Hi

Help me understand this statement (among many other statements). I recently had to fix my brothers Macbook because it didnt understand what a USB stick was, amusing more than anything but I had a chance to play with a mac for the first time, expecting all the statements I have ever heard to be true.

Ok so im not that gullible, I dont believe everything I hear but I do read a lot and have seen statements like the title statement persistently, so you would think with a statement there would be an explanation, the 'best' explanation I have gotten ever from a search is "Photoshop was originally designed for a Mac and is used on a Mac", now to me that doesnt explain anything.

This isnt a hate thread on a Macs either, in my 'world' Macs arent used simply because they arent needed and no one has made a decent sales pitch to make me or the companies I have worked for buy them, there just always seems to be cheaper better alternatives to solutions, I respect others having Macs but when someone says something like "wait, you use photoshop on a PC, wow talk about doing things the hard way" then encourage me to get a Mac I just dont get it.

I normally would never dream of bringing up a comparison thread but these days ponies, one direction and apple seem to be getting popular and I want to understand why. Can someone explain a Mac to me and the 'real' benefits one has over running Windows, from my brief experience with a Mac I honestly only saw a different UI and a different price tag.

These are the statements I hear a lot, far too much tbh.

1. Macs are better for graphical design, if you are working with photoshop or corel draw, Macs are a must
2. Macs are better for programming
3. Macs are faster than windows
4. Macs are safe and virus free

Now for me I dont ever have performance issues with windows, even using my old 2004 single core comp runs fast with Win7, and I havent had a virus since Win95 which was my own fault anyway ("You are our 1 millionth customer, click here!"), with the growing popularity of a Mac what are the real benefit of having one over Windows?

I apologise if this comes across as a flame / vague comparison thread, but I truly genuinely dont get 'Macs' and all the threads / articles I see are too vague

Regards

Edit: I think the edit thing broke, I only changed one word and it said I edited this 3 times :/

Macintosh had Photoshop in 1988, it wasn't ported to Windows until 1992 and IIRC, the original Windows versions were inferior.
This is just a non-referenced "fact" that's been past around by word-of-mouth since 1990.

Also, Macintosh used to splash out on hardware a lot more than your no-name "IBM compatible PC" would. e.g. Macs were rocking SCSI before it was cool.
These days it's pretty easy to get a Mac-equivalent PC for a much lower price though...

The only games company that I know of that uses Mac, does so because they are forced to in order to make their iPhone games... however they use parallels to run Windows alongside OSX anyway...

If you want to know why people make these statements, then simply ask "why?" next time you hear it said.

1. Macs are better for graphical design, if you are working with photoshop or corel draw, Macs are a must
2. Macs are better for programming
3. Macs are faster than windows
4. Macs are safe and virus free

I use a Mac for all my graphical side of things. It's because of other reasons, such as the superior Mail app. But it's all personal preference. Here's why I think they tell you to use a mac:

(1) Ever since the Adobe CS suites this is no longer the case, but habits (and keyboard shortcuts) die hard.
(2) Macs are similar to Linux with their console-y ways. Some programmers prefer this. It also comes with a great dev environment (XCode), but so does Windows.
(3) Macs come with excellent hardware, though if you splash the cash on a PC it's similar. However, the OS (at least feels like) it's slightly faster.
(4) Macs are not virus free, but it's more difficult to get hit by one. (You have to actively install a virus, it cannot sneak in the back way due to the way programs are installed).

theyre better for making IOS apps

WRT artists, whilst nowadays its all much the same, years ago the color reproduction etc on the screen was generally better on a mac,
also WRT screen theres a macbook today with 2880x1800 or something whats the best standard windows screen on a laptop ? 1920x1080. Im a windows guy but if you want the bes or near to it, hardware wise buy a mac

I have never really cared for OS wars and vendor fanatism. Used whatever I could get my hands on, and never understood people arguing "Amiga!" "no, Atari!", and I was like "why not both?"
At home I have two screens on my desktop, one of them connected to my macbook, and another to a desktop PC with a good graphics card.
Then I use "synergy" to connect them to each other, so I use the same keyboard and mouse to control them both as if they were the same computer.

Bought my first macbook in 2008 to get into IOS development and was very impressed with the hardware quality.
Specially the track pad which only recently anyone else is even close to in precision and general "feel".

Its hard to rationalise it as an engineer, but its a lot of small details in everything including choice of materials, that just makes it feel sleek and whole, in contrast to most PC laptops that either feel very plastic, or very clunky or both, even when they are physically small.

Its also very well designed from a power and heat viewpoint, which makes it cool and silent.
People say that you can get an equivalent pc laptop much cheaper, but I have still to see one that actually matches the macbook in all respects.

It's easy to find one that has better specifications on paper, or kick the macbooks ass on a few points, (though usually then in around the same price range) but as a whole, no-one else is close imo.
One thing you should never, ever, do though, is upgrade your macbook when buying it. Those upgrades are ridiculously overpriced.

(Oh, and yeah, I too run vmware to boot windows, for ps vita development... )

1. Macs are better for graphical design, if you are working with photoshop or corel draw, Macs are a must
2. Macs are better for programming
3. Macs are faster than windows
4. Macs are safe and virus free[/quote]

1) no longer remotely true. maybe 20 years ago, but for the last 10 its been a myth.
2) never been true. never. for the majority of the mac's career, this was one of the worst platforms to program on. some still consider objective-c to be the devil's handiwork.
3) again, not true. this has more to do with default config and the user installing stuff. you can throttle a mac as easy as a windows as easy as linux as easy as unix.
4) again, not true. viri are majority caused by a user executing something unwittingly. this was for the most part true in the days of xp and earlier (inability to stop a rogue program from asking to run), but with the kernal mods to windows vista and later, they are on about equal footing now. The only x-factors are 1) how many people targeting that particular platform, 2) how many people are gullable on that platform. I would actually posit it would be easier to get a paranoid mac user to execute a malicious program than to get a paranoid windows user to mainly due to the false sense of security that apple sells. The windows user will never trust it, the mac user will think they are safe. On top of that, you have more things to worry about identity theft these days with websites and the ubiquitous cloud than your personal machine. These are 1000x easier to hack than your desktop due to the myrriad of flaws in the various standards and their implementations. Hell, Wired (or maybe it was Ars Technica) ran an article recently where a writer of theirs had his Mac cloud service "hacked" via social engineering and the attacker erased all his devices remotely among other horrors. The owner never was even contacted by apple.

Anyway, enough of my podium proselytizing. I'll just say this, as with anything in this world: don't believe the hype, its usually wrong.

[P.S. not saying windows is great, just that apple is selling the hype not a product]

[edits for spelling & grammar]

Next time tell him WACOMs are better for artists. ;)

Back in the mid-late 1990s I was working in the publishing software industry. All artists used Macs because all Macs were colour calibrated and just worked. They ran a 32-bit OS and always had millions of colours available, and supported professional hardware like drawing tablets and colour laser proofers, vital in the publising industry. PCs ran Windows95 and most applications were 16-bit and ran in DOS compatibility mode, with 16 colours, no color calibration, and support for pretty much any input hardware or proofer was either nonexistent or a nightmare to set up. Many of our installations ran a Linux server back end and 100s of Macintosh front ends. In 1996.

Nowadays, the gap has closed. Windows applications are 32- or 64-bit (while all Macs are 64-bit) with built-in colour calibration and reasonable hardware support, and their UIs are sometimes not nightmares to navigate. In terms of functionality and sophistication, they're on a par with the Mac. The main differences are (a) target market: Microsoft markets to business suits who write purchase orders, a culture which most artists do not consider themselves to belong (but an excellent business decision), and (2) there is a critical subculture of artists who use Macs. Like the enormously crappy Facebook, the critical mass of people is what makes it popular, not any technical feature.

In summary, there used to be strong technical reasons why artists preferred Macs. Nowadays there are not, but there are strong social reasons.

2. Macs are better for programming
...
2) never been true. never. for the majority of the mac's career, this was one of the worst platforms to program on. some still consider objective-c to be the

I just wanted to say something regarding this. I find Macs to be the hands-down best development platform there is, better than Windows and slightly better than Linux, and that's because I have the tools from the *nix world (proper terminals, compilers, interpreters, file groking stuff, etc.) but also nice GUI thingies. I work with all three platforms (Linux, Windows and Macs) on a daily basis, and while they're all good environments, I prefer the Mac. OTOH, I really like Emacs, sleek GUIs and solid hardware
Also, I'm a bit of a hipster. If anything, the hype should really drive me away... if only there was something better!

[sub]I guess i should caveat my point #2. I was talking more history than current state. Mac is now a decent dev environment, but i dont consider it -better- than windows or any posix environment. they all have their pro's and con's.[/sub]