Should I buy a Mac?

:shrug:

Mac user since 1989.

I don't own a Mac, so the particulars of the inner workings are unknown to me. And the people with the glitches are employees of my now former company, so I can't contact them readily for follow-up. And "costly" is intended as a piece of Lounge-poll hyperbole rather than as a strict dollars-and-cents term.


Anyway, one of them had a series of problems with his laptop resulting in the loss of a whole hard drive's worth of data. He's a professional wedding photographer, and thankfully he'd backed everything up on tape, but it was a huge inconvenience for him. He took the machine to a local Apple dealer and they fixed it promptly and returned it to him, including a brand new hard drive with the software reinstalled.

Within a month he lost all data on that hard drive, though again he had backed everything up. Back to the dealer...

They sent it out to be repaired, during which time he was sans computer. In a week's time (or so--I can't recall) it was returned as before. This time around it seemed to work, but the problem ultimately was nothing like what the dealer had originally diagnosed.

There's more, but that's all I can recount with any detail at all. I know, I know--twice-told-tale. Sorry about that.

The net effect is that he was essentially hobbled for several weeks while the whole process went through, not to mention the pain in the ass of restoring from tape. What he found most infuriating is that he didn't have a lot of options for getting the repair done--he used the term "monopoly," though I realize that the term doesn't really apply. I also realize that the problem was exacerbated by an error at the dealer, rather than an inherent flaw in the machine.

Incidentally, he still swears by Mac, mostly because of the power of its graphics applications. But his problems, all by themselves, amount to more trouble than all the PC owners I know have had.

YMMV (and apparently does!)

This thread is obviously nothing but an excuse to tell that rambling tale.

Nice pathetic whiff.

"But his problems, all by themselves, amount to more trouble than all the PC owners I know have had."

That has to be the ultimate parody in DU history. How many have you known, one? :rofl:

Seriously, you can describe PCs in any fashion you want. But trouble free isn't fooling anyone.

I need no excuse to tell a rambling tale. Have you read nothing else I've ever posted?

Your most honest post ever!:rofl:

"Buy a Mac. I have one, and it totally cured me of my sense of humor."

Had to call tech support twice in 20 years.

What costly glitches?

My last job had all macs but for one computer, and in my experience there they were ever bit as buggy as PCs, but much more expensive to fix. AppleCare was a bit of a joke- they'd take ages to authorize repairs.

When my sister's Mac crashed it took over two months to fix, and cost more than than the initial cost of all the PCs I've ever owned. Plus, her damn peripherals cost her three times what mine do. I've used her Mac, and it's a sweet machine, but I'd go bonkers if I had to go without a decent computer for more than a month.

With the right software - and believe me, it's easier to find for a PC than a Mac - a PC can do almost anything a Mac can, just cheaper.

- It's not glitchy

- It's free

- Your smugness will increase ten fold (just ask me :D )

Among Linux smugnocenti, Ubuntu is considered the "noob's OS," something you play around with until you're ready for "Real Linux." In this context, "Real Linux" means those distributions that can't be installed without a PhD in Computer Engineering and a pact with Satan.

To be moderately smug, you should definitely move to Debian (which is what Ubuntu is derived from, but smugger). To be highly smug, Give a "build from source" distro like Gentoo a try. For ultimate smugness, build your "Linux from Scratch" (www.linuxfromscratch.org), after which you will be a deity in the firmament of software self-regard.

I might OD on the smug drug which scares me. Albeit, a month into Ubuntu and I'm starting to learn some scripting so I might make another leap sometime in the future... Even if this is the n00b's Linux it still beats the shit out of Windows or Mac so I'm relatively happy.

I cut my teeth with it and still contribute to the support forums. The online community is great (helpful and friendly with precious little of the "read the manual, nooooob!" attitude you find elsewhere), the OS itself comes with a lot of useful stuff, and it's much easier to get up and running on a wide variety of hardware than some of the more "hardcore" distros. No matter what anyone says, there's nothing you can't learn or do on Ubuntu that you can do on any other distribution. You just do it more easily.

:rofl:

it doesn't seem to be compatable and can be a real PITA.

...by dual booting OS X and Windows on the same machine. There's nothing you can run on a PC that you can't run on a Mac these days.

so they won't work. It's a major PITA.

...that sort of limits your options.

who have pcs.

but your answer made almost poop myself.

you said, "Buy a Kenworth"

buy a Windows PC. If you want to do actual work, buy a Mac,

Windows is advanced computating. You gotta want it bad, 'cause it's gonna put up a fight!

http://www.youtube.com/v/Jg1-ywndVNc&hl

is that with the billions of dollars at their disposal, Microsoft could have said, "Let's create the best operating system of all time" and hired the world's best programmers and system designers, and blown away every other OS on Earth, including Mac OS. But instead they chose to just keep releasing incremental changes and a series of so-so systems filled with bugs and requiring service packs and all that. Different Windows editions seem so different from each other it sometimes seem like they came from different companies or at least groups with differing ideas about system design. At least Mac OS is still essentially the same software it was since the Mac first came out in 1984, it has evolved dramatically and been continuously refined and improved but at its heart and soul, Mac OS 10.5 is the same software as 1.0 - just improved and expanded.

off of others' work.

Remember, the first operating system the company ever released was Xenix, a Unix version they licensed from AT&T.

Then they purchased 86-DOS from Seattle Computer Products, renamed it {C-DOS and sold it to IBM for the PC and the rest is history.

From its very beginnings and through today, Microsoft's philosophy has always been, "Why reinvent the wheel?" So they buy/license/borrow/steal the creative efforts of other and adapt the technology to service them. That is why there never seems to be any underlying theme to what they do.

They are literally the Borg of the digital universe.

I have never had any problems with my mac. My sister has never had any problems with her. My dad has never had any problems with any of those they use at work. My SO is now getting a mac.

I love my mac and will never buy a PC again. If I need windows for some program, I use Parallels. With all of the problems we have had with PCs (and we are not inexperienced computer users), I don't want one.

no evil Microsoft error messages!

There are some little glitches with the MacBook, but no big problems...

I love my Macs but the last two I've owned have had major logic board failures. The MacBook was three weeks away from it's warranty ending (phew!), but my other iMac was not covered and would have cost $940 to repair. We bought the MacBook instead to replace it and later received my current iMac as a gift. So far, the newer aluminum iMac has been great but both Macs are now covered by AppleCare.

I bought it for my eMac and there was one repair that was covered by it, but after having the eMac for 3 years, the AppleCare ran out, and I went to Apple to renew it or buy an extension to it - but no go. They will not let you. They will only sell one AppleCare agreement, one time, for each Mac. In effect, they are saying that Macs are only good for 3 years and they will not warranty one longer than 3 years, even if you are willing to pay for more warranty time. (Ironically, nothing at all has gone wrong with my eMac since the AppleCare expired a year so, so Apple could have made money off me by letting me extend it, and they would have had no repairs to do on it.

If it's for hanging out on DU, organizing photos, editing photos, or just living - get a Mac.

If you have to work on this machine, however, most business applications aren't made for mac. Some are, check ahead. But a PC would be your thing.

Apple's web site lists 1,495 business applications available for Mac OS:

http://guide.apple.com/action.lasso?-database=MacOSGuide&-layout=cgi_search&-response=/uscategories/business/business_results.lasso&-op=bw&st_Cat_IDs_result=B044&-maxRecords=10&-search

http://www.apple.com/business/

Entourage on a Mac has finally become Exchange compatible - which changed a lot

There's a bunch that just isn't built for macs though - especially in say SAN management, or Storage?

I think the Mac still dominates the graphic arts, publishing, photography, music, video and education markets. Everything else is dominated by PCs

...using something like Parallels or VMWare, or natively (via BootCamp). In fact, according to PCWorld, the fastest Vista laptop in the world is a MacBook Pro (well, it was late last year when I read the article, anyway).

I mostly use Linux and BSD machines, but my traveling laptop is a MacBook Air with a tiny Windows XP partition on it. This lets me enjoy the benefits of using a Mac 99% of the time, with the backup of having Windows if I need to use any software that really requires it.

VMware is well worth it if you ever virtualize anything.

But - you are running two OS's on your machine. That takes resources.

...particularly so on the tiny 80GB disk on my MBA, but it's a small price to pay for a bit of choice in this Windows-dominated world. Of course, XP is as far as I go. If I tried to install Vista, I'd have no disk space left. :)

Do you want to be the young, hip, cool guy in the commercial, or the stodgy, monotonous old guy?

:hide:

and much faster resiubses and bootups!

Might even improve your image. Certainly stylish on some people.



Oh, I guess you meant the computer. As for that oh well... they're pretty good from what I hear, never owned one (yet), can't afford one (yet), don't desire one (yet). But if you want one definitely go right ahead. Besides the newest ones can be made to run Windows if you have to.

Mark.

I like using it.

It maybe my next computer.