Hey peeps...

I just acquired my first ever mac! I know my way around a PC pretty well, but macs are an entirely new thing to me. Can somebody tell me, what exactly is the difference? I opened it up, and all the components (PCI cards, HDD, IDE interface, RAM etc) all seem to be the same as PC components, so what makes it a mac? Is it a different motherboard? Different processor?

Can I use PCI cards or RAM from a Mac in a PC?

Macs use different Motherboards, CPU's (Power PC by IBM), and a propritary OS. Almost all other components are swappable between PC and mac (with the exception of case and maybe PSU. Macs are all built by Apple, as is the OS, where with PCs, its an industry standard that anyone can use.

Software is generally not interchangeable.

Macs are soon to be produced on Intel chipsets and CPUs, meaning the only big difference between PC and MAC is the OS.

A doorstop.

Macs are usually better than normal PC's b/c Apple designs the software and the hardware.

Mac PCs use the Motorola instead of Intel Byte order. Thus, they are incompatible. If you want to find out the details of how that works, have a look at this article:
http://www.cs.umass.edu/~verts/cs32/endian.html

"Macs are usually better than normal PC's b/c Apple designs the software and the hardware."
-Sorry not in my book!

They're pretty good if never ever will play a game in your life, and want to spend more for a slower piece of hardware and have to learn a new OS.

MACINTOSH stands for: "Most Applications Crash, if not the operating system hangs."
And Mac is a short way to sum it up: "Most Applications Crash"

Looked it up in the dictionary...

MAC: (Adjective) Piece of s**t.

Macs run on a Unix based OS. some hardware and most software will not run on the system however some linux software will.

Mac's are one of the worst economical PC's to buy.

All Mac hardware is 3-6 time more than a IBM-PC ( standard)

Mac's are slower than PC's- (standard)

I guess I found the online headquarters of the Mac haters convention.

As it turned out, I got hungry for parts before I even turned it on!! So before even attempting to learn how to use it, I stole the memory and the graphics card for a PC. Now my mac truly is a doorstop!!

Doesn't Microsoft stand for Making Intel CPUs Run Older, Slower Or Fail Totally? That my attempt anyway...

Here's a joke for you, I hope its not too distasteful for this site:

Bill Gates is feeling lonely, and decides to hire a prostitute. After asking around, (and checking the Knowledge Base...) he decides to go with one called Wild Tigress. So she comes round, makes all Bill's dreams come true, and afterwards they're sat in bed with a cigarette. Bill, obviously impressed, says, "I can see why they call you Wild Tigress!". In response, she says...

"And I can see why they call you Microsoft!"

Hee hee!

Haha that is a good one

Mac's are alright I worked on them every once in a while, but a small majority uses em. Do you have latest and greatest OS X?

Rory wins the award for least informative post of the day.

>> Mac run on a linux based OS. some hardware and most software will not run on the system however some linux software will.

Mac OS X is based on BSD (specifically 4.4BSD-Lite2). The vast majority of software written to run on *nix (including Linux) can be built and run on a Mac.

>> All Mac hardware is 3-6 time more than a IBM-PC ( standard)

Not sure where this one came from, but Macs take the same memory and hard drives as PCs these days. Yes, you'll pay a premium for anything you buy from Apple, but 3-6x more expensive is out of line even for an uninformed mac hater. Video cards are probably the place where you take the worst hit (even if its identical hardware, you're paying for drivers), and even then, they are no where near 3x the cost of the PC equivalent.

>> Mac's are slower than PC's- (standard)

Depends what you're doing. For some tasks, a dual processor G5 beats the crap out of even dual Xeon PCs. "slower" and "faster" are meaningless unless you have some idea of what tasks are being compared.

For the record, I do not have a Mac, and have not in 8 years or so (back when they *really* sucked). Just hate to see such blatantly incorrect information tossed around. If you don't play games and don't enjoy virus/spyware removal, Macs are a pretty good choice these days, IMHO. Time is money...if your time is expensive, a Mac may end up costing you less in the long run, especially if you're not "computer savvy".

But hey, my guess is you won't find many people in these parts willing to admit even that

Go look in the 'Columns' section and read some of my Mac columns, that basically sums up what a Mac is exactly.

"Macs are usually better than normal PC's b/c Apple designs the software and the hardware."

Really Calc? I don't find a Unix operating system, Microsoft software, and Intel hardware to be Apple's design.

The one with an Apple on the shell.

wtf @ these unburied topics

Indeed. And what is "mac" ... macaroni, of course.

Levon S said:


Troll

i like to rub myself with macaroni and cheese

There is no need to bring back three year old topics for no good reason.