“As any Windows 7 user can tell you, Microsoft is getting more and more aggressive in pushing upgrades to Windows 10 from within Windows 7,” David Gewirtz reports for ZDNet.
“But what about those users for whom it’s time to get a new machine? With the exception of some existing contracts or old inventory, you’re pretty much faced with the choice of not only a new machine, but a new OS — Windows 10,” Gewirtz reports. “Given that you’re going to make a big operating system jump, should you stick with Windows, or move over to the Mac?”
“Because you can run Windows in a virtual machine on a Mac, but you can’t run OS X in a virtual machine on Windows (at least without a Hackintosh hack), you can run a wider variety of software on the Mac,” Gewirtz reports. “That’s precisely why I moved my main machines from Windows to Mac. I actively use a lot of Mac software as well as Windows software, and with Parallels, I can easily use both side-by-side on the same machine.”
“Most Mac users can get away without using an antivirus program, while Windows users would be suicidal to do so,” Gewirtz reports. “If, like me, you need to run both PC and Mac applications, then a well-configured Mac is the best choice (and definitely beats having two machines, especially since you can cut and paste between OS X and a VM running Windows).”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Anybody who buys themselves a crappy Windows PC is limiting themselves shortsightedly to an anachronism.
No contest. Mac wins every time on every level.
Nope. Definitely not true!
• Gaming much better on Windows (Games are the biggest Business!)
• Security Flaw Awareness very low at Apple (Firmware corrupted!)
• Hotline is often not qualified to solve OS related issues (significantly worse over the last 3 years)
• 200 Billion $ are sleeping, only Goldman Sachs is making profits of it. Apple has bend over for Wall Street, Zuckerbaby – Logic all around.
• Car Project loses Appeal significantly because of Ives Isolation within Apple.
• The old crew is almost completely replaced, Ive, Cue and Schiller seem to vomit almost every day.t
Apple sucks again.
Because Apple has failed to protect its assets. Ask TC what that is supposed to mean.
Also there is no good Pro option for high end computing that requires high end GPUs, like nVidia Tesla GPUs, which are used for engineering and science, or similar graphics oriented GPUs.
The Mac Pro should be just called Mac. It is a very nice and fast Mac. It just isn’t remotely pro speed or capable however.
A good solution would be if the Mac Pro had a superfast port expressly designed for an add-on GPU enclosure. Thunderbolt 3 or preferably something even faster.
Until then, I develop on a Mac but have to actually run my software on a crappy Windows PC that is an order of magnitude faster.
Ah, the old non-data driven “order of magnitude” proclamation. Yes, the MacPro hasn’t been updated since its release, I’ll give you that.
Thunderbolt 3 isn’t out yet, so kind of hard to add it to a machine. I can’t wait for it either. One connector is going to be awesome.
What do you mean non-data drive? This is a fact that is well known. Tell me how to hook up 4 nVidia Tesla cards to a Mac please, before spouting your ignorance.
Run the same software on any kind of machine with four nVidia Tesla GPUs vs a maxed out Mac Pro. You will be waiting several times longer for the Mac Pro to finish because it has no comparable options. It only comes with mid-range GPUs.
They might seem high end to a casual user or a gamer, but they are nowhere near the fastest cards used to do real computationally heavy work.
Worse, much worse, if your application uses CUDA, the most popular platform in GPU computing by far for any kind of engineering or science, you cannot even run that on a Mac Pro at all because Apple has abandoned any nVidia options at all.
I am as pro-Mac as any Mac Pro but Apple has completely abandoned the whole high end computing market. Macs are now unusable for high end creative, engineering and scientific work and it sucks because it just comes down to being incompatible with the vast majority of GPUs by not supporting the standard slot.
There is no good reason for Apple to abandon us except it wants its Mac “Pro” to look cool. But the definition of a Pro is they care about objective performance, not cute looks.
Your entire argument is agenda driven. It exists merely so you can expose your homophobic views. You are a shitty person. Go away troll.
Troll.
I wonder about Ed Bott some times.
I get the feeling he’s about to flip for good.
Windows shills will forever blame the network so no point listening to the opinions of these clowns. I’d say get a Mac every time even if you’re aren’t supposedly’upgrading’ to windoze 10
I had a lot more faith in Apple’s technical superiority 6 years ago, before Apple screwed up its WiFi, before it incorporated buggy functions like Handoff that seldom work, and before it fell multiple generations behind on chipsets.
You want to talk about Apple being a leader, then look at its Airport range. The Airport Express would be an awesome product if only Apple would update it past 802.11n.
Bitch and moan about Microsoft all you want, Windows 7 remains a very stable platform with dramatically more software titles than the Mac. That’s why so many of us have to use both platforms every day — because Apple isn’t delivering the goods anymore.
Most people only use a handfull of software titles anyway. Most of the important ones people use can be found on both platforms. Your software argument is grasping at straws. That being said, I agree Apple has made some mis-steps along the way. However I have never been as frustrated with any of them, compared to the constant anger I feel when something else in Windows (any verision) stops working for no reason except booting the machine. Taking time away from getting anything done for troubleshooting and finding a solution to something that shouldn’t have happened in the first place.
Whatever Paul. Overall Apple’s hardware quality remains high, the problem is that the beancounters are in charge at Apple now and they aren’t willing to take any risks. Cook is infamous for showing up late and offering fashion-first hardware rather than taking the effort to develop a full line of products.
There are several different camps who use Macs, and one by one Apple is losing touch with them by putting fashion before user needs:
– Bleeding edge Scientific/Graphc/Audio/Video pros who need workstation performance, superior connectivity & customization. Most of these guys prefer workstations with internal expansion
– Multi-platform pros who need competitive performance and the software & hardware efficiency that makes the Mac a better long term value. Many of these guys would like a 17″ laptop, others are happy with smaller MacBook Pros or top spec desktops.
– executives and road warriors who want primarily light weight amd reasonable performance, top wireless performance. Which Macbook Apple has aimed at them is anyone’s guess.
– Switchers who want a moderate performance, high value machine with support for legacy peripherals. Thick stylish plastic case would be fine. Apple has abandoned this market, as its MacBooks are either underpowered or overpriced — or both, and the Mac Mini is just neutered to the point of irrelevance.
– small businesses that need a versatile do-it-all machine with relatively low processing power but super high reliability. Should be an updated Mini or a ruggedized Macbook by now, but there isn’t.
– Home media buffs or gamers who need a server with ease of networking and high graphics capabilities to drive several large high-definition displays. Apple doesn’t really support this market very well, as its GPUs are all well past their prime and Apple doesn’t allow easy user upgrades anymore.
Why are you reading MDN?
Well… If it’s for the same reason than me it’s because people here are completely crazy… It’s fanatismus to its best.
It’s very distracting and funny to read the comments and to see how anyone daring to express the slightest criticism or just not praising whatever crap comes from Apple with enough enthusiasm gets flamed down.
North Korean propaganda can barely compete
Totally depends on what you need and want.
For me a macbook pro running boot camp is nirvana.
Of course.
I run parallels on a Mac Pro with windows10 and a hefty finance software application. It works well but there are glitches. Yesterday, for instance, I changed the batteries in the trackpad and Windows, in full screen mode, didn’t recognise it again. I had to turn the Mac Pro off! I don’t run any other Windows apps except chrome, and then only for the software website. For the finance app it is a compromise. But I use the Mac Pro for film stuff and I don’t have room for yet another computer…
I too use Parallels mainly for access to Visio (I know I also have Omnigraffle but the import / export only “sorta” works). Parallels is a money pit. OS upgrades are now free on both Windows and the Mac but I have to pay Parallels $50 each time either one them releases an upgrade and I decide I want to upgrade so Parallels costs me about $50 a year. Hopefully MS releases Visio for the Mac as part of Office365 and I can finally drop the Parallels now that Excel for the Mac actually works (usually).
“Because you can run Windows in a virtual machine on a Mac [or a Linux/Unix machine], but can’t run OS X in a virtual machine on [any other machine] (at least without a Hackintosh hack), one can run a wider variety of software on [“.nix”-based machines],” Gewirtz reports. “That’s precisely why I moved my main machines from Windows to [a “.nix”-based machine.] I actively use a lot of Mac software as well as Windows software, and with Parallels [Or PlayonLinx/PoMac/Wine/VM Ware.]” Fixed it for you. ^.^
I run all sort of stuff, including games, in virtualization. There are three virtualization programs to choose from on Mac. They work great.
The only limitation I’ve run into is 3D graphics development and 3D games that require Microsoft’s DirectX versions 11 or 12. NO virtualization program is planning on supporting either versions of DirectX. If that’s going to be a problem, then use Apple’s BootCamp and boot directly into Windows on your Mac.
The problem I have is the engineering software I write is developed for CUDA, i.e. nVidia’s highly popular GPU language, which is the standard for an enormous majority of scientific and engineering applications.
Apple doesn’t seem to like nVidia at all these days, which makes Macs completely unusable for all those applications.
This really sucks for those of us who remember when Apple was the supporter of high end academic and creative work.
Yeah, I don’t know what’s going on with Apple an Nvidia. I’m happy my 2013 MBP has an Nvidia GPU. But the next gen MBP moved to ATI/AMD. I know Apple has, in the past, supported both companies. But you brought up an excellent point.
Anyone watch the Pats/Broncos game yesterday? Surface stole the show….
You mean by failing in spectacular fashion?
Attempting a surface response to the question:
Buy the machine that runs the software you are required to use. Most other software is on both platforms. That’s not much of an issue.
Is a Mac better than a Windows box? YES, on every level I can imagine, including cost/value. Don’t let the mythologists fool you. I’ll skip the myth busting, but I love doing it!
Regarding security:
– I highly recommend at least an anti-adware application at this point in time. Adware is becoming a plague on the Mac. Malwarebytes Anti-Malware will find and kill it all, and its free.
– There are always people who will be fooled by social engineering, which is the prime way Mac users acquire malware. I call this, sadly, the LUSER Syndrome. If you know someone who has this problem, they definitely should be using some sort of anti-malware program 24/7. Either that or get them onto an iOS device, NOT a Mac.
It would be pretty much ridiculous to worry about malware on iOS, although Apple has inexplicably left one iOS malware door wide open on purpose, that being their poor enterprise developer security certificate system. We’re going to hear more about this ongoing blunder by Apple throughout 2016, I predict. Ideally, that barn door will be slammed and barred shut by the end of this year, whether Apple likes it or not.
and so here we are, with mr. apple being handed, by mr. windows himself, one of the most perfect opportunities ever – to make even greater inroads, on a virtually wholesale basis, in convincing people to switch from windows to the mac platform.
and where is the advertising campaign to benefit from this opportunity?
well, the whole world wonders….
ya gonna let this one slip past ya too, tim?
Too bad not a single shipping Mac provides PCI Express slots. (Some of us work outside the tiny box provided by Apple.)
I’m a lifetime Mac user and advocate, but my faith has been tested with my latest machine (27″ iMac mid-2011). Pretty much everything that can go wrong – hardware and software – has gone wrong.
I’ve had the GPU replaced twice (under a recall program) and the logic board once. The SuperDrive and Wi-Fi have failed and software updates have brought all kinds of obscure bugs that have required much googling to fix.
I realise I’m in the minority, and have started to think I just bought a lemon. Through it all, I never considered switching to PC a serious option.