PC vs MAC....thoughts & experiences appreciated

[Anonymous]

Hi people.

I am currently a PC user user..newbie status.

Is there any major difference working in MAC as apposed to PC. Which do you find works better for you and why?

Does the software run any better on one type than the other or is it much of a muchness?

Apart from the fact that MAC's are really expensive....is there any disadvantage in switching to it?

Your thoughts would be very much appreciated

[Anonymous]

There has (as you might imagine) been a fair amount of discussion on this topic already. A search of the archives should glean a lot of useful info.

As a power-user of both platforms I strongly disagree with your assertion that Macs are more expensive. PCs are only cheaper until you get them out of the box, then the cost of ownership starts to mount. Macs have always been consistently easier to set-up, use, and maintain than PCs and this discrepancy is only increasing with the rapid improvements of OSX.

Before the release of OSX I was more split on this issue and found that I often preferred Win2K over OS9 for ArchiCAD work.

Some people seem to have an almost religious fervor about their choice of platform, but I attribute this to human nature; consider people's feelings about their cars and sports teams. To me a computer is just a tool to get a job done and I chose my tools based on design quality and productivity. It is the same reason I drive a BMW. It is cheaper to own than a Ford (or any other car I've owned for that matter), lasts longer (part of the reason for the lower cost), and runs & drives better.

Ultimately what matters most is what works best in each particular circumstance. A BMW for all its advantages could not have done the job of my Ford Bronco.

[Ted Taylor]

Michael,

I am a long time Mac user beginning with the original 128k machine and a big champion of Macintosh. Operating systems and machines are only a part of the equation, especially when a program such as Archicad appears to run essentially the same on both platforms.

If you are a Newbie with Archicad, I don't believe that there are substantial enough differences between PC's and Macs at the moment to add the difficulty of learning a new operating system and its quirks along with learning to use Archicad and its quirks at the same time.

[Anonymous]

leaving aside aesthetics (and the oh so wonderful Exposé)

OS X

no viruses, trojans, malware etc

stability - never had OS X crash running native software

not getting into the platform war but what does it cost PC users a year in dealing with, or preventing, these

bill

[Dwight]

While one can rarely add to anything our eloquent colleague Matthew can say, as a user of all three platforms [remember Sonata? I do., I find the OS X environment to be a smooth and productive place where working in numerous applications from ArchiCAD to Photo editing to presentation layout to audio and video editing, concurrently, in any given day is a flawless experience.

[Eduardo Rolon]

As a user of both platforms:
1) macs are not more expensive than pc's if you compare them equally. The basic reason is that you can buy a pc with less options than a mac and thus the price difference (I read somewhere that the difference between a dual G5 and its equivalent pc was only $100.00). The comparison between an emac (the cheapest one) and a dell resulted in a $75.00 difference.
2) mac OS X is more stable than windows and you have less problems with drivers. Last time I had to reboot the system was about 14 days ago and it was because of a system update not because of a crash. Last time a had to do a force quit to an application was about 6 months ago.
3) macs usually last longer than pc's. Most people change the machines on an average of 4 years instead of 18 months for pcs. One of the features of the new mac OS was that it made older machines run faster than with the previous one. This has never happened with windows.
4) OS X has virtually no viruses at this time. OS X has minimal hardware compatability issues since apple controls both the OS and the hardware. Because of this if you buy some extra hardware that is mac compatible you should get a 99.9999% problem free installation.
5) on the pc side hardware for the pc is cheaper because there are more suppliers and especially printers since to have a printer/plotter that works well in mac you should usually get one that has postcript built-in which jacks up the price.
6) there are more games on pc's than on macs. But you are not buying a game machine.
7) most software runs on both systems except autodesk's stuff, but since you are using AC that is not a consideration.
8 ) OS X is more fun to use than windows, thus you have more productivity.

About AC
1) It runs well on both systems, so that does not help.

Conclusion:
If you have a limited amount of funds to buy a machine and cannot get a mac for that price then you are stuck with a PC...
Also verify the minimum/ideal requirements for both platforms, in regards to memory, hard disk space and video cards.

[Anonymous]

ejrolon wrote:
Conclusion:
If you have a limited amount of funds to buy a machine and cannot get a mac for that price then you are stuck with a PC...
Also verify the minimum/ideal requirements for both platforms, in regards to memory, hard disk space and video cards.

Hmmm, "stuck with a PC..." I wouldn't consider the PC platform a bad bet. I'm a long time user of ArchiCAD and, of course, started using it when it was only available for the Mac. I really enjoyed the platform and was quite "religious" about its superiority. An employment change around 1996 required me to switch to the PC. I went ever so reluctantly to the "otherside"... once I got there I was quite pleased to find that many of the performance/compatibility issues are simply "myths" or "urban legends" at best.

I guess all I have to say is that both platforms have their unique strengths... for me personally, COST is an issue as I have most recently ventured out to the world of self-employment.

I just paid under a $1000.00 dollars for my latest "HP" PC. Let see, it has a P4 2.8Ghz hyper threading processor, 512 Mb of ram, 160 Gig hard drive, DVD+RW/CD-RW, an additional CD-Rom drive, NVIDIA Geforce 64 Mb video, Windows XP Home...That's alotta' "bang for my buck". It runs ArchiCAD like a rocket and I've never experienced any problems.

I'd be interested to hear of a Mac at this price point, with similar config - and with this performance. last time I put a mac side by side with an "entry-level" PC...well, lets just say the Mac wasn't having a very good day.

Bottom-line is that my "inexpensive" computer is powerful enough to make my work output quite profitable.

Oh yeah, I used to drive a Jaguar, but these days...and I almost hate to admit it...my Dodge Caravan gets me around just fine.

Dan K

[Eduardo Rolon]

Dan wrote:
Hmmm, "stuck with a PC..." I wouldn't consider the PC platform a bad bet. ... once I got there I was quite pleased to find that many of the performance/compatibility issues are simply "myths" or "urban legends" at best.

I agree... but if I had a choice I would pick mac. Sorry about the stuck thingie...Us mac zealots sometimes have trouble with agreeing to pc stuff

Dan wrote:
I guess all I have to say is that both platforms have their unique strengths...

Agree again

Dan wrote:
I just paid under a $1000.00 dollars for my latest "HP" PC. Let see, it has a P4 2.8Ghz hyper threading processor, 512 Mb of ram, 160 Gig hard drive, DVD+RW/CD-RW, an additional CD-Rom drive, NVIDIA Geforce 64 Mb video, Windows XP Home...That's alotta' "bang for my buck". It runs ArchiCAD like a rocket and I've never experienced any problems.

I'd be interested to hear of a Mac at this price point, with similar config - and with this performance. last time I put a mac side by side with an "entry-level" PC...well, lets just say the Mac wasn't having a very good day.

I assume that it is price wise not performance wise...
New macs are comming out next week, so lets see what happens. Rumour has it that there will be a G5 iMac comming out. Also remember that you have to include the price of the monitor to compare because there are no headless macs unless you take into consideration the G5's and they are 64bit dual processors.

Dan wrote:
Bottom-line is that my "inexpensive" computer is powerful enough to make my work output quite profitable.

I agree again.

Dan wrote:
Oh yeah, I used to drive a Jaguar, but these days...and I almost hate to admit it...my Dodge Caravan gets me around just fine.
Dan K

I am selling my wrangler to buy a Mini Cooper while i still can...
sorry about the jag
but i am not going to get stuck in a PC nor in a Caravan

[Dwight]

But you have to agree: the Caravan gets the chicks.

[Anonymous]

After reading some of the Mac PC debates, none explain some of the real benefits I’ve experienced from recently switching from Mac to PC. These views are subjective but as a long term Mac user (14 years), I feel they’re worth making.
My experiences are based of the use of the following workstations, both running Archicad 8.1.:
Mac 1 GHz G4 tower (mirror door) with 1 Gig RAM, running OS 10.3.3
PC P4 2.8 GHz with 500Mb RAM running Windows XP
Both boxes running on the same network, reading writing files to a G4 Mac Server running OS Server10.2.8,

(1) 2D window screen refresh rates on the PC are noticeably faster making panning and zooming very responsive. This in my recent experience is the single biggest advantage of the PC over the Mac.
(2) Being able to open more than 1 session of Archicad at a time is really useful, especially when updating hotlinked files (never been able to do this on a Mac).
(3) Spell Checking on Windows XP works a treat, I’ve never had much success on equivalent spellchecker on the Mac, this is a useful tool if you’re as poor a speller as me! .
(4) Updating Archicad files in Plotmaker is noticeably faster on a PC, it feels a real chore on the Mac updating large AC files, and its nice to be shielded form seeing BG ArchiCad opening up.
(5) Being able to embed OLE files form Microsoft Office is really useful especially with PM’s very limited text capabilities, (this was possible back in Mac OS 9 days but no longer supported by Apple/Microsoft in OS X). Importing schedules from Excel and drawing notes from Word is very useful and a major feature.
(6) Stability of Archicad in Mac OS X is good but from recent experience stability in Windows XP is equally as good if not marginally better.

These features have definitely increased my productivity in Archicad. However I would be intrigued to see the advantages of using ArchiCad on a G5, they would have to be fairly noticeable, as these boxes are at least twice the price of the PC I’m using.