Is a MAC reall worth it?

[Guest Lester Weevils]

Geekbench seems to be a decent cross-platform speed tester. It is free for rudimentary uses.

Geekbench - Primate Labs

Unless it has changed in the last year, you get a top "summary" score section and then scroll down for a "details" score that can be informative.

A year or so ago folks at the company I work with, tested a lot of our machines. By and large most of the scores tended to "make sense". For instance if comparing a quad-core machine with about the same bus speed and memory speed as a dual-core machine-- CPU-related scores of the quad-core machine would be about double the score of the dual-core machine. Computers with fast hard drives and fast bus speed would score higher on storage tests than computers with slower hard drives and slower bus speeds. Windows versus MacOS didn't seem to matter much compared to the hardware guts in the machine.

But maybe the OS makes some difference. Years ago it was a lot easier to write fast file-manipulation programs on Winders than Mac, but dunno if that is still the case. Winders seemed to do better disk buffering and caching at that time.

Ferinstance my 8 core MacPro scored more than 4X faster than my 2 core MacBook. The MacPro had faster bus speed, faster memory, and faster hard drives. Can't recall the ratio, but it was surprising that the ratio was not drastically bigger than 4X. The 8 Core MacPro scored almost exactly 2X faster than my 4 Core HP desktop Win 7 puter. In that case, the memory speed, buss speed, hard drive speed was nearly identical between the MacPro and the HP. The only diff was that the MacPro had double the number of cores, and the speed score ratio was nearly the same.

I don't have winders installed on the MacPro via bootcamp, so can't easily directly test a difference between winders and MacOS on exactly the same hardware. Winders runs pretty quick in VMWare Fusion Virtual Machine on everything except interupt-dependent realtime tasks, but the windows version of Geekbench I tested would not run properly in the virtual machine and the VM is only a 2 core emulation. Have run some time-intensive batch processes on winders in Fusion that ran surprisingly fast.

Geekbench has a user-submitted scores page and many of the fastest scores are on recent 12 core Mac Pros. A couple of years ago even if a person prefers winders, and money is no object, the person could do worse than buy a Mac Pro, format the disk and get rid of MacOS, and install Winders via bootcamp. When I got the MacPro in 2008, the only equivalent machines in the winders world were Xeon servers which actually were priced higher than a MacPro. If you were looking for a fast machine the MacPro was almost a bargain.

However, the current prices on MacPro have drifted upward (along with performance). A "loaded" 12 core MacPro with 16GB ram and 8 TB storage and dual 27" monitors would weigh in at about $10,000 but it would be a heck of a machine. If you just buy the box with 8 GB RAM and a 2 TB hard drive and no monitors then it would "only" be $6500 and you could probably expand it with third party drives and RAM and such and save a thousand or two compared to the Apple "loaded" price.

Haven't gone price-comparing, but at that price maybe a 2011 MacPro ain't a bargain any more though a very nice machine. Maybe in the $6500 range (or below) you could find a pretty competitive generic XEON server box that would give the MacPro a run for the money in performance. But maybe servers/workstations have also got real expensive in the last couple of years. Haven't shopped lately.

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There can be puters with fast cpu and slow memory, or slow cpu/memory but really fast drives, etc. All sorts of combinations. On certain tasks it may not matter if the CPU and memory is slow if the hard drive is lighning fast. On other tasks, maybe CPU multitasking speed is the most important spec. Some tasks do not benefit from multi-threading and maybe a 3 GHz single-core Pentium with fast hard drive will work faster than a 2.2 GHZ 8 core machine.

All my current computers seem about the same speed (pretty fast) on mundane tasks. And they seem so slow I want to shoot them and put them out of their misery doing other tasks. Drives and cpu and memory have got so much faster/bigger but so has the data.

On the MacPro or the HP, if I need to copy or process hundreds of GB of files it takes dang forever. Actually working amazingly fast, but it is just having to tote so much data it seems glacially slow.

[enfield]

Just a different set of problems. Some folks love Windows, some love Mac. I'll take Linux.

[Guest nicemac]

Just a different set of problems. Some folks love Windows…

It is called Stockholm Syndrome.

[G27]

It is called Stockholm Syndrome.

Hahahaha, nice.

[Jonnin]

Back to what I was saying... I see how the mac has better bloat and concede the point. It does come with better software out of the box. (Bloat is any program on the computer when you buy it that is not critical to OS function, all types have their fair share of it). But if you have a computer with programs installed to perform the desired tasks, they are about even. I do not accept preloaded software as a valid way to say the mac is better though; windows is not allowed to put good software on their OS, they got sued for this a few years back and the practice was determined to be monopolistic. If that had not happened, I think windows would come with a video editor now, and a better paint program, and so on. So apart from the "buy a computer, start using it" race scenario, they are, as I said, about even. Mac video editing is better than all but the most expensive stuff for a PC, I have not seen a really, really good free one for PC. Biggest thing for me on a PC is visual studio. It blows anything else out of the water for developers. Anything else I can do on any type of machine.

[Guest nicemac]

There is a reason that Apple is number 1 in customer satisfaction for the eighth year in a row-they make good hardware and great software. Second place (HP) wasn't even close. (Press release dated today)

ACSI Press Release September 2011

Mac (Apple) and Windows (everybody else) are not " just about the same…"

[Guest Lester Weevils]

Back to what I was saying... I see how the mac has better bloat and concede the point. It does come with better software out of the box. (Bloat is any program on the computer when you buy it that is not critical to OS function, all types have their fair share of it). But if you have a computer with programs installed to perform the desired tasks, they are about even. I do not accept preloaded software as a valid way to say the mac is better though; windows is not allowed to put good software on their OS, they got sued for this a few years back and the practice was determined to be monopolistic. If that had not happened, I think windows would come with a video editor now, and a better paint program, and so on. So apart from the "buy a computer, start using it" race scenario, they are, as I said, about even. Mac video editing is better than all but the most expensive stuff for a PC, I have not seen a really, really good free one for PC. Biggest thing for me on a PC is visual studio. It blows anything else out of the water for developers. Anything else I can do on any type of machine.

Hi Jonnin

Haven't used VS lately. My last copy of VS was maybe 2005 or 2006. Maybe lots different now. VS seemed OK. Probably depends on the kind of programming you need to do. There are so many programming niches and I'm ignorant of most.

Is your code dependent on special MS features such as .net or C#?

Apple's XCode (based on gcc open source tools) is a pretty passable IDE. On PC I use gcc and Borland/Embarcadero tools. On Mac mostly XCode.

Favorite IDE's of the dim past include Symantec/Think C and pascal, and then Metrowerks Codewarrior was a fine full-featured IDE where you could target multiple platforms including many micro controller and DSP chip families. Have read that the Eclipse IDE pleases some folks. Might have time to look at it some day. Some guys are incredibly productive with nothing but a text editor and command line.

There are so many languages and IDE's. Many can do "about the same thing". I prefer languages that are not "locked in" to a platform and are "close enough to the metal" to allow fast performance. Extra points if it is fast and easy rather than slow and difficult to finish a project.

Visual Studio, the Borland/Embarcadero IDE's, XCode, old Codewarrior and Think IDE's all did about the same thing and seemed up to the task and not maddening to use. Visual Studio would be a near-no-brainer if one does .net or C#. Similarly Apple really wants the developer to use Cocoa and Objective C. It goes "easiest" with MS or Apple if you go with the flow and do it how they want. At least until the day you need to port to another platform.

Mac (Apple) and Windows (everybody else) are not " just about the same…"

Hi nicemac

It is about the same to me. It is fine that people have other preferences.

There is probably something I'm forgetting, but right now I can't think of any task I'd have a definite preference for performing on a Mac. On the other hand working the Mac is not usually any more annoying than winders except for programming the dam thang, the constant changes, and the dearth of up-to-date authoritative documentation. The documentation slogan on MacOS X is "read the headers". Sure it is good to read the headers, but on OS X that is about the only documentation you will ever find on many topics, and the headers are not THAT verbose.

For software that is for sale on both Mac and PC, I almost always buy the PC version because the software is likely to run longer and give better bang for the buck on Winders. Mac changes so much that every new MacOS release you cross your fingers that old programs will continue to work as expected. In addition, the constant changes on Mac tends to eventually run away developers or just grind them into the dirt till they don't care any more. So if I buy MacMegaKewlProgram 2.0, then there is a better chance that the developer will give up before he ever releases MacMegaKewlProgram 3.0 or 4.0.

Because winders doesn't change so quickly or deprecate API's with glee, then not only will PCMegaKewlProgram 2.0 have good odds of running trouble free on future versions of winders, there are also better odds that the developer won't get discouraged trying to completely rewrite a million lines of source code, and better odds of finishing a PCMegaKewlProgram 3.0 or 4.0.

[Jonnin]

Its not the windows libraries or other junk (I rarely use this, many of my programs are just number crunchers), its the basic features. Auto-complete of class members with the associated comments for the fields. Open included files with a click. Not having to deal with make files or other 1980s stuff. Easy to use class factory in the IDE. Collapse code sections with outlining. Mouse over code info, from value of a variable if in a debug session to data type when editing. I am not sure how "caught up" the others are with all the cool features, but the last few times I had to use something else, there was always something the other product would not do that I missed. The IDEs that have "almost" everything else often fail to make project files and configurations easy, either still using makefiles or their own limited internal formats that are just not as rich as what VS has. And a lot of these IDE's are not really "I" -- they use some compiler like gcc by trying to be a wrapper for it, which can lead to aggravations. And I second that about old software -- I still use a half dozen dos 6.22 programs including the trial version of paint shop pro (I bought it, but the freebie was better than the version I bought sadly), egaint (the worlds best tetris style game), arj (7zip is as good --- finally a program that is as good as the old stuff came along!), and a few others.

Edited September 20, 2011 by Jonnin

[Guest nicemac]

RE:"For software that is for sale on both Mac and PC, I almost always buy the PC version because the software is likely to run longer and give better bang for the buck on Winders. Mac changes so much that every new MacOS release you cross your fingers that old programs will continue to work as expected.…

I have several programs that are 8-10 years old that still work beautifully. If they follow Apple recommendations in their coding, they work for a long time.

…Because winders doesn't change so quickly or deprecate API's with glee, then not only will PCMegaKewlProgram 2.0 have good odds of running trouble free on future versions of winders,…

Trouble-free is the cornerstone of owning a Mac.

Look, I support around 415 Macs in one location and 84 in another. You want trouble-free? I generally have 1-3 actual office visits per week. Sure, there are remote sessions where I do this or that for a user (mainly training and related issues), but for the most part, there is little to do most of the time.

I am sorry, I just don't see my pc support friends that manage 500 machines having the same amount of downtime at work.

[Jonnin]

and you are correct. A novice PC user can (and often does) make tons of work for the IT/support staff. Heck I am probably an expert user and I still break mine now and then, the difference is I fix it myself.

[mikegideon]

and you are correct. A novice PC user can (and often does) make tons of work for the IT/support staff. Heck I am probably an expert user and I still break mine now and then, the difference is I fix it myself.

We have a rule. You break it, we reimage it. Doesn't take that long at all. User data lives on file servers. I don't do any of that work myself, but my guys do.

[Guest nicemac]

A re-image takes us seven minutes to run, then verify. That's how we handle any kind of major issue as well.

[mikegideon]

A re-image takes us seven minutes to run, then verify. That's how we handle any kind of major issue as well.

Actually, we don't do that with everybody. We treat the real users a little differently... the ones that don't normally break their machines.

[Guest Lester Weevils]

I have several programs that are 8-10 years old that still work beautifully. If they follow Apple recommendations in their coding, they work for a long time.

Some do, some don't. Of course some old winders programs get wonky on new OS also. But the risk is smaller on winders.

I daresay you don't have any 68K Mac programs that work on Lion. Same with carbonized PPC programs which were never recompiled universal. The equivalent of an old 68K Mac program would be an MSDOS exe. Some useful MSDOS command-line exe's will still run on Win 7. Though of course some don't run any more.

I keep wondering how long before Apple drops carbon completely? Possibly along with changing to yet another completely different and incompatible CPU family. That will wipe out lots of history rather completely on the Mac. The oldest Mac program I still use is Resorcerer 2.4.1 (circa 2002). Carbonized PPC code. Requires Rosetta and Rosetta won't run under Lion. Other PPC apps that remain useful-- Iconographer X 2.5, Rezilla. All of the above (and virtually all 68K programs which no longer run) were written according to Apple's recommendations at the time.

Maybe a strategy for writing smallish programs that will run a long time on Mac would be to write a unix command line program controlled by a cocoa shell app. Or maybe more long-lived if it is an X Windows program, at least until Apple quits supporting X Windows. Change is inevitable everywhere of course. Life is change, that's how it differs from the rocks. Even rocks change over deep time.

Virtual machines may be the solution for some kinds of obsolescence? If you have a set of tools that won't run on modern OS and takes too long to rewrite, maybe just bundle em along with the correct OS into a canned virtual machine? Hmmm, maybe that would be the ultimate cross-platform? Write yer apps targeting an open-source OS and then sell a virtual machine including the program and OS. It ought to run the same on any platform supporting virtualization.

A re-image takes us seven minutes to run, then verify. That's how we handle any kind of major issue as well.

Am curious how much data you are talking about? Dunno nothin about network admin. On Mac I usually use Disk Utility or SuperDuper (which appears to be a shell on top of unix). On PC lately just use the Windows backup mechanisms.

The MacPro has four 2 TB drives, configured as two Raid-1 volumes of 2 TB each. One for system, tools and data, and another for Time Machine and specific backups. Also a 2 TB firewire external Raid-1 and an assortment of thumb drives and 2.5" externals for redundant-saving important stuff.

The HP Win 7 machine has three 2 TB drives, the boot drive is a 2-disk Raid-1 and then the third internal drive for backup. And a 2 TB external for removable backup. And various thumb drives and 2.5" externals which somewhat overlap with the Mac.

Imaging either the MacPro or the HP takes HOURS. It beats installing from scratch and am not complaining. One can usually run an image while doing other tasks. Just sayin-- Seven minutes I wish! Is most of your workers' data on the servers rather than the desktops?

[peejman]

Perhaps someone already suggested it and I just missed it somewhere .... however, I'm surprised no one has suggested simply getting the MAC and partitioning the hard drive. Run the MAC OS on one partition and Windows on the other. That's the trick I've heard from several people. Perhaps that's changed...

Oh, and CAD/CAM work on a MAC?

[Guest nicemac]

Am curious how much data you are talking about? Dunno nothin about network admin. On Mac I usually use Disk Utility or SuperDuper (which appears to be a shell on top of unix). On PC lately just use the Windows backup mechanisms.

The MacPro has four 2 TB drives, configured as two Raid-1 volumes of 2 TB each. One for system, tools and data, and another for Time Machine and specific backups. Also a 2 TB firewire external Raid-1 and an assortment of thumb drives and 2.5" externals for redundant-saving important stuff.

The HP Win 7 machine has three 2 TB drives, the boot drive is a 2-disk Raid-1 and then the third internal drive for backup. And a 2 TB external for removable backup. And various thumb drives and 2.5" externals which somewhat overlap with the Mac.

Imaging either the MacPro or the HP takes HOURS. It beats installing from scratch and am not complaining. One can usually run an image while doing other tasks. Just sayin-- Seven minutes I wish! Is most of your workers' data on the servers rather than the desktops?

My standard editorial-user OS and app package is 15GB. A graphic Designer image is 21.7GB. The editorial re-image (intel iMac) is seven minutes, around 10 minutes for the Graphic Designer (Quad-core Mac Pro). I use SuperDuper! to make the master and Disk Utility to restore from an external hd using Firewire 800.

I just started using Netboot/Netrestore this past year. In buildings where we have Gigabit (most of the company now), there is no real difference in restore times from using an external hd. On older network segments that are still 100MB, Netrestore is not a good choice.

All data is supposed to be on the server, but I still have users that keep "backups" on their Desktops. We limit the amount of user data we backup/ restore to 20GB.

Edited September 21, 2011 by nicemac

[Guest nicemac]

3 Reasons Why Windows 8 May Be Dead On Arrival | Fox News

[mikegideon]

3 Reasons Why Windows 8 May Be Dead On Arrival | Fox News

And, I was worried that nobody would pick up the Mac torch after I dropped it. Carry on, my brother

[LagerHead]

RE:"For software that is for sale on both Mac and PC, I almost always buy the PC version because the software is likely to run longer and give better bang for the buck on Winders. Mac changes so much that every new MacOS release you cross your fingers that old programs will continue to work as expected.…

I have several programs that are 8-10 years old that still work beautifully. If they follow Apple recommendations in their coding, they work for a long time.

…Because winders doesn't change so quickly or deprecate API's with glee, then not only will PCMegaKewlProgram 2.0 have good odds of running trouble free on future versions of winders,…

Trouble-free is the cornerstone of owning a Mac.

Look, I support around 415 Macs in one location and 84 in another. You want trouble-free? I generally have 1-3 actual office visits per week. Sure, there are remote sessions where I do this or that for a user (mainly training and related issues), but for the most part, there is little to do most of the time.

I am sorry, I just don't see my pc support friends that manage 500 machines having the same amount of downtime at work.

Windows is the reason I switched focus to networking. Even when managing networks on a global scale my life is so much more hassle free.

[wcsc12]

3 Reasons Why Windows 8 May Be Dead On Arrival | Fox News

There's not really very much information in there at all and I doubt the guy has even tried Window's 8 and is just posting to put something out there.

The developer preview for Windows 8 is actually pretty decent. The installation time is pretty good and it will run pretty decently on really old hardware as well. I installed it on my old Athlon 64 3000+ Socket 754 with 512MB of DDR 400 RAM and it actually ran pretty good. The only bad thing about it (this is the desktop version so keep that in mind) is that it uses about 10GB of HDD space for the initial install but after that, it's all good. The tablet version I can actually see being pretty awesome. The Metro UI is actually pretty decent but I would rather they still kept the old start menu as well.