Does the G5 make sex better?

malevolent jester, you might need a
power supply
hard drive
mouse (optical)
keyboard/usb hub
dvdrw if you want to compare it to a mac
optical in/out sound card
gigabyte ethernet
firewire card
new total
$3400


maybe you should actually buy a whole computer hooray!

I had no trouble editing videos, adding background music, transitions, voice overs, special effects, etc in my first 20 minutes of ever touching a Mac.

Every single Mac you've used crashed? Every single PC I've ever used crashed repeatedly, especially after it had 3 different viruses on it. OS8 crashed? So did Windows 95, if you want to compare "apples with apples" as it were.

I've imported every type of file I use to a Mac and back with no problems. Including mp3's, Office files, photoshop files, corel draw files, etc. No problems at all.

If your teacher had an old powerbook it was probably OS8 or 9, which is beside the point. It's like saying you hate PCs because Windows 3.1 doesn't work with Half-Life 2 or something.

You are still skipping a lot of details. Does that integrated soundcard support optical in/out? Which would provide you with some amazing THX certified surround sound, and is it gigabit ethernet?

Since you've never heard of it, PCI-X: http://itpapers.cnet.com/abstract.aspx?docid=4035

Bluetooth, who needs it? Who needs games? Your original post was to show how easy you could get something faster and better in a PC than a Mac for cheaper. But if you are going to do that, you have to compare a PC that is as equal to the Mac as possible, which would include bluetooth and wi-fi readiness, just by buying an antenna.

About macs - how is the OS so different and better? Is it in the file structure, etc? Or in the everyday user-friendly features? I've never really used a mac and I'm wondering whats so different.

tom

ah - best when its GSPOT orgasim

heathrowe

The file structure is based on Unix, because OSX is based on FreeBSD Unix. You can open the Terminal Application and you have access to a complete Unix installation underneath the GUI of OSX that is called Aqua. You can run all of the command line applications that you normally would on Unix, right on OSX. It has a built-in Apache web server, etc.

Overall the GUI system is beautiful, with transparencies, animated effects, etc. Panther, which is the next version of the OS will have a feature called Expose' (Demo) which will shrink all of your open windows at the press of a button, so you can easily find the one you want, select it, then bring it to the front. That's just one cool trick of the GUI system. The upcoming release of Panther will also have an integrated Font Manager/previewer, fast user switching (just click your name at the top of the screen, choose another one, and the whole screen flips around as if it were a cube, showing you the other person's background, icons, etc.), encrypted home folders (which is like my documents on windows), etc.

There are no DLLs or registry on the Mac. Every application is self contained. You just drag and drop it from the CD to your Applications folder, and you're done. When you want to uninstall it, just drag its folder or icon to the trashcan, and it is gone.

Everything on the system is integrated. For example, once you enter your personal info into your system-wide address book, it will automatically fill in your info on web sites for you. The first time this happened with my I wondered what the heck was going on 'cause I went to fill out a form and it already had all of my info in it!

You can use Sherlock, Apple's web search tool to look up a movie time, watch a trailer, buy tickets etc. Clicking one button will automatically add that show time to your "iCal", which is Apple's calendaring program. You can also use another program called Watson to look up an address/phone number, then with one click add that to your address book. Then immediately that person's address and phone is accessible from any application on the computer.

PDF functionality is completely integrated into the OS. Anything you can print, you can save as a PDF. You can also send receive faxes. Anything application you can print from, just hit fax and choose a number from the address book or enter a new one, and it will fax the page with a cover sheet if you want. When it receives a fax it saves it as a PDF, which you can review before printing, or have it automatically send a copy to an email address. It could even be an email on a Cellphone, allowing you to receive faxes on your phone.

The apps included with the OS are incredible. iPhoto is a great photomanagement/basic editing app, which is fully integrated into all of the other iApps. For instance you can sort through your iPhoto albums from iMovie, import it with one click, and put titles over it. Or import a song from iTunes into the movie as background music.

Synergy is a cool little $5 add on to iTunes that allows you to skip songs and control iTunes with keyboard combos from any application. Just hit Command F11 to go back a track, F12 to pause/play, etc. This works no matter what app you are in. It also shows a popup with the name of the song, album, artist, etc. The rating you gave the song, year it was made, etc. It even downloads the cover art from the internet and displays it. Granted that is not part of the default OS, but just a sample of some of the great things you can do with OSX.

It also has free development tools, so if programming is your thing, you can feel free to make you own OSX apps without having to buy super expensive programming tools.

Applescript is a scripting language built-in to the OS, allowing you to control most applications with a simple english-like language. for example there is a script to automatically export a certain iPhoto to the background of the DVD menu in iDVD, or a script to import a photo from Safari (apple's web browser) to iPhoto automatically. These are simple scripts, and it is capable of much much more.

That's just a few reasons, but there is a ton of info at the apple site: www.apple.com take a few minutes and read a little.

edit: nevermind, the arguement is old, and each side will reject the other. But I still wasn't convinced, just for the record. :p

"dual processor G5 machines still don't match the processing power of a single processor Pentium 4 system, contrary to what Apple announced Monday.

Here's why: In a bit of classic benchmark trickery, Apple's systems were highly tuned in non-standard ways that would provide the best scores on specific benchmarks. Meanwhile, the PCs used to compete against the G5 were saddled with generic tools. Furthermore, advanced Pentium 4 features such as hyperthreading were actually turned off, artificially lowering that system's scores. What's most interesting is that Veritest actually has results for various Pentium 4 systems in which these features are enabled. Guess which system, Mac or PC, comes out ahead when these results are used.

"Apple's test results are invalidated by severely lopsided testing conditions," InfoWorld's Tom Yager writes in his Web log. "Among them, Apple used a prototype G5 running its special GNU compiler and an unreleased version of OS X. The Dells used shipping hardware, vanilla GNU compilers and Red Hat 9. None of this would be a problem if Apple and Veritest didn't claim the tests were objective. An apples-to-apples test, so to speak, would require that Dell, like Apple, be allowed to tune its systems and software for best-case performance. Dell's published results on the SPEC site--regarded as the definitive repository for SPEC results--are best-case. They're far better than the results cited by Veritest in the Apple report."

Sure enough, in each of the benchmarks in which Apple claims victory over the Pentium 4- or Xeon-based systems, various Pentium 4, Xeon, and even AMD Athlon XP systems actually beat the G5 routinely when the tested systems have been properly configured, and don't have features turned off.

What's most bizarre about all this, of course, is that Apple makes good products. Let's be clear on this point: Mac OS X is excellent, and the Panther release, while not overly exciting, looks solid. And the company's hardware is of tremendous quality (I own two Macs and an iPod), with the PowerMac G5 clearly continuing this trend. And there are still excellent reasons to pick a Mac over a PC in certain situations. But Apple has been stretching the bounds of credibility with its performance claims for years now, and this latest example is, by far, the most bold. This situation, ultimately, is an embarrassment for both Apple and its customers. Perhaps the company needs to think its claim that the PowerMac G5 is the "world's fastest computer." Quite clearly, that is not the case."

http://www.wininformant.com/Articles/Index.cfm?ArticleID=39381

I wouldn't trust that article
they didn't even have macs in june there fore they aren't acurate statements.

Oh please, that is like 3 months old and was done before the G5 was even out. Here's a review from PC MAGAZINE, not a Mac magazine, a PC magazine, showing that it is faster, or close to as fast as a Dual Xeon 3.06ghz machine.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,1274182,00.asp

The point is, is that the new G5 out performs high performance pcs at “some” tests. I’m not saying PC’s are better than the Mac, but I’m not convinced the mac is better than the PC either.

Until anyone can prove that one is by some large amount better than the other in so many ways that actually matter I think it’s more of a choice of comfort when looking for a mac or pc. Which ever one you’re more comfortable with.

That’s just me I guess.