No distinction between PC and Mac anymore?

[Virchanza]

There was once a time when somebody would say, "I'm buying a new computer", and you'd respond with "What are you getting, a PC or a Mac?".

Back in the day, only Mac's could run Mac OS, and only PC's could run MSWindows.

Just there yesterday, a friend of mine came looking for my advice, he's looking to spend about $2500 on a really good laptop. I was about to ask him whether he had been considering getting a Mac instead of normal PC... but then it occurred to me: I don't think there's a distinction between the two anymore.

The most important revelation in the last few years with Mac's and PC's is that Mac's switched to using x86 CPU's. This now means that Mac's and PC's have the same kind of CPU, and can therefore execute the same machine code.

I've known for some time now that there's been "hacks" to get Mac OS to run on a normal PC, and also to get MSWindows to run on a Mac, but I've always been told that these hacks never really worked right, you'd be left with a buggy or non-functional operating system.

There a few days ago though, I heard about a thing called "Boot Camp". It's a utility actually made by Apple which... wait for it... lets you install MSWindows on your Mac:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boot_Camp_(software)

Seriously, it's actually 100% legit. A friend of mine has a Macbook Pro laptop that cost him $2400, and he's got it dual-booting with MacOS and MSWindows. I've asked him if MSWindows runs well and he says it runs perfectly, it has all the drivers and all.

Now I'm thinking to myself, you have two choices:
1) Buy a normal PC, you can run MSWindows and Linux on it
2) Buy a Mac, you can MSWindows and Linux on it, but also MacOS too

It seems to me a Mac can do everything a PC can do, and more!

My friend's Macbook Pro has a solid metal body, I think it's alluminium. It's without a doubt the most sturdy laptop I've ever seen, I'd say the thing will still be running in 20 years time. (My own laptop on the other hand has cracks in the plastic all over the place!).

So anyway, what are your views on buying a new computer, should you go for a Mac? They seem to me to be very well-built, very high-quality machines.

I burned a copy of BT4-Pre-Final for my friend but he hasn't gotten a chance to boot it yet on his Macbook Pro. Does anyone here know if Backtrack will work fine on a Mac? And what about other distroes of Linux, do they work fine on a Mac too?

PC Gamers will be particularly happy with being able to play Windows games on their Mac computer. Here's one guy that has Half Life 2 running on his Mac:

http://www.cabel.name/2006/04/boot-c...e-2-video.html

[Gitsnik]

You make some good points, so as an Apple Sysadmin (Technical Coordinator) and a windows admin (could pass MCSE if I could be bothered paying the cash for the cert), let me make my one and major point:

When you buy a Mac, you're buying hardware. The OS is incidental, but it (to use their catch phrase) *just works* because they write their OS to work on their Hardware. When you buy MS software, it is built to work everywhere moderately well, rather than in one place perfectly well.

HOWEVER - drivers for windows are really quite stable (the ones put out by the fruit co that is), Apple use good quality equipment (nVidia graphics cards and such) which makes me actually prefer the iMac for gaming over the custom built XPC rig.

The hardware is also something like 98% recyclable - show me a non-mac gaming rig that can claim that.

BT4 works fine on the current release Macbook Pro (I have one), but Apple use broadcom hardware, so you're stuck with sticking in the Alfa.

Recommendation from someone who has chosen in the last two years to work with Mac over PC: Get a Mac to game with, get a Vaio to hack with, put Windows where you want it. If I feel like it I can run Server 2008 as a workstation on my Mac.

And never ever use Parallels or the Might Mouse - get a quality Razor or similar.

[lupin]

Ive considered getting a Mac laptop at various points over the last few years. The x86 processor, BSD Unix based Mac OS X, and boot camp are what moved my opinion from "Are you kidding?" to "Perhaps...", but thats as far as it has gone.

After checking the price and configuration of the Macbook Pro laptops (significantly more expensive than a corresponding non-Mac alternative) and asking someone at work who had just bought a Macbook Pro what their opinion was (they didnt like Mac OS X), I decided against it.

Considering the Mac OS X angle, unless a new Operating System is going to make me significantly more efficient, or will provide me with other value in a professional sphere (useful skills for example), Im not going to dedicate the time to learning it. Especially when theres so many other things I could learn that would provide greater value. I also don't really want an Operating System that tries to dumb things down for me, so stuff "Just works". If I were not IT literate, a Mac with its easy to use OS might be a good choice, but since I am IT literate Linux is a better fit. I like control and flexibility, which I can get by using Linux. Linux also has the reliability and security benefits over Windows that Mac OS X uses as a differentiator. Considering all of this I dont really see any feature that Mac OS X has that would make it really worth my while.

Other minor factors were the missing Windows keys on the keyboard (which I use extensively when actually using Windows), and the one button mouse (you pay that much for a laptop you should get the full complement of mouse buttons). Yes, I realise Im being petty about these last two...

[Gitsnik]

Just want to "counter" some of this with my experience, the opinions are obviously still yours.

Originally Posted by lupin

After checking the price and configuration of the Macbook Pro laptops (significantly more expensive than a corresponding non-Mac alternative) and asking someone at work who had just bought a Macbook Pro what their opinion was (they didnt like Mac OS X), I decided against it.

Did you account for buying MS s/w as well? It seems to be the most common thing when people walk into my office that they've forgotten, you buy a mac, you get everything (and you don't need to register, you can just quit past it).

Originally Posted by lupin

Considering the Mac OS X angle, unless a new Operating System is going to make me significantly more efficient, or will provide me with other value in a professional sphere (useful skills for example)

The rest of this paragraph is fluff to me - efficiency is relative to your task obviously. I've been using a Mac for my windows admin tasks for the past 3 years, and I've only officially been working with them for the past 1. Having the power of the command line (tcsh) there for me is essential to the rest of my day.

Originally Posted by lupin

Other minor factors were the missing Windows keys on the keyboard (which I use extensively when actually using Windows), and the one button mouse (you pay that much for a laptop you should get the full complement of mouse buttons). Yes, I realise Im being petty about these last two...

Ha I said not to use the migty mouse, it's a PoS, and the "windows key" is there, it just says "command" instead of having a pretty picture for you.

[lupin]

Originally Posted by Gitsnik

Just want to "counter" some of this with my experience, the opinions are obviously still yours.Did you account for buying MS s/w as well? It seems to be the most common thing when people walk into my office that they've forgotten, you buy a mac, you get everything (and you don't need to register, you can just quit past it).

Yep. Still much more expensive (approx 20%-25% IIRC), especially considering I dont buy any MS software other than the OS (pretty much everything I use at home is free/open source, e.g. Openoffice). And its even more expensive if you count the additional Windows license you would have to add to a Mac to enable "boot camp" Windows booting. And more again if you did actually want to buy MS Office for Mac (the OpenOffice version for Mac was a fair bit behind when I was considering a Mac purchase).

Originally Posted by Gitsnik

The rest of this paragraph is fluff to me - efficiency is relative to your task obviously. I've been using a Mac for my windows admin tasks for the past 3 years, and I've only officially been working with them for the past 1. Having the power of the command line (tcsh) there for me is essential to the rest of my day.

Im sure you are quite efficient working in Mac OS X, but in my case Im specifically talking about efficiency that exceeds what what I would already be able to obtain in either Windows or Linux. Thats what Id want before I was willing to invest the effort in learning another OS that tries to hide its complexity from the user. I put up with this from Windows, but thats only because its so common and Windows skills are professionally essential to what I do. Mac OS X - not so much.

The fact that Mac OS X has a good command line doesnt do it for me. Yes the Windows command shell is rubbish, but it can be improved/replaced by use of UnixUtils/cygwin, and Linux has a great shell environment already built in.

Originally Posted by Gitsnik

Ha I said not to use the migty mouse, it's a PoS, and the "windows key" is there, it just says "command" instead of having a pretty picture for you.

If the command button maps itself to the Windows function key when booting to Windows then that removes that minor complaint (although Id still prefer the pretty picture ). I was also aware that its possible to get mice with more buttons than one for the Mac, although I was under the impression that one button mice were still considered the system default and that the inbuilt track pad on the Macbook Pro was also one button.

[Gitsnik]

All valid points, and arguments for/against a Mac come down to your own opinions of course

Originally Posted by lupin

that the inbuilt track pad on the Macbook Pro was also one button.

My trackpad accepts variations of me touching it with one, two, three or four fingers (though the three finger functionality is not useful for me), the ability to "show desktop" with a quick sweep of four fingers is a useful ability - for me. Each to their own. The last thing you will see me doing is pushing a Mac when a Windows machine is the best in that environment.

And yes, a "one button" mouse is the default - it's actually a 5 button mouse but has no definitive lines/buttons - it takes a bit of work getting used to, but I make do with a $5 K-Mart job with two buttons and a scroll wheel - I hate Mac mice.

Anyway, as I was saying, there are valid points to using a Mac, or using a PC - if any other points come up about Mac's that I spot I will point out the "counter points" to those. In closing:

In the last 5 years I have seen a large number of people go to Mac's (even when I was an exclusive windows admin). I have never seen one go back, even if they were initially an Ubuntu or other FOSS user.

Backtrack is still on my hacktop though

[archangel.amael]

Although I don't own a MAC, I have thought about buying one on several occasions.
My father-in-law has a macbook two apple tv devices, and a iphone.
I do like that fact how it is all integrated and easily synced.
Now granted one may and can do the same things with PCs.
My father-in-law told me he got tired of having to do all the "extra" work involved with an other type of setup. He took some photos with the Iphone then synced it to the macbook and apple tv device so that he we could add a song to the photos to make a slide show then look at it on the 42" flat screen.
That sold me on the "cool factor" but the prices thus far have kept me away.

[Virchanza]

If I myself were to buy a Macbook Pro, I'd have it tripple-booting:

1) Backtrack Linux
2) Mac OS
3) Windows

I've never really played around with Mac OS much, I don't know how good or crap it is. Of course though I like the way Linux is open-source, and also that it's not profit-orientated so in that way it's tailored to "giving the people what they want" instead of "getting money out of the people".

I'd use Linux as my main OS. I'd keep Mac OS on it just for kicks, I might boot into it rarely just to piss about. I'd use MSWindows for playing games and for the odd program that needs MSWindows to run.

One other cool thing about having this tripple-boot system is that if you were writing a program, you could compile it for all three platforms and see how it runs on each platform without leaving the room

When people talk about high-quality laptops for gaming and so forth, they usually mention brands such as Alienware, but it seems to me that Apple is right up there with them too.

[pureh@te]

I have considered getting a mac on a few ocasions. After a recent Capture the Flag event I was involved in with Rel1k on my team, I was very impressed with his mac set up with backtrack running in vmware fusion with a alfa.

I for one rarely dual or triple boot OS's. If I need something other than I am working on I like to be able to pull it up in a VM and use it with out interrupting my other work. This means I need laptops with lots of ram and a big processor so those are my main selling points. I will have to stand with lupin on the mac/pc issue though as he makes the main points which concern me. The one button mouse of course is fail but easily fixed however I wish that apple would just make the track pad work with 2 buttons, I use right click entirely to much to go to a one button system. Lugging around a external mouse can become "to much junk" when you have multiple wifi cards.

I have been shopping for a new laptop and here is what I found:
The mac I custom built:
# 15 inch macbook pro
# 3.06GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
# 8GB 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 2x4GB
# 256GB solid-state drive
# Every thing else I left at default (i.e. Screen, graphics card)
Price: $4,249.00

A custom built computer from Sager:
15.6" Full HD LED Display with Super Glossy Surface (1920 x 1080)
Intel® Core™ i7-920XM Processor Extreme Edition ( 45nm, 8MB L3 Cache, 2.0GHz )
Nvidia GeForce GTX 280M Graphics with 1GB DDR3 Video Memory
8GB DDR3 SDRAM at 1333MHz - 2 X 4GB
160GB Intel SATA2 Solid State Disk Drive
Price: 3719.00
15.6" Full HD LED Display with Super Glossy Surface (1920 x 1080)

As you can see the price issue is really not that different when you get into high end computers. As you can see you get a bigger drive and a far bigger processor with the mac for only about a 400 dollar difference. I haven't yet decided on a laptop but mac is certainly becoming a competitor on the market for me.

[Virchanza]

Don't forget about how cool you look in a cafe when people see the Apple logo on the lid of your laptop

I'd really like to get a powerhouse of a laptop... but to be honest I'd be afraid to put that much money into something that I could leave in a restaurant or spill water on.

When I was in college I got lucky with my laptop on maybe 5 different occasions. I'd be walking down the corridor and be like "shit, I had two bags, where's the other one, where's my laptop?!", and then I'd run back to my last classroom and see my laptop bag sitting there on the seat. I don't know what I'd do if a $2500 laptop went missing on me :O

Which laptop brands have the sturdiest body? I never would have thought that this would be such a big deal but now that I have my own laptop that has a shitty plastic body that's cracked in 5 places, I know I want the next laptop to be solid as a rock. My friend's Macbook Pro is solid as a rock, you could literally beat someone to death with it.