Apple's G5 vs. PC audio comparison: a joke?, Apple Options

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Apple's G5 vs. PC audio comparison: a joke?

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I don't really think that all of these comparisons are helpful or by the sound of it very helpful. Its far to easy to criticise any test with optimised code this, specific add-ons that. It boils down to one thing, Which one make life easier to do the task you are doing. For me, after arguing with people till I'm blue in the face of the benifits of the Apple (Yep I love em!) and them leveling very valid arguments at me, the only thing that has made me pay the hefty price tag twice is the ease of use of the Mac over PC. Mac OS X threatened that for a while some of the rougher edges of unix were smoothed off but now with Panther and the soon to be released tiger the numerous subtle extras will make my PhD much easier, from finding that elusive paper on an obscure subject or author, to being able to get out of the printer exactly what I seen on the screen, so even if it takes me 3 hours to get a graph right I dont uaually have to spend another 3 getting it to come out right in the document.

PCs will probably always boast faster clock speeds on paper, as there are now at least two major chip manufactuers pushing them forwards, but without wanting to get into that there are a lot of things that determine processor power in addition to speed. Windows with all its whistles and bells is still to finiky for my liking and does things in an ilogical way for me even though it is improving in terms of stability.


With apple I know that I get a product that is carefully designed to function in the way I expect it too by one company that elegantly integrates each part rather than a PC which are usually slapped together from the latest fastest components. Don't get me wrong to big companies do do quality controls no doubt but its just that as apple only use very selelct compenents they are able to harmonise the hard and software rather than Windows that has to try and make an opperating system that will cope with all possible comfigurations.

The best example I can give is when i was preparing a report a while back with a 500mhz PIII running Windows NT and Office 97 it took me a whole afternoon to try and order and label the 19 graphs in the results section. After 3 hours I gave up went home to my G3 400 Mhz iMAC with MACOS 9.0.4 and office 2001 and did it in 1-2 hours. For me it doesn't matter if I have the faster computer, if the one I have is the most efficient way of working for me then I'm happy and feel able to glot over others running systems they have to battle against or learn inside out to get it to do what they want. I'm a Biologist and not a computer scientist and so I want a computer that is logical, intuative and if I have to easy to learn when it comes to short cuts, my PowerBook G4 with Mac OS 10.3 offers that and 10.4 will go even further.

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