This is purely personal, I’m not making any recommendations here, just my observations of what’s good about each of the two after almost 6 months of using an Apple Macintosh G5 at work and a Dell Laptop at home. Some of it’s based on cold hard facts, the rest is just my perceptions.<\/p>\n
First off… advantages of PC’s over Macs<\/b>:
\n\u2022 Sepy Actionscript Editor<\/b> They’re porting it to OS X, not a big reason.
\n\u2022 Price, price<\/b> (did I mention price)
\n\u2022 Office’s native platform<\/b> Office just feels<\/i> nicer on the PC to me… can’t quite explain it.
\n\u2022 ActiveX controls<\/b> (3cim, timecharge) Some of the companies I work for or do work for have web apps that require IE 5.5 or higher.
\n\u2022 Counterstrike…<\/b> minesweeper… I’m not much of a gamer. Buying a mac would ensure things stay that way.
\n\u2022 Dreamweaver, Flash<\/b> are just plain faster and easier to use on the PC.
\n\u2022 Filezilla and leech<\/b> Ftp programs that take RBrowser and kick it all over the room.
\n\u2022 Way better IM programs<\/b> Can iChat do desktop sharing? How about games? Ok.. so it does video and voice, but only with AIM, not MSN…
\n\u2022 Camtasia<\/b> I’d miss Camtasia studio.
\n\u2022 Gospel link, LDS collectors library<\/b> – These are programs that have large collections of books written by memebers of my church and, you guessed it, PC only. PAF is a family history program my church distrubutes and my family uses–again, PC only.
\n\u2022 Swift 3d<\/b> This is more just for fun, but I really do like using Swift every once in awhile.
\n\u2022 IE 6 – for testing… blech<\/b>. Personally, I can’t stand IE, but everyone uses it so I have to keep it around somehow to test things.
\n\u2022 Taskbar<\/b>. I like the taskbar better than the dock. Sorry… I just do.
\n\u2022 No fear<\/b> that the next software pkg I need won’t run on Windows. Another one of those intangibles.
\n\u2022 Pocket PC support<\/b> without buying any 3rd party software (and I like my iPaq). Now if Apple came out with a sub $500 handheld, I’d jump ship and get it in a heartbeat… I have no doubt it would be good.
\n\u2022 Better networking<\/b> in my experience anyway.<\/p>\n
Ok. That having been said, here are the advantages (in my mind) of the Mac over the PC<\/b>.
\n\u2022 Expose<\/b> – One of the things I miss the most when I’m not using a Mac.
\n\u2022 Apple (command) Key location<\/b>. Whose idea was it anyway to put my left pinky through so much stress pressing ctrl? The command key on the mac makes so much more sense.
\n\u2022 Resell value<\/b> – My laptop (1.13ghz Inspiron, all the goodies) is worth maybe<\/i> $500 now. That’s a pretty big drop from the $3000 I paid for it. On the other hand, a Powerbook from around the time I bought my laptop is worth a few hundred dollars more and it cost a few hundred dollars less new.
\n\u2022 iPhoto, iMovie, iDvd, iTunes, Garage Band<\/b> – I really love the iLife suite. In fact, that’s one of the big deciding factors for me. iTunes runs on the pc. I know. It just feels so much more at home on the mac though. Adobe Albums (for what it is) makes a lot more sense than iPhoto, but for some reason I still like iPhoto better–I think a lot of it is because it takes care of organizing all my photos automatically. I have to tell Albums where they are. iDvd and iMovie… more goodness I don’t want to live without.
\n\u2022 Final Cut<\/b> – Speaks for itself.
\n\u2022 Good looks<\/b> – I’m a designer. My laptop is ugly. All Dells are ugly. Some gateways are okay, some Alienware computers are okay, but on the whole, Apple’s just look better. That’s important to me.
\n\u2022 Quicksilver<\/b> – Woah… just wrote about this one the other day. This is one piece of software that I don’t want to live without.
\n\u2022 Fink, X11<\/b> – Cool. I can run my linux stuff on my mac and do it easily. I don’t even want to ever hear the words cygwin again. No. Stop.
\n\u2022 Responsiveness<\/b> – I like being able to click the Flash, Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Illustrator, Word, Entourage, iChat, iPhoto, iTunes and whatever else I feel like clicking all at once and still browse the Internet while I’m waiting without major lag. I’ve never seen a PC that can handle that.
\n\u2022 MacJournal<\/b> – Yet another piece of software I don’t want to live without.
\n\u2022 Free SDK <\/b> – There’s probably one for Windows as well, but developing for the Mac seems so much more sexy and fun. I’m not really even a programmer, but using a mac makes me want to become one.<\/p>\n
So that’s my off the cuff list. I’m sure I’m forgetting things. Which way will I go for my next computer? I’m not sure, but at the moment… that G5 is looking really tempting.<\/p>\n
[updated 6\/8\/2005 to fix some encoding issues]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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