Making this point, in no way, is ruling out producing the better apps with whatever quality of hammer you have. All I am saying is, the time you spend in creating the environment for your application to run or develop can be put into designing/developing your application itself provided the hammer you got is smart enough!

Thanks

I’m not supporting either side here, I use and own pcs the majority of the time, but also macs when at work. I do feel that OSX is developed for a more creative brand of people, however its not to say that you are any better when using it. Photoshop is photoshop no matter what system your using it on. the tools may look slightly different but they still do the same things.

Windows is actually alot more powerful/responsive than people give it credit for, because it was originally for logic/intelligent (think early programmers) type people and as such theyve stuck with that model. I’ve never has issues with the command line and batch scripts have saved me countless hours over the years. So the whole unix debate is quite frankly rubbish, besides theres programs such as kitty and putty if you need to interact with a unix environment, or you could dual-boot.

At the end of the day it all comes down to comfort, ability, and the time you put in to actually learning how to make things better for yourself rather than getting frustrated and then ranting about the tools. I love windows because i can tweak and customise to my hearts content because I’ve taken the time to learn how to.

As trigger from only fools and horses once said “I’ve had this broom for 15 years, its had 7 new handles and 12 new heads”.

That sums up a pc for me, if its not powerful enough or has issues i can pop down to almost any electronics store, pick up new parts and install them and get back to work, no fussing with sending it off or taking it into the apple store.

Even the whole “a windows pc doesn’t look as nice” argument is fairly rubbish. Buy a new case, get a monitor from somewhere else, get one of those disk drives that you just slide a disk into, even if it means when that cd jams your screwed. At the end of the day aesthetics are just that, a little bit of fluff to make it look nicer in your bedroom. Use the stardock themeing to make the desktop look nicer.

I know this has turned into a very pro windows based post, but thats because i agree with the claim of “apple-elitists” even down to the fact apple portray “pc” as a useless, tubby doddering old man in their adverts to seem “trendy”. Wheres the need? If you have to rely on immature jibes at your competition to get sales then where is your effort really focused? obviously not on making the product speak for itself.

That said, I do find some of my workflow more fluid on a Mac, but it certainly isn’t more stable than Windows (for me, anyway). I’ve had my MacBook since August 2008 and it certainly gets it’s fair share of lock ups. Seth W. said it pretty well with this: “My iBook is giving me more beach-balls than a holiday weekend… at the beach.”

There are also a fair number of utilities for the Mac that I use regularly that either don’t exist or aren’t as polished for Windows. But in the end, I really don’t care what you or I use. It’s like when developers argue about IDE’s or libraries: if the end goal is achieved, that’s what really matters.

Along come a couple of other (a bit less nerdy but very geeky) types that come up with a different approach. Along with it comes something called “The Humane Interface”. There’s even a book by that title by the person that developed said philosophy for them. Wait!! Didn’t they rip various ideas off other inventors/innovators? Yessiree Bob! But just like a great chef can take some simple (concepts) ingredients that are wandering around looking for something to do and put them togehter into a wonderful dish that is great than the sum of the constituent parts, Apple was born. I paraphrase and generalize for brevity and effect.

The main difference is in philosophy _ apple realized that people like order and like good design. They incorporated that into almost everything that they did even to the point of making things too intuitive (I never can find the finder thing!) – but elegant. So yes it’s subjective – but on the whole humans have evolved a very highly sophisticated sense of design whether they work in that field or whether they just respond to it. It’s obvious more people respond to good design than not and that’s why people like to shop at Nordstrom’s, Banana Rep., etc. instead of Big Lots and The Dump. It’s the atmosphere.

So especially people that work in graphic design (and are even MORE sensitive to it) like to feel that elan, suave feeling of wroking on a cool, slick little Industrial Design Wet Dream which, of late, actually boasts an operating system very like what NPR called “the greatest cooperative effort in the history of humanity” – Linux. OS-X is really great – you can flip down out of uber-elan and get right on your (local no less) command line and do a grep -15 “my dog has fleas” |less and away you go! Try that (without WinGrep) on your PC.

So really, both are good (for instance try finding some Ham Radio 2.3GhZ packet radio software that’ll run on a Mac – not likely ) but for different things. And as long as we have VM-ware type cross-pollinators (that tun on both systems, mind you) I guess we really don’t have a fight on our hands.

Just for the record – I use – and like – both! So pardon me while I go mod my PC box so it looks like a Mac, throw away the other two (useful) buttons on my mouse and get a custom windows/mac emulation template and I’ll see you over on the other side.

I totally understand your point! I just couldn`t get the right words for it. You sum it op perfectly. Its exactly how i feel about the whole mac vs PC affaire.

Besides that, i did buy a mac for personal reasons. Somehow, dont ask me why,… working on a mac seems a bit more natural. Things are found easy, working on applications like Photoshop and the likes seems to be more fluid and so on.

However, now that i have a mac, worked on it, i slowly start going back to my old pc. I guess im a bit rusty in a manner i cant explain. Somehow i got used to the pc that the mac seems like the odd duck here.

Yes, it doesnt matter what tool you use if you suck at doing something. The elitist attitude is nauseating at times. But a mac does have its merits, it does crash less and is more stable (of course if people knew how to operate windows well, it wouldn’t hang or crash so frequently either; but that’s the point. 90+% of the users don’t know that and they can survive well on a mac not knowing than on windows).

Everyone develops a comfort zone in the platform they use.
But you know when it gets annoying? When they push the platform unconditionally on to others as an obvious choice (“or else you’re a retard”). THAT’s why I like this post. I still like the mac though.

I guess your post was always going to stir criticism, as well as many responses with people: ‘sitting on the fence, but…’

I have never understood why Macs have been considered better. Many years ago Windows 2000 and even XP were far superior to OSs like OS9 (and even 7 and 8 which were about the 2000 era) but still the Mac world continued to blossom. Instabilities in the OS were due to the huge amount of support Windows had for so many different manufacturers’ drivers (mostly) while Apple locked down their software and hardware and prevented many people developing for the system: safe.

The result was a HUGE move to Windows for development (thank you .NET!) and with newer Microsoft innovations (yes, Microsoft IS innovative!) more and more developers are even being pulled away from Unix (go away C++ – hurry up and die already!) systems to develop create.

Aside from the hardware (which is still locked pretty tight, but allows for Windows distributions) Macs are still very locked down. You need specific tools, on a Mac to actually develop new tools. Bah! Microsoft is so generous with their tools and frameworks that developers can build tools like Moonlight (think Silverlight but on Unix) that allow for such a wide range of exciting new toys.

Apple fanboys need to step up and TRY a PC, instead of boasting that their machine is so good that YOU need to try IT. All Apple really excels at is a great PR and marketing campaign.

Oh, and I HAVE used a Mac for more than 10 minutes at a time, and will ALWAYS come back to Windows