Who thinks I should buy a MAc?

hmmm you're looking for a balanced perspective in a mainly mac environment. this is a debate that has raged for years, and well i doubt it'll stop here.

I however use both, mainly PC, but when i can i'm on the mac. I'll also admit now that there are parts i don't know much about like the whole tech support vs. doing it yourself. As far as i know, you're more then allowed to do the fixing yourself.

that covers your #1. #2, run bootcamp, that gives you windows on a mac faster then on a windows machine. No, i'm not kidding. We use Revit at work, alot of them running on mac's that have windows running, and it KILLS the best machines we can get from any PC manufacturer. I'm just waiting for my 90 days to be up at the firm i'm at and then i get my Mac to run Revit also :D (architectural software)

Personally, my next computer at home, is without hesitation a MAC, it'd be foolish to deal with a PC again.

hope this is a start of info...

An Intel chipped mac can run both XP and Mac OS X now -- so you can use all your pc software.

Mac parts are readily available, even more so now that they are intel chipped based. RAM has never been an issue since it's platform neutral. Get a G5 tower for the max upgradability, with as many ports as allowed. Then you'll have time to use your sweet software instead of building the computers all the time. Ha.

I notice you are an Aussie, yes? (Holden). Are you a Holden person or a Ford person? :) My wife's a kiwi...for me I'd have to go bogan and say 'Holden'.

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Powerpoint is not a design application

Yeah talk about provoking the bees! I must be mad!

archmedia:
You are right the debate rages strong today and likely won't go away ever, but it's good to get an unbiased opinion from those who for the most part have taken a clear stand for a given side - in this case the Mac side.

A Mac rep told me you can dual boot, I take it that's what bootcamp is about, yes?

And I would not be surprised that Mac hardware would run Windoze faster - although it may be an insult to Macs do such a thing.

natobasso:
Thanks for the insight on the hardware, I was under the impression that the only thing you were aloud to mess with was ram and drives.

And yes I am in Australia but came from England when I was five, so I am pretty much an Ausie! Oh, and I have to admit I am a Ford person (no real reason, mainly just a bit roomier for the family) but I have had Holdens (and Valiants and dare I say Mitubishi) and never had any real problems with any of them.

Maybe when I get a Mac, I better get a Holden too. Hehe.

Hey notice that.. when.. not if!
Since I am planning on spending money an Adobe apps - Illustrator or Photoshop - maybe both - see my post: What tool is the best for icon design, (natobasso has been there, again thanks for the input) it's probably a good time to make the change.

I have heard that Macs give a more acurate colour printout of what's on screen, is that true?

And are they truely plug and play?

What of reliability?

Thanks for the input
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Remember only true artists can be constructive!
Constructive criticism - of a COMPOSITION - belongs only to artists since
it nurtures the creative spirit others, and because they are artistic in
themselves they fear no competition.
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Bootcamp, Parallels, VMware and possibly more will create special partitions on the Intel Mac's hard drive for Windows. You can run Windows-native software on it faster and more efficiently than on a Mac. Not all software makes the transition, however. Search the Internet for forums dealing with this issue. You'll find mixed reviews on how, for example, Sony's SoundForge runs in a Mac environment using one of the Windows-enabling apps.

That aside, I feel there's really no beating a Mac if you're into design. If your primary service area is something other than that -- what it is, you don't say -- you might be better off sticking with your PCs. (The devil you know, and all that.) Sometimes, you'll run into features of Web sites that don't function as well on a Mac as on a PC, because their designers didn't, for some reason, want to include Mac people in their client base. (Or maybe they were just ignorant.) If you're into games, you might be disappointed by the relative paucity of releases for the Mac versus the PC. Ditto bean-counting apps and the like.

On the other hand, Mac now boasts native versions of AutoCAD and other professional-level apps formerly the exclusive domain of PCs. Most importantly, Adobe software has its roots in a Mac environment, and I believe they still work best on a Mac. If you're headed toward design, Mac is the way to go.

If you want to play games and count beans, build yourself another PC.

And then, there's the issue of viruses. There just aren't enough Macs to warrant the effort of the geekjerks who pollute cyberspace with them, so although the Mac OS is fractionally more vulnerable to infection than it once was, the fact is that Macs are, for all intents and purposes, virus-free. If you value security, and/or would like to recapture the time you presently spend innoculating and disinfecting your system, you might want to lean on a Mac.

I have to use a PC at work, but that's changing soon as part of the ofice move brings new offices and mine is being specced out with a nice 24" iMac.

As for not being able to do your own repairs...
I've repaired my macs, in fact I took apart my 12" G4 Powerbook after the hard drive failed the other day and despite it being a long process involving removing 47 screws it was easy and done within 30 minutes.

I've also replaced the HDD on my MacBook, upgraded ram on all my systems, installed wireless cards, disassembled an old iBook and sold the parts on eBay for spares etc

There are guides all over the net on how to disassemble apple equipment. I also replaced the battery on a 3 year old iPod mini last week and the screen on my 4G iPod after someone stood on it.

It's easy.

I've also converted 3 friends to Mac in the past month and all are loving it.
One installed Windows and said to me the other day he's used it once in about 3 weeks as he just doesn't need it.

All the software you need you can generally find equivalents for Mac, and if not then use Parallels or Boot Camp

Never had an issue with plug and play anything bar an ancient webcam that said it wasn't supported on OS X but I decided to try anyway and even that sort of worked.

I got two friends an iMac 3 weeks ago, so far it's not hooked up to their surround sound system and their 42" plasma, they use it as a DVD player, they've redone their website in iWeb, dumped microsoft office and moved to iWork and made movies and picture DVDs in iLife.

They love it and the week after they got it I came round to install Windows and boot camp and got told not to as there was no need.

I've got 4 Macs in my house.all of which I've opened up to add bigger hard drives or RAM etc one they've been out of warranty, however...
AppleCare is truly amazing customer service, when I got a dodgy logicboard in an old G3 iBook I got sent a box, packed it, called for them to collect and it was back to me within 3 days with a replaced logicboard, they also replaced the screen, keyboard, damaged modem port (i tripped over the cable) and entire top casing free of charge.

Do it.
Buy one.
If you regret it just flog it on eBay.

I have to admit that I was fairly sold on the whole Mac idea before I posted this topic, but as mara06 mentioned somtimes its the devil you know thing, so I just wasn't sure about the plunge.

I think you people are making the decision pretty obvious, after all I can always flog it on eBay eh plugz.

Games are not an issue for me, programming and databases are though but I can always keep the PC for that if need be for Windows clients, or possibly Bootcamp will alow for the total PC ditch.

As for Adobe's roots in Mac marao6, I've noticed that several of the design focused businesses in my area are using Macs, one place does photography based work and another is into prints\posters. I don't know what software they are using but it's probably safe to read between the lines..... actually I reckon I'll just go and ask them.

The main thing I was concerned about was reliability which sounds like it isn't really an issue either. But being in the PC world you hear all these "horror" stories about Macs, but don't know what to believe.

Hows this for a laugh - I went back to Tafe last year for a short course and one of the instructors there had been called in from retirement for the semester. Now this really lovely Scottish man had been teaching all sorts of stuff mainly to do with Windows PC's - programming, networking, MSOffice - for a good part of his career.
When we were donig the intro stuff a fellow lecturer asked him what he had been donig since he retired, and he said among other things - I bought a Mac! His reason - because they just work!

Only problem was I didn't have a lot of opportunity to ask him the real ups or downs of that decision - but he really got me thinking along the Mac lines thats for sure.

Thanks for the input everyone.

Yes; it's true. And right out of the box, too.

In the years since I switched to Mac (that was 1989), I've only had two kinds of trouble: failures caused by my ISP, not the Mac; and application crashes that were the result of poor decisions on my part, such as loading oddball third-party freeware/shareware that turned out to be corrupted or just plain incompatible. Once -- ONCE, mind you, in all this time -- an Apple product proved to be defective. It was a bad logic board, and Apple arranged for my local authorized dealer to come to my office and replace it for me immediately, for free. (He also brought me cappuccino and a brownie.)

Oh, wait. I acquired the W-Def (W-dev? I forget) virus from a service bureau back in 1990, I think. Apple had a fix for it for it in the mail, on a 3.5" disk (remember those?) before I was even aware I had it. (I wasn't online then, yet.)

I think this list of troubles stacks up pretty well against those that my husband has experienced on his Dell in the past month alone! :-)

I think it's pretty safe to say that the design studio you plan to visit is working on Macs. While Mac may have a small share of the overall computer market, I believe its share of adherents in design (not to mention motion picture, animation and sound studios) is nearly 100%.

Switch.

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Powerpoint is not a design application

I like that natobasso - just switch - no other words need be said.

mara06 you make a good case, but as for your husbands Dell - well I wouldn't touch them anyway, in fact I stay clear of any brand machines - I find I can build a far better specced and much more reliable machine myself, and still get the standard 12 months warranty on parts that they would give you.

I got burnt by IBM once, bought one of their machines (thinking these people ought to know about PC's) but the monitor was a peice of junk (crt), couldn't get the geometry of the dam thing to be anywhere near reasonable, the Windows Taskbar tilted about 20mm (no kidding) up at the right side of the screen.

Their customer service was actually OK, they sent me a total of three (hehe...) monitors all couriered out within a couple of days, great!, only problem was that they were either worse or just the same as the original.

Then they finally decided that it was time to pull the plug and I would have to accept the fact that is was due to the magnetic pull of the earth and all that stuff, and I would just have to find the best spot in the house where the problem is as minmal as possible (for crying out loud!)

Anyway I digress...... the point is I just don't have those problems when I build my own machines, so the brand name is often just that, a name, not necessarily equating to quality.

plugz you mention the dual boot with Bootcamp, have you done that yourself, or do you know someone that has? I would definately be intereste to know of any glithces with the WinOS (if any) talking to Mac hardware. (As I understand it Mac architecture deals differently with graphics and cpu operations, which is why they have always had better performance)
But if that is not an issue then it's of to the MAc store for sure!

Thanks heaps for the input everyone.

thanks for the input everyone - this site is really quite awesome!

plugz: thanks for the Bootcamp info - that makes the decision to switch very compelling indeed.

Just one issue I thought of (overlooked...?) is networking. My home\office is currently a network with three machines (one for work, two for the kids), and one machine acting as a server that is the gateway to the web (running Win2K). So I just wonder about networking issues (if any). I could replace all machines with Macs eventually, but in the meantime it would need to talk to Win2K server!

Thanks for the input :-)

That's all the incentive I need.

Thanks for the network info ireid.

OK enough said, the only thing left to do now is take Yoda's advice and DO!

Thanks for the input =-)

Why does someone always invoke the Holy Trilogy? It's inescapable. It's all knowing!

but what of Macs.......?