Apple or Not?

Chris Byrne

I am looking to buy a laptop. It will be mostly used to surf the web, check emails, write reports and link with my camera and iPod. I won’t need to use it to write code as I have a Dell Laptop for work and a decent PC desktop at home. (However it will need to work with my existing wireless home network). I was thinking of getting an iBook / Power Book, basically because they look cool and I think as a programmer it would be useful to try something different. What are people’s thoughts / experience with apple note books? And what are good PC alternatives? Thanks Chris

Nemanja Trifunovic

I hope you heard Apple was switching to Intel next year.

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Chris Byrne

That does not really bother me too much. OS X is still going to be a different operating system, with the same benefits and limitations as it has now. I am interested to hear from PC users who have made the switch OS X. What do people think?

Andrew Peace

It's a very nice operating system. My girlfriend has a Mac and I intend to get my own when they switch to Intel. They're very easy to use, and tend not to baby the user through tasks, but rather assume a basic knowledge of the OS, which makes things far less annoying to use on a day-to-day basis. It does have it's odd gripe, but I'm sold on it. -- Andrew.

Jim Crafton

Buy it! It's a great OS, and the Dev tools are free. The newest version of XCode that came with Tiger (OS X 10.4) has some pretty cool features. Definitely worth looking at and the learning experience of a new API like Cocoa is definitely worth it, IMHO. ¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! Real Mentats use only 100% pure, unfooled around with Sapho Juice(tm)! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned Save an Orange - Use the VCF!

Bob X

Chris Byrne wrote: What are people’s thoughts / experience with apple note books? Apple's are great for what you say you need it for. It's a bonus that they cannot be infected by viruses. Apple's also have greater reliability and better support than pc laptops. It will take you a bit of fiddling around, but an apple will work with your existing network. Chris Byrne wrote: And what are good PC alternatives? I think that the only decent PC alternative is Toshiba.

Arch Stanton

Absolutely! I run OSX 10.4 at home and I love it. While I'm not against MS (I use and develop for XP everyday at work and find it to be a fine OS) my preference is OSX. Also, with the upcoming switch to Intel, you may see some price drops on PPC-based systems, though probably not for a while yet.

FlyingTinman

I just got a Power Book G4 for development. (porting our windows USB video drivers to MacOS X) I really like it and now use it quite a lot at home too. Steve T

Chris Byrne

Thanks for your replies, its good to hear people with positive reports. Is there anybody out there who has had bad experiences?