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PC or Mac?


Chaos

PC or Mac?  

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  1. 1. What's your OS of choice on your primary computer?



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I almost can't believe we don't have a thread on this.

What's your main computer's OS of choice? And once you vote, tell us what version you have, and why you use that?

(Obviously, keep it respectful and mature, you guys.)

For me, I use Windows 7. A lot of that is familiarity with Windows, I suppose, but Windows 7 is an operating system I'm genuinely happy with.

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Mac, all the way. As genuinely happy as Chaos is with Windows, I am happier with Apple. I find it easier to use, honestly more enjoyable to use, and it does everything I need it to do.

Fun fact - the graphics on this site were made on a Mac. Because it does it better. ;)

And for the record, I have an Android phone, so I am not a complete and utter Mac fanboy, who will only own an Apple product. :P

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Linux here, because it works.

Also, I prefer windows because its what basically everyone develops for :P

apart from, you know, the whole of the open source movement, and a rather large collection of other people.

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Linux here, because it works.

apart from, you know, the whole of the open source movement, and a rather large collection of other people.

every open source project ive ever seen has a window binaries version, including linux staples like gimp and gzip (though i wont outright say that ALL do, because that likely isn't true). the only people im aware of who dont develop their software for windows are people who have a proprietary reason not to (i.e. apple doesn't make windows versions of all of their software) :P

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  • 3 weeks later...

I use windows mostly because its everywhere. I have it. My school has it. The college I am going to has it.

I personally use Windows Vista because that is what came on my computer and I don't have the money or inclination to get windows 7. I actually don't get the problems that people claim vista has.

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I use windows mostly because its everywhere. I have it. My school has it. The college I am going to has it.

I personally use Windows Vista because that is what came on my computer and I don't have the money or inclination to get windows 7. I actually don't get the problems that people claim vista has.

Well, most of the issues people claim with it (such as 32 bit software compatibility and drivers and such) are issues that were fixed/changed rather soon after it came out, and have just plain have been smoothed out over the years. Anyone who claims it still has such issues are generally just willfully ignorant over this fact in order to bash windows in general.

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Brandon uses Windows 7 on a Zenbook, an Android phone, and a Nook.

Idle curiosity, a nook color, simple touch, or classic?

We have Windows Vista on a desktop, my sister/2 of my brothers have windows 7.

As for phones, we run are divided in my family- 3 iphones and 5 android.

I don't like iphones because I think the idea of only having 1 button an the entire phone is stupid. I like having my menu, home, select, and back button easily available- also there are no options for a physical keyboard with apple. I know from experience that virtual ones are easy enough to get used to, but I don't like half my screen being taken up with a keyboard. I prefer to be able to actually see where I am typing :)

I haven't used mac computers enough to have an opinion.

I have a nook simple touch, scribbled on by Mr. Sanderson among others

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I use Mac, for 3 reasons:

First, and if I'm honest, most important: familiarity. I know the Mac OS inside and out. I can make it sing and dance to my tune. I can configure it, troubleshoot and fix it. Using Windows makes me feel like I have one hand tied behind my back, because of unfamiliarity.

The second reason is a thousand little things that add up to a heap of happiness. It's impossible to remember these little things, much less enumerate them, in the context of a discussion, but I think it boils down to the following generalization. On Windows, "good enough" is good enough, but on the Mac, it has to be better, or nobody is going to use it.

There are differences in philosophy, too. For example, Apple prioritizes user interface responsiveness, even at the expense of overall system performance; Microsoft seems to focus on raw performance first and UI responsiveness second. The result is that Windows and Linux destroy Mac OS X in server benchmarks, but the only thing that can reduce the responsiveness of my (4-year-old) Mac's UI is heavy swap usage. My computer is a workstation, not a server; I prefer Apple's approach.

Third, OS X is a programmer's paradise. Want to program on Windows? Reach for that wallet, kids: Visual Studio is expensive. Or suffer through a cobbled-together chain of second-rate tools. (Linux programmers only have the latter option.) The Mac comes with a cadre of scripting language runtimes preinstalled, and Xcode is free for all.

And speaking of Linux, I find its UX to be generally worse than that of Windows. It's a fantastic server OS, but I wouldn't want to make it my primary OS. The "thousand niceties" argument applies equally between Linux and Windows as it does between Windows and Mac.

"It's not my powder keg; I just brought the match." :P

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Third, OS X is a programmer's paradise. Want to program on Windows? Reach for that wallet, kids: Visual Studio is expensive. Or suffer through a cobbled-together chain of second-rate tools. (Linux programmers only have the latter option.) The Mac comes with a cadre of scripting language runtimes preinstalled, and Xcode is free for all.

VS express is completely free, along with a license that allows you to create and sell anything you make, and express versions have basically all the features you need in it. In fact, i'm honestly not sure what the pay versions bring to the table....

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I use Mac, for 3 reasons:

First, and if I'm honest, most important: familiarity. I know the Mac OS inside and out. I can make it sing and dance to my tune. I can configure it, troubleshoot and fix it. Using Windows makes me feel like I have one hand tied behind my back, because of unfamiliarity.

See, I feel exactly the same way... only opposite. I am incredibly familiar with windows, and the few times I've had to use a mac (one family I babysat for is a mac family, and a friend who I had a project with's laptop) I have to stare at the screen for several minutes tring to figure out how the heck to do anything.

Also, it seems to me that all mac-ish people pride the "intuitive" user interface- see the above. I know about twenty different ways to do some things in windows, whereas with mac I have to look and try to find the "right" way. I am willing to admit this is probably just due to unfamiliarity with the way the interface works, but something that touts itself as "intuitive" should be more, well, intuitive!

Anyway, mini-rant over. All of the above said, I have rather limited experience with Apple, other than iTunes (which is a whole new rant-tastic rant that I won't get into right now)

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VS express is completely free, along with a license that allows you to create and sell anything you make, and express versions have basically all the features you need in it. In fact, i'm honestly not sure what the pay versions bring to the table....

You can add "ignorance of the Windows platform" to my list of reasons why I use Mac. :)

Also, it seems to me that all mac-ish people pride the "intuitive" user interface- see the above. I know about twenty different ways to do some things in windows, whereas with mac I have to look and try to find the "right" way. I am willing to admit this is probably just due to unfamiliarity with the way the interface works, but something that touts itself as "intuitive" should be more, well, intuitive!

Intuitive is probably the wrong word. Intuition is gained through knowledge of how a system works, or, in other words, by familiarity. There is nothing intuitive about either Mac or Windows to someone who wasn't born with a mouse in their hand.

The word, then, is a difference in philosophy. Windows culture tries hard to accommodate a wide variety of tastes and strives to provide multiple redundant ways to accomplish any given task. Mac culture, on the other hand, strives to find the one best way to do something, and then implements that. It believes that redundant workflows add clutter, complexity, and confusion. It recognizes that you can't please everyone, so you may as well design things in the way that makes sense to you.

I believe that every tool has a set of workflows that work best. I mean, you could hammer a screw into the wall, and it would work, but it would work far better if you used a drill.

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The word, then, is a difference in philosophy. Windows culture tries hard to accommodate a wide variety of tastes and strives to provide multiple redundant ways to accomplish any given task. Mac culture, on the other hand, strives to find the one best way to do something, and then implements that. It believes that redundant workflows add clutter, complexity, and confusion. It recognizes that you can't please everyone, so you may as well design things in the way that makes sense to you.

Bit like Python vs Ruby, The Python Way ascribes a single way of doing things, where as Ruby is probably rather messy (never looked at it, but it's always fun to hate on XD)

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Heh, so i decided to look up the differences in VS express vs professional, and so far I can't seem to find anyone who can name any real differences outside of "less code templates" and not getting a free subscription to the MSDN library for so many years.....

There was one thread i read where someone said it was missing some sql server integration and reporting services (especially since SQL server report builder is a free download), but if you know how to connect to and use a database at all, I don't see why you would even care about this in the first place.

Also, from personal experience i don't know any difference. I've used it professionally for quite a while, and I have no idea what's different in the two other than professional is installed all as one, where as the express editions are installed a la carte, so i honestly couldn't tell you WHY you would bother paying for it.....and that's kinda bugging me :P

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The IDE my school uses has both a paid and free version. The difference is the paid version has intellisense while the free one does not.

The thing is, you can get a license for free if you are a student or school, so I don't really see the point of the paid version either.

Edited by Emeralis00
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The IDE my school uses has both a paid and free version. The difference is the paid version has intellisense while the free one does not.

The thing is, you can get a license for free if you are a student or school, so I don't really see the point of the paid version either.

I assume you arent talking about visual studios, right? because the express version totally has intellisense

Also: techincally, if it isnt a microsoft product, it doesn't actually have "intellisense" since i think that's microsoft's copyrighted name for autocomplete.

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I assume you arent talking about visual studios, right? because the express version totally has intellisense

Also: techincally, if it isnt a microsoft product, it doesn't actually have "intellisense" since i think that's microsoft's copyrighted name for autocomplete.

it isn't. yeah its probably called autocomplete, but we all know what it really is.

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The word, then, is a difference in philosophy. Windows culture tries hard to accommodate a wide variety of tastes and strives to provide multiple redundant ways to accomplish any given task. Mac culture, on the other hand, strives to find the one best way to do something, and then implements that. It believes that redundant workflows add clutter, complexity, and confusion. It recognizes that you can't please everyone, so you may as well design things in the way that makes sense to you.

I believe that every tool has a set of workflows that work best. I mean, you could hammer a screw into the wall, and it would work, but it would work far better if you used a drill.

Conversely, I prefer the Windows environment because I find the Mac way of doing things to be not my preferred way of operation. Windows gives me greater choice, and so I can work in whatever way is convenient to me. Maybe my way is horribly inefficient, but I can develop whatever system I want, not a one-size-fits-many solution. It's totally a different philosophy, and neither one is wrong, but I like the Windows way better.

EDIT: For example, iTunes is most certainly not how I want to play my music ever, and I feel like I'm being forced into a paradigm that doesn't fit me.

Edited by Chaos
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