MoSXS
100+ Head-Fier
- Joined
- Aug 25, 2004
- Posts
- 192
- Likes
- 12
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Well, you can consider yourself and family lucky. I'm just one of many I know that have had hardware related issues with Macs and share similar experiences with the repair center botching the repair and destroying the system and then having to go a month or so without it.
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I've been using Windows since the 3.0 days. I've used 3.0, 3.11, 95, 95B, 98, 98SE, ME, XP, and Vista. Out of all of those various versions of Windows, I can count the combined number of times I had a full system lockup on one hand. Through all of the various versions of Windows, all of them combined, I have only had 5 total system crashes.
I've been using OS X since March, upgraded to Leopard the day it came out. Since March I have had OS X crash 5 times. One time it crashed while I was trying to burn a DVD of data. All I did was right click > New Burn Folder then I dragged the files over to the folder. I clicked "Burn" and put the DVD in that it asked for. System locked up. Just a couple of days ago I was installing Photoshop CS3. System locked up during the installer. Couldn't force quit anything. Complete system lockup. I've had other random crashes for no reason while browsing the web in Safari or using iDVD to create a DVD.
I've been running this HP now for about a month with XP and I have not had one single hiccup with it. Ironically, if I'm doing something that requires speed and stability, I have to leave the Mac at home and take my XP based HP.
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Well, one big example is the lack of firewalls for OS X. The only way to get outbound connection control is to buy Little Snitch. There are no other options. Theres also lots of other little programs that try to charge small amounts of money. Software for OS X seems to start out free then turn paid more often than not. Look at iFuntastic as an example. Started out free and now its "Shareware". Ridiculous.
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You basically have VLC, which isn't very good, and DVD Player. Up until Leopard, DVD Player didn't even properly upscale video. It simply stretched it to whatever resolution your display was set to. This resulted in washed out and blurry video when set to fullscreen. Leopard finally upscales video properly (Quicktime, however, still does not), but the "advanced deinterlacing" that Apple tries to say is one of Leopards 300 new features just about kills any kind of TV based content. DVD Player still lacks the capability to decode the .1 LFE channel and send it to headphones or speakers. Something Windows DVD players have been doing since the 90s. It also lacks advanced power saving features, such as caching the disc to RAM like WinDVD and others in Windows do. This saves the life of the battery and the drive in question. Considering Apple uses very low quality optical drives and they are not meant to be serviced by the user, this is something that every Mac owner should consider very important.
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Quicktime requires you to pay extra money to make it useful. At least Apple finally decided to let people go fullscreen without paying. But yet they stupidly decided to take away the ability to view the stream statistics. Whats up with that?
GarageBand is okay at best. It's an extreme resource hog, however. Apple also requires $100 a pop to get full functionality out of it. GarageBand is basically one of those free pieces of mixing software that used to come with non-Creative soundcards, yet has a prettier interface. Even the newest GarageBand has all of the original functionality toned down and the focus more on recording podcasts and cheesy lounge music to go with it.
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The fact that Gwen Stefani is on that list should be a sign that you should look elsewhere.
Let's not forget that Pro Tools, the defacto standard for musicians, is available on Macs and PCs. As well as every tool made by M-Audio.
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Let's not forget that the quality of the DAC and ADC on the Macs built-in audio isn't exactly the best.
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All of the artists I know (musician, anime, graphic artists for websites, photographers that get in nationally published magazines) have no troubles with their Windows machines. In fact, some software that anime and other artists use (like openCanvas, pretty much the standard for anime and Japanese artists) is not available on OS X.
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That is very untrue. Both of my Macs have sounded better than the first HP notebook I had. But this system I have now? Its not even close. The headphone output on my HP, compared to my Mac, has actual base. The midrange is alive, and theres detail on the higher end. The MacBook just sounds flat. Detailed, but even more flat than any of the iPods I own. It's basically lifeless, but detailed.
When it comes to using it for movies... it's pathetic. DVD Player can't decode the LFE channel and send it out to headphones or speakers. So you have to use Apple's poor little EQ thats built-in to DVD player. All that does is artifically pump up the bass that would have been sent to the two front speakers. With my HP's headphone out and WinDVD decoding the LFE channel, my A500s rumble just as low as the 12" subwoofer I have hooked up to my home entertainment system.
The original poster really needs to reconsider the iMac purchase. It will be a disappointment once the honeymoon and "wow" factor wears off and it's time to get down and dirty with the system.
The only reason I haven't sold all of my Apple products yet is because I'm hoping Apple will have a quick turn around and stop being so anti-consumer. But we'll just have to see how my current BBB complaint goes.
| I'm typing from a MacBook right now, and have had zero problems with it. It stays up 24/7 without fail. Still haven't had an Apple product fail on me and I've owned various models since... |
Well, you can consider yourself and family lucky. I'm just one of many I know that have had hardware related issues with Macs and share similar experiences with the repair center botching the repair and destroying the system and then having to go a month or so without it.
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| OS X is a huge advantage over Windows. It does not crash. Neither does Linux, for that matter. By the way, I'm one of those Linux zealots, too. I had some trouble with System 7.0 back in the day (the disappearing files were a bear, and I still much prefer 6.0.8 on the vintage machines) but nothing much with OS X. Nor RedHat/Fedora since I started using RH 7.3 some time ago. Anyway, my Macs stay up for years and I'm about to clock 36 months of uptime on my Fedora machine. I have to use XP, SP2 at work. I measure its uptime in hours. No joke. At least one freeze or crash per day. Nothing personal or philosophical against Microsoft, but, in my experience, Windows is not ready for a production environment. I can't tell you how much work I've lost and how many extra hours clients have paid for because of its instability. When a really important project comes down the pipe these days, I bring the MacBook in to work because I trust it. |
I've been using Windows since the 3.0 days. I've used 3.0, 3.11, 95, 95B, 98, 98SE, ME, XP, and Vista. Out of all of those various versions of Windows, I can count the combined number of times I had a full system lockup on one hand. Through all of the various versions of Windows, all of them combined, I have only had 5 total system crashes.
I've been using OS X since March, upgraded to Leopard the day it came out. Since March I have had OS X crash 5 times. One time it crashed while I was trying to burn a DVD of data. All I did was right click > New Burn Folder then I dragged the files over to the folder. I clicked "Burn" and put the DVD in that it asked for. System locked up. Just a couple of days ago I was installing Photoshop CS3. System locked up during the installer. Couldn't force quit anything. Complete system lockup. I've had other random crashes for no reason while browsing the web in Safari or using iDVD to create a DVD.
I've been running this HP now for about a month with XP and I have not had one single hiccup with it. Ironically, if I'm doing something that requires speed and stability, I have to leave the Mac at home and take my XP based HP.
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| Lack of utilities? Would you please provide some examples of the nickel and diming? I haven't seen it. I generally use open source software and have been able to find what I need for free. Can't comment on Windows, as I only use it at work. But I've never had trouble finding OSS Mac (or Linux) utilities. |
Well, one big example is the lack of firewalls for OS X. The only way to get outbound connection control is to buy Little Snitch. There are no other options. Theres also lots of other little programs that try to charge small amounts of money. Software for OS X seems to start out free then turn paid more often than not. Look at iFuntastic as an example. Started out free and now its "Shareware". Ridiculous.
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| As for DVDs, there are other players available. Free ones, at that. You don't have to use the one it comes with. Though the included one is fine by me, but that's only for plane trips and hotel rooms. Any serious watching is done on a TV set. If you use a different configuration, well, maybe it doesn't work for you. However, I've been pleased with playback so far. |
You basically have VLC, which isn't very good, and DVD Player. Up until Leopard, DVD Player didn't even properly upscale video. It simply stretched it to whatever resolution your display was set to. This resulted in washed out and blurry video when set to fullscreen. Leopard finally upscales video properly (Quicktime, however, still does not), but the "advanced deinterlacing" that Apple tries to say is one of Leopards 300 new features just about kills any kind of TV based content. DVD Player still lacks the capability to decode the .1 LFE channel and send it to headphones or speakers. Something Windows DVD players have been doing since the 90s. It also lacks advanced power saving features, such as caching the disc to RAM like WinDVD and others in Windows do. This saves the life of the battery and the drive in question. Considering Apple uses very low quality optical drives and they are not meant to be serviced by the user, this is something that every Mac owner should consider very important.
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| iMac and MacBook both come with GarageBand and QuickTime which are pretty nifty and powerful tools for amateur recording and mixing. |
Quicktime requires you to pay extra money to make it useful. At least Apple finally decided to let people go fullscreen without paying. But yet they stupidly decided to take away the ability to view the stream statistics. Whats up with that?
GarageBand is okay at best. It's an extreme resource hog, however. Apple also requires $100 a pop to get full functionality out of it. GarageBand is basically one of those free pieces of mixing software that used to come with non-Creative soundcards, yet has a prettier interface. Even the newest GarageBand has all of the original functionality toned down and the focus more on recording podcasts and cheesy lounge music to go with it.
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| If you want to go pro, Logic Studio and Logic Express are pretty darn popular. If you want to do it rough and ready, Audacity is free and works well. Motu, Mackie, and others also exist. The whole software spectrum is covered from $0 to $500. The supposed lack of software hasn't stopped hundreds of pro musicians from using Macs to produce their music. |
The fact that Gwen Stefani is on that list should be a sign that you should look elsewhere.
Let's not forget that Pro Tools, the defacto standard for musicians, is available on Macs and PCs. As well as every tool made by M-Audio.
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| Pretty much all external USB and firewire recording devices work as well in OS X as they do in Windows. For simple 2-channel work sans USB, both the iMac and the MacBook have optical digital input. Again, MOTU, Mackie, Creative, M-Audio, the list goes on, all make Mac and PC compatible devices. |
Let's not forget that the quality of the DAC and ADC on the Macs built-in audio isn't exactly the best.
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| ^ Agree with the top 2 posts 100%. Anybody who works in the arts (whether it be music or graphic) would tell you that Apple is the way to go. |
All of the artists I know (musician, anime, graphic artists for websites, photographers that get in nationally published magazines) have no troubles with their Windows machines. In fact, some software that anime and other artists use (like openCanvas, pretty much the standard for anime and Japanese artists) is not available on OS X.
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| Bout the h.p out.. I'd say mine on my mbp is pretty decent. Better than most 'on board' pc ones. I'm not sure how well it would stand against a good added on card. I listen with an alien dac, and the difference is.. worth using an alien dac with I still use the h.p out for movies and stuff if I need.. on the go or whatever.. but for most people and their purposes.. yeah, h.p out is pretty good |
That is very untrue. Both of my Macs have sounded better than the first HP notebook I had. But this system I have now? Its not even close. The headphone output on my HP, compared to my Mac, has actual base. The midrange is alive, and theres detail on the higher end. The MacBook just sounds flat. Detailed, but even more flat than any of the iPods I own. It's basically lifeless, but detailed.
When it comes to using it for movies... it's pathetic. DVD Player can't decode the LFE channel and send it out to headphones or speakers. So you have to use Apple's poor little EQ thats built-in to DVD player. All that does is artifically pump up the bass that would have been sent to the two front speakers. With my HP's headphone out and WinDVD decoding the LFE channel, my A500s rumble just as low as the 12" subwoofer I have hooked up to my home entertainment system.
The original poster really needs to reconsider the iMac purchase. It will be a disappointment once the honeymoon and "wow" factor wears off and it's time to get down and dirty with the system.
The only reason I haven't sold all of my Apple products yet is because I'm hoping Apple will have a quick turn around and stop being so anti-consumer. But we'll just have to see how my current BBB complaint goes.
