Anyone recently made the move from a Mac to a PC?

A third party manufacture has licensed Mac OS before... it sucked. I can only imagine how shitty OSX would run if you had HP trying to make a bunch of 450$ desktops preconfigured with OSX, and was built to a profit margin (ie: machine probably only cost them 100 less than that). The only real market, realistically speaking for OSX on a machine other than apple's would be in the "I can't afford shit , so gona see what the cheapest thing is down at best buy" market. since anything else isn't going to be a big enough market share.
Also apple is primarily a hardware company, so it makes sense to keep their best asset (the OS) on their hardware.

here's my annoyance though- a lot of the hackintosh community is OMG apple is expensive - here's my $800 build.

I don't want a $800 machine.

I have money sitting around for a mac pro that I can't buy because apple doesn't update it. Fine. I'll GLADLY pay $3k for a comparable hexacore workstation from dell/hp, the included warranty is a benefit. I've built machines for years but I'm happy to pay the apple premium just to have something that works without fiddling. That said I'd also happily buy an alienware/dell/hp/etc if one of them was 'hackintosh friendly' and thus came with formal/informal support.

The hackintosh route is fine, however I don't particularly want to research/piece a build together. That's a waste of time/money just like spending $3300 on a 2.66ghz quad that's 18 months old from apple.

Other situation I'd be fine with: apple dropping the prices to reflect present day value, in which case I'd just buy a 8 core machine now at a discount and trade when needed. But this 'price is what it is on release day' a year and a half later is asinine, even for apple.
 


If you are going to build your own anything probably want to get some advice on the build from one of the geek forums.

I like toms hardware forum.

I built a beast for about 1k a few months ago.
 
Hi there, professional computer repair technician here.

You have no idea what you're talking about.

lol, a computer repairman pitching his 2 cents.

wait, my bad - he's a professional technician
 
I would never ever ever buy a mac pro. That's the most overpriced piece of hardware I have ever seen, especially considering it's a desktop tower.

Ly2 has it right, unless you need Mac specific apps like Final Cut, just go with Windows. Way cheaper, way way cheaper.

Win 7 is pretty rock solid now, barely uses any RAM. I regularly have at least 1 VM, Photoshop and Illustrator cs5, skype, and firefox open and have never gotten within a Gig of my max ram (4 gigs ddr).

^this... Never bought a mac. I laugh at socially unrecognizable kidz who buy a mac just to browse the web and show off the logo. Built myself an i7 when they came out, from newegg, total cost - around $1500. Beats $3-5K mac.

I can see people using macs for print designs though for bigger magazines/agencies for the true color too (web designers still design for pc users for the most part). Can also see grammas using mac since its UI is more newbie oriented...

It's hard for a mac user to switch to PC, you'll hate the colors... :)
 
Hi there, professional computer repair technician here.

You have no idea what you're talking about.

I take it you aren't aware of the following:

  1. Macs just work.
  2. Once you get a mac, you won't go back.
  3. New next generation technology, now.
  4. With a Mac you can do so much more.
  5. Macs have absolutely gorgeous LED back-lit displays.

Combine those 5 points and you have a machine that exceeds your ability to understand how it works, so it sort of becomes magical and details such as price and specification fade into insignificance. It'll take down a cluster of quad cores if you believe it can.
 
Linux + Virtualization of Windows if you need to run some other apps. I get away with using an old Windows laptop for my Windows apps though.

Linux at home lets me have another dev machine that's nearly identical to my webserver, which I like. But I've also been using Linux for 13 years so I don't need to waste too much time learning new stuff.
 
I love how everyone says the hardware is overpriced. Yeah, the hardware itself is overpriced.

However, a quad core chip running on OSX will produce a faster experience than dual quads on a windows setup due to the massive fucking RAM usage and memory leaks.

This is pretty much completely false. My Windows 7 machine uses less RAM than my Mac OSX uses wired ceteris paribus.

Windows 7 is probably more efficient than OSX SL. Not that I don't love my Mac.
 
I have a 24' iMac with a second external 24' monitor, and it works great. I use OS X most of the time, but the exception is if I am playing starcraft or some other game, using IntelliJ Idea, or using Visual Studio I use my Windows 7 PC. Why do you need a mac pro? I like OS X better than Windows, but that's just my preference, they both have some nice features that the other doesn't
 
I take it you aren't aware of the following:

  1. Macs just work.
  2. Once you get a mac, you won't go back.
  3. New next generation technology, now.
  4. With a Mac you can do so much more.
  5. Macs have absolutely gorgeous LED back-lit displays.

Combine those 5 points and you have a machine that exceeds your ability to understand how it works, so it sort of becomes magical and details such as price and specification fade into insignificance. It'll take down a cluster of quad cores if you believe it can.

1. PC's just work.
2. Once you go Mac, you can blend in at Starbucks.
3. Ummmm, Next generation? hahaha. Next Apple Tower = itampon
4. Like what, exactly?
5. My dual 23" Samsung's are LED Back-lit. Big whoop. (oh and big surprise, at 25% of apple's price.)
 
I move from Mac to PC then back again daily. It’s great to not be entirely invested in either.

A quality, plug-and-play hackintosh is a dream for me too, however it probably just isn’t going to happen.

You release how lame the hackintosh scene is when you read the 17th post about some guy spending 3 days to get his soundcard to work in OS X. All that frustration to avoid “apple tax” simply isn’t ball’n.