Mac/pc/linux

Alright, what is the big deal? I just want to know why (insert word Mac, PC, or Linux here,) allegedly suck from some standards and why they are the only way to go.

I have a limted understanding of the topic, but I'll say what I know...

From my experience, PCs are the most accesible and user-friendly while they sometimes have stupid/pointless base settings as well as are sometimes unreliable or aren't too deep in certain types of options.

Macs on the other hand are sometimes innacessible and have annoying features, though they can be counted on and are abundant with user-control.

I have no experience with Linux.

What is there that causes the rift? What pros/cons am I missing? Do you even disagree with my pros/cons?

What I can gather: PC is for people who can handle a complex computer, but don't want to mess about too much with it, or people who prefer to be able to mod the computer.

Mac is for people who prefer buying a better computer more often because they can handle using a simpler computer to do cool stuff, or just using a simple, more user-friendly less (virus, spyware, etc)-prone computer for occasional use.

Linux is... Have you ever read the Unix references on Dilbert? Like that, only less ZZ Top and more hardcore computer users only. And free. Even less probability of encountering malware than an Apple system.

I mostly use PC, but only out of habit. I occasionally use Apple (must.. destroy... iMac...) but don't own one, and am planing to set up Linux on the computer I'm building from spare parts. I say this all is a stupid argument anyway, like 'cube vs xbox vs ps2. Different systems for different users/purposes.

PC
PCs dominate the business market because of Microsoft Office and because those people are trained to use Windows and know how to use it efficiently and have support staff who keep their registries clean.

The average user will rack up thousands and thousands of registry dead links in the life of the PC and there is no way to clean them or defragment them with the software that comes with it. They are also by far the poorest performer when it comes to security.

Windows also allows files to get fragmented, this is a legacy of yesteryear when computers were too slow and didn't have the hard drive space for on-the-fly defragmentation.

Another legacy to its former self is aggressive page swapping, it constantly swaps things in and out of RAM, which makes it run hot. Aggressive page swapping used to make commonly used programs load faster, but now it just takes up power.


Mac
Macs dominate the media market because they had specialized hardware for faster media rendering and production. Not to mention that all graphics tools were developed on the Mac from Photoshop to Maya.

It's best for the average consumer because Apple is known for ease of use. Everything on the Mac works just like everything else on the Mac and like the iPod. It's also the best for the average person to use media because of iTunes and Quicktime, both support the latest codecs and run very quickly.

Other than the specialized media hardware, a Mac is essentially just a high end PC, in fact Windows will run on the iMac better than it runs on most PCs. PC World said that the Macbook Pro was the best notebook to run Vista on, beating all other top-of-the-line PC notebooks.

The major Mac problem is that it has some legacy stuff too. The current OSX has special software for computers with multiple processors and computers with only one processor is the default. No Macs have only one CPU, but they have to support the old PPC computers. Snow Leopard is supposed to fix this being Intel only it has it's process swapping redone for optimization on multiple cores.

With the new inclusion of OpenCL the entire Mac and Mac gaming experience will get much faster. It will allow the computer to use the GPU as another processor so that regular programs run much faster and can use extra CPUs as graphics processors to make graphics much faster.


Linux
Linux dominates the embedded market because it is by far the smallest and fastest operating system. It also dominates the server market because it has is the most secure.

Certain distros are easy to use, but most are largely command line, which makes them impractical for the average user. Dell and IBM both ship machines with Ubuntu on them, but I don't think they sell as many of them as they do XP machines.

Linux's major problem is non uniformity. Programs in it have been written by hundreds of different people and companies and they all put their own twist on things. Nothing is integrated with anything else and it causes frustration and problems finding features.



There is another modern OS called Solaris you know :P

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by spockman

What is there that causes the rift?

---

Do you want the long version or the short version?