Saturday, May 19th, 2007 3:28 pm by
J David 
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So I have never personally owned a mac of any kind, whether it be a laptop or a desktop. My family has had them (my brother being a huge fan), and I have had a great deal of experience with them, but I still have never owned one myself. However now I am at a crossroads. I was recently hired as an intern for a new startup (hopefully you will be hearing more about this later), and they all use macs in the office. It may be time to finally get an Apple.
Now, I realize that just because their office uses macs does not mean that I have to use a mac. The computers get along with each other, except for in the commercials. Besides, I think as far as most web design applications go, there shouldn’t be much of a problem (although, I am not sure about FileMaker). But it may be to hard to pass up this semi-legitimate excuse to get one.
Well, let’s assume that I do decide to get one (with unknown funding…). It would then be a matter of which model. I definitely would need a laptop, and it would have to be powerful enough to run your standard Adobe stuff, but its not like I want Goliath of a machine with 3 gigs of memory and an 800 gig hard drive; well, actually I do want that, but it is not what I need. So with that in mind, I have been eyeballing those pretty black Macbooks. Derek recently wrote a short review about the one he got, and he sounds pretty pleased.
Anyhow, it is time to make a decision and I would like some advice. If you have one of these computers, I would love to hear from you. If you think I am making a huge mistake, I also want to hear from you. In fact, lets make this an all out battle! Mac vs. PC in one final battle to determine which is best… And to think, it is going to take place right here at j david macor.com… Actually, I will probably get 3 comments, 2 of which are trying to get me to enhance my junk…
I can’t help you with the laptop selection, but I do feel for your ‘buy-a-mac-or-not’ choice…
My primary PC finally gave up the ghost a couple of months ago, and I was faced with the prospect of speccing, ordering and building a new one.
I *seriously* considered buying a Mac at the time (I have used them quite frequently in the past, depending on where I was working at the time). At the end of the day - for me anyway - it all came down to money.
I ended up building a kick-ass PC (dual-core 3800 Athlon, 4 gig RAM, NVIDIA SLI motherboard, 800 gig SATAII RAID drives, silent case, 21″ TFT, and all new accessories) for 690 pounds including VAT and shipping. The only Mac setup I would have got for that money would have been a Mac Mini - and only with a 17″ display!
Perhaps one of the problems I ran into is how large corporates rip off us Brits! I’d like them to explain to me how come something that’s 1200 dollars from their US store costs 1200 pounds from their UK one. I don’t think that’s quite how exchange rates are supposed to work…
Duh, buying an Apple DOES enhance your junk.
I’ve got a three year-old iBook (that I’m using right now, actually) and I’ve been pretty happy with it. If you’re comfortable with both systems and don’t have any preference, price is a big consideration. Apples cost more, but I think you get what you pay for. They just released a new round of MacBooks (and Pros), so the same laptop is probably a couple hundred bucks cheaper than it was last week. Both lines had some problems early on, just like you’ll find with the first model year of any car, but it seems like things are in pretty good shape now. And of course, the fact that you can run Windows on Macs is a serious point in their favor.
So, when I said it depends on price, I lied. I’d buy a Mac. Really, I have no intention of buying another PC if I can avoid it, and plan to upgrade to a MacBook just as soon as I can afford it.
I just had this discussion with my fiancé and am really torn. On the one hand, I’ve been wanting a top of the line MacBook Pro (it’s all or nothing when it comes to Apple) and even purchased a cheap copy of Windows XP (not really excited about Vista) for a future Mac. Yet after all is said and done, I’ll be getting an IBM T60 widescreen since the one my fiancé has will do everything I need it to. I will have a MacBook Pro one day as a gift to myself, and if I had an excuse to buy one now - I would probably do so in an instant.
Seeing that I’m your fourth comment, I make your last paragraph complete bullocks– but enhancing junk is always such a good thing!
I myself find myself wanting an Mac more and more with each passing month. I’m also in the same boat with experience wise, I’ve never personally owned one and have some experience with them. Sounds like you might have a tad more experience than I, but from the hype that’s been going on for YEARS… I would assume that people that switch, are glad they did.
However, I think that when and if I do switch, it won’t be a switch at all… more of a compromise of features. I enjoy using a PC, I even enjoy troubleshooting it (although my hair gets pulled out sometimes)… I don’t think I’ll live without a custom built PC (by me) ever.
I myself am looking at getting a Mac laptop (I just sold my HP laptop for some spare change) I’ll be interested to see your opinions and review if and when you get one yourself. Good luck man!
Although this is a bit Mac biased, it has some interesting notes about one guys switch over to Mac:
Ten things I wish I had known before I switched to OS X
First it was funny i read MONTM - mac or not to mac
my site is blog or not to blog lol.
Anyways , i think you should get a mac first its based on linux
means no freaking viruses well at least not a lot of them out there to harm your macy 
I my self dont use MAC ! but i am linux user since 2000 
so yeah I have not much clue of windows but from what i can see it sux 
2nd if u are in development od design industrie believe me mac is the way to go
But if you are really only windows confy then stay with it but you are loosing a lot of quality pictures, design and stability !
Well, thanks to everyone for all of the advice. I have started working and I think I am beginning to turn green with Mac-envy. I still haven’t made a decision, but I am leaning towards getting one.
But I just wanted to note that never, in any of my other posts, were there comments as long and well thought out as these! I just wanted to say thanks again!
Are you aka ’super j man’? I’d like to change the credit in the footer of the DELICIOUSLY-BLUE template I got from soholaunch via LunarPages.com. To J. David Macor?
BTW, read any stuff on globalization “versus” internationalization: e.g., Roland Robertson?
Actually, I am Super J Man. That is something left over from way back when I thought super hero handles were cool… Well, I still do, but you can just change the footer link to my regular name. Oh, and thanks for letting me know about where you got the template. I didn’t even know that that company had it.
As for reading about globalization, I haven’t read anything in a while related to that topic (although interestingly enough, Thomas Friedman taught a course at my business school this year). My interest in globalization was from a political perspective as well, something that I have also not thought about in a while. However, just to throw something into the hat, I wouldn’t call it globalization; it looks more like regionalization to me… So in that sense, I guess I stand more on the internationalization side of the fence.
PS, you don’t have to leave a link to me at all, if you really don’t want to. I leave it up to you.
Hi,
I have a couple of Macs and a PC laptop, I bought the PC laptop purely for messing about on the internet and a bit of writing (because it was far cheaper than a Mac equivalent). I love the Macs, maybe because I have used them for so long compared to the pc. I find a Mac much more intuitive than a PC, and less temperamental. When a PC goes wrong I have absolutely no idea what to do, whereas there are things I would know to try on a Mac, but then again maybe that’s just because I use them more. Personally I would go for a Mac everytime, but the question I guess you need to ask is why do you want to swap, if you happy with PC why swap, PCs are far cheaper and have more software available (although as mentioned before you can now run PC software on the Mac)
This is one of those issues that people feel so strongly about they almost come to blows over… It’s like discussing religion. But, each definitely has their strengths and weaknesses. It’s more up to what you want to do with your laptop. I use mine to mostly play games (very sad, eh?)… hence, I choose the PC. I have a friend that does lots of multimedia development and hence he prefers Mac.