Tell me about the Apple Macintosh

[Lyris]

I don't mean to crash the Mac fans thread, but I think the point of this post was to ask for people's opinions, so I'll give you mine.

Back in February I finally ordered my iMac G5. I was ecstatic, I'd been using Windows for all my life and wanted a change. The gorgeous silky GUI was really tempting me, as was the convenience of the all-in-one unit (I don't have a lot of room in my desk, and my PC tower is huge).

When my iMac arrived, I unboxed it and set it all up. Although I didn't like the mouse (this was when there was no scroll wheel, which is a totally idiotic thing to leave out - but I was aware of this beforehand), and I really liked the feel of the keyboard. The build quality of the iMac itself was fantastic, it had that really nice acrylic surface if I remember right. The quality of the TFT screen was also far better than the 2003 Philips LCD I still use - brighter, more accurate colours. The specs of my model were, IIRC, the 20" screen, 1.5gb of RAM, and whatever the fastest processor speed was back in February (1.8ghz I think?)

The first problem I had was that of speed. Dragging and resizing windows slowed the machine down quite a bit. I thought this was very odd given that the whole GUI was supposedly built around OpenGL, but it wasn't enough to make me send the machine back obviously. It just looked very unpolished for an otherwise very nice looking GUI. Apparently that's now been fixed with Tiger though.

My speed concerns didn't stop there. Programs just took far, far longer to start than on my Windows PC. Before I'd bought it, I was a little concerned with the slower processor speed, but everyone I asked told me the line: "You can't compare Intel and G5 clock speeds". Bull****, I compared them quite easily, using a stopwatch. The speed of the bundled software that Apple prides itself on (iPhoto etc) was also very, very poor. Try using the Straighten Picture setting and drag the slider around on iPhoto on the Mac, then do the same in Picasa for Windows. It's embarassing.

Another big problem with mine was the sound. I am not talking about the built-in speakers - I didn't expect those to be good. I'm talking about the headphone audio output using a very good set of headphones (Etymotic Research er6i Earbuds). The sound was absolute crap compared to my Sound Blaster Audigy 2, lacking in bass and depth and sounded unbelievably boring. I was utterly shocked that Apple sell these systems under the guise of a premium brand with multimedia excellence - the sound quality was atrocious for a machine this expensive, a huge problem considering that I'd planned on listening to music using iTunes a lot.

A problem I had was also related to the mouse - not the hardware itself, but the way the OS handles it. Try using a Mac mouse with a PC and you'll see how much differently it handles. On the Mac, moving the pointer around even with the tracking speed set to almost full was like dragging and old ball-mouse around a sticky desk. I can imagine the hardcore Mac users switching to Windows' version of mouse handling might be put off in the same way I was, but if Apple want to attract a lot of "Switchers", it's something they should really consider. When you couple this strange mouse handling with the number of programs that rely on tiny, tiny clickable buttons (the bookmarks in Safari and Firefox, and the buttons at the top of the tiny "About this Macintosh" box), it's just not pleasant to use.

What really soured my opinion of Apple (pun not intended) though was the fanboys. When I told them quite politely my problems with the iMac and informed them of the fact that I was returning it for a full refund, a lot of the responses were frankly ridiculous. "Why do you do so much messing around with digital video anyway!", "It must have been faulty" etc.

All in all, I wasn't impressed at all by the iMac. A few months later I got rid of my iPod as well (reverse "halo effect") and went with a Sony digital audio player, and lo and behold, the freezing and bass rolloff issues disappeared. My opinion of Apple Computer then? Not good at all - overpriced products of inferior quality in almost everything but build. In my opinion a stable, secure install of Windows XP (I know keeping it running without spyware can be a laborious process) is the best option.

Best of luck to any new Mac owners though - I'm sure it'll be just the ticket for most people, it didn't tick the right boxes for me though.

[Pavey]

Stuffit expander should do the trick. Thought it came on the OS?

[andrewfee]

I thought this was very odd given that the whole GUI was supposedly built around OpenGL, but it wasn't enough to make me send the machine back obviously. It just looked very unpolished for an otherwise very nice looking GUI. Apparently that's now been fixed with Tiger though.

It most certainly has been "fixed." For some reason, "smooth scrolling" really slowed down 10.3's scrolling, and I presume you'll have had it on. (it was one of the first changes I made) The "slow" resizing was due to the way the OS renders things. OS10.4 is orders of magnitude faster in this regard; you wouldn't have a problem with it anymore, I guarantee it.

My speed concerns didn't stop there. Programs just took far, far longer to start than on my Windows PC. Before I'd bought it, I was a little concerned with the slower processor speed, but everyone I asked told me the line: "You can't compare Intel and G5 clock speeds". Bull****, I compared them quite easily, using a stopwatch. The speed of the bundled software that Apple prides itself on (iPhoto etc) was also very, very poor. Try using the Straighten Picture setting and drag the slider around on iPhoto on the Mac, then do the same in Picasa for Windows. It's embarassing.

Not sure about the app startup times; on my iMac most things (other than Photoshop) were near instantaneous, and even on my Powerbook they're maybe a second or two at most.

I don't think that's a fair comparison really though; you need to compare like for like. Photoshop is always a good test, as it's the same app on both systems. While Picasa / iPhoto do roughly the same thing, they're not the same app, and likely do things differently. I'm not a big fan of iPhoto to be honest anyway. I've not used it recently, but it just didn't let me do what I wanted to do with it. I think Aperture is more like what I actually want. Unfortunately with no trial available (that I'm aware of) I'm a bit wary of buying it at ?350 and not finding it to be of any use.

Back then you wouldn't have had the latest iLife suite, and personally I was disappointed with that too when I had my iMac G5. (I ordered a max spec one the day they were announced) The newer versions are much improved.

Another big problem with mine was the sound. I am not talking about the built-in speakers - I didn't expect those to be good. I'm talking about the headphone audio output using a very good set of headphones (Etymotic Research er6i Earbuds). The sound was absolute crap compared to my Sound Blaster Audigy 2, lacking in bass and depth and sounded unbelievably boring. I was utterly shocked that Apple sell these systems under the guise of a premium brand with multimedia excellence - the sound quality was atrocious for a machine this expensive, a huge problem considering that I'd planned on listening to music using iTunes a lot.

I'm not sure what to say really; I found the quality to be excellent from the iMac, as it has a built in headphone amp on the jack, far better than anything I had heard on a PC. (the original Audigy) It may just be that the iMac's card produced a more accurate representation, or that the audigy "coloured" the sound in some way. I no longer have either, so I can't say for sure.

A problem I had was also related to the mouse - not the hardware itself, but the way the OS handles it. Try using a Mac mouse with a PC and you'll see how much differently it handles. On the Mac, moving the pointer around even with the tracking speed set to almost full was like dragging and old ball-mouse around a sticky desk. I can imagine the hardcore Mac users switching to Windows' version of mouse handling might be put off in the same way I was, but if Apple want to attract a lot of "Switchers", it's something they should really consider. When you couple this strange mouse handling with the number of programs that rely on tiny, tiny clickable buttons (the bookmarks in Safari and Firefox, and the buttons at the top of the tiny "About this Macintosh" box), it's just not pleasant to use.

Well, personally I prefer Apple's mouse handling, but there are apps to change which type of mouse-handling is used.

What really soured my opinion of Apple (pun not intended) though was the fanboys. When I told them quite politely my problems with the iMac and informed them of the fact that I was returning it for a full refund, a lot of the responses were frankly ridiculous. "Why do you do so much messing around with digital video anyway!", "It must have been faulty" etc.

Yeah, it does get pretty bad. When people like you have spent at least ?1500 on a computer, they don't like hearing that either someone doesn't like it, or thinks it's got a lot of problems. It's the same with the forums for pretty much any expensive product. (I've been looking into getting another DSLR and the Nikon fanboys are awful, jumping on anyone that doesn't think the D200 is the "best camera ever")

Still, I think a lot of people will disagree with you about thinking it's not very good for video; Final Cut Pro is regarded by some to be the best in the business.

All in all, I wasn't impressed at all by the iMac. A few months later I got rid of my iPod as well (reverse "halo effect") and went with a Sony digital audio player, and lo and behold, the freezing and bass rolloff issues disappeared. My opinion of Apple Computer then? Not good at all - overpriced products of inferior quality in almost everything but build. In my opinion a stable, secure install of Windows XP (I know keeping it running without spyware can be a laborious process) is the best option.

Best of luck to any new Mac owners though - I'm sure it'll be just the ticket for most people, it didn't tick the right boxes for me though.

Well, to each their own. It does take a bit of adjustment; things do work differently, although personally, I think they work better overall. When using OSX the computer gets out of my way, and lets me do what I'm wanting to do.

I'm probably going to be getting a new machine around March time to replace my 17" Powerbook, and I basically don't have a budget for it. I've been looking at every option available to me, and while a Windows machine is probably faster than everything but the higher-end Powermacs, I just can't bring myself to go back to Windows. While the hardware may be faster; I get things done quicker on my Mac.

The Window management alone makes a huge difference; Windows is terrible for this.

Now, don't get me wrong; I know my way around Windows. I've never had a virus or spyware on my computers, and if there's a problem, I can fix it. However, it never seems to just "work" and many things are so inconsistent within the OS.

Just this afternoon I've had to fix another issue; my Sister's computer (only gets used for MSN / iTunes and browsing with Firefox - she's not able to install anything) refused to print anything, and my parent's machine, which is only used for creating word documents, skype and email, wouldn't even see the printer on the network.

Nothing about the setup had changed, nothing was installed, no viri, spyware etc, it just decided it didn't want to work today.

Now, I did get the problem fixed pretty quickly, but I shouldn't have had to. As I said, nothing about the setup had changed, it just stopped working. It's things like this that make me glad I'm on a Mac. I can't think of a single problem I've had like that since I switched over a year ago.

This is why so many professionals in the creative industry use Macs; they just work.



If you don't like how something works differently, or there's a specific app you need and it isn't available, then fair enough. I can completely understand why you would have been put off by the iMac, as 10.3 did have some issues. They're issues that don't bother most people (like window resizing; how often do you actually do that?) but I would recommend trying out a 10.4.x system before saying that Macs are overpriced for what they do. The iMacs are now insanely cheap; probably about ?600 less for a high-end system that has much higher specs.

My only hard choice now is which mac to replace my Powerbook with. Initially I was thinking about a maxed out 20" iMac, but I think I would miss being able to carry my machine around with me. One of the reasons I'm selling the Powerbook though is that it's just not as portable as I'd have liked now; it's fine if you're going from one desk to another, but not something I enjoy using off a desk for extended periods of time. I'd love a 12" machine, but don't like how they're "cut down" from the other two.

I'd also like a little more "grunt" - not that this machine is slow, but Aperture has some pretty high specs, and I'm not sure how well this machine would handle it. (well, it's a 1.67GHz Powerbook with 2gb RAM, but some of Apple's apps only really like the G5s.



When I was deciding to get a Mac, www.xvsxp.com was a great, and pretty unbiased resource. I haven't been for a while, but I doubt that will have changed.

I'm into photography, and Ken Rockwell's site is pretty biased, but a good read, in my opinion. He recently posted up an article about why he and so many other pro's use Macs, so you might want to check it out if you're looking to make the switch: http://kenrockwell.com/apple/why-pros-use-mac.htm

[Lyris]

Back then you wouldn't have had the latest iLife suite, and personally I was disappointed with that too when I had my iMac G5. (I ordered a max spec one the day they were announced) The newer versions are much improved.

It actually came with separate CDs of iLife 05 - in fact, I think it was just straight after the launch.

I don't think that's a fair comparison really though; you need to compare like for like. Photoshop is always a good test, as it's the same app on both systems.

Yeah, that's true. Photoshop CS was far slower starting, and just slower for general usage. LimeWire is a nastily coded Java application, and I remember it took a lot longer to start on OS X as well.

That article you linked to is questionable to say the least though.

The clock sets itself automatically. To get your Windows clock to set itself requires some sort of Ph.D. On Macs the clocks automatically and continuously set themselves over the Internet to atomic references. I did this on Windows, but I had to pay for special software. On Mac it's just another free part of the computer.

Ummm...

[andrewfee]

Hey, I did warn you that it was a bit biased. He's perhaps not talking about XP there, but there are some good points made. I noticed a couple of other minor inaccuracies too, but I still agree with his main point; Macs just work and don't require constant maintenance to keep working.

I'm not going to argue for/against the iLife suite though; most people seem to regard it as a great package, especially as you get it with every Mac, but I don't really use it myself, so I can't say.

I'm not running CS, but from what I remember about the trial, Elements 3 was slower at booting, and after just testing, it takes 9 seconds on my Powerbook with its 5400rpm drive. Downloading the CS2 trial to test, but the site is very slow. (70k/sec)

EDIT: Not even 5 full seconds to open up CS2, and that's with iTunes, Safari, Mail and MSN open.

[SubparMario]

Yeah, so, um.. I just bought a 12" Aluminium Powerbook G4. Talk about cute.

[Pavey]

Did you get it from the refurb store?

[SubparMario]

Nah. ?550 delivered from an Internet citizen.

Didn't know about the Apple Refurb Store though, hope I didn't miss out.