Things have been far too busy recently for me to do any substantive posting. But I have noticed that our discussions of topics such as race and gender and interpretations of quantum mechanics are far too genteel and rational for my tastes. (Seriously, why is it that people just cannot resist the temptation to argue with people who say outrageous things, even if they know perfectly well that those people are absolutely immune to reason?)
So I’d like to broach a more controversial topic. I’m thinking of buying a new laptop. Tell me: Mac or PC? I’ve used both quite a bit, so I’m not a fundamentalist either way. The Macs are of course Linux FreeBSD-based, which is useful if you’re a scientist. And there’s the fight-the-evil-empire business. But one cannot deny that there is useful software that isn’t available for Macs. And the variety of laptop hardware is much more diverse in the PC world, including attractively thin ultralights. So — reasonable cost-benefit analyses on either side? Your thoughts are welcome.
And play nice.
Oh, and in one of those “it just works” things in OSX, you can IM in LaTeX, in either iChat or Adium. All under the hood, using a nice program called EquationService. Another little tool that make my life better. Especially when problem sets are due the next day. 😉
(For fairness’ sake, you can do the same using gaim-latex on Linux/BSD machines, but it has a habit of not working for no apparent reason. No one I know has gotten it to work with gaim for Windows.)
@Lubos
Apples are nice. They are symbols of anti-capitalist people because of a reason that is not clear to me, many people think that Steve Jobs is less capitalist than Bill Gates. My admiration for both… Summary: a politically unbiased person who still wants to do all kinds of things with a computer should choose PC.
I’m impressed: it’s takes considerable skill to do this sort of thing.
i second the thinkpad/linux combination. I have one (an old t23 running fc4) and am quite happy with it.
Sean,
If you have a Windows machine now and want to buy a laptop soon, I’d suggest sticking with Windows for now, the overriding consideration being that you’re better off not getting involved in the ugliness that will surround Apple’s move to Intel. Anybody buying a Mac right now has the problematic choice of
1. buy a PowerPC based machine, likely to be obsoleted earlier than it should be as new versions of software only run on Intel hardware.
2. buy an Intel based machine, likely to have all sorts of problems as the new OS is shaken down, most of your software running slowly in some sort of emulation mode.
In general, Macs make more sense for some people, Windows for others, with some of the relevant factors:
Advantage Mac:
Machines are attractive, software user interface is sometimes better than Windows.
Very few worms/viruses/adware to worry about (this advantage is huge, but could change in the future)
iTunes is quite good, especially if you have an iPod and don’t mind Steve Jobs controlling your music collection.
It’s a unix box, unix software you know and love is either there or can be made to work. If you like fiddling around with low level software, unix is the way to go.
When your colleagues start evangelizing about how wonderful Macs are, you can join in the conversation.
Lubos is in favor of PCs.
Advantage PC:
PC hardware of a given sped is much cheaper than Apple’s. This is a big deal for most people.
Good lightweight PC laptops are available, much lighter than anything Apple sells. If you are carrying the thing around a lot this really matters.
PC hardware is more reliable in general, Dell hardware especially is extremely reliable, and I’ve rarely seen problems with it. Most people I know with Mac laptops have had hardware problems at one point or another. Mac repairs (or having to throw out the machine and buy a new one) are significantly more expensive than PC repairs. If you buy a Mac, you should probably buy the extended warranty, making it even more expensive. If you buy a Dell, much less necessary.
Much better games.
If you like playing with hardware, lots of computer gadgets work with PCs but not Macs. A much wider range of cheap electronic toys to play with.
Jacques is in favor of Macs.
For me, the benefit of using a Mac is the way things just work. Whether I’m working or just browsing around, using the computer feels right. I’m happy to use my Mac.
In contrast, using Windows or Linux hardly ever elicits such a feeling. They feel different; there is less attention to detail or more things you should worry about. Macs get the balance right.
Using Windows feels like work. Using Mac is like a vacation.
Just about everything you’d want (including Mathematica) already runs natively on Intel Macs.
Existing Mac users will probably have a bunch of legacy software that either doesn’t run under Rosetta (e.g., Classic Applications, Kernel extensions, …) or runs slowly. New users will never notice.
Hey Sean —
I recently switched from using linux on an IBM thinkpad to a Mac. (You may recall that when I gave the Chicago colloquium a year or so ago, I was going to borrow your laptop after mine was snowed upon, temporarily shorting something and making it go haywire.)
Why did I switch? Basically, keeping linux sufficiently up to date so that my local sysadmins stopped bugging me got to be more of a pain in the ass than I needed. When I was younger, I had a lot of fun hacking kernels and screwing around with relatively low level crap. I just don’t have the time anymore, and I got sick of things almost but not quite working perfectly.
I’ve found the mac transition to be *almost* painless. The biggest pain for me came from OpenOffice: When I got my mac, the openoffice port version was not as up-to-date as the linux version. I liked OpenOffice 2.0 a lot, and had converted all of my talks to the 2.0 presentation format; having to backport to 1.3 (or whatever it was) really sucked. I used powerpoint for a few talks in the meantime, which wasn’t bad; just different enough from what I’d grown accustomed to to make me grumble. However, it now looks like 2.0 is available for OSX 10.4, so this point may be moot. (The pundits keep telling me I should just start using Keynote; I’m far too lazy to stop using a package I already know well.)
Aside from the OpenOffice pains, I’ve been very happy with it. (I’m going to test the newer version tonight, and will let you know how it flies.) It’s particularly nice to be able to read Word and Excel documents that administrators send me; OpenOffice (even in late versions) often never quite did that perfectly. The powerbook is a little heavier than my thinkpad (I got the 12 inch version), but not dramatically so. If you can find a workaround for the Texas Hold’em problem you’ll probably be happy with it.
cheers,
scott
Well there’s a no-brainer: PCs suck and are evil.
Mac works, looks cool and everyone else has one.
For the last 3-4 years you’ve been able to tell very easily who just got a new grant based on whether they had a latest model Mac.
Last NASA panel I was on they had also bowed to peer pressure and half the secure laptops we were given were Macs. There was a very unseemly scramble at the door as people dove for the still available Macs, those who lingered over coffee cursed long and heartily when they came in and saw the gleaming new PC laptops waiting for them.
PS: check Consumer Reports
and, a friend of mine got bored at a workshop once and histogramed the “time for someone to setup a laptop on the projector” distribution. Clear three-peaked function: a narrow peak butted up against 0-1 minute for Macs, a narrowish peak to the right for linux laptops, and a broad distribution peaking to the right of both the other distribution with a very long tail (formally stretching to infinite time) for the PC laptops.
Sean,
I would ask you to consider a single question. How many people who made the transition from PC to MAC regret the decision and then went back and got another PC a the next purchase cycle?
I think you’ll find it is very few.
Elliot
Poki’s Poker Academy runs on Macs. I don’t know how that compares to Wilson’s Turbo Texas Hold’em. FullTilt Poker just released a native client for the Mac also. So there are your poker needs.
I’ve become a Mac bigot. I have to use PCs and Suns at work because they’re the only thing certain things run on (National Instruments), but I log into them through my Mac. The PC under my desk doesn’t even have a screen or keyboard connected.
The next replacement for my Linux box (mailserver, webserver) is going to be a Intel-based Mac Mini. FWIW, I once wrote a book on Linux and OSS. I’m kinda done with that now, I’d rather get work done than try to configure the XF86config file ever again.
-bw
Lubos wrote:
Hey, does that count as a prediction?
Some random thoughts, from someone coming late to the party.
Firstly, I think the problems surrounding the move to Intel will be relatively minor, and will mostly center around hardware integration. The only software for which I have seen persistent reports of problems are high end video and photo editing packages. I may be missing some, but standard productivity packages such as Word and Powerpoint “just work” under emulation.
Personally, I would be interested to hear how Mathematica does; I have little patience for Wolfram’s business ethics or (cough) science, but I have been using Mathematica for so long I am stuck with it, as it would be a huge wrench to change to anything else.
Looking at Sean’s oeuvre, I am guessing that I do more heavy duty computing than he does, and for me simple access to a Unix command line is vital — a lot of the serious computing I do is on Linux based clusters, and I can develop code sitting on a plane and then run it when I plug in at the hotel (I can do that on Windows machines under Cygwin, but it is not as transparent), or sit in Aspen and ssh to the command line on my office G5 and run code there from my laptop.
Linux on a laptop is a valid alternative, and while it is getting better, if Linux is going to have hardware specific trouble it tends to show up most painfully on laptops, rather than desktops. Some of this can be solved by choosing one’s laptop carefully, or making friends with a geek 🙂
My gut impression from sitting at conferences (or giving talks at them and looking back at a disconcertingly large sea of open laptops) is that the fraction of Apples in our community is steadily rising, and since we are all clear-eyed individualists who don’t care what other people think there must be a good reason for that…
In general security on a Mac is better — there are going to be more Mac viruses, but it is an inherently more secure architecture than windows, and I suspect it will be hardened further in the future.
But for me the biggest reason to use a Mac is that “it just works” — the hardware is on the expensive side (but not excessively so, if you are comparing to name brand PC makers) but a couple of hundred bucks is nothing compared to the cost in time and productivity from having a sub-optimal computer (whatever brand/OS that might be).
The one reason *not* to use to a mac would be if there was some piece of software that was only available on another platform and you couldn’t do without it. So ask yourself if such a thing exists, and if the answer is no, go and buy yourself a nice shiny new Intel MacBook 😉
Many wise things have already been said. I have just one thing to add against the Mac: one button mouse!! (OK, I know there are 3-button ones nowadays… but not by default!)
Then I would like to recommend this little essay by Neal Stephenson. I want a Hole Hawg.
A few people have mentioned Mathematica as a source of fear, but there is already a universal binary out that works with both PPC and Intel macs.
With that said, let me toss my hat in the mac ring as well. Less time spent futzing with the computer and more time spent doing work. And they’re gosh darn pretty, too.
A last 5c: I am a software developer with a product that has to run on all three. So I carry both a PC and a PB with me at all times. I turn on my PC _only_ when forced to because of a platform-specific bug I have to fix. I have been through both Dell and Gateway laptops. Dell (top of the line Inspiron): three main cases, two LCD’s, two keyboards, two CD drives (floppy still not working but extended warranty now expired). The only bright spot was that their in-home warranty for $300 was no questions full replacement, so I had no extra waits or expenses. Gateway: two cases so far. They have a poor battery contact design, and the case flexes, with the result that an incautious tap on the rear right hand side will shut the machine down dead. It also mysteriously wakes itself up from hibernate. If in the case on my way to/from work it will then overheat. So I have to reboot every time I use it.
OS. well, maybe no blue screen any more. I hate MS wizard approach to configuring things, I hate their idea of what configuration things are related, I hate having to figure out how to re-enable my wireless interface, I hate .. you get the picture. MS taught me my own variation on Murphy: that which can be configured must be configured. The defaults for just about everything are w0rng.
Both are top of the line machines. Dell sales did not tell me 256M was only enough to boot Windoze, not enough to actually do any work with it. And after sales RAM was horrendously expensive.
My PowerBook 15″ is, in contrast, pure joy to use. I reboot it once a month just because. It knows how to go to sleep and wake up anywhere – with or without second monitor, wired or wireless or both – and takes very little time doing it. It is very clear how to control the external monitor mode for projection from a menu bar icon. It runs Office if you have to. Every outlet gives you an extra 1G RAM for free. Superdrive will burn DVDs. Beautiful, rugged, non-flexing case design. Extra wide LCD is better for watching movies than my TV, if I am the only audience. Usable built-in speakers. Fink for Linux tools. Comes with Perl, Python, PHP, MySQL, Apache, sendmail, gcc (all versions), Xcode IDE, X, emacs, vi, pico, etc etc etc. I run a Wiki on it for capturing notes and other useful documentation. BBEdit is exemplar for how to do text editing for programmers, and as noted above the TextWrangler version is free and only missing the HTML stuff.
I also do music stuff. On Windows I had to set 100msec buffering times. On OSX I set 2msecs. That makes the difference for real-time or not. OSX knows how to let an application be a virtual MIDI source, a trivial function call. Windows does not – to be a virtual source requires you delve into the mystery innards of Windows Device Drivers that have to load as services..
I expect that vmware will shortly have a version for the mactel machines. I use vmware on my PC to give me Linux and 2003 Server test bubbles. I only wish I had it on my mac, but the PPC translation makies it unusably slow for disk intensive stuff.
So have fun.
PS: I know vmware is not available for PPC. I used to run Virtual PC (now owned by MS), and that is where my speed comment comes from. I’m waiting for mactels to shake down. Then moving up. I hear the new books are 4 times faster than the latest PPC books. But on 1 month waiting list.
(via stepwise.com) – a stringy reason to prefer the Mac.
Sorry, not those type of strings.
grrr, here is the URL
http://www.red-sweater.com/blog/98/string-theory
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