Thank you, Mihir. Very well said.
Did anyone actually read the original post? It's "Buying advice for a Mac".
Yeah my bad, I just hate it when people like to bash something with tons of misinformation.
So - does anyone have any advice for buying a 2nd hand Mac - for a seasoned PC user who requires some introduction to Macs? I am not in the market for the biggest powerMac - I just need to run Photoshop CS2 and a decent DAW package with VST instruments.
CS2 will be a problem for a new Mac. Older Macs were based off of Power PC technology (PPC) and were written in entirely different code for an entirely different hardware architecture. CS2 is written for PPC hardware. You will have to at least get CS3 to get universal binary versions, and even then you are most likely best off with CS4. This is entirely Adobe's fault, and Adobe is a horrible developer. I hate supporting their very crappily coded apps. I get that photoshop is super powerful and a must have tool for some, but supporting it, packaging it, deploying it and dealing with group policy and licensing, Adobe is the worst. As for DAW, Macs run a plethora of digital audio apps. Depending on what you want to do you could use Garage Band, MOTU, Pro Tools, Logic, Final Cut Studio, Reason, and so many other apps out there.
Instead, we seem to have attracted a lot of PC fans who have it in for the Mac. I do relate to their arguments because I have been there myself with this particular way of thinking.
I hate to say this, but a lot of times the most vocal people are also the most ignorant, or perhaps most misinformed.
Let's get something straight: When I am carrying out important tasks on the Mac platform, I will not be thinking about how much money I could have saved with a PC. Instead, I will be thinking about how much money I am making... I have already saved a ton of money by buying (building my own) PC, only to have lost it again, due to unproductive downtime through repeated operating system and hardware failures.
I concur, I switched over to Macs professionally about 5 years ago. I have been working with Macs and supporting them since 1999 by profession, but never actually ran my personal computer as a Mac. I found myself being 10x more productive. With Spaces, Stacks, and the multitasking memory management of OS X, I found myself doing a lot more work more efficiently.
I've come to the conclusion, it's no good asking PC gaming enthusiasts whether it's worth buying a Mac. They don't think in the same way because of their particular requirements. If we want a great, reliable and comfortable car for the road, we do not need to know which rally car will shave 0.100056 seconds off the race by the way it takes corners at speed. We invariably end up with an aggressive info dump instead of a plain answer which is sensitive to the buyers tastes and requirements.
Again, I hate to say this about gamers because I hate talking in stereotypes, but a lot of them are very misinformed. i often see them building rigs with 8 to 12 gigs of RAM. They don't realize that 99% of games are 32bit apps, which can never use or address more than 4gigs of RAM. Having 8gigs is a waste, unless they are going to do some serious multitasking outside of gaming. Even the fact that almost all games are 32bit and can only address a maximum of 4gigs of RAM, hardly any of them will actually take 4gigs. I got 8gigs in my PC (I run virtual machines) and the most I have ever seen a video game take up, is around 3gigs. Gamers also have the mindset of hardware hardware hardware. Hardware only becomes really apparent when you actually push it to the level needed. Performance is not always dictated alone by hardware. Your OS resource allocation and app performance hold a hand in performance just as much as hardware at times.
I know that a PC has to be maintained in order to function properly. Contrary to what has been suggested, I DO know enough about PCs to be able to sort out most of the problems... part of that has included me creating a dual boot system which quarantines my work environment from the Internet. The point is, that the problems arose in the first place, when really they needn't have.
Computing is just like anything else. If you take the time to actually read up on the subject and learn it, you can. It isn't hard, but it is just really boring to some people. Most people do not care to learn about memory management or perhaps the inner workings of a file system. I even admit, it gets quite boring and I have to know it for my job.
I don't need to be an expert in computing to understand that a Mac is safer on the internet than a PC. I will stick my neck out and say it is probably a fact - because there are not as many viruses and malware exploits written for the Mac platform. We need to distinguish here between viruses that you must click a link in order to contract and those which find their way in without any interaction from the user. That may be where Macs are safer but the common sense of the Information Age is simply - don't click on anything you don't trust. So when people DO click on things they shouldn't - that is probably why people are saying Macs are not safer than PCs. But on the whole, for now, I am willing to believe it, until someone can show evidence to suggest otherwise.
Lots of security experts would agree that since the Mac has a smaller market share it is less targeted. I have already laid out the many reasons why Unix based OSes are more stable and secure than Windows, so I won't repeat myself again.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone graciously for their input to this thread. I both admire your passion and value your information.
Dr. V
I will be expecting my free beer in the mail.
To answer your question - If you are going to be doing some heavy audio and video work, I would get an iMac or a Mac Pro, or if you want to go mobile a Macbook Pro. Some Hollywood videos have been post edited on Macbook Pros.
I think you have a thing for tlarkin. Also you assume too much.
Please tell me how a Mac is better than a $400 windows based PC for the average user. The same PC is even capable of running Ubuntu or w/e flavor of linux you wanted to as well.
The average user wants to run Ubuntu? I don't think so. You bring nothing to this conversation, you cannot even contribute. You are simply trolling.