Your article hits the nail on the head early on, the software isn't comparable; Apple are light years ahead of windows - comparing garage band to audacity? The hardware side of things was interesting but its really got nothing todo with the 'comptetion' you were trying to compete.
The document we used to test whites also showed inconsistency in the way the iMac displayed text. Some characters were slightly fainter than others, while some were fuzzy at the edges. In contrast, the HP display produced brighter, clearer whites and more consistent rows of identical digits, making it easier on the eye when running word processing apps.
Did you use the same OS on both computers while testing this?
OS X renders font in a more realistic (how they would look if printed) way than windows.
" The primary difference is that Microsoft try to align everything to whole pixels vertically and sub-pixels horizontally.
Apple just scale the font naturally - sometimes it fits into whole pixels other times it doesn't.
This means Windows looks sharper at the expense of not actually being a very accurate representation of the text. The Mac with it's design/DTP background is a much more accurate representation and scales more naturally than Windows which consequently jumps around a lot vertically."
Originally Posted by hexx not fair comparison, you should have tried to build all-in-one computer, using smallest case available (shuttle) as iMac is using laptop components. and yes, mac is about mac os that's something you don't get on win machine so there's no point to build mac killer if you don't run mac os/hackintosh os on it. but nice article, but not fair
Not really, there are multiple ways you can build a 'mac killer': 1. An as powerful machine for less. 2. A more powerful machine for the same money. 3. As close to the hardware and style as possible. On top of that you can argue about using hackintosh for any of the builds. There's no wrong way to go about it though.
It's an interesting point the article makes about the fact the appeal of the iMac wears off. Certainly I know quite a few mac users that have replaced their keyboard and mouse after a while, which instantly takes some of the flashy polish away. Equally most people buy decent speakers. Obviously you still get quite a sleak setup but it's not as amazing as it first seems.
Meh, could witter for ages about potential for a company to build PC 'versions' of macs with nice looking screens and custom cases etc but I've got work to do.
Originally Posted by p3n Your article hits the nail on the head early on, the software isn't comparable; Apple are light years ahead of windows - comparing garage band to audacity? The hardware side of things was interesting but its really got nothing todo with the 'comptetion' you were trying to compete.
I think it has everything to do with the hardware we were competing with. Mark had to make the system as quiet as possible to keep up with the near silent Mac so decided on water-cooling. We were also very image conscious when dealing with the Apple machine (which does look gorgeous). As such we had to come up with a design that was not your bog standard high end tower using the usual Antec Twelve Hundred or Silverstone TJ-07.
The screen was also given a lot of consideration - there are plenty of awesome screens around at the moment but this is something Apple need to do some catching up on. The result is a PC that's small, very quiet, powerful and looks pretty good too and takes up much less space than most towers.
Originally Posted by hexx not fair comparison, you should have tried to build all-in-one computer, using smallest case available (shuttle) as iMac is using laptop components. and yes, mac is about mac os that's something you don't get on win machine so there's no point to build mac killer if you don't run mac os/hackintosh os on it. but nice article, but not fair
Not really, there are multiple ways you can build a 'mac killer': 1. An as powerful machine for less. 2. A more powerful machine for the same money. 3. As close to the hardware and style as possible. On top of that you can argue about using hackintosh for any of the builds. There's no wrong way to go about it though.
It's an interesting point the article makes about the fact the appeal of the iMac wears off. Certainly I know quite a few mac users that have replaced their keyboard and mouse after a while, which instantly takes some of the flashy polish away. Equally most people buy decent speakers. Obviously you still get quite a sleak setup but it's not as amazing as it first seems.
Meh, could witter for ages about potential for a company to build PC 'versions' of macs with nice looking screens and custom cases etc but I've got work to do.
Oh, one last thing. Water cooling?! Seriously?
well, if you compare to imac, build an imac clone, as simple as that. :) still, i would go for mac, that's for sure, btw, working on mac, win, linux and at home got vista, win 7 and hackintosh :) and win is just for games and the rest i do is on hackintosh, no way i'm going back to win for normal work (coding, photoshop...) that's just waste of my time and nerves. next computer will be macbook pro
Can a qualified Mac/Windows support tech put in his professional 2-cents worth? Because I'd be happy never to see another PC again, they are a total support nightmare compared to Macs.
Macs have never been gaming machines per-se. Yes, they have games, but rather than saying what is available, it's easier to mention what isn't available - Crysis, FEAR, Half-Life 2 - to illustrate the lean Mac gaming has away from the hardcore end of the spectrum. Microsoft has gaming all sown up with DirectX. It's that simple.
I also object to anyone who says Macs are behind the performance curve. That's a sweeping generalization that just isn't true. Okay, the 3D graphics performance is a trifle lacking, thanks to software and hardware deficiencies, but OS X's ability to read, move and cache data around a system is light-speed compared to Windows, and that makes a very big difference when working with databases and large graphics files (eg: multi-gig Photoshop projects).
Hmm, databases and large graphics files. Could that, along with the simplified support, be the reason the creative community couldn't give a stuff about Windows machines?
Originally Posted by p3n Your article hits the nail on the head early on, the software isn't comparable; Apple are light years ahead of windows - comparing garage band to audacity? The hardware side of things was interesting but its really got nothing todo with the 'comptetion' you were trying to compete.
I think it has everything to do with the hardware we were competing with. Mark had to make the system as quiet as possible to keep up with the near silent Mac so decided on water-cooling. We were also very image conscious when dealing with the Apple machine (which does look gorgeous). As such we had to come up with a design that was not your bog standard high end tower using the usual Antec Twelve Hundred or Silverstone TJ-07.
The screen was also given a lot of consideration - there are plenty of awesome screens around at the moment but this is something Apple need to do some catching up on. The result is a PC that's small, very quiet, powerful and looks pretty good too and takes up much less space than most towers.
Far more than 50% of the appeal of an iMac (desktop pc that is easy to use) is software, im not joining the retarded fanboy flamewars because I use both OS at home and at work and they both have a purpose but whether you blame Apple for having a 'closed' hardware support or whatever; the article is ultimately flawed because unless you spend a load of money on different software (much like the different sources on hardware) you not going to come close to the software offerings from Apple.
Originally Posted by StoneyMahoney Can a qualified Mac/Windows support tech put in his professional 2-cents worth? Because I'd be happy never to see another PC again, they are a total support nightmare compared to Macs.
I work at a school, we have much less Macs but they are alot 'easier' to fix, and if there is something you can't do with the Mac 'policies' then you have the seriously powerful unix underneath. Apple's remote desktop is pretty awesome too
Conclusion is, as always: If you want a mac, get a mac.
And the same works the other way: if you want a powerful desktop computer, get a powerful desktop computer.
It's such a HUGE nobrainer for me personally, I would never, ever get an Imac. An Apple laptop maybe or a power mac maybe... Those have atleast some merits in my eyes, while the imac is just an all-in-wonder solution for those who really WANT one.
EDIT: And oh, thanks for the great article, and the pics are working for me.
Originally Posted by an4rew I've always though of the iMac as a laptop, you can't overclock it and you have to pay over the odds to get half decent graphics.
Not just graphics, performance all-around. You pay for the looks, the status, and the brand.
I don't hate Macs, but I just don't see a use for them in my lifestyle. That's not to say they're worthless, I just find my money is better spent on a Windows-based machine than an under-powered good looking slab of crafted aluminum.
Whether Windows/OSX is superior though I don't really see how one can claim. Both have their uses, cons & pros. Try taking a Mac to a large corporate network and see how long it takes you to connect to the active directory and have everything working exactly like with the Windows machines. /shrug
On the other hand, I absolutely love doing video editing with Final Cut Pro.
Originally Posted by RTT I'll take the iMac please :)
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jamie I'd take the iMac thanks.
Quote:
Originally Posted by oasked Perhaps a better comparison would have been against a G5 rather than an iMac? After all, the iMac is an all-in-one unit (using laptop parts). Really to "compete" against the iMac you would have to do the same thing.
I'll take the iMac as well.
I lol'd at the Vista part. I'm sorry but Vista is like WinME, it fails. No computer with Vista can outdo anything, even a Mac. Thats not me being a fanboy, thats me being honest... and to be honest the whole thing seems biased, but whatever. I'm wondering why BT didnt pick the iMac with the 4850 over the GT120. Surely that would have given you a better run for your money... And what oasked said, you cant take an all in one and compete against it with a self build. If your going to compete do it by class or rank (ie, iMac vs Del XPS All in one), that way its an even match and not some fanboy review page.
I lol'd at the Vista part. I'm sorry but Vista is like WinME, it fails. No computer with Vista can outdo anything, even a Mac. Thats not me being a fanboy, thats me being honest... and to be honest the whole thing seems biased, but whatever. I'm wondering why BT didnt pick the iMac with the 4850 over the GT120. Surely that would have given you a better run for your money...
:) agree and to be honest, how many games on mac do you have that you need powerful gpu? sims? :) and as i said before, it's all down to os so ppl who say that mac is underpowered don't actually know what they're talking about because if you work on mac or own one you know that last issue you'd have on mac is speed as everything is just very snappy and smooth and it just works, you don't think about it at all.
Originally Posted by hexx :) agree and to be honest, how many games on mac do you have that you need powerful gpu? sims? :) and as i said before, it's all down to os so ppl who say that mac is underpowered don't actually know what they're talking about because if you work on mac or own one you know that last issue you'd have on mac is speed as everything is just very snappy and smooth and it just works, you don't think about it at all.
QFT. You dont really need anything powerful on the Mac to play Sims or anything in that category. Most people dont use Macs to game on anyway, and if they do, its in BootCamp or VM Fusion, which means its running under Windows. Macs are used for Music, Photo and Video editing primarily. Does Windows come iLife 09? I didnt think so. And OS X coming with bloatware or "as much software as PCs these days"? Might want to go and check yourself there, because OS X, has never to date contained bloatware, or any other crap, only the stuff that was either manufactured by Apple or bought by Apple and used in their releases. PCs on the other hand, well....
tbh most mac users dotn play games though, id assume.
brilliant atricle, shame its been stolen from CPC :P now i see more and more articales coming on here, im going to end my subscription, but keep em coming on here please :)
Originally Posted by StoneyMahoney Can a qualified Mac/Windows support tech put in his professional 2-cents worth? Because I'd be happy never to see another PC again, they are a total support nightmare compared to Macs.
I work at a school, we have much less Macs but they are alot 'easier' to fix, and if there is something you can't do with the Mac 'policies' then you have the seriously powerful unix underneath. Apple's remote desktop is pretty awesome too
Agree with that one, ARD is crazy powerful. We were fiddling with a monitor cailbration program, needed Admin mode to run. Then we figured out it just needed write access to the colorsync profiles so I changed the permissions for it on the 70 Macs in the studio by issuing one shell command through ARD. Took about 5 minutes in total.
OSX is what happens when you build a GUI on BSD and spend a decade and a half updating it. XP/Vista is what happens when you build a GUI on top of MSDOS and hack it for a decade and a half to fill in for all the features it's missing from OSX.
Comments 26 to 50 of 128
ReplyClearly, you have not read the article you noob.
Great article guys, personally I would have opted for all-in-one for more fair comparison but you did it bit-tech-style I suppose.
Photos work fine for me
Did you use the same OS on both computers while testing this?
OS X renders font in a more realistic (how they would look if printed) way than windows.
" The primary difference is that Microsoft try to align everything to whole pixels vertically and sub-pixels horizontally.
Apple just scale the font naturally - sometimes it fits into whole pixels other times it doesn't.
This means Windows looks sharper at the expense of not actually being a very accurate representation of the text. The Mac with it's design/DTP background is a much more accurate representation and scales more naturally than Windows which consequently jumps around a lot vertically."
From: http://damieng.com/blog/2007/06/13/font-rendering-philosophies-of-windows-and-mac-os-x
I am really happy to see such a nice article on modding because the modding comunity need a shake! Congrats staff.
BTW, I can't see lots of the photos on the article.
Well, someone has to post this. Might as well be me:
http://img268.imageshack.us/img268/5543/macvspcwebcamisbroken76.jpg
Not really, there are multiple ways you can build a 'mac killer': 1. An as powerful machine for less. 2. A more powerful machine for the same money. 3. As close to the hardware and style as possible. On top of that you can argue about using hackintosh for any of the builds. There's no wrong way to go about it though.
It's an interesting point the article makes about the fact the appeal of the iMac wears off. Certainly I know quite a few mac users that have replaced their keyboard and mouse after a while, which instantly takes some of the flashy polish away. Equally most people buy decent speakers. Obviously you still get quite a sleak setup but it's not as amazing as it first seems.
Meh, could witter for ages about potential for a company to build PC 'versions' of macs with nice looking screens and custom cases etc but I've got work to do.
Oh, one last thing. Water cooling?! Seriously?
I think it has everything to do with the hardware we were competing with. Mark had to make the system as quiet as possible to keep up with the near silent Mac so decided on water-cooling. We were also very image conscious when dealing with the Apple machine (which does look gorgeous). As such we had to come up with a design that was not your bog standard high end tower using the usual Antec Twelve Hundred or Silverstone TJ-07.
The screen was also given a lot of consideration - there are plenty of awesome screens around at the moment but this is something Apple need to do some catching up on. The result is a PC that's small, very quiet, powerful and looks pretty good too and takes up much less space than most towers.
well, if you compare to imac, build an imac clone, as simple as that. :) still, i would go for mac, that's for sure, btw, working on mac, win, linux and at home got vista, win 7 and hackintosh :) and win is just for games and the rest i do is on hackintosh, no way i'm going back to win for normal work (coding, photoshop...) that's just waste of my time and nerves. next computer will be macbook pro
Macs have never been gaming machines per-se. Yes, they have games, but rather than saying what is available, it's easier to mention what isn't available - Crysis, FEAR, Half-Life 2 - to illustrate the lean Mac gaming has away from the hardcore end of the spectrum. Microsoft has gaming all sown up with DirectX. It's that simple.
I also object to anyone who says Macs are behind the performance curve. That's a sweeping generalization that just isn't true. Okay, the 3D graphics performance is a trifle lacking, thanks to software and hardware deficiencies, but OS X's ability to read, move and cache data around a system is light-speed compared to Windows, and that makes a very big difference when working with databases and large graphics files (eg: multi-gig Photoshop projects).
Hmm, databases and large graphics files. Could that, along with the simplified support, be the reason the creative community couldn't give a stuff about Windows machines?
Far more than 50% of the appeal of an iMac (desktop pc that is easy to use) is software, im not joining the retarded fanboy flamewars because I use both OS at home and at work and they both have a purpose but whether you blame Apple for having a 'closed' hardware support or whatever; the article is ultimately flawed because unless you spend a load of money on different software (much like the different sources on hardware) you not going to come close to the software offerings from Apple.
because you cannot run photoshop on ubuntu :)
I work at a school, we have much less Macs but they are alot 'easier' to fix, and if there is something you can't do with the Mac 'policies' then you have the seriously powerful unix underneath. Apple's remote desktop is pretty awesome too
Oh god no, that's nasty
And the same works the other way: if you want a powerful desktop computer, get a powerful desktop computer.
It's such a HUGE nobrainer for me personally, I would never, ever get an Imac. An Apple laptop maybe or a power mac maybe... Those have atleast some merits in my eyes, while the imac is just an all-in-wonder solution for those who really WANT one.
EDIT: And oh, thanks for the great article, and the pics are working for me.
Not just graphics, performance all-around. You pay for the looks, the status, and the brand.
I don't hate Macs, but I just don't see a use for them in my lifestyle. That's not to say they're worthless, I just find my money is better spent on a Windows-based machine than an under-powered good looking slab of crafted aluminum.
Whether Windows/OSX is superior though I don't really see how one can claim. Both have their uses, cons & pros. Try taking a Mac to a large corporate network and see how long it takes you to connect to the active directory and have everything working exactly like with the Windows machines. /shrug
On the other hand, I absolutely love doing video editing with Final Cut Pro.
I'll take the iMac as well.
I lol'd at the Vista part. I'm sorry but Vista is like WinME, it fails. No computer with Vista can outdo anything, even a Mac. Thats not me being a fanboy, thats me being honest... and to be honest the whole thing seems biased, but whatever. I'm wondering why BT didnt pick the iMac with the 4850 over the GT120. Surely that would have given you a better run for your money... And what oasked said, you cant take an all in one and compete against it with a self build. If your going to compete do it by class or rank (ie, iMac vs Del XPS All in one), that way its an even match and not some fanboy review page.
:) agree and to be honest, how many games on mac do you have that you need powerful gpu? sims? :) and as i said before, it's all down to os so ppl who say that mac is underpowered don't actually know what they're talking about because if you work on mac or own one you know that last issue you'd have on mac is speed as everything is just very snappy and smooth and it just works, you don't think about it at all.
QFT. You dont really need anything powerful on the Mac to play Sims or anything in that category. Most people dont use Macs to game on anyway, and if they do, its in BootCamp or VM Fusion, which means its running under Windows. Macs are used for Music, Photo and Video editing primarily. Does Windows come iLife 09? I didnt think so. And OS X coming with bloatware or "as much software as PCs these days"? Might want to go and check yourself there, because OS X, has never to date contained bloatware, or any other crap, only the stuff that was either manufactured by Apple or bought by Apple and used in their releases. PCs on the other hand, well....
Therefore
http://glark.org/media/nick-cage.jpg
brilliant atricle, shame its been stolen from CPC :P now i see more and more articales coming on here, im going to end my subscription, but keep em coming on here please :)
Agree with that one, ARD is crazy powerful. We were fiddling with a monitor cailbration program, needed Admin mode to run. Then we figured out it just needed write access to the colorsync profiles so I changed the permissions for it on the 70 Macs in the studio by issuing one shell command through ARD. Took about 5 minutes in total.
OSX is what happens when you build a GUI on BSD and spend a decade and a half updating it. XP/Vista is what happens when you build a GUI on top of MSDOS and hack it for a decade and a half to fill in for all the features it's missing from OSX.
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