PC or Mac

[Bowmans]

iPad must have pushed them over the top of Microsoft. Doesn't surprise me that they did. The only real hold back was their price point but that has come way down as well as introducing the side units like iPhones, iPads and iPods. I'm personnally going to wait for the iDoitall before upgrading...

[myoung]

Originally Posted by Bowmans

I'm personnally going to wait for the iDoitall before upgrading...

... fun and productivity you will have lost by waiting for iDoitall, which, of course, will never come. What's the point?

[sepezlover]

Been a Mac person since the birth of my daughter in 1982. Apple II+ with 48K ram, added a 80 column card with another 16K and upper/lower case. Paid $2400 for it in 1982 dollars! It was such an amazing machine, I remember really wishing I had had something like that when I was I in college. All those all-nighters typing final drafts of papers...how glorious it would have been to just hit a key and it prints itself!

[JimmyT]

I've always used WinTel machines to be compatible with work. I'm in Technologies and understand well how much we spend trying to keep that fleet up and running and safe.
Meantime I bought Macs for my two daughters through HS and college. Never had a problem. Ever. Just a few hard drive failures (sudden impacts perhaps?) and upgrades. But overall I spent hours keeping my home PC running and zero hours keeping theirs running. It took me years to learn, but I finally ditched the Dell and now use only my MacBook at home. And yes, I can connect to my Citrix system at work and even remote to my desktop from this Mac. Once you go Mac, you'll never go back.

[myoung]

Originally Posted by JimmyT

I've always used WinTel machines to be compatible with work. I'm in Technologies and understand well how much we spend trying to keep that fleet up and running and safe.
Meantime I bought Macs for my two daughters through HS and college. Never had a problem. Ever. Just a few hard drive failures (sudden impacts perhaps?) and upgrades. But overall I spent hours keeping my home PC running and zero hours keeping theirs running. It took me years to learn, but I finally ditched the Dell and now use only my MacBook at home. And yes, I can connect to my Citrix system at work and even remote to my desktop from this Mac. Once you go Mac, you'll never go back.

When I was CIO of our subsidiary of a large, global bank, my annual support budget for 1,100 Windows computers was $3 million. We once had a department that used Macs exclusively. For those 25 machines and peripherals, our support budget was $0. Whatever problems they had they either solved themselves or got a few minutes of assistance from my staff. No big deal. I suppose a cynic would argue that without the Windows machines that needed constant attention, I never would have had a staff to offer assistance to the Mac users.

Oh, BTW, the Macs had no antivirus software because there weren't any viruses to be found. Also, the useful life of the Macs was double that of the Windows machines.

[Jimandrod]

Originally Posted by cameront120

Jim,

Now that you've come into the light, you'll have to give Vectorworks a spin!

Thanks for the tip Cam - however - I'm the last of the hand drawing/drafting generation. The last years that I was gainfully employed in architecture were spent in management and policy development. When I designed our house I sketched it all out by hand (to scale) and turned it over to a draftsman to do the contract drawings.

Lately I've been doing some drawing on Illustrator. Adobe has some really cool graphics software.

[Jimandrod]

Originally Posted by Wingeezer

So maybe you can help me out!


I have a couple of Mac laptops and several ipods including a Touch.

Much as I like new gadgets, I can't really figure out why I would need an iPad!

I'd be happy to be convinced, but it just seems to me that most things can be done better and more conveniently with a Macbook or a Touch.

What am I missing here? They do seem to be selling very well, but is it to folks who don't own laptops and ipods?

Brian

Brian - Mike's response summed it all up really nicely. We've had the iPad for since they came out with the 3G model at the end of April. It's a lot easier to carry around than a laptop and I'm constantly discovering cool things to do with it.

I have an iPhone and a laptop. I prefer the iPad for a lot of things. I just downloaded Netflix for the iPad and it's amazing. You can stream all sorts of movies and other programming. Amazon just released a Kindle reader app. So, now you can get the full spectrum of Kindle books in full color!

iPhone apps will work on the pad but the ones developed for the iPad offer a lot more in size and functionality.

If you get one - you won't regret it. Right now we're both sharing one but there's going to be another one in the house in about 3 weeks.

[myoung]

Originally Posted by Jimandrod

If you get one - you won't regret it. Right now we're both sharing one but there's going to be another one in the house in about 3 weeks.

I got my iPad the day it was released. On the following Wednesday, I showed off the magical device to the largest group we've ever had attend an Apple Special Interest Group (SIG) in our adult community. Most had never attended an Apple SIG meeting before. More than half said that they would be purchasing one very soon and one couple planned to go to the Apple store the next day to buy one for each of them, which they did.

Also, I was helping a new-to-Apple iPad owner discover some tricks about using Netflix and the book readers one morning in our clubhouse over coffee when a woman who had purchased an iPhone just a week before came over to watch what we were doing. She had never used an Apple product before but was absolutely ecstatic about her iPhone. Her husband was having coffee with friends outside. After seeing what the iPad could do, she called her husband over to have a look and then both left for the Apple store to buy one. Amazing but true.

[Denis4x4]

I switched to Apple power books several years ago and wonder why I waited so long. Bought an ipad wi-fi/3G yesterday and it's amazing. Only problem so far is the lack of AT&T service. However, the number of public wi-fi hot spots is big.

[Wayward]

I love digital technology but this is the same discussion since the 80's. Who's going to lock us into buying proprietary software and fee-based services like itunes, ebooks, and navigation by dangling shiney new toys in front of us?

Dedicated hardcore CPU intensive work like science, engineering, financial analysis, CAD design, medicine etc is different story - but most folks using a PC/laptop for personal stuff already spend most of our time using a web browser.

The latest best consumer apps are on the web. Trend now is toward web-based software. So the real user experience is with the web browser and the website design. That is why Apple, Google and Microsoft are still working feverishly to lock us into Safari, Chrome and IE. However there are really good browsers like Firefox and Opera - free and hardware/OS independent.

Personally..... I go out of my way to resist these tech companies' proprietary enticements into what should be open software.

My iPhone was basically a portable web browser hopelessly tied to what Apple wanted to feed me. For the same monthly fee, I replaced it with a plain ole' smartphone and a Verizon broadband card/router that gives us wifi and broadband open web access on all of our laptops and smartphones wherever we go.

For home and travel I'll take Firefox and Open Office running on a cheap, rugged, reliable laptop like a T-series Lenovo, with cheapo XP or free Linux. That way I can use the money instead on wireless broadband, antennas and routers that let me spend more time in the shiny toy Airstream dangled in front of me .

(a recovering Mac addict)

[myoung]

Originally Posted by Wayward

The latest best consumer apps are on the web. Trend now is toward web-based software. So the real user experience is with the web browser and the website design. That is why Apple, Google and Microsoft are still working feverishly to lock us into Safari, Chrome and IE. However there are really good browsers like Firefox and Opera - free and hardware/OS independent.

... Safari (free, by the way) is not proprietary unless you believe that apps that run on both Windows and Mac OSes are proprietary. Indeed, Webkit, the underlying code of Safari, has been open source since 2005 and is, in fact, the underlying code of Chrome.

As you must also know, with over 200,000 apps on the iPhone/iPad platform, many of the best consumer apps are not on the web. Or, perhaps "best" is in the eye of the beholder, which is more likely.

[Jimandrod]

Originally Posted by myoung

I got my iPad the day it was released. On the following Wednesday, I showed off the magical device to the largest group we've ever had attend an Apple Special Interest Group (SIG) in our adult community. Most had never attended an Apple SIG meeting before. More than half said that they would be purchasing one very soon and one couple planned to go to the Apple store the next day to buy one for each of them, which they did.

Also, I was helping a new-to-Apple iPad owner discover some tricks about using Netflix and the book readers one morning in our clubhouse over coffee when a woman who had purchased an iPhone just a week before came over to watch what we were doing. She had never used an Apple product before but was absolutely ecstatic about her iPhone. Her husband was having coffee with friends outside. After seeing what the iPad could do, she called her husband over to have a look and then both left for the Apple store to buy one. Amazing but true.

We also got our pad on the day it was released (we waited until the 3G came out). they went on sale on Friday 4/30 at 5 PM. By 5:30 we were walking out of the Apple store with one in hand.

Your mention of the Apple sig reminded me of when the Mac first came out in 1984. We were at a presentation that Jobs and the Woz put on for Washington Apple Pi (the DC sig) To get a glimpse of the first Mac in a setting like that was amazing. The thing that disappointed me was that my Apple IIe was only 4 months old and I couldn't justify spending the money on a Mac.

[myoung]

Originally Posted by Jimandrod

The thing that disappointed me was that my Apple IIe was only 4 months old and I couldn't justify spending the money on a Mac.

... the 128K model, cost about $3,500 including the dot matrix printer in 1984 even with the academic discount that my wife obtained. That's when $3,500 was real money.

It's astonishing to see how much the price/performance equation has changed over the years. I bought a hard disk drive for my Wang 2200 minicomputer in 1979. It had 10 megabytes of storage capacity, 5 meg fixed and 5 meg removable on a platter about 2 feet in diameter. The drive was so heavy that two people could barely lift it. The price: $30,000!!!! Now, you can buy a terabyte for about $250. That is 100,000 times as much capacity for less than 1% of the 1979 price. Truly amazing.

[Wayne&Sam]

Originally Posted by Jimandrod

....I couldn't justify spending the money ....

You need to get over that. I got over it long ago- it is very freeing.

[Jimandrod]

Originally Posted by Wayne&Sam

You need to get over that. I got over it long ago- it is very freeing.

LOL

I'm over it now but at that time I was still in graduate school.

[ddstech]

Everytime Apple releases a new product I somehow end up in the store with glazed eyes and my debit card in hand and almost without words hand it over. I never get apple care, because they will release a new model before the warranty would ever be needed. I'll be picking up my 5th Iphone on the 24th. Still trying to find a legit excuse for having a 64gb Ipad, and am typing this reply on a 24" Imac. The design of their products alone is worth the money. PCs miss the boat completely.

I provide Dell computers to all my clients because of logistical reasons, and hey, it keeps the work coming in.

[dljosephson]

It's been my experience that among crowds of people, the more computer-savvy the crowd is, the higher the proportion of Macs. I was mostly a Mac user around System 7 time, then went to PCs. Now I have to be trilingual; my usual portable machine is a Mac but there's a PC on the desk mainly because the Mac version of Quickbooks is so far behind the PC one. But frankly I use Linux most often, usually the xfce version of Ubuntu on a portable, or CentOS on servers. Generally I have found that the Mac hardware is much better engineered than the average PC from hp/Compaq/Dell etc. But the bottom line is to find the computer that runs the software you like best.

[myoung]

Originally Posted by dljosephson

It's been my experience that among crowds of people, the more computer-savvy the crowd is, the higher the proportion of Macs. I was mostly a Mac user around System 7 time, then went to PCs. Now I have to be trilingual; my usual portable machine is a Mac but there's a PC on the desk mainly because the Mac version of Quickbooks is so far behind the PC one. But frankly I use Linux most often, usually the xfce version of Ubuntu on a portable, or CentOS on servers. Generally I have found that the Mac hardware is much better engineered than the average PC from hp/Compaq/Dell etc. But the bottom line is to find the computer that runs the software you like best.

... run all three OSes on the same Mac?

[myoung]

Originally Posted by mattkroff

I'll be picking up my 5th Iphone on the 24th.

How did you get through the maze? I tried over a dozen times on the 15th and never got past the errors, timeout conditions, etc. The lines were so overloaded. Even so Apple says that they took 600,000 preorders, which is 10 times more than they got last year with the release of the 3GS iPhone.

Didn't they anticipate the lust that the new iPhone evokes? No it looks like I'll have to wait until sometime in July to get mine. Bummer.

[Cstar]

Originally Posted by mattkroff

I'll be picking up my 5th Iphone on the 24th.

Next time you buy an I phone ask an Apple rep about the "lifetime limit". I was once told an individual has a lifetime limit of ten I Phone purchases.

I am sure that is to keep someone from buying and reselling (or jailbreaking) phones for profit. Interesting, but when they get enough generations out in the marketplace they will probably change that.

Corky