Forgive me Bill for I have sinned....

[2Dogs]

Well I'm a Windows PC geek from since.....well they started making the things.

Last time I seriously touched an Apple was in 1980 with the Apple IIE :D

I've had a few clicks over the years with the Odd MAC..... but wasn't interested because....well I thought they weren't good value for money.

Rachel got herself an IMAC and I'm very very impressed. I just love how everything works!....

Tonight I decided to break it and add bootcamp and Vista.

Must say, all PC's in this joint are going to be MAC's in some shape or another over the next 2 years.

Love it!

[paulrb]

Well I'm a Windows PC geek from since.....well they started making the things.

Last time I seriously touched an Apple was in 1980 with the Apple IIE :D

I've had a few clicks over the years with the Odd MAC..... but wasn't interested because....well I thought they weren't good value for money.

Rachel got herself an IMAC and I'm very very impressed. I just love how everything works!....

Tonight I decided to break it and add bootcamp and Vista.

Must say, all PC's in this joint are going to be MAC's in some shape or another over the next 2 years.

Love it!

So my ruin perfection and add bloody VISTA....

[2Dogs]

Well OSX can't run certain CAD packages.....and that brings in the $$$.

[ninevalleys]

funny how MAC is meant to be the best graphics and music workstaions around.... yet hlaf the industry standards in both are not compatible with OSX

[Marcus]

funny how MAC is meant to be the best graphics and music workstaions around.... yet hlaf the industry standards in both are not compatible with OSX
:rofl: you should really learn about what you speak. As someone who made a good living in the graphics industry to someone who has never worked in it I can tell you you are WRONG.

Welcome aboard 2Dogs, I love that feature about Macs too. The only platform that runs Mac, Windows and Unix software.

[ninevalleys]

umm AutoCad anyone? not availble for mac... that is kinda a vital program to have.
Townsville Civic theatre recently chicked their macs and switched to normal PC's due to lack of compatibilty with sound softwares and sound board components.
personally to me mac or Pc is just a preference, my pc has faster rendering times than my freinds mac whose got two GPUs in it, though admittadly ive had one gig or ram fry once (warrenty covered within a week), and his mac is still up and going, tiem will tell though

[Marcus]

CAD is not used in the graphic design, video, pre-press and photography markets where MACs have pretty much total dominance.

As I said save your comments till you have actually worked in an industry please, you are embarrassing us all.

[ninevalleys]

solid edge, prodesktop, industry standard stuff and all incompatible with MAC

i designed the work benches for the North QLD tech college, and am currently putting together a portfolio for my entrance into a Industrial Design course at Monash Uni, i know enough to be in the position where i now show the teachers somthign new with the above programs.
as i said, its preference, i like PC cause it does it better, faster with a lot more programs simple as that, there are positives and negatives for both

NV

[2Dogs]

Unfortunately I think the choice still comes down to "Ok What software do I need to run"

Then you would normally go MAC or PC.

But after seeing how well Vista is running on the MAC, even if I was after a new PC..... I would buy the MAC :D

If I could show the powers that be at work, that all the engineering software would work....and total cost of ownership was lower they would change.

here's an interesting read about the Autocad situation

http://autodesk.blogs.com/between_the_lines/2007/03/run_autocad_200.html

[Archangel]

If I could show the powers that be at work, that all the engineering software would work....and total cost of ownership was lower they would change.
How is the total cost of ownership going to be lower if you're running Windows + OSX on the same machine? You still need all the same software you would if you were running Windows, so you're going to have to buy Windows licenses etc, plus the cost of OSX.

Surely if you're spending all day in some CAD package running on Windows it doesn't make an awful lot of difference whether the machine has an apple on it or a banana? The hardware is identical now, so the logo is about all that would differentiate them...

[James Park]

When I first read the title of the thread I first thought 'oh no, 2Dogs has discovered some new disaster to do with the Clinton's'.

[2Dogs]

How is the total cost of ownership going to be lower

If the engineering software would work on OSX, then from what I've seen the OSX machine seems to run more stable. There is less chance of the Users stuffing things up & less downtime and less IT support time required.

Running Windows + OSX wouldn't solve anything.

The same idiots would break Windows :D (removing internet access from 95% of all staff would solve it..... how many staff Really need it?.....not many! )

[Archangel]

If the engineering software would work on OSX, then from what I've seen the OSX machine seems to run more stable. There is less chance of the Users stuffing things up & less downtime and less IT support time required.

Running Windows + OSX wouldn't solve anything.

The same idiots would break Windows :D (removing internet access from 95% of all staff would solve it..... how many staff Really need it?.....not many! )
Oh right, sorry, I think I see what you mean now. That makes sense.

As for needing internet - I couldn't possibly count the number of times I've needed it to look up some API thing. I can't imagine I'm in that 5% - if I was about half of the rest of my company would be too...
I imagine it's a lot less so if most of the staff are doing CAD stuff, but there probably still are good reasons to use the internet. Not what it's used for much of the time, granted, but it'd be pretty tough to just not have it.

[Marcus]

The engineering software will be out on Mac soon enough.
What the change to Intel does is make it easy for developers to make versions of their software for both platforms. EA will now bring all their games to Mac at the same time as Windows. Industry developer will not be far behind.

[Archangel]

The engineering software will be out on Mac soon enough.
What the change to Intel does is make it easy for developers to make versions of their software for both platforms. EA will now bring all their games to Mac at the same time as Windows. Industry developer will not be far behind.
Not particularly easy. The processor architecture wasn't that big a deal - you need to compile for a different architecture, that's not so hard now we have things like gcc. But you've got completely different API's on both platforms - all of the windowing stuff, the widgets + scrollbars and whatnot need to be changed completely, unless you write in something like wxWidgets from the start, which of course nobody has.

That's a metric crapload of work to port to another platform, and it's probably a bit chicken-and-egg; there's kind of not much motivation for anyone to port their CAD software to Mac as long as nobody else does. On the other hand, there might be a big first-mover advantage, so maybe they will start springing up...

[Chris Madeley]

It did take adobe 1.5 years or so to port to intel mac, even though they had PPC and windows versions already. Admittedly it was also a version step, however I don't know how easy it really was for them.

They also had big incentive to go native on intel mac due to the big speed increase and massive potential market.

[Ozzy]

Very interesting 2D.
I have only ever used macs, so can't compare, but I did find them easy to master (well, sort of)
Just aquired a new one.

[recurve boy]

If the engineering software would work on OSX, then from what I've seen the OSX machine seems to run more stable. There is less chance of the Users stuffing things up & less downtime and less IT support time required.

Running Windows + OSX wouldn't solve anything.

The same idiots would break Windows :D (removing internet access from 95% of all staff would solve it..... how many staff Really need it?.....not many! )

Tight hardware integration would definitely have a large impact on stability. That being the case, and if apple always writes their windows drivers, windows on mac will also be more stable.

[2Dogs]

agreed.

Hence if I were to consider a new windows machine, I think I would buy a mac and load windows on it ;)

[Eberbachl]

About time you got a decent machine Paul ;)

:D

[Bruce]

Welcome to the right side of the fence
We have a few macs around the house great machines

Dad just got the little black laptop to take on a trip around australia with him very nice machine.

But my fav is my 24 inch imac

[Archangel]

Tight hardware integration would definitely have a large impact on stability. That being the case, and if apple always writes their windows drivers, windows on mac will also be more stable.
Well, given that the hardware in a Mac now is pretty much exactly the same as the hardware in anything else, I can't imagine it's going to make a whole lot of difference.

Apple don't write their own drivers, companies like nVidia do - Apple don't have the knowhow to write a driver for a modern 3rd party video card. Which isn't meant to be a criticism of Apple as such, but nVidia etc have some very smart people working on their drivers, which are very complex bits of code - other companies can't just rock in and "write their own".

[recurve boy]

Well, given that the hardware in a Mac now is pretty much exactly the same as the hardware in anything else, I can't imagine it's going to make a whole lot of difference.

Except that they aren't quite. Apple machines are a very small and specific subset of "pc hardware". Previously, even video cards, while technically the same as the PC variant, were actually customised jobs done for apple. All so that they could get it into their small form factors.

So sure, the actual code writing is outsourced, but they can literally test on all possible configurations (even if a certain component comes from 2-3 actual sources) and presumably they work closely with the big manufacturers to get the drivers right.

[Archangel]

Except that they aren't quite. Apple machines are a very small and specific subset of "pc hardware". Previously, even video cards, while technically the same as the PC variant, were actually customised jobs done for apple. All so that they could get it into their small form factors.
Well, they used to get custom versions because they needed big-endian video cards, which they used to charge rather more for. Presumably now they can use little-endian ones with the standard drivers just fine.
I have a sort of sneaking feeling that any custom small video cards they had would have been pretty similar to the normal versions used in everyone else's laptops.

So sure, the actual code writing is outsourced, but they can literally test on all possible configurations (even if a certain component comes from 2-3 actual sources) and presumably they work closely with the big manufacturers to get the drivers right.
I doubt that they do work all that closely with them, but you're certainly correct about the smaller number of configurations - to stick with the video card example, nVidia's drivers are pretty well rock solid. But there are plenty of 3rd-party gizmos that aren't, and come with dodgy drivers written by lowest bidders (which probably means 100 people being paid 5c/hour in Mumbai) which will explode the machine at the slightest opportunity. Not having OSX drivers means that they never get that opportunity on OSX.

[recurve boy]

I have a sort of sneaking feeling that any custom small video cards they had would have been pretty similar to the normal versions used in everyone else's laptops.

Yeah. As I understand, only the shape and size were different so that they would fit into their non-standard cases.

[2Dogs]

Well the Mrs has spat it. Can't teach an old Dog new tricks :D

So her Mac is running Windows fulltime now.

Must Say the Mac runs Windows so much dam better then anything else I used to date :rofl:

[whiz]

A real computer geek gets the job done regardless of what hardware and what OS.
If you've got an imac or a dell, check your fire insurance is up to date.

I know a lot of my 4th dan computer nerd friends have gone to mac platforms. One guy has the second operational iphone in Aus, so we're talking serious firmware level geek hackers.