Why you got an Apple

[ssidbroadcast]

Hey guys,

Just came across a defining Apple moment that makes me happy to be an OS X user. As many of you have likely experienced, the winXp computer I use at work is slow as molasses. I was scanning a 2 page document, trying to save it as a PDF, and then using IE6 (yeah, ie6) to gmail said attachment to someone in Sales. I eventually did so but a whole 7 minutes later, during which, out of boredom and curiosity I opened the Task Manager to look at the threads to see what the hell was eating up the CPU cycles. While most of the time it appeared the CPU was doing nothing but sitting on it's fat ass (most processes showing nothing, or >10 percent, sys idle showing 90 ≥ ) it would occasionally spike and show that the 2-separate-but-necessary scan processes taking about 70-80 percent. Inefficient beast.

Later, I was home tinkering around with some photo stitching in DoubleTake and organizing an album in iPhoto while doing a screenshare with a friend in iChat. He had dropped a huge panorama picture, a 14MB JPEG, in the iChat window to direct transfer show me something. I had forgotten it was there and while we were talking I on a whim just grabbed the iChat chat window to resize it and... it was white-spacing and sluggish as hell. Not knowing the cause of the slowdown, I opened up the Dashboard to check my iStat widget and I was blown away by what I saw:



112% ? How can a process be more than 100% of the CPU cycles? Further, that iChat or OS X hadn't crashed was amazing. Not only that, but things were just fine as long as I didn't try to resize the chat window. I think that's a prime example of what Apple means by their slogan It Just Works, and it's a reminder why I'm way better off with this.

* To be fair to WindowsXp, that machine is kindof old and has been around the block in terms of spyware/bots/etc. If it were my personal machine, I'd be taking much better care of it and wouldn't be surfing sleazy sites (I heard there was a salesman that used that comp for such things).

[SNM]

It's...possible there's some multi-threading going on in iChat, I suppose...

[Hance]

I am with SNM. My guess is OSX would actually show 200% cpu usage if your processor was maxxed out 100% for each core.

[Meadows]

I am with SNM. My guess is OSX would actually show 200% cpu usage if your processor was maxxed out 100% for each core.

Exactly.
The same way, Windows counts "CPU time" on a per-core basis, therefore if you have a process maxing out 4 cores, you'll see that its "CPU time" goes up by 4 seconds every second. Today's processors bend the fabric of reality it seems, whether Microsoft or Apple.

[lordT]

I bought an Apple because it made me look cool.

[derFunkenstein]

I am with SNM. My guess is OSX would actually show 200% cpu usage if your processor was maxxed out 100% for each core.

It does. When I was running SETI@Home, I'd get around 98-99% CPU time on two different processes.

[Norphy]

I got an Mac because I work as a Windows network admin for a living. I got so fed up with having to deal with the crap that Windows throws up all the time at work then having to deal with the same crap at home. I started a new job almost a year back and the place had some Macs. I had a play, thought "Hmm, this is nice" (which was the direct opposite of what I thought of Vista) and bought one for myself. I've not looked back since!

[Fighterpilot]

I was thinking of getting one just for the free Benzene fumes

[Meadows]

I was thinking of getting one just for the free Benzene fumes

If the neighbour gets an annoying pet, I'll put a Mac close to their window with a fan and wait till the pet dies.
Got the idea from the bird story that's posted on the above news headline here.

[tanker27]

I got an Mac because I work as a Windows network admin for a living. I got so fed up with having to deal with the crap that Windows throws up all the time at work then having to deal with the same crap at home. I started a new job almost a year back and the place had some Macs. I had a play, thought "Hmm, this is nice" (which was the direct opposite of what I thought of Vista) and bought one for myself. I've not looked back since!

You know thats the same reason I have one. Although I still have a PC in my house and a Vista one at that I really need to ween myself off it)

[Usacomp2k3]

The fact that it wasn't crashing is more an aspect of it being a dual-core machine than the OS. The same cpu in your XP machine at work would exhibit similar behavior.

How serious is this thread supposed to be?

[newwind]

I have been a user of IBM/PCs since about 1988. To be honest I was a PC snob I always felt the people with Macs were not "in the know" and tended to be artistic rather than professional. In 1999 I married my wife who will not touch anything that is non-apple. It was not really an issue as I did not care to mess with her apple and she had no desire to touch my beige boxes. Love and life being what it is a purchased a macbook pro for her last Christmas. Somewhere deep inside me after reading about the product and then going to the store to examine it I began warming to the apple/mac products. This Christmas she purchased me a macbook pro and I am writing this on the machine right now. I cannot say that I care any longer as I am older and generally just want things to work and be tools for me. The switch over to intel chips really makes the whole apple vs PC thing kinda pointless. It is a OSX vs Windows thing and to be honest Windows has not really kept me happy. I am not saying anything is superior just that in my older age I find OSX a better fit.

To sum it up I really don't feel my switch to Mac is a reflection on the Mac vs. PC debate I waged in my youth. Now it is OSX vs. Windows. I am also at a point in my life where I do not get as blindly loyal to the brands I own. They are all companies attempting to get my money. None of them will look out for me so I generally to not fight for them. Whoever offers what I want I will use.

[adisor19]

I've been a Mac hater since 1993. I know some of you who probably spit some coffee on the keyboard right about now.. But seriously, i used to bash macs on a regular basis till around 1999/2000. At that point in time i started caring less and while i was aware that the macs were now using OS X, that was pretty much it. Around 2002 i started work at IBM for tech support for the graveyard shift. As it turns out they had an iMac running 10.2 as a demo/tech support for OS X diaulup networking. Since i had nothing better to do for most of my shift, i was just playing with that little mac. Anyways, i was kinda impressed with the fact that it didn't crash on me and also i remember that the interface just kinda flowed better compared to doing simillar tasks on win2k.

Time passed by and i kinda lost track of macs untill 2005 when Apple announced the Mini. Since i kinda always wanted to mess with OS X, i went trough with it and bought a first gen mini. It was cool but slow. That 4200RPM HD really made it crawl. It wasn't untill i purchased an external Firewire drive and installed Tiger on it, it it really started to feel like my old Athlon 1.2Ghz.. still kinda slow but hey, it could run OS X at a decent speed compared to my PearPC emulated image...

Around 2006, i finally made the mini my primary PC. (notwithstanding gaming) This lead to me buying the current MBP in 2006.

I can't say there was a defining moment for me going Mac.. i've always been curious but just never could jusity the $$ for a Mac. The mini arrived at a price point where i just could not refuse it.

Adi

[tfp]

How serious is this thread supposed to be?

I get apples because I like them in pie, granny smiths are the best.

[steelcity_ballin]

Sweet dude, thanks for the links!

[henfactor]

Well lets just say there isn't much in terms of AVCHD video editing capabilities on a PC, and the software that did exist pushed my little Athlon X2 4200@ 2.8 into the floor

We got the 24" iMac for video editing but love it for OSX in general (also, iWork is MUCH better than office 2007).

[derFunkenstein]

A subject for a different thread, possibly, although this thread doesn't have much of a subject to begin with...but if iWork is better for you than Office, it's because you don't need the complexities and advanced features of Office.

And I know I certainly don't - I just need a no-frills word processor and a spreadsheet that will let me save data as tab-delimited text. iWork does both of those things marvelously, and while OpenOffice is free, it's nowhere near as fast on OS X.

[bthylafh]

I got a work Mac because I support PCs and Macs, and the Macbook can run OSX and Windows both.

I have a self-built PC running XP and Ubuntu at home, and no plans to switch.

[SNM]

A subject for a different thread, possibly, although this thread doesn't have much of a subject to begin with...but if iWork is better for you than Office, it's because you don't need the complexities and advanced features of Office.

That's not an entirely accurate description. They do different things. I'm sure that Excel has more power-features than Numbers does -- but Numbers makes formatting its numbers for presentations much easier and prettier. Word may do more than Pages does, but it's not because heavy-duty typists need those features; they're just little things that are useful for individual niches. Keynote, however -- as far as I can tell it's better than PowerPoint in every way, with capabilities that PowerPoint doesn't have and easier ways of accessing them. You can always tell when people are using Keynote instead of PowerPoint, because their slides don't suck.

[henfactor]

because their slides don't suck.

True that.

[derFunkenstein]

I can't discuss Keynote at all; I've never had need to use it. And that's why I left it out.

And SNM never does say what I said wrong - all I said was that if you think iWork is better it's because you don't need the added features of Word or Excel. Then he goes on to say I'm wrong, because Word and Excel have different features. Uhhh...moo?

I prefer Pages and Numbers, btw. My requirements are extremely light for home use, and for the most part, they're pretty light even for work use. Excel for me is just a glorified delimited text editor. Word is just the app we're using for people to communicate to me how certain features work and for me to communicate back to them whether or not they were successful in implementing/fixing said features. If I had a Mac at work, I'd be able to get by entirely on iWork outside of Exchange support.

[Usacomp2k3]

because their slides don't suck.

True that.

Eh? I disagree. It's easy to make nice looking slideshows in PowerPoint.

[SNM]

And SNM never does say what I said wrong - all I said was that if you think iWork is better it's because you don't need the added features of Word or Excel. Then he goes on to say I'm wrong, because Word and Excel have different features. Uhhh...moo?

As far as I know, Excel is completely lacking in Numbers' page layout capabilities -- ie, featuresets are distinct rather than one being a superset of the other. Word, on the other hand, can do everything that Pages can, so yes, it's got advanced features. But it's not so much that they're features a "power user" needs as that they're features that "research scientists in biology" need, or "copy editors at a publishing company." At least, as far as I can tell.

Keynote, on the other hand, is just better so far as I can tell. I've never seen anything in a Powerpoint presentation that can't be done more easily in Keynote, and I've seen Keynote presentations that I have never seen anybody make in Powerpoint.

Eh? I disagree. It's easy to make nice looking slideshows in PowerPoint.

Meh. You can make acceptable slides in PowerPoint. But you can make amazing ones with less effort in Keynote. I've been making PowerPoint shows since I was 10 and I've made precisely 2 Keynote shows, and the Keynote ones are better than anything I can make in Powerpoint. Granted, better Powerpoint users could probably make slides equivalent to my Keynote ones, but I've never seen anyone even try to do it.

[Usacomp2k3]

Meh. You can make acceptable slides in PowerPoint. But you can make amazing ones with less effort in Keynote. I've been making PowerPoint shows since I was 10 and I've made precisely 2 Keynote shows, and the Keynote ones are better than anything I can make in Powerpoint. Granted, better Powerpoint users could probably make slides equivalent to my Keynote ones, but I've never seen anyone even try to do it.

Fair enough. I've never used Keynote, so I guess I can't comment on on their features, I just know that PowerPoint is much more capable than most people give it credit for due to it being used by most executives you are often still running old versions and such.