mac is business, gaming better elsewhere...

The last few messages have tried to sell the mac for "gaming", this is obviously a stretch -- the mac is not the best machine for gaming. If you primarily are interested in games, a game console (PS3 or Xbox 360) is the best way to go. The next best is the Windows platform, then last is the mac. EA announcement was a sham, they won't be porting the games, they will be running them through an emulation layer (that is two layers of performance draining - emulation, and OpenGL which is not optimized for games).

If you use the computer for business, then the mac is the best way to go. If you use it for business, but also a little for gaming (and you don't want to shell out the money for a console -- which is a better investment than getting a high-end graphics card just for gaming) -- then probably an intel mac with a dual boot to windows.

As far as Vista? It took them 5 years to go from XP to Vista -- and that release reminds me of MS DOS 4.0 -- a failure in the worst way. The computers at work are primarily windows machines right now (working on resource management software off of windows -- which should allow development should be able to migrate off of windows completely. The company has refused to update to Vista. What is in-store for the next release, based on prior history -- they will try to fix Vista in Vienna in 2 years time, the next major revision will follow 2 or 3 years later.... that is five years from now..... That leads me to believe that the code base for windows is so bad, that it is currently strangling Microsoft -- which is why they feel the need to scare people from using Linux.

Microsoft would be better off doing what Apple did, take their windowing environment and replace the core with Unix.... that would allow them to focus on two areas -- graphics optimization for games, and the User environment (and quicker releases).

Re: There seems a rough consenus here

"By Hugh_PymPosted Tuesday 26th June 2007 08:08 GMT

OS X = business

windows = games

Sounds about right to"

Fine, if all you need to do on your Mac is noncey stuff like Photoshop or web design.

How many high-end engineering / CAD applications are there for OS X then?

Games are coming

I'm a recent convert, having got a Mac at work 18 months ago, since then 2 more have joined the company... i'm the SysAdmin too, in an otherwise totally Windows environments, so it may seem a bit odd.

I personally love the simplicity of them, they do everything they say they can, with minimal fuss. Should an app crash then you can Force Quit and open it again straightaway and carry on, something that Windows can only dream of.

It does always seem to be the people who've not used Macs who slate them, i've been guilty of the same in the past, but i'd never go back now and if only SAP would run on OS X i could shift the entire company over!!!

As for the games things, Apple have recently signed deals with some major game developers so more should be on the way soon... personally i use a Wii and an Xbox 360 for gaming though but i appreciate others want PC's for games.

Games?

The niche PC Games are just a way for the hardware manufacturers to make more money by the latest and greatest game needing X upgraded graphics card and Y upgraded RAM with Z upgraded CPU.

Let's face it, based on sales alone, PC games are a minority compared to games consoles. In the top 25 games on Amazon, you have 2 PC games (World of Warcraft and The Sims 2) neither of which need special graphics cards or amazing spec machines (and both of which are available for the Mac aswell). The rest being majority Wii, Xbox360, DS and a couple of PS3 games.

Agreed a PC can be the jack of all trades, but IMHO I prefer to play games on a console (which means the game designers have to work harder and be cleverer because it's a fixed specification for the life of the console, generally). Also, the cost of the games is the only cost, not a new video card every time a new game comes out ;o)

For home use for e-mail, web browsing, video editing, music I have 2 Macs - an older iMac and a Macbook. It allows me to do so much more out of the box than a PC without spending money on extra software to get things done. Plus it's easy for my kids to use, allows me to control what they can do on the web (again, integrated into Mac OSx without needing to have a degree in IT to configure, allowing my wife and I to administer what the kids can see), secure out of the box, and not overly complex like Windows. My macbook does have parallels on it and an XP licence, however, XP's very rarely used, if ever.

Oh, and it doesn't suffer from spyware, malware or viruses ;o)

(For the record I'm an SVR4 Unix SysAdmin, Did my MCSE with NT4 and now work in Networks, so I'm definitely not an Apple Fanboy.)

Refreshing

I bought an iMac last week after having a PC laptop for four years and using a PC at work (for too long!). I’m absolutely delighted with the purchase – it looks beautiful, it starts up and shuts down in (relatively) no time at all, and (once you have gotten used to the differences from Windows) the OS and bundled software is really intuitive and a pleasure to use – even for mundane tasks. Also, I had to get some pictures from my camera, get some files off my flash drive and even tried out my old Microsoft mouse – I just plugged them in and they worked – no installation process / downloading drivers / frustration-when-it-doesn’t-work needed. That’s how computing should be!