Mac owners and long time users

[The_Mage18]

So now that the Intel Macs have been around for a while, what are your thoughts on the new beasts? I love my Mini, don't get me wrong. It's the best damn machine I've owned hands down but I feel cramped.

I'd like to hear from those of you who have made the switch. Are you happy with your upgrade or would you have not done it? I'm looking at a 20" iMac and getting a 1GB stick for it to have 1.5GB of RAM total. Hell just moving from the 2.5" HD to the 3.5" HD alone is going to be a major speed increase, nevermind the faster proc and bus speeds.

The whole Rosetta issue doesn't bother me one bit. All of my necessary apps are universal "Fat" binary now and the few that aren't don't need speed (I can only type so fast in Open Office fer Pete's sake ) or will have an updated version very soon.

One thing I would appreciate is if you vote no, eplain what it is that makes you wish you didn't get a MacTel

 

[esr2]

while photoshop obviously lags in rosetta, everything else about my 2ghz 20" imac (2gb ram) far exceeded my expectations and i prefer it greatly to my previous dual 2ghz G5 powermac with 4gb of ram and a 20" ACD.

-esr

 

[Black Morty Rackham]

This poll needs to more options:

"I haven't upgraded yet, but will at some point."

&

"I don't plan to get an Intel Mac, ever."

 

[mngl1500]

Put me down for "I haven't upgraded yet, but will at some point."

Soon, real soon. I just need the smaller size of the 12" because of limited space on the motorcycle for it. Unless they give the 12" a really bad video card in which case I will have to see about making room for the 15".

 

[ShimmyT]

Supposedly the 12" will go away and you'll have the macbook with a 13" wide screen, and it will have two processor options a single core and dual core: Think Secret Link

 

[The_Mage18]

This poll needs to more options:

"I haven't upgraded yet, but will at some point."

&

"I don't plan to get an Intel Mac, ever."

Dang it, didn't think about those as options.. Too late now, I can't edit the pole itself once votes are cast.

I'm still on the edge decision-wise. I've read about Rosetta and how it works and can understand why it takes such a performance hit. One article I read compared it to the days when Apple first rolled out the Power Mac 6100, 7100 and 8100 with the PowerPC non-native translator that made many people stick with their Quadras.

I guess the real issue isn't whether someone should upgrade to the Intel Mac but when someone should upgrade. All of Apple's machines are going to be Intel x86 sooner or later. Only the iBook and Power Macs are left. Universal binaries are already rollling out and more are inevitably on their way so the whole Rosetta debate will soon be put to rest. Now with Boot camp and its integration into the upcomming Leapord release, Apple is becomming even more of a viable option. Hence why my Mini is giving me growing pains.

In case it's not obvious, my mind's pretty much made up, I'm upgrading. Going from the Mini to an iMac I'll probably be happy overall. Better screen than what I have now, faster proc, faster hard drive, higher capacity for RAM and upgradable proc.

Still I welcome people to debate and continue discussion on this thread for anyone else looking to switch or get a Mac for the first time. If such a thread already exists, mods please feel free to close this one.

 

[KaosDG]

Fixed the poll up for other options, and I haven't upgraded yet.


I would like to get either an iMac or MacBook pro, if my wife ever realizes that in my line of work, a laptop is indeed a necessity.
Not just so I can "go on that damn internet when we are on vacation"

 

[Black Morty Rackham]

Fixed the poll up for other options, and I haven't upgraded yet.

Thanks.

And same here. I will get an Intel Mac at some point, most likely. Don't know when, though.

 

[MannyZ]

I think I'll be upgrading once the 17" MacBook Pro's are released.

 

[The_Mage18]

Fixed the poll up for other options

*places sacrificial case of Mountain Dew on the altar of the Mods*

I'm looking at a 17" iMac. The res on it is larger than what I have now and the refurb price is nice. I can get it and 2GB of RAM off NewEgg for close to the same cost.

 

[piako]

prob. have to upgrade to an intel mac for hd dvd roms and the udi connector

hopefully hd and the 5.25 devices will be ppc compatible so $$$$ doesn't have to be spent

other than that intels not that imp. if they don't lock down hd dvd playback to the intels

that would stink

 

[morpheus777]

I love my MBP. Best Mac I've ever used (and fastest). After upgrading from 512mb to 1.5gb of RAM, I couldn't be happier.

 

[The_Mage18]

Back up this thread goes.

 

[NulloModo]

Well, I don't own a Mac, but I have used them for a long time. My computer classes in middle school were all run on Apple IIe's and then in high school it was Performas (the ones that looked like chunk beige original iMacs, but without the PPC chips). I also did tech support for a lab full of IILc's and in college the labs in the ed building were all blue and white G3s (IMO the most POS machine Apple ever put out, could have been System 7 or the fact they were lab machines, but they were incredibly unstable and slow).

Now I play around with my girlfriends powerbook G4 a lot, and every now and again run into a Mac when I am working at another school. I don't have tons of experience with OSX, but I like it.

Up until the Intel switch, I never would have considered one. The G5s are very overpriced, and the G4s are just plain slow by today's standards. Going Intel was a very good idea, IBM just couldn't produce enough yield on the G5 to make it affordable to the average user, but with Intel behind them, Apple can have faster chips and sell them for cheaper. I definately see an Intel Mac in my future.

 

[Black Morty Rackham]

Nullo:

The Yosemites never ran System 7. They shipped with version 8. Hell, I don't know if they even booted System 7, what with the Open Firmware and all. And my Yosemite was solid as a rock even after I overclocked it...

And regarding the pricing on the G5, it wasn't that IBM charged too much for them. In fact, chances are the actual G5 CPU is a lot cheaper than the Intel ones. Fewer transistors and all that.

 

[NulloModo]

Nullo:

The Yosemites never ran System 7. They shipped with version 8. Hell, I don't know if they even booted System 7, what with the Open Firmware and all. And my Yosemite was solid as a rock even after I overclocked it...

And regarding the pricing on the G5, it wasn't that IBM charged too much for them. In fact, chances are the actual G5 CPU is a lot cheaper than the Intel ones. Fewer transistors and all that.

Maybe it was System 8 though, all of those looked pretty much the same to me. It could have been that they were lab computers that made them so dodgy, but I just never had a great experience with them.

 

[Black Morty Rackham]

Do lab computers ever not suck?

 

[KaosDG]

Do lab computers ever not suck?

Lab computers I've setup never sucked.

Then again, they were research / Development labs, not student computer labs

 

[NulloModo]

Do lab computers ever not suck?

The x-terms didn't suck, in fact, I preferred using those if what I had to do could be done on one, but when I had to print off of a disk or cd, I was out of luck.

 

[The_Mage18]

The x-terms didn't suck, in fact, I preferred using those if what I had to do could be done on one, but when I had to print off of a disk or cd, I was out of luck.

GAH!! DON'T MENTION THAT SATIN-SOFT PRODUCT IN MY THREAD!!

I hated it with a passion. Give me a Linux box with a remote session connected and an externally piped display any day.

 

[NulloModo]

GAH!! DON'T MENTION THAT SATIN-SOFT PRODUCT IN MY THREAD!!

I hated it with a passion. Give me a Linux box with a remote session connected and an externally piped display any day.

That's what I am talking about, they were all just dumb terminals attached to Solaris machines.

 

[The_Mage18]

From the poll results it looks like only 2 people either didn't notice a difference or aren't happy.

I'd say this is a pretty clear sign.

 

[Iria]

I am the only vote on that list that states I will never buy a MacTel.

Reasons:

Well, honestly, I follow a pretty logical path... it is the programs I use such as Maya and 3DSMax that would have a hard time on any Mac, from my experience. I am not snobbish enough to not admit that i am not an avid Mac user and a big issue for me has been figuring out how to troubleshoot when programs crash or something doesnt run. I had a terrible time runing Premier for the Mac. My exposure to Macs comes from my university where I got my 4 year bachelors in media study, and did a lot of image processing and video editing on several different programs on the macs. My inexperience with mac hardware and the obvious lack of available manual upgrade paths and the expense of the established ones sets me off.

On my PC I am a true pro, hardware and software, and troubleshooting, image editing and video editing, I know where everything goes and how it works and most importantly, how to maximise my performance via both hardware and software I install, and how to troubleshoot when something goes wrong. I found this very difficult to figure out on a mac, as I havnt owned one at home and tinkered with it, but from what I hear, most ppl who own max are not mac hardware fanatics and the lack of made-for-mac hardware that you can use to upgrade them on your own is seriously glaring.

The idea of windows on a mac is just windows on a computer with an extra loophole to jump through which can cause problems and you wont even know if its the rosetta thats doing it. Runing Maya on Windows inside of a MacTel can produce a miriad of problems (as it can on regular PC) and you call their tech support and try to explain you're runing on a Mac with windows, they'll say its some unkown problem the moment they get a chance at finding an easy hitch to explain what might otherwise be a complex software issue and get you off the line. You're just giving them an excuse or at best ignoring what might be a real problem with rosetta. The kicker is, you wont know which, because now its no longer "it can be a hardware problem or software problem" but it can be "hardware, software, or software that translates different software to adapt" ...

Rosetta will be your link, your lifeline, and any problem that goes wrong with it like a virus or trojan (as it is regular software and quite possibly will have random malware developed to attack it) will sever, completely, your link between your Windows and Mac and you just might have to re-install everything if not just rosetta. You or the company you work for will not be able to tolerate a malfunction or insufficient support through rosetta, as it will be equivilant to trying to tolerate bad hardware without replacing it. You know you wouldnt be able to live without it.

 

[cre8chaos]

I have a 14m old 17" PPC 1.8 and talked mom into buying the mactel 1.8 17" and I can not tell a difference but the camera at the top. No speed difference in day to day stuff.

 

[Black Morty Rackham]

Iria:

Regarding Windows on an Intel Mac, it's just that: it's Windows running on a personal computer. It's pretty standard stuff. It's not doing it via some loophole, or anything such. It has precisely NOTHING to do with Rosetta. Rosetta is a part of the Mac OS X for x86 kernel. It does not exist in Windows at this time.

Why the heck would you run Maya in Windows on an Intel Mac, when you can run it directly in OS X? I've run Maya PLE on my Power Mac G5 in OS X, and it worked like a charm (if you ignore the fact that I cannot stand!Maya). Cinema 4D, Lightwave and Maya all work just fine in OS X. Cinema 4D even has a universal binary version for Intel Macs, and is by all accounts pretty damn fast. The latest version of Cinebench running in OS X is actually slightly faster than when running in Windows on the same exact hardware. 3D on the Mac is not a problem. I use modo and Lightwave quite a bit, and I'm quite good at it too if I may say so myself.

Premiere for Mac was cancelled. Go figure.

Honestly, most of your post just didn't make sense. You should read up on what Rosetta is, how it works, and why it exists.

 

[The_Mage18]

I have a 14m old 17" PPC 1.8 and talked mom into buying the mactel 1.8 17" and I can not tell a difference but the camera at the top. No speed difference in day to day stuff.

That's one of the things I wanted to find out about. For me, there's going to be a big difference even if an app is running in Rosetta because I've gone from a PM 8500 w/ a G3 upgrade card to a G4 Gig-e 400 Mhz to a first gen Mac Mini 1.42Ghz. Either way, the iMac is going to be a big difference from my perspective.

I'm looking at it for the reason of consolidation. Sell two machines and go down to one.

 

[Rocketpig]

Rosetta will be your link, your lifeline, and any problem that goes wrong with it like a virus or trojan (as it is regular software and quite possibly will have random malware developed to attack it) will sever, completely, your link between your Windows and Mac and you just might have to re-install everything if not just rosetta. You or the company you work for will not be able to tolerate a malfunction or insufficient support through rosetta, as it will be equivilant to trying to tolerate bad hardware without replacing it. You know you wouldnt be able to live without it.

Head... hurts... post makes no sense...

 

[synergyo1]

I am the only vote on that list that states I will never buy a MacTel.

Reasons:

Well, honestly, I follow a pretty logical path... it is the programs I use such as Maya and 3DSMax that would have a hard time on any Mac, from my experience. I am not snobbish enough to not admit that i am not an avid Mac user and a big issue for me has been figuring out how to troubleshoot when programs crash or something doesnt run. I had a terrible time runing Premier for the Mac. My exposure to Macs comes from my university where I got my 4 year bachelors in media study, and did a lot of image processing and video editing on several different programs on the macs. My inexperience with mac hardware and the obvious lack of available manual upgrade paths and the expense of the established ones sets me off.

On my PC I am a true pro, hardware and software, and troubleshooting, image editing and video editing, I know where everything goes and how it works and most importantly, how to maximise my performance via both hardware and software I install, and how to troubleshoot when something goes wrong. I found this very difficult to figure out on a mac, as I havnt owned one at home and tinkered with it, but from what I hear, most ppl who own max are not mac hardware fanatics and the lack of made-for-mac hardware that you can use to upgrade them on your own is seriously glaring.

The idea of windows on a mac is just windows on a computer with an extra loophole to jump through which can cause problems and you wont even know if its the rosetta thats doing it. Runing Maya on Windows inside of a MacTel can produce a miriad of problems (as it can on regular PC) and you call their tech support and try to explain you're runing on a Mac with windows, they'll say its some unkown problem the moment they get a chance at finding an easy hitch to explain what might otherwise be a complex software issue and get you off the line. You're just giving them an excuse or at best ignoring what might be a real problem with rosetta. The kicker is, you wont know which, because now its no longer "it can be a hardware problem or software problem" but it can be "hardware, software, or software that translates different software to adapt" ...

Rosetta will be your link, your lifeline, and any problem that goes wrong with it like a virus or trojan (as it is regular software and quite possibly will have random malware developed to attack it) will sever, completely, your link between your Windows and Mac and you just might have to re-install everything if not just rosetta. You or the company you work for will not be able to tolerate a malfunction or insufficient support through rosetta, as it will be equivilant to trying to tolerate bad hardware without replacing it. You know you wouldnt be able to live without it.

I think you need to read up on the purpose of Rosetta and how it functions. Rosetta has no influence on a Windows install whatsoever.

 

[The_Mage18]

Alright, one more person just voted for Not going to get one ever. One question: WHY?!??! What's your reasoning behind it?

C'mon people, if you vote against upgrading we want to hear your reasons.