Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler OFF TOPIC - Who owns an Apple macintosh too?

Rather than continue a "Grand Theft - Thread" exercise, how many Axiom owners also own/use/prefer Apple Macintosh versus the dark side (PC)? The meter is running.

Oh lordy, you're really asking for it now.

Here's my rundown (including my work Powerbook)

PowerMac G4/dual 1.25 (FW800)/768 MB/80 GB/Radeon 9000/Combo/OS X 10.3
Athlon 1400/Asus A7V333/896MB/Radeon 9500 Pro (128 MB)/30 GB+120 GB/CD-RW/Windows XP SP1
Powerbook G4/867/512 MB/30 GB/OS X 10.3
Powerbook G4/667 (DVI)/512 MB/30 GB/OS X 10.3
TiVo Series2 222hr (formerly 60 hr)
Newton Messagepad 2000. (no I don't use it any more...)

Yes, I do consulting for the Macintosh (including servers and networks). Yes, I play games on my PC. Yes, I play games on my Mac. Yes, generally speaking, I would use a Mac before I would use a PC. No, I'm not getting into a flamewar. Unless you ask really nicely.

As you know, I'm a Mac guy. My dad bought the original Mac back in 1984. The rest is history.

Like Ken, I have both a Mac and PC at home (not including the X-Box). I haven't turned the PC on since I beat Call of Duty, though.

That's cause you don't play PlanetSide!

If you had a baby, neither would you. But don't let that stop you. C'mon Ken, have a baby...

Yeah, but I get to sleep at night.

I've got a Graphite iMac (the old CRT special edition one). The small screen is is starting to bug me more and more each day...not that I can afford to do anything about it at the moment.

My systems - (yes systems)

Athlon 900 Windows XP
Athlon 900 Linux Slackware 9.1
Athlon K-7 Windows 2000 Server
Pentium III Linux Slackware 7.2
IBM 390 Notebook Slackware 9.1 (Music Server)

Plus network to pull it all together. I also have an x-box that I bought with the intention of turning into a media server over the next couple of months. I like Macs but where I live it is easier to get PC's

I almost forgot, in addition to the above I also own two Silicon Graphics O2 workstations running IRIX that I use for the SetiAtHome project

Do I count if I have my original Mac Plus w/ 128K RAM, 32MB external HDD, and 2nd external floppy plus boatloads of software? I actually work w/ Apple on some of their projects now. The G5 is VERY cool, though it doesn't run cool...

Or how about if I REALLY coveted getting a Newton?

Does it count if I covet OSX but am still a windows/linux guy?

jr

Everybody's got to start somewhere, James.

I've got an old PM 4400/200 sitting in my closet...

I use a MessagePad 130 on a near daily basis (technically not a Mac, but still an Apple product). I wouldnt be supprised if it died sometime soon however, its been acting kinda funky for the last year or so (turning itself on at random, flickery backlight, occationally gets the pen position WAY wrong, ect).

So I am standing here on the shore, watching my thread be swept slowly out to sea. Aloha mac thread, goodbye forever. Sigh....

I've been die hard mac user since I was a graphic design student. I had a g-4 400mhz but now I got a new G-5 dual 1.8 with a 20" cinema display. Since it has the optical outputs, I can send audio to my HK and get my Axioms to push Mac sound - once you go Mac, you never go back!

Bless you for saving the thread Steve. I lust for a G5, but the 17' flat panel "lamp" I have is doing so well, I just can't force myself to throw more money into a bigger toy.

Whoa - what a head rush. I don't know what made me say that. Of course I could do a G5 and ..just because. It's a toy, it's bigger. I must have one.

You know Ray, this thread is what prompted the appearance of the Decepticon's logo under my name. I am on the dark side. I grew up with a commodore 64, then 128, then an amiga 1000, then 2000. Then my mom brought home macs... She was a graphic designer for years and is most certainly a mac person. I on the other hand got into coding, and I quickly discovered that coding for mac was a thing to abhor. (I had to end up coding in borland running in softwindows because it just wasn't happening otherwise...) It's true that you didn't encounter ".dll hell" that can arise on pcs, but instead you used to have conflicting extensions half the time you installed new software. I like them, don't get me wrong, and OSX/Jaguar are great, but it's too late in the game for me to get pulled in. The only things macs have going for them now are the OS and physical designs, although in those two areas they far surpass pc. I did discover something extremely discomforting regarding Jaguar security. You can aparently boot from an install cd, hit two keys at the login screen, and then set the root password to be whatever you want. Not at all acceptable if you have sensitive material on your computer....

They made some serious marketing mistakes early on, which now amount to the hardware lagging behind similarly priced pc hardware. The claim that the g5 is the fastest pc on earth is completely false (any reasonable system costing ~$1k less built around amd's 64 bit processor will beat it on all but two or three benchmarks, I'll find the articles for the non-believers if desired.) So...I guess what I'm saying is that for economic high end performance, mac is not a feasible option. (This is what I personally look for in a computer.) Granted the pc systems that compare are not as readily available, and one might even have to buy the parts and build the thing themselves, but all assembling a computer amounts to is an expensive jigsaw puzzle. Anyone capable of configuring a $5k home stereo system and tuning it properly could easily assemble a computer with information readily available on the internet.

For useability and stability, mac wins hands down, no contest. In fact I worked at microsoft for a short while on the upcoming version of windows ("Longhorn"), and they had macs set up in numerous places throughout the windows buildings and encouraged programmers to see how various aspects of the mac OS worked...

I will point out that the walk up and change password thing is a moot point. Without physical security, you have NO security. I tell this to my clients all the time. If I can get your drive out of a machine (and it's not encrypted), I can get the data off of it. Now, you can also encrypt data on an OS X machine, and that password (to unencrypt the data) cannot be changed from a boot CD.

OK, that's if you trust OS X not to nuke your encrypted data. I'm pretty sure they fixed that bit...

I'd love to see pricing on the parts for a dual Athlon 64 (or whatever they're calling it--I can't keep up!) for $2K. With a SATA drive, 8 slots of DDR400 (dual channel), PCI-X or Extreme (your choice, I don't care), gigabit Ethernet, Firewire 400 & 800, DVD-RW drive, Radeon 9600 equivalent (yeah, I know, Apple's is a pathetic 64 MB card.) Oh, and a really nice case with fairly quiet cooling. I haven't priced it out; I don't know. Hey, I'd love to know how to do it!

But on dual-proc aware stuff, I would wager that a dual proc G5 is faster than a single proc Athlon 64. I don't know about dual vs. dual. It would not surprise me if the Athlon 64 was faster in some areas, and the G5 faster in others.

Damn, I said I wasn't going to get into this.

Oooh Commodore! I had a Vic20. Oh the happy memories of playing snackman (pacman) on a little 13in b/w tv.

jr

Agreed that without physical security you have no security, but the speed with which someone can compromise your system is still rather frightening. It's one thing to rip out a drive, you're going to clearly notice the thing is missing.

But if someone comes in and installs malicious software on your machine without your knowledge, you might end up far more screwed. I mean in a corporate setting, the user of the machine often doesn't know the root password anyway, some sys. admin sets up the machine and gives them a login. They may never realize anything has happened.

I should add here, you can do something similar on a windows machine by installing windows over top of the existing installation. But again, it takes considerably longer than the mac trick... In which case if you want to be safe, you need to set a bios password and make sure that your bios is not set to boot from cd.

Hrm. You've got a point there. Let me think about it...

Here's a benchmark pcWorld did:
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,112749,pg,8,00.asp
This is the last page of it where they have the nice chart, so if you want to read it all just check the other pages.

Here's a link to the "Aurora" line of alienware machines:
http://www.alienware.com/system_pages/aurora_ddr.aspx
Note that these are *single* athlon 64 systems, and they outperform the dual 2.2 Ghz g5 on half of the benchmarks. Also note that the specs on these Aurora's are better than the ones used for the benchmarks, and the cheapest one here is only $1.5k...

I can't find a link to the polywell machine listed, but this is their site if you want to check it out:
http://www.polywell.com

Cool. Thanks!

Well, maybe we'll get there someday...

I have a G4 Powerbook, I switched about a year ago when my girlfriend bought an iBook and we set up an airport base station in the apartment. I could no longer go to the desk to go on the internet on my old Gateway when she gets to walk around the apartment with her computer. A month later my college bookstore was selling top of the line combo drive 17" Powerbooks for $1000 less than the Mac website, so I got one for my mom too.

I can barely even look at Windows PCs now. It is like listening to Bose speakers after having my Axioms for the last 2 years. Mac OSX Panther is too much fun and everyone I know is as jealous of my Powerbook as they are my Axiom theater.

Although I took a class on C and Unix, I am not a programmer, and I do not play games, all I do with my computer is play on the internet and use Mac features like iTunes, iPhoto and other stuff like that.

ringmir,

Not to keep this mac vs. PC thing going, but I have in my posession a bootable CD from which I can reset any Windows password. I can walk up to your PC, drop it in, reboot, and have complete control in about 5 minutes. Works like a charm. I use it at work. (Of course, the BIOS password and no CD booting can defeat it, but I'm just saying...)

http://www.winternals.com

As a further on that, you can't get past the open firmware password on a Mac, either.

Alright. I wake up and there's been some action around here. On the password note, I was not aware of that product for windows, and naturally it doesn't comfort me to know about it. On the firmware password, I haven't personally tired it, it sounds like exactly what is needed. A friend of mine however, told me that if you fail it three times in a row the thing will still boot. (Personally that sounds like nonsense to me, but this is just what I've been told by a friend with a powerbook g4 and I have no way to confirm or deny it.)

Now then, snippy, I have a linksys 802.11b wireless router in my apartment, and my desktop is wired to it. But whenever people come over with a laptop, mac or pc, they can get online without any problem. From your explained use of your laptop, I would personally recommend a mac anyway.

As I said before, mac wins for useability and stability, pc wins for economic high end performance. That's why I'm on the dark side, I grew up serious gamer, and ended up a serious programmer. These days I do most of my programming in java anyway, so I could code on a mac without any trouble, but the hardware is not cheap enough for me to justify it. I can just get more computer for my money with a pc, and I've been working on pc's long enough that fixing them whenever they act up is not a problem.

I want to be clear, I'm not doing any mac bashing here. I like them, they're good computers, they're just not good computers for me.

In reply to:

---

pc wins for economic high end performance

---

That really depends on how high end (see #3) you're talking about

I'm a mac guy as well--

on the subject of performance, I think apple/ibm POWER chips will do quite a bit better than apple/G4 chips, which is where apple earned their reputation for lagging speed. OS innovation has really stepped up with OS X as well.

This is going to be an exciting time to be a mac person, I think.

i have an ancient mac LC sitting around here somewhere. i think it's in the closet?

I had an LC for years. The closet is where those poor, crippled beasties belong. I upgraded to the maximum amount of ram and added a coprocessor about 2 months before I bought a 9500. Then I waited 7 more years to buy a G4. About 2 months before they announced the G5s. Gah.

Peter I think the key word there was economic...supercomputers don't count as economic

They do when they cost $5 mil instead of $30 mil (pulled second number out of my hat...) and beat all but 2 machines on the list.

First let me say, it is an impressive machine built very inexpensively, especially compared to the $250mil #1 on the list.

The thing about the $5mil claim is that it's literally the cost of the hardware. They built it themselves, using student labor (trust me, student researchers don't get paid much at all...grad student stipends are laughable compared to industry salary.) When they ordered those processors, Apple had to delay the release of the g5 bcause they wouldn't have enough of them! (Just a funny side-note)

Supercomputer pricing is an odd thing, if you do some searching online regarding the amd opteron and supercomputers, you'll find that Univ. of Utah picked up 1000 Opterons for $2mil, and are working on a supercomputer. Also the number 6 computer on the list (opteron based) cost slightly under $10mil on a contract including the hardware, labor, maitenence, and an upgrade down the road adding another ~120 nodes. It's hard to say how much of that contract was hardware, but I would be surprised if it were more than $3mil. When you think about Utah's 1000 Opterons costing $2mil it's likely that Los Alamo's 1100 Opterons cost a similar amount. And that $10mil price includes more hardare upgrades that haven't been installed yet.

So whenever a university lists the cost for something, you have to be very wary of comparing it to a professional contract job including all kinds of support and professional labor costs.

And here's a scientific benchmark that actually compares applications that someone is using:

http://www.hs.uni-hamburg.de/EN/For/ThA/phoenix/computing.html

Eeenteresting...

I'd say that the Athlon64 and G5 are pretty darn similar, speed wise. Yes, the G5 was a dual, and the Athlon was a single.

Gaaahhhh! Enough already! My hammer is faster than your hammer!