Mac vs PC : The Debate
For many, many years, Apple and Microsoft fought a very public advertising war comparing the Mac and the PC via figureheads on TV with the PC shown as boring and the Mac as cool.
It’s very common for the PC community to label Mac users as people who prefer form over function, but in reality that couldn’t be farther from the truth. I work for a very large IT company and have relationships with some of the biggest vendors in the world. In my experience it is the hardcore techies in these companies who are Mac users (and directors but for different reasons).
I use both operating systems on a daily basis and these each have their benefits and uses. However, my desktop operating system of choice is Mac OSX for the following reasons:
- It never gets slower: I find I have to reinstall Windows on my PC every few years to get rid of the DLL bloat that slows it down.
- Applications are single files: Well they appear as single files but they are really a special type of folder with an icon. Want to delete it, just delete the file and it is gone.
- It is BSD based: It has the full Shell power you get from Linux / Unix.
- Package Managers: Just like Linux you have powerful package managers available.
- The GUI: Mac OSX has been around for 18 years and it is extremely feature rich and stable. Companies know how to build very impressive apps using it.
- Strong Industry support: Because Mac OSX is used by so many IT people within the IT industry it is extremely well supported by large companies, such as Adobe
- IOS integration: I occasionally jump ship to Android but when I am in the IOS ecosystem (as I am at the moment) the ability to respond to text messages and even answer phone calls on my Mac is great
My main PC is a 2008 Mac Pro that I bought second hand about 7 years ago. It has 2 Xeon processors and I’ve added an nVidia GTX 970 and 32GB of memory. It feels as fast as any of my other PC’s despite the age and is a joy to use. It cost me £1200.
What is your favourite operating system or computer and what do you like about it so much? Please vote and/or resteem this post if you enjoyed it.
OS X is awesome. However, Apple's hardware is crap. Ok, that may be an exaggeration but... With a PC I can build whatever kind of machine I want. Can't do that with a Mac. Also, with a Mac you are going to pay a significant price premium. And while I don't have any experience with the latest Mac Pro soda can design, it seems like a step backwards to me. Finally, the MacBook pro may be nice and thin but it's a poor trade off for lack of ports and extremely poor thermals.
I love OS X but I'd rather build my own PC or buy a nice PC laptop and put Windows and Linux on them vs. buying mac hardware. And as nice as OS X is, Linux still gives you more flexibility, just with a little less polish. I have a better opinion of earlier Apple hardware designs like your 2008 Mac Pro and earlier Macbook Pro's (say the Core 2 Duo era and even earlier with the PowerPC) though you still paid a price premium.
The Mac started gaining more tech users with the advent of OS X but I think it still depends on what kind of technical users you are talking about. Mac Users are more likely going to be developing web apps and mobile apps vs. enterprise applications, games, and other types of software. That's my completely unscientific observation anyway :).
So OS X vs. Windows, OS X wins hands down. But Mac hardware and OS X vs. PC hardware with Windows and Linux the results are different.
Thanks for the detailed opinion and response Darth. I too don't like the trashcan Mac Pro, the one I have is the tower one that is fully expandable. Apple have realised the trashcan was a mistake now and have a new Mac Pro in the work.
I have a Macbook Pro 2015 edition and it is light years ahead of the Lenovo or HP laptops I use at work. It still has the ports (unlike the latest edition) and the disk provides 3gbps of throughput which is incredible. Also the resolution of the screen is 2880 x 1800 and uses an IPS panel. These things are becoming more common place in 2018 but they certainly weren't in 2015.
Also I have a 2008 Macbook Pro that i've owned since new and it is still working strong (I use it for controlling my CNC machine). That was my first Mac and prior to that I had Sony Vaio, Toshibas and HP's and most of them failed shortly after the warranty ran out.
I have a late 2013 model I use sometimes for work. On paper the specs are nice. Core i7, dual GPUs, etc. Problem is the thermals really suck. If you do anything that taxes the CPU, its temp will hover in the upper 90s (I think the CPU limit is 100 degrees celsius). If you do anything that taxes either one of the GPUs, then the CPU throttles. Why pay for all that power if you can't use it? It has an acceptable number of ports (2 USB and 2 thunderbolt plus an SD card reader). Not sure if it is upgradeable or not which is one of my gripes with modern Macbook Pros...you should at least be able to upgrade memory and swap out the hard drive.
I still have a Core 2 Duo based MacBook Pro at home and I love that thing. But then I was able to add more RAM to increase its useful life and can even put in an SSD if I want. Plus the CPU doesn't throttle.
As far as PC laptops go, it's true that you have to pick and choose more carefully and the quality varies greatly. However, almost all the PC laptops I've had over the years are all still going strong, all the way back to my Pentium M based Acer which was awesome for its time. I just think for the money I would rather go buy something like an Alienware laptop vs a MacBook Pro and I'd definitely prefer to build my own PC vs buying anything pre-built, mac or pc.
I've had an HP, a Toshiba, a Lenovo and a variety of Dells for work and at home. The only one I have had fail is one of the Dell's that had a known issue with the Nvidia GPU they used. Basically this was shortly after they took lead out of solder and the thermal cycles eventually caused the solder of the GPU to crack. However, the nice thing about Dell's is that you can actually fix them if you want. Even replacing the motherboard isn't that bad if it comes to it (though that may change any day and may have already on the very latest models for all I know). The MacBook Pro, if it does fail, you might as well toss it.
As far as IPS, Dell, HP and presumably other manufacturers had IPS screens available on some of their laptop models going back to at least 2012. You weren't going to find them on their lowest end laptops though. They were common enough that if you wanted one you could find one. This goes back to having to pick and chose more carefully with PC laptops. The variety is a good thing in my opinion but selecting a particular model is more work than with a MacBook Pro. There's so much more to choose from.
It will be interesting to see what they do with the new Mac Pros...
I think you lucked out on the 2013 Macbook Pro. My wife had one of those and it did get hot. The 2008 Macbook Pro could also get warm under stress, but only if pushed hard.
The 2015 Macbook Pro has no overheating problems at all. It never even seems to get warm no matter what I throw at it. However, I wouldn't upgrade it to a later model because I need the SD card reader and full sized USB ports. Removing those is a step to far for me.
Maybe Windows laptops have improved in recent years, but my experience of them is a lot worse. Had Dells and HP's for work and about a 50% failure rate and i've also had reliability issues with Sony, Toshiba and Acer laptops. Lenovo's are solid and reliable though.
Only last week my son's HP laptop harddisk failed and it was only 18 months old. I was able to repair it though by swapping out the hard disk for an SSD. I've upgraded most of my Mac laptops too. Even the HD in this 2015 can be upgraded though it uses a more expensive M.2 interface.
I am a big Linux fan and Ubuntu is my current daily use machine. I have all three on my desk currently and as a semi-retired IT Pro I made my living off Windows support. I agree that the OSX looks good and runs fairly well, but having to support Mac users I discovered that Apple likes to change things under the hood. Yes, still BSD based but they would change key support directories and files when doing a version upgrade. So processes developed to support new machine setup broke. I also agree with @darth-azrael about Apple hardware, great fit and finish, but way to much money and way too restrictive on hardware upgrade or expandability.
Thanks for the support perspective. I have never had to support Mac Desktops in an enterprise so didn't notice these under the hood changes.
I've also only occasionally used Linux as a desktop due to the fact there is limited support for the apps I use. I use it every day in the server space but my interactions there are almost exclusively console based.
Linux!
OSX is BSD based so you'd be right at home with it (bar the differences to Linux) :)
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