[quote=“TheLostSwede”]Yes, OSX is all nice, but Windows 7 really changed things for the PC and it’s not that much worse these days.
mabagal, FYI, most current PC notebooks have multi-touch as well, it’s no longer a unique feature to Macs. And why in the name of all things would a Mac run Windows “better” than a PC when the new Macs are PCs? What a load of crap from a Mac fanboy. My desktop PC runs MacOS better than an iMac, as I have better hardware… and no, it’s not BS, as you can run OSX on a PC as well if you know what you’re doing. However, I wouldn’t attempt it on a notebook, as that’s just too much hassle.[/quote]
Swede, I don’t know if you know this, but I was at MSFT for six years, so I still do have loyalties. I was so loyal even after leaving for business school that I actually used a WinMo phone as my main phone until 2009, long after that platform was way past its shelf life. Now it’s common to see people inside MSFT, including my ex-colleagues running iPhones, which is always an interesting conversation. BTW, I also have an Motorola Milestone Android phone sitting around and now an N1 that I use from time to time. So maybe I am a fanboy. But it’s not like I haven’t considered the other options.
Yes, I know every notebook now (even lowly netbooks) have multi-touch, but have you actually used a MacBook for any period of time? Have you tried drawing on one using a capacitive pen? The touch panel is huge. You cannot really do three or four finger gestures on the trackpads offered on other notebooks and these gestures help a lot with quickening workflow. You cannot use the trackpads on other notebooks as a drawing input very well because they are simply too small nor are any of them flat glass, which makes the feel of using a Pogo like drawing on a whiteboard.
The reason I say MacBooks run Windows better than most PCs is people usually have the shop install a vanilla build of Windows and the rest of the stack is built specifically for that machine. The vanilla build means that Windows runs without the crapware that comes with nearly every PC and the limited number of hardware setups means that effort in the drivers, and firmware could be concentrated on that one config. Apple sells 5 models of notebooks whereas Dell, etc sell 10x that many models at a time with far fewer than 10x the resources, often having drivers and BIOS shared across different models. Even without discussing actual results, which one of those approaches is going to make a better stack more often?
My experiences with my last Dell notebook (which I still have and use) was nothing short of a nightmare with constant BIOS updates, driver updates, etc. It got pretty annoying and was definitely NOT worth the $200 less the machine cost than the same spec’ed MacBook Pro. When I thought about it, nearly every experience I’ve had with Dells have been some sort of constant chase of the latest BIOS or drivers until it was time to get another machine a year or so later. I like it the way it’s been going with the MacBooks because it simplifies things for me. Computers should be our slaves, not the other way around.
BTW, yes I have also Hackintoshed and dual-booted that Dell notebook, a 2009-build Studio XPS 13 which is basically the same specs from processor to bus to RAM to harddrive as the 13" MacBook Pro from before the recent GPU update. The Mac does everything better, including running Windows, including running MacOS, and including doing stuff like drawing because of the fact that I don’t have to constantly chase drivers or BIOS and also because the hardware features (like the big-ass trackpad).
Ramzchillin, yes, but grew up, schooled and worked in USA, so I’m a bit off on the culture. In Taiwan right now building a startup with some classmates. BTW, if any of you guys can code up a storm in PHP, Java and C, we are hiring for senior architect and developer positions.