What made you switch to Mac?

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holmesr

18 posts

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#21182 18-Apr-2008 08:47

Hey there I'm just curious to all of you mac users out there what made you guys want to switch over to a Mac (if you were on PCs beforehand) Spec wise? O/s wise i'd be interested to know.....

[Moderator edit (tonyhughes): Expanded title.]

spazz

266 posts

Ultimate Geek

#124726 18-Apr-2008 13:10

To be honest it was the interface that attracted me.. I'd skinned my PC to look like a Mac so I thought screw it, why waste system resources with an imitation? So i got the real thing, and haven't looked back since.

I was also sick to death of spyware, adware, and having anti-virus software bog my system down. Ew.

Anyway yeah, I was converted within a week of getting my Powerbook G4. Since then I've owned a Macbook, Intel iMac, and now a Macbook Air!

http://walkingisoverrated.com

holmesr

18 posts

Geek

#124731 18-Apr-2008 13:19

Mine was sort of similar, I was looking on the trademe message boards and came across this fliteakite OS X thing so I checked it out and decked out my windows XP to look like OS X and I thought it was kinda cool then I was going past noel leeming and saw a few macs and got curious and had a look thought hmm nah I don't have enough since then I have owned and still own a mac mini and also a Mac book, I don't want to sound like a mac enthusiast but I love my mac everything I need is just there and apparently there's only 4 viruses for Macs and they were Pre OS X 10

rscole86

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#124732 18-Apr-2008 13:25

http://vil.nai.com/vil/default.aspx

I suggest you search on there... a few more than 4 viruses. Yes there are less, but 4?

tonyhughes

Hawkes Bay
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#124733 18-Apr-2008 13:29

I needed a new laptop anyway. Wanted a grunter.
Long time Windows + Linux user.

Wanted to give OSX a try and see what the fuss was about, knowing I could boot camp XP or Vista if it came down to that.

Nice design was important too, the MB lives in the lounge at home.

OSX rocks, and does everything I need it to do (with the exception of an easy+free DVD rip/compress/burn solution), and seems much more stable and hassle free than XP for the things I do - YMMV, and I am not a Mactroll.

Fantastic battery life. Awesome keyboard. Nice UI. Seems to handle sleep mode better than all my other PCs/laptops.

I have never used bootcamp to boot Windows for anything other than install/testing. Performance of XP under Fusion is awesome, and the Vista Boot Camp partition performs "adequately" (Imagine Vista on a P4 2.0GHz with 1GB RAM, and thats what its like under Fusion).

Vista performance under Boot Camp (i.e. natively booted Vista) is blazingly fast.

Tend to use OSX for everything now. I really only have Windows because I support peoples Windows environments, and I teach Windows systems.

holmesr

18 posts

Geek

#124736 18-Apr-2008 13:35

rscole86: http://vil.nai.com/vil/default.aspx

I suggest you search on there... a few more than 4 viruses. Yes there are less, but 4?

You would be correct I was majorly off but there's not a whole lot :)

holmesr

18 posts

Geek

#124737 18-Apr-2008 13:37

anyone that asks me for help looking for a computer I recommend macs they are just super easy pretty much everything the average user will use is there Mail, Safari iTunes its just all there

gehenna

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#124740 18-Apr-2008 13:39

It was when the Mac Mini G4 first came out, I was blown away by the price and form factor. I'd seen screenshots of OS X before but never really had the interest in finding out more about it. But when that little box came out I just knew I had to have it. And so I got it, and have never looked back - 1x iMac 24" and 1x Macbook later (along with dozens of vintage Macs I've got in storage). I just fell into the whole Mac thing completely. Mind you, I don't class myself as a zealot like some people I talk to or things I read online. It's like that whole "man-hating lesbian" stereotype....I think there's a place for Windows and a place for OS X, and each has its merits. There's even the odd spot for Linux ;) I get pretty sick of the biased arrogance I run into quite a lot, that air of superiority. Sad but true.

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holmesr

18 posts

Geek

#124744 18-Apr-2008 13:48

Sadly it is true, there is a few mac users out there who shove in a Pcs face, I still use windows for a few small things and yes it is Vista to be honest yes it does have its hole and let downs but I think its got some pretty useful features the built in search in explorer is handy I used that quite often.

dpw

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#124755 18-Apr-2008 14:18

tonyhughes:

I have never used bootcamp to boot Windows for anything other than install/testing. Performance of XP under Fusion is awesome, and the Vista Boot Camp partition performs "adequately" (Imagine Vista on a P4 2.0GHz with 1GB RAM, and thats what its like under Fusion).

Vista performance under Boot Camp (i.e. natively booted Vista) is blazingly fast.

I am running 2.4GHz MBP with 4 GB of RAM, with 1 GB allocated to the VM. I had vanilla Vista installed in a Boot Camp partition and it ran pretty sluggishly under both Fusion and Parallel. I didn't want to boot into Vista all the time and it annoyed me enough that I finally removed it.

At the last MS Launch Wave we were all given Vista with SP1 so I decided to give it a try. Installed in a Bootcamp partition, and created a Parallel VM for that partition and WOW! I was thoroughly amazed at how much faster it was! Not blazingly fast but it certainly flies along happily way above and beyond P4 2.0GHz with 1GB RAM! I have no idea what exactly gave it the huge improvement - may be the SP1 but who knows. I have VS2005 and 2008 installed, along with SQL 2005 Express and Oracle 10g Express, and I happily code in Parallel VM. I'd love to know if anyone else notice the performance difference...

D.

Android user, software developer, a semi-typical (not a gamer) geek, and a Bernese Mountain Dog nut!

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MattD

663 posts

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#124808 18-Apr-2008 16:58

The Power Mac G5 dual 2.5 was announced as fastest personal computer and performance of Photoshop over Windows versions for digital workflow. I had been envious of the simplicity and use-ability factors and iLife software. (hardware looks much cooler than beige and dark grey boxes from Dell and clones and the Cinema Display topped it off). Since then we have 3 Macs in house, Cinema Displays, Airport networking (x3) couple of Apple TV units, numerous iPods.... just waiting for the 3G iPhone.

Plenty of colleagues family and friends have since switched. Father bought an iMac purely to watch his grandchildren on full screen iChat (plus mother is tinkering with iLife suite). The amount of support calls I take for managing various family computers, is nearly non existent, compared to a weekly issue for over 5 years.

chakkaradeep

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#124910 19-Apr-2008 12:11

Its because of Hardware. And also with Bootcamp, I can run Windows/Linux. So, why should I need a PC ?

That said, Leopard is also really good and I am enjoying the offerings of Apple, especially iLife'08, .MAC etc.,

Regards,
Chaks

Desktop : Intel Quad Core Q9400 2.66GHz - 8GB RAM - 500 GB + 500 GB HDD - NVidia GeForce 9800GT - LG246WH Flatron Display - Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise with Hyper-V
Virtual Machine : Powered by Hyper-V and VMWare Workstation
Laptop: HP dv7-3004TX Entertainment Notebook PC | HP Touchsmart tx2 1119au - Windows 7 Ultimate x64
Mac: iMac 21.5" Snow Leopard
Mobile : iPhone 3GS

holmesr

18 posts

Geek

#125008 19-Apr-2008 22:53

Speaking of .Mac accounts has anyone seen or heard of Microsofts version of it? I got an email about it the other day its called windows skdrive and gives you 5 gigabytes of online storage free how much do you get with .Mac this could be interesting.....

chakkaradeep

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#125015 20-Apr-2008 05:37

holmesr: Speaking of .Mac accounts has anyone seen or heard of Microsofts version of it? I got an email about it the other day its called windows skdrive and gives you 5 gigabytes of online storage free how much do you get with .Mac this could be interesting.....

Windows Live Services is not equivalent to .Mac

Please keep this thread with its topic. If you want to start a totally different discussion, please create a new topic. Thanks.

Mark

1653 posts

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#125230 21-Apr-2008 10:26

I switched because I wanted as idiot proof a computer as possible :-)

I've been doing computery stuff at a very high-end level for many many moons and when I get home I don't want to have to faff around with my home computer .. I just wanted it to work!

PC gaming is not my thing, just web browsing, e-mail and other various downloading stuff ... games are for the PS3.

OSX fitted the bill nicely as it is guarenteed to work on the Apple hardware, uptime of the machine is excellent and the Mac Mini is a nice low exelectricity consuming box.

Mark