It's interesting seeing more people try the Mac. Definitely, productivity is dependent on familiarity. You just need to spend time with the Mac and you'll see the logic and elegance.

Lig hasn't jumped in yet.

Seems that Windows has been good enough for most people for quite some time. Mac folks have mainly been those who have had exposure and know it's a more elegant solution. But nowadays, people are getting so tired of spyware and spam, plus they're seeing how cool other Apple products are, they're exploring the Mac in greater numbers. Apple Stores help too. People can finally explore the Mac OS in person vs. buying mailorder.

Russ

 

As a longtime unix/linux user/bigot, I find it highly amusing that Apple fans just love OSX....

 

By the way, using The GIMP to resize photos is like using a hydrogen bomb to get rid of blackberry bushes in your back yard. Yes, it will do it very well, but it's massive overkill.

Presumably this also holds true for any other full-featured image manipulation program (Photoshop, et al.).

 

Oh, and I like the Single Menu Bar, mainly because that's what I'm used to. I'm also anal about wasted screen real estate, so I like the fact that all windows' menus are consolidated in one place vs. having their menus waste 16 vertical pixels 20 times (say, 20 windows).

I'm used to having tons of windows open, with many visible at the same time (on multiple monitors). So wasted menu space becomes an issue.

I also like the way practically every Mac App has individual windows that can be dragged anywhere. Makes software development more efficient by having the editing window on one monitor and debugging & tools windows on another monitor. Same with image and video editing. On Windows, many apps still use the Mother Window paradigm. IE, all of an application's windows are contained in a Mother Window. This makes it difficult to spread windows out (across different monitors or one huge monitor) efficiently.

It's funny having someone see 2 monitors on my system and ask: "how do I move the mouse cursor to the other monitor" Windows has this capability (multiple displays), though it's not as mature as the Mac's implementation since Windows was 10 years behind on this feature.

Russ

 

Typical Mac folks love OS X because it's Unix underpinnings are well hidden. But those geeky enough, love the ability to easily bring up a terminal window and geek out in Unix/BSD to their hearts content!

http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/unix/

Russ

 

fellas!

As another user who has XP Pro and OSX I do find the elegance of the Mac appealing.

I'm curious to see what this unholy alliance with Intel will bring.

I can get work done on either platform and coincidentally have 17" laptops of both flavors - but I have a clear favorite for reasons everyone else has elucidated so eloquently. (had to use a couple of 25 cent words for the helluvit )

My preference is still clearly for the Mac. That online resizer is handy for a quick and dirty job. Usually I just use iPhoto to get my image manipulation needs taken care of. If it is heavy duty it's off to Photoshop I go.

 

I never understood 17" Laptop's, I call them mobile desktops. My friend has one of those big boys. I can't imagine lugging that thing around. I think a ~15" sub ~5lb laptop is the perfect size.

The apple 17" isn't that bad but my friend has a Sager. Which has the full power Intel Desktop processor, full power NV 7800GT, and has like 5 fans. Batteries last like 45 mins tops and the thing probably weights like 15lbs.


Oh and I use both mac and pc to. I still prefer PC, but it looks like I'm out numbered here which is surprising.

 

No, you are just outnumbered in terms of the people who care enough to post something about it. That's a very different thing than actually being outnumbered.

 

I was thinking about the 17" Mac PowerBook when it came out... but I kept thinking how hard it'd be watching movies on airplanes when the person in front of me reclines their seat.

So I waited for the 15" Aluminum PowerBook with the same auto illuminating keyboard as the 17" and grabbed it.

Bummed about the failure of Moore's Law recently... Computes aren't doubling in processing speed every 18 months. PC Centrinos have been stuck betweek 1.4 and 1.8Ghz for a couple years now, as have Mac PowerBooks.

Apple got around this recently with their quad CPU's: Two dual core G5's. If they could only drop them into laptops.

It's also funny, that Microsoft has gone away from Intel (XBox 360), while Apple has done the opposite and is switching to Intel.

The nice thing about this processor migration, relating to all our OS bantering, is that in the next year or so, it'll be no issue: Macs will be running on Apple Intel machines and you'll almost certainly be able to run Windows at full speed on them if you desire.

:-)

 

I think he's outnumbered (in the pool of people who regularly use both OS's) by those who prefer the Mac.

Russ