Mac OS Got firt Mac system- initial thoughts

anandkrishnantc

anandkrishnantc

Disciple
Hi,
I bought a used Mac machine from a FM. I am not very impressed with the OS. I agree the IOS is very nice and pretty great for the user, but for a full fledged computer MAC is not upto the mark.
I think MAC is suitable for people who are not interested to do something technical , just use it with its applications (say, artists, photographers , sound engineers etc).
The control and the transparency Windows provides, cant be matched on MAC.
And that too new Windows 8 UI
In a top down list with Most Application centric and least tech savy centric,
I would say, MAC first, (Application centric)
then Windows, (both app centric and tech savy centric)
then Linux.(more of tech savy centric)

So for guys who are lookig to play with machine, then Mac will be a little dissapointment.
 
Waiting to see the comments on this thread.
BTW can you tell me why almost all R & D engineers now use Macs? E.g. I am referring to people who work with Cisco/ EMC etc. I hope they are technical in your definition.
 
Its important to understand how they do what they do.
For those very limited items that need Windows/ Linux, they use emulators/ Vm's such as parallels/ vmfusion etc.
Everything else - Mac, but perhaps thats because of the cult following Apple has in the US as well.
 
I have seen Cisco and EMC guys using Mac but they are not pure technical, they are more into marketing or consultants. They use Mac for presentations and demo. Being in technical line, I don't think Mac is of any use to R&D guys.
 
axeman said:
Its important to understand how they do what they do.
For those very limited items that need Windows/ Linux, they use emulators/ Vm's such as parallels/ vmfusion etc.
Everything else - Mac, but perhaps thats because of the cult following Apple has in the US as well.
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For R&D guys, "everything else" of your above statement is less priority. They have to work more on their specific tools. And if company is providing Mac to perform primary work on emulators/VMs, then its not good spending/utilization of money.

Even in my organization, I have seen people using Mac and purpose is checking mails and connecting remote machines, where their mail tools are installed. When asked they said, if company is providing why to say no. Because of these AH, my proposal of increasing RAM in my system (even after showing evidence that current RAM is not sufficient) is refused by saying that not sufficient funds.

But the point is, for technical work Mac is not the right machine. If you have to roam around, meet customers, give presentation/demos then using Mac might give good impression but that also don't justify the cost with purpose.
 
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anandkrishnantc said:
Hi,
full fledged computer MAC is not upto the mark.
So for guys who are lookig to play with machine, then Mac will be a little dissapointment.
Click to expand...
MAC is based on unix so if you want to run your script you can run it on mac. What do you mean by MAC is not upto the mark what you were expecting (Supercomputer) ?
If you are thinking of playing computer games on mac yeah i agree it is disappointment. but other than that i don't see any issue with mac.
 
anandkrishnantc said:
Hi,
I bought a used Mac machine from a FM. I am not very impressed with the OS. I agree the IOS is very nice and pretty great for the user, but for a full fledged computer MAC is not upto the mark.
I think MAC is suitable for people who are not interested to do something technical , just use it with its applications (say, artists, photographers , sound engineers etc).
The control and the transparency Windows provides, cant be matched on MAC.
And that too new Windows 8 UI
In a top down list with Most Application centric and least tech savy centric,
I would say, MAC first, (Application centric)
then Windows, (both app centric and tech savy centric)
then Linux.(more of tech savy centric)

So for guys who are lookig to play with machine, then Mac will be a little dissapointment.
Click to expand...

And how long have you used the mac before you came to this conclusion?

OSX is actually far more flexible, powerful and intuitive than Windows. The biggest differences with Windows is that it communicates better with hardware, has better optimised usage of hardware resources, and with a bit of knowledge you can get under the hood and do a lot of tweaking that would make advanced Windows users blush.

However, there is a learning curve to it, and it takes a bit of getting used to. I couldn't get used to it either and admit freely that it's not my cup of tea, but that doesn't make it any less capable, or make me go and vent ire on tech forums. If there are two things i hold against it, one is the inability of enthusiast users to perform surgical interventions on the OS (you need to be fairly technically competent and understand computing better to mess with OSx), and more importantly, a much smaller base of applications that the Windows environment,
 
anandkrishnantc said:
I think MAC is suitable for people who are not interested to do something technical , just use it with its applications (say, artists, photographers , sound engineers etc).
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LOL. What makes you eligible to say this ? And ever tried to programme something on Windows ?[DOUBLEPOST=1381326377][/DOUBLEPOST]
sky said:
But the point is, for technical work Mac is not the right machine.
Click to expand...
Please elaborate. Share your old experiences.
 
Why is this becoming a mac vs windows argument.

The Op just shared his view and we must respect it. We all have our own views for everything.

I am pretty sure with some rnd his views might change.
 
:-)
I am seeing a super MAC cult here. It was a surprise though.
I am into embedded programming (micro controllers in assembly ) and C/C++ programming on Windows for more than a decade.
But that is not the point I am making..
MAC is built to run the applications. Its rock solid and fine (its too much fine in fact)
Its like some one commented about Merc S class "Its a shit car, it wont allow you to feel the road". this doesn't mean S class is really shit car.
The way Windows attach with the user (a kind of slave), MAC is not I say.
I know like any other system, it will take time to go deep into MAC do all the tweaking and all. But its clear from Apple, that's not what they want their customer to do. They created this machine (molding the OS and HW tightly) for the customer to perform the tasks specific to them. I am sure some people here will wonder what I am saying about.. but sure some one will understand what it is.
As one of the comment says "What do you mean by MAC is not upto the mark what you were expecting (Supercomputer) ?", I admit that my expectations were big, but not definitely super computer ( which is super only in speed) :-)
 
anandkrishnantc said:
:-)
I am seeing a super MAC cult here. It was a surprise though.
Click to expand...

For the record, i do not have even one Mac. Never bought one, never will. Learnt computing on them, though, and used one for a year and a half as my main work machine - and i was a business head, so not graphics etc but more typical powerpoint, office and email/internet stuff. So no, cult is a pretty long shot even by internet forum standards.

Still doesn't make me wanna diss them as my 'initial thoughts'. Each system has its shortcomings and highlights, but none of what you pointed out are valid. There are enough hints in the replies as to which are the correct parameters to evaluate the two platforms, none of yours are except the ones you are borrowing from other replies.

Being a programmer does not entitle you to impose your world view on the world. There are more than enough people coding on macs, and enough who know how to really mess with the OS. Yes, Apple doesn't like it but understand this, neither does Microsoft. Unfortunately, the latter have built their platform on universality and the latter on reach and marketshare. The two approaches are completely different, with different results.
 
I just got a Macbook Air a month ago. I gave Mac OS a try for a day or two but I gave up because I have become so used to using certain programs in Windows. I did find alternatives pretty easily but having used the same programs for over 6 years made moving back to Windows an obvious choice. Plus with Trackpad++ I can use all the gestures which makes the Air such a great device.
I did feel a little disheartened over my own inability to give enough time to the new OS.
 
cranky said:
For the record, i do not have even one Mac. Never bought one, never will.
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That doesn't make any difference. Whether you own it or you use others.

There are enough hints in the replies as to which are the correct parameters to evaluate the two platforms, none of yours are except the ones you are borrowing from other replies.
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This is not an attempt to evaluate two OS platforms in a systematic way. This is much more into human approach.And it is with full of surprises.

Being a programmer does not entitle you to impose your world view on the world.
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No body says so. But anyone can yell their view on this world on anything. that is the fundamental human freedom. And the world you know is only the world in your brain. Whatever outside your brain is still a black box for you.

And I did buy the MAC not to hate it . But to fall in love with it.
 
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avi said:
Please elaborate. Share your old experiences.
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When I said not good for technical people, I didn't meant for programmers or generic technical work. I said the statement for R&D people. Since they have to work on specialized applications for their work, which are not designed for Mac, and there are lot of applications similar to that.

I can give you best example of myself. The application I am working on is resource hungry (16 core cpu and 32GB ram required for my production environment), even though it is designed to work inside datacenter servers but I am using a copy of it in my laptop so that I can do R&D and testing before doing any changes in production systems. It is available only for linux or windows platform. So if got offer to buy Mac, I will refuse it without second thought because it is not going to me help anyway.

By saying this, it doesn't mean that I don't like Mac. Personal choice and what is needed for your work are different things. I have worked on all major platforms IRIX, AIX, HP-UX, Solaris, Linux, Mac and ofcourse Windows in last 10 years. There was time when I worked purely on linux, managing PARAM series of Supercomputers (no windows machine for any work in datacenter as we as personal use). Then when I moved to another organization they only have windows for laptops, even when insisted to install linux, they refused because there were some tools like MS communicator and other licensed tools which were not designed for linux (situation might have changed now).

From my technical point of view (at least the work I am doing), I agree with @cranky, me too will never use or buy Mac.

I am not biased to any specific platform, but again it's up to individual's point of view and their usage which decide whether they like Mac (or any other platform) or not.
 
Let's clear one thing up. I am not a mac fan..... I am a hack fan.

I like the OS. Unlike windows is actually very intuitive. Time machine really works, I cloud works great too with proper integration..... Adding right zoom and xtra finder makes it perfect...... Not to mention as a CA I even found a tax app that works great on it! The Three is logic for my music etc...... But its just the stability that amazes me...... I still have leopard running on a p4 but xp have up on the machine long time ago.
Windows 8.1 is way better than 8. Th day being said, they took out the windows 7 backup and restore in favour of the recovery partition which sucks.
Not to mention windows doesn't play well with Gpt schemes
 
If one owns iDevice(s) then buying a MAC makes even more sense. I am now owning multiple iPhones and iPad and i may buy a mac laptop someday but i am not sure when. I am very comfortable with windows mainly because i have been using it for past 13+ years.
 
sky said:
Which OS you used after using GPT scheme? Not all Windows versions supports GPT scheme.
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Mountain lion, mavericks and windows 8/8.1. Windows 7 also supports Gpt..... But windows 8 gets screwed up on Gpt if you let it create the recovery partition.
Best thing to do is first format ntfs pairon using Linux live cd or anything else then install windows 8 to it. Works like a charm.
 
Can people share what they use their computers for and what specific programs do they run ?

The people I know use MACs because of prestige, they boot into Windows and run their programs. ( no Mac versions for it)
 
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