MAC or PC

johnnyboyrebel

the_r_sole wrote: »

What's the benchmark for this? Have you got two identical specced machines performing the same tasks? Statements like that need explanation...

Yes I have, exactly same spec and same tasks. As I said my own experience. You seem to want me to bite here but I won't.

My experience only

johnnyboyrebel

RobTang wrote: »

The problem is when you are wrong on the internet there will be someone to challenge you. come on you're a web designer you should know this.

http://xkcd.com/386/

plus dreamweaver works the same on Windows as it does on OSX and ive never ever ever seen a html IDE that doesn't support split.

Additionally the designer view is never really reliable, you still have to push it through the rendering engines of your browser sets or use something like superpreview or browserlab.

Having read the posts I will upgrade my advice and suggest using a Magic 8-ball to answer your questions.

Sorry mate, again a misunderstanding (although I did state the correct thing)

I am not talking split screen in dreamweaver. I mean when viewing the source of a webpage online.

johnnyboyrebel

nicoipanema wrote: »

Definitely don't waste your money on buying a Mac. Anyone that tells you it will outlast a PC either works for Apple or does not know what they are talking about. I have a Macbook Pro. Bought into the hype that it is the rolls royce of laptops and paid a small fortune for it because I believed people that said once go Mac you never go back.
Biggest mistake ever. Two months after the guarantee ran out, it began to crash if I tried to watch any kind of video on it or open a website it didn't like, including hotmail on random days. Apple refused to repair it and want to charge me £300 to do so despite the fact that I paid £1800 and they obviously sold me a faulty product.
DIGUSTING! I could have bought 4 PCs for that price and had less trouble and probably better customer service
I would highly recommend that you never buy one of their products. It's a piece of crap. Not worth the risk for the huge payout you have to make.

But this is your experience, surely you are not saying don't buy a mac because this is what will happen as clearly that is not true. It's ironic that in my first post here I actually advised the op to get a pc lol

nathand_2

Someone has already pointed out that a mac will hold its value far better than any other PC out there. I prefer macs but for £600 I'd go with a PC.

If you pay for a mac and decide to upgrade in a few years time you'd be able to sell it for a fairly good price (this applies more to iMac / Macbooks rather than the mini). Can you say the same about a PC?

MadTechie

johnnyboyrebel wrote: »

You will get idiots who are pc only yet funnily enough most mac only users will not slag off a pc like the pc users will.

I have been a PC & Mac Engineer for many years,
and I'm sorry to say but most mac users I know slag off PC's and the PC users haven't got a clue about mac's

johnnyboyrebel wrote: »

The fact remains a mac is much more convenient to use. Uninstalling a program is a case of dragging an icon into the trash, that's it.

Yeah kinda true, except you many need to clean up the library and preferences files form time to time.

johnnyboyrebel wrote: »

Running adobe cs6 just works better on a mac as having multiple apps open at once has no effect on performance like it does with a pc.

Bottom line even though a mac is my only option being a designer, for your needs it soundsike you may aswell go for pc.

This isn't as true as it used to be, I'm not saying it isn't true but most macs now use an Intel processor and the same hard drives these days so the difference isn't as great as it once was,
BUT the system is different (but also not as much as it once was as its now based on FreeBSD)

In my opinion these days their are less pro's and con's to each system, but some con's are also indirect pro's :think:

So here my little ramble.

Mac have less of the market (around 5%)
where as Windows have around 92%,
PC are more customizable, you can have different motherboards different cases so in all completely different builds,
Their is more software, engineers and support for Windows OS system.

But in reverse becuase their are so many PC builds, hardware problems/drivers/conflicts it can be a nightmare to to find and fix, where on Mac's many other users will have the same build as you.

The Mac community is much tighter than the PC community,
While less software may sound bad its not that bad as a lot of software you can get on a Windows OS is useless/badly written, I'm not saying that some Mac software isn't badly written but its less common than on a Windows OS, and most of the best software is available for both, but it worth checking to see if the software you need to use is available on a Mac if not what is used instead, for example on my PC I use Outlook but on a mac i wouldn't use outlook I'll use mac mail.

One piece of software you probably don't want would be a computer virus,
and more virus authors write malware for windows (because its used by more people),

Also on if you do buy a mac then theirs nothing stopping you from buying the windows OS and using Apple’s Boot Camp to have a dual boot system so you have Windows and Mac OS X,

So that sounds like i am saying Mac's are better, but I'm not, its all down to personal preference most designers use Mac's as their were quicker at rendering graphics and all the best design software was released on the mac's before the PC also they have less problems and easier to fix than PC's as they more of a standard build,

but PC you have more options (and more can go wrong) but their is also more support and because theirs more choice it is also cheaper.

Personally I use my PC more than my mac, because i can't justify the cost in getting a new Mac and all my work can be done on a PC.

unless i am writing Mac software then well duh i use the mac

RobTang

johnnyboyrebel wrote: »

Sorry mate, again a misunderstanding (although I did state the correct thing)

I am not talking split screen in dreamweaver. I mean when viewing the source of a webpage online.

Meh same applies, all the main contenders IE, firefox, chrome offer split source code, along with javascript debugging and network monitoring and until quite recently Safari was available for windows, although I don't think anyone used it.

all offer live in live css editing out the box as well which safari doesn't seem to.

Also as as Designer i'm not quite sure why this view is so useful to you, as a coder is useful for when you're doing live dom manipulation or you want to tweak css live, but as a Designer your IDE generally provides better tooling for these kind of things. I mean whats the point of looking at static html that you wrote right ?

In my 3rd in the series of things that give better advice then listening to people on here about mac vs pcs.
If you drink coke buy a pc, if you drink pepsi buy a mac (swap out for your fav beverage rival pairs if needed, tea/coffee, beer/wine etc)

jungle_jane

I use both - there are some software packages that you can only use on a PC (eg Visio) and sometimes i need to use a Mac (eg for Omnigraffle). Depends on who I am contracting for and what the rest of the team are using.

I only started using the Mac 9 months ago so all my life I have used a PC.

I must say I prefer the Mac and now use it in my down time rather than the PC. I like the build of the hardware (the keypad is lovely and doesn't gather crumbs and gunk either!). Its a very light machine, the track pad is just awesome and as others have said it is lightening fast to shut down and to boot. I find the software a LOT cheaper and there are far less viruses on a Mac.

Aside from that though, it's just a nicer machine to drive. I am most surprised - I never realised just how diferent the two feel.

There are some things I don't like about the Mac - some of my shortcut keys don't exist on a Mac and I like Windows Explorer better for finding and organising my files. I hate the lack of a delete button (you have to user function+delete)...small niggles...

Also, I used to burn through a PC once a year whereas my Mac is still operating like a new machine and I think I may go years with this one....

My new macbook air was around £1000 though (you can get them cheaper from the Apple store if you look under the refurbished section) so I think its way outside of your budget. For around that budget on a PC I had a very good experience with an Asus...

MadTechie

One little things I loved on the mac was the colour labelling files and folders, but as I said but RobTang put it better
If you drink coke buy a pc, if you drink pepsi buy a mac,
But you do need to think about your needs, for example I wouldn't write apple script on a Windows OS any more than I would write C# on a MacOS

also apple haven't stopped supporting safari for windows that pure speculation, based on the fact their is no download for safari 6 for windows, and I do use it myself (only to test a site for comparability)

wba31

debitcardmayhem wrote: »

Just for comparison reasons , I paid 449.99 in 2005 for a P4 WinXP 500 GB with 2GB . I have added a spare 1GB stick I purloined (foc) to it , and have spent £24.99 to upgrade it to Win8, and 4.99 for a new fan (I broke the old one whilst cleaning...fat fingers). It is still going strong tri-booting with Fedora/W8/WinXP, oh I didn't pay for any extended warranties.

On the flip side I bought a Sony Vaio a few years back for £800 and within 15 months the motherboard failed and it developed numerous other faults. It was then I entered the world of Mac, and the MacBook i bought then (2007?) is still working today... I think it can sometimes be hit and miss on electrical items on their longevity...

wba31

jungle_jane wrote: »

Its a very light machine, the track pad is just awesome and as others have said it is lightening fast to shut down and to boot.

Macs are not actually designed to be shut down and rebooted every day (i still do it with my macbook) and run better when left to hibernate...
When I get an iMac next year it will remain on at all times, and only be rebooted when updates demand it, or shut down when im on holiday.