Apple iMac vs. PC with Microsoft Vista

The reason for this is that no Microsoft x86 OSs support booting from EFI based motherboards. Bootcamp provides Intel's Compatibility Support Module to make this possible, as well as non-destructive partitioning software and drivers for things like the built-in iSight camera.


Can you name one of the special Apple-only chips?

Actually, poor ol' me, I can't. I don't have an Intel Mac. (Not that I really need one, as I'm happy with the Macs and PCs I have.) Though you could have figured that out by looking at the list of computers I own that I posted above.

Anyway, as to why people might want to try a Mac: Oh, I dunno. Maybe they prefer a different UI. Maybe they're tired of the large number of Windows viruses and trojans (note I didn't say there aren't any for Macs or that there can't be, but the fact is that right now there are many, many more viruses and trojans on Windows and the likelihood of infection is much higher if you use a Windows PC). Maybe they're sick of obscure unintelligible driver conflicts. Lots of possible reasons why they might want to consider (consider!) switching. Besides, competition is good.


I haven't bought software in a brick-and-mortar store for any platform in at least five years (ironically the last one was Windows XP Home ). Even though I use all three major platforms on a daily basis. I also don't buy computers at a big-box store, I order them online. Have done that for years, too. Nowadays the vast majority of common peripherals and components are compatible with both Windows and Mac OS X, so that's not an issue, either. Thus your (once again hugely out of date) argument is worthless. I don't care about being able to browse shelves of whatnot, because I haven't browsed for years.

The software that most people actually use -- MS Office, for example -- is available on both Mac OS X and Windows, or there are equivalents already installed (Mail.app, Safari, iChat, etc.) for the basic things most people need, or there are alternatives that are compatible with the Windows product in question. Yes, Windows has more games. Hooray for Windows. But I'd rather play games on a PS2 or Xbox (speaking of things Microsoft did well, BTW) anyway.


The sales trends demonstrate that the opposite is happening. Since monocultures are bad things, I'd say that's a very positive development indeed (as is the growth of Linux as an alternative).

Do I want Windows to disappear? Nope. They are a useful alternative, as is Mac OS X and Linux. I would also like to see Amiga and BeOS come back. I would also like to see open standards taken more seriously and no more embrace and extend BS (which Microsoft is very guilty of, Apple is also guilty but less so). Alternatives are good. I like alternatives. Competition is good.


I stated my personal preference quite clearly and also stated why. I also stated that I use multiple platforms and also said it's just peachy for others to use whatever they want. That's the very opposite of a partisan. If I insisted that Macs were the best thing out there, you'd have a point. I actually avoided saying that and made it clear that Macs are good for me and said why. YMMV. Which, since you apparently don't know what that means, stands for Your Mileage May Vary, as in, do whatever ye want, my experience is my own and yours may be different.

You, on the other hand, have consistently argued that Windows is the only solution and missed no opportunity to sneer at Mac users. So who's the partisan, he asked rhetorically?


I merely shot down some of your erroneous statements regarding the Mac, because they were factually wrong. I have never said that Macs are always better or even mostly better. In some cases, Macs have advantages. In some cases, Windows PCs have advantages. Sometimes Linux has its advantages. Which is why I use more than one OS.


All of those are demonstrably factually true. The fact that Apple is still around and is making more money than ever shows that Jobs was right. The fact that Apple's market share is steadily growing for the first time since the mid-1980s shows that Jobs was right. The fact that Apple has succeeded in bringing out new products that have the markets raving (such as iPod and iPhone) shows that Apple has buzz around them. You have said nothing to factually contradict any of that except to sneer.


Why should I? I stated that I own and use three PCs on a daily basis. Thus it is plainly obvious that I have no trouble with buying and using them. I took the time to shoot you down on your factual errors about the Mac, so there was no reason to say much positive about Windows at the time. Had you wrongly said something negative about Windows and no one else corrected the error, I'd have had a reason to say something.


I don't need to provide evidence of any such thing, because the other members of the forum can read.


No kiddin'? Try installing any OS without a bootloader -- or the wrong one.


Ding ding ding ding! We have a winner!

Cheers,

Fairfax71

my 2 pence worth: I'm a Windows admin by day & a mac user by night. I like it that way, lots of work around in the Windoze world, & an easy computering life at home, my mac does what I need it to do

Already described the differences in a previous message. In all honesty, I responded to your question solely to allow one last comment on this topic - if the Intel Macs are indeed real PCs with plain vanila PC motherboards, why can't Mac users reliably install anything other than XP? Why not Windows 2000, Windows NT, Windows XP 64-bit, or whatever? All these operating systems will install using the motherboard in my PC. In fact, I'm not aware of any current PC motherboard these operating systems won't work with. So what is so different about the motherboards in the Intel Macs that prevents one from simply using these operating systems with Boot Camp? Since you obviously don't agree with my conclusions (emulation within Boot Camp), perhaps you can explain how "PC motherboards" in the Intel Macs break all those other PC operating systems while the motherboards in normal PC's don't. And I'll leave your response as the last word (at least as far as I'm concerned).

Stewart

Bootcamp installs Intel's CSM, which allows the EFI based Macs to act like an old style BIOS based PC during the boot process. It also partitions the disk non-destructively using GPT. I assume the GPT disk partition format is the problem for NT & W2K etc., it's new and they would need to be re-written or at least have new drivers to be able to deal with it. Microsoft has no incentive to do that work since it stopped selling NT and W2K years ago.

Microsoft says (at the bottom of the page):


So there you have it. Some work has obviously been done to allow XP to boot from a GPT disk.

They can. Windows Server 2003, various Intel Linux distros, NexentaOS, and XP Pro x64 can all be installed -- even though Boot Camp is only a public beta.

No one claimed that Macs have "plain vanilla" PC motherboards. Then again, a Vaio doesn't have a "plain vanilla" motherboard, either, but I wouldn't hear you claiming it's not a real PC. At least I hope not.

GPT and EFI is also the way PCs are going as well. Seems a bit silly to criticize Apple for using a technology that PCs are adopting.

Apple made a conscious decision to go to open standards as much as possible and to have as much compatibility with PC components as possible. They also made a conscious decision not to be backward compatible so as to not create trouble running OS X, and because BIOS is a kludgely outdated technology anyway (which is why everyone's moving to EFI in the first place).

Current and future Intel OSes will run on an Intel Mac natively. Boot Camp is only a bridge for those that need it for the time being.

Cheers,

Fairfax71

My Mac laptop that is just over one year old crashes once or twice a week (completely freezes and then has an interminable boot time).

Ergo, Macs suck.

Seriously, I don't know what happened to it and it's not predictable enough to take into for repair (still under extended warranty). My 2 year old Win XP computer is actually rather more stable.

Wow, your machine is fucked. I don't remember the last time mine locked up although I think it has happened once.

The most common cause of Mac OS X crashes is cheapo USB accessories, especially hubs. Unplug everything except your mouse & keyboard and see what happens. Next is bad drivers and then haxies using Unsanity's Application Enhancer. The crash logs might help but it's hard to explain what to look for.

Sorry for your trouble, but it's a classic case of YMMV, I'm afraid. :-)

Try using Disk Utility (under Apple Menu -> Utilities -> Disk Utility) to check and correct the permissions on the hard drive. If hard drive journalling is not turned on, turn it on.

You can also try using Cocktail to run the maintenance scripts. The maintenance scripts normally run in the background, but for some strange reason it sometimes happens that they don't run, which causes OS X to progressively get more and more flaky. It shouldn't happen, but it does.

Hope that helps.

Cheers,

Fairfax71

Thanks, will give it a go.

Here's my iMac running Vista in Parallels:



I've thrashed virtualized Vista thoroughly and for me it works as well as a native install. The added bonus is that once the Vista install slows to crawl I can just restore it to virgin pvs file in seconds. That's reason enough to virtualize it on a better OS in my book.

@DW
Nice.. If you want a faster VMed OS, stay with XP

What imac do you have? specs?

Shocking

http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article2418417.ece

and the report is from the independent.

Yup. Vista is a resource hog whether native or virtual!

I've got it running on a 20" iMac 2.16GHz Core 2 Duo with 1GB RAM (basically the base level 20" iMac). I'd really like to add another 1GB. Apparently they respond really, really well to more RAM though it's not as if it's slow now by any means.

RAM's cheap.. max the sucker out...

Have a look at Parallels Coherence, No need to Display the entire Windows
OS when you can simple have the programs windows on the MAC Desktop.

Coherence is just a neat trick.

All they are effectively doing is making the host os's desktop transparent and making it effectively full screen. All the windows of the host are one one window layer. You cannot have an OSX window layered between 2 windows of a running host OS. You click on MSN in parallels and all the windows apps come to the foreground as well.

It's still bloody awesome though. It looks so cool seeing your XP/Vista windows in amongst your OSX windows and it requires less 'context' switch for the user. Shame Parallels wont implement that feature in their Workstation product so Windows/Linux users could get that same experience. Oh well. I reckon it's a feature that will start to catch on in VM software makers, I hope

Last I heard they were going for feature parity for v 3. Stuff may get developed on one platform but should make it to the other.

It seems that it's human error and not Vista that is the problem. You will have the same problems on a mac, even more so if you're used to a PC. Make sure that you run Windows Updater to make sure that all your drivers are current. And go to your Camera's support page to make sure that they don't have the drivers available for Vista. Some software companies have been slow getting their drivers distributed on Windows update. You can also try running software in compatibility mode.

Having worked in the "creative" field for many years, I can tell you that a PC is as good or better for software. Adobe/Macromedia apps are now optimized for PC use and are very buggy on a mac. I have owned and worked on many macs and PCs, and at this point the PC would be my choice for flexibility and OS superiority. Apple is really focusing their efforts on consumer hardware like the ipod, apple tv and soon to be over priced iphone. All which are top class User Experiences.

Which version of Office are you using? In 2007, the undo toolbar button is now only in the Quick Access Toolbar in the upper left. You can always use the keyboard shortcut ctrl + z for undo. Works in all versions of Word.

It doesn't matter which is better because its only a machine with motherboard,hddrive,coolingfan, and etc. Its how knowledge ur computer skills and patience u r. If anyone who being using windows 98se for a long time like my oma and now she decide to switch over to vista, omg what a nightmare. I try to explain to her its not the same. Whatever ur preference mac or pc, goodluck, and make sure u have a reciept. I like pc because for a long time being using pc when first came out windows 3.0 dos til vista. I have no problem with pc. If u are not ready to learn new thing than stick what u have until u r ready. If u have problem with vista makesure all ur software and hardware are vista compatible. For example I have a printer hp psc 1410 all in one, on my xp I had to install the drivers but on my vista I just had to plug in the usb cable and it detect my printer and install driver for me without cd.

Invisible Man, could you try to be a little more visible and post in English. Read the forum rules! Thank you!

Mac any day! I grew up with Windows and worked with it all my life, but eventually got pissed off with Microsoft's crap pre-Vista and moved to a MacBook Pro... I will never look back! Much more stable and rarely need to reboot, as well as little chance of getting viruses.

Maybe this thread could have a poll? ;-)

ARRRGGGHHH! I HATE people who write messages in forums or emails with abbreviations such as "ur", "u"!!! These are not bloody text messages and you are not limited by the number of characters you can write!!!

I have a 386 that still runs back home, whats that, about 13-14 years old or so?

But how often does it hang? How often do you have to reboot it? How often do you get viruses etc? ;-)
Or are you running Windows 3.1? Couldn't really do too much with that!

Windows - ha, its dos! Its the machine I used to run a BBS off of when I was a kid, I think I booted it up last year to play ultima - never got a virus on it

Its fun to go back and exprience the fun of adding emm386 lines to your config.sys - nothing like the good old days where it took longer to make a new game run than to beat the actual game.

So for good or bad, I am pretty much the only "tekkie" one in our office of 5-6 staff. I am also the only one using a MAC (I switched about a year ago and love it).

So I need to buy some more computers - 2 or 3 for now.

Obviously Dells are cheap as chips but my stomach lurches at the thought of maintaining these with VISTA (that I have never used) and in German. I could knob about getting them into
English XP OS but that in itself is a time consuming pain in the arse. Ideally I wanna plug and play.

Apple is more expensive but I "could" go with maybe Mac Minis and use the existing Dell TFT screens that we have. Or just go the iMac route and be done with it. The rest are not "power" users
but I find the SPAM filters etc in Mac easier to live with now.

I am just a bit undecided. Microsoft crap is the cheaper initial solution, but should I bite the bullet and switch us all to Mac?

p.s. We work in German/English/Swedish/Italian/French etc here, so thinking with Macs we can switch around for staff as they want?? Harder with MS OS?

Your last point is definetly a Mac only feature. Would be ideal for your staff to work in their native language if possible.

Ya. Many (though sadly by no means all) software packages are multilingual as well and follow the system language preference. So if you set OS X to be in German, many apps will automagically be in German as well (if they have a German localization).

Furthermore, it is set at the user level, so if more than one user has an account on the machine, they can set their own language without affecting the other users.

Cheers,

Fairfax71

I have a German Vista machine (and recently a Macbook too ). I am so frustrated with struggling to change applications "back" to English on my Dell. They often seem to magically change themselves and also if I type www.xxxxx.com, no, I do not want to be directed to .de in the German language. I wrote .com. because I wanted .com!!!

For business use they will no doubt have either a volume licencing agreement like Select or Technet, this would allow you to download the XP/Vista/Office multi-lingual packs, allowing the experience you are after. Have used this many times before in companies where offices were spread throughout the globe but still maintained a corporate "standard build". Will give the user the option to change his environment to English/Japanese/Chinese/French/Russian etc.

ok, thinking about hte imac again and got some questions for the massives..

boot camp v's vmware? How many people are running XP and Leopard at the same time? Any problems I should think about?

Has anyone tried mounting an hard-disk with XP already installed on it, in say a firewire drive bay?

Thinking about the 24" 2,8GHz wit the 2gb ram probably with the upgrade to the 500gb hard disk.

Anyone got anything bad to say about the machine?

I have the 24" 2.8ghz Intel Extreme iMac. It is a good machine.
Vmware is in my experience extremely poor compared to parallels. XP partition on the alu mac works, but the drivers for xp are awful - no ati control panel for example. I ended up installing vista on it which has the ati control panel. I hate vista, it is there for counterstrike alone.
Performance is as per a native pc in bootcamp. Parallels also has 3d acceleration support to directx level 8 I believe. I used xp in a vm for Elster, and that is about it. Pretty much spend my time in OSX 100% nowadays.
500 gig is a good size drive to have. I would say if you can to stretch to the newer processor do.

Thanks for that. I need to use Vmplayer for one of the linux builds I want to run. Otherwise am open for everything else. I guess I want a windows option for any software I cant find to run in OSX. I do some security stuff nowadays as well and some of that is based only on windows

While I use Parallels with XP and Leopard on my Mac Pro, I've heard that the new beta of VMware Fusion is much improved and has leapfrogged Parallels (as Parallels did in the previous version).

I haven't got any personal experience with that so far, however. Thus far Parallels works well enough for me, though it was a chore getting my very old copy of XP Home to install. Only drawback is that the graphics are a bit sluggish in transparent mode, but otherwise everything works fine.

EDIT: Boot Camp ought to be a last option, though. Either Parallels or VMware ought to do you fine. Boot Camp is after all a dual boot, so it's a hassle switching back and forth.

Cheers,

Fairfax71

My next laptop is def gonna be an Apple. My friend who has always used an Apple doesn't even know what a Trojan Horse is!!!

Just to clarify, as the above sounds a bit confusing.

To use VMWare, you actually do load Bootcamp exactly as normal, just that the VMWare is then a nice instant way to access the Boot Camp partition live via the Mac OS. But you can still boot straight into BootCamp if for example
planning to do several hours of Windows work 'cos it will then run quicker of course.

So with VMWare you do still need a full version of Windows XP and you do still need to load Bootcamp.

@JE: Ah, good point, thanks for clarifying.

Cheers,

Fairfax71

but, you do not have to run bootcamp windows from your VMWare/Parallels partition, you can just create a new VM for linux/xp/etc. which sits on your normal Apple filesystem.

Personally I had problems using the windows bootcamp partition from parallels, in as much as whenever I went back to bootcamp, I would have to reactivate windows :/ Not sure if that is fixed, and tbh, I just like to keep them separate now.

That was also originally a problem in VMWare, but I think they fixed the issue a long time ago, although I never boot into Windows now just in case!! VmWare includes instructions to avoid and reactivation of windows issues.

VMWare Fusion (MAC), acts and works just like VMWare workstation on the PC. Bootcamp is not needed. The VM is stored on the local harddrive just like every other file.
Bootcamp is only need if you want to boot the MAC into XP instead of OSX.

Sorry my bad. I assumed that the Virtual Machine was the only route, but sounds like you dont in fact need BootCamp.

the deed is done

anyone recommend a good straight text editor and sftp/scp client for osx?

Pardon my ignorance here. I can understand why you might want a more user friendly text editor than vi or emacs, but why would you need an sftp/scp client? Is there some reason to not sftp or scp from the command line?

ipj, on all counts you are right, vi is the ultimate text editor. command line sftp/scp also.

I do that all day at work on big fuck off unix machines. In the world of cuddly mac friendlyness, other options are sometimes better.

where vi lets you down, it good colour highlighting of the html/php/perl/c/fortran you are hand coding enabling you to visualise whats going on.

its a simple request for recommendations, and not one to talk about how unix commands are better than mac osx apps.

I use textwrangler for text editing and such, and cyberduck for sftp. Both free. They also work together so you can effectively edit a file directly on a server for example.

add the following to a ~/.vimrc file and you will get colour highlighting

set term=ansi
syntax on

For FTP, SFTP, scp and so on I use Transmit if I'm not using the command line.

For text editing, I use the old workhorse, BBEdit.

Cheers,

Fairfax71

I use Fugu for SFTP. No particular reason, just at the time I needed a free SFTP client it was the first google result. There may be better alternatives.

ok another question - antivirus solution?

You don't really need an AV solution for MAC.