ComputerPro's Temper Tantrum

[cash68]

I've had macs for my main machines since ... 1994? And apart from an optical drive dying in my titanium powerbook 4 years ago, I've never had a single hardware failure. I've owned:

Performa 5300cd
Peforma 6400
333mhz G3 iMac
800hz G4 iMac
1.25ghz G4 iMac
800mhz G4 Powerbook
1.33ghz DP G4 Quicksilver (heavily modded)
1.25ghz 12" Powerbook
and a 2.33ghz 24" iMac with 7600GT.

And yet... I've had one minor hardware failure. So what I don't get, PC Zealots, is if Apple generally uses the same hardware as a PC, why is it that I never have to reinstall, and don't have problems? Why have my harddrives never lost sectors? Why have I not had to spend hours troubleshooting?

This is a serious question. I am not trying to start a flamewar, but everytime this topic gets mentioned, PC users say that Apple uses the same hardware and have just as many problems... but I don't see how that's true.

[Arainach]

Apples DON'T generally use the same hardware as PCs. They use specific runs and very limited models. This leads to minimal troubleshooting (since there's only one possibility), less testing and less driver-writing, etc. That's their big weakness.

And FWIW, I've had god knows how many PCs (a list at least 3 times as long as yours) over the last 15 years and never had a serious HW problem.

[Kirosia]

My OS is like 12 inches.

[olblueyez]

I have been building PC's for years. Only problem I ever had was a Kenwood optical drive. If Apple chooses components wisely then they should do well as they only have about 10 computer models. Try to accomplish that track record with an infinite number of configurations and multiply the number of MAC's on the market so as to match the number of PC's and I'm pretty sure you will end up where the PC is now. Its apples to oranges. Pun intended.

[zotjen]

Well, I just bought my fifth PC. I bought the first one about nineteen years ago. In all that time I've only had two hardware problems. I had a hard drive fail (which I should note was a second drive I installed myself sometime after the original purchase). And most recently (and what prompted me to get my fifth PC) a motherboard failed after over five years of working without a problem.

[cash68]

You guys. I am not talking about driver issues. I am talking about threads like the ones on the front page right now, where some guy was using his computer then POOF it went all retarded, and he has to reinstall windows because his hard drive has bad sectors.

[8xOverMsOctober]

Originally Posted by cash68

So what I don't get, PC Zealots, is if Apple generally uses the same hardware as a PC, why is it that I never have to reinstall, and don't have problems? Why have my harddrives never lost sectors? Why have I not had to spend hours troubleshooting?

This is a serious question. I am not trying to start a flamewar, but everytime this topic gets mentioned, PC users say that Apple uses the same hardware and have just as many problems... but I don't see how that's true.

Everyone that I know that has a Mac basically have it for internet usage. With the exception of one friend that has SoundForge on his. So how taxing is it on a system when all you do is surf the internet, using a couple hundred meg of cache on the disk, barely ever install any software on it, or never use anything more taxing on the system than SoundForge?

IMHO, Macs have a design problem anyway with the whole 'one mouse button' thing... very annoying.

[smrtby123]

The reason that people do not have to spend hours with a Mac is because you are locked out from doing anything really deep with your OS. This describes it perfectly.



The first time I tried a Mac I needed to get in and fiddle with the printer settings and the first thing I said to myself is "How to do I get deeper into the setup?". I can fiddle with every last setting on my PC in XP and do even more in Ubuntu while Mac coddles you and shields you from breaking your comp, but also from making it do more for you.

It is a lot easier to put together a puzzle with pieces from one box than try to make a puzzle with pieces from a collection of hundreds of boxes and have every piece fit perfectly (if you get my analogy).

[majid]

There's PC and PC. It's not fair to compare a DIY PC (or worse, a hack job from a garage-shop assembler) to one from a major maker like HP or Dell.I've never had problems with the Dell desktops we used at work (and never NOT had a problem with Dell laptops, but I digress).

People forget that integration testing of PC components is a big part of the vendors' value proposition. In theory, you should be able to assemble a PC from best-of-breed components and have them work together flawlessly. The reality is otherwise, with conflicts that can be hard to resolve, which is why you don't always get the bleeding-edge stuff from HP, Dell or even Apple.

Apple computers are now really just PCs with a not-so-standard EFI instead of a BIOS and a TPM chip to lock OS X. Your experience of reliability with Motorola or PowerPC chips may not necessarily carry over to the Intel Macs.

As for software reliability, not using Windows does wonders, mostly because it means you get drivers written by Apple, not by some OEM hardware vendor with sub-standard software skills. Since Windows NT/2000, the bulk of Windows problems are due to either buggy drivers or poor quality third-party software.

[Fallen]

In the first company I ever worked for as an offline editor for television shows, we were using 8 to 10 year old macs to edit (Media 100 systems).

We pushed those machines hard, and they were ultra stable. They'd go down, but rarely. Sometimes we'd leave them rendering AfterEffects for 2 or 3 days. (I think we had two machines that still had 333 megahertz processors).

The Windows NT based 3d graphics department always had the most current machines, much faster than the Macs, and they'd crash every day. Considering both were turnkey systems, and we had a fanatical systems administrator who wouldn't let us install anything other than what came with the machines, it started to become clear what the more stable OS was.

That's when I converted to using Macs. Over the years since then I've had a handful of hardware issues (mainly optical drives and batteries of the portables), but I'd have to say MUCH, MUCH less than the rest of my family and friends, who were all on windows based systems. Now a lot of them have converted to Macs as well.

There's a lot of talk about the "Apple tax", the price of doing business with Apple. The latest Windows ads attack Apple on that very front. The cost comparisons are debatable at best. But no matter what cost analysis comes up, I say my peace of mind and amazing user experience is worth the premium I pay.

Gaming is still an issue, titles are much more limited than on a PC. Also, I still take a perverse joy out of tweaking my system, a holdover from my Windows years. Solving computer issues can be a lot of fun, which is something that OSX doesn't really require of you (though you can if you want to, it just seems silly when you don't have to).

My girlfriend's eee pc has been a blast for that. Trying to squeeze as much performance and features out of the different linux distros has quelled my tweaking beast. I wholeheartedly recommend this for satisfied Mac switchers who sometimes miss the messing around.

[majid]

Ordinary PC hardware can be quite reliable without Windows. My company had Intel commodity servers running Solaris, they ran for well over 5 years uninterrupted before we decommissioned them.

[fraseyboy]

Originally Posted by cash68

You guys. I am not talking about driver issues. I am talking about threads like the ones on the front page right now, where some guy was using his computer then POOF it went all retarded, and he has to reinstall windows because his hard drive has bad sectors.

If you're talking about mine:

I have not had to reinstall windows yet. And we do not know that it is bad sectors. It may be something completely different.

Out of interest, what do you use your mac for?

[PhilS]

Originally Posted by cash68

So what I don't get, PC Zealots, is if Apple generally uses the same hardware as a PC, why is it that I never have to reinstall, and don't have problems? Why have my harddrives never lost sectors? Why have I not had to spend hours troubleshooting?

Because Windows sucks? Seriously, it seems to me that it's the problems with Windows, or the integration of Windows (and other software made by other companies) with PC hardware made and sold by still other companies, that is a large part of the problem for what people refer to as "PC's."

BTW, I'm typing this on a Mac, as I've switched over my entire family from Windows-based PC's to Macs. And, believe it or not, we actually use them to do more than just surf the internet! Basically, they do everything we need a PC to do. Actually, that's not entirely true. We don't use our Mac to deal with viruses, update anti-virus software, fix problems with the registry, deal with spyware, or download and install Windows updates that occur two times a day.

P.S. I'll never, ever go back.

[cash68]

Originally Posted by fraseyboy

Out of interest, what do you use your mac for?

I'm an industrial designer, so I use it a LOT. I use it for video editing, after effects, photoshop, illustrator, and music production. I also boot into windows, and use it for 3d work in Solidworks, Alias, and rendering in Hypershot. Sometimes I do renderings that take 7-10 hours to complete. Occasionally I play Half Life 2 or Team Fortress.

Prior to school I used to game pretty hard on my old quicksilver.... which is why it was so modded. I was a Ut2004, UT, and Wolf ET freak. Again, never had an issues and I was running twin 200gig disks in a striped raid array, aftermarket CPU, aftermarket videocard, fans, leds, etc. No I didn't have the videocard choices that PC's had, but I could play pretty damn well.

I don't just "surf the internet". I've been pushing my machines all my life, except now... I push my iMac, but the 12" powerbook is just used for light tasks like writing, sketching, photoshop, printing, stuff like that.

[cash68]

Originally Posted by smrtby123

The reason that people do not have to spend hours with a Mac is because you are locked out from doing anything really deep with your OS.

Why would I want to do something "Deep" in my OS? I'd rather spend my time creating, rendering, gaming, composing, editing, writing, etc. What is the point?

The first time I tried a Mac I needed to get in and fiddle with the printer settings and the first thing I said to myself is "How to do I get deeper into the setup?". I can fiddle with every last setting on my PC in XP

Okay, wait a tick. In the graphic design field, Macs dominate. So you're saying macs are inferior because they have less printer settings? No offense, I find that hard to believe. It could just maybe, possibly be that you didn't know what you were doing. >shrug<