So, new macbooks.

[SidewinderINC]

Originally Posted by divine

I honestly think a lot more of the premium is peoples willingness to pay for the looks and the image though, rather than any specific benefits MacOSX provides. I'd guess if you asked most 'new' Apple customers why they went for Macs, that MacOS itself wouldn't be the largest factor.

It was my largest factor when I bought mine.


Yes the Dell has a higher spec, and for cheaper but as JUMPURS has said above, and I've said before

I've had this mac for nearly 18 months now, and I've not done a single thing to it in the way of "housekeeping" and it still runs as smoothly as the day I got it. I've installed plenty of trial software, plenty of plugins/addons and still it works perfectly.

My windows desktop (when it's working) is of a higher spec than the mac, but runs a butt load slower because I never get round to "tidying" it up and doing some housekeeping on it.

[Streeteh]

Originally Posted by divine

In Vista they tried to remedy that by having it constantly slowly defragging in the background

Interesting that you mentioned that as it's the perfect example in many ways of why Windows has to wrestle with many issues in terms of being a more open format operating system. I remember the above feature actually killing quite a few peoples older PCs when they upgraded to Vista as the constant harddrive activity caused by it pushed less reliable/worn out drives to finally give up the ghost.

One of the many pitfalls of creating software for a huge number of hardware configurations i guess. Another reason why Macs are becoming so popular.

[divine]

As an aside, i've been contemplating installing Windows again on this PC, on a different partition, to compare how fast a new install would be vs my 3 year old one at the moment.

Main problem being I can't find my XP disc and I have no idea which of the plethora available downloads are any good.

[JUMPURS]

Originally Posted by SidewinderINC

It was my largest factor when I bought mine.


Yes the Dell has a higher spec, and for cheaper but as JUMPURS has said above, and I've said before

I've had this mac for nearly 18 months now, and I've not done a single thing to it in the way of "housekeeping" and it still runs as smoothly as the day I got it. I've installed plenty of trial software, plenty of plugins/addons and still it works perfectly.

My windows desktop (when it's working) is of a higher spec than the mac, but runs a butt load slower because I never get round to "tidying" it up and doing some housekeeping on it.

Yeap, one of the reasons i was so happy to get the missus back onto a mac. TBH there is nothing she can feck up on it. And even if she does, if she reboots it fixes it. I have had to do no maintenance on it because she has fannied about and clicked something or blah blah blah.

[SidewinderINC]

^ That too, they're idiot proof

[JUMPURS]

Can you even burn DVD's and ISO's and watch DVD's out the box with Vista?

I know xp you can't

[divine]

Originally Posted by Streeteh

One of the many pitfalls of creating software for a huge number of hardware configurations i guess. Another reason why Macs are becoming so popular.

When you think about it, it's amazing Windows works at all, considering it basically has to be compatible with everything from an AMD K6 or Pentium MMX etc. all the way to a Triple core Phenom or Quad core Core 2, combined with any combination of all the graphics chips released since the TNT2 etc.

I suspect, had Apple had to spend as much time working on compatibility and stability on such a range like MS, MacOS wouldn't be half the OS it is now, which is both an advantage and a disadvantage. Advantage is, they have a better OS in terms of features and use but they'll forever have a limited market because any one who wants it needs a Mac, or PC with near identical specs.

[divine]

Originally Posted by JUMPURS

Can you even burn DVD's and ISO's and watch DVD's out the box with Vista?

I know xp you can't

You can burn DVDs and watch them I think, not sure about using ISO images though.

[Garp]

Originally Posted by SidewinderINC

I've had this mac for nearly 18 months now, and I've not done a single thing to it in the way of "housekeeping" and it still runs as smoothly as the day I got it. I've installed plenty of trial software, plenty of plugins/addons and still it works perfectly.

Same goes for my Ubuntu workstation. About the only time it breaks is when I do 'dodgy' upgrades (it's recommended to install fresh rather than upgrade, though upgrading is possible.) I can chuck software on and off it to my hearts content, all sorts of weird ass crack, and never ever does it run any slower than it did on the day I first installed the OS.

Seriously, the advantage of OSX is purely that it is based on an old, reliable, mature, and ultimately stable operating system (BSD). POSIX standards based operating systems (Linux, Solaris, BSD, UNIX, AIX and all their associated derivatives) are rock solid. It's one of the oldest operating systems around, has had plenty of time to get it's act in gear, and has been under constant development. It's the reason why its the operating system of choice for a large sector of businesses that are running real-time critical services.

And yes, all of the above operate happily on almost any computer architecture you could be bothered to name, and many more than Windows can, and do a better job of it

[divine]

However, 95% of them are totally inaccessible to anyone who isn't fairly confident with computers, which immediately renders them useless in a home usage environment.