Apple's Boot Camp

Originally Posted by Grigori Rasputin

Now all we need are Macs equipped with windows to be standard.

Who needs MAC OS, it's all upside down anyway.

Or, you know, you could just USE Mac OS X for a while and maybe you'd understand why people are so enthusiastic about it. It's just better in general—from the overall design to its look and feel to the functionality and uniformity of operation between applications... it's a smoother, more consistent, and more pleasant experience than Windows. (Not to mention safer).

I'm excited about Boot Camp because it means I can finally chuck this damned PC tower out the window and just buy a MacBook Pro. Then I've got MacOS X for all my daily needs (plus all my graphic design and video editing needs) since it's the system I actually enjoy, and I can reboot quickly into XP if I want to run a Windows-only game. No more need for two computers, an extra monitor, or any of that crap. Very convenient.

As for why Apple's stuff costs more (it's not 4 times as much, stop exaggerating), there are several reasons. One: Apple is a small hardware company whose profits are made on hardware margins, which they use to finance all their software development. Unlike Microsoft, Apple does not make the bulk of their money off OS X or iLife. They make most of their money off the sales of their hardware (computers and iPods). Thus to stay profitable they need to charge for their hardware. Two: Apple spends a lot of time custom designing motherboards, cases, and related items. It's no secret that their industrial design is a cut above anything else out there in the PC world. They make functional AND beautiful machines, and that costs money. And finally, three: Apple's machines simply are more functional than most PCs. Yes, you can self-build an "equivalent" PC for less money, but it's not as much less as you'd think. And in the realm of laptops, when you customize a Dell or other manufacturer's laptop to match a MacBook Pro, you'll find that it often costs nearly as much.

In the end, a Mac now is more functional than ANY PC. It can run Windows—whoop de doo, so can everyone else, but it can ALSO run the best operating system out there: Mac OS X. You can go anywhere for Windows, but there's only one place you can get OS X, and that's Apple.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by ElectricSheep

Oh, and today a company called Parallels released a beta of their Virtualization software for MacOS X Intel (like VMWare) allowing the option of running Windows from within MacOS X rather than dual-booting.

To Cetra, as ElectricSheep so helpfully pointed out, Apple's the only source for drivers for OS X. So unless you build an iMac clone (a desktop running a Core Duo on EFI with an ATI Radeon X1600 on PCIe, the same audio hardware, etc...) you won't have support for all your stuff. Running OS X on PCs requires you hack and steal (no boxed version of OS X for Intel exists yet, and won't until version 10.5 Leopard comes out sometime early next year) and it's still nowhere near an optimum experience. So, that's what's preventing you. No support. Apple can choose to release drivers for their hardware to work seamlessly with Windows. They can also choose not to release a version of OS X that will run on whatever crud you put together.

And yes, please build me a Core Duo based system in an attractive, slim, space-saving case with full-featured hardware for half the cost of a Mac. The last thing I want in the world is another ugly, space-hogging mid-tower.

And to ElectricSheep—not just Windows. Parallels will run pretty much any x86-based operating system, by the look of things. Much like VMWare.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Originally Posted by Merv Burger

Now, now, beggars can't be choosers here.

This is a very important lesson you'll have to learn.

Nonsense. I have a choice, and I've chosen it. People value different things, and that's something that the "PCs ARE OMG CHEAPER" crowd needs to learn. I value the total package, and I'm willing and able to pay for it. I think outside the insular nerd community that's the prevalent view.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Originally Posted by Stealth

That's why we have Linux. MacOs isn't the end-all be all of operating systems. Besides, it's just a matter of time before those hackers out there figure out an easy process to get Mac Os X installed on a PC anyway.

If you think Linux is in any way comparable to the current state of OS X, you're dreaming.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

OS X exposes functionality in a graceful, well-designed, and more often than not in an easy-to-understand way. Windows obfuscates functionality behind wizards and helpers and basically hand-holds a user most of the time. Whereas Windows is always popping up some "helpful" notification at me from the system tray or trying to "dumb down" something complicated by adding a wizard, OS X just makes it simple and logical in the first place.

Which is to say that overall OS X is more friendly to both new users AND power-users. For those who are relatively new, OS X makes life pretty easy to understand. You've got the Dock, you've got the Applications folder, you put your documents in the Documents folder, your music in iTunes, your pictures in iPhoto, etc. For the experienced power-user, you can do basically what you want with your system without being confronted by a lot of helpers or wizards—you can just DO shit.

The sort of object lesson of this is OS X's Terminal. Obviously OS X has a UNIX heritage—it's essentially BSD on a Mach microkernel with a lot of Apple enhancements and a pretty face. A new user can use OS X and never need to know all that. But an experienced user or UNIX jockey can jump right down into the Terminal and get into the guts of the system to do all the usual stuff they can do elsewhere... AND they can run Photoshop or Final Cut or other big-name apps natively.

That's the long version of what I believe MagicalVacation was trying to express.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Originally Posted by Cyrus XIII

@ Cless
You've done you homework on that OS for sure. Please, tell me about package management.

If you're referencing Linux-style package management for OS X, both Fink (based on Debian's apt-get/dpkg system) and DarwinPorts (obviously based on BSD's Ports system) are available for those who need tools typically distributed through those sorts of channels. I'm not a user of either, as I deal mostly with OS X GUI apps, which are (obviously) pre-compiled binaries distributed using disk images.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Originally Posted by foxyshadis

Final Cut Pro is Premier's equivalent, there's really no replacement for AE out there. I do like FCP better than Premier Pro, however, in some cases a lot better. Sadly, avisynth is still windows-only, so that gets the nod by default.

avisynth is a pathetic hack of an outdated video framework that blows. As a frameserver, it's clever, but reference movies in Quicktime can accomplish at least the frameserver bit of it. I'm assuming you use AE and avisynth for anime fansubbing... which is one of those awfully specialized fields (that is to say, not a professional one at all representative of the "real world").

As for AE replacements, there are plenty. In fact, AE is the bottom rung when it comes to motion graphics/compositing software. Motion is, overall, a better motion graphics package, and in the compositing world it's Discreet's line of products (Combustion up through their Flame/Inferno hardware-software combos... bought out by Autodesk I think) for TV/commercial or quick-turnaround work, or Apple's Shake for feature films. There are a few other software-only compositing solutions I'm not as familiar with and whose names escape me at the moment.

FELIPE NO

Originally Posted by foxyshadis

No, cless, I use it for semi-pro video editing, local shit and not film though. Some of the cleanup filters developed for it literally surpass anything I've found in commercial packages. I can get a damn frameserver anywhere. (loooooooooool quicktime. wtf?) And it's free and fast; video gets too expensive too quickly, especially 3rd party AE and Premier plugins. The upgrade to FCP studio isn't steep, so I'll check out motion, but I can't really jusify dropping another grand or three on Autodesk just to find out they suck just a little less than AE. And back to the point of this thread, they're also not mac exclusives.

How exactly is video editing awfully specialized, when macs have always catered to multimedia composition and editing? That's their fucking specialty. Or did you mean fansubbing? Most of them are hacks and neophytes, but they still fall into the bottom of the general video ecosystem.

QuickTime isn't just QuickTime Player. On the Mac it's an entire video framework, and a damn sight better one than AVI. As for AVIsynth filters, I'd assume most are open-source since they're free (though yes, not all free things are open source). Seems to me it wouldn't take too much work for them to be ported to the AE plugin framework, which is shared amongst programs like combustion and Shake as well. I mean, in the end, it's "video in > operations (settings) > video out." I'm surprised the people developing avisynth plugins haven't bothered to make them available within other software. As for Combustion, Autodesk offers a 30-day free trial. Download it and see what you think.

And yes, I meant fansubbing is awfully specialized, and by that I mean "basically restricted to very specific, AVI-reliant Windows-only utilities" and populated by people who aren't very overall experienced with video.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?