[ctviggen]

I have Macbook Pro, Mac Mini, (Mac Pro, 2 Macbooks moving out soon), Lenovo Thinkpad (W7) and access to thousands of linux nodes at work, pretty familiar with most OSes today and I feel Apple has the edge on:

• More software applications you can now purchase or download for free  (just a few years ago I would have laughed at that statement, linux is strong too)
  
• Most app store software purchase can legally be install on all the mac you have control over..  huge savings..   No DRM on most software other than account to download, install or update.   
  
• Very simple backup and restore process.   So simple that you don't even use a CD to recover now.
  
• Still the best security and antivirus OS.  (just turn on the firewall for security) I don't even care to run antivirus software on my macs (same with linux), but my email does all go through a virus check at the email server.
  
• Best warranty service I've ever experienced except that you have to go to them for warranty work or mail computer to them.
  
• Suspends/Hibernate actually works on my Macs when compared to windows
  
• Printer drivers, cameras, etc all just seem to work.  I've had exceptions though, but it was a Dell printer that only worked for XP and was a POS.
  
• Features I like in Mac OSX, main thing is the fullscreen on an applications, real easy to partition work to dedicated screens (linux has been like this for years though)
  
• Easy to encrypt your boot drive and even create encrypted file containers (like an CD/ISO file image)  that you can mount with a password.
  
• iCloud...  email, music, movies files, etc can be accessed from iPod/iPad/Macs/PCs and web enabled devices.  Very well put together it's probably this factor that will keep me using Mac OSX.  I love the fact that I can create a list of CDs to buy on my Mac and when i hit the store review and edit the list on my phone.
  
• XCode is a world class development environment for software development anyone that might be a bit geek curious.
  
• resale value is rather high on mac compared to PCs
  

What I don't like Mac/OSX:

• There's no Apple iBook Reader for the desktop... this truly annoys me too
  

What others might not like:

• Game support is still lacking but Steam has greatly improved the outlook.
  
• Not a lot of fine tuning one can do to the settings in the GUI... If you are a gearhead (car always in garage with hood open), you should be using linux, or use the command line....
  
• Newer apps will remember opened files, windows, etc when you close them and will reappear when you open them.   Not hard to get used to though.
  

Pretty much disagree with much of what you said.  For instance, it's very easy to partition screens in win 7.  I'm letting my kids watch a movie on my 92 inch projector while I'm working on a 15 inch monitor in win 7.  I've never had a problem with suspend in any of my computers or laptops, all of which have win7, except for a computer that's connected via HDMI to a TV.  That's an HDMI problem, though.  I backup multiple computers to a server and don't see that it's complex.

On the other hand, I just bought a win 7 laptop because I tried to use win 8 and had no freaking clue how to use it.  I don't have the time to learn a new OS. 

[Rclark]

Yeah I'm guessing someone hasn't used a Windows system in a while, they work flawlessly. Win 7 is great, PC and mobile version.

[Doublej]

I think Windows has a few more apps available than OSX, probably by almost an order of magnitude. For Windows it's gotten to the point where there is often multiple freeware or open source options for whatever it is one wants to do. OSX not so much.

[skunark]

I think Windows has a few more apps available than OSX, probably by almost an order of magnitude. For Windows it's gotten to the point where there is often multiple freeware or open source options for whatever it is one wants to do. OSX not so much.

Almost all opensource software these days will run effortlessly on Linux and Mac OSX.  With windows you can use cygwin or port the application, sure there are tons of opensource software for windows, but there's over 10,000 apps available now in the Mac App store, which works on the last 3 versions of the OS (i.e. windows 7-8 timeframe) and where MS only seems to be only allowing the app store for windows 8?  Either way, these app stores will be great for both the consumers and software developers, but at this instance, Mac OSX seems to have the edge.

[skunark]

Pretty much disagree with much of what you said.  For instance, it's very easy to partition screens in win 7.  I'm letting my kids watch a movie on my 92 inch projector while I'm working on a 15 inch monitor in win 7.  I've never had a problem with suspend in any of my computers or laptops, all of which have win7, except for a computer that's connected via HDMI to a TV.  That's an HDMI problem, though.  I backup multiple computers to a server and don't see that it's complex.

On the other hand, I just bought a win 7 laptop because I tried to use win 8 and had no freaking clue how to use it.  I don't have the time to learn a new OS.

There's a difference between extending a screen and creating multiple ones to swap to on a single display.   Linux/Windows/Mac can all extend your display equally well, i agree with you on that, even though i haven't had the hdmi issue.   Linux/Mac and even Windows with the right drivers, can provide additional screens/spaces/desktops for a single display.  Mac just does a better job than windows IMO, hence why I feel Mac OSX (and linux) both have the edge over Windows 7.

With the suspend, on my mac it takes a few seconds, on my windows 7 machine it takes several seconds or more. With my lenovo about 20% of the time, my wireless driver crashes and forces me to reboot.  My older HP that I had with windows 7, the wireless driver crashed about 80% of the time which it greatly improved, perhaps it's the corporate build causing these issues.    Rebooting after a suspend sucks, so in my experience, mac has the edge on this even if you ignored the wireless driver issue, it still has the edge.  (all machines have i7, 4G RAM, SSD drives, lenovo doesn't have discrete graphics though)

As for windows 7 backups, sure power users won't have an issue setting this up, no one i know with W7 has it configured and none of them are power users, but every mac user I know has time machine running and most I don't consider a power user... and they been doing it for about 5 year now.     It's really simple, just a few clicks after you connect to a network and you will even be prompted on the first time you connect a new external drive or a router that offers time machine.   It's real easy to recover user and applications if you had a crash if you choose not to do a full recover.  It's even a great way to migrate to a new OS, fresh install, and  just transfer what you need with a few clicks.    XP/Vista had nothing close to this, Windows 7 has greatly improved, but the edge still goes to Mac OS.   

So what is your experience with a Mac here?    I spend significant time on linux, mac osx, and windows 7 daily doing anything from writing code to browsing the web. 

[skunark]

Yeah I'm guessing someone hasn't used a Windows system in a while, they work flawlessly. Win 7 is great, PC and mobile version.

They do work very well, just Mac OSX has a clear edge over Windows XP/Vista/7 from my day-to-day experience.   What is your experience with a Mac any advantages you see with Windows 7 over a Mac? 

[JLM]

Don,

I'm in very similar boat (old PC running XP) knowing that I'll need to upgrade soon, but I also want to use the machine as a music server.  And I'm most assuredly the dumbest here with computers.

As I've compared pricing of Mac Mini to iMac, my conclusion is that iMac is the better deal if you want a new/ever bigger screen, with camera/microphone plus speakers and keyboard/mouse.  And now the new iMacs are an even better value (better screens, bigger HD standard, more/faster RAM, and more/faster video card - I know the optical drive is extra/external and I don't like that either).

As mentioned, the old iMac can be gotten for $1,000 factory refurbed and you'd have everything built-in (no hardware incompatibilities, like a laptop but cheaper with bigger screen, more guts, better keyboard).  Something comparable in HP is about $800, but clunkier all the way around (and IMO about as good as a PC gets).

[totoro]

There's a difference between extending a screen and creating multiple ones to swap to on a single display.   Linux/Windows/Mac can all extend your display equally well, i agree with you on that, even though i haven't had the hdmi issue.   Linux/Mac and even Windows with the right drivers, can provide additional screens/spaces/desktops for a single display.  Mac just does a better job than windows IMO, hence why I feel Mac OSX (and linux) both have the edge over Windows 7.

With the suspend, on my mac it takes a few seconds, on my windows 7 machine it takes several seconds or more. With my lenovo about 20% of the time, my wireless driver crashes and forces me to reboot.  My older HP that I had with windows 7, the wireless driver crashed about 80% of the time which it greatly improved, perhaps it's the corporate build causing these issues.    Rebooting after a suspend sucks, so in my experience, mac has the edge on this even if you ignored the wireless driver issue, it still has the edge.  (all machines have i7, 4G RAM, SSD drives, lenovo doesn't have discrete graphics though)

As for windows 7 backups, sure power users won't have an issue setting this up, no one i know with W7 has it configured and none of them are power users, but every mac user I know has time machine running and most I don't consider a power user... and they been doing it for about 5 year now.     It's really simple, just a few clicks after you connect to a network and you will even be prompted on the first time you connect a new external drive or a router that offers time machine.   It's real easy to recover user and applications if you had a crash if you choose not to do a full recover.  It's even a great way to migrate to a new OS, fresh install, and  just transfer what you need with a few clicks.    XP/Vista had nothing close to this, Windows 7 has greatly improved, but the edge still goes to Mac OS.   

So what is your experience with a Mac here?    I spend significant time on linux, mac osx, and windows 7 daily doing anything from writing code to browsing the web.

Multiple desktops on windows never seems to work right. Microsoft themselves would have to decide to do something about that for it to really work. I think spaces on osx kind of sucks too, though, and only becomes usable if you spend the 10 bucks to get hyperspaces: this is something that just works on any reasonable linux distro.

I keep a vm with windows 7 around just for dbpoweramp: that one app is pretty much the only reason I bought a license for it (made it a pretty expensive software purchase,  but I like it a lot better than any other ripper I've tried--- I hate manually entering metadata, and want my output in flac).

Forgot who brought this up, but you can create an image in vmware player (that's how I did mine at home). You can't take snapshots unless you pay $200 for the pro version.

[JerryLove]

Even among advanced users; a perceived edge goes to the familiar.

Back in 2000 or so: I was advanced support for IBM's E-Commerce division (for some perspective: I had root access to IRS.gov, which was a UNIX box BTW). We had AIX, Linux, Solaris, and WinNT servers (among others). It was a very anti-Microsoft crowed (not just against Windows, but MS in general).

One thing interesting to me, among these very advanced sys and network admins was how many of their specific complaints were wrong. Simple things like believing you couldn't kill a process from the command line (you did need the Resource kit, but that was installed on all IBM WinServers), or believing that reboots were required to deal with hung IIS threads (as opposed to killing the thread with kill or (if it was cooperative) "net stop" and then restarting it). These: they asserted, were things they could do in Unix that WinNT could not do.... except that it could.

I'm very familiar with BASH and while I love its power, it's conventions are archaic. I was sad to see PowerShell on the windows side move to emulate those standards rather than improve on what they were doing with VBS.

I'm surprised and confused to see people claiming that Windows would stand in the way of productivity. Except for working with the OS itself; productivity is usually application based; and even from an administrative perspective: there's nigh-nothing that could not be done in cmd, perl, VBS, and PowerShell on a WinServer.

Not that I'm attempting to say something negative about HP_UX, AIX, OS400, Linux (whichever distro), or Mac; but I think that the people who are saying (basically) "That OS is awful, not like mine" are not being very realistic.

[skunark]

Even among advanced users; a perceived edge goes to the familiar.

Back in 2000 or so: I was advanced support for IBM's E-Commerce division (for some perspective: I had root access to IRS.gov, which was a UNIX box BTW). We had AIX, Linux, Solaris, and WinNT servers (among others). It was a very anti-Microsoft crowed (not just against Windows, but MS in general).

One thing interesting to me, among these very advanced sys and network admins was how many of their specific complaints were wrong. Simple things like believing you couldn't kill a process from the command line (you did need the Resource kit, but that was installed on all IBM WinServers), or believing that reboots were required to deal with hung IIS threads (as opposed to killing the thread with kill or (if it was cooperative) "net stop" and then restarting it). These: they asserted, were things they could do in Unix that WinNT could not do.... except that it could.

I'm very familiar with BASH and while I love its power, it's conventions are archaic. I was sad to see PowerShell on the windows side move to emulate those standards rather than improve on what they were doing with VBS.

I'm surprised and confused to see people claiming that Windows would stand in the way of productivity. Except for working with the OS itself; productivity is usually application based; and even from an administrative perspective: there's nigh-nothing that could not be done in cmd, perl, VBS, and PowerShell on a WinServer.

Not that I'm attempting to say something negative about HP_UX, AIX, OS400, Linux (whichever distro), or Mac; but I think that the people who are saying (basically) "That OS is awful, not like mine" are not being very realistic.

In my realm IBM and MS were both shunned at the enterprise level.  Both considered too slow and IBM definitely too expensive, and Solaris hit the sweet spot, all pretty interesting to ponder how things turned out.  I remember IT tell me that Windows NT was going to replace solaris for the type of work I do, and man they were wrong, solaris exploded until Linux took over.    AIX, HP-UX were dead in my field about 7 years ago, and solaris is now on the EOL list for the applications,   SuSe/Redhat/centos has taken over and during that time Windows never made it out of beta, i laughed at the IT person then and again now.  He might have been correct if scripting and batching solution existed.    At that time I considered Windows to be the only viable desktop OS for home and work and just relied on remote desk/vnc applications to jump on machines that did real work.   Today,  I would easily consider Mac OSX, Linux and Windows as my personal desktop.  Mac OSX is just too convenient for home and for work, they are all productive as a web, email and vnc client and not necessary a fire i would fight since my work is strictly done on a linux compute farm with 10s of thousands of nodes. 

[skunark]

Multiple desktops on windows never seems to work right. Microsoft themselves would have to decide to do something about that for it to really work. I think spaces on osx kind of sucks too, though, and only becomes usable if you spend the 10 bucks to get hyperspaces: this is something that just works on any reasonable linux distro.

I keep a vm with windows 7 around just for dbpoweramp: that one app is pretty much the only reason I bought a license for it (made it a pretty expensive software purchase,  but I like it a lot better than any other ripper I've tried--- I hate manually entering metadata, and want my output in flac).

Forgot who brought this up, but you can create an image in vmware player (that's how I did mine at home). You can't take snapshots unless you pay $200 for the pro version.

I never tried hyperspaces, but it's not compatible with Lion or Mount-My-Lion, but would agree that Leopard and SL were lacking, it's greatly improved with Lion and ML.   It's just real simple to expand an application to a space, create a new space with several applications, and to collapse.  Solaris/Gnome/KDI have all done this very well for over a decade, and ML is the first time that has outperformed.   

[WerTicus]

there is barely any learning curve from xp to win7... far more going to win 8 or apple.

go for win 7 its good

[Doublej]

Almost all opensource software these days will run effortlessly on Linux and Mac OSX.  With windows you can use cygwin or port the application, sure there are tons of opensource software for windows, but there's over 10,000 apps available now in the Mac App store, which works on the last 3 versions of the OS (i.e. windows 7-8 timeframe) and where MS only seems to be only allowing the app store for windows 8?  Either way, these app stores will be great for both the consumers and software developers, but at this instance, Mac OSX seems to have the edge.

Are you claiming that there are more free apps available for OSX than there are for Windows? Do you really think your typical computer user is going to port a Windows app to a Macintosh? I think not.

Regarding app stores, personally I don't need an app store when there is Google search to find the apps I want. I don't Apple or Microsoft or Google or anyone else controlling which applications I should be permitted to install by controlling which applications they allow in their store. Apple has extraordinarily tight control of there store, rejecting apps that don't meet their criteria read image. If Google did this on search results there would be lawsuits up the wazoo.

[totoro]

Are you claiming that there are more free apps available for OSX than there are for Windows? Do you really think your typical computer user is going to port a Windows app to a Macintosh? I think not.

Regarding app stores, personally I don't need an app store when there is Google search to find the apps I want. I don't Apple or Microsoft or Google or anyone else controlling which applications I should be permitted to install by controlling which applications they allow in their store. Apple has extraordinarily tight control of there store, rejecting apps that don't meet their criteria read image. If Google did this on search results there would be lawsuits up the wazoo.

There are good sides and bad sides to the app store. On one side, you can have at least some certainty that the thing you're downloading isn't just a bag full of viruses. On the downside, apple has control. But there is nothing stopping you installing things on an osx box that don't come from the apple store. The apple store is really just a convenience (like apt-get in ubuntu).

I don't think typical users write software, so no I don't think your typical user is going to port an app to osx . Seriously though, unless you're a gamer, there isn't a ton of stuff you'll want that you can't get. My only reason for keeping a windows vm around is dbpoweramp. I certainly wouldn't use windows as my main os just for that.

[Rclark]

They do work very well, just Mac OSX has a clear edge over Windows XP/Vista/7 from my day-to-day experience.   What is your experience with a Mac any advantages you see with Windows 7 over a Mac?

I haven't had experience with Mac's for a long long time. When I was a little kid we had PowerMacs, a few of them, and they were as buggy and terrible as Win95 was. I hated that there were no games, hated the proprietary-ness of it all, hated the one button mouse.

Apple stuff just always seemed either really expensive and trendy, and ultimately useless, unless you were a "graphical designer", but even then it seemed Windows had all that and more. I just think I'm a staunch Windows supporter, that's all. It's my home team, I'm surrounded by people that work there.

To be fair, I bag on them all the time, and many versions of Windows have been garbage, but these latest iterations are quite polished and should not be discounted.

In fact, I suggest all of you take a second look at Windows phone, you might find you're missing out.

[JLM]

I haven't had experience with Mac's for a long long time. When I was a little kid we had PowerMacs, a few of them, and they were as buggy and terrible as Win95 was. I hated that there were no games, hated the proprietary-ness of it all, hated the one button mouse, as a kid.

Gawd you're young.      

When I was young computers still had tubes and were kept in a conditioned room at NASA while audio was all analog.  But damn it those computers (and slide rules) put man into space and on the moon.  So what's the truly impressive real world application of all this computer stuff now? 

IMO we're distracted with convenience and entertainment.  We lack vision, leadership, and courage to tackle real goals.  Now, where's my clicker and can someone bring me another cup of coffee?   

[HAL]

Yep, first programming I ever did was on punch cards for a Univac 1142 mainframe in college.   That was fun, but a real pain when the cards got out of order!  One of those programs was to calculate the crossover components for the newly released Linkwitz-Reily crossover design for my four way speakers. 

[Don_S]

My first programming was Fortran IV for an IBM 360(?).  It always amazed me that I could read the punches in a card. I was not a real engineer though.  My slide rule was only 6". 

My studies took me into the life sciences (ecology and environmental--hazardous waste management etc) career path so computers got left behind and remain a mystery. Sadly, life also remains a mystery. 

[Elizabeth]

I had Win 95 (bad) win 98 nearly as bad, (NT then XP at work) XP not quite great either, though way better than 98.
Then Windows 7. Never have had any sort of problem. Free Microsoft antivirus works great, Add in Malwarebytes.. CCleaner...
My laptop is great always runs fast, clean. Never an issue. After three years of use my drive has 70Gb used with another 380Gb free. Tons of photos, some music.
If the last Microsoft program one had was an old one, the the newer 7 is really way better.
I have no idea what 8 is going to do. But I can say Windows 7 is a really decent easy to use product for the non nerd.
I do not have anything against Apple except it costs more. Has less free stuff.
The one point IMO in Apples' favor is the screen image quality. Though my top of the line video (designed for gaming) card and screen are pretty good too.
My final thought is both have 'giant corporation' issues. The lawsuits from Apple have made me uneasy, reminding me more of The Monster cable sort than legitimate issues. Though Microsoft always has antitrust issues going on too. So neither is a saint. In all my computer use, I have never taken a computer in  for repair. All running Microsoft stuff.

[skunark]

I haven't had experience with Mac's for a long long time. When I was a little kid we had PowerMacs, a few of them, and they were as buggy and terrible as Win95 was. I hated that there were no games, hated the proprietary-ness of it all, hated the one button mouse.

Apple stuff just always seemed either really expensive and trendy, and ultimately useless, unless you were a "graphical designer", but even then it seemed Windows had all that and more. I just think I'm a staunch Windows supporter, that's all. It's my home team, I'm surrounded by people that work there.

To be fair, I bag on them all the time, and many versions of Windows have been garbage, but these latest iterations are quite polished and should not be discounted.

In fact, I suggest all of you take a second look at Windows phone, you might find you're missing out.

Wow a PowerMac, that's a long long time ago for sure, i was a Linux/Windows person then, as those didn't interest me, but they weren't known to be buggy.    Now that Apple switched to Intel, X Windows and BSD Unix, it's whole new ballgame with a fast CPU and reliable windowing program and I can still install Windows and Linux on the box.   Fun fact during my switch, they had the fastest Windows XP laptop on the market, even a selling point.

So if all you know is Windows 7, then sure it works flawlessly in your mind.

As I stated, my experience is from daily use of Windows, Mac OSX and Linux.    Not sure i'm missing out since I use them all about each and everyday.    I don't think either is particularly hard to learn, just macs have the edge for most things, especially for the average user.    If you knew how to connect a mac and windows laptop to a wifi hotspot, you will be able to do it quicker on a mac, neither is that hard if you use the Windows method.  If you have special wireless driver from HP, Lenovo or Intel it's rather annoying to connect.  (i can go on and on here lol)    Other thoughts, adding a printer, connecting a camera, usb device, driver is already installed on a mac (linux is pretty much the same) is very easy, no network required to download the driver.   There's been releases of the OS that actually improved performance and reduce it's area footprint which can extend the life of a computer (or delay when I convert it to a linux box).

Thing is, unless you give it a fair shake, you won't like it and that goes for anything, not just computers.      There's nothing wrong for batting for the home team, just might not actually be the right advise.     

It will be an interesting race with Android, iOS vs windows 8 mobile.   Most feel there's not a room for a third, but time will tell, and historically Microsoft has never been strong in the mobile space, just deep pockets.    I think Android will lose customers to both iOS and Windows 8 since they both have controlled app stores and hardware.  But I do hope they do well to make it more competitive.