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Mac. PCs come across as kinda nerdy...all that tech-geek lingo being thrown around while you, the novice user, have no idea what any of it means.

You know, IT-guy kind of nerdy. Helpful when all else fails, but other than that...bupkes.

This topic, for the umpeenth time - why?

dvpierce wrote:

You obviously don't know what a symlink, mount point or fsck is.

OS X has plenty of room for nerdiness. Windows has plenty of room for people who click on the picture of an E and think Word is their operating system.

True enough. But only power users and administrators, for the most part, need to know what those terms mean.

P.S. You didn't have to put it like that. I know precisely what symlinks, mount points, and fsck are. Symlink = alias (the kind most users are familiar with; there are also "hard links" and "soft links"), mount point = where a volume is located (for the primary hard drive, it's usually "/"), fsck = filesystem check (usually run in single-user mode if it's on a Mac).

P.P.S. Mac users only see the nerdiness if they want to (often via Terminal), but Windows users get those dialog boxes with the cryptic error codes (just a generalization to keep my point simple and easy to read; I'm sure there are plenty of stable Windows systems out there).

Last edited by roostajoe (2008-04-04 1:59 pm)

From my experience,

Mac Pros:
• Macs far outlive PCs. (I have an iMac G3 running 10.4.11)
• Apple seems to be one of the only brands people will pay the extra dime for, time and time again.
• Enthusiastic developer and user bases.
• The cheesy phrase "Once you go Mac, you never go back" is true for probably 99% of Mac owners.

PC Pros:
• Price
• Multiple brands to choose from (that could also be a con, I guess)
• Honestly, I can't think of any others.

ukimalefu wrote:

On price:

A similarly configured brand name PC like Dell or HP or Alienware to name a few, costs about the same (maybe a little less, maybe a little MORE) than a Mac.

A no-name, build-yourself PC, costs a lot less, but could potentially be more problematic and/or have lower quality parts (you get what you pay for).

Agreed. It was always funny listening to some people complain about Mac prices by comparing a given Mac to the most basic PC platform, but when you ask them what machine they own it turns out that they have the fanciest AlienWare PC (which usually was MORE expensive than a comparable Mac).

A bit of an exaggeration, but you get the point.

I'm not sure of this either but I think that the RubyCocoa and PyObjC bridges are comprehensive. But I don't think this detracts away from your point that Obj-C is pretty much what you're stuck with.

roostajoe wrote:

HackerJax wrote:

You can that for pretty much any OS out there.
Linux has tons of free software development tools.
Windows has tons of free software development tools.

I don't see this as a good plus for the Mac, the core languages and development frameworks are much more varied on the Linux and Windows Side.

Unless a lot has changed, the last I checked you were stuck using Objective-C in some form as this was the only language with a full set of Cocoa bindings on OS X. (this was a couple of years ago, so maybe thats not the case now)

All right, Xcode isn't the only free* IDE out there. And it sure isn't the easiest to use. But it's okay, if you haven't had a taste of anything else.

But why do you say "stuck" with Objective-C? It's always been good enough for me. (Although, I must admit, my programming requirements aren't extensive. Notepads and application launchers are easy.)

* Well, it's only free if you spend money on Mac OS X and/or the computer it comes with. So, in a sense, I guess it's not.

P.S. I just want to know this: do the other software development tools you mentioned come with the OS?

I wasn't trying to imply anything bad about Objective-C, I've got no real problems with it but I haven't used it in years.

What I mean is that if you are a developer you are pretty much forced to learn it if you want to create professional apps on OS X. Your options for making cocoa apps are limited if you want to use another language, such as java, pascal etc. etc.

Depending on the Linux distro you get, you may or may not get the dev tools with the OS.

On the Windows side if you install XP you'll have the basic MS Scripting IDE, on vista you'll have the full .net framework but will be lacking an IDE. you'll need to download the free dev tools on windows, which MS and others provide.

Mac. You get to discuss computers and related topics with an excellent user group!

PC. If you've had a problem, chances are someone else has had it as well.