Why is the Mac Better than the PC?

Steve Jobs started from scratch. He built an OS that didn't suffer the inherent problems that Bill Gates had created for himself (e.g. compatibility to MS-DOS and a 640Kb memory problem).

Now really, do you believe either Jobs or Gates actually determined the technical directions of either of their respective companies? Jobs "borrowed" liberally from Xerox PARC and relied on Steve Woz for tech. Gates & Co. bought DOS.

You are all wrong...it's linux

*giggle giggle giggle* :D

"Computer Fight"

:lol:

lol

Aren't PC's much more expensive then Macs?

I think either way you look at it, a great PC made by a reliable manufacturer won't have many crap outs. My dell has never freezed on me, in the four or so years I've had it. I'm running windows as well.

And, I just combined audio +video with no hitches ;)

Macs look much prettier out of the box. Thats a main selling point...

Im just kidding. I have no idea.

Just one word for PCs. I think they are a ton better than any Mac. Macs are just easier to use than PCs. Many musicians prefer to get good at things that dont involve troubleshooting a computer program.

^Yeah, thats a bad thing about having a mac, i doesnt support alot of stuff. Thats another reason why I hate monopolys(not the game :lol: )

Steve Jobs started from scratch. He built an OS that didn't suffer the inherent problems that Bill Gates had created for himself (e.g. compatibility to MS-DOS and a 640Kb memory problem).

Now really, do you believe either Jobs or Gates actually determined the technical directions of either of their respective companies? Jobs "borrowed" liberally from Xerox PARC and relied on Steve Woz for tech. Gates & Co. bought DOS.

Yeah, but Xerox wasnt gonna use it. Why else would they show him that?

Steve Jobs started from scratch. He built an OS that didn't suffer the inherent problems that Bill Gates had created for himself (e.g. compatibility to MS-DOS and a 640Kb memory problem).

Now really, do you believe either Jobs or Gates actually determined the technical directions of either of their respective companies? Jobs "borrowed" liberally from Xerox PARC and relied on Steve Woz for tech. Gates & Co. bought DOS. Yeah, but Xerox wasnt gonna use it. Why else would they show him that?

Pick up the book Fumbling the Future. It documents the brilliant things invented at Xerox PARC and mismanaged into non-products. Having for a short time worked for and with some of the people mentioned in that book, I understand how it happened: no real business sense and a lot of naivety.

In my estimation, though not a technical genius, Jobs is a business visionary. The only thing that really galls me, is that he and Apple would sue Microsoft over the look and feel of the Windows GUI, when Jobs/Apple took the same from Xerox. And no, I'm not particularly partial to MS/Apple ... or Linux.

I would say that both Macs and PCs are equally capable of meeting the needs of 95% of computer users. It's just in the professional sector that the Mac's power and reliability shine through and make it the weapon of choice for graphic design, publishing, artwork, video, audio & music creation.

All the hype around Macs these days is just marketing. I hate to say it but all the people in the world who need a Mac to do their work to the highest standard already know that they need a Mac, and already use one. It is universally accepted as the standard for professional multimedia; now Apple is just targeting the other 95% of the world's computer users.

I use a Mac, and I can't say it's clearly better than a PC. PCs are cheaper and more upgradeable. Then again, I know for sure that my next computer will also be a Mac. Maybe it's because I'm a rebellious artist, maybe it's because they are so easy to use, maybe I got sucked in by the sleek white curvy plastic design... or simply that my computing experience has become more pleasant and stress-free... either way, the slogan is true: once you go Mac, you don't go back!

You are mistaken. OS X is based on the FreeBSD kernel.

When Apple started, there was no freeBSD.
The UNIX world was all based around what was originally developed by Kernighan and Ritchie, in the early 70's. There were two "standards" consortia - POSIX and OpenBSD (I think that's what it was called). Neither were open source and UNIX wasn't free.

The point is that, although another OS was used as a model, the memory management built into Apple's OS did not restrict you to a physical limit of 640Kb, even though paying for anything larger was prohibitive.

Gates, on the other hand, was so convinced that no computer would ever need more than 640Kb, he wrote his entire memory management around it. Even when Windows became so bloated, that it it could no longer be satisfied with 640Kb, the memory management was still built around that physical limit, you could just add an additional driver to manage "extended" memory.

Worse still, he was so scared of losing market share, that he kept it in so that even ancient programs (read: games) would still run.

Greybeard, you are misinformed on a number of issues. There were 2 original UNIXes - AT&T's SysV and Berkely's BSD. POSIX is a standard (not even an operating system) that emerged in the 80s. OpenBSD didn't come around until the 90s.

The 640k addressing issue is rooted in Intel processors. The original 8086 only had 16-bit registers, so a single register could not hold a 20-bit memory address. Instead you had to use two registers, storing the base in one and the rest of the address in the other. As Intel came out with newer processors (80286, 80386) they added additional registers and the capability to access memory beyond 1 MB. However, they retained the 8086 architecture for the sake of backward compatibility.

DOS was just a loader. It loaded computer instructions stored on disk into memory and told the processor where to look for the program and data. It had nothing to do with Intel's stupid memory addressing schemes. LEt me say that again: Bill Gates and Microsoft had nothing to do with Intel's memory addressing schemes on the 8086. They just made an OS for the chip that IBM chose to use in its Personal Computer. Had IBM chosen the more expensive Motorola chip, instead of the cheaper Intel chip, then everything would have been different.

But none of this is relavent at all. WinXP doesn't make users deal with Intel's goofy memory addressing schemes. Apple scrapped their original operating system for a new one based on BSD Unix. Both are capable of allowing an artist to get things done with good results. I don't see why all this ancient history makes a bit a difference to an artist choosing a computer today.

Use what you're comfortable with. Pick what you like. It doesn't matter.

Personally, I could care less if it were based off of this kernel -

HOOOGAAAAAN! THIS CONVAHSASHUN IZ OVAAAAAH!!!

However, the big disparity betwen Macs and PC's right now (which has me considering a Mac when I eventually upgrade my 2-year old laptop... in about 4 years) is that Macs now come with FREE and powerful (lots of features) video editing, picture editing, and sound editing software, on top of programs built into the system for instant messaging, internet browsing, searching, and nobody has decided to program viruses for Macs yet!

Pretty much - if you need apps for business and whatnot that are only on PC, chances are you're better off getting a PC, because the other stuff you'll use personally is on there as well. if you're just going to be surfing the internet, writing documents / e-mails, and recording the occasional moment of inspiration, just get a Mac. It's less hassle for everything. (don't get me started on setting up networks with PC's...)

-Rodya

In earlier times I didn't mind setting up my PC every few month or even weeks.
It was quite easy and transparent to install MS-Dos. With W95 everything started to change as you lost a lot of inside information but as a "reward" you were given just a lot of troubles. So a real troubleshooting wasn't possibel that easy and setting the whole beast up again took it's time.
I didn't mind it until W2000 because I got older and I finally figured that I didn't want to have a PC to reinstall everything but to actually USE it.
My priorities changed.
Suddendly I wasn't after the highest free RAM or the "best configuration" or whatever anymore. And I might tell you, if I'm buying a new machine it's definitely going to be a Mac.
My standard applications that I use for Windows can still be run on my current PC and the rest is better working on the Mac.
I'm pissed off Microsoft. They can't tell me it's not possible to programm a GUI based OS that hangs itself after double clicking the wrong icon at the wrong time. They have already been proven wrong.
I hate how they are selling us crappy products. Yes they may have some nice features. But they are neither new nor do they compensate for the lack of kernel tohuwabohu...

Greybeard, you are misinformed on a number of issues. There were 2 original UNIXes - AT&T's SysV and Berkely's BSD. POSIX is a standard (not even an operating system) that emerged in the 80s. OpenBSD didn't come around until the 90s.

The 640k addressing issue is rooted in Intel processors. The original 8086 only had 16-bit registers, so a single register could not hold a 20-bit memory address. Instead you had to use two registers, storing the base in one and the rest of the address in the other. As Intel came out with newer processors (80286, 80386) they added additional registers and the capability to access memory beyond 1 MB. However, they retained the 8086 architecture for the sake of backward compatibility.

DOS was just a loader. It loaded computer instructions stored on disk into memory and told the processor where to look for the program and data. It had nothing to do with Intel's stupid memory addressing schemes. LEt me say that again: Bill Gates and Microsoft had nothing to do with Intel's memory addressing schemes on the 8086. They just made an OS for the chip that IBM chose to use in its Personal Computer. Had IBM chosen the more expensive Motorola chip, instead of the cheaper Intel chip, then everything would have been different.

But none of this is relavent at all. WinXP doesn't make users deal with Intel's goofy memory addressing schemes. Apple scrapped their original operating system for a new one based on BSD Unix. Both are capable of allowing an artist to get things done with good results. I don't see why all this ancient history makes a bit a difference to an artist choosing a computer today.

Use what you're comfortable with. Pick what you like. It doesn't matter.

Sorry, there was only one original UNIX - that invented by Kernighan & Ritchie, which was developed at AT&T labs, along with the programming language C in the early 1970's. I started using a UNIX derivative around 1979-80, together with a XENIX derivative. SysV came in the early 80's (and after Systems 4, 3, 2, etc.), some 10-15 years ater the first UNIX - I seem to remember that SysV came around the same time as POSIX. I may be wrong, but I think that SysV was supposed to be the first POSIX conform UNIX. OpenBSD also originates from the 1980's - BSD arose to compete with POSIX for "the" UNIX standard.

Also I did state categorically that both POSIX and BSD were standards consortia - I never claimed that POSIX was an OS.

"The original 8086" - What about the 8085 that went before it???? And the 8080 and 8080A, that went before that??

"As Intel came out with newer processors (80286, 80386)"
What about the 80186?? And what about the fact that, even with the 80386, you were still messing with "Expanded" and "Extended" memory drivers. By the time that the 80386 came around, no-one outside the games faction wanted the "8086 backward compatibility". I don't remember having to deal with memory problems on an 80286 running OS/2.

"DOS was just a loader. " As is WinXP!!!

I had been writing programs for 10 years by the time DOS came on the market (and I'd written SCSI device drivers for a UNIX derivative before DOS even got a "windows" GUI) Do you remember CP/M?, GEM? Apple Lisa? COBOL? Assembler? Octal?

You don't see why "ancient history" has anything to do with people's choices? A lot, probably most, of the companies that employ Macs do so because they started by employing Microsoft OSes and Intel hardware. They got sick of the inherent problems. Microsoft WindowsXP is probably 10-20 times the size it needs to be. It is bloated, it is badly written and it is slow. It does not deal well with memory allocation at all - Windows wants all of the available memory and only gives some up when applications absolutely demand it. It installs and runs "services" that no-one knows about and would stop if they knew they were there - that's if Windows would allow them to.

End of anti-MS rant 8)

Greybeard for President.

He's got my vote. 8)