Anyone else frustrated with Apple/Mac?

[Scott Brady]

We are relieved the new Mac Pro is only a few months away. Our primary design machine is from 2009, and is in need of a serious upgrade.

I just hope the thing doesn't cost eight squillion dollars.

 

[Ryanmb21]

Got a new imac 27" with fusion drive. It screams, love it.

 

[Seeker]

I'll play devil's advocate, but PC's have had lots of changes in connectors throughout it's history too. It's not just Apple.

serial -> PS/2 -> USB

ISA -> EISA -> PCI -> PCI Express, PCI-X, AGP

IDE -> E-IDE, SCSI, Parallel ATA, Serial ATA

VGA, DVI, HDMI


Then printers within the same brand with different cartridges.
Digital cameras within the same brand with different battery sizes and different chargers.
Laptops with different battery sizes and different chargers.
And so on....

Yes, but rarely does the industry simply abandon the old for the new. This has always been my issue with Apple - backward compatibility is bad. No gradual, only sudden change, and because they control the platform soup-to-nuts, you get no say in the matter.

Things evolve and change. Pixar's first film was rendered on hugely expensive SGI machines, now its vast render farms filled with cheap commodity hardware. Advantages will always flow back and forth or move around among platforms. The key is, as long as you stay out of the walled garden, you can be more adaptive due to increased access to hardware and software.

--Allen

 

[Chazz Layne]

Having done IT professionally for a dozen years, my honest opinion is that it's all junk. Macs, PCs, whatever hardware running Linux (which I've used since it came out in 1993)...

All complete crap.


Every time I use one, I feel like this:

I couldn't agree more. :jump:


It's obvious when you realize there is an equal share of rants and raves from the fanboys on both sides. The only way to make computing not suck, is to become truly platform independent.

I'd like to think I've embraced this concept, but in truth I still feel the Mac eats up a good 10-15% of my productivity between poor interface design (things like "mandatory mouse use" and the need to click on an app before I can click IN an app come to mind), the worst memory management in the industry, and it's frequent tendency toward crashes and bugs (Lion and Mountain Lion must be rebooted multiple times per week, sometimes multiple times per day during heavy use). Apple seems to have gotten out of the habit of actually testing their software before releasing it. Did I say actually? I meant fully...

 

[nwoods]

Wow Chazz, that has not been my experience at all. My version of Mountain Lion has been very stable, running about 9 months now.

I think I made this point earlier in this thread, there are two sides to this issue, Hardware and Software. On the laptop side, Apple's pricing, feature for feature, is high. But I've not found any PC equivalent to the rMBP. It's the little things that work so well, like the MagSafe connector, the peerless touchpad, the lag free response of Guestures, the illuminated keyboards, rapidly responsive self dimming screens, etc.... But they really are not THAT much more than say, a Samsung similarly equipped in performance related bits.

The other side if the coin is software. I run Parallels 8 in Retina mode, with Win7 in Convergence mode, which means concurrently, with any given program simply open in its own window. I have a few PC only apps, such as Bluebeam, that I must use (and enjoy using). On my Mac, they run as if they were Mac based. The OS is transparent to me. Right click on a given file, choose from Mac or PC apps to open it with, and its done. With all solid state RAM and SSD drives, there is no performance hit. It all just works together seemlesly.

Have your cake and eat it too

 

[reece146]

Lion sucked... Mountain Lion has been rock solid for me on all my machines. The only time I reboot is when a patch requires it. The machines are on 24/7 otherwise. I beat the hell out of the processor and memory transcoding stuff.

That said, I'm really liking Android. I'm waiting for Google, Samsung or whomever to release a flat panel desktop running Android. It would be a good addition.

2¢

 

[Chazz Layne]

Agreed on Parallels 8, it's one of the few pieces of software on any platform I'd consider truly excellent.

I take it you've never had the issue where you click on an app and focus won't change to the app? When it happens, you can click back and forth between as many other apps as you'd like to try and clear the problem and get where you want to go, but no action on the mouse will bring the rogue app into focus. The only way to clear it out is to command-tab until you're off the app, then command-tab back into it. This happens at least 3 times a week, most commonly with Adobe InDesign, but it has happened with non-Adobe products as well (including Apple's own Server.app).

And then there's the pop-under, un-ignorable dialog that prevents any activity in the main app window. Since it popped under, there's no way to click on it. Since it's a mandatory response dialog that prevents any activity elsewhere in that app, there's no way to move or minimize the window blocking it, so no way to get at it. The only option is to force-quit the app and loose whatever you were working on. I get this one at least once a month.

Of course, I do drive a Land Rover as well so that was all typed between profuse giggling over fond memories of late nights cursing Jobs for ever stealing the mouse.

 

[nwoods]

No Chazz, never experienced either of those issues. Wouldn't Expose or Spaces or whatever it's called solve that second problem by showing all open dialog boxes and/or desktops? Just try hitting F8 if you don't have a dedicated Spaces function key on your pre-Lion keyboard

A handy and comprehensive list of keyboard shortcuts:
http://www.danrodney.com/mac/

 

[David Harris]

I started using a MAC back in 2003 when I finally had enough of struggling for hours trying to get my PC to work right. I'm convinced half the trouble with PC's is Microsoft which is a sad excuse for a software company. I can't believe with all the resources and talent they have at their disposal that they can release an operating system that is only half finished and requires major patches and updates to solve problems that should have been solved before they released it in the first place. Then there is the virus threat which requires you to buy yet more software and a monthly subscription only to deal with daily problems in that area as well. Anyway, the MAC was night and day. Finally I could actually get work done on my computer without having to struggle with the computer itself. That Powerbook G4 worked faithfully for the last ten years and is still working today. I only updated to a new Macbook Pro 17 inch and couple of years ago because the old hardware had trouble keeping up with the processing and storage demands of the modern software. The new MAC has been flawless as well. In that time I bought my daughter three PC laptops and a couple of desktops which were all a waste of money as usual with PC's. Finally, I bought her first Macbook Pro this summer and now she has the joy of using a decent computer as well.

Are MACs more expensive? Yes. A lot more. But my rule is that I spend the most money on the things I use the most, and I don't know about anyone else, but my computer is among the tools I use the most in my life. So, why go cheap? MAC's are not really more expensive anyway when you figure their reliability into the equation, which is light years ahead of any PC I have ever used.

I also use an iPhone, and have been just as pleased with that.

Can MAC's be improved? Of course, like anything. But they work brilliantly out of the box, so I really have few complaints.

David

 

[Chazz Layne]

No Chazz, never experienced either of those issues. Wouldn't Expose or Spaces or whatever it's called solve that second problem by showing all open dialog boxes and/or desktops? Just try hitting F8 if you don't have a dedicated Spaces function key on your pre-Lion keyboard

A handy and comprehensive list of keyboard shortcuts:
http://www.danrodney.com/mac/

I could, but that would still be an extra step I shouldn't have to take in the first place. When I'm switching between apps every few seconds to drop content and photography in place the extra time and frustration adds up real fast.

Thanks for the link, I'll run through it and see if I'm missing any.

MAC's are not really more expensive anyway when you figure their reliability into the equation, which is light years ahead of any PC I have ever used.

Something to keep in mind, which often seems to get overlooked in these types of discussions, is the difference between hardware (and even software) standardization between the two platforms. On the Mac side, there is only one company to deal with so everything is pretty well standardized across the board. No matter what Mac one buys, the hardware is (mostly) guaranteed to be top notch and perform the same with everything from an iPhone on up to the Mac Pro. It will stay that way as long as Apple continues to purchase top quality components.

On the PC side there may be more room for competition and flexibility in configuration, but there's also more room for sloppiness, cheapness, and outright rip-offs. Some brands are great, and provide a product of equal or sometimes better quality and longevity. Others can't even be trusted to boot up. As if the multitude of brands wasn't enough, many of them have a distinct separation between their consumer-grade and business class which can often make all the difference.

Great example: I have a pair of business class Dell GX1 workstations built in 1997 currently running as Windows 2003 file servers in my home office. They've never been replaced because they've never skipped a beat. They've only had to be rebooted for upgrades, such as installing gigabit ethernet cards or moving from Server 2000 to Server 2003. One of them even boots off the original 10GB Quantum Fireball hard drive.
Dell chose not to maintain excellence, and these days it's hard to take them seriously. HP's business class products (with the no-bloat option) are arguably the best thing out there on the PC side right now.

Software is no different. Manufacturers love to load up an otherwise extremely stable Windows OS with tons of bloat- and spy-ware, especially at the consumer level. Some companies have bloat-free options in their business offerings (HP comes to mind), and many of the others can simply be wiped and loaded with a vanilla install to regain speed and stability (ASUS comes to mind). Others are simply beyond hope, they may be sleek and have excellent hardware, but the bloat is built right into their proprietary drivers (Sony comes to mind).

What's easiest out of the box? I'd say you're rolling the dice with both. In 3 new Macs purchased over the last 2 years, 2 of them have required a serious investment of time to get working properly (including a complete reinstall or three). Almost all of the Macs I support have required a lot of support time to get simple things like email working just right, and some features I've simply had to give up on and pray for an upgrade. The only thing truly special about Mac is that menu bar stubbornly burning itself into every single Apple monitor since 1984.


Most folks don't realize that I grew up a Mac loyalist, and have switched platforms more times than I can count. Now I use and support all three (*nix) with equal distrust—with the exception of a few hand-built, finely tuned machines in my office.