Okay techies, Apple Macbooks/OS x or Windows x64 or Linux?

Lets not discuss cell phones, tablets, and the various hybrids which they are evolving into.
Simple enough rules.
If this doesnt fall under tech and design....then...i need a new dictionary and offer apologies.

Do you prefer OS X and your Macbook, Air, Pro, or iMac?

Or are you more keen on Windows machines with the x64 interface? (vista and later)

OR are you super tecched out like a dekker and part of the Linux/Unix/Debian type of systems and machines?

Me personally, I first started out with the old school Macintosh's which we only had in school. I hated them, with the exception of Chess and Oregon Trail.
I destested Apple hardware, software, etc. very behind the curve.

Then in 1992ish we got a Windows PC (back when they had DOS!) and i loved it. More versatility, freedoms, and within 5 or 6 short years later, there were emulators.

After Apple switched from Power PC and did mass purgings of many of its staff thanks to Stevo, I was still apprehensive. Besides, I was still enamoured by emulators and shortly after, Acid Tetris, the best tetris ever.

Then in this new millennium, for about 4 or 5 years a dear friend begged me to give apple a chance. An ex bought me an unmentionable device which played music. I was floored that I could load 60gb of my 90gb of music.

So eventually I relented and read up more on the new Operating System X, and about how the new Macbooks are designed. So i tried it. and I was bought. Its enough for simple people to enjoy, but also enough for the devious to enjoy too.

Falling in the latter category---lets call it, not devious, but an insatiable curiosity, I decided to find a middle ground---running the Apple Operating System X and its many incarnations, on an X64 computer. in that area of the jungle, its called "Hackintoshing." and it satiates, and frustrates my learning curve and curiosity. Its not illegal, with that EULA grey area of legality that emulation affords, however, Apple would call it devious nonetheless. but they can raid my flat any day of the week, and they will find that i am the proud owner of sever macbooks, and x64 windows machines too. I support those I respect. I just want to know what makes a good system good, so they should respect that too.

Sadly, i tried Linux once, twice if you count a virtual machine. I had to code to-scale models of the human brain from MRIs within a linux program within a shell program called Neurodebian. Sorry Linux, i'm sure its a great OS, but its a steep learning curve for a non-linuxxer like me.


Talking computers in the strictest sense of a laptop, notebook, or desktop, what's your poison folks?

A little of both. I have a Macbook from 2009 running Mavericks at home, which I also use for school, and I have to run some specialized software on it (more on that when I eventually make a thread pn my Master's thesis). It's showing its age, but still going strong. At work, I have a PC running Windows 7, also running some specialized software on it. I'm not a huge techie, but I've gotten more savvy over the years, and my boyfriend is a software engineer and huge techie, so I absorb a lot via osmosis.

I don't do PC gaming, though, as I just haven't been able to get into the mouse-and-keyboard controls, but I'm pretty sure my boyfriend is going to build me a gaming PC for Christmas/my birthday.

I'll keep this post short but as an IT tech, I could write pages and pages and pages....

I'll stick to PC/Windows, thanks.

Why not Mac? I like to be able to repair and upgrade my stuff. What I want is a versatile tool, not a shiny toy. Also, I have salary for only one house payment per month, if you get my drift.

Why not Linux? I like to be able to actually do things with my computer. Linux is good for server and certain development environments. However, a lot of user-grade hardware is not driver-supported, its multiple distributions may be a strength because of the versatility it brings but the useless competition between them divides the community so you get terrible to no support. Also, Linux people tend to think that they belong to some of recluse, nerd-exclusive clubhouse. Don't ask them any questions, all you'll get is a good ol "RTFM".

Windows has its blue screens and its viruses but there's a reason why an overwhelmingly vast majority of people pay for it while Linux is free: Windows is easy and it makes the job done.

if you make a dual boot 64 bit machine running OSX and Windows, then you got versatility, and can upgrade and tinker away. and for the price of a regular PC, too!

Interesting and undeniable.

But what can a Mac OS do that my Windows can't?

I find the administrative programs to the more easily usable for OS X. I believe the category is now called "productivity" and the term program has been replaced with app"

I find the mail client much better than Microsoft Outlook, I enjoy the fact that I can condense most messaging programs into the one messenger app. while I do for Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint to be nice, those are also available for OS X. I suppose majority of the uses I can name are ones that are administrative in nature.

however there are some good third-party apps for OS X, such as radiant player which allows one to directly stream their Google music account. I am not a big fan of iTunes nor what I store anything besides music on a cloud server nor pay for iCloud space when I can store music for free on Google. there are also good third-party apps for using Google voice or Google talk, without having to use Google plus. I prefer my socializing programs to be as asocial as possible. but really I just would rather not have to advertise everything that I do, which is something you typically must opt out of on Google plus. also, I wrote all of my cell phone calls to my Google voice phone number, so that I can answer hands-free on my MacBook, without having to log into the webpage. Not only that, if I miss a call, has with Google voice, the text that is left in the voicemail will be transcribed as I can read it instead of having to dial voicemail and listen to it.

I am not a big fan of webpage based apps, due to those above Google reasons and others, considering Apple, Microsoft, and others are constantly mining for your data, mostly for adverts, it still is principal.
so I prefer to do things the old-fashioned way with programs. I also find the Nuance Dragon dictation program to be more precise than the Windows counterpart (or at least I did not have to put in as much training; mostly just for foul language)
I find OS X to be more customizable, although I am sure they that of any operating system.
I am not a photo editing or photo guy much at all, so I do not know how iPhoto compares to other photo software. But I do like that the iPhoto does synchronize with a photo that you may take on your iPhone. I do not do anything incriminating, so I do not worry much about that type of privacy invasion. Usually it is just me taking a photo of an address are place or something that would be of use at a later time.
as far as handling PDFs, Adobe Acrobat is still supreme.
I find iBooks, to be a decent program for opening up electronic books and reading them. and if you have certain bugs in your library, then if you have an iPhone or iPad, then you can usually read those books from those smaller book shaped devices.


OS X also takes advantage of the hardware that they use for the machines they make. For instance, in a real MacBook, OS X is coded to work and optimally work with that specific set of hardware on MacBook or iMac. additionally, if the machine has a solid state drive, there is something called trim, which I have not really investigated much, but I can attest that with trim optimized on a solid-state drive, your machine can run quite fast.
I am sure you have seen the specs on a typical MacBook air, and if you notice, the RAM, the memory, the hard drive, even a processor, are not super specs that one would find in a gaming PC. Regardless of this however, your typical MacBook Air on those specs, will run far more faster than a Windows laptop with similar specs.

For a Hacintosh to even function without many about any bugs, the hardware inside similar to that of a MacBook. You will not find many laptops this, for this reason it is a lot of trial and error with kexts and drivers. people with the know-how and the finesse of knowing how to build a desktop, often just build their own homemade custom Mac from te ground up. I do not have that kind of patience to build such a machine, and even my patients for the tedium of tweaking a hackintosh can be overwhelming and monotonous, especially when you think you have done everything correctly.

another perk about the native hardware of the MacBook, is that the battery life on a MacBook Pro or MacBook Air, is like seven or eight hours. my Sony VAIO has maybe two hours of life. both machines are the same age.

I would say that a part of a hackintosh is that you can create a dual boot or even triple boot system with OS X, Windows, the next etc. Now if you have a real MacBook, there is a Called boot camp which lets you also load the Windows onto that MacBook, but then you must purchase a fresh Windows install, and in addition to it, with boot camp you are using up more resources since more similar to running a virtual machine.

I am not saying that Windows does not do all this, but what I saying is that it is far more time-consuming to set up the steps needed for those processes and functions.

OS X also has and have somewhat similar to how Windows as system restore, however the OS X Is called Time Machine, and it are you to usually restore back to that point as long as it was saved, and what is need about this also is that suppose you do not want to restore, you can just browse the backup and cherry pick whatever you want from that backup.

while on a Windows operating system I usually have to wait for plug-and-play and if not, I will have to hunt down and install the driver for the device. With a MacBook operating system, plug-and-play is almost instantaneous and I rarely have to find any kind of driver. I used to think that Windows files would have massive compatibility issues on a Mac operating system, but that was just a misconception. once you enable NFTS, you can pretty much open any file for a Windows format drive with the only exceptions really being that of executable files. but it is far more of a hassle to view a OS X formatted hard drive and then even much more of a hassle to open files that might be compatible on Windows if at all.

OS X also offers a lot of compatibility with Linux files, but I cannot think any that I use on a regular basis.

that being said, OS X does have its flaws, which is why I use Windows as well.

on a side note, have you ever used Apple's GarageBand? Prefer from what I have read, several musicians prefer that over other windows/linux music programs.

I have Vista 64-bit on my main laptop, and XP Home on my two secondary laptops.

My desktop was originally configured as a tri-boot PC, but Windows 8 proved itself to be a precursor to the HAL system and was summarily wiped before it's AI could learn to cause any more trouble.

I primarily use XP Home, the secondary OS on my PC is 7 Pro 64-bit, but I generally only boot to that when I want to back-up and transfer data to my PS Vita.

One of my servers has Windows Server 2000 installed, and another has Solaris installed. I never, literally, get to use either as the noise factor is absurd... and my parents rightly complained about it. I mean seriously, you could not go into any room of the house and not hear the noise of even just one of those running. Needless to say, that brought to a halt my hopes of learning about server administration before I had even cracked the first book open.

Somewhere I have a laptop with a version of Linux installed on it.... somewhere...

Two weeks ago I started my Operating system management class, so far it's extremely intense but so much fun. Though we'll explore the general concepts of OS management, we'll be using Debian exclusively. I'm FINALLY going to become a Linux sysadmin!

Tweeg: I really loved the 2000-XP era but I got rid of those. EOL support is gone, no more updates mean severe security holes, especially in 2015 where everyone and everything wants to turn your system into a botnet zombie.

I started with a Windows PC, but thanks to some suggestions from a friend I migrated to a Macbook Pro w/OS-X. Why?

For me, it has been MUCH more user-friendly as a laptop to browse the web, hang around YouTube, and visit forums. Not to mention that for the most part is does videos & such quite well. Not to mention that I don't have to defrag the thing like a Windows PC. It's from 2009 and it's running Mavericks now, and it is showing it's age, but it's still going strong; a lot better than my HP running XP at this point (after five years of usage).

At work it's a PC with Windows....8 I think. It's serviceable.

Aeroprism wrote:

T....we'll be using Debian exclusively. I'm FINALLY going to become a Linux sysadmin!

Aero, whenever you finish your Linux classes and the majority of your learnings, I'd love to hear retrospective regarding your view on that. I never had the patience, or perhaps only just never see reasons to choose to use it in a world where software is pointed in so many other places. My exposure has been limited as I mentioned before to virtualization and debian based apps for medical based stuff, but did install Linux once long ago, to a partitition which soon grew virtual dust.
So your functional input and personal opinion is appreciated man.