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bcwood16

Who likes Macs?

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Hello,

Im sure this subject has come up before, but as macs have become so much more popular in recent times I was wondering what peoples opinions are on Macs.

I have always worked on computers from a technicians point of view and in the last 6 years I have worked mostly on Macs.

Im not talking about Apple in general, yes their products are expensive, but iPhones, iPads and other Apple stuff is pretty well made and easy to use. However, I think their Laptops and especially their OS are total rubbish!

Over these 6 years of using Macs and PC, I can certainly say that just about 'everything' people say about how superior Macs are to a PC, I find to be the total opposite.

1) Macs do crash and I mean 'alot'!! my biggest gripe is that there is often no reason what so ever. For instance if Microsoft Word crashes on a PC, its almost always because of a hardware fault or virus. On a Mac it will often just crash with no reason, I understand some complicated programs can crash due to software bugs, but this is 2013, I dont expect my word processor to crash.

2) Macs are very very slow! Yea they load up fast for the first week, and even if you dont install ANY software on it, it slows down more and more! No reason, it just does! Now we all know icons on the dekstop can cause windows to slow down, but leave a few icons on a Mac and performance drops massively! I had 1 user whos laptop took almost an hour to load up. She had alot of icons on her desktop. I moved them all into just 1 folder, and the laptop now runs fine.

3) USB speed, yea Macs win if you drag a file from the desktop to a USB stick. Windows can be about 2 maybe 3 seconds slower. However, what they dont tell you is when you plug in a USB pen the mac takes a very long time for it to appear on the dekstop. In fact by the time Mac displays the USB stick, a windows machine would have already copied the file over and been unplugged.

4) Security! Its by far the worst security system ever! You dont need to know how to hack, or write code or even be devious to get into a password protected Mac. It is child's play! Yes you can do 'special' things to make it more secure, but most users (especially Mac users) are not going to do this. If you do want to 'hack' into a user account, again its super easy, in fact just 1 command line and wala, new admin account to do what ever you want!

Anyway, you get the point! I could just be bashing Mac (which I guess I am), but I do appreciate some aspects of their system. However, after using 'both' systems side by side for 6 years, I really can not understand everything they say about Mac, as I find it is the complete opposite.

I could go on for ever, but I guess I could go on about bad things with Windows, it all depends what angle you want to take.

I can say for sure though, that I can use a Windows machine in confidence, on a Mac I really just dont know how its going to perform that day. Its like a box of chocolates, you never know what your guna get - A crash, a freeze, a beach ball of death, lost documents, will it find a USB pen, will it even load up today??

What are other peoples experiences ??

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The newer ones are supposed to be pretty good.A friend of mine has one,and she loves it.I tried it for myself,and it was okay.I still like Windows better though.

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I don't like Apple and the way they use slave labor in China to create their overpriced shit which all the hipsters gobble up.

I've also discovered when attempting to repair somebody's Mac laptop that it's not possible to re-install preinstalled system components such as iPhoto or even the fucking System Preferences if they have been deleted by mistake. You need to reinstall the OS from the installation DVD, and of course the laptop had come with the OS preinstalled and no installation DVD.

Even worse is their OS update stuff. It was an old version of Mac OS X, but the built-in software updater kept claiming that everything was up to date. Oh, how delightfully user-friendly when you have a package that tells you it cannot install because you need to update the OS first, and when following the procedure to do so, all you get is to wait a long ass time while a progress bar slowly crawls forward, then an insolent little window telling you "no updates are needed"! Fuck you, you piece of DESIGNED-IN-CALIFORNIA(but-made-in-china) shit.

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Haven't used many, I must say. I had sporadic experiences with older Quadras and late Mac OS 9 machines, and more recently a few months of actually working and hacking on an old G3 and a recent iMac.

Both appeared well built, great UNIX-like OS, much friendlier than most Linux distros etc. but with crippling deficiencies and unimpressive performance for what they cost (e.g. G3 only had 2 USB connections...too little for a computer that has a huge-ass 20 kg tower and wants to be "hip" by abolisthing PS/2 connectors, and overall performance wouldn't exactly smoke a contemporary Pentium III of similar class, while costing much, much more). I gotta say I liked the case of the G3, truly a hardware junkie's dream, but being it a Mac, there's only so much you can do with it.

Modern Intel-based iMac and MacBooks that I've worked with (not mine, usually of friends/students) they appeared too overpriced for their actual specs: e.g. a Eur. 2500 MacBook had the same exact hardware specs as a contemporary generic Eur. 400 laptop, except for the screen. Can't justify that kind of difference on branding or "just working" alone.

Another thing I don't like about them is poor forwards/backwards compatibility: if I take a Pentium III from 2001 and throw enough hardware at it, I can run Windows XP and browse the net acceptably, run most modern software (however slowly), find it a job it can perform, and even tinker with Windows 7 or other OSes. With a G3, software-wise, I'm stuck to older revisions of Mac Os (max official is 10.4 "Tiger"), and of course I'm cut out of all Intel-specific software, which means that I can't use practically anything of value today, not even open source stuff like GIMP, unless I put Linux on it...which IMO is completely missing the point of using a Mac.

Gez said:

I don't like Apple and the way they use slave labor in China to create their overpriced shit which all the hipsters gobble up.


As opposed to....? Is there ANY piece of consumer electronics today that is NOT produced in one of Mainland China's Special Economic Zones (e.g. Shenzhen), where most of these factories operate?

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Maes said:

Another thing I don't like about them is poor forwards/backwards compatibility: if I take a Pentium III from 2001 and throw enough hardware at it, I can run Windows XP and browse the net acceptably, run most modern software (however slowly), find it a job it can perform, and even tinker with Windows 7 or other OSes. With a G3, software-wise, I'm stuck to older revisions of Mac Os (max official is 10.4 "Tiger"), and of course I'm cut out of all Intel-specific software, which means that I can't use practically anything of value today, not even open source stuff like GIMP, unless I put Linux on it...which IMO is completely missing the point of using a Mac.


Oh yea, dont get me started on compatibility. lol I have £800 worth of software such as Photoshop Elements and a bunch of video editing stuff that will not run on the new Lion OSX. Apparently my licence cant be used for 'upgrades' so I have to buy it all again. While on Windows all that stuff would still run on Windows 8 if needed. My PC at home has loads of very old software that runs fine on modern hardware/Windows.

On a Mac, bin it ALL and start again! This is so not cool!!!

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Heh now that you said it, this Mac G3 came with a full Pro Tools suite and soundcard...probably worth a fortune when new, and now all but useless if you don't use Mac Os Classic... Even installing it is a PITA as you have to use activation floppies (!) and use an external USB floppy drive just for that....

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1) I used to hate Macs to hate Macs sort of thing. But now I've dated a girl that has a Mac... a few Macs and I've had to work on them. Its just so cumbersome. Having to hold Ctrl + mouse click for a standard right mouse click on a PC.... even when her mouse has 2 buttons.

2) It gets stuck in some sort of full screen mode and I can't access the lower program icons without going to the top right then going to the bottom again. Sure that might seem like it takes 1 second, but its noticeable.

3) She and I have competed... updating our music collections using our iTunes to see who could update the collection easier. I blew her away. Then she said that's only because you know more about computers. So I switched. She's never used an typical PC for a decade. She was able to edit more music info than I was.

4) The people at my local mac store sometimes get slow in the daytime and so they'll hang out in the doorway and harass me to come in. They tell me Macs have no viruses... I said I'd rather deal with a virus once a year that might take a day to fix than have to deal with how cumbersome mac controls are.

5) 2 of my Mac friends jumped to iPads and they both hate them due to the keyboard and auto correct. One of them said it makes him type like a retard and he has to go back and triple check his documents for any weird typos like sex instead of six.

6) I have a few friends that work for companies that have always used iPhones and gotten deals where every employee gets a free iPhone. When the latest iPhone came out all of the companies found it not economically viable enough to get the new version and rather waited.

7) When Samsung a Korean company donated more to Hurricane Sandy victims than the American based Apple. That said a lot. When Apple sues other phone manufacturers for patent infringement for having 'curved edges' on their phone that says a lot too.

8) You need to have your code looked at before they let you publish.

9) Mac conned my company into buying Flash CS5 because they announced that they'd allow Flash based apps. For months we payed Flash devs to make a whole slew of Flash based apps expecting that when they allow it we'll be ready right out of the gates. Then Apple changed their mind after I bought the program. Then when Android allowed Flash based apps suddenly Mac did too. Somehow our company survived despite no payoff to paying extra.

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I've been working with macs a lot for the past year, and they're so goddamn cumbersome. Slow, I hate the mouse and the whole setup, I don't like the keyboard.... They're fucking slow. And funny enough, the guys supervising or teaching with these computers have all admitted that they too hate these computers. Also, I wanted to attach my small sansa 2gig once to a mac in order to transfer some music on it from someone's flashdrive, and somehow, for whatever reason, the entire mp3 player was erased. No idea Macs were such mp3 player murderers. I just really don't like it, especially when I seem to be able to do anything a mac can do on my pc.

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I like my MacBook Pro Retina, I also have a 2008 white MacBook, and so far I've experienced no software update bugs (I was getting them many times with some Windows/computer combos, nothing serious, just annoying). I only got a crash once on the MacBook because its RAM module failed. Good thing it was replaceable. Otherwise the experience is so much more seamless than out-of-the-box Windows 7 or 8. Yeah, I understand that you can install stuff on Windows 7 or 8 to make it seamless, but that's either inconvenient or costs more money.

Some things to consider:

- Office programs seem to suck on purpose, since they're made by Microsoft on a rival OS company. I avoid them as much as I can. Instead, I'm planning to just use MS Office for Windows when I have to, on Parallels or Dual-Boot Windows (my MBP is fast enough to handle virtualization).

- I don't get why people say OS X is more intuitive. If you come from Windows, you'll use it by expecting the same interface as in Windows, and discover the differently working Dock, Finder etc. Truth is that you need to find the keyboard shortcuts, use virtual desktops ("Mission Control"), use the Dashboard (something AWESOME for me), USE THE SEARCH FEATURE, get a trackpad and use its gestures (and not that single-button mouse) etc. to really get fast with it.

- I don't find desktop Macs a very good idea, laptops seem to be much more practical.

- you'll quickly stumble upon Windows-only applications and need either Wine, virtualization or Boot Camp (problems similarly faced by Linux users). Face it.

- there's no walled garden in the same way as on iOS, you don't need Apple's approval to distribute Mac apps! Well, it's true that user security settings are currently set by default to "Mac App Store and identified developers only", for now it can be turned off, so let's see if things change for the bad.

- I like it because apps developed for OS X feel more modern and have good features:
-- all document applications are multi-document (opening another document won't close the current one)
-- all encoding is UTF-8, not Windows-1252, NEXTSTEP or whatever.
-- some API features that haven't spread to other systems, except on a case-by-case basis, such as remembering application state on quit/shutdown, autosaving/versioning, being able to rename/move documents while they're open (try that in Windows with ultra-modern Office, I dare you),
-- fairly customizable keyboard or shortcuts. I doubt Windows has a way to swap Control with Win, for example.

Also why the fuck does Windows 8 still require me to click on windows before scrolling them with the wheel? This makes Explorer very annoying to use, because I end up clicking on a random folder on the tree and change what displays on the right, just to navigate.

I am however a power user, have learned to take care of my Macs, and I can see why some others get frustrated. I don't care about specs. Hardware build quality indeed does suck, I only see the quality in software and technologies they're implementing (multitouch trackpad or Hi DPI display). They're good enough to work for me. Usually if I find something that is absent or doesn't work on Mac, I try to program it. I'm aspiring to program, and I find the OS X platform quite inspiring on this regard.

I prefer to avoid iProducts though. Their walled garden design is too bad for me, and they seem to cater to the kind of people who are the reason:
1) Apple is still in business
2) Apple doesn't care too much about professional-quality software on Mac. Or security (idiots don't have anything to lose from a malware!).

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I actually bought an old G3 blue-and-white tower (350 MHz with 512 MB RAM) from Craigslist years ago for $35. While it has OS X 10.3.9 installed on it, I never actually boot it, because I opted to put 9.2.2 on it instead to goof around. Sure, the old Mac never got a lot of the really good PC games, but its shareware market throughout the 1990's is loaded with all kinds of bizarre things and points of interest, like Ambrosia Software's Harry the Handsome Executive, an overhead action-adventure game where you navigate around offices by kicking around on a wheelie chair, and fight robots by throwing exploding soda cans and firing staple guns.

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bcwood16 said:

Who likes Macs?

Fags :P


I did a course on a MacBook Pro back in April and it felt very "style over substance" in functionality. It was fun to play with for a bit, but I'd not want to have to get used to one properly to use it as efficiently as I use Windows (and I'm not even one of those guys who can hotkey their way through everything in seconds).

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Technician said:

I'm a Mac fag, myself. I can't speak for the longevity of their gizmos, but my old iMac is running on it's fourth year.

Are you happy with your Doomin', though?

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I like macs for work. Adobe Creative Suite.

printz said:

Are you happy with your Doomin', though?

No. I need to find a mouse that will work with my Mac and also I haven't bothered with Parallels or the like. I doom with the non-simultaneous-key-press-friendly keyboard on Mac-Zdoom.

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I haven't had many experiences with Apple products, but those I've had for extended or short periods of time have been pretty bad. And that ranges from Macs through iPod and iPhone. Their software too. Especially iTunes was horrible and definitely one of the worst pieces of software I've ever used.

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printz said:

Are you happy with your Doomin', though?


latest prb+ works swimmingly, and I've been meaning to mess around some more with EE :)

is there any gzdoom that compiles on os x?


on a side note I got an old mbp that's going on it's 6th year, it's yet to give me serious troubles. I'm sure I could find reasons X, Y, and Z to hate apple, but I can't muster the enthusiasm to do so.

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I'm a Macfag, too. Currently running an iMac from early 2009, using 10.6 as my main OS and Win7 in Parallels for Doom editing.

I've been very dissatisfied with the direction Apple has been taking Mac OS in 10.7 and 10.8, though. Lots of counterproductive changes to interface and filesystem behavior, ported over from iOS or otherwise, and with noticeably worse memory management. I had been running 10.7 for a while on here until I downgraded due to the poor performance and other irritations.

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esselfortium said:

I've been very dissatisfied with the direction Apple has been taking Mac OS in 10.7 and 10.8...


I do agree with this though, I'm going to keep using 10.6.8 for as long as humanly possible

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Hellbent said:

No. I need to find a mouse that will work with my Mac and also I haven't bothered with Parallels or the like. I doom with the non-simultaneous-key-press-friendly keyboard on Mac-Zdoom.

Mouse on OS X runs with acceleration. It may be interesting for Dooming, letting you have fine aim accuracy and still be able to turn quickly. Be sure to configure its sensitivity both from System Preferences and Doom Options.

Also maybe you can tell ZDoom team of that keyboard problem? Or are you using a non-standard key binding setup? Using the default arrow-key/ctrl/alt/shift/space combo I have no problems (THOUGH I'M RARELY PLAYING ZDOOM so you may disregard this).

Ribbiks said:

is there any gzdoom that compiles on os x?

Google-search "GZDoom for mac", you'll come across a Google Code page that also contains SLADE.

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Ribbiks said:

is there any gzdoom that compiles on os x?

Yes.

http://code.google.com/p/gzdoom-macosx/

That said if someone with some programming experience is willing to help me make the tweaks needed to get the official GZDoom compile on Macs (and able to init OpenGL), I'd be glad to!

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I've been using a MacBook Pro for the past year and a half. Works pretty well for me. Over the past ~10 years pretty much all of my most technically-skilled friends have switched to Macs, even people I'd never have expected to use them. Most of the people where I work use them as well.

To briefly answer the OP's original points: 1). I don't experience any regular crashes. 2) I don't experience any particular slowness. 3) USB doesn't seem particularly slow that I've noticed. 4) Encrypt your hard drive with FileVault and it isn't "easy" to get into a password-protected machine - and even without an encrypted hard drive it isn't any more easy than Windows or any other system.

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Not really, and he also went on to completely rewrite the OpenGL renderer so it's not really possible to just backport his changes.

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Perhaps the one single feature that makes me "hate" modern macs is that they are Intel based, and so actually nothing more than a PC in disguise. It's like paying for a Dell or a Compaq-made "home PC", but with twice the premium, and only a funny OS to set it apart from full-blown Wintel. Is it really worth it, I ask? OK, you can also run Windows on them...but what about the reverse situation, aka Hackintoshes? What are the Macfags' opinions on those?

That's right folks: no more super-duper exclusive Apple hardware, no mind-blowing custom chips, etc. quite the opposite, they seem to be bottom feeders with peripherals at the level of an entry-level office laptop (e.g. Intel integrated graphics and AC'97/HDA audio, maybe an integrated ATI if you're lucky).

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Maes said:

but what about the reverse situation, aka Hackintoshes?

They sound tempting, but too often I read about maintenance trouble such as failing to update the OS…

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68k Macs are pretty cool. I had a Mac Classic and it was one of my favorite machines. Very useful and easy to use. In contrast, my PowerPC Mac Mini is the most useless machine I've ever owned. Of course, it was one of Apple's last products before the switch to x86 - so it was obsolete in a year.

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People say Macs are intuitive because doing things is always accomplished the way a stupid Windows newbie might try: drag a whole program somewhere, move drives to the trash, etc. Macs drive me crazy, but it is nice not to have to hack registry settings for everything.

When an app says you need to update your OS it usually means you need to go buy a new version on CD. It's a bit evil, but at least those upgrades are far cheaper than Windows, or even MS Office.

I really don't like using Macs, but sometimes I recommend them to people who aren't already comfortable with Windows. Apple's in-store service is second to none and I like it when I don't have to fix somebody's PC every week.

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