Making the Mac jump from PC.

[pisces7378]

Well although there are several reasons that will make me a PC man over a Mac man for most any application... I have decided after all that I will be buying a Mac for my Home Project Studio. I am living in Germany now but will be going home to the US for good in about a year and rather than try to ship my Pent III 933 Mhz PC (which in a year will probably be as up to date technologically as "The Clapper") I am just going to strip away the parts that are good, and sell the rest as junk. Or maybe sell the whole thing to some college student. Anyway you slice it I ain't carting that thing home. So my first US purchase upon returning will be an Apple Mac. Now I just wanted to ask you guys if you think I wouyld get a better deal from a retail store, or from the www.apple.com web store? Normally the original manufacturer (Apple) don't want to compete with their retailers so they make their prices higher. Is that the case here? Where is a good place to buy a Mac if the Apple sotre isn't the place?

Also, I have seen a ton about this INCREDIBLY expensive dual GHz processor Mac. Is that not just freakin rediculas over kill unless you are like working for NASA!

 

[elevate]

Also, I have seen a ton about this INCREDIBLY expensive dual GHz processor Mac. Is that not just freakin rediculas over kill unless you are like working for NASA!

Um, no. I'd say it's an average performing computer. Apple has some work to do on their SMP implementation in X, but even if their SMP was up to par, it'd still only be an above average performing computer.

 

[charger]

If you're gonna buy a Mac, you just have to resign yourself to the fact that you will be paying twice as much for a computer that performs quite a bit less. This is not "Mac bashing," I had to resign myself to the same thing. My G4-933 cost over $2000. For half that, I could buy an insane PC with an Athlon 1900 and what have you, that would absolutely kick its ass. The only thing I get with the Mac that is even remotely cool is the Superdrive. However, since I need the Mac to run Pro Tools TDM, I did what I had to do.

However, I wouldn't kid anyone who is getting into the Mac world about the price/performance as compared to a PC. On audio apps, the Mac is routinely smoked by PCs that are half the price, and if I was using the Mac for host processing, I would be totally f*cked.

 

[jdechant]

...

there are rumors of the Power G5 coming now that iMacs are up to G4's... don't know how powerful they will be though

 

[elevate]

There's been rumors of the G5 for more than six months. I still think nobody (aside from the peeps at Apple) knows whether or not the rumored G5 is actually the G4 Apollo, which is in the latest batch of Power Macs.

As to performance, you're going to see the G[whatever] lose efficiency per clock as they lengthen and increase the number of pipelines in the cpu. These pipelines allow the chip speed to be ramped up but also make the chip less efficient. A good example of this is the P4, which wasn't all that stellar of a performer when it was released, but it's still just getting warmed up at 2.2Ghz.

 

[wyastarr]

Umm... Yes, buying from apple directly is usually more expensive. However, it's easier to configure the machine. Shop around and you'll find a good deal.

Also, yes, the dual-processor is a monster machine on dual-processor enhanced apps. I can't see anyone who isn't paid for their audio work needing such a machine. I use a g4/533 single processor with Logic and it's wonderful. It has yet to crash. I'm sure I'd be fine with a g4/400 or even an iBook g3/600.

Whatever with the mac/pc thing, buy whatever makes you feel good, allows you to work without thinking, and makes the babes swoon.