A friend asked about buying a computer. He wrote
Time for a new home computer. Went to the Apple store with the wife, and she’s in love with the iMac, and I have to admit, it comes across as a pretty slick product. Personally, I like the fact that OS X is Unix based, as I’ve got a pretty good handle on the Unix command line and overall architecture – PC’s are black-magic to me(not to mention I hate Gate’s guts) even though I use one daily and know the usual apps.
Primary applications for home will be the usual browsing, kid’s educational sw, kids games, and photo and home-movie editing/production. The iMac in question, 1.25Ghz PowerPC, 80Gb drive, 256M RAM looks really meek compared to lower-priced PC hardware sporting 2.5GHz Intel hw. So what gives? I know that processor speed doesn’t necessarily translate linearly to computing power, but can anyone clue me in on relative performance of the two CPUs? Does it come down to a RISC/CISC thing? Multi-threading?
In short, I’m looking for some pro/con analysis on the Mac vs. PC. If I were to buy today, I’d lean toward the Mac, but have the reservations alluded to above.
Here’s how I replied:
My advice -> If you like the Mac, buy the Mac, don’t worry about CPU comparisons.
Do max out the RAM after you get the thing home with 3rd party RAM. A gig would be good.
Functionally, Windows and Macintosh both get the job done for users. Either way you can surf the web, email, make DVDs, etc. Both OSs are stable, highly useable, and powerful.
Things the Mac excels at:
Integration of software – The apps work cohesively and in a similar fashion.
Aesthetic design – No doubt Macs look nicer, and this is important to some people.
Security – Since OSX is a tiny fraction of the deployed OSs in the world, it is rarely targeted for exploits.
Innovation – Apple pioneered use of USB, firewire, and Bluetooth, while Microsoft is slow to adopt newer technologies. Sony is comparable to Apple in hardware design and innovation, but is hampered by the needed changes to the Windows OS.Things the Mac sucks at:
Closed hardware – Unless Steve wants you to have it, it ain’t available. If it is available, it costs more. Long term upgrading is near impossible.
Living within Apple design – The apps are great as long as you will do things the Apple way. If you don’t like the way iTunes manages music, too bad, you’re stuck. Same for email, file system, calendar, etc.
Cost – Macs are more expensive. OS upgrades are costly. Four $99+ OS upgrades in the last three years alone.Things Windows excels at:
Open hardware – You can run Windows on nearly everything, PCs are virtually unlimited on what kind of hardware you want to add, upgrade, or change.
Cost – PCs are far, far cheaper than Macs, but you get varying levels of quality.
Software – If there’s software to do something out there, chances are it runs on Windows. No other platform can say that.Things Windows sucks at:
Security – A Windows computer is under constant assault. You need firewalls, auto-updating OS, anti-virus, and anti-spyware software running at all times.
Integration of software – Windows apps ‘look and feel’ different from application to application. To some this is a drawback.The only crystal clear choice to choose a PC over a Mac is for gaming. If you want to play computer games, there is no comparison. PCs are orders of magnitude above Macs in CPU & video card power and selection of games.
In all other aspects, the computers/operating systems are comparable for home users.
Myself, I use Windows because I like to build the computers from scratch and am constantly upgrading them. Also, gaming is hobby of mine and I want a great platform to play on.
What do you think?
It’s all about the gaming with you!
We own many computers, including a couple of Apples.
Generally speaking, I’ve found that Macs are better than PCs for graphics editing, video edition/DVD creation, and working with music – listening, creating, ripping, burning.
The displays are *tremendous* as well.
With PCs the big attraction is gaming…and the cost difference between a mac and a pc becomes negligable when you factor in a $450 graphics card and a gig of memory.
For most Mac users, 512Meg of memory will more than suffice. If this guy is going to be shuffling a lot of large files around (video editing), then yeah go for the full gig.
Our iBook recently died (older model, to a well known and documented logic board problem.) Our “lampshade” iMac has been running rock solid for well over a year now.
I agree mostly with the analysis, but video editing is superior on the Mac. All the video editing tools you need are tightly integrated on a Mac, and can be a downright nightmare on a PC, trying to get everything to work together. As well, Final Cut Pro (video editing program) kicks ass, and doesn’t require the steep learning curve of say, Adobe Premiere, which would be the only reasonable facsimilie for Final Cut that you would find for the PC.
Jihad! You dare speak ill of the beloved!
Macs and Apple’s apps are easier to use, period. Any additional cost is made up in time and money saved not chasing down problems later.
Now if you’re a geek, windows has some advantages that probably matter to you.
That’s it: Ordinary human – Mac. Geek/gamer – Windows
Vegas Video by Sony Digital for Windows is much easier to use than Premiere, kicks butt, and is very stable.
And it’s a really good multitrack audio app as well.
Great comparison between the two platforms, though I’d snipe at a couple of things.
I very rarely have found “cross-platform” peripherals costing more on the Mac than the PC. Video cards are about the only exception, where I understand ATI would charge more for their Mac cards than their PC cards. That said, sometimes doing “the same thing” will cost more because the hardware is different. I’ve never priced this, so I don’t know, but a graphics card with a built-in TV tuner for the PC might be cheaper than an external Firewire-based TV Tuner that you would use on a Mac.
Long term upgrading is nowhere near impossible. My Blue & White G3 was just retired after four years. It’s upgrades included a new graphics card, more memory, and a larger hard drive. There are CPU upgrades for many Macintosh models. Check out Accelerate Your Mac for details.
Are we all pro video editors here?! iMovie should be sufficient for most people and it is part of the iLife suite of applications supplied with a new Mac.
If he buys the Mac, tell him to buy one of the third party “missing manual” type books. Macs are different in the way they operate – so many PC people don’t get the most out of them because they’re trying to do things the PC way – ie. they overcomplicate things.
— Security – Since OSX is a tiny fraction of the deployed OSs in the world, it is rarely targeted for exploits.—
wrong, just try and infect a Mac running OS X. it aint easy and that is what virus creators want, a easy target…ie: Micro$hit
–If you don’t like the way iTunes manages music, too bad, you’re stuck. Same for email, file system, calendar, etc.–
michael….what are you talking about? you are not required to use itunes or any of the iapps, mail, calendar, etc. just use whatever the hell you want. just cuz it comes with the mac dont mean you have to use it. you are a very typical peecee user my friend. c’mon over to mac and learn something about them, i bet you will wonder what took you so long.
I agree with Eric that if he buys the Mac he should get a comprehensive book on the operating system – I’ve just spent a year doing things the hard way on my Mac (I’m a switcher) … Now I’m getting smarter with it all the time and I’m feeling a lot more productive – more so than I ever was on my PC. I don’t know why I spent so much time fighting trojans, adaware, spyware and the like for so many years … If someone had told me the Mac was free from all of that stuff five years ago I could’ve switched then and achieved so much more …
Thank you Eric, while Final Cut Pro is my bread and butter, I find a lot of joy in using iMovie, it’s the easiest video editor around. I mean when it comes down to it, you don’t really need tape logging, slip edits, multiple video tracks, color correction to put together a movie. I’ve seen some awesome stuff put together in iMove.
If you find yourself wanting more from iMove, check out Avid Free DV from Avid. It’s a strip down, free version of the Avid Xpress DV editor, they have it for XP and OS X, it lets you have a go at the more advanced functions available in higher end editors, a great free step up to something with more functionalities and a good way to learn before you shell out money for Final Cut Express, Avid Xpress DV or Vegas Video.
Side note, the new Premiere Pro is actually an awesome product, and the learning curve and functions are pretty close to FCP.
I think i want a Mac.
That’s my comment.
If you have kids, get a Mac, there is nothing they can do wrong with the system and they can’t download virii and spyware.
I would take an eMac, the CRT display brakes less easly than the iMacs LCD (that only applies if your kids are braking things at lightning speed).
I grew up using Apple ][e’s and Macs from system 5 or 6 and never had problems in school because PC were used. (I had to learn DOS and Win 3.11 back then, Win 2K at work)
If you want to do video editing, iMovie is simple and powerful (ask all the people that cry when they see the wedding movies I make for friends), Final Cut Express is cheaper than Final Cut Pro and almost as powerful, if you want to do some ‘pro’ editing.
The integration of all the iApps can’t be beaten on the Wintel world.
I grew up with Macs and would never buy a Wintel for home use, even the biggest Wintel user I know, is thinking of getting a Mac as well, just for the video editing and Garageband.
Anyway, If you don’t like what you bought, Mac or PC, eBay it and get the other one. (Macs tend to keep their price longer than PC, so I sugest to try the Mac first)
Your answer to your friend’s specific question regarding CPU is fine. I have a 17″ 1ghz iMac with 768 MB RAM and spend most of my computer time using the iLife 04 apps and Final Cut Express 1.0.1.
I set up specific user accounts for the kids so they don’t mess up my settings or my Mac. I have no worries they’ll infect the Mac with virii or dialers.
I spend my time being creative instead of patching and troubleshooting.
I have a few games which work perfectly well on the iMac. Try Real-Myst for stunning images and sound. Performance is excellent.
For high-end PC-type games, buy a Playstation. Sony has the most choice in games. It’ll cost you less overall and the kids won’t be hogging the iMac.
The resell-value of my 1 year iMac is much higher than that of a comparable priced PC at the time of purchase.
Also it has a small foot-print and is quiet.
Best of all, it is so fun to use and I still feel real pleasure everytime I wake it from sleep. This is the best part about it.
The danger is you may become posessive of your computer, which never happened to me while computing om by Dell or self-built PCs.
One more important thing- the data.
On the Mac OS, in over 10 years, I’ve had not one instance of loss or corruption of vital files. And I do mean vital.
All of this on multiple machines, configurations (including RAID), and setups.
Granted, I’m very disciplined when it comes to backup, but no one I know that uses all PC’s can say the same.
To reassure your friend he would be making the right decision to choose a Mac: the first thing is to dispel the myths wrongly associated with the Mac such as “closed, incompatible, not expandable” etc. This is mandatory reading! For a great article read: “Seven deadly words that need to disappear from the Macintosh vocabulary” by by Bill Palmer at http://billpalmer.net/com000145.html
Upgrading a Mac is easy. I have a Blue and White G3 from 1999. It was originally 350Mhz, 6GB, 128MB RAM with DVDROM.
It is now 900Mhz, 73GB, 896MB RAM, DVD-Burner, Bluetooth USB, PCI ATA Card, and USB 2.0 PCI Card.
It has seen varying RAM and Hard Disk configurations. Installing the DVD burner was child’s play, only 6 screws and a cable. The hardest thing about installing a hard disk was playing around with jumpers when I was feeling ambitious.
All this was EASY! Go to the very few Mac sales outfits, OWC for example, and you get your job done. Having fewer choices actually helps.
I have probably sunk $1,000 in parts in this machine since its purchase in 1999. The lionshare of the cost going to the processor and DVD-burner upgrade of $500 total which I made only recently after deciding not to buy a G5 (I’m too poor, *sniff* *sniff*).
This machine has seen Mac OS 8.6 to 10.3. Show me a 4 year old PC that can still run the latest and greatest OS and applications? While the OS purchase price is getting painful, I have been much happier after every upgrade. I could sell the disks but like many an old mac user, I love hoarding system disks.
Upgrading any PC and you have to have a clue about all the hardware options. I obviously don’t. 😉 I should mention that I have built two peecees. I had the luxury of buying cheap parts and not making choices on the “best” parts. See all those choices just makes building one too hard. Too many reviews to read and figure out who is telling the truth.
Want to play games? bah, get a PS2 or a Special Edition XBox.
Want to get some work done? Buy a Mac. You will be happy.
This was a surprisingly fair comparison, but I want to nipick a bit: there is a difference between a “Gamer” and a “person who plays game”. If you are a hard-core, serious Gamer then absolutely a PC is a better choice. But I don’t want people to think that the Mac doesn’t play games well. A casual-to-average or even above-average game-player would still be blown away with the games on the Mac.
Some good points in this column, and some bad or erroneous ones:
If one is into upgrading and tweaking, then don’t buy an iMac, or a Gateway Profile 4, or those Sony systems, or any other Wintel all-in-ones. I’ll add my story to those who DO upgrade their Macs. I have a Sawtooth Powermac, which started out life with a 450MHz G4 processor, 128MB RAM, a 20GB disk, a DVD-ROM drive and a Rage 128 Pro. It now has a Radeon 9000 Pro card, 2GB of RAM, 92GB of disk, a CDRW AND A DUAL 1.3GHz G4 UPGRADE. Just be clear on what you want to do and buy accordingly. You can get these ols Sawtooth fixer-uppers for real cheap these days.
And limited application choice? No choice beyond Apple’s iLife stuff?! What, are you kidding, here? Here is a search at Versiontracker.com on the term, “mp3”. Tell me if there’s not enough choice:
http://www.versiontracker.com/php/search.php?mode=basic&action=search&str=mp3&plt%5B%5D=macosx&x=13&y=8
And BTW, if ou want to MAX OUT an imac’s RAM, you’ll need to get a BTO iMac from the Apple Store. you see, the iMac has two RAm slots: one that is user accessable and one that is not. So, if you want a gig, you have to order the iMac with 512MB in the factory slot, then buy a 512MB stick of your own to put in the user slot.
“Having fewer choices actually helps”
-priceless
Nice article – tries to be fair, and makes good points. Very rare.
Afraid I have to agree with others about some mac misconceptions though-
1. “Since OSX is a tiny fraction of the deployed OSs in the world, it is rarely targeted for exploits.” – Understandable thought, but untrue. The Mac – with UNIX at the core – IS actually safer.
2. “Cost – PCs are far, far cheaper than Macs” – untrue. Sure, PC’s are cheaper – but I would argue with *far* cheaper in fact portables are hardly any more expensive – and they’re so much better than PC offerings. Don’t believe me – go and take a look – you might be surprised.
Before I go, just a little testimony from my own 13 years of Mac use –
1. I now have 4 active Mac systems, with two working but obsolete computers in the cupboard. Why? A) because no Mac I’ve ever had has stopped working and B) I can’t bear to part with them!
2. I have never had a virus. Ever. Never. I’ll say that once again for the benefit of PC readers: In 13 years of computer use with full internet access I have never had a virus. Not one. Ever.
3. I am a user of Microsoft Word, and have been for 13 years. I have used my computer for work all of this time. I swap files every day with users of PC’s across the world. I edit video, make music, play games, study for a degree, research, run web pages and do my accounts on my computer.
I do all this, and I have never owned a PC. Ever. And this has never, *never* been a problem to me.
Need to distinguish between internal upgrades, which are limited for some models, and peripheral upgrades, which are frequently identical products usable on both systems. Also, some supposedly “closed-box” Macs can be upgraded: My son’s 333MHz iMac sports a 600MHz G3 card with firewire, CD burner, and a 120Meg HD picked up on sale at Circuit City. The only case I’ve seen where a corresponding product were more expensive for the Mac was a microphone for which the Mac version had a dongle to adapt to the impedance of the Mac’s outlet. The $5 didn’t break me. Moreover, you can certainly function perfectly well without the latest OS upgrades – our 5 Macs (4-12 years old) range from 7.6.1 to 10.2.8. I only upgrade OS when required for something else (HW/SW) I decide I “need.” In fact, everything on the Mac seems to work well for long periods without problem. (So far with my old-to-ancient Macs I have replaced 1 CD-ROM drive and 1 mouse due to failure.)
Bottom line for me: Macs do everything (except games) at least as well as Wintel, with far less hassle.
MACDUFF – We’re buying a new iMac or 2 this spring and I need to make sure I’m not missing something: Does the 1-slot 512MB RAM upgrade Apple offers NOT leave the “external” slot free to be filled with cheaper (but still good) aftermarket RAM? That *was* our plan to save a little $$.
tia – mgh
Answer to “Does the 1-slot 512MB RAM upgrade Apple offers NOT leave the “external” slot free to be filled with cheaper (but still good) aftermarket RAM?”.
The iMac is delivered with 265 MB RAM in the “internal” slot. Best is to upgrade to one 512 MB module on the internal slot BTO by Apple. This leaves you the option of maximising the RAM in the future. Trans Intl even sells (pricey) 1GB modules, so you could have a total of 1.5GB of RAM for the iMac if ever necessary.
Price a dual Xeon Dell and a dual G5. If I were to generalize like everyone else does, Windows machines are far more expensive! I bought a dual G5 last November and saved about $1400 bucks over a not as well equiped Dell.
Not a bad overview.
On the advice side I have some minor quibbles regarding the Mac.
Aesthetic design isn’t all that important (really!) from the standpoint of ‘is it pretty’ but more from the perspective of consistency. For the most part, Mac applications get this right or they get whined about.
iApps are neither as good or bad as you will read. Like AppleWorks, iApps make a pretty good solution for many people. In most of the categories, there are better applications available, but they tend to be on the expensive side. Third party innovation is more interesting. It’s either there and leading the pack or nowhere to be found.
I’m not too sure about educational software. When I last explored the area, MacOS X support was really poor. We’re still using MacOS 9 and the nine11 extension on the system our youngest uses for those activities.
Software updates are pricey but I generally wait and Apple’s track record on updates is spotty at best going all the way back to the days of System 7. Things are in a weird place right now with Panther. I’m updated as far as I am going to until they sort out the Safari kernel panics.
Hardware is where I completely disagree. If you have a slotted Mac, PCI hardware is fairly ubiquitous although driver support is a different story. If you have a closed system (Powerbook, iMac, etc.) USB and Firewire offer a raft of alternatives and of course you get Gig-E and 802.11g. Video hardware has always been the sticking point. Mac video hardware is almost always way behind the curve and as soon as they catch up, they’re behind again. That’s less of a problem on PCI systems, but if you choose a closed Mac, you will forever be stuck.
And there lies the rub. Mac hardware generally falls apart quickly (the lemon factor — it happens and isn’t pretty) or lasts practically forever. At some point you have to move on from your fully functional system.
I’m new to the Mac fold (bought two Macs in the past year) but I still use Windows machines at work and I have 3 Windows machines at home. I’m a lawyer, not a super-geek. But I have learned a lot about computers from fooling with Windows. I got lots of practice dealing with the intricacies of computers and networking. I wouldn’t have gotten all that practice with a Mac, mostly because my curiousity about computers is limited.
Fortunately, the incessant trouble-shooting that is required in the Windows world (not because MS is an evil company, but because they have to make their stuff work with more 3rd party apps and hardware) is not present for Macs. This is what most Mac users want: a computer that runs reliably under the constraints that Apple creates. After completing Windows bootcamp I want that serenity too.
When I come home from work I don’t want to tinker with computers. I just want them to work, and that’s what the Macs do. I wouldn’t use a Mac as my primary business computer and I think that Windows is a good operating system, but I can say also that unless you live with both systems (i.e. working extensively in both platforms) for at least 6 months it is hard to say you have an objective standpoint from which to make assessments. I don’t get the impression that you (Michael) spend a lot of time working with Macs, but nevertheless you pretty much capture the major differences. One thing you didn’t mention, though (which I told you about in San Diego and you agreed with) is that Mac OSX laptops sleep and wake faster and more reliably than Windows computers. I like that a lot. It means that I can pop open my computer and know that I will be able to start working immediately. I haven’t rebooted my laptop in weeks, and that is pretty much the norm (the only time I reboot it is after a software upgrade).
I have noticed that any operating system on any machine works more or less flawlessly IF.. You keep it off of the internet.
My solution.. one machine and operating system for work. kept off-line. AND one machine for play/downloading/browsing.
Two heads are better than one.
My cyber-life has been made much simpler.
Real-life?.. Still working on that.
Ive had a Mac G4 powerbook for 4 years now and its still running fine with no viruses or problems – the casings a bit battered & the op system needs upgrading but thats all – ive been looking at pcs again for music but they end up costing even more because you keep on having to buy loads of extra bits all the time to make the technology work!