Comparable Intel to Powermac G5?

[micrors4racer]

What is a comparable intel system to a powermac G5 late 2005 model with a dual-core 2.0ghz and 1gb ram?

 

[shoota]

ummm... pentium 4

 

[CEpeep]

1st gen Macbook Pro is probably comparable, depending on which GPU the Powermac had. If you just want something better, every single Mac you can buy today, including the low-end Mini, will stomp a G5 into the ground.

 

[YeuEmMaiMai]

ummm... pentium 4

Try a Pentium III lol just kidding PPC is quite different than intel and a direct comparison is not easy to do.....

http://www.anandtech.com/show/1936/9

Anad states comparable to a first gen Intel Core series chip- somewhere between a Core Solo @ 1.83GHz and a Core 2 Duo @ 1.83GHz

 

[micrors4racer]

Ok thats good enough as long as its faster than my skt 478 P4 3.0ghz. Just sucks you cant keep upgrading the os no matter how old the system is like a pc.

 

[Peteman100]

Ok thats good enough as long as its faster than my skt 478 P4 3.0ghz. Just sucks you cant keep upgrading the os no matter how old the system is like a pc.

Its the price of progress. On the plus side, any computer you get now is going to be crazy fast in comparison.

 

[shoota]

Unless you have a reason to use osx then you're sorta just side stepping instead of upgrading. But i would probably rather use a G5 than a P4 anyways.

 

[CEpeep]

Ok thats good enough as long as its faster than my skt 478 P4 3.0ghz. Just sucks you cant keep upgrading the os no matter how old the system is like a pc.

Sure you can. Linux PPC is updated regularly and works fine on that G5. You can run the latest version of Fedora, Debian, etc. You can't run Mac OS because the PPC architecture isn't even supported anymore, but the computer can easily be upgraded to a modern OS.

 

[Dan_D]

Try a Pentium III lol just kidding PPC is quite different than intel and a direct comparison is not easy to do.....

http://www.anandtech.com/show/1936/9

Anad states comparable to a first gen Intel Core series chip- somewhere between a Core Solo @ 1.83GHz and a Core 2 Duo @ 1.83GHz

That's probably as close to the mark as you are ever going to get. Basically a G5 is a dinosaur in today's computing world. For it's day, it was an impressive chip, despite being relegated to Macs in the consumer market.

 

[UnknownSouljer]

Ok thats good enough as long as its faster than my skt 478 P4 3.0ghz. Just sucks you cant keep upgrading the os no matter how old the system is like a pc.

Apple places a hard limitation whereas Windows is a soft one. It isn't entirely true to say that you can just keep upgrading PC software despite the age of the machine. An obvious example is that a 32bit CPU will never be able to upgrade to a 64 bit operating system. The cutoff Apple made from PPC to Intel in a lot of respects is the same. In order to have progress on their new platform support for the old platform had to go away. In a similar manner it's going to happen again with Mountain Lion as Apple is pushing for 100% 64-bit operating rather than any sort of half-compromise.

Additionally as a less obvious soft limitation is just sheer speed. Windows XP spoiled a lot of users in the sense of being the only operating system they had to worry about for 10 years, but a P3 and P4 are not going to perform as well in Vista/7 as XP. Sure you could still run it, but for some of us the speed loss wouldn't be acceptable (That "Windows 7 Ready!" or whatever campaign comes to mind.) I believe in addition to not wanting to continue supporting old systems for the above reason, Apple also puts barriers in place so that there will be a continuous feeling of fluidity in the OS.

 

[YeuEmMaiMai]

Apple places a hard limitation whereas Windows is a soft one. It isn't entirely true to say that you can just keep upgrading PC software despite the age of the machine. An obvious example is that a 32bit CPU will never be able to upgrade to a 64 bit operating system. The cutoff Apple made from PPC to Intel in a lot of respects is the same. In order to have progress on their new platform support for the old platform had to go away. In a similar manner it's going to happen again with Mountain Lion as Apple is pushing for 100% 64-bit operating rather than any sort of half-compromise.

Additionally as a less obvious soft limitation is just sheer speed. Windows XP spoiled a lot of users in the sense of being the only operating system they had to worry about for 10 years, but a P3 and P4 are not going to perform as well in Vista/7 as XP. Sure you could still run it, but for some of us the speed loss wouldn't be acceptable (That "Windows 7 Ready!" or whatever campaign comes to mind.) I believe in addition to not wanting to continue supporting old systems for the above reason, Apple also puts barriers in place so that there will be a continuous feeling of fluidity in the OS.

the thing is that 32bit windows can still rum apps from 20+ years ago and still run even older DOS applications that do not require direct hardware access....the x64 bit platform can run pretty much any 32bit windows app that does not require direct hardware access.

Remember the game "take no prisoners"? it still runs fine on Windows 7 x64 dispite being released in Feb 1998 over 14 years ago.....since it has a 16bit installer you have to manually install the game but it works.

 

[UnknownSouljer]

the thing is that 32bit windows can still rum apps from 20+ years ago and still run even older DOS applications that do not require direct hardware access....the x64 bit platform can run pretty much any 32bit windows app that does not require direct hardware access.

Remember the game "take no prisoners"? it still runs fine on Windows 7 x64 dispite being released in Feb 1998 over 14 years ago.....since it has a 16bit installer you have to manually install the game but it works.

Okay, are we talking about operating systems or are we talking about the programs that run on them? I was under the impression of talking about updates in-so-far-as operating systems. Applications are a different subject entirely. However I should note that with Rosetta (recently retired) the entire PPC library was available. However Apple realized something important, if it wanted to move developers away from Carbon to Cocoa the only way to get them to do it was by phasing it out, otherwise there would be no motivation for them to do so.

That may not be a popular decision, but it is by in large what is best for the ecosystem... Apple is very smart in the sense of understanding how important unification is. Windows wants to support everything, which is great, up to a point. Legacy weighs everything down whether or not developers or end users want to admit it or not. Other than games, it's pretty hard to name anything that anyone would want to run that is legacy. If we're honest, the newest stuff is generally the best anyway. And just for the record, I have recently enjoyed playing Shogo on Windows 7 which is probably one of my favorite games from 1998. However, given the option between forward thinking and excellent and a need to support everything in legacy, I would choose the former.

 

[YeuEmMaiMai]

^ That's why windows is the BEST OS out there overall it is providing new updated features while still maintaing enormous backwards compatability and the widest possible hardware base to run on. Apple will NEVER have that.......and that is why they cannot make inroads into the PC market.

 

[UnknownSouljer]

^ That's why windows is the BEST OS out there overall it is providing new updated features while still maintaing enormous backwards compatability and the widest possible hardware base to run on. Apple will NEVER have that.......and that is why they cannot make inroads into the PC market.

Okay. What mission critical software do you use that is 10 years old? Backwards compatibility is nice, but is completely unnecessary... unless you consider games to be mission critical. Saying that a particular OS is the best ever because of backwards compatibility is by in large moot.
Just as a side note, they already are making inroads on the PC market. They sell more laptops than any other single manufacturer.

 

[CEpeep]

Just as a side note, they already are making inroads on the PC market. They sell more laptops than any other single manufacturer.

This. Every single year they sell even more computers than the previous one. What market are they encroaching on if not PC?

 

[micrors4racer]

I got this G5 as a trade for a laptop that i never used anyway so no loss and my computer (P4 presscot 3.0ghz 2gigs ram 7800GS) is way old anyway,about as old as this g5, so I decided to try it out to get a feel for OSX and so far im loving it! Just gotta get used to using older software that works fine anyway. PPC has been dead for what 6 years? I think that is a good enough time to switch hardware for those who had a g5 originally.

I would like newer software and hardware (this thing wont even run netflix) so I can continue to use OSX on the daily. What used Mac Pro model would be best for the money and compatibility for the newest upcoming OSX (mountain lion?) I heard that the oldest intel mac pros cant even run that and that would suck if I dropped the money on those, I am looking for something that will last the next 5 years or so.

Or should I spend 500-700 toward a new PC build and run hackintosh because I do like the os and I have a bunch of G5 cases to stuff it into.

 

[UnknownSouljer]

I got this G5 as a trade for a laptop that i never used anyway so no loss and my computer (P4 presscot 3.0ghz 2gigs ram 7800GS) is way old anyway,about as old as this g5, so I decided to try it out to get a feel for OSX and so far im loving it! Just gotta get used to using older software that works fine anyway. PPC has been dead for what 6 years? I think that is a good enough time to switch hardware for those who had a g5 originally.

I would like newer software and hardware (this thing wont even run netflix) so I can continue to use OSX on the daily. What used Mac Pro model would be best for the money and compatibility for the newest upcoming OSX (mountain lion?) I heard that the oldest intel mac pros cant even run that and that would suck if I dropped the money on those, I am looking for something that will last the next 5 years or so.

Or should I spend 500-700 toward a new PC build and run hackintosh because I do like the os and I have a bunch of G5 cases to stuff it into.

Rumor is the Mac Pro refresh is around the corner. I would wait until those come out and then get what is the current gen for less, if you're purely trying to get in at a lower cost level.

 

[YeuEmMaiMai]

Okay. What mission critical software do you use that is 10 years old? Backwards compatibility is nice, but is completely unnecessary... unless you consider games to be mission critical. Saying that a particular OS is the best ever because of backwards compatibility is by in large moot.
Just as a side note, they already are making inroads on the PC market. They sell more laptops than any other single manufacturer.

Obviously you do not get out much do you?

As for needing backwards compatability

Windows 7 has xp mode becuse "no one uses it"

There are banks out there that STILL RUN WINDOWS NT 4.0 or 2000 and not to mention the crapload of XP users out there......

So go a head a praise apple all you want but fact is Windows IS overall the best OS you can get for the obvious reasons I mentioned previously.

*goes back to playing Heritec 2 and other ancient games like Unreal

as to apple selling more laptops, no not true they include Ipad numbers so please try again. In terms of actual shipments they don't even make the top 5 when it comes to global PC sales

 

[micrors4racer]

Rumor is the Mac Pro refresh is around the corner. I would wait until those come out and then get what is the current gen for less, if you're purely trying to get in at a lower cost level.

What do you think they will get down to? My budget is only about 800 at the most

 

[UnknownSouljer]

I have Windows 7 installed on a machine, although honestly it serves no purpose to me other than gaming. I therefore am not sure what "getting out much" means in reference to any of your arguments. I could actually make the counter-argument that those that don't get out as much and are computer nerds (specifically nerds glued to the internet) would actually know more about this topic than those who "got out more."


Let's examine your arguments. First. Stating that old machines are running old versions of their operating system defeats your own argument. We're talking about backwards compatibility. If you're using an older operating system you have no need for backwards compatibility because you're using an OS that would be running those old programs natively.

Second. Windows NT and Windows 2k aren't currently supported by Microsoft. If a bank is running them, I would highly recommend moving to another bank immediately. This is especially true if they are using any of those machines to protect or safeguard personal information. If you want to bank in a place like that, go ahead, it's your money. XP is on it's way out. In fact, Microsoft wanted it to be phased out as well, but there are so many users using it that complained about their phasing it out, they gave into the wining. Making the argument that people are using older OS's still doesn't mean anything in-so-far-as making an operating system great. I could talk about a bunch of Mac's running OSX 10.4 Tiger, OS 10.5 Leopard, and 10.6 Snow Leopard. Great, yes there are people using old operating systems and therefore running old programs. This has nothing to do with backwards compatibility or fantastic operating systems.

Third, yes, Windows has an XP mode. You still haven't mentioned a single mission critical program that would require backwards compatibility. So far, you've mentioned Hexen which is hardly mission critical, and most gamers have moved on to you know... modern gaming. You also made a blanket statement about banks using old machines. Fantastic. The sad part is, yes I realize that there are a lot of companies using outdated software. I've worked for some. But they don't have a need for backwards compatibility because again, they aren't running Windows 7, they're runnings much older OS's. Those same companies when upgrading, would not only be upgrading the OS, they would be upgrading all of the hardware and guess what... they would upgrade all of the mission critical software as well. Any organization with a half-way decent administrator working for a company that actually needs technology will more than likely have no-need for backwards compatibility.
This is even more so in OSX. Sure, a few programs get thrown by the wayside, but nothing that is a deal breaker to all but the most obstinate.

Fourth. Okay, apparently iPad's don't count to you. Does stock price? Does market cap? Does overall value of the company? Does net profit? Gross profit? We're talking about popularity and devices in people's hands. iPads have cannibalized netbooks and laptops. That's a fact. If you want to ignore that, fine, I'll even give that one to you, but in terms of popularity Apple cannot be ignored. Every year their market share grows. Every quarter they break their sales from their previous years quarter.



If the only thing that makes a great OS to you is backwards compatibility, great, I'm glad you found exactly what you're looking for. I'm perfectly happy to use something "less backwards compatible" that is faster in all of my productivity applications and doesn't contain bloat all of Windows' additional bloat. You know what bothers me? Is that without a lot of work Windows 7 is over 20GB.
And if I need to use an older operating system or even Windows... great, I can boot into that or use a VM. But honestly, other than gaming there isn't much of a reason to boot into Windows 7. I haven't bothered in over a month.

Obviously you do not get out much do you?

As for needing backwards compatability

Windows 7 has xp mode becuse "no one uses it"

There are banks out there that STILL RUN WINDOWS NT 4.0 or 2000 and not to mention the crapload of XP users out there......

So go a head a praise apple all you want but fact is Windows IS overall the best OS you can get for the obvious reasons I mentioned previously.

*goes back to playing Heritec 2 and other ancient games like Unreal

as to apple selling more laptops, no not true they include Ipad numbers so please try again. In terms of actual shipments they don't even make the top 5 when it comes to global PC sales

Well, unfortunately it will probably be much more than that. Mac Pro's and Mac's in general retain a good portion of their price in the after market. Honestly it will depend on what you want and what you will be satisfied with.

What do you think they will get down to? My budget is only about 800 at the most

 

[YeuEmMaiMai]

I have Windows 7 installed on a machine, although honestly it serves no purpose to me other than gaming. I therefore am not sure what "getting out much" means in reference to any of your arguments. I could actually make the counter-argument that those that don't get out as much and are computer nerds (specifically nerds glued to the internet) would actually know more about this topic than those who "got out more."


Let's examine your arguments. First. Stating that old machines are running old versions of their operating system defeats your own argument. We're talking about backwards compatibility. If you're using an older operating system you have no need for backwards compatibility because you're using an OS that would be running those old programs natively.

Second. Windows NT and Windows 2k aren't currently supported by Microsoft. If a bank is running them, I would highly recommend moving to another bank immediately. This is especially true if they are using any of those machines to protect or safeguard personal information. If you want to bank in a place like that, go ahead, it's your money. XP is on it's way out. In fact, Microsoft wanted it to be phased out as well, but there are so many users using it that complained about their phasing it out, they gave into the wining. Making the argument that people are using older OS's still doesn't mean anything in-so-far-as making an operating system great. I could talk about a bunch of Mac's running OSX 10.4 Tiger, OS 10.5 Leopard, and 10.6 Snow Leopard. Great, yes there are people using old operating systems and therefore running old programs. This has nothing to do with backwards compatibility or fantastic operating systems.

Third, yes, Windows has an XP mode. You still haven't mentioned a single mission critical program that would require backwards compatibility. So far, you've mentioned Hexen which is hardly mission critical, and most gamers have moved on to you know... modern gaming. You also made a blanket statement about banks using old machines. Fantastic. The sad part is, yes I realize that there are a lot of companies using outdated software. I've worked for some. But they don't have a need for backwards compatibility because again, they aren't running Windows 7, they're runnings much older OS's. Those same companies when upgrading, would not only be upgrading the OS, they would be upgrading all of the hardware and guess what... they would upgrade all of the mission critical software as well. Any organization with a half-way decent administrator working for a company that actually needs technology will more than likely have no-need for backwards compatibility.
This is even more so in OSX. Sure, a few programs get thrown by the wayside, but nothing that is a deal breaker to all but the most obstinate.

Fourth. Okay, apparently iPad's don't count to you. Does stock price? Does market cap? Does overall value of the company? Does net profit? Gross profit? We're talking about popularity and devices in people's hands. iPads have cannibalized netbooks and laptops. That's a fact. If you want to ignore that, fine, I'll even give that one to you, but in terms of popularity Apple cannot be ignored. Every year their market share grows. Every quarter they break their sales from their previous years quarter.



If the only thing that makes a great OS to you is backwards compatibility, great, I'm glad you found exactly what you're looking for. I'm perfectly happy to use something "less backwards compatible" that is faster in all of my productivity applications and doesn't contain bloat all of Windows' additional bloat. You know what bothers me? Is that without a lot of work Windows 7 is over 20GB.
And if I need to use an older operating system or even Windows... great, I can boot into that or use a VM. But honestly, other than gaming there isn't much of a reason to boot into Windows 7. I haven't bothered in over a month.







Well, unfortunately it will probably be much more than that. Mac Pro's and Mac's in general retain a good portion of their price in the after market. Honestly it will depend on what you want and what you will be satisfied with.

repeating the same old line does not make your point anymore valid

Windows is

A. More secure
B. Runs on a much wider hardware base (ie you are not locked in to a certain revision of hardware)
C. Runs countless apps
D. is contstantly getting new features
E. is updated on an almost weekly basis (patch tuesday)

and I pointed out the fact of NT and 2K to illustrate the need for backwards compatability

btw Windows has 92.1% of the desktop market..........comared to 6.4% for Apple so you do the math.......

 

[CEpeep]

repeating the same old line does not make your point anymore valid

Windows is

A. More secure
B. Runs on a much wider hardware base (ie you are not locked in to a certain revision of hardware)
C. Runs countless apps
D. is contstantly getting new features
E. is updated on an almost weekly basis (patch tuesday)

and I pointed out the fact of NT and 2K to illustrate the need for backwards compatability

btw Windows has 92.1% of the desktop market..........comared to 6.4% for Apple so you do the math.......

If it's more secure, why does it need weekly updates? They're not adding new features in those updates...

 

[micrors4racer]

Found a couple of Mac Pros in the 700-900 range around my area but they all seem to be 2006. Should I look for a 2007 for future support? I dont need anything super fast, even this G5 is fine for me just cant do with the diminishing support like flash or netflix.

 

[CEpeep]

Found a couple of Mac Pros in the 700-900 range around my area but they all seem to be 2006. Should I look for a 2007 for future support? I dont need anything super fast, even this G5 is fine for me just cant do with the diminishing support like flash or netflix.

If you want it to run the upcoming 10.8 (Mountain Lion) you should look for an Early 2008 or newer Mac Pro.
Also, you might want to consider a Mac Mini. The latest one will outperform most older used Mac Pros and costs less than $600.

 

[UnknownSouljer]

repeating the same old line does not make your point anymore valid

Windows is

A. More secure
B. Runs on a much wider hardware base (ie you are not locked in to a certain revision of hardware)
C. Runs countless apps
D. is contstantly getting new features
E. is updated on an almost weekly basis (patch tuesday)

and I pointed out the fact of NT and 2K to illustrate the need for backwards compatability

btw Windows has 92.1% of the desktop market..........comared to 6.4% for Apple so you do the math.......

Okay... well here, I will try to respond again, in the least antagonistic way I can manage.

First, please re-read my post. I've addressed everything you've said point by point. So far if anything, you're repeated your same responses over and over again much more than I have. So, here I'll do it for you again.

A.) Please show me any OSX virus in the wild which has caused any amount of problems for any user. Would you be willing to bet me any amount of money that I would be able to find more viri for Windows?

B.) Sure, this point is valid, but it also is working under the assumption that a large hardware base is needed in order to run programs. The truth is, one of OSX's strengths is that it runs on a limited hardware base. Why? Well in a sense it's similar to how operating systems run on video game consoles, in that there is a finite amount of variables that have to be programmed for. Windows, life you've mentioned, has to support everyone. What does that mean? It means lots of buggy drivers, hardware that is incompatible with one another (through conflicts etc,) and also larger installs.
The reverse question I would ask you, is do you really need tons of hardware options in order to get what you want done?

C.) Does the quantity of apps really matter? It does only to a certain point. If I went and talked about any other nerd topic like say: cellphones, video game consoles, and things of that nature, I think more people would care about two things: 1 that the applications are the best they can be for the platform and 2 that they cover usage requirements. Is 20,000 apps better than 10,000 apps simply because there are more of them? Just so you have a point of reference of where I'm coming from: I've used PC's for over a decade. I've done anything you can imagine with them including, BIOS tweaks, overclocking, watercooling, formatting on a weekly basis in order to run a clean testbed, and things of that nature. Software wise I've used every tweaker and high end game in order to stress test. I used to work for Viperlair.com (before they apparently went defunct) as a contributing editor. I am in no way ignorant of Windows as a platform. I say all of this to say that after moving to OSX there has only been two programs that I couldn't find an equivalent for in OSX. Every productivity based application I use and do I can do significantly faster in OSX than in Windows. Windows 7 has done little to change that. What programs do I need and use? Firefox, uTorrent, Office, Adobe Suite (most specifically Photoshop and Bridge, although I will use Premiere in the future,) Aperture, VLC, Garageband, iTunes, Cog, uTorrent, Netnewswire, and Adium. Do you know what major productivity programs that Windows has that OSX doesn't? I'd love to have you list them, because honestly for 99.999999% of people I don't know of them. So what are all of those applications? Mostly just games. If your computing experience comes down to just games, great. You listed Unreal and Hexen as being an important part of your computing experience. I concede that if you need to play a lot of Hexen and Unreal, you've got OSX beat.

D.) Okay, so is OSX. OSX releases feature updates more often than Windows does. Patch Tuesday by-in-large is patching holes and fixing problems not feature adding. Snow Leopard got up to version **.8 in 2 years. That's 8 new versions of increased features. Then each OS bump adds a slew. Apple claims 500 new features over Snow Leopard on Lion. If we're competing on features for features you will have to at least admit that both operating systems are doing at least that. If you ask me, Apple is doing a lot more. Other than minor tweaks, Windows hasn't changed much since Windows 95. I will give them credit however, 7 at least added a lot of new behaviors such as Windows snapping and maximizing depending on where you drag windows towards. But from 95-Vista, a majority of the actual interface was just making it look more pretty. Of course they did do things to the back end (like the major shift to the NT kernal starting in Windows 2000) but it still worked exactly like before.

E.) Windows is updated on a weekly basis because it has to be. It's called patch Tuesday because that is what it is... a weekly system devised to cover more flaws, holes, and vulnerabilities. It's not like Apple doesn't do patches, because they do. It's just that there isn't holes the size of cruise ships all the time that need patching like Windows does.



Okay you've pointed out that there are people running NT and 2k. But showing that people are running old operating systems doesn't even create a correlation towards needing backwards compatibility. Here is an illustration: did you know that people still have and play original Nintendo systems? How about Super Nintendo systems? Now if I made the statement: "Because people have old Nintendo's and Super Nintendo's, Nintendo should ensure that all future consoles could play these games" you would laugh at how ridiculous that is. That's because when people move up in their hardware, they move up in their software as well.
Organizations that are running these old systems do so because they don't see an need to upgrade. When they upgrade their hardware, they more than likely will upgrade all of their software as well. People are still running OS 10.4, 10.5, and 10.6 like I mentioned. However Apple doesn't just feel like there is and should be a need to offer backwards compatibility carte blanche just because. Apple is ensuring a consistent level of experience and performance by removing this stuff.
How can you ensure that developers know what the future is in terms of coding? How do you ensure that they know to move from Carbon to Cocoa? How do you make sure that everything is coded in 64 bit to move to maximum efficiency? You have two options. Wait for developers to change, or to make it so they have to. Honestly, I'm glad that they have made strategic pushes for these changes because it makes the operating system run tighter and smoother.


Your final point is about popularity. I didn't know we were talking about a popularity contest, I thought we were talking about which operating system is better based upon objective (and of course some subjective) reasoning. Popularity doesn't mean something is better. Once again, I could make an argument that the Honda Civic is better than anything made from: Ferrari, Koenigsegg, Lotus, Lamborghini, Cadillac, Lexus, Acura, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, and other similar manufacturers simply because they have sold more cars. I say all of this once again to illustrate that popularity doesn't mean that something is better. There are other factors to be considered for why something is popular, some of which you have mentioned... like price, distribution, and the number of sellers in the market.





So now that I've answered your questions here are some things to think about. I'm not even asking you to respond, but seriously, just think about them. Here are some reasons I've moved to OSX as my primary environment over Windows.

1.) No hardware conflicts. Also, no drivers put in by many different manufactures. One of Windows strengths is also its weaknesses. Sure Windows supports a lot of hardware but with all of the hardware manufactures finger in the pie it often leads to buggy drivers and or conflicts. Want some examples? AMD as much as I love them has been having a heck of a time trying to make drivers that are stable and give maximum performance. Creative Labs has a history of creating cards that cause IRQ conflicts and drivers that have had many uses so frustrated that they swear them off. This is not even including the entire Vista and OpenAL debacle.
2.) I got sick of tweaking. I used to be a hardcore tweaker as a hobby. Like I mentioned, I did the BIOS tweaking, OCing, watercooling, etc. If you love that hobby, great, you can certainly enjoy all of that on PC's whereas on Mac's generally you can't but this is something I don't care about anymore. I know that some people have mentioned Apple's walled garden as problem because they couldn't tweak. You know what? I get that. Those are the kind of people that always like to work on their car engines or play around and experiment. Great, if you need that as a hobby. I don't. I want the minimum amount of hassles with the maximum amount of productivity. I found that in OSX.
3.) Gaming has become much less of a priority for me, and now I care more about productivity. Windows has the gaming market cornered, no doubt about it. Things have changed recently somewhat. I play SC2 and the Diablo III Beta in OSX happily but by in large everything is coded for Windows. After that however OSX offers a lot of ways to speed up my workflow that Windows doesn't have, nor does it have something that operates in a similar way. Here are some examples: Mission Control (or Expose/Spaces,) Track Pad Gestures, Automator, and the Dashboard. This is not including OSX's hotkeys which are more plentiful and useful than on Windows, Terminal for real access, and Spotlight (I actually use Quicksilver instead, but credit where it is due.) Windows 7 introduces mostly things that involve the mouse. Clicking and dragging to invoke a behavior. Keystrokes are faster. Windows hasn't really introduced anything to do things faster in a long time in general.
4.) Purchasing the hardware and the software for the most part is a pro for me. Okay look, I won't lie, there are somethings I wish I had a few more options on in-so-far-as Mac hardware. Usually that just involves the choice of graphics card as the processors, chipsets, and RAM are more than sufficient. But other than that Apple builds their computers in a way to deliver a set experience. The hardware choices they use allow for a unified style across the board which are: sleek, small, efficient, lower power, and usually less noisy. A person buying a Mac Mini will still get a nice smooth feel in OSX. Just like on an Air, an MBP, or a Mac Pro. Windows on the other hand has had to rely on the "Windows System Assessment" Tool in order the gauge how the system will perform. Windows also had that problem with their "Windows 7 Ready" campaign causing problems because although the hardware with that certification could run 7, the hardware couldn't run it with all of the enhancements on including Aero without extreme performance degradation. Any machine built by Apple is basically guaranteed that it will have a consistent experience, unless we're talking about 5-6+ year old hardware, which is reasonable, as of course that is the same thing that happens on the Windows side as well.


Look, I realize there is about a .000001% chance of me changing your mind. In fact, I'm more than sure I won't. I'm only trying to get you to see that the reasons that you're giving aren't really valid ones. Honestly if you would have said: "I like to use Windows because it is backwards compatible with older Windows programs," I would have said, fair enough. Or if you would have said "I use Windows because I like to overclock, tweak, game, and install my own hardware in" I would have said: "sure." That is an entirely different attitude than just saying one operating system is "the best." If Windows is always your preference, that's fine. Just realize that A.) there are people that do know what they're talking about and are very familiar with both OS's and B.) just because people disagree with you, doesn't mean they're wrong.

Right now as I see it your reasons for saying that Windows is superior is because of everything I just said (installing hardware, gaming, etc.) but for me I care more about productivity, speed, and stability. Going back to an earlier analogy, you could care more about V8's and straight cats in your Chevy, and I could care more about fuel mileage and my stereo in my Civic. That doesn't necessarily make either of us wrong it's just that the application is different. And once again you'll note that it has nothing to do with popularity.