Mac vs PC

[hj2k_x]

It's a tedious argument, especially when you're dealing with someone who is lacking any worthwhile experience with the hardware and software in question. Its paramount to giving a review of a movie you've never seen even if you've read the book.

It is a tedious argument. Some people will never be swayed of an opinion they belive to be correct, despite facts to the contrary.

I stick to everything I have said above and stand by it.

If you do not put any value in my opinion because I 'do not have any experience' with MACs, despite the fact that i have already mentioned that I have, then that is up to you.

My opinion is my own, and I am entitled to it. Backed up with facts it becomes all the more valuable and justified.

 

[PearlJam]

No

Yes

Yes - that's why most mac users buy generic after market ram.

Is the first answer "no" because of the second answer, iow the hardware is better on a mac due to the OS? Therefore if i theoretically have a pc and mac with same hardware and i encode one hour of video the mac will finish quicker than the pc? If so, why is it?

 

[bwana]

If you do not put any value in my opinion because I 'do not have any experience' with MACs, despite the fact that i have already mentioned that I have, then that is up to you.

My opinion is my own, and I am entitled to it. Backed up with facts it becomes all the more valuable and justified.

Forgive me for being so sceptical but to be fair it wasnt long ago when you said . . .

Howzit.

I have been using PCs for nearly 15 years now and have always steered clear of MACs altogether.

As you say you are of course entitled to your opinion - everyone is

Is the first answer "no" because of the second answer, iow the hardware is better on a mac due to the OS? Therefore if i theoretically have a pc and mac with same hardware and i encode one hour of video the mac will finish quicker than the pc? If so, why is it?

Hardware performance is always going to be affected by the operating system. The core of osx is unix based and differs greatly to windows.

As for which machine would render the video faster and better I honestly dont know. I suppose I could try rendering something on my mini under osx and then boot into windows and try again - who knows, maybe I will one day. As far as I can see that's the only fair way to ensure identical hardware.

 

[hj2k_x]

Forgive me for being so sceptical but to be fair it wasnt long ago when you said . . .

I meant I steered clear of pruchasing one(mainly because they were always too expensive, which is the main thrust of my argument), I have used MACs before, no doubt, and they are nice, but not worth the difference in cash IMO.

 

[bwana]

I meant I steered clear of pruchasing one(mainly because they were always too expensive, which is the main thrust of my argument), I have used MACs before, no doubt, and they are nice, but not worth the difference in cash IMO.

We'll thanks for clearing that up then

 

[hj2k_x]

We'll thanks for clearing that up then

No worries

Maybe some day I will have enouh cash to be able to afford a nicely specced MAC and then I can really give it a good thorough run-through, but for the moment I am quite happy with my PC.

Also, there are not a lot of 2nd-hand MACs out there and if they are, then they tend to go for quite a lot still. Which does say something for how they hold their value compared to PC's I guess.

 

[bwana]

You think prices are bad now? I'm looking at the receipt for my Powerbook G4/800mhz/15.2" TFT/512mb sdram/40gb hdd/Combo dvd/16mb DDR RAM purchased in 2002 - r39,999.00!

Prices have come down a lot!

BTW it is still running and getting used everyday (even though my kid ripped off the screen not long ago so I run it without one.)

 

[PearlJam]

As for which machine would render the video faster and better I honestly dont know. I suppose I could try rendering something on my mini under osx and then boot into windows and try again - who knows, maybe I will one day. As far as I can see that's the only fair way to ensure identical hardware.

That would be quite interesting. Just to see what difference the OS makes.

You think prices are bad now? I'm looking at the receipt for my Powerbook G4/800mhz/15.2" TFT/512mb sdram/40gb hdd/Combo dvd/16mb DDR RAM purchased in 2002 - r39,999.00!

Prices have come down a lot!

 

[koffiejunkie]

Is the first answer "no" because of the second answer, iow the hardware is better on a mac due to the OS? Therefore if i theoretically have a pc and mac with same hardware and i encode one hour of video the mac will finish quicker than the pc? If so, why is it?

It won't be faster or slower accross the board. It depends greatly on *what* you do. To give you a rough example, myself and a graphics designer friend compared my notebook (1.8GHz Turion64 with 1mb L2 cache and 2GB mem) to her 500MHz G4 tower in Photoshop stuff. Some things, like scaling massive images (I'm talking 60,000 by 5,000 pixels) down to smaller sizes, the Turion64 is much faster. Then she ran a couple of images through a string of filters, and there the G4 laid waste to the Turion64. In addition to that, some of the stuff she did managed to crash Photoshop on Windows, while on her Mac (OS9) it just kept running for as long as it took.

So it really depends on what you do.

 

[PearlJam]

It won't be faster or slower accross the board. It depends greatly on *what* you do. To give you a rough example, myself and a graphics designer friend compared my notebook (1.8GHz Turion64 with 1mb L2 cache and 2GB mem) to her 500MHz G4 tower in Photoshop stuff. Some things, like scaling massive images (I'm talking 60,000 by 5,000 pixels) down to smaller sizes, the Turion64 is much faster. Then she ran a couple of images through a string of filters, and there the G4 laid waste to the Turion64. In addition to that, some of the stuff she did managed to crash Photoshop on Windows, while on her Mac (OS9) it just kept running for as long as it took.

So it really depends on what you do.

interesting

 

[koffiejunkie]

Of course these differences are between an x86 and PPC processor, which I think has a bigger impact than the fact that the one is running Windows and the other OSX. I imagine if I compare my notebook to an Intel Mac the differences would be much much smaller.

 

[hj2k_x]

You think prices are bad now? I'm looking at the receipt for my Powerbook G4/800mhz/15.2" TFT/512mb sdram/40gb hdd/Combo dvd/16mb DDR RAM purchased in 2002 - r39,999.00!

Prices have come down a lot!

BTW it is still running and getting used everyday (even though my kid ripped off the screen not long ago so I run it without one.)

That is crazy money!

For the nowadays you could get one of those 8-core beasts!

 

[bwana]

That is crazy money!

For the nowadays you could get one of those 8-core beasts!

iirc the £ was also much stronger then so when I purchased it with my UK creditcard it cost less than had I bought it in the UK.

 

[alma-tadema]

I got to go out now, so I can't search for stuff like I wanted to .

Off my head though
250Gb HDD - R700
1GB DDR800 RAM - R1000
DVD-Writer - R350
Some kind of decent gfx- R1000- R2000. 7300 GT goes for like R1400
CPU - 2GB dualcore XEON go for like R3500 a pop so that's another 7k


Which makes R10 450...The mobo's go for like 4 grand, which I did not know.

So my estimate was WRONG. But that still comes to like R5000- R6000 less than the MAC, doesn't it?

Did I miss anything?

What about the case and power supply? It is high powered and silent so >R1200 at least. Also software? Vista is probably at least R2000 extra. I believed when apple brought out the pro it was cheaper than similar offerings from HP and Dell.
Remember it is a workstation computer, it is a bit silly to buy these for home use. The Pro is popular for hi-definition and feature film editing as well as scientific, bioinformatics etc.
Now the iMac is definetely more expensive, but then it is sold as an unique integrated product that "just works".

 

[hj2k_x]

What about the case and power supply? It is high powered and silent so >R1200 at least. Also software? Vista is probably at least R2000 extra. I believed when apple brought out the pro it was cheaper than similar offerings from HP and Dell.
Remember it is a workstation computer, it is a bit silly to buy these for home use. The Pro is popular for hi-definition and feature film editing as well as scientific, bioinformatics etc.
Now the iMac is definetely more expensive, but then it is sold as an unique integrated product that "just works".

Indeed.

We put this debate to rest long ago.

MACs are expensive but not if you include the bundled software.

If you want to build a computer from scratch and don't want software, like me, then PC will ALWAYS be cheaper than MAC.

Fact is thought that many people do not want to do this themselves, hence the popularity and ridiculous pricing of Dell and HP PC's.

 

[PeterCH]

That would be quite interesting. Just to see what difference the OS makes.

Even if the performance differences are not significant, the user experience counts for a lot. Look around and you'll see people moaning and bitching about the Windows setups. I always used Windows and thought that was just part of computing- rebooting 1-2 times per day, having stuff crash on you, loosing data because you clicked Save but the stuff was never saved for unknown reasons, etc - but when I tried a Mac - the system just works.
It's rock solid. It never crashes. The only thing which crashed on me was
VLC and once Roxio's photo slideshow maker. The OS never dies. Now I still get peed off at Mac OSX for some things, eg
the interface is sometimes different to Windows, right click is OFF by default (I enabled it), and when an app
uses your DVD drive (eg DVD player is playing a movie but is PAUSED) you can't eject the disk, but overall the experience
with the MAC is better than with Windows, especially when dealing with Video rendering and DVD creation applications.
It's almost like you never even have to save your work until you actually quit the app at the end of what it is you've been doing.

The Mac Pro I'm using (quad core 3Ghz) is so quiet you can't tell its on, while my 2GB RAM 3.2GHz Pentium 4 machine next to it sounds
like a jet airliner taking off. Drives and memory are also easy to install, while on my PC it takes ages to install something and then you
find you pulled out one of the SATA cables and you waste another 15 minutes. Windows is also dead slow on my P4. It takes
a SATA 16MB cache drive/2GB DDR RAM/ATI Radeon9800Pro/3.2GHz Pentium4 HT machine 5-6 minutes to boot Windows XP
(despite disabling non-essential services, network stuff, spyware, malware, useless junk etc, it took like >10 minutes before).
On my Mac Pro the MAC OSX takes 30-40 seconds or less.

 

[hj2k_x]

Bwana, do you want to buy me this so I can finally fully test out a new MAC properly?