Mac IS a pc...

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I'm getting sick of those "get a mac" ads (especially after I had to do a college research paper on the subject). They constantly refer to a "windows" system as a pc, as if macs are supposedly not pc's themselves. The way wikipedia says it, a mac is merely another form of pc (which is even more accurate after apple switched to intel processors).

I have nothing against most mac products themselves, they do what they're designed for (mostly media applications) fairly well. My only problem is this propaganda they're shoving down the public's throat that their systems are somehow set apart because they have tons of white plastic trim on them. I wouldn't even care about the "get a mac" commercial line if they called hodgeman's character "microsoft" or "windows" (although, to be fair, that would probably lead to trademark litigation).

The main point I want to get across with my rambling is simple though: stop trying to market a pc as a non-pc...

"Get a workstation"... "Get a server"

If you run Linux on a Mac and a PC there's next to no difference, except for the CPU the code was compiled for (on older Macs at least). These days the only hardware difference is a Mac's EFI and the 'PC's BIOS.

What's worse is that people are falling for it! Ask any apple devotee why they paid twice as much for the same machine and youll get an answer about "the programming being more elegant" or "the interface being more intuitive" or "these are built for creative thinkers". And it's the exact same machine! Keep asking them for an example of any of those ad slogan's they parrot back to you, it's funny to watch the stammering start.

Well the sheeple buying them were adequately covered by Maddox...

http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net ... =macs_cant
(being maddox, it has strong language)

LOL I thought I was alone in this observation.

Every one that tries to convince me otherwise can give me nothing but the AD programing.

Like a parrot.

This is from an old Mac advertisement... I thought it relevant to the discussion.

Well if they are getting the Mac because they realyl want MacOS X then thats what they need to runs MacOS X. even though they are a generic PC these days Apples OS won't run on an non Mac Computer without hacking the operating system to do so which is a violation of apple's license. also the advantage with a mac over a PC is that apple chooses the software and the hardware that goes into the *system* as in hardware and software are developed togeather. you can be 100% sure that if you buy an apple computer everything in that computer will work and you wont have to go searching for drivers on the net or updates for those drivers from all over the place.

you can be confident that it will all just work together nicely out of the box. my experience with PC hardware has been less wonderful because theres a ton of different chipsets out there and to make matters worse vendors will sell the a product with the same brand name and model number but use like 3 different types of chips that are radically different from each other but not change the model number at all. its driver hell in that case.

I primarily use Sun hardware with Solaris for similar reasons. but I have enjoyed Apple hardware in the past and wouldn't be against getting new apple hardware down the road.

Simply, the Mac embodies NT ideals of snobbery, hipsterism, flakiness, and brash put-downs whilst PC embodies the aspie ideals of elegance, logic, intelligence, precision, the power of knowledge, science, mathematics, and unassuming inobtrusiveness.

Actually, "PC" for "Personal Computer" is strongly associated (possibly legally so) with IBM, due to their manufacture of the IBM-PC series of home computers in the Eighties. (The younger members here may not remember a time when IBM actually constructed computers, and Bill Gates' big break was writing PC-DOS, the ancestor of MS-DOS, which in turn gave rise to Windows...)

The Macs derive from the Macintosh series of computers, which were always less popular than the PC series because of Apple's original insistence on including a tiny little screen built into the computer itself, and their refusal to permit outside contractors (such as third-party software companies) to know enough about the software kernel of their proprietary OS to write code for early Macs effectively. This has been much reduced in recent years, but the attitude is still present. (There was an old joke circulating usenet back in the day, comparing various OSes to colas. The Mac Cola would open itself, but you would be unable to look inside, and the ingredient list on the side of the can merely said that the end user had no need to know what was in there.)

I prefer PCs today because components are easier to find and install, and less expensive to purchase.

I've always known that Macs are PCs, but in conversation, I use the term "PC" to refer to computers that run Windows. I think of it as one of those slang expressions that does not make sense. With these expressions, it often makes sense to use them in the way that people understand them - as opposed to in accordance with their literal/logical meaning.

It is weird for Apple to be promoting this kind of nonsensical colloquialism through their advertising, though. Maybe they chose to use the term because it is succinct and widely understood (albeit incorrectly)? Maybe they thought fewer TV viewers would understand, "I'm not a Mac and I run Windows"? Also, Macs do run Windows these days (in addition to OS X). That makes the differences between Macs and other machines a little harder to explain in a televised ad.

I am still planning to get a Mac, because not only are they neat, but they are less vulnerable than the IBM clones to viruses, spyware, etc. After my roommate downloaded porn on my HP while I was gone during the holiday break, I decided that I need a more secure computer.

just put linux on your computer.

it's not that PC's are more vulnerable, it's that the mass of viruses created are made to target the widest audience possible and with 75% of the OS share, XP is still the prime target.

you're not getting better operating software with OSX, just less popular. and you can get the same thing from linux for free and gutsy gibbon works very nicely as a transitional OS from PC to linux.

and you don't get more secure than linux where almost every change you make to the system requires a password prompt.

There are two differences between a mac and PC:
Macs have EFI, no BIOS
Macs have Mac OS X.

Mac OS X is by far a lot more comforting to use than Linux or Windows. I'm not saying it's better but in my preference I like it more. I run it on my mac and 3 of my PCs.

Mac Fanatics are stupid ideologues are far as I'm concerned.

I'm a lapsed Mac user -- while offering a wonderful machine and OS, Apple, Inc. has consistently proven itself to be uncaring to their loyal users. OS 9 and earlier can't even run on their bloated, clunky OS X, machines, making my entire software collection useless. PC's on the other hand run my 11-year-old PC software just fine, in fact even better now that the machines are faster. This isn't even the first time Apple betrayed it's customers -- they did it with the original Apple computer OS, and the Newton, and BEOS...

not to mention OSX is on rails moreso than the other OS's.