closed-minded 'experts'

Here's my anti-Mac argument, I guess. Now I'm sure Macs are great at whatever it is Macs are great at, but the biggest problem with Macs is the way they've taken "proprietary" to a whole new level. Today I had to work on a dead Power Mac G4. So, I tried all the reset procedures I could find with no success, that's fine. Every computer suffers from hardware failure every now and then, no problem. Then I start looking up replacement PSUs, these were very difficult to find, but I found one - for $250 (they even claimed this was a sale price). Now this isn't a high end gaming PSU, this a 360W PSU with only 4 peripheral outputs. So, I had my boss check with his vendor to see if we could maybe get a better price. Of course, our vendor tells us that he may not be able to send the PSU directly to us because Apple may deem it a non-user replaceable part and will only allow them to sell it if they deliver it to an authorized Apple service center. So not only would we get shafted on the ridiculous price for this thing, but also have to pay to have it installed when we could easily do it ourselves. What I can't seem to understand is why Bill Gates is always the one who has to defend himself against monopoly accusations. I don't know, maybe I'm the moron...

Edit: I found out what our vendor would charge for a new PSU - $465. ...yeah
 
But yes, David is right on. An expert needs to be open minded. I may bash mac (Mostly because of their new anti-pc commercials), but I understand that Macs are a god-send to some people like graphic designers/musicians.

I'd also like to add that an expert needs to know when to ask for help, and shouldn't be afraid to ask for a second oppinion. No one knows everything, and no one gets a problem solved right the first time, every time.
imo macs are overrated in music.
when they were running PPC it used to be the case taht they were a bit faster than PC, not s much now that they are running on intel.

in any case, in general, a computer (be that PC or Mac) is pretty much the worst place to be trying to record music...

the clue is in the input -1 stereo source. OK for a home musician, but neither platform suits a large operation.


the anti adverts get me as well, not so much because they bash PCs, more because they lie, like saying that there are no virus's for mac etc... it's just a bunch of rubbish...

the whole 'macs are less compatible' thing is rubbish. with a little know-how you can get any windows program running with something like Parallels or CrossOver. The same isnt true the other way round, unless you go down the hackintosh route.
hackintosh implies that you have to boot the computer into windows,
parallels is a VM solution.

you can run a copy of Mac OSX on windows in a VM...

e.g they are just as compatible with each other if you;re just going to visualise a whole new machine on top of your start machine.
 
Root, how do macs compair to PC's when editing music/audio? I was vauge in my original post because there are many different things you can do with music on a computer.
 
I personally still fail to see how Macs are better for graphic design, video editing, music, etc. For graphic design they will probably use Photoshop. Maybe they are too narrow mined to notice there's a PC version of Photoshop...? Even some programs there isn't a PC version of, there's something that's going to be very similar and can get the same task done. I've owned 2 Macs, an iBook and now a MacBook. Couldn't really make either of them work as a main system. Something I could easily accomplish on my Windows machine just didn't want to work on my Mac.

I am an Intel fanboy. I don't hate AMD, but I have personally only owned 1 modern AMD system, which was running a single core Athlon. I refer people to AMD who are on a budget. I have a kinda closed mind about hard drives. I've had several bad experiences with Seagates that were no more than 3 years old at most. I've had plenty of good experiences with Western Digital drives, so I only refer people to buy WD, and I only buy WD. I am annoyed that my laptop has a Seagate drive. :p
 
Root, how do macs compair to PC's when editing music/audio? I was vauge in my original post because there are many different things you can do with music on a computer.

I'm going to speak from personal experience of using a mac, but bear in mind that my experience with a mac is more than a few years out of date.

Weirdly, there did used to, or at least seem to be a case for using a mac for creative tasks. but I feel that was limited to the fact that at the time, macs were faster than PCs.

the reason that most 'creative' tasks are done on a mac is because the tools are there for mac.

if you're a desktop publisher then you're going to use something like quark express, last I heard there isn't a version of this for windows.

if you're going to work in a studio setting you'll be wanting to use cubase or some similar program.
you want to do art work, you'll use photo shop.

Of course, in a professional environment you're not going to be using virutal machines sitting on top of a PC to create a mac o run a DTP tool, you'll just get a mac to start with.

Personally, I now think that PC speeds are as good as macs, (though there were never the greatest amounts of difference anyway). and the reason that if you want to be creative use a mac is still banded around is just blind ignorance by mac fans as to the fact that the same applications are available for PC and work just as well.
Or ignorance by PC users who just believe what their mac friends/advertising tells them.

The same ignorance is also shown with the idea that if you want a business machine go for a PC, because it ignores the fact that most PC applications are available natively on a mac.

a the end of the day Macs have caught up with PCs now, in terms of applications, and usability, and PC's have caught up with macs in terms of style and stability.

I can't see any good reason to use one over the other, other than as a choice of personal preference.

I hear mac users tell me now, well it just works. well of course it's works, it's meant to work, my PC works, but I don't feel the need to make a song and dance about it.
 
Another thing when your a so called "expert" youve got to put your own personal opinions aside when you are being an expert . Just because he dosent use mac or it dosent work for him dosent mean that other users wouldnt have a want or a need to use a mac .
 
Another thing when your a so called "expert" youve got to put your own personal opinions aside when you are being an expert . Just because he dosent use mac or it dosent work for him dosent mean that other users wouldnt have a want or a need to use a mac .
I wouldn't necessarily agree with the above. I know of many people I class as experts that have pretty strong personal opinions on a number of topics - the difference is that these opinions are well founded and built on experience and research, not just ad-hoc fanboy claims.

For instance, instead of just saying "I hate Python it's crap", their opinion would more be along the line of "I'm not the biggest fan of Python - it forces the use of a particular indentation style and as such you end up with lots of whitespace everywhere, it tries to accomodate quite a lot of styles but instead ends up not being the best template for any of them, etc. etc."

There's a big difference between having an opinion that's properly backed up, researched and validated and one that's just pulled out of a whim on something you heard from someone down the pub!
 
Im very open minded when it comes to computers. People can be experts in one aspect but can be utter failures in another sometimes. Ive used Windows 3.1 up to Windows 7, also have used Ubuntu (which i cannot stand...i have backing behind this. If something goes wrong, its hard to pinpoint what went wrong because everything is automatically there for you..) yet..i use Debian and i KNOW what went wrong because i select and put out what im doing. I guess its a median between having everything done for you, and doing everything yourself. I also used macosx, (my padre's have a iMac) and its not terrible, but if you actually want to do anything, imo..its pretty hard. To be a computer "expert" you have to look through all aspects...programming/OS knowledge/rootshells/etc etc.

Idk, just expressing my opinion.
 
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