iBook?

Great box, don't buy RAM direct from Apple (costs way too much, you can install it yourself w/o voiding the warranty), you'll want to get Bluetooth.

Go to an Apple store and try it out yourself, though: I know lots of people who prefer the Powerbook keyboard (myself included).

iBook has a better antenna. Something about the case of the power book raping the signal.

Macs aren't bad. But I've never found any reason to think they are great either. If the specs are nice and you don't have to use PC specific programs or want to play many games, then go ahead and get one. I wouldn't, personally, just because if you don't need PC specific programs/games then you probably could settle for a much (much) cheaper, lower spec PC laptop anyways.

I've got a friend who keeps talking about how he thinks he'll get a Mac laptop so he can do "all the graphic and music stuff". For the love of god and all that is holy, don't ever do that. Photoshop loading 2 seconds faster is not a valid reason to spend an extra couple hundred dollars on a Mac.

I was thinking of getting a Mac. After thinking about it for a few months now, I am happy to not have had enough money back when I wanted to get one. My biggest turn off is that its white. Seriously, they are trying to blind you with thier products.

I am somewhat biased. I own a PowerMac G5 and one of the current iBook G4 machines. They are fairly nice, it runs ok(I am running it with 256 MB RAM, for some reason or another) it seems to run Xcode fairly well, haven't tried it with large project yet, though. As far as GUI is concerned, I would try OS X first, before buying a machine with it. Since, I wouldn't invest into an OS just on someone's word alone. Hardware wise, it is decent, not great, but not really terrible either, the build quality is good, the keyboard is only OK, the wireless is fairly good. Although the graphics board isn't exactly great for games, it's still better than that integrated intel crap on other laptops that are cheaper. Software, if you have used *NIX before, it has most, if not everything you used there, with MS Office(which is fairly good for the Mac), Xcode(Apple's IDE for C\C++\Java\Objective-C), and a lot of stuff that can be found on versiontracker. So, the best advice would be to try it out for yourself if you can find an Apple store near by.. or at least a store that sells Macs.

Quote:

Original post by LockePick I've got a friend who keeps talking about how he thinks he'll get a Mac laptop so he can do "all the graphic and music stuff". For the love of god and all that is holy, don't ever do that. Photoshop loading 2 seconds faster is not a valid reason to spend an extra couple hundred dollars on a Mac.

True, but the ability to concurrently run multiple memory-hungry applications, each with multiple large images open, with zero noticeable slowdown can be a boon to your workflow. On the PC, there's a tendency for applications not to play well together in terms of hogging memory, resulting in users having to do more memory management - the infamouse "close a few applications to free up memory" solution. On the Mac, many PC users (I see this all the time in the labs on campus) don't realize that they have a ton of applications open, in part because they don't see any slowdown (otherwise they would have called on one of the techs).

The Mac is also better for dealing with huge numbers of documents, thanks to Exposé. Individually, these are perhaps minor considerations, but if media editing is your primary use for the machine, it can add up to a lot of lost productivity.

I wonder whether Oluseyi works for Apple, because I've just been sold on the idea.

Quote:

Original post by bastard2k5 Xcode(Apple's IDE for C\C++\Java\Objective-C)

How is Xcode? Is it any good?

I wish I could play around with OS X before making the decision. Can't they port the damned thing to x86 [smile]?

Quote:

Original post by CoffeeMug Quote: Original post by bastard2k5 Xcode(Apple's IDE for C\C++\Java\Objective-C) How is Xcode? Is it any good? I wish I could play around with OS X before making the decision. Can't they port the damned thing to x86 [smile]?

Personally, I like Xcode, but you'd have to try it yourself to decide. You might want to look at this powerpc emulator, you'll still need to buy OSX, but you can install it and try it in the emulator before buying the computer.

Quote:

Original post by CoffeeMug Quote: Original post by bastard2k5 Xcode(Apple's IDE for C\C++\Java\Objective-C) How is Xcode? Is it any good? I wish I could play around with OS X before making the decision. Can't they port the damned thing to x86 [smile]?

I have been recently playing around with more of the features of Xcode/Interface Builder, and I would say that I personally like it. It has fairly nice project management, and uses GCC and GDB for those who are familiar with those programs. I think the next version(2.0, unless Apple updates before OS 10.4) should bring some nice improvements into how writes code for Mac OS X. I would say if you want to look at the features that Xcode has, and what developing software on Mac OS X is like in general, visit Apple Developer Connection.

Quote:

Original post by LockePick Macs aren't bad. But I've never found any reason to think they are great either. If the specs are nice and you don't have to use PC specific programs or want to play many games, then go ahead and get one. I wouldn't, personally, just because if you don't need PC specific programs/games then you probably could settle for a much (much) cheaper, lower spec PC laptop anyways. I've got a friend who keeps talking about how he thinks he'll get a Mac laptop so he can do "all the graphic and music stuff". For the love of god and all that is holy, don't ever do that. Photoshop loading 2 seconds faster is not a valid reason to spend an extra couple hundred dollars on a Mac.

I am a PC fanboy and I've never owned a mac, but I've worked with video editing software for commercial releases and I can tell you now that FinalCutPro (mac specific software) owns the hell out of any other video editing tool that has ever been invented for the PC platform that I am aware of.

Quote:

Original post by LockePick Photoshop loading 2 seconds faster is not a valid reason to spend an extra couple hundred dollars on a Mac.

No - but better support for most high-end audio editing and graphic editing programs are a reason to spend the extra on a MAC. Adobe, AVID, SoundForge, Sony and a few other high-end video/graphic/sound editing programs are specifically written to work best on the MAC and then ported over (if there is a port available ) to the PC. For some reason, MACs got a good share of the Graphic Design and Audio/Video market early on, and hasn't really given it up.

The one thing I do know about Macs is that it makes colors "warmer" than the same color on PCs - and many thing the color resolution on a MAC is superior to a PC. Thus that's why graphic designers and some web-designers prefer to work on Macs rather than PC - because they feel that the colors that MACs display are nicer.

I use Macs and PCs bothe regularly BTW. I like Macs because everything is simple to set up and use - the graphic design/audio/video production software (Avid, SoundForge, Adobie) that I use on it is more stable and has better technical support on Macs. And it seems that my MAC crashes a whole lot less than my PC does.

I like my PC though because of the other software options that it has (Games, etc). It's also much cheeper to upgrade, etc.

Roach

Quote:

Original post by PnP Bios iBook has a better antenna. Something about the case of the power book raping the signal.

That's only true for the Titanium Powerbooks; they acted as a Faraday cage.

Also: If you're a pirate, or just borrow OS X from a friend, you can run it in PearPC fairly well these days as long as you have a meaty box. XCode works pretty acceptably, but there are still parts that bug me (having come from MSVC++, they're pretty much all naming issues now).

Quote:

Original post by CoffeeMug What do you think of iBook's hardware and usability?

After two logic board failures and a combo drive that can't burn at more than 4x, I'm inclined to say that iBook hardware isn't all that great. And as for XCode, I'm sure it would be fine, if not for one boneheaded feature: when you set the editor's background color to black, the mouse cursor remains black. Trying to code with an invisible mouse cursor is rather difficult.

Quote:

Original post by Roach The one thing I do know about Macs is that it makes colors "warmer" than the same color on PCs - and many thing the color resolution on a MAC is superior to a PC. Thus that's why graphic designers and some web-designers prefer to work on Macs rather than PC - because they feel that the colors that MACs display are nicer.

I certainly don't think designers would prefer work in a warmer color temperature that only exists within their workstation. Designers should work in standard visual conditions to ensure that their product looks correct on any medium. If an image is being rendered warmer on a MAC during the design process a false sense of imagery is (obviously) created.

Quote:

Original post by Roach The one thing I do know about Macs is that it makes colors "warmer" than the same color on PCs - and many thing the color resolution on a MAC is superior to a PC. Thus that's why graphic designers and some web-designers prefer to work on Macs rather than PC - because they feel that the colors that MACs display are nicer.

So what you're saying is either, Mac's come with better monitors than your standard PC, or have adjusted gamma/colour settings out of the box?

Quote:

Original post by Salsa Quote: Original post by Roach The one thing I do know about Macs is that it makes colors "warmer" than the same color on PCs - and many thing the color resolution on a MAC is superior to a PC. Thus that's why graphic designers and some web-designers prefer to work on Macs rather than PC - because they feel that the colors that MACs display are nicer. I certainly don't think designers would prefer work in a warmer color temperature that only exists within their workstation. Designers should work in standard visual conditions to ensure that their product looks correct on any medium. If an image is being rendered warmer on a MAC during the design process a false sense of imagery is (obviously) created.

Graphic designers would want to work with the format that provides the "truest" form of color, which I guess is on a Mac - I know a lot of pastells look much better on a Mac than on a PC (they are "warmer" on a MAC and darker on a PC). From what I understand (i.e. from what Graphic Designers and former Graphic Designers/Web designers have told me) - they use MACs because the colors that they see on the screen match with the colors that they want when the final product is delivered (print media or something to that effect). From what I understand - is that when they use a PC, they need to modify the color on the screen using color curves in order to get the color they want in the final product.

Since a lot of Web-Designers are former Graphic Designers - they continued using the Macs for their web graphic development (even though they know that the color could be seen differently(i.e. darker) on a PC). Also because the popular web development tools (Photoshop, etc) were primarly designed with Graphic Designers in mind (before Web Development took off) - they contunued to focus more on the MAC user more than the PC user (because more graphic designers prefer working on MACs).

Quote:

So what you're saying is either, Mac's come with better monitors than your standard PC, or have adjusted gamma/colour settings out of the box?

I believe that they have better Gamma/color settings out of the box. I don't think that they have better/worce monitors that PCs. Not exactially sure why pastells look better(Warmer) on a MAC, but I would assume it had more to do with the setting out of the box than anything hardware related).

Quote:

Original post by Salsa Quote: Original post by Roach The one thing I do know about Macs is that it makes colors "warmer" than the same color on PCs - and many thing the color resolution on a MAC is superior to a PC. Thus that's why graphic designers and some web-designers prefer to work on Macs rather than PC - because they feel that the colors that MACs display are nicer. I certainly don't think designers would prefer work in a warmer color temperature that only exists within their workstation. Designers should work in standard visual conditions to ensure that their product looks correct on any medium. If an image is being rendered warmer on a MAC during the design process a false sense of imagery is (obviously) created.

That's why Colorsync exists.

Quote:

Original post by Salsa Designers should work in standard visual conditions to ensure that their product looks correct on any medium.

Sadly, there is no such thing as a "standard" visual condition. Macs and PCs display colors differently, print media differ from both (though they differ less from Macs), television is again different, and so forth. The reasons why are rooted in the precise technology in use in the medium, and, in the case of print media, on the specific ink/dye/wax transfer methods.

I'm, frankly, really surprised you didn't know this, being a really good artist and all.