View Single Post
  #10 (permalink)  
Old 09-22-2006, 08:41 PM
cosiz's Avatar
cosiz cosiz is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Mar 2005
Posts: 94
Re: Do you own an Apple Mac computer?

I own a PowerPC running FreeBSD that I'd like to use to learn Linux but never have the time, a Mac that is a little bit old and slow but still gets semi-regular use, and a PC that is my primary work station/HTPC. (then there's the bevy of old PC and Mac boxes that are too old to do much with and require upgrades before they'll even be suitable for use as NAS)

I don't spend a great deal of time on a Mac anymore, but that is mostly because I don't do much other than work and any leftover time is usually spent messing around with BTV. I'm considering buying a new Mac and then I suspect I'd be splitting my time a bit more equally again -- especially after seeing BTV running on Parallels in the blog.

<skip the rest if you're not interested in reading a little Mac myth rebuttal >

Prior to XP (or rather until XP became stable), I always had a PC but I would have stuck up for a Mac over a Windows machine without any hesitation because it always seemed to be more efficient and did things like networking and printer sharing with hardly any effort at all. And then about the time that XP really became solid there was a period where the Macs just weren't keeping up with processing power and I would have chosen a Windows box solely based on the strength of CPU. Video, Audio and Graphics editing was generally much easier to deal with on a Mac, but PCs always had the edge on freeware being developed to do the latest and greatest trick like authoring VCDs, etc.

While they have swapped back and forth over the years, they are really on equal footing these days. So in my opinion it's more a matter of what you started with as to which platform might be more comfortable. There isn't much in the way of hardware or software that isn't available on both, except for some specialty type stuff (unless you're a gamer). And the Mac interface is no more or less difficult/intuitive to deal with than a PC (unless you're a PC guy switching over to a Mac).

And if you compare the pricing on a new Mac and a new PC with equal hardware/software configuration, you might be surprised that they aren't as far apart as they might appear. For instance, I've been running multiple monitors on a Mac out of the box for about 6 years (before it was in vogue :-)
__________________
BTV 4.9.0 (6073) - BM 1.0.0.570

Source1- PVR-150 (2.0.28.23053)
Source2- FusionHDTV Gold USB (6.1.12.0)
Source3-HD-PVR rev C2 (1.0.5.3)
Firefly Remote (1.2.0.816)
System- P4 3GHz HT, 2.5GB RAM, SATA 74GB 10K system HD, XP Home SP2, XFX 6600GT 128MB PCIe (81.98)
Storage- 9 TB and counting...
Reply With Quote