My brief impressions of a Mac

A colleague has just moved to the desk next to me at work, and has brought a dual processor G5 tower with a 23-inch Apple widescreen flatpanel (which does look very nice), and installed on the machine is OSX.

I am not going to go in depth too much here, but I have to say that I am impressed with it. The operating system is a real work of art IMO, and does make Windows XP look a little dated in comparison. The transition effects are beautifully done, and it sure is a fully featured, user friendly operating system. In terms of usability, I dont agree that its any better than Windows, but its definitely a lot more polished. The only thing that does irritate me is the lack of right mouse button, which is easily sorted.

What I would say is that I think that it would be a nicer machine to use overall, once you were used to it.

That screen is a beauty too, with excellent clarity and a very good resolution.

All in all, I wont be ditching my PC anytime soon - I still like to fiddle too much, and I am a gamer after all, but I must say that if I wanted an out of the box solution, had a few quid to spend, and wasnt into gaming, and was sick of looking at windows based desktops, I'd have to say it is indeed a compelling option. There isnt a lot you cant do with it that you could do with a PC, and the specification being less than a decent PC is not much of an issue unless you are a hardcore gamer.

I just wish its users were less zealous (luckily though, my colleague is not).

 

Snigger Paul, by users you mean me!

Its the same old thing, when you love somthing you just can't shut up.

Does he have the clear surround screen on the metal surround screen?

I must say as we are all 'coming out' that my sister just bought a new PC for 600 quid and yes it does have a much larger spec, I think in an ideal world OSX on a PC would be the best solution for most.

 

Gary, its a she and it does have a clear casing yeah. It looks very nice

 

OMG burn the heretic

 

Wow a girl with taste, you single Paul?

 

Paul, just out of interest........... is she fit?

 

Barsteward ! You beat me to it !

 

pictures..... or an mpeg :JOEL:
cheers


julian

 

Paul, no wonder you wanted to get under her Mac...

Michael.

 

Yeah Paul is it her apple or her cherry your after?

 

I reckon Paul will be going in tomorrow with a dirty mac !

 

Not fit no, but I'd still hit it

 

He he - yeah, work of art as in all style and no content. Oh, and it's based on Unix - two reasons why the only mac I'll own is a raincoat

Seriously now though, I have to admit that if I could figure out the way Macs do things (as in, how to fix them WHEN they go wrong) I'd junk a PC for one any day - although now this new one of mine's booting in 45 seconds from power on (for some reason XP updated SP2 AGAIN, and, err, it now works properly) I can live with the PC lack of coolness

 

i was thinking of getting a mac when my pc isnt cutting it anymore. i was talking to my mate about though and he says macs are horendously more expensive than pcs. another point which put me off is that he said if a mac goes wrong you have to send it back to apple and they charge you £500 to fix it.

i will admit it does sound like he's talking twaddle about the second bit though!

 

I still say PC's can be cool though, but you've got to WANT to fiddle around with them, which I dont mind doing at all. To a degree, you can mimick just about any operating system on the PC.



There you see a mixture of "Longhorn" and OSX, running on Windows XP with nothing more than a cracked DLL, a downloaded style + wallpaper, and a small freeware utility

Also, the point that has been done to death is that PCs are cheaper for the same spec, but Apple is clearly going for that out of the box experience. It kind of seems to work almost like an appliance than a computer, if that makes sense.

That monitor is wicked though... but theres nothing to stop you using that on a PC, I shouldnt think.

 

BTW, someone at work told me today that someone bought a Mac G5 just so they could strip the innards out to put a PC inside it - and then posted the results on a Mac forum. Apparently, he received death threats from some people on there

 

We had to buy a G4 to write some Mac-specific code for a client a couple of years ago, so, of course, the first thing I did was stick an "Intel Inside" sticker on it.

I like my Powerbook, but it would be no good as a full-time computer. For someone who doesn't work in IT it would probably be fine though.

-- Ian

 

Paul that brilliant!

Ian, I don't understand your bit about 'someone working in IT?'

Presumably if you mean working on running PCs then I understand.

The Isle of Man has two schools running 2000 Apple macs, and it has one administrator.

At my works there is approx 200 PCs with 2 Admin guys, that is the reason most IT people don't like macs

 

Gary, I mean somebody with a requirement for serious computational tasks.

-- Ian

 

What like this?

http://www.apple.com/science/profiles/colsa/