I happen to agree. Being a Primary Mac user, I love the OS, love the hardware, hate the price, and hate the ecosystem. One thing I can't stand is a Mac user that touts and touts everything about OS X. Most Mac users, in essence, are very prideful and very rude as well, usually. I use MANY operating systems, some that far surpass Mac, Windows, and Linux. My line of work requires me to know and operate all kinds and sorts of OS's (Hence why I'm part of a Beta OS Enthusiast forum). There's a difference between liking a platform and totally submersing your brain in you rear over it. I've encountered the same ideology at work as well. At school, too. I don't think there is a perfect platform. Mac is good, but definitely has it's downsides. As time goes on, I see myself transitioning into one of those "Linux Nerds", that's quite a platform... Just my two cents, take it or leave it.

I'm going to throw my hat into the ring.

I've used both Macs and PCs. Macs do have the superior build quality and the superior OS, but inside of that sleek aluminium... is a regular old PC, which was why I chose the Hackintosh route. Many people with Hackintosh PCs find Final Cut movie rendering equivalent to an iMac or a Mac Pro or even better. Sure, it's a giant, giant contrast to the out-of-the-box instantly-working feel that Macs have, but hey, I'm technologically advanced (Aren't we all on here!? )

But I know people don't want to fiddle with kexts and DSDT, so they go for the normal Mac route. That's fine with me, just don't rub it in my face that your Mac is superior to my PC (Some early MacBooks had Intel GMA 950 which is horrible! ).
What I don't like is how people say when they see a Windows PC and say "Omfg! this is too slow!" and then blow a thousand dollars/pounds/euros on a Mac... of course that £300 PC may not be as powerful as that £1999 iMac (just a random number, chill guys).
My aunt wants a MacBook, I'll let her have a MacBook. I know she isn't the best in computing (she knows about formatting and is kinda used to the Windows 8 Consumer Preview I put on there, whoops! ) so I said "whatever you feel comfortable with". I don't choose for them. And I know for sure she won't rub it in my face.

So if and when she gets her MacBook, she'll want me to set it up, download/install apps, etc. even though that might be really easy. My experience with the Mac has been mostly positive, being a student at a media-centered school. At first, the MacBook would not load a blank Pages template, so I told the teacher (school policies, gotta follow 'em!) and she told me to reboot, which I did and it worked. And I just whizzed away on Pages (while using two fingers to rotate images, that got pretty fun instantly! )
I don't like how Apple switches from Ctrl to Command (Windows User's Syndrome ). I see myself pressing Ctrl+Shift+3 and not Command+Shift+3 on a school PC.

This topic has become a flame war...

And you just bumped the topic to continue it?

Nice bumb. But is this a flamewar? In my opinion its just saying ones opinion. Mac OS vs. Windows, or Apple vs. all other computer manufacturers.

Don't know about macs really, but my iPod is great, a bit closed (no external memory, radio, not heaps of settings, no equaliser), but I still like it. What I don't like about macs is that they allow Windows to be installed on them, but don't allow Mac OS on a competitors PC, so my uni has to have Macs in order to allow dualbooting between Windows 7 and Mac OSX-which means Apple hardware. Unfair in my opinion. I couldn't use Mac OS or Ubuntu, since I need software which is only available on Windows.

I am a little late on this topic, but this is my opinion:
I don't have much experience with Mac desktops, so I will compare the actual quality of the output of my high end $3000 i7 2.6GHz Macbook Pro to the output of my $700 i5 2.3GHz Sony Vaio.
The PC has a Blu Ray drive, first of all, as it is a Vaio. This is useless for some people, but is very important to me. The Mac has 8Mb of RAM, same as the PC. The PC has a nice, big 17" screen. The Macbook has a 15" screen. Installing OS X took 1 Hr. Installing Windows 7 took 45 min. Once I had the OS installed, the Mac was obviously faster with it's i7, but surprisingly not by much, especially after running a few programs because they stay in memory after you close them as described earlier. The mac and PC were pretty evenly matched. The factor that really swung my preference toward the PC was the repairs I made on the Mac. After about a month, the Mac's screen developed a pretty bad crack. After about a year, the screen was almost completely shattered, the left mouse button didn't work, the KB didn't work, the HD had some serious errors, and the webcam was shot. I sent it in to an Apple repair chop, and they charged me $1000 to fix it. Once I got it back, it was fine for a few days, but then the screen fell out! I had that repaired, and the repaired one fell out again! So all in all, I paid $4000 for a Macbook Pro that I have to tape the screen onto and is still only a little faster than my $700 PC. I realize that the repaired screen falling out very well may be the repair shop's fault, but twice... That is over the top. Bottom line, I have always found Macs to be flimsy and will likely be making more repairs next year.

No. Bumping a topic means to post on something that is over 2 months old. It's been 1 month.

Apple sells some pretty decent hardware. Having briefly used a friends Macbook about the only think I didn't care for were the small arrow keys. I do a lot of Excel work and use the arrow keys quite a bit, but now I see PC laptop OEMs doing the same thing with laptops. Some things that stuck out which the Macbooks do better than any PC laptop was the charger plug was held in with magnets so a bump to the plug would knock that magnetized plug out instead of possibly damaging the port. Another thing I liked was the screen open/close spring resistance was just right. Some PC laptops have spring loaded screens than slam shut.

In order to get Mac OS you have to buy it on Apple hardware. There is no competition among OEMs like there is with Microsoft which leads to lower priced computers, but also cheaper build quality. Macs are essentially PCs, they have an Intel x86/64 based CPU, the hardware they use is nothing special.

Apple makes their iPads and iPhones without upgradeable memory and batteries. With cellular data plans becoming more expensive and microSD cards coming way down in price I don't think I'll be using the cloud anytime soon. All my music, movies, etc are going on microSD cards and I wouldn't buy a phone without a card slot. Granted iOS devices come with a lot of space, but with a microSD card I can use that same memory card with multiple devices and when I upgrade the memory is not left inside my old device.

Mac OS is decent and there is some nice Mac exclusive software out there, but I can get nearly the same virus free and stable experience by using a Linux distro of my choice. I can't stand the smug elitist attitude that some Mac users have. They feel that buying an overpriced computer somehow makes them better than everyone else.

I just bought a sandy bridge i3 Asus laptop for under $400. Its plenty fast and can run Mac OS and Windows 8 in Virtualbox just fine. The cheapest Macbooks are $1000+ unless you go with something refurbished.

So there is a specific time. But still, its a bit funny to post on a topic that's weeks old just to say that it has become a flamewar (especially since the war must have ended by now).

Trust me, I feel the same way about some Windows/Linux users.

Actually,


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bump_(Internet)

Traditionally, BA defined it as 30 days, but the current rules define it as 90 days. So no foul there.

However, it does require that your post isn't pointless (I'd contend that posting a few weeks after discussion has died just to say "WOAH, FLAMEWAR!!" is pretty pointless) and that you don't backseat moderate (If you think there's a flame war, you should report it using the report post button, not post to announce the fact that in your opinion, this thread is now classified as a flame war).

Macs are overhyped by their fanboys and marketers (and reviewers who do nothing but positive reviews).

I know. I have the range from 68030, PPC 603e and G3 750fx and an Intel machine.

Deep down, they're just regular PCs. They have the same problems any other computer can get. Bad batteries. Flexible motherboards. (???) GPU issues, another sore point. With the Crumb Collector Keyboard, terrible keyboards. Terrible. As of the early 2000s to recent, non-user repairability. (Crack open a iBook G3 to change the hard drive and you'll see why.) If my iPad gives out, who's gonna fix it? I'm not going to buy a new one, the 2nd and 3rd generations are so non-repair friendly I won't buy them, 2x display or not.

Some say the Apple Extended Keyboard II is one of the best keyboards ever made, alongside the IBM Model M. I have its sister, the Standard Keyboard. Ahhh yes Alps keyswitches. Auto-inject and auto-eject floppy drives. Who would have thought about that?

It goes on. Most people here know of their plusses, and most arguments are much like Ford vs GM, MG vs Citroen, and on and on and on with few "new" arguments, just rehash and rewash of the old.

Mostly, I use Macs because there are few PCs I'm after. I want to spend more time using it rather than diagnosing it. In my opinion, Windows is an Advanced User's operating system, Linux is an Expert User's system, and Mac OS is entry to intermediate, advanced if it can do what you'd like. On the other hand Mac OS X has become quite bloated and sophisticated it really can take an Advanced or Expert user to really leverage the platform properly.

Apple is pretty good at boxing up rubbish and selling it to the people like it's hotcakes. For my next computer, I'm strongly considering NOT an Apple. Definitely not. I don't even use their latest OS. Not even 10.6. Rather, I'm considering a 2530p....

I consider macs to be extremely overpriced, when they moved to intel its like your paying $400 for the computer and $600 for the apple logo and the right to use mac os x. Dont get me wrong the OS is nice but the macs themselves are just unrepairable and hot running (The i5 imac will almost burn your hands if you feel the back after a day of use).

My last iMac was the last of the (easy) repairable ones, The 1st Gen G5. Shame it went into vacuum cleaner mode and died

I cant hate apple though, They kick started some of the largest consumer devices we see today (Almost everyone has a touchscreen smartphone or a tablet etc) and while I know they were not the first to invent a "tablet" or "smartphone" they seemed to have started the craze.

I used to hate Macs, but now that I've switched I'm neutral.

The thing that I can't stand about Macs (and other unix based OS) is the 40 year old file heirarchy. I need to have a cheat sheet
taped to my monitor to remember what the difference between bin, sbin, usr..etc. With today's monstrous hard drives, information
really should by organized per application like windows instead of stuffing everything into a few common directories in the hopes
that they can be shared amongst other apps.

I guess you're not very much familiar with the Windows file system either then. Windows does it the same way as Mac OS does it, just in a different way. If you don't know your way around a file system then naturally you would find it to be confusing, just as others would be with the various SYSTEM32, WOW64, ServiceProfile, L2Schemas, lme, winsxs, vss folders and so on and so forth. And take a look, the NT file hierachy isn't very new either .

Here's my opinion:
Macs are good, but EXPENSIVE! Also popular software is not compatible with them, so i use VMware and winxp to install software.
My two cents.

Depends on what OS you run on it . Also, what kind of "popular" software? All the major suites* exists for OS X (which should work with the majority of users) not to mention that Apple already ships some decent software with it (how many PCs come with a good video editor, music editor, Photo manager, Multimedia manager etc?). Sure, if you mean games then Apple has some way to go, but the hardware is already there, it's up to the game developers now to make their games for OS X, which is something that is already happening with the Steam platform supplying games such as Borderlands 2, Civilization 5, CounterStrike, Half-Life series, GTA series (except 4), Valve games etc etc. Not as much as on Windows but it's growing, and most people don't use their systems for high end gaming either.

Performance-wise Apple are up to par with PCs as they use identical components, you have a much wider choice of videocards of course but Apple never marketed Mac as a gaming platform. It's more of a high end home computer where you pay not only for the design and quality but also for the entire ecosystem of OS X and iOS. Look at any high quality PC and you'll find their price tags up there with Apples too.

So all in all, the only two questions you need to ask yourself when it comes to Macs are, do I want to pay for the extra stuff and do I want OS X?

I think many still live in the 90's when it comes to Mac thinking there's little to none software for Mac, but considering that Mac has an ever growing userbase and with a lot of major software developers supporting it that view needs to be revised. And it's not as an isolated platform as it used to be either, if you don't like OS X you can just pop in Windows on it (or dualboot it, or virtualize it) and still have a good hardware package without the hassle of unfamiliar software.

I used to be a strong opponent of Mac before, today it shares my desktop equally with my PC. And the system integration Apple has with iCloud and its neighboring services is still unparallell to anything the Windows or Linux world (and its avatars) can offer.

[*]Suites (and software) such as Adobe CSx, AutoCAD, Microsoft Office, various software such as Filezilla, Skype, Firefox, Chrome, Thunderbird, VMWare Workstation etc.

Its a matter of personal preference you can use a MAC and pay a bit extra or use a Windows Machine if you want some basic customization. Linux of course is the king of customizing as it will always be which is why so few people use it as they perceive it as too far out.

If I was more experienced I would dual boot L, ML , NT 6.1 and NT 6.2 together. You find the OS names.

Longhorn(?) OS X 10.5 (Leopard), OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion), Windows 7/Server 2008 R2, Windows 8/Server 2012
Anybody has a cookie for me?

No, W4E, I get your cookie.
Leopard 10.5, 10.8, Windows 7 and Windows 8.
I highly doubt he has a copy of 2008 R2 / 2012.

Like if downloading & pirating didn't exist
PS. I stole yer cookie