Mac

What is everyones opinion on the new intel macs? I've been considering buying one for ages but I want to hear other peoples opinions on it.

Constructive criticism please, no /B/ talk.

Ive used a x86 mac at work.  I am posting this on a PPC.  It might be faster, I havent tried anything intense on it at work.

I want to get an x86 so I can do some assembly programming.

macs were worth buying for the ppcs, now they're nothing more than an overpriced pc.

Intel Macs are the "best of both worlds" (Star Trek LOL) It's a tad bit pricy to run Windows but I'd buy a refurb anyways.

Iwant one to play steam on.

>>1
Switching from PC or just upgrading from PPC?

switching from PC, my friend made the switch awhile ago and he couldn't be happier.

It made me all curious D:

Macs are worth buying if you like being charged extra on commodity hardware.

"Does it come in black?"
"Sure, only $200 extra!"
"What?"
"We hate niggers."

>>7
It depends on what you want to use it for.  My opinion is that if you're happy with what you have right now, then don't switch.

I switched to the Intel mac mini duo core from an 1.4 Athlon PC in March and I have to say it doesn't feel any faster for most things and my computer usage/satisfaction/productivity is about the same.  The only time it feels faster is when I'm watching large resolution videos.

Considering you're posting on 4ch, I'm going to assume iLife doesn't interest you.  FrontRow is cool at first but it's very gimmicky.  I don't even launch it these days.

It really depends on what you're using your current PC for.  If you're just plugging in your camera sometimes and using Windows to grab photos from it, using winamp/itunes to listen and manage to your mp3s, msn to chat, IE to browse and WMP to play videos, then sure the Mac fits your usage pattern.

If you like to break outside the box, go a bit beyond, say you've played with alternate shells like Litestep to make Windows work better for you, or you swear foobar2k up and down because it really lets you manage and play music the way you want it, or have a heavily customised Miranda rocking MSN v10 and a video player like MPC or ZoomPlayer configured the way you like it, then I wouldn't recommend a Mac to you.  You're thinking too different and demand too much customisability, Macs don't like that.

I guess if you have a Unix emulation layer like Cygwin installed and it's feeling too lightweight, then OSX's BSD foundation will appeal to you.  There's other stuff that's worth mentioning like home/end keys never working the way you think they do, finder's navigation model really different than explorer's browser model and finder's slow refresh rate but those are more lesser points.

FWIW, I crash finder and watch it restart itself more often than I did with explorer on Windows.  Not to say it's unstable but coming from a Windows experience that hasn't seen blue screens since bad ram four years ago, I didn't find Macs any more or less stable.

For the basics the Mac Mini is just fine but still a tad bit overpriced. It's a small out of the way system that's much more suited for a media center then a powerful rig. Intel just dropped their Yonah prices so I expect Apple to do a revision on the Mini that'll consist of dropping down the 1.5 GHz Solo to $499 at least.

The iMac is a much more powerful machine and it has the usual value added effect that more expensive Apple products have. You get the video card and still compact size. You're locked into the onboard monitor though unless you're going to run spanning screens.

I find that OS X is customizable enough for my tastes but not as much as Windows. The Finder crashing is more then likely due icon previewing. At least that's the only thing that crashes my Finder.

>>10
9 here and yes, I agree that the iMac is a better deal but I already had a 20" Dell so it was either the Mac mini or one of the towers and at that time, I believed Intel towers won't come until at least fall (so far so good).

I guess my biggest problem with my Mac experience that I'm not hardcore enough to do things the Unix way and the few times I do compile from source, I find out some library I need is not Intel-OSX ready yet.  So I'm left with either what Apple provides or what third-party developers contribute and third-party support is much, much scant than on the Windows world.  Leaves me a bit frustrated when I want to do things 'differently'.

Not to say I'm disappointed with switching, just that I don't feel any more satsified or disappointed.  The home/end key thing is really bugging me though.

I find that third party support is much better on OS X. They take the time to make the applications OS X like (More then likely from the Human Interface Guidelines) Other then Office I don't really pay for non-Apple software. I have tons of freeware on my iMac already.

I rarely have to go into Terminal to do something. I normally use it at work since we're running Solaris and it's the best interface for it. Otherwise at home it's a lot of really well made programs that'll just ask for your admin password.