Does windows run faster on a mac?!

flippant said:
I think you are talking about perception again though, at that price point plenty of other laptops share the same build quality, especially since the latest generation of MBP, I find those very plasticy, the original aluminium MBP (manufactured by ASUS iirc) was sturdy but now? As to the track pad, I haven't used a track pad, except in cases of desperation, for years, so I'm sure it is the best in the world, again it's a question of taste as to it's superiority. Screen? Quite a few IPS screens these days, and if like me you don't like shiny screens? I can't give you a technical reason why matt is better than gloss, it's just a question of taste, IPS is better than TN, sure, but it isn't apple specific.

It's about taste, and I will happily agree that for you a Mac is better.

I like the Air, but I'd still buy an Asus ZEN if I needed that kind of machine, because I use windows and without OSX a mac makes no financial or technical sense.


If Apple ever release a workstation that can compete on price, or for me, more importantly performance I'll buy it, hell I'll buy two, but right now I'd have to be insane, or just really really like Apple.


We could argue this all day, and as I'm trying to get enough posts for the MM, I happily will! But I've had this same conversation with studio heads, designers, editors and apple sales guys for going on 20 years now and I have yet to see anything to convince me that apple have anything over a different brand of PC unless you buy into their software, and since it doesn't do what I need, I can't.
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There's obviously more to it than just the software. The MBP experience would be very different if it didn't have the trackpad that it has, or the battery life that it does, or the build quality that it has. If it just had a bog standard Synaptics trackpad with poor to moderate battery life and a plasticky, panel based body, it would just be a Windows laptop with a different OS. I'd argue at that point it wasn't worth paying any extra for. But as it offers more than just a different OS, there is obviously more to the value proposition than just the OS. I researched extensively before I bought my late 2010 13" MBP and I couldn't find any alternative laptop that had the same specs, just as good a trackpad, keyboard and build quality in as slim a shell with as good battery life as the machine I bought. The nearest I could get was an HP Envy which had about the same spec, but worse battery life and trackpad and was more expensive. The MBP was the technically superior machine.
 
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mrochester said:
There's obviously more to it than just the software. The MBP experience would be very different if it didn't have the trackpad that it has, or the battery life that it does, or the build quality that it has. If it just had a bog standard Synaptics trackpad with poor to moderate battery life and a plasticky, panel based body, it would just be a Windows laptop with a different OS. I'd argue at that point it wasn't worth paying any extra for. But as it offers more than just a different OS, there is obviously more to the value proposition than just the OS.
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But I think that is the point, I've used the Mac Book Pro and I've used well built laptops from other manufacturers, and it really is just the software, the build quality is good, but it's not unique. If it did have a plasticky body poor battery life it would be a £199.00 Medion from Aldi, and not all non-Apple pcs are.

I happily spend lots of money on things I know are not the best or the latest, I drive a classic mini, and I think it's the best car ever made, and can never never be bettered, but if someone asks me if it's better than a new ford focus I'm not going to try and convince them my mini is technically superior or faster or can carry more people because it's a mini, I know it's an unreliable heap, and my emotional reaction is what makes me prefer it, but this simple self honesty seems to be absent in a lot of Apple users.

Yay, my first car analogy on a computer web forum. Do I get a cookie?
 
But I think that is the point, I've used the Mac Book Pro and I've used well built laptops from other manufacturers, and it really is just the software, the build quality is good, but it's not unique. If it did have a plasticky body poor battery life it would be a £199.00 Medion from Aldi, and not all non-Apple pcs are.

I happily spend lots of money on things I know are not the best or the latest, I drive a classic mini, and I think it's the best car ever made, and can never never be bettered, but if someone asks me if it's better than a new ford focus I'm not going to try and convince them my mini is technically superior or faster or can carry more people because it's a mini, I know it's an unreliable heap, and my emotional reaction is what makes me prefer it, but this simple self honesty seems to be absent in a lot of Apple users.
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If you can point me to a Windows laptop that has even just a trackpad that's as good as that on the MBP, I'd agree with you. But you'll probably find that impossible, because no such thing exists; believe me, I researched this extensively! If there had been a Windows laptop with a such thing, and was considerably cheaper, I probably would have bought it.
 
Cleeecooo said:
When mac pros get a refresh with current hardware
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Erm, the reason Mac Pro's are still using the Westmere processor family is because the next ones haven't been released yet. The top Mac Pro processor is currently the X5670. The next generation equivalent will be the E5-2670. But it's the next generation. Intel haven't released it yet.
"Sandy Bridge-EP" Xeon E5 processors and their related "Romley" server platforms, are now in volume shipment and due to be launched during the first quarter.
Apple might have a good relationship with Intel, but when the Xeon E5 processors were delayed by a quarter there's nothing they could do about it. Intel's current product is what Apple currently use.

http://www.cpu-world.com//news_2011/2011101001_Launch_schedule_of_Intel_Xeon_E5_microprocessors.html
http://www.cpu-world.com//news_2011/2011102701_Prices_of_Xeon_E5-2600-series_CPUs.html
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/01/20/intel_q4_2011_server_drilldown/


slinxy said:
Macs rarely use the latest hardware, as they have to source the parts themselves from a manufacture. Its not like that can place the standard mainboard with the lastest chipset and place it straight into an imac like most manufactures can with there base units.
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Apple released the current (Sandy Bridge Quad-Core with Thunderbolt) iMac on May 3rd 2011. It used LGA 1155 Sandy Bridge with Intel's BD82Z68 platform controller. Intel didn't release Z68 until May 11th. For a week you could walk into town to your local Apple Store and buy an iMac with the Z68 chipset that was not released to any other OEM yet.

http://www.macrumors.com/2011/05/03...andy-bridge-quad-core-imacs-with-thunderbolt/
http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/iMac-Intel-21-5-Inch-EMC-2428-Teardown/5485/1
http://www.macrumors.com/2011/05/05/apple-gains-early-access-to-intels-z68-chipset-for-new-imacs/
http://www.tonymacx86.com/viewtopic.php?f=79&t=18967
http://www.fudzilla.com/motherboard/item/22512-intels-z68-comes-on-may-11th



For the record, I don't have rose-tinted Apple specs, it's just that those two posts were factually incorrect. Infact I'm typing this from my self built overclocked gaming PC :p (with my MacBook Air sleeping in my bag).
 
Erm, the reason Mac Pro's are still using the Westmere processor family is because the next ones haven't been released yet. The top Mac Pro processor is currently the X5670. The next generation equivalent will be the E5-2670. But it's the next generation. Intel haven't released it yet.
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I know, i'm counting it as SB-E, ehich is current :p
 
flippant said:
Those upgrades are expensive and so is the base machine about twice the price of a similar specification computer without the Apple badge. The MBP is a very nice laptop, and as fast a laptop as any other, but it's not a better 'tool', and it is much more expensive.

Spread sheets, word processing and internet browsing don't work in any way better that warrants the significant investment over a different brand of PC, I understand that people find it preferable, and that is a choice, but saying it's technically better is cognitive dissonance at best.

Some may feel the user experience is better, but that is subjective, not technical, if OSX wasn't locked down to apple, you could get the same experience elsewhere for a lot less money.

I still say it’s about fashion and perception, not about better hardware. I don’t think anybody is wrong to buy one, I just think it’s wrong to justify the purchase as something technically superior.
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Ok, recommend me some hardware that is significantly cheaper and in the same league as the Apple hardware it is pitched against.

Prebuilt workstations? Mac Pro vs Dell or HP?
Thin, light notebook? MBA vs Acer, Dell, Sony etc?
All in one PC? 27" iMac vs Sony, Dell, HP etc?

I can tell you for the above three product areas Apple are no different to any of the other good brands.

Buy a workstation from HP or Dell and they come out at just the same cost (talking Xeon processored workstation here).
Wat a thin, light notebook? Well the MBA is around £1100-1400, the Asus UX31 is around £1100-1300, Sony do the Z which is around £1400-3000 and that's about it for like for like competition at the moment (Performance, battery life and screen... You could go for a cheap, heavy plastic Acer or something else for £500 that has the same internal performance but they will be heavier, thicker, lower resolution screen (problem with the other ultra books released at the moment and even then the Samsung 7 Series is around £1100-1200) with lower battery life.
How about a 27" all in one? Well at the moment there is no competition for that, the 21" has a bit more but most are touchscreen and with lesser specs and poor screens. Sony do a range of 24" AIOs which are pretty good, similar/more than the iMacs... ;) It would be difficult to even build a tower machine for a similar price to the 27" iMac... The screen alone is around £600.

So in a lot of cases Apple really isn't that expensive compared to it's peers. They certainly used to be but not any more. Some areas they still are, and they still have the nasty fanboy cult thing going on with a lot of Apple users but generally as machines that do a job they are pretty good value.
 
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mrochester said:
I've only found that to be true if you look solely at the processor, RAM, hard drive and graphics. If you also consider the physical size, build quality, trackpad, keyboard, battery life and screen too, I don't think there's any Windows laptop that can outdo a MBP in those respects. They are all part of the spec, so I don't know why they should be excluded from the comparison.



As above, my MBP purchase was because of it's technical superiority over a Windows laptop. There was no other laptop that had the same spec in the same size body, with the same quality trackpad, keyboard, screen and battery life. In that respect it was technically superior to the Windows based offerings, hence I bought it! So you can clearly see why it's not wrong to justify a Mac purchase as technically superior.
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There are/were some windows laptops that can outdo MacBooks, however they either don't exist any more or they are just the same price. As the old saying goes, you get what you pay for...:p

My last Laptop was a Dell XPS M1330, bought over the 13"MB at the time due to it being more powerful, better battery, thinner and lighter (although debatable) and generally better for me. It was the same price as an MB... Unfortunately Dell then sold their souls after that and stopped making anything similar.
 
All in ones and ultra books, apple probably is te market leader.

Workstations, as they're targeted at businesses, they'll all be expensive, but you could get it cheaper building yourself or by Getting OcUK to do it.

Laptop wise, macs are poor. Pretty shabby price/performance wise. Same goes for desktops.
 
Actually I'd suggest Sony are the Market leaders in "ultra books", unfortunately they are generally priced out of most peoples range, that's why I bought an Air, couldn't afford the Sony...

Depends what you mean by "cheaper building yourself'. From your previous posts you seem to be suggesting building using consumer parts rather than actual workstation parts. Big difference in reality tbh. Want a dual CPU 24 core (with hyper threading) and 64GB of ram, you start to run out of options... Even the lower specced workstations don't really compare.
 
You can quite easily build high end workstations yourself.

I was contemplating a 64gb SR2 12 core system but decided to spend my money on better monitors instead :D

The reason I say apple lead the ultra book market is because the air is so well known!
 
Cleeecooo said:
Workstations, as they're targeted at businesses, they'll all be expensive, but you could get it cheaper building yourself or by Getting OcUK to do it.
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<Looks at OcUK's workstation class processor section>
All Out Of Stock or Pre-Order.

Remember the other key thing in a workstation class machine, downtime. I don't know what OcUK's policy is, but the company I used to work at had the 4hr contract with Dell. On workstations/servers (not desktops/laptops, they were 24hrs) Dell would get a replacement part in our hand in 4hrs time.
What are you going to do if you build it yourself and it dies? Nip along to PC World and buy a Xeon off the shelf?
 
Cleeecooo said:
You can quite easily build high end workstations yourself.

I was contemplating a 64gb SR2 12 core system but decided to spend my money on better monitors instead :D

The reason I say apple lead the ultra book market is because the air is so well known!
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Yet how much do they actually cost when you start putting Xeon and EEC RAM in?

Our work workstations are all basically custom built and still come to around £8k with proper workstation equipment (dual hex core Xeon, EEC RAM, Quattro graphics cards).
 
Amp34 said:
Yet how much do they actually cost when you start putting Xeon and EEC RAM in?

Our work workstations are all basically custom built and still come to around £8k with proper workstation equipment (dual hex core Xeon, EEC RAM, Quattro graphics cards).
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Can't remeber :(

But it was roughly £1K cheaper than Dell IIRC
 
Cleeecooo said:
Laptop wise, macs are poor. Pretty shabby price/performance wise. Same goes for desktops.
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Why is it always about performance per £?

It is NOT the reason you buy a Mac!!!!

I was the only one in my group of friends to have a Mac.

Now they all have one/want one because they love how well it's made and how easy it was to pick up and use.

A friend of mine bought a Dell 15" a month before I bought my MBP for £100 less but:

• My battery lasts twice as long.
• My GPU is four times faster.
• My build quality is far superior.
• My single thread performance is the same.
• Her multi thread performance is 40-50% better.
• Her laptop is worth £100 less than mine now, so i've made my money back already.

You telling me that the dell has better performance per £? :confused:

I should be clear that I bought my MBP at three months old for £1100. Granted if you buy from the Apple Store new without a student discount it's £1500, but you get what you pay for...


The problem is this is a performance enthusiasts forum. Therefore because the benchmarks say its worse and the price is higher automatically makes it a **** purchase. Which is rubbish.
 
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