What's the difference between Mac and PC (Hardware)

I've never used a mac before, but I was wondering if there are any differences between a mac and a PC hardware-wise. The price difference says a lot.

 

Short version: The chassis.

Long version: With Macs, you're paying more for the right to use Mac OS X than the hardware itself.

 

The Logo on the cover.

 

If so, if Apple wanted to compete with the PC market, then why are the prices so high if hardware difference is negligible? I could simply build a PC, install OS X, and call it a mac.

 

One has more dollar signs on the price tag.

 

Don't buy an Apple is the conclusion you and I are getting at here, it seems.

 

The hardware is the same. Mac hardware is much more selective. The hardware used by Apple is a subset of the PC hardware made by Intel and other Apple partners. You can find all the Apple hardware used in PCs by other manufactures.

You could say that the combination is unique and selective for compatibility with OSX and also compatibility between components. There is also selection for quality. This is not unique to Apple but comparable to what HP, Dell and others use in their business or higher end consumer lines.

The LCD, keyboard and chassis also has a pretty good reputation. The Track pad is unique. Don't think it has been copied by any PC maker. The Megasafe power adapter is also unique and a better design then any PC notebook. Also Apple care is a great service.

Once you compare the price of the Macbook Pro's to the business lines of the big PC notebook makers the difference in price becomes much less.

If you look at the notebook just from CPU, GPU, harddisk and ram then a mac is no different. If you want a notebook which is solid and has extras such as the megasafe power adapter and good service by the manufacture the macbooks are worth looking at.

 

I think you mean MAGsafe--but yeah, I have to admit, after repairing a number of power jacks on laptops, I wish every laptop maker would steal the idea. However, it should be noted that while the idea is great, the implementation is shoddy. At least the early adapters used very cheap wiring causing the wires to actually melt where the cord meets the end.

 

Actual hardware - pretty much the same as any normal upper mid range "PC".

And on a side note - you can't say better built as more Macs failed on the 8400M GS than Vaios (quicker than Vaios...)
This is then counterbalanced by Dells... who also has excessive failure rates...

(Design flaw in the graphics card - didn't take thermal cycles too well)

 

A lot of laptops, even some cheap netbooks such as acer aspire one has the same touchpad that supports multitouch and every feature on the macbook touchpad, so the synaptics trackpad isn't unique, only the size of the trackpad is unique.

 

and the lcd's don't have that good reputation. by now, they're okay (if you like much-too-shiny setups), but for a long time they where much below other laptops screens (they had horizontal lines each other pixel a bit darker, it looked strange).

and they don't deliver artist-useful screens, which to me is shocking, as they try to be the 'arty guy of laptop world'. hp and dell do.

the chasis, well, it's okay. but the unibody hype is mostly just that: hype.

 

I was thinking about building my own desktop for my music needs. It'll be used as a music-making machine. Some people say it's better to go mac for that purpose, but mac is expensive. If people wanted to "go Mac" they could just build a PC and install OS X. In the end it will still function the same way as a mac, but for a much cheaper price.

I've even heard mac lasts longer than a PC. That to me sounds like a myth. OS X may be stable sure (I'd dual-boot anyways), but hardware?

 

Well first of all, Apple owns the legal rights to its OS i.e. you can't install OSX on a non-Mac machine: it's illegal, feasible but illegal.

As for Macs being more stable, it's exactly what Apple says "they handpick the hardware and they design the OS that goes with it"; therefore it's "supposed" to be more stable. With Windows or Linux, the OS developers have to take into account every hardware combination and driver combination possible but with mac/OSX, that list goes down to a smaller selection. It's really that simple, nowadays Macs and PCs are more alike hardware-wise than ever before(they used to be different).

The OS itself might be a bit more stable(being based off Unix), but overall a well-versed user will be able to maintain both a PC or a Mac well into the future.

 

just use win7 on a normal core i5 or so, and you will love producing music on it. the question is not if the os is stable (which win7 is on most new hw, too), the question is, is your app and the plugins stable on the os.

right now, f.e. ableton live is about as buggy on osx as on windows.


don't even consider messing with an apple if you're not sure. it's not worth it.


edit: i produce music btw.. just in case that wasn't obvious somehow. and i perform live gigs, and dj sometimes for up to 9 hours, and have to rely on my hw and sw 100% during those cases.

 

Hardware-wise, it all comes down to whether you find a satisfactory sound card for Mac as well as connectivity & support with other musical instruments/devices. You also have to consider the fact that Mac Pro (the most expensive Mac) is the only model that provides PCI expandability.

 

May I refer you to the Forum Rules?

 

Didn't know about it >.<

I guess apple can set it at any price they want as long as there are demand from consumers (probably a lot fewer than PC's). People buy it for the name, looks, and the OS I guess.

 

I've lost count of the number of university students who claim that their Macbook purchase was revelatory, citing numerous advantages of the OS (the most outrageous being that it promotes the development of "higher level thinking") and that Apple uses their own special hardware customized specifically for their products by companies like Intel.

Even the people who acknowledge that the hardware is the same believes that the Macbook is a multimedia monster, infinitely faster at video encoding and decoding despite having a lesser/same graphics card as a comparable Windows laptop. Sure, the multimedia software may be better, but they insist that the Apple OS does something akin to unlocking some hidden shader units or something in the Nvidia GPU.

In short, these people believe in magic, and preach it. And their preaching gains converts. That is why people buy Apple.

 

IMO the OS should be the main reason one gets a Mac since it's the major difference between that and any other Windows or Linux based system. If you like, prefer, are more at ease within the OSX environment then by all means, I'm not against getting a Mac.

Personally, I've used OSX(Leopard and Snow Leopard), Windows(95 to 7), and Linux(Ubuntu and Fedora) and I've found the differences between them for the average Joe marginal at best. I will admit that OSX does have a certain "simplicity" to it(ex: just delete an applications folder to uninstall a program) but to the common folk it wouldn't be all too noticeable.

 

I personally do not like Mac OS X compared to Ubuntu... However, I understand that it is very appealing to most consumers. Also, I like to be able to dual boot with Windows 7, without needing to wait for Apple to say it's "Okay!" through boot camp. Hardware wise ever since the Intel switch, Macintosh became another PC.

 

As everyone has mentioned so far; limited hardware selection makes OS/X theoretically more stable than a Windows platform, but don't count on it.

I'm surprised that nobody mentioned the BIOS - well, its not a BIOS, but the EFI which does not allow you to install Windows as if you had a real PC. This might be the biggest difference hardware-wise between them.

Performance-wise, I find that Windows 7 runs just as fast if not faster when A/V is not installed - but then, you're not connected to the internet too (if you don't want viruses running rampant).

The touch pad drives me crazy - multi-touch or not - and the one button mouse with no scroll wheel is also a last decade holdover that does not enhance the user experience. I realize you can get two button mice with scroll wheels from Apple, but this is considered anathema by Apple devotees.

The keyboard is also not a favorite of mine, but that is just personal preference - it is simply too small.

The LCDs do look gorgeous and calibrate well, but again, on the PC side there are as many (or more) options for consideration too.

As long as the software you run works well enough for you in Apple or Windows O/S's then I say choose the cheaper hardware route. When even one program doesn't work in the O/S of the hardware you're considering then your decision is effectively made (in my mind).

Keep in mind that when you're upgrading (if you can: Mac Pro mostly), you need to stick very closely to Apple 'genuine' parts - or, at least Apple compatible - and those too are for a premium, compared to generic PC parts.

I think I've covered it all?

 

Interesting! Is that true? I obviously know next to nothing about Mac OS, but I have my doubts that such a simple approach is really viable, unless you severely restrict the kind of functionality that an installed application can add to the system. Otherwise, the only way to implement such simplicity is to require installers to place an uninstall program/script in the installation folder, and add some logic to the OS such that, if a folder delete is performed, the OS checks for the presence of the uninstaller, and then silently runs it. However, doing so may lead to some quite suprising effects of what a user might have thought of as a simple removal of a folder.

If none of the above is true, then after deleting program folders to uninstall stuff is bound to leave you with a system that has orphaned files and links scattered all over the hard drive, clearly a very ugly situation.

So, I wonder, how do application installations work on Mac OS. I do have quite a bit of experience on other Unix systems, and these systems do not have such elegantly simple installation/uninstallation procedures, either.

That's a fairytale, of course. You can run modern Windows systems just fine without any A/V software. I have many years of experience of doing just that, on quite a number of machines, including our family computer that is used by my wife and kids. No viruses, ever, in something like 20 computer-years (several computers over about ten years or so, some of them on, and online, 24x7). My secret: Don't install a virus or other malware. It's as simple as that.

P.S.: And, yes, you wouldn't believe how fast, and stable, Windows systems are if you don't weigh them down with crummy anti-this-or-that stuff...

 

Yes it does work that on some applications. I'm helping out at my bf's dad's office and half of the computers I set up are Macs so I can confirm this mechanic for certain softwares(ex: MS Office for Mac, mind you, you also need to delete another adjacent folder).

I'll be honest, I'm far from a Mac expert(I just happened to have gotten one as a gift from a near-stranger XD), I've just come to notice that installing and uninstalling applications in OSX seems just too simple. Literally the first time I came upon an OSX program that didn't have a "regular" Windows type installer, I was wondering what to do and I had to google it to find out the solution was "drag the icon into the folder" I wouldn't be surprised if there was some hidden installer working in the background though.

In a similar way, some(although not all) applications can be uninstalled by removing their respective applications folder(just as some applications can be installed simply by dragging the thing into a folder). I'm assuming a similar logic/protocol would be used and there's probably a link between those 2 types of installs/uninstall(i.e. those that install that way probably uninstall the other way).

Nonetheless, it feels a bit gimmicky to me as you've said because for me, pressing "delete" never really equated to uninstalling anything, but I confirm that it does work like that in the case of some applications.

 

That is interesting, thanks for the confirmation. I am curious as to how this is done, and how well it really works, see my post above...

 

What happens if I don't? Would it freak out and go BSOD on me? :laugh:

So besides the motherboard (because of the BIOS or EFI), does Apple use any propriety hardware in their computers like the mac pro?

 

Well RAM isn't proprietary(as in, regular RAM works in most Apple machines) however Apple "strongly advises" their own certified RAM and I believe they might not even repair your problem if one arises due to 3rd party hardware. Then again, the iMacs use notebook RAM I think(at least shorter RAM sticks).

As for everything else, I think it's proprietary in most cases as except the mac Pro, the only computers most consumers buy are the Mac Mini and iMacs which both have proprietary hardware due to their sizes. Same can be said of the Apple notebooks.

 

Yea I agree with you deleting an Application is not a good way.
It is a lazy way of removing an Application in many UNIX software dependency exist therefore you might leave an orphan file around.

But these days there are drive by malware that launches via script so it is better to get an AV especially when Microsoft decided to offer Windows customer a free one.

 

Well like I said, I'm not a Mac expert(more like an accidental user), but I've come to notice that not all applications come with an uninstaller(notably those without an installer typical don't have an uninstaller) and I've no clue if there is such a thing in the OS as Windows' "add/remove program" interface to uninstall softwares that don't have an uninstaller. Mind you, I haven't really bothered looking around that much.

 

Yes, it could BSOD on you (but it isn't called that in Mac land: it will have a 'kernel panic' ) or, more likely the computer won't boot up at all (with certain devices like certain SSD's, RAM and/or specific add-in cards).

In the Mac Pro, the proprietary hardware is the use of sleds/rails to install new hardware into - but afaik, these accept standard devices anyways. It is nice to add/remove hardware with no fiddling of wires and/or screws though.

 

Is it possible to run multiple ASIOs in Windows? I can only have one running 1 at a time. If I have youtube on, then I have to close it before I can free the driver. It's annoying having to disable an application and enabling it in another.

Mac OSX's audio driver beats Windows in this regard. I want to know if there's a workaround in Windows.

 

Erm I don't know about others but since long a ago, I can open flash movies and Windows Media Player in the background.
Given Microsoft is a really rich corporation you'd think they have the money to employ good coders...

 

Typical OS X apps are self-contained packages, which are directories with an .app extension. They typically all install in the same directory, /Applications. Since OS X's UNIX underpinnings are effectively hidden from the user, any OS X user simply knows things go in the Applications folder. Occasionally a stub preferences file will be dropped in the user's home directory, but the user is not normally aware of this. These don't necessarily go away when the app is 'uninstalled' (deleted), but are tiny, a few hundred bytes maybe, and don't usually interact with anything.

A program downloaded will usually come as a disk image (.dmg, which is basically an ISO specific to Macs). For the majority of apps, This .dmg will simply have the .app directory I mentioned above and maybe a readme of some sort. The user drags the .app file into the Applications folder, and that's it. Typical .dmg's come with autoplay-like windows that will have two icons: the app, and the Applications folder, with a nice big arrow from the app to the folder. DRAG THIS HERE.

Larger apps, like MS Office 2008 or Photoshop or whatever, will have traditional installers like Windows users are used to seeing.

 

But don't application share software libraries?
If 2 Apps uses the same software libraries won't there be duplication?
Then does the computer dynamically load the libraries twice?