Mac vs PC: Does it matter anymore? | Hacker News Reader

Mac vs PC: Does it matter anymore?

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16 pointsbdfh4230 comments

I think it still does. I use both a mac and a pc. I tend to spend a chunk of time inside a browser. Desktop work on the PC is Outlook and Excel. Desktop work on a mac is mostly spent inside Textmate and a shell. All computing/web hosting is done virtually. I can't wait to get a mac from work so that I don't have to use the PC. Now that is personal preference, but IMO the experience on your host machine does make a difference, regardless of your preference.

Is Mac vs. PC becoming irrelevant because of the maturing of the internet as a platform and cloud computing?

What I find very interesting about this is the possibility that it cuts both ways for Apple. If the two are interchangeable, you can buy based on price and features, which can be an advantage for Windows, since there are many manufacturers who can offer a larger variety of form factors and feature combinations.

But the flip side of that proposition is that if there is no Windows lock-in forcing consumers to buy Windows, so they can also choose Apple based on good design, Apple branding, the iPod halo effect, and perceived security.

Personally, I think that there is a big difference between saying that there are no factors forcing consumers to purchase one or the others and saying that the differences between them don't matter any more.

Perceived security? How many hundred thousand new pieces of malware for the mac this year again?

An astronomer, a physicist and a mathematician are on a train in Scotland. The astronomer looks out of the window, sees a black sheep standing in a field, and remarks, "How odd. Scottish sheep are black." "No, no, no!" says the physicist. "Only some Scottish sheep are black." The mathematician rolls his eyes at his companions' muddled thinking and says, "In Scotland, there is at least one field, containing at least one sheep, at least one side of which appears black from here."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_joke

I was referencing effective security (what your chances are of contracting something bad), not theoretical security (how inherently secure the system is or isn't). You're effectively safer on a mac than Windows regardless of the design and architecture. It's just a fact that you have orders of magnitude less malware on the mac.

So saying macs have "perceivably" better (effective) security than Windows is a bit like saying white is perceivably brighter than black. Technically true, but it sounds a tad dishonest to me (or maybe he was just talking about theoretical security).

Yes, but you should still take the SAME basic security precautions on both platforms. And if you do so, you are probably just as safe on Vista, and maybe safer. The biggest security risk on the MAC is a false sense of security. I don't know how many people have told me, "I have a Mac, I can't possibly get anything bad!"

I saw "perceived security" and actually physically winced, bracing for the mac fans' incredulous "how DARE you"s

It totally matters. Just ask any Mac or Linux diehard. Personally, I use all three of the primary operating systems: Windows XP, Mac OSX and Linux (Ubuntu in this case). I have separate uses for each and can't imagine getting rid of any of them.

I'm curious what you use Windows for. The only things I can imagine myself using Windows for are gaming or testing in IE.

'Wine' is ok for testing IE under Linux.

Does it work with IE7 now? I haven't looked at IE under Linux for a while, but last time I did look it was IE6 only.

Microsoft Sam text-to-speech. I've never found a more amusing computer voice.

Windows seems to work better as a media center PC. Streaming video to an 360 or a PS3 is really easy to setup with Windows and getting the hardware / codec's to work is simple.

Note: I have heard that Linux is getting better for this stuff but windows is cheep enough that I don't really care.

I use Connect360 (http://www.nullriver.com/products/connect360) for OSX->360 and I couldn't be happier. The only annoyance is that it won't stream drm'd content from the itunes store. I think that SUCKS. Otherwise, it couldn't be easier to use and it's quick and clean.

No connection to them other than I'm a happy customer ;)

Yep, it almost works but that just means it's only slightly broken.

My response has simply been: don't buy DRM'd content. Works 100% of the time ;)

Are there any legal options to buy non DRM'd Blu-ray content? I mean new 1080p movies?

I have a solution- Don't buy DRM'd content. Ever. And if you do, pirate a usable copy. I still prefer not buying it in the first place, as I don't want to support the notion of DRM.

Many EDA and FPGA software packages are Windows only.

Offline files. The only thing I still use XP or Vista for.

I have a Mac Book, an iBook, two Dell laptops running Ubuntu (one is our media center and my wife uses the other for work), two dell towers (one I bought 5 years ago which still has XP; the other is a 10 year old 900MHz P3 which is my file server, running SuSE 11 and Compiz), and I have two OLPC XOs (two kids; one was a gift). That's 8 computers in the house plus a server I admin that's running CentOS.

The one Dell running Windows has 1) an HP scanjet 4470c that isn't supported in OS X or SANE and 2) MS Money with 10 years of data. GNU Cash is on my todo list and I found an epson scanner on craigslist for $40 that I'm going to get tomorrow. Once I resolve those two issues I will happily abandon my Creative Suite 2 and never use Windows again.

Meanwhile, people at Starbucks ask me how to get on the internet and while I help them with their HPAcerVaioToshibaGateway $500 special, I advise them to use Ubuntu instead of Vista. I give them the link to Ubuntu and I know they won't use it. One guy was so happy he bought me a coffee, even though I'm sure he will never follow that link. They use what ships with the computer.

Well, to test in Internet Explorer of course! I'm a front-end engineer for Yahoo!, and unfortunately a stupidly high number of our users are IE users. There are options on other operating systems like Parallels and WINE, but nothing gets the job done like the real thing.

Even if the Internet is the "killer app", it still matters how you get there. Is your preferred client available on the platform? Does it work well on that platform?

My web browser, E-mail client and terminal of choice, for instance, are not available on Windows; and no, I'm not using Apple's Safari or Terminal. So when I pull up these applications, I'm seeing what is (to me) a superior Internet experience. Even Firefox on Windows, or PuTTY, just don't quite deliver what I like most.

And cross-platform applications are still platform-dependent. For instance, I love Thunderbird on Linux...it works well. On the Mac, however, despite using Thunderbird for months, it always felt a little clunky (e.g. emulated UI appearance, doing everything itself instead of integrating with OS services such as Keychain). In the end, the combination of platform and application made Apple's Mail more useful to me.

That is by definition a very niche problem.

Apart from running each other's proprietary browsers, there is no reason not to make any browser with enough of a following to determine machine choice, available on any platform.

Normally, the reason an 'app of choice' wouldn't be available is obscurity. The point here is that the only app that matters now is the browser & maybe another handful.

Fewer chances for an obscure killer app to kill the sale because all your obscure apps are online. If all you need to do is make sure that all important browsers are available on your platform, it's doable even if it's chasing down browsers with less then .01% of users.

Mac vs PC, not really. OS X vs Windows, totally.

Only in so much as Macs are popular enough now that I'm almost never forced to use a PC. On the (thankfully) rare occasions when I am, then yes. It matters a great deal.

I cant help but to wonder if this author knows what he is talking about. "Mac Vs. PC??? Does he not realize that Mac (Apple Macintosh) is a brand of PC (Personal Computer)?

rather than get my pc with xp out of my briefcase, i picked up my wifes mac air and with outlook web access i can grab email and with mionews.com i can read friendfeed and news. biggest difference left is instant on...and of course IM which requires a thick client to be good.

Sure it does. I prefer the Mac over a PC. Windows generally treat the user like an idiot (you have unused icons on your desktop!!) while the Mac tends to be a little more user friendly. Sure I have a PC as well, I don't know of a good alternative to EAC for ripping a perfect copy of a CD. And playing games on the PC is great too, not to mention the hardware is more often than not a lot cheaper. But I've been a Mac User since 1984 and haven't felt any need to stop using one. I like the Mac philosophy, and Windows generally erks me to no end. My newest Mac (a MacBook) runs Windows XP on a partition, which is pretty nice, so I get both OS's on one machine. No more Dells from Hell for me. Knowing the average reader on this site, this comment will probably get voted down to about a -15, because I don't trumpet the superiority of Linux.

There are easily as many Mac users on HN as there are Linux users. If you're getting voted down it's because you say things like this: Windows generally treat the user like an idiot (you have unused icons on your desktop!!) Never mind the poor grammar and complete non-sequitur, it takes all of two seconds to remove those icons. Just delete them and find something more substantial to complain about.

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