Re: FN-FORUM: Mac vs Linux advice?

date posted 11th January 2005 21:40

On 11 Jan 2005 18:52:08 -0000, Joe Freeman [EMAIL REMOVED] wrote:
>
> So, have any of you switched from Linux to Mac? Can you list some bad
> points of Mac's?

Oh, lots of them!

Price - "you can always get it cheaper" with the PC platform. You have
choice - tons of it. In fact - from a Mac user's point of view, the
choices are bewildering. If that's the sort of computing environment
you enjoy and get a kick out of making all those hardware decisions -
don't buy a Mac. You'll be frustrated. On the other hand - all that
choice can bring its own set of problems - as many posts I have seen
on here attest. "Why doesn't x work with y when I have z installed?"

Cost of service. Again - PC parts are 'cheap as chips', readily
obtainable anywhere. Whereas if the Super Drive (CD-RW/DVD-R) dies on
a Mac and you're out of warranty - prepare to have your wallet
vacuumed. However, you can buy 3 years of AppleCare which removes the
uncertainty - at a price.

Choice of software. There's three gazillion applications available for
Windows however, you're talking Linux ...

does Linux have 23,000 applications? Strikes me its very much a
roll-your-own environment. Which I have to say appeals to me in many
respects but I've too much invested in the Mac platform ... however if
Linux had been around back in 1985 ... hmmm.

Most importantly - does the Mac platform have what you're looking for?
See http://guide.apple.com/

Choice of 3rd party hardware. Since Apple adopted USB, dropped SCSI,
introduced FireWire, this has improved. Vendors used to have to
maintain two separate product lines - one for the PC and the other for
the Mac. Of course, most didn't bother. The Mac world developed its
own base of hardware manufacturers and OEMs. These days, many of those
businesses have expanded into the PC marketplace which makes it much
harder to justify charging Mac users a premium for the same device.

On the other hand ... George has got me convinced ... :)

The prejudice some supporters of the PC platform hold towards the Mac
is based on history. The old Mac was based extensively on proprietary
technology. We had ADB keyboards, a network protocol called AppleTalk,
no parallel port, non standard serial ports, the slot architecture for
many years was Nubus, we used SCSI instead of IDE, the floppy drive
couldn't handle PC disks for the first few years and connecting Macs
to PCs was a dark art. Let's not forget video interfaces. Much of this
technology eas developed by Apple and some of it was indisputedly
superior. Nubus gave us 'plug and play' a decade before its emergence
on the PC, AppleTalk may have been s-l-o-w but in terms of user
friendliness - night and day. However, there was also a culture of
'not invented here' - they even developed their own modem for gawd's
sake!

Now we have a Unix based OS, USB 2.0, ATA drives, ATAPI peripherals,
we use the VGA standard. FireWire has been made available to the PC
world under license - the old Apple would never have done that,
perceiving any new technology it developed to be part of its
competitive advantage and to be guarded at all costs.

Rant over ... Food ...

Dave
--
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