Is a Mac a PC?

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Is a Mac a PC?I get this question far too often… Dear Chris, I’m in the market for a new computer and I can’t seem to decide between Mac and Windows. I myself am gamer and I’m kinda leaning towards Windows because I know PC’s can run waaaaaaaayy more

s universe on their own super personal computer playing a game or perhaps we are their hobby. Keith Olbermann and guest explain http://clydestuff.blogspot.com/ [ Google Blog Search: Virtual Personal Computer ]Is a Mac a PC?Your computer needs two things to be functional: hardware and software. PC stands for ?personal computer,? but has become interchangeable / synonymous with ?Computer that comes with Microsoft Windows.? Microsoft licenses its operating

Chris Pirillo

Is a Mac a PC?

I have question, why would your friends buy a Mac and turned it to Vista, is not more expensive to go with this option, I would understand if they run both of them, but to use it just for Vista, that;s little bit weird.

Hey Chris,
This is a question I have been deciding on myself for some time, but the Mac option won out. I realized that the geek that I am was dying to get my hands on something new that I could mess around with. The Boot camp/parallels questions was bothering me quite a bit as well, and after talking to several Apple store employee’s near where I live, it became apparent that they either didn’t know which was a better choice, or they had never run into the question before.

Thanks for answering that part as well, it really helped put my mind at ease over what I would go with.

Mohamed, they prolly like the design and simplicity in design of the Mac

No. It isn’t. Next question please.

Mohamed:

They probably just like the design on the Mac. I know some Windows-users who have bought both iMac’s, MacBook’s and MacBook Pro’s, and just install Windows XP or Windows Vista.

Thought that I would add another comment, I think that it was you that said this Chris, that formatting of the drives through Boot Camp means that the performance is decreased, though I have forgotten what. Also, because EFI firmware on the Mac is not currently working with the beta, Apple had to write a layer to simulate the BIOS, which means that NCQ and other modern hard drive technologies do not work. Though, this is only a problem on the Mac Pro, it is nothing on other systems.

dalambomanblog.blogspot.com

“You can buy a Mac and never run OS X at all (as many of my friends have done, choosing instead to use it as a Vista machine).”
Now that really is an expensive Vista machine – good looking and well built but expensive all the same if you do not leverage the advantages that OSX brings. Chris, have you ever asked your friends just why they do not boot into the Mac partition? I admire their decision to buy a Mac, but not using it’s main asset is rather confusing and somewhat negates their purchase.
I converted a long, long time PC user friend to a Mac Pro who treated it like his Windows boxes until he wanted to do something that was much easier on the Mac side. He now uses the Mac side to have more ‘fun’ than just playing games as he did on the PC. What did it, was having to put a presentation together and he arranged the soundtrack in Garageband, mixing home recorded ambient sounds with samples. and assembled the whole thing in Keynote with very cool graphical elements he didn’t know he was capable of producing. The fact that his Mac Pro was so quiet finally made him realise that there is more to just designing a better computing platform than mere chips and cpu cycles.
So now, whenever someone asks for a good reason to switch to a Mac, I ask them how easy it would be for them to do something totally unfamiliar on their PC machine – when I explain that you can do almost all this unfamiliar stuff straight from the box with no extra purchase needed, the realisation dawns that the PC has held them back and they never even knew it.

If you are a gamer then video performance would be quite important and over the life of your machine you would probably upgrade the video card. I can’t really comment on the 3d video performance of a Mac but I’d say it would not be as good as the latest generation of video cards available for PC’s.

I own a Mac use it for “regular” duties, don’t know if I’d buy one just to install Windows for gaming.

I have just registered, and I thought that I would add, that Mac Pro’s have some issues when it comes to the EFI firmware. Boot Camp at this time doesn’t support this, so Apple had to write an emulator to emulate the BIOS. This means that all support for NCQ and other modern technologies in hard drives are now rendered useless, and will not work in Windows under Boot Camp ATM. As I said before, this is only in Mac Pros, not any other system. But, when it comes to all Mac systems, disk access is very slow on them. This is because data transfers between memory and hard drives are currently done with PIO, or Programmed Input/Output. This is not as fast as the more modern technology known as DMA, or Direct Memory Access. DMA is much faster than PIO. Luckily, there is a fix. If you go into the Windows Device Manager, and look under the advanced settings tab, there will be an option to an Enable DMA. Of course, as usual with a lot of problems, updating to the latest version of Boot Camp will probably help if this doesn’t work.

lamboman – dalambomanblog.blogspot.com

Chris, you may want to note that you can have a Boot Camp partition with Windows installed that also works under Parallels. So you can boot into Windows for your h4rdc0r3 g4m3z OMG LOL and you can run Parallels when you just want to use Minesweeper, both using the same Windows setup :-)

So, now that I’ve installed VM ware on my new Macbook Pro and installed my World of Warcraft game and it WON’T WORK… you’re telling me I should have gone with Bootcamp instead? *groan* (In case you’re wondering why I am doing the whole windows thing in the first place it is because I’ve always had PC’s and I have too much “stuff” to change formats completely…)

This drives me crazy too. Macs ARE PC’s. As stated in your 2nd bullet point. PC stands for “Personal Computer”. Not “Personal Computer which is only capable of running a Microsoft Windows Operating System”.

That being said the assumption when you’re talking about PC is still any computer that runs Windows. The concern about whether to buy a Windows based computer or a Mac should come down to 1) Cost and 2) hardware specs for the games (since the question dealt with a gamer) The hardware in the lower priced Macs (mac mini/macbook) don’t quite compare with a comparably priced Dell (for example). Plus you’d then add the additional cost of a Windows license.

There’s no clean cut answer. Mac or Windows-based Computer? You really have to judge what you want to do and which will allow you to do it best.

Personally I have Dell laptops running windows, a home built rig running Windows and a Macbook Pro. And love them all (for different reasons). Choose the tool that’s suited for the task at hand.

Just to clear some issue, I think next computer for me will be Mac, and I will install both operating systems( Leopared and XP), I just hate Vista.

My question was if you are not going to use Mac to run OS, what the use to run just XP on it, it’s just waste of money, while you can but a really good deal of PC to run windows XP fine, and more effecient.

So I’m just adding this comment to clarify that I’m not against MAC, on contrary I think they will rule in 10 years from now, may be even less.

Thank you for taking the time to answer.

“You can only run OS X is on a Mac computer.”

wrong… there is plenty of non-Apple hardware that supports OSX x86.

“While you can run virtual machines on OS X, you can’t run OS X inside a virtual machine.”

wrong… in fact the first leaked version of OSX x86 was inside of a VWware virtual drive, already installed.

“Playing “Windows games” through virtual machine software is going to be hit-or-miss.”

but it is getting a lot better, especially with VWware. Especially on Linux, which pwns Windows and OSX.

I could be remembering this wrong but I’m pretty sure that IBM popularized the phrase, “Personal Computer” in 1981. It was a marketing term and the name of their product; IBM PC Jr.

When IBM rolled out their “PC” to compete with Apple, they ran commercials featuring Charlie Chaplin. Before that, I think Apple may have used the term “personal computer” but they also used the term “micro-computer”.

No matter, IBM’s commericials broadcast the phrase “Personal Computer” into American homes and linked the iphrase “Personal Computer” to their product.

This is what put Microsoft on the map. Within a short time, IBM PC “clones” started popping up and by the time the Macintosh came out in 1984, IBM had stolen the micro-computer market away from Apple. Microsoft went on to infect millions of computers (and in my opinion, single handedly delayed the GUI interface from being integrated into society as a whole for another 10 years).

There used to be a comic strip called Bloom County. Berke Breathed inked a great spoof of the original 128k Macintosh and IBM PC Jr. I still have the Gene Simmons Sunday strip that I clipped from the Sunday newspaper and hung on my father’s refridgerator with magnets.

http://www-i5.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/mbp/bloom/bloom.html

I can write with absolute certainty that Apples have been called Apples and IBM and compatibles have been called personal computers since the early ’80s.

If there was a time when Apples were commonly referred to as “Personal Computers” it was before my time and it was probably during the late ’70s.

!

What I’d need to know is:
If I can get one of those Keen white thin iMac’s with InTel, and buy XP Home; can I install it from the “suck-in” CD? What happens with the Super-mouse? Does the little ball-thingy work like it does in OS x?

… And what about the “slingshot” effect of the mouse on all Mac products? Will the mouse behave just like on a non Mac?

You’ve got is all wrong Dave! PC does stand for “personal computer,” but Mac stands for “more advanced computer!” Mac’s can be PC’s but PC’s can’t be Macs!

You know you’ve been a Mac person for way to long when you make typos like “iPhrase”.

The best reason I know of to buy a Mac is that its OS is UNIX (ignore the OS X GUI) and so running UNIX software development tools on it makes it a great software development platform. I would never buy a Mac as a user platform since less than 0.1% of the software I use is available for the Mac.

If I had four grand to drop on a spec’d out 8 core Mac Pro, I’d do so. However, at the price point at which I’m willing to enter the market, two grandish, I can get more bang for the buck with a high end PC, period.

@mohamed
Google “fastest Windows laptop” and you will find that the MacBook Pro running Windows is commonly it. Apple makes awesome notebooks.

I found it a BIG PLUS to use your Boot Camp installation as your VMWare Windows partition. Now when I update anything in Windows on either side, it is there in VMWare AND when I boot-up in Boot Camp. This is great for the gamer who also needs to open Windows occasionally while in the Mac side. To do this; install Windows in Boot Camp, update and install ALL apps, etc., then boot into the Mac side and install VMWare and point it to use the Boot Camp partition. I’ve tried it other ways and this is the best.

@mark1davidson
Apple has been calling their products Personal Computers since the beginning as these ads will show.
http://www.macmothership.com/gallery/gallery1.html
http://www.macmothership.com/gallery/MiscAds/a2bestselling1.jpg

@hoopskidoodle
That’s an old argument that no longer holds up.
Here’s the Mac Pro
http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_mac/family/mac_pro?mco=MTAyNTQwMTk

Please list EVERY single piece of hardware AND software that comes in the box. Now go to a BRAND name PC maker and spec out an IDENTICAL machine, including 3-party software it doesn’t include. Let’s be fair, please don’t use the argument of a hogpogged together home-made PC where your labor is valued at nothing and all the software is pirated. If you’re honest you’ll find the prices are very close.