PC v Mac... Which do you prefer?

[Kier]

Can't you just run VS2008 in a virtual machine such as VMWare Fusion or Parallels? I run Outlook 2007 that way, because all Mac email clients that claim Exchange support (including MS Entourage) appear to be not very good shall we say.

[HexOnxOnx]

I had always been a Windows PC lover. I say Windows PC because Macs are PCs as well. Last summer however, I bought an iPhone and was so happy with the quality of it that a week later, I bought a MacBook Pro. It will be a year old the second week of July.

I then added an iMac, a Black Mac Book and early this month, a Mac pro. I simply love the way Leopard does things and the quality of everything Mac.

But....

I couldn't forget about Windows PCs entirely. I still had a 1.5 year old HP notebook that worked even though I lost my temper with it and threw it about five feet in front of me onto the floor. The DVD drive broke but that was it. On Monday, I bought the updated model HP identical to the one I broke that has Vista Home Premium on it because I was missing my Windows and a working DVD player/burner on a Windows machine. So far in three days of using Vista, it's been stable with no "internet explorer has encountered a problem and needs to close" message that I got all the time in XP. Even Firefox would crash occasionally.

Oh and yes, I did do the bootcamp partition thing on the iMac and MacBook but it's a pain to have to reboot and yes I also know about parallels and other programs.

I started out on Windows PCs back in 1993 while there was Windows 3.1 and MS Dos. I had an old Packard Bell 25MHZ from Rent A Center because I couldn't afford to buy a computer than.

[MrNase]

As much as I love Macs (and I have an iMac and a MacBook): What do you need those 4 units for?

It's always good to have more than one unit to work with but I use my MacBook rarely or never because the iMac is my main system. With another MacBook and a Mac Pro my desk would be even fuller but I don't have two more hands to use them.

[Wayne Luke]

As much as I love Macs (and I have an iMac and a MacBook): What do you need those 4 units for?

It's always good to have more than one unit to work with but I use my MacBook rarely or never because the iMac is my main system. With another MacBook and a Mac Pro my desk would be even fuller but I don't have two more hands to use them.

I have six Windows machines in the house... My PC, Wife's, 2 for the kids, and 2 laptops (on for my son to use at school and one for me). There is also a linux file and media server in the house.

[HexOnxOnx]

As much as I love Macs (and I have an iMac and a MacBook): What do you need those 4 units for?

It's always good to have more than one unit to work with but I use my MacBook rarely or never because the iMac is my main system. With another MacBook and a Mac Pro my desk would be even fuller but I don't have two more hands to use them.

Just for variety and for convenience. They are in different rooms now that it's summer. Downstairs during the summer, upstairs in the winter.

[Cromulent]

I actually prefer to not use the command line if it can be avoided. One of the things that I like about Windows Explorer. I don't have to.

You don't have to on the Mac, but the command line is always going to be faster to use than a GUI as typing requires less movement and also allows you to use wildcards.

Although, I understand it is not for everyone. The Windows command line is next to useless though.

[King Kovifor]

As far as I'm concerned, the search isn't the issue. I hardly ever use search either on Vista or OSX.

What is important is things like Explorer's tree view, which Finder suffers terribly for not having, decent keyboard navigation, the ability to type a file path into a window, a usable and useful breadcrumb facility, the ability to cut, copy and paste files, decent multi-file selection mechanisms...

All of which Finder lacks, badly.

For all it is worth, Menu Bar -> Go -> Go to folder.... And I use my mac non-stop for a good part of the day. And having used Windows at school, they are a PITA in my opinion.

I 100% agree with Kier.

Finder is a joke on the Mac, it should have been updated 2 versions ago, and it was very disappointing at the release of 10.5 to hear it's basically still the same.

It's one of those things you run into daily when working with projects and go 'omg, really! common' .. there are a few alternatives but I mostly use a load of shortcuts now and aliasses to make it easier for me.

Hopefully the Finder (and iTunes) will get a major reworking due to the fact that they are partially dropping support for Carbon applications. And Finder and iTunes are written in Carbon.

[Chroder]

I love my mac. I just started using VMware in 'unity' mode to run some Windows apps (like regex buddy) -- excellent. I don't even know Windows is running, theres no task bar or anything, the windows behave like Mac windows, and appear in the dock etc.

I have to agree with Kier on the Finder. It's absolutely horrible. I don't understand how such an important part of the system can be so completely useless.

About 1 day after getting my mac I found Path Finder, which is a Finder replacement. It has a lot of advanced functionality and does almost everything I want it to. Some of the features Kier mentioned, like the "tree view" and cut/copy/pasting are apparently "in the works" for the next version, so I'm looking forward to that release.

[Vtec44]

I prefer Windows over OSX because I grew up with DOS and Windows file structure. =)

[MrNase]

I grew up with a dog and the dog died. And I bought another dog and this one is even better.

[Chousho]

I grew up with a dog and the dog died. And I bought another dog and this one is even better.

RIP MrNase's dog

[Floris]

I grew up with a dog and the dog died. And I bought another dog and this one is even better.

I used to have a dog too, but it kept rolling over every time I asked it to go fetch something. Now I have a Leopard.

[Vtec44]

LOL OSX is just Linux with a nice GUI interface. I prefe Linux over Windows when it comes to running/hosting a site, LAMP.

[Floris]

vtec44, before you make wrongful assumptions.

linux is just like unix

Leopard is an Open Brand UNIX 03 Registered Product, conforming to the SUSv3 and POSIX 1003.1 specifications for the C API, Shell Utilities, and Threads.

[Chousho]

LOL OSX is just Linux with a nice GUI interface. I prefe Linux over Windows when it comes to running/hosting a site, LAMP.

:\ OS X is based off NeXT/BSD, so that would make it part of the Unix family. GNU/Linux is, essentially, a Unix clone and usually called "Unix-like", but not Unix.

The only similarities between actual Unix and GNU/Linux is the fact that the programs all follow the same scheme for hierarchy, naming, etc. The underlying code is different, even though it does pretty much the same thing (drastically simplifying this).

Although I might be wrong, I believe OS X doesn't run the X Window System like most distros using the Linux kernel do. Off the top of my head I think it uses Darwin? Although you can install it, but I have no clue why. If you wanted to do that, why not just use BSD in the beginning and get it over with. Surely it'd be cheaper, anyway.

Any of you Mac guys wanna clear that up better than me?