Comments

1. 
   Jacob W said over 1 year ago

   I use PCs and Macs on a daily basis. I am a 17 yr old programmer. At home I mainly use PCs with a Mac server for compatibility testing. While at school however, I use Macs for my Yearbook class for design and picture editing. PCs are great for their customization and the .NET framework. I have tons of compilers and editing environments that I can use for programming. They range from Dev-CPP to Visual CPP to Notepad++. I’m very limited on a Mac and am not a huge fan of XCode. However, I do like being able to sit down and just start working on my pictures and design projects without any hassle. I can sit down, connect to the server we use and get to work. They’re both good, but for different things.
2. 
   Justin said over 2 years ago

   Hi, I’m 14 and growing up to be a web designer and graphics designer. I own a PC and use it everyday (that is not a joke) because I cannot live without dreamweaver and photoshop. I am seriously considering getting a macbook, but it will take me about a year on a paperound:
   52 Wks, £15 a month = £780
   But if I do a double paperound earning £30 quid a week then I might get there sooner.
   PC sucks.
3. 
   Peter said over 2 years ago

   I switched to Mac about a year ago… Just a regular white MacBook. But I must say, I’ve never had a better computer. Of course, there a things I miss from Windows (but not many), as for instance the cut function in Finder. But it’s things you can get used to. OS X has a way better interface, once you get used to it, you can tell it’s a lot more user minded than XP. So I love my Mac, and I’ll never turn back. But that doesn’t mean I’m gonna start a war with Windows users. I like OS X, they like XP, and that’s it.
4. 
   Phill said over 2 years ago

   As a graphic designer for a University in the UK, I use a iMac all day. I find the iMac very useful because I can run dual boot, thus allowing me both platforms for testing and also I can access software for both windows and OSX.

   However, I have a PC at home, top spec with 30″ Dell 3007wfp and find it much much faster then the 24″ iMac.

   When I say faster, im talking about all aspects of useage; design, gaming, browsing the web… The PC at home cost quite a bit less then my 24″ iMac and thats with a 30″ screen.

   For me, if its my money, I would buy PC all day long, if im at work and someone else is paying, apple all day long.

   Good article, I am also pretty sick of reading fan boy blogs. Use whatever suits you best and respect that different options suit different people to yourself.
5. 
   Paul said over 2 years ago

   @Design Pixi:
   I have SVN set up on my mac and collaborate with our programmer in the office and share files through our rep quite easily and hassle free. The Mac solution is not as good as Tortoise but it gets the job done. Look into http://scplugin.tigris.org/servlets/ProjectDocumentList
   Funny how everyone is switching to Mac. I must admint that since switching to my MPB 17″ about a year ago I have been more productive and I have a new found love for some of the things that became “every-day-tasks”. I am a web designer/developer and I use Textmate every day. Some of the features I love about the Mac OS X is the clean and useable inteface (read: sexy) and how it handles PDF’s natively. Automator has enabled me to do some funky things that I would have battled to do on my Win machine or I would have had to purchase software to do so. Being a web designer and coder I often have to re-visit good ol Win for x-browser testing and for this I run Paralells on a seperate boot partition so I can either run Win whilst in OS X or I can boot into Win to play some of my Fav games, like Neverwinter Nights. My MPB is a truly revolutionary piece of quality hardware and worth every penny. It travells with me everywhere I go and works all day long (at home and at the office) and it still looks as good as the day I gought it.
6. 
   Martin said over 2 years ago

   Mac rules windows sucks!!! just kidding :)

   I switched to macbook pro about a year ago, I am a designer and coder and what really won it for me was some of the amazing software that is only available on mac. Coda for example is a program I use daily.

   I also find the mac interface a lot nicer to work with.

   I do still have a windows pc that I use occasionally but only for personal things like gaming.
7. 
   Rogie said over 2 years ago

   I am really liking the honest opinions expressed here. It’s really nice to hear real stories from real people, rather than the fabricated/filtered ones from ads and from Microsoft or Apple.

   It seems pretty overwhelming that most people that read this blog feel that OSX is superior to Vista/XP, however this is a design blog and tends to bring a certain sort of people if you know what I mean.

   I’d really love to hear a success story of a PC user that loves using maybe a VoodooPC or some sort of laptop and the set of application that he/she uses on a daily basis.

   Thanks @all for all the great conversation.
8. 
   Tony El Batal said over 2 years ago

   Well, I’ve been using PC and Windows for 14 years now, but this year I switched to MacBook Pro 17. Well what I can simply say is, Apple knows what they are doing. They listen to what people wants in an OS and a computer. I never use Windows anymore, expect at work. And I am convincing them to get some iMacs here. The OS is simply simple, all the features you need are there. Also, the MacBook is really of excellent hardware quality, unlike my 2 old toshibas. Great work Apple. I also own an iPhone (owned it before the MacBook Pro) and it’s a stunning phone too.
9. 
   Design Pixi said over 2 years ago

   @fssalaska: AGREED.

   I switched to a Mac back in November of ‘07. The reason being? My HP laptop stopped booting and my warranty ran out.

   I did NOT want to make the switch since I knew there would be some time required to learn the OS (it took me 2 days), lack of gaming (though I’m too old play), and minimal support for Windows applications (which I later found work a rounds).

   I am happy that I made the switch (wonder why I hadn’t made it earlier). I am a developer so I knew that there were going to be some things that I will not be able to use on my Mac. Boy was I wrong! Textmate = BFF.

   I guess the only reason for me to use Vista or XP are company applications like TortoiseSVN and Outlook (Entourage is still not there yet).
10. 
    fssalaska said over 2 years ago

    I switched to Mac, as a gamer it was hard but I’m not homosexual and Vista is ! So it was time for me and Winblows to part ways.

    I love my Mac Pro no problems ” EVER ”
    Once you go Mac you never go back, baby !
11. 
    Uli said over 2 years ago

    What I love about my PC (it´s not around, I don´t even remember what it is, just some PC, bought 5 years ago): the desktop – it does NOT act like my real life desktop – everything is next to each other, and I find stuff easier, instead of having to move stuff around to find windows underneath others (just like in real life – but what´s the benefit of having to search trough everything?).

    What I love about my Mac (MacBookPro 17″): it looks good. But then again – isn´t it supposed to be a tool, not a piece of (in germany at least) rather expensive decoration? But in my line of business it´s still the most often used platform and therefor agencies etc require their work done mac-based…

    Both: they´ve gotten faster, and more reliable since I started working on computers; being faster I sometimes wish back old times… save a pic, and be free to have a coffee, a chat and a cigarette, because the computer will definitely be busy the next 15 min… being more reliable – well, that´s nice, I just don´t feel that ‘close’ to the machine nowadays, it´s just less human, without all the little bugs ;)

    I agree – use common sense in valuating macs and pcs, don´t be a blind follower of brands.
12. 
    Contra said over 2 years ago

    @Carlos: Apple copying MS? You should watch Pirates of the Silicon Valley..

    Bought a MacBook Pro almost a year ago for college, almost never saw one before then, to find out 50% of my classmates have one. They helped me out with some cool apps and tricks, and Windows has become a pain since then..
13. 
    Yonghwee said over 2 years ago

    I’ve been using a Mac for over 3 years now and the switch was probably one of the best decision I’ve made since birth! There is still a need to use Windows and a PC for school but everything else is done on an aging iBook! (=
14. 
    Chris said over 2 years ago

    My first computer was a Power Mac Performa 630 and I loved it. Cost damn near £4000 at the time with all the bells and whistles attached. All of my friends had PC’s but the Mac could do things the PC couldn’t dream of.

    In those days the hardware of the PC and the Mac were completely different and only recently has the Mac moved to X86 and X64 architecture. Today, there is little or no difference between the hardware so the good ol’ Power PC processors that singled out the Macs as graphical workhorses are no longer used.

    It used to be that if you worked with graphics you had a Mac but now there is no hardware advantage it comes down to the software and the price.

    Mac OSX is very pretty and the interface is intuitive and easy to use BUT its also very buggy, there is limited driver support for third party devices AND the most crucial factor for me…..mac products are hellishly expensive.

    And thats what it comes down to for me, if I costed a Mac and a PC of the same spec the Mac is always a huge ammount more expensive. The difference in price would allow me to go for a better processor, graphics card and more memory in the PC. So the PC in those terms wins for me.

    Vista is a decent OS and most of its initial problems came down to poor third party driver support. With drivers crashing left right and centre it was bound to tarnish its reputation.
    But its a good looking and usable OS. Maybe not as sleek and shiny as OS X but never the less, I can game on my PC, I can work on my PC and thats what I want my computer to do.

    When Mac release OS X as a stand alone product then I shall probably buy that and have it dual boot with Vista.
    That way I have the best of both worlds.
15. 
    Brian said over 2 years ago

    I use a PC/XP in the office and I don’t mind it at all.

    I use an iMac and a Macbook at home. I much prefer the Macs for design as things appear visually sharper and softer in the interface. This aesthetic component proves to provide a considerate value for design.

    I do web development on both. There are +/- on each.

    Programs like iChat are nice. I think my productivity is higher on OS X due to the flexibility of the workspace.
16. 
    daemonx said over 2 years ago

    I’m not into extremes of both. I respect both sides their strength and weaknesses. Right now, I work on an iMac during night and WinXP, Vista on PC during the day. When playing with I’d go for Linux (no specific distros).

    Average people say Vista sucks, I think they’re too narrow minded. Computing on a specific platform meant to change for better or worse. But anyway let Microsoft prove it self.
17. 
    JC said over 2 years ago

    i like the windows taskbar and start menu, and the way i can cut/paste folder paths, but that’s it.

    I work on both mac and PC and definitely find the adobe suite far more stable in OS X. I have daily crashes in XP.

    But yeah, the taskbar is a great device and i miss it when i use OS X. Im not a huge fan of the dock really – it just isnt functional enough. Also i cant stand ’stacks’ in leopard.

    But then things like time machine, spaces, stability and the geeneral ease of use and reliability of OS X make it my favourite, especially for work.
18. 
    Zachary said over 2 years ago

    I’m split. I personally end up preferring Mac. I can have so much more going on on my Mac and it keeps ticking. RIght now, I am doing a Blender fluid simulation at high quality (resource intensive) as well as having Mail, Safari, iTunes, and various other applications running. No problems. On my XP upstairs, it can have FireFox open and maybe one other application before it starts having problems. Yet my Mac is doing a lot more and still ticking away at a great pace. And I’ve had it for a couple years, so you can’t say it’s brand new. I’m not sure why, but I like XP for some reason. Although I HATE Vista. It makes everything slow, unless you get a really really good computer. I’ve used a bunch of Vista computers, many of them more technically powerful than my MacBook Pro, but they just don’t run as well. However, Macs aren’t perfect either. I have had to take my MagSafe power adapter in twice on warranty (the connector melted…) and my DVD burner just stopped working. On top of that, my screen has been buzzing since I got it but the people at the Authorized Reseller have no clue how to fix it. But the XP has had problems too. The motherboard melted for one. Then the hard drive had troubles. Mine are annoyances, but the XP had problems. Finally, the freezing problem. I don’t use my XP for anything intensive anymore because it just can’t do it without crashing. My Mac usually crashes when I am coding and send something into an infinite loop. Oops. Other than that, sometimes I overload it. But I can usually Force Quit the program before it completely freezes. So while XP is good, Vista sucks, and OS X just comes in over both of them. That’s my two cents. Well, maybe a bit more. But oh well.
19. 
    James said over 2 years ago

    I’d have to disagree with you Krista.
    I use a PC at home with XP and another with Vista on it, while Vista SP1 is a lot better than XP, I still find my Mac Pro at work is a lot more stable.

    I’ve never had it crash at all with Leopard OSX.

    The applications are much simpler in ways of installing and using, and feel less clunky (coda, transmit etc).

    I use VMWare Fusion to load XP within to test websites in IE6 and 7 and build the websites on the Mac so all in all the Mac does all platforms well for multi-platform browser testing.

    I think the design industry is more a Mac based platform so saying not enough people use Mac is an understatement I know dozens of people and companies using Macs for design and programming.

    PC’s are cheaper as there is more market/competition for them, Macs are more expensive but since they moved to INTEL chips they are definitely a lot more reliable, stable and faster than the previous generations.

    That and you dont need to upgrade Macs as often as PC’s :)
20. 
    krista said over 2 years ago

    PC for the win. Macs are just overcomplicated and overrated (at least in their commercials) They say they do not crash but they do, oh they do. And can anyone say pinwheel of death? That and no good games for it. You can buy a good PC for what you can get a mac for that will last fvr and you can play games on it. Mac also likes to claim “no viruses” thats because not enough people use Macs to make it worth writing viruses for.

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