-D

BTW, that was an extremely funny spoof. I laughed out loud.

~jr

Remember the term "IBM Clone"?

That refers to a time when IBM was a "real PC" and other brands were clones of lesser quality.
Every part of an IBM machine was grossly over-priced but it wasn't a "clone".
That marketing technique worked because people were convinced that the "clone"PCs and parts were of lesser quality.

Remember proprietary hardware and software?

IBM and clone parts weren't always interchangable.
Soundcards had to be "Soundblaster compatible" or games wouldn't work.
Different brands of modems dropped to lower speeds to communicate with each other?
When you installed 2 pieces of hardware that both wanted the same IRQ?

The good thing about Bill Gates and Microsoft was that they licenced the software which allowed others to manufacture PCs and the prices dropped with competiton.

Now things are plug and play everything is interchangeable as far as PC parts and software pretty well runs on any combination of parts and manufacturers.

If software was written for Mac, PC AND LINUX now that would be interesting.

My brother's room mate got a Mac and she wanted me to help them set up their internet connection and e-mail. I spent almost all night trying to figure out that stupid computer. I got the internet working but the e-mail thing was out of my league. Funny thing... I thought Macs were supposed to be the mother of USB, everything plug and play compatible. Well, the modem from the cable company wouldn't work with USB, you had to use the ethernet cable. I lost a little confidence in Mac with that one. Because if they're not incredibly easy to use, Macs have nothing. And in my opinion, they're not easy to use at all.

I think they were the mother of 1394 / Firewire, not sure about USB. I always thought USB was a replacement for serial and parallel interfaces.

But I digress.

I 've owned two macs and I liked them a lot....still wish I had some way to play the original Prince of Persia game....but around the time of Windows 95 I think the combination of pc hardware and OS and relative ease of use came into their own for the PC crowd. I haven't looked back.

Another consideration on this thread is the OS, a lot of folks tend to say PC when they are referring to a Windows operating system. And some of those are way better than others.

First of all, I prefer a PC based machine because of the compatiability (hardware and software). I've used both PC and Mac and really don't see that much difference in performance or stability (as far as the OS), and belive me you CAN crash a Mac when you really stress it with video editing. I like to be able to upgrade a motherboard, video card, just about ANYTHING on the inside of a PC. If you use good components and stay away from propriatary parts a PC will run solid as a rock.

With all that said, if you want to talk stability, look at Linux, which I run on a PC based machine on a shelf behind my desk. It has never failed (over two years now). My first linux server, which I ran on a 486DX 66 with 32 megs of RAM, ran for two and a half YEARS without a single re-boot. I was running most of our web services on an IBM RISC 6000, but eventually offloaded some of the processes onto my 486 Linux because it ran faster than the RISC system (some CGI programs).

Windows and Mac can't compete with that, but Linux isn't as universal, guess there'll always be tradeoffs. Right now I can't complain about my dual proc 3.2 P4s, no problems there running XP. Hmmmm, might have to load Linux on it someday just to see what it'll do with some horsepower behind it, after all, I can run both XP and Linux on the same box, that's pretty kewl too.

My uncle had an old mac and wanted a couple of my pictures so I put them on a floppy (the old people used to use these) and he said the colors were all messed up like a painting. After much ado found out his old Mac had only 4 color capability. His Mac was ten years old and about ten generations behind. I never let him hear the end of it so he bought a Dell labtop. He can't figure out why all of his okd financial stuff will not work. He keeps talking while I play the Violin.

JJK

The only time I liked Mac was when I was in grade school and the only game they had was oregon trail and the screen was black with green characters. No I haven't looked back since.

MAC

"By only allowing one motherboard they eliminate a lot of the incompatibilities that many PC users experience. It’s this “perceived’ stability that sells a lot of Macs."

They achieve this in software instead. Incompatibility stumpers are provided in every point release of OS X. Anybody with an advanced software or hardware Mac setup who upgrades from say 10.2 to 10.3 can count on not getting much done for a while. Then there is the infamous "if nothing works and OS X won't tell you why, trash the preferences and see if that helps."

At a past SCVUG meeting, a pro FCP editor said that for each new (studio) project it was good practice to budget a new Mac to ensure its compatibility with the latest FCP release.

At least Apple has made user-friendliness progress from the days of "An error of type 13 occurred in application 'unknown'." which was common before OS X. This may have had something to do with the fact that MacOS didn't get real [pre-emptive] multitasking until a decade or so after Windows got it.

I have so many horror stories from using 3 Macs and helping other Mac users....

The Grand Prize would go to installing Internet software when Apple thought nobody would ever use this non-AppleTalk compatible network:

Mac runs OS6 which cannot run Internet communications.
Needs to upgrade to OS7.
How?
a) Borrow extra harddisk and copy all user files to it.
b) Reformat harddrive so OS7 can be installed.
c) Install OS7.
d) Get comm stack. Not from Apple. They don't have it and they don't care.
Hijack friend's PC and chase all over the Internet to download the different pieces for MacOS from different universities across the globe.
e) Transfer these pieces to Mac and install. They don't work together.
f) Go back to PC and get other pieces from other universities.
g) Transfer to Mac and install. After much advanced computer engineer support and rapid updates to 7.02 and then 7.03 , can finally access the Internet in the most basic way.
h) Transfer original user files back to the involuntarily formatted harddisk.

Meanwhile PC users are laughing their heads off because MS quickly provided single source internet software. For free.

..and that's just the beginning. Ever seen reviews of the most common page layout program for the Mac? "Vile," "crashes a lot," "takes 20 minutes to print a 4-page postscript document while colleague's PC with InDesign prints same exact document in 20 seconds," ... etc., etc.
Still this is accepted because "it runs on my beloved Muck computer."

Blech! :O[~]

Wonder how much further Apples stock would go up if they made a Mac version of Sound Forge, Acid and Vegas....hmmm.

I worked for one of the large studios. The creative depts and executives had Macs. Most refused to use a PC to run some critical business applications that they needed to do their jobs. We ended up buying a bunch of expensive Orange Micro cards (an entire PC contained in a card). That way, they could still use their precious Macs to run PC applications by booting the equivalent of a very cheap PC inside thir Macs. At the time (before the Web) there were very few cross-platform development tools. Later, we started using a product called Omnis 7 that was a decent cross-platform development tool. Yes, at one time the Mac was much nicer than the PC, but now, there's just about nothing you can do on a Mac that can't be done faster and cheaper on a PC.... except run FCP, of course!

that add reminds me of the old Ibrator site. Classic (it was a spoof site about colorfull vibrators you can plug into your mac. :) )

I used a Mac at a part time job at college. It was the latest: a G4 with 1gb RAM. Sitting right next to it was a SGI O2. Back in my lab's we had Duel P3's 300-700's & O2's. Gotta say, that G4 outdid those duel P3's like there as no tomorrow, in apps that were avaiable on both platforms of course (that would be Photoshop & Quake 3 I did tests with). The O2's killed in Maya though & they were 180 & 200mhz single processor comps.

Another thing about mac's is that they are powerful. Very powerful. I'm sure many of us know of the Pixar jumping lamp logo (Junior). In 2001 at the MacWorld Expo in Tokyo, they showed the short, Junior, running in complete real time, on a projector, with a Mac & a Geforce 3 graphics card. PC's couldn't do that at the time.

I also see Apple as one of those few companies left that doesn't just make a better product every time something comes out by adding a new feature (ohhh.. I can now use PnP devices but they don't work anyway!) or making a prettier interface (look! winXP has a more friendly interface! It now looks closer to a mac!), but by advancing the field of computers. PC's still have serial ports. Why? Because companies still make devices that use them. Why? Who knows. PC's still use floppy drives. Why? Who knows. Oh, wait, I know. Because if you want to install Windows onto a non-motherboard IDE connection you require one. Can't use a CD/USB/FireWire/etc drive, MUST be a floppy. Can't even do it with XP. Talk about advance technology! Windows XP REQUIRES technology as advanced as a my C64 floppy drive from the early 80's!

If PC manufactures/softwaremakers actuatly advanced technology instead of just doing what someone else did years ago (most PC companies do) then maybe we could brag about our computers. But what am I gonna brag about to a mac user besides I can play more games & use Vegas. Not much else.

oh wait.. I have a serial port that will NEVER get used!

You can always brag that according to recent competent benchmarks, decent PCs run After Effects 50-400% faster than the best dual G5s. This app was chose because it has a common codebase that is very mature on both platforms. The PCs of course cost less for more performance.

You can also brag that you don't have to pay $99 per year to update to the latest point release of the OS. Windows updates are free...

You can brag that when you make a web page, it looks perfectly normal, whereas most Mac-generated web pages (and HTML e-mails) are full of weird unintended characters (because Apple insists on being the only computer company not using international standard character codes).

You don't have to put up with marketing bullshit like "SUPERDRIVE!!!! Apple's ultra-sensational (ultra-sensuos?) new SUPERDRIVE can both READ and WRITE both CDs and DVDs!!!" Of course PeeCees don't have that! (They only have regular plain vanilla DVD/CD Combo drives that do the same thing for less).

Floppy drives actually originated on IBM 360 mainframes, to load boot code for diagnostics. 242 KB on an 8" soft floppy... These drives were built like tanks and cost $800 at a time when that was more than a monthly salary for many.

Today, many new PCs come without floppy drives, finally!

The serial port is for communicating with your UPS, so you don't have to use up all your USB ports. :O) :O)

Here's one simple thing you can brag about to Mac users, you can edit 1080 HDV NOW. Well OK in a few weeks Mac users will be able to edit it on ah well iMovie!
There is several things though that Macs in general and FCP in particular seem to be able to do that I've never found a PC app capable off.
1) Drag a track from a CD onto the timeline and have it clipped by at least 6dB, oneday Vegas will be able to do this.
2) Drag audio at a different sample rate to the project onto the timeline and don't resample giving you these very creative clicks, when can we have this in Vegas or Premiere please?
3) One click aliasing and interlace artifacts. It took me hours to get Vegas to do this so my footage looked like what the client could get out of FCP in seconds. Come on guys, get with the program, my clients are demanding this unique Mac Look.

The only thing Apple fall down on is the G5 toolkit. It's OK that you need a jigsaw to fit more drives into a G5 than Apple though you'd need but Apple users can't figure out how to use any tool that isn't made of white plastic.

Bob.