any mac owners out there ?first time mac prospective buyer.

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came across the mini mac thread over on the plamsa forum and after getting a few answers there it was going off topic so i thought id post over here,basically i have NEVER entertained the idea of mac because games mostly and the cost of the peripherals aswell as the fact you use to be able to just get more bang for your money on pc`s but i havent played a game on my pc for something like a year and a half and im thinking of going the mac way.

basically i want to know what i should be looking at price wise,good place to buy and a few myths and questions i have had answered in a nother thread but would just like some clarification on.so firstly is it true i can use ANY hard drive in a mac?as i was told on another thread theres no such thing as mac memory or mac hard drives etc. i would like something like 250gb,whats so much better about osx etc?and any other little things a none mac owning pc user will come across after making the change.

thanks in advance.
 
The macs changed for ever a while ago now when they changed from the "nubus macs" to using a normal IDE chain which was present in PCs at the time and is now in both Macs and PCs.
This makes life easier as it relates to your point about being able to use any Hard drive and RAM.......this is true provided it's the right spec of course i.e you could'nt put RAMBUS RAM into DDR PC even though they are both PCs! :)

With regard to why is OSX better (if it is at all) that is impossible to answer and at best you are going to get conflicting opinions but they are only going to be opinions and not fact......I ran a shop where we made bespoke comps for music, we used both platforms and both had there pros and cons for music as both will have for use as a HT computer.If one was really better than the other, the other would go out of business pretty quickly. But they're not there so similar, think BMW and Mercedes :)

For what it's worth I still have a G4 which I used exstensively for music, though I currentley use a PC in the studio, but my HTPC has only ever been a PC.

When I saw the macmini (which I suspect is where you're coming from:)) I really wanted to use that as an HTPC as I am in the process of upgrading myself. I was amazed at the price and the looks are perfect for an HTPC ( why has no one still not made a great HTPC case ) as is the power. However with extensive research helped by a good thread over at our American cousin's av forum I concluded not yet..........

I think the overall problem with Macs, and this has been the problem from having an old 8100 up to my last G4 everything in between, is the availability of peripherals and software......compared to PC there really is so little out there. So when this forum is talking about a new Holo3dgraph card or a sweetspot etc forget it mate, you're stuck. It's not so bad within the industries where macs made their name i.e pro audio, graphics etc. But day to day stuff forget it.......let's face it if we were up and coming developers whether it be software or hardware, whould we delvelope for a platform with LOADS of users or one with a fraction of? Of course the other problem with there being less third party mac development is the prices.....which tend to be pretty much set in stone.....this goes for the actual computer it's self (when was the last time you saw a mac in the sale :mad: ) to add ons! This is maybe not such a problem with the mac mini as they have finally made a computer at more than a reasonable price, a great price.

Anyway I'm going on now........maybe at £339 you could dip your toe in the water and see for your self, but I'm fairly convinced you'll stick with a PC for the living room.......unless you get into desktop publishing? Stranger things have happened! :)
 
cheers mate.i been doing a bit of research myself over the weekend and while i like the neatness of the macs aswell as there highly regarded OS i think im going for another pc.i might teat myself to a mac mini if the price of the ram upgrade drops but to be honest there doesnt seem to be a great deal of scope for upgrading the mini.it seems to me as a new mac potential buyer its a big ipod for the house with a few other bells and whistles.
 
1. You can upgrade the mac (mini) RAM yourself, using exactly same memory that Wintel PC's use. You don't have to buy the RAM from Apple.

2. cost of Macs for years has been the same, or slightly lower than an equivalent spec. Dell. However, there are nearly always cheaper Dell configs. For example, you can't even buy a Dell laptop with 6-pin firewire because it puts the cost of manufacture up substantially, and most people won't know the difference. (All macs have 6-pin firewire)

3. the majority of PC hardware add-ons are in fact hardware compatible with Macs. Sometimes there is no driver software, but often, the manufacturers and retailers simply don't bother to market OS X compatibility. And there are areas where the Mac is probably more competent than Windows (eg bluetooth).

4. there are interesting times ahead. Xbox and playstation are going PowerPC (ie not intel). What is the Mac mini if not a console with a PC operating system? Will Apple have that market to themselves, or will MS be forced to partly strangle the Windows cash cow by putting out a Windows OS for consoles?
 
ancientgeek said:
4. there are interesting times ahead. Xbox and playstation are going PowerPC (ie not intel). What is the Mac mini if not a console with a PC operating system? Will Apple have that market to themselves, or will MS be forced to partly strangle the Windows cash cow by putting out a Windows OS for consoles?

Microsoft already has a Windows OS for consoles. How else do you think the Xbox runs?

Windows CE already runs on non-intel/amd processors. e.g. Pocket PCs.
Here's a surprising list of processors certified for Windows CE http://msdn.microsoft.com/embedded/usewinemb/ce/supproc/default.aspx including PowerPC
 
Microsoft already has a Windows OS for consoles. How else do you think the Xbox runs?

I am afraid you have missed my point utterly. An ancient geek isn't that naive. The point is that after 15 years MS monopoly, Apple, Sony and IBM will shortly be in a position to get sweet revenge. They've already done 90% of the groundwork.

An Xbox with a keyboard and mouse IS a PC. Of course it CAN run XP or Linux or Mac OS. Xbox is £100 and the PC is £265. That price difference is all Microsoft; part Xbox subsidy (ie xbox games licence fees), and part MS Windows XP Home OEM license fee. These and MS Office are Microsoft's muli-billion dollar cash cows. Everything else loses money (especially xbox hardware) and is there to keep out competition. Users can't run Explorer or Outlook or iTunes on Xbox or PS2 purely because MS says so. And MS says so to protect those enormous license revenues. But the strategy only works while you keep your monopoly.

The mere threat of a console that does everything a consumer wants from a PC better than Windows XP, without paying Microsoft tax, takes away the MS consumer PC monopoly and fatally damages the attractiveness of Xbox. They have to offer PC services on Xbox. If MS stick with Intel for Xbox, they risk losing everything in the (consumer) PC space AND the console space. It's better to adopt a strategy where the down side is sharing the consumer cash cow with other big players and separating the business cash cow off. The long term downside of staying on Intel could be giving the whole monopoly away to someone else. Hence the "crazy" Xbox change to PowerPC.

It's a battle of titans coming up, each trying to monopolise the revenue stream from PC/console/internet/media viewing users worldwide. It's going to be fascinating. And it's going to bad for HP and Dell's consumer PC business.
 
Well your point wasn't very well made first time :)

I now understand and can concur.

Note though that MS already sell XP Embedded (another version, targetted at a market for embedded OS, such as consoles) at a very low unit cost (for the right bulk). They have already made the decisions of what you speak to some extent. They even sell it in a compontized form where the buyer can choose which features are needed (surprising considering the ooh ha about them not being able to separate features in windows.....)
 

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