Apple Mac vs PC

[Twerto]

[***mod edit***- thread merged with similar previous one]

 

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7079777.stm

[Spinner72]

Another urban myth about the mac begins to be exposed to the masses...

[marlin13]

If you take the time to read the article, the "trojan" is only found on porn sites currently and asks for permission effectively before it can be installed. Hardly a serious risk. Not compared with the real trojans which invite themselves without being asked onto the offerings of big bad bill, nt to mention the scores of other spy and malware out there.

No computer user should think they are immune however the risks to a Mac are effectively zero while the risks to a Windows user are relatively high in comparison.

 

Just a thought are there any viruses for the speecy canna mind if there were.

[trout]

^^ Dromader and Xhumator were two

[TeeAyBee]

^^ Dromader and Xhumator were two

 

Macs are at less of a risk than Windows machines, but that is most certainly not to say that they're immune. There is still a proportionally minute risk in the festering cesspool of viruses out on the net. Nevertheless, a sensible virus checker is always a smart move on whatever platform you use. One day soon, the Symbian proof of concept virus families will go properly airborne with a reliable infection vector (Bluetooth, MMS, whatever) and we'll have to seriously start worrying about phone handsets. I think McAfee already do an anti-virus product for phones.

 

HNY

[Bigstan]

I always install the Linux version of Avast on my Ubuntu rigs.

The risk of infection whilst using Linux is very low but the AV will also identify and eradicate Windows viruses which, although harmless to the Linux machine, could be passed on, unwittingly, to Windows machines on the same network or whilst sharing files over the internet etc.

 

Better to be safe than sorry.

[Ross]

After using macs since I can remember. Going back to Clarisworks and Koji the Frog days, drooling over the "funky" imacs. spending a 6th year doing graphiccy stuff with a lovely PowerMac G5 whom i named "franko" , to working in maccy D's for a year to buy my own powerbook. So since I can remember I've bought, lived and worshipped Apple.

 

Last week I did the unimaginable .... I bought a P.C !?!?! I hate myself a bit. My Family have been asking if I am okay. And my brother warned me about "viruses".

 

So now i'm clued up and i'm up to my nuts in spyware detectors and norton is being a pain and updating itself everytime i go near a wifi spot.

 

It's okay i'm getting used to how it all works, but when this new laptop gives up the ghost. I'll definatly be going back to my cosy world of apple.

[Njugle]

What were you thinking!?? Should've bought a Macbook and then you could've run both, but still lived in the magical kingdom of Apple. Mmm, two finger scrolling both vertically an horizontally, light sensitive backlit keyboard etc etc

 

Also, some say that both XP and Vista run faster on the Intel C2DP Mac than on most if not all PCs.

 

ps, not long discovered new 'quick look' function which is brilliant! I would describe it, but, aacch, you'll just have to buy one.

[BigMouth]

MackBook Air

 

http://www.apple.com/uk/macbookair/

[Ross]

What were you thinking!?? Should've bought a Macbook and then you could've run both, but still lived in the magical kingdom of Apple. Mmm, two finger scrolling both vertically an horizontally, light sensitive backlit keyboard etc etc

 

Also, some say that both XP and Vista run faster on the Intel C2DP Mac than on most if not all PCs.

 

ps, not long discovered new 'quick look' function which is brilliant! I would describe it, but, aacch, you'll just have to buy one.

 

I know, i know, i know. I'm hurting. But i'm a skint student and needed something asap. And the ol' bank balance is... well it's not very good.

[Njugle]

My sincere condolences, never mind, at least you've got something great to look forward to. Think of it as character building.

[DigitalAura]

Mac user all the way here.

 

Moved all my systems to apple just over a year ago and haven't a single regret especially as I can run Winblows whenever I need to.

 

Don't get me wrong, both systems have their flaws, but I just prefer the way everything "just works".

[Ally]

Thought some of you may appreciate this. Or not, I suppose...

I hate Macs

 

 

Charlie Brooker

Monday February 5, 2007

The Guardian

 

 

Unless you have been walking around with your eyes closed, and your head encased in a block of concrete, with a blindfold tied round it, in the dark - unless you have been doing that, you surely can't have failed to notice the current Apple Macintosh campaign starring David Mitchell and Robert Webb, which has taken over magazines, newspapers and the internet in a series of brutal coordinated attacks aimed at causing massive loss of resistance. While I don't have anything against shameless promotion per se (after all, within these very brackets I'm promoting my own BBC4 show, which starts tonight at 10pm), there is something infuriating about this particular blitz. In the ads, Webb plays a Mac while Mitchell adopts the mantle of a PC. We know this because they say so right at the start of the ad.

 

"Hello, I'm a Mac," says Webb.

 

"And I'm a PC," adds Mitchell.

 

They then perform a small comic vignette aimed at highlighting the differences between the two computers. So in one, the PC has a "nasty virus" that makes him sneeze like a plague victim; in another, he keeps freezing up and having to reboot. This is a subtle way of saying PCs are unreliable. Mitchell, incidentally, is wearing a nerdy, conservative suit throughout, while Webb is dressed in laid-back contemporary casual wear. This is a subtle way of saying Macs are cool.

 

The ads are adapted from a near-identical American campaign - the only difference is the use of Mitchell and Webb. They are a logical choice in one sense (everyone likes them), but a curious choice in another, since they are best known for the television series Peep Show - probably the best sitcom of the past five years - in which Mitchell plays a repressed, neurotic underdog, and Webb plays a selfish, self-regarding poseur. So when you see the ads, you think, "PCs are a bit rubbish yet ultimately lovable, whereas Macs are just smug, preening tossers." In other words, it is a devastatingly accurate campaign.

 

I hate Macs. I have always hated Macs. I hate people who use Macs. I even hate people who don't use Macs but sometimes wish they did. Macs are glorified Fisher-Price activity centres for adults; computers for scaredy cats too nervous to learn how proper computers work; computers for people who earnestly believe in feng shui.

 

PCs are the ramshackle computers of the people. You can build your own from scratch, then customise it into oblivion. Sometimes you have to slap it to make it work properly, just like the Tardis (Doctor Who, incidentally, would definitely use a PC). PCs have charm; Macs ooze pretension. When I sit down to use a Mac, the first thing I think is, "I hate Macs", and then I think, "Why has this rubbish aspirational ornament only got one mouse button?" Losing that second mouse button feels like losing a limb. If the ads were really honest, Webb would be standing there with one arm, struggling to open a packet of peanuts while Mitchell effortlessly tore his apart with both hands. But then, if the ads were really honest, Webb would be dressed in unbelievably po-faced avant-garde clothing with a gigantic glowing apple on his back. And instead of conducting a proper conversation, he would be repeatedly congratulating himself for looking so cool, and banging on about how he was going to use his new laptop to write a novel, without ever getting round to doing it, like a mediocre idiot.

 

Cue 10 years of nasal bleating from Mac-likers who profess to like Macs not because they are fashionable, but because "they are just better". Mac owners often sneer that kind of defence back at you when you mock their silly, posturing contraptions, because in doing so, you have inadvertently put your finger on the dark fear haunting their feeble, quivering soul - that in some sense, they are a superficial semi-person assembled from packaging; an infinitely sad, second-rate replicant who doesn't really know what they are doing here, but feels vaguely significant and creative each time they gaze at their sleek designer machine. And the more deftly constructed and wittily argued their defence, the more terrified and wounded they secretly are.

 

Aside from crowing about sartorial differences, the adverts also make a big deal about PCs being associated with "work stuff" (Boo! Offices! Boo!), as opposed to Macs, which are apparently better at "fun stuff". How insecure is that? And how inaccurate? Better at "fun stuff", my ass. The only way to have fun with a Mac is to poke its insufferable owner in the eye. For proof, stroll into any decent games shop and cast your eye over the exhaustive range of cutting-edge computer games available exclusively for the PC, then compare that with the sort of rubbish you get on the Mac. Myst, the most pompous and boring videogame of all time, a plodding, dismal "adventure" in which you wandered around solving tedious puzzles in a rubbish magic kingdom apparently modelled on pretentious album covers, originated on the Mac in 1993. That same year, the first shoot-'em-up game, Doom, was released on the PC. This tells you all you will ever need to know about the Mac's relationship with "fun".

 

Ultimately the campaign's biggest flaw is that it perpetuates the notion that consumers somehow "define themselves" with the technology they choose. If you truly believe you need to pick a mobile phone that "says something" about your personality, don't bother. You don't have a personality. A mental illness, maybe - but not a personality. Of course, that hasn't stopped me slagging off Mac owners, with a series of sweeping generalisations, for the past 900 words, but that is what the ads do to PCs. Besides, that's what we PC owners are like - unreliable, idiosyncratic and gleefully unfair. And if you'll excuse me now, I feel an unexpected crash coming.

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2006031,00.html

 

BTW, the comments at the foot of the original article (above link) contain some good rebuffs if any cravat-wearing-Jazzclub-enthusiast-media-types feel their feathers have been ruffled

[Frances144]

Hmmmm...... that old piece of fish and chip paper! It's a bit ancient.

 

There are these:- (sorry if I am repeating another).

 

 

[Roachmill]

Eat this Apple! A lesson in how advertising should* be done:

 

This video was developed by us as a way to poke fun at ourselves a bit. We thought folks internally would get a kick out of not taking themselves so seriously all the time.

As a result, this little gem came to life and has caused quite a few laughs in our hallways. It is no way a serious attempt at marketing Windows to external audiences and was developed for internal consumption only.

"Little gem" hugh? That'd be like a little gem that refuses to flush away

 

* shouldn't