Laptop Pricing - A small rant.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@creayt said:
@MattSpeller said:
@creayt said:
Awesome, I'll check it out. It'd be amazing to Raid 0 that sh.
lol damn rights it would. You'd probably see little benefit but massive props if you do it anyway XD
I'm the asshole that thinks OS X is too sprinkled w/ latency to use for web development. I notice that command + tab has a slight, imperceptible to some people, delay before it fades onto the screen when compared w/ Windows' alt + tab on the same machine. I wouldn't be shocked if I did feel some benefit
I'm a Mac user and find EVERYTHING to have an annoying amount of delay. I have the top end, brand new MacBook Pro and find it sluggish and problematic.
So refereshing to hear someone besides me say that. My theory is that it has to do w/ OS X being some kind of secondary presentation layer OS that sits over Unix and does a crapload of translations from underlying Unix events to OS X. There's even a delay in right clicking half the time. Whatever the cause actually is, it's annoying and I just cannot feel comfortable writing code on OS X. Don't get me started on the laundry list of abominable usability decisions. I like OS X for web browsing ( as long as I don't need to browse too many tabs at once ) and love the text aliasing for the most part, for most fonts preferring it to Windows, but productivity man, productivity. It is interesting to see how much faster the same computer becomes when you throw Boot Camp onto it.
*Written from a retina iMac running Windows 8.
I actually returned a top-of-the-line 15.4" retina MacBook Pro two nights ago because I realized I had no use for it, at all. Somehow the 13" 2015 one feels faster than it even with just a dual core. The PCIe SSD uses 4 lanes apparently so it gets 1300/1300, which is my only guess as to how it manages that.
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@MattSpeller said:
@creayt I spent several hours creating the fastest core XP install I possibly could for similar reasons. Granted that was for dual WD Raptor 150GB 10krpm drives that you could hear with headphones on. Ahhh good times
Epic.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@creayt said:
@MattSpeller said:
@creayt said:
Awesome, I'll check it out. It'd be amazing to Raid 0 that sh.
lol damn rights it would. You'd probably see little benefit but massive props if you do it anyway XD
I'm the asshole that thinks OS X is too sprinkled w/ latency to use for web development. I notice that command + tab has a slight, imperceptible to some people, delay before it fades onto the screen when compared w/ Windows' alt + tab on the same machine. I wouldn't be shocked if I did feel some benefit
I'm a Mac user and find EVERYTHING to have an annoying amount of delay. I have the top end, brand new MacBook Pro and find it sluggish and problematic.
It didn't used to be that way.. apple has thrown away their base and primary market to make everything more consumerish and the OS and apps (final cut pro) suffered a lot. There's a lot of things that feel too much like iOS on it now. Sad thing is Mircosoft is doing a better job of a unified OS/ecosystem... That shouldn't be happening. Mac OS used to be much more lightweight.
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@thecreativeone91 said:
It didn't used to be that way.. apple has thrown away their base and primary market to make everything more consumerish and the OS and apps (final cut pro) suffered a lot. There's a lot of things that feel too much like iOS on it now. Sad thing is Mircosoft is doing a better job of a unified OS/ecosystem... That shouldn't be happening. Mac OS used to be much more lightweight.
Hey! haha - give MS a break, they're doing pretty well lately.
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@thecreativeone91 said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@creayt said:
@MattSpeller said:
@creayt said:
Awesome, I'll check it out. It'd be amazing to Raid 0 that sh.
lol damn rights it would. You'd probably see little benefit but massive props if you do it anyway XD
I'm the asshole that thinks OS X is too sprinkled w/ latency to use for web development. I notice that command + tab has a slight, imperceptible to some people, delay before it fades onto the screen when compared w/ Windows' alt + tab on the same machine. I wouldn't be shocked if I did feel some benefit
I'm a Mac user and find EVERYTHING to have an annoying amount of delay. I have the top end, brand new MacBook Pro and find it sluggish and problematic.
It didn't used to be that way.. apple has thrown away their base and primary market to make everything more consumerish and the OS and apps (final cut pro) suffered a lot. There's a lot of things that feel too much like iOS on it now. Sad thing is Mircosoft is doing a better job of a unified OS/ecosystem... That shouldn't be happening. Mac OS used to be much more lightweight.
That's how I remember it, long ago. Now I've got this crazy laptop, loaded with the fastest hardware ever and it feels no faster than my dc5850 Windows 8.1 desktop.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@thecreativeone91 said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@creayt said:
@MattSpeller said:
@creayt said:
Awesome, I'll check it out. It'd be amazing to Raid 0 that sh.
lol damn rights it would. You'd probably see little benefit but massive props if you do it anyway XD
I'm the asshole that thinks OS X is too sprinkled w/ latency to use for web development. I notice that command + tab has a slight, imperceptible to some people, delay before it fades onto the screen when compared w/ Windows' alt + tab on the same machine. I wouldn't be shocked if I did feel some benefit
I'm a Mac user and find EVERYTHING to have an annoying amount of delay. I have the top end, brand new MacBook Pro and find it sluggish and problematic.
It didn't used to be that way.. apple has thrown away their base and primary market to make everything more consumerish and the OS and apps (final cut pro) suffered a lot. There's a lot of things that feel too much like iOS on it now. Sad thing is Mircosoft is doing a better job of a unified OS/ecosystem... That shouldn't be happening. Mac OS used to be much more lightweight.
That's how I remember it, long ago. Now I've got this crazy laptop, loaded with the fastest hardware ever and it feels no faster than my dc5850 Windows 8.1 desktop.
I don't remember macs ever being fast. I remember them false advertising themselves as fast, like with their "The world's most powerful personal computer" campaign w/ Jeff Goldblum that they had to stop airing because it was deemed preposterously false ( was a 2 CPU desktop that would lose in benchmarks to a single CPU, low-end Windows box ).
In fact I remember when I first started using computers, it was circa 2003 I think, and I'd ordered some generic, cobbled together AMD Athlon box off of some auction site because it was all I could afford, I think it was around $400, which for that day and age was extremmmmely cheap. I used it for a few weeks at home, and then school started and I enrolled in some graphic design and animation classes... When I got to their brand-new iMacs they were so slow by comparison that I figured something must be wrong with mine ( until I switch 3 or 4 times to other seats and they were all the same ). Even things like Photoshop were exponentially slower, and I found myself waiting on the interface so much that it was pretty instantly frustrating. Then I'd hear my graphic design teacher say things like "Macs are better for web design and development, they just are", and when I'd challenge her ( out of sincerity, I wanted to know why ) she'd never have any actual information to back up her claims, just that "it's generally accepted that they are." So for my main project in that class I made a video showing me doing identical work much, much faster on my $400 brandless windows box side-by-side w/ their "brand new", exorbitantly expensive iMacs. The class was laughing almost the entire time, at one point I showed how in the time it took to launch some video editing suite on the iMac I was able to launch it on my box literally 6 times, and this was on an entry level 7200RPM drive ( before the SSD days ). I like a lot of things about Macs, but I've never used one I thought was fast ( with the exception of while in Boot Camp, most of them get pretty zippy if you throw Windows onto them ). I think it's just that Microsoft has heavily invested in performance engineering and Apple hasn't, because clearly they can get by without it. If they made Macs with Windows keyboards I'd buy them every time though, a lot of their hardware is more attractive than any Windows hardware I see. I don't think their designs are that amazing, and they make some awkward color choices, like the face that my 2014 retina iMac is aluminum and black and then the keyboard has clashingly white keys. But still. Windows designs, even when they're good like the new XPS 13, are still, most of the time, ruined by stupid decisions ( like the ugly texture/pattern they put on the XPS 13's body ).
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@creayt said:
I don't remember macs ever being fast. I remember them false advertising themselves as fast, like with their "The world's most powerful personal computer" campaign w/ Jeff Goldblum that they had to stop airing because it was deemed preposterously false ( was a 2 CPU desktop that would lose in benchmarks to a single CPU, low-end Windows box ).
OMG, I remember those days. They were so outrageous. It was so trivial to get stuff SO much faster for half the price - even for running Mac OS let alone running "anything." That was a lot for why I've avoided Macs so much, I feel a bit embarrassed using them as people might think I fell for the outrageous claims.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@creayt said:
I don't remember macs ever being fast. I remember them false advertising themselves as fast, like with their "The world's most powerful personal computer" campaign w/ Jeff Goldblum that they had to stop airing because it was deemed preposterously false ( was a 2 CPU desktop that would lose in benchmarks to a single CPU, low-end Windows box ).
OMG, I remember those days. They were so outrageous. It was so trivial to get stuff SO much faster for half the price - even for running Mac OS let alone running "anything." That was a lot for why I've avoided Macs so much, I feel a bit embarrassed using them as people might think I fell for the outrageous claims.
Everywhere I look I see developers using them, and honestly I just don't get it. They make me feel about 40% as productive as I otherwise do, and using Windows on a MacBook Pro makes keyboard shortcuts feel slower and more awkward to me, which also feels like a dramatic productivity hit. I've tried switching for primary use about 10 times, but in the end always retreat, including a 6 month stint where I used OS X for web development. I have no idea how people do it. I notice the delay between when I'm typing and when the letters render on the screen even, which makes my blood boil.
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For Video production and graphics work they used to be fast. A windows machine couldn't touch a mac from the 1990's until about 2002 or maybe a little before when the Pentium 4 had came out along with the Athlon XP. They supported features better and the vendors worked on making their software take advantage of the new cpu features.. That was the first time windows really became viable at all for serious video production. The Athlon's actually were faster than the Intel's but, Intel had paid modified the benchmark software to make theirs look better on all tests. (which has went to a class action now, if you owned a p4 computer you can get a whole $15 out of it.)
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@creayt said:
Everywhere I look I see developers using them, and honestly I just don't get it.
That's what convinced me to give one a try. It's not bad, but it's not good. Certainly not on par with Windows or Linux systems that I use for a fraction of the price. Last week I asked my office to replace mine with a $250 Chromebook as I'd be more productive. $5,000 isn't as useful as $250!!
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@thecreativeone91 said:
For Video production and graphics work they used to be fast. A windows machine couldn't touch a mac from the 1990's until about 2002 or maybe a little before when the Pentium 4 had came out along with the Athlon XP.
Actually the Pentium IIIS was faster than the Pentium 4. The PIII / PIIIS and Athlon XP were really good. The P4 era was the big "dip" in Windows performance. It was with the Pentium Pro family that Windows made the big leap to where Mac just wasn't in the performance game anymore.
Long ago when Mac was M68K based and Windows was on Intel 386, yeah, Mac had lot more power. But Amiga had way more than either because of the better support hardware.
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The problem is Apple is trying to do too much. in the PowerPC days things were simple they focused on one market. Now they are trying to get everyone and doing none of it well. I also think they should decided if they want to be a software company or a hardware. If they want to keep making OS 10 do it, then charge a small amount for it and let it run on any computer, forget about the hardware - which in recent years hasn't been to great. And make the software a lot better.
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@thecreativeone91 said:
The problem is Apple is trying to do too much. in the PowerPC days things were simple they focused on one market. Now they are trying to get everyone and doing none of it well. I also think they should decided if they want to be a software company or a hardware. If they want to keep making OS 10 do it, then charge a small amount for it and let it run on any computer, forget about the hardware - which in recent years hasn't been to great. And make the software a lot better.
Mac OSX isn't good enough to pay for, though. What little value Apple has, is in the integration. Neither the hardware is good enough to buy and run Windows on (although I know people doing exactly that - only full Mac shop I know does that) and the software isn't good enough to pay for on its own outside of having a copy in a lab to make supporting Mac users easier.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@thecreativeone91 said:
For Video production and graphics work they used to be fast. A windows machine couldn't touch a mac from the 1990's until about 2002 or maybe a little before when the Pentium 4 had came out along with the Athlon XP.
Actually the Pentium IIIS was faster than the Pentium 4.
Yeah but the P3 didn't have SSE2 like the p4 (and eventually SSE3) That's what made a lot of it possible. And AMD's ripped off versions.
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@scottalanmiller said:
That's what convinced me to give one a try. It's not bad, but it's not good. Certainly not on par with Windows or Linux systems that I use for a fraction of the price. Last week I asked my office to replace mine with a $250 Chromebook as I'd be more productive. $5,000 isn't as useful as $250!!
It's so funny that you say that!!!!! I have an Acer Chromebook that was $160, and it blows the 15" Retina MacBook Pro away for web browsing. The scrolling and rendering performance is so much better that I almost made a video for YouTube. God it's such a relief to hear someone else say these things aloud.
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@creayt said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@creayt said:
Everywhere I look I see developers using them, and honestly I just don't get it.
That's what convinced me to give one a try. It's not bad, but it's not good. Certainly not on par with Windows or Linux systems that I use for a fraction of the price. Last week I asked my office to replace mine with a $250 Chromebook as I'd be more productive. $5,000 isn't as useful as $250!!
It's so funny that you say that!!!!! I have an Acer Chromebook that was $160, and it blows the 15" Retina MacBook Pro away for web browsing. The scrolling and rendering performance is so much better that I almost made a video for YouTube. God it's such a relief to hear someone else say these things aloud.
Mac OS has the worst performance for web based streaming now days. Flash sucks much much worse on it. Html5 isn't too much better.
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@thecreativeone91 said:
Yeah but the P3 didn't have SSE2 like the p4 (and eventually SSE3) That's what made a lot of it possible. And AMD's ripped off versions.
It was backported to the PPro family with the PIII's rebranding to the Pentium M.
PPro was PPro -> PII -> PIII -> PIIIS -> PM
Netburst was P4 -> PD
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@creayt said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@creayt said:
Everywhere I look I see developers using them, and honestly I just don't get it.
That's what convinced me to give one a try. It's not bad, but it's not good. Certainly not on par with Windows or Linux systems that I use for a fraction of the price. Last week I asked my office to replace mine with a $250 Chromebook as I'd be more productive. $5,000 isn't as useful as $250!!
It's so funny that you say that!!!!! I have an Acer Chromebook that was $160, and it blows the 15" Retina MacBook Pro away for web browsing. The scrolling and rendering performance is so much better that I almost made a video for YouTube. God it's such a relief to hear someone else say these things aloud.
I have you beat. My $150 Acer Chromebook that is years old is better than the just purchased MacBook Pro
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@thecreativeone91 said:
The problem is Apple is trying to do too much. in the PowerPC days things were simple they focused on one market. Now they are trying to get everyone and doing none of it well. I also think they should decided if they want to be a software company or a hardware. If they want to keep making OS 10 do it, then charge a small amount for it and let it run on any computer, forget about the hardware - which in recent years hasn't been to great. And make the software a lot better.
Totally disagree here. Their hardware is what IS great(ish), their software is what's terrible. Everything from the handicapped mouse acceleration curve, to their core mechanisms for windows placement and resizing, to their omnipresent top strip to represent application focus, to their implementation of "cut", and how they selectively withhold transferring focus to system dialogs in certain situations such that you have to hop in your mouse ( and they make the world's worst mouses, btw ) and drive across town to dismiss a dialog. I could literally go on for hours but there are just endless, endless software design decisions that slow you down on a minutely basis compared to Windows.
I'd tried literally 5 different 4k monitors before I got to the retina iMac, and couldn't use any of them for work because of performance. It's the first one that actually manages 60Hz at a crisp and readable size, and for that reason I love it ( running Windows ). Their laptops, phones, and tablets are also typically well-made from a hardware perspective, IMO.
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Font rendering used to be a big thing for mac os too but, the cleartype fonts on windows are just as good as the OS X antialiasing to me now.
