Mac VS. Windows Laptop?

Originally Posted by chaofan

Recently, I've been eying Macs a lot. Perhaps it's the sleek, white design of the notebook, but lately I've had a desire to own one. If I had the money, I wouldn't jump into buying though, cause I have NO IDEA about Macs.

Go find an Apple store or a Mac user near you with relatively modern hardware and play with OS X. Ask an experienced user to show you around the OS. Be aware that if you buy a Mac, you will be using different software than you're used to. For me personally, I like a lot of it better than the apps that I used to use on Windows, but that's because I prefer the OS X design and apps that conform to it.

If you need AutoCAD a lot, don't bother. There's no native version of it for OS X so you'd be running it virtualized. It's not slow, but buying a Mac when your livelihood is AutoCAD is kinda like buying a hammer when you've got a bunch of shiny screws.

Now, if you have a main desktop to do AutoCAD on and want a Mac laptop for portability/to find out about the platform, that's a different story—I'd say go for it.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

To present a counterpoint, I've had a PowerBook G4 for four years. In that time it has gone into Apple three times. Two of those times the computer was back in my hands two days after I sent it, and in all three cases the repairs were free—free shipping, free parts, free labor, all covered under the AppleCare plan I purchased for it. If you buy a Mac laptop, buy AppleCare. Repairs for faulty components will be FREE. If you don't ever need it, great. Their service and support is wonderful.

Second, aside from those problems (minor screen defect in the first run of aluminum G4s, a DVD drive problem that I created, and an "end of warranty" hinge fix/backlight replacement) this little laptop has been an absolute workhorse and has never let me down. The battery life is obviously not so great 4 years on, but the machine is still extremely capable and I use it for mobile tasks daily. I actually use it as a testbed platform as well—currently it's running the most recent developer seed of Leopard so I can see what it's like. The best thing? It's actually faster, smoother, and more stable with Leopard than it was with any OS revision before it. It shipped with the last version of Jaguar, I got a free upgrade to Panther, and bought Tiger. With each upgrade the machine has become more stable and smoother to work with, a real testament to the quality of engineering that goes into Mac OS X.

Any laptop or desktop line will have some problems, but overall Apple still has the highest customer satisfaction rating of any computer company out there. Their service and support are, overall, great. For that reason alone I recommend them wholeheartedly.

Originally Posted by Slash

Tell that one to my school

Well, to be fair there are things that can make OS X a better workflow environment. Font management solutions on OS X tend to be more mature and stable. System-wide color calibration built into the OS means it's much easier to set up a consistent color-managed workflow between applications (especially important for print environments). Beyond that it is preference. In my case the OS itself has things that make me more efficient (Exposé being foremost among them, but also things like spring-loaded folders and the third party app-launcher Quicksilver), and a lot of the OS X-only apps fit the way I work much more than Windows apps. But yes, in this day and age a lot of it is preference.

There's nowhere I can't reach.