imac……can i swear?

[XDC wild egg tamer]

Nothing to do with hair removal.

I never thought i’d say this but i’m actually thinking of getting an Imac this year!

I think my gaming days are over as far as pc is concerned as once my house is finished i’ll be trying out the xbox i got for my birthday and may just settle with that as a gaming platform. We also intend to start a family this year so any spare time will be be no doubt taken up being a parent or working my arse off to pay for the so called privilege of being a parent!

My intentions are really to have something that i can use for editing videos, messing with images and surfing the web. I want something that won’t give me aggro or slow down the moment i install 4 or more progs on it and hopefully something that will have some longevity (does such a thing exist in computer world?).

My cousin has a macbook pro and loves it, he’s given me some demos of it and i can see why he will never go back to PC’s – admittedly he was never great with his PC and after about the 20th BSOD he swore he’d never again use a computer running windows.

I’ve seen that i can get something called bootcamp that allows the mac to boot into windows. Does this mean that should i feel the urge to, i could run a windows based game such as BF on the mac assuming the hardware is compatible. I’m thinking of the 27″ Imac with an Ati gfx card and about 4Gb of ram.

Does anyone have any experience of macs? are they reliable? do they work as well as i’ve been told. The one thing that did impress me was that my cuz was originally given an old mac which at the time was nearly 10 years old. He installed the latest OS on it at the time and it worked well. Not as quick as it would do on a new machine obviously but quick enough to do what he needed – i can’t imagine getting a 10 year old PC and installing windows 7 on it and it working well – if at all!

cheers chaps.

[xdcmaniac]

Hi Egg,

I am (and for the last 10 years have been) an Apple user.

You’ll get many many negative comments from your XDC brethren, however, if you live with the Mac platform I doubt you would go back to PC’s.

I run bootcamp on my 2 year old 25″ 3ghz dual core, I can play battlefield with no issues. The only thing you need to do is run an app called SMfan control which up’s the speed of the internal fans. This is due to the closed and thin design of the machine, and that most applications in the apple environment are not game intensive. It is not essential, however, I run it to be on the safe side.

To give you an idea of the stability of the product. I also have at work an 8 year old power mac (now called the mac pro, basically the big fuck-off aluminium tower machines). It has been switched off 3 maybe 4 times.. Been online since day one. Never put a foot wrong, never crashed, bliped or struggled with any pro application thrown at it.

The 27″ imac is a stunning multimedia machine, I also have the i7 quad core version at work running the 1gb ATI card and 4gb ram.. Renders on my video and audio work are lightning fast.

The ilife suite is bundled with all macintosh computers and is basically cut down versions of pro apps like logic, final cut etc.. they are fantastic, simple but elegant ways of creating multimedia projects without professional knowledge.

I know its the common reply to PC users who for some reason find the need to flame at Apple customers, but I have never ever had one virus or spyware infect any of my machines. I have never had to run Norton or any other anti-virus software. There are mac based nasties out there, but they are so rare that the chances of getting one in your system is next to nil, (particularly with Snow Leopard).

Support – I had a dodgy HD which had a mechanical issue. Mac shop sorted it no problems. With Apple care you can be sure that your machine is covered by one of the best support systems in place in consumer IT.

There are loads of boring reasons that Apple suits my personal needs, but even without those reasons I would still use (and pay a premium for) the products.

I’ll go now, and let the PC legions flame about “Cost” “Choice” “Upgradeability” “Evil Apple Empires” and the other shite you hear on a daily basis as an Apple user. 8)

[XDC wild egg tamer]

Cheers maniac, i’m thinking of this one at the mo:

3.20GHz Intel Core i3
4GB 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM – 2x2GB
1TB Serial ATA Drive
ATI Radeon HD 5670 512MB GDDR3 SDRAM
8x double-layer SuperDrive
Apple Wireless Keyboard (British) & User’s Guide (English)
Magic Mouse

but by the time i’m ready to buy they may have moved onto the sandybridge cpu or done a deal with AMD….heck they may even have reverted to making their own cpus though i guess that would render bootcamp obsolete!!! 😉

it’s the lower range of the 27″ so i’m wondering how it would fare with running games within windows. also would it struggle with video editing or photoshop type progs (apps). I’ve looked into the price of upping the ram myself and i could get 16Gb of ram for about £150 should i require it though i imagine at that speed the cpu itself may become a bottle neck.

The other option is to buy a refurbished unit from apple in which case i can get this spec:

2.8GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i5
4GB 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM – 2x2GB
1TB Serial ATA Drive
8x double-layer SuperDrive
ATI Radeon HD 5750 1GB GDDR5 SDRAM
Apple Wireless Keyboard (British) & User’s Guide (English)
Magic Mouse

for about the same price. Would there be a noticeable difference in speed from the i3 to the i5 and also with the increase in speed of the gfx card? I know i can only future proof so far ahead but is it worth the additional £200 if i can’t get a refurb unit?

Cheers.

[xdcmaniac]

The next update for the Apple line is Power Books, which will be getting the Sandbridge processors. Imacs are not due an upgrade till at least November as the current line is mid-cycle. Apple will not go back to using IBM processors for a number of boring reasons… Also, remember BootCamp is endorsed and actually included in Snow Leopard.

Ok, first off, the re-furbed macs are not second hand or shop items. They are returns. If any item such as the mouse or K/board comes back with the unit opened they are replaced with new items. Despite the description they are no more than 2 weeks old usually and are great value.

The spec of the first machine is better than my home imac (25″ dual core) and I run Battlefield, Logic (With loads of intensive Virtual Instruments), Various Adobe programs including After Effects, Final Cut, etc etc.. without any problems. (Oh, and 4gb of RAM is fine for the applications you want to run).

I would personally go for the Refurb purely for the better GFX card, if you wish to run games under bootcamp.

I notice a difference between my i7 (4gb) and my 3.0ghz Dual core (2gb) in rendering speeds in applications like after effects obviously. But I still use my home machine for working from home, and gaming.

You need to think more in terms of the OS rather than the spec of the machine. OSX is such an easy, stable operating system. I recently installed Windows under boot camp and can’t believe how counter-intuitive and clunky it feels compared to OSX. (OSX Lion is due out this year, but the upgrade should be around £60 as its a major update)

[XDC wild egg tamer]

All great info mate, cheers.

I may not be getting it until later in the year as i have a few debts to pay off first so November would tie in perfectly with my birthday 😉 though by the sound of it all the spec of the existing machines would do me for a good while anyhows.

What are the negatives of osx and macs?

thanks again.

[XDC_Wolf]

@=XDC= wild egg tamer wrote:

What are the negatives of osx and macs?

they’re gay and they only have one mouse button. Did I mention they were gay?

[XDC wild egg tamer]

don’t knock it until you’ve tried it!

😉

[xdcmaniac]

Paddy, They do NOT only have one mouse button. The very old imac G3 (Colours) series had one mouse button back in the late ’90’s.. The standard apple mouse clicks left and right, but rather than having defined buttons, you press the actual mouse left and right. I will concede that for gaming, it is not that precise, but the new mouse with multi-touch is much better. I use a Roccat mouse for gaming, and my apple mouse for everything else.

And yes, Paddy is right Apple is gay. On purchase you get a voucher for a 9″ dildo, a small tube of KY, and a Barbara Streisland DVD. 😕

[XDC_Wolf]

it’s what keeps Babara Striesand in retirement, for that we should be thankful.

[bmstalker]

I think this complicated flow chart should help you decide.

[XDC wild egg tamer]

@bmstalker wrote:

I think this complicated flow chart should help you decide.

Lmao

Not gay, just in touch with my feminine side 😉

[xdcmaniac]

I think you’ll find this more helpful. 😀

[XDC wild egg tamer]

having used pc’s for ever now i’m pretty much sold on the idea of trying out a mac. Let the gayness begin!! 😉

Another question for you maniac.

looking at the spec of the higher end 21″ and the lower end 27″ they are both exactly the same:

3.20GHz Intel Core i3
4GB 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM – 2x2GB
1TB Serial ATA Drive
ATI Radeon HD 5670 512MB GDDR3 SDRAM
8x double-layer SuperDrive
Apple Wireless Keyboard (British) & User’s Guide (English)
Magic Mouse

Obviously the 27″ has a higher res screen; 2556×1440 so the computer is having to work much harder to push the extra pixels around, if this is the case and i was intending on getting the lower spec 27″, would it be wiser to actually go for the 21″ and keep the extra cycles for processing rather than trying to run a 27″ monitor and lose valuable power in doing so ?

Think that’s clear?

[xdcmaniac]

There is no difference in performance between the 21″ and 27″…. but for the love of god get the 27″. The extra real estate for general work is worth it, and for viewing movies the screen is perfect. As mentioned before don’t be too hung up on small spec differences.. Think of it like the difference between a European car with a 6cyl 350bhp engine and an American muscle car with a v8 500bhp.. the european car is refined to get its power down properly in a refined manner. (the mac). The American car is all noise, weight, plastic, and straight line speed. (PC).

The low end 27′ will be lightning quick… as mentioned before most of your gaming will be xbox, so no need for a super high end GFX card.

[xdc the doc]

OK I will bite.

Was trying to ignore it… but it is turning into a ridiculous love in.

if you prefer the Mac interface to windows (and many do) then great. But what do you want to do with it?

Video editing? Final cut pro used to be the daddy for sure… but newsflash – the BBC last year started converting from Final cut to CS5 for the majority of its editing. This is extremely hardware reliant… for the same price as your mac you could buy a much more powerful CUDA NVIDIA card and faster I7 processor to number crunch.

Photoshopping? Similar to above – why use a lower specced machine when the programme is OS agnostic?

Play some games? Well – you need to bootcamp into windows… but will have a relatively shit processor and GFX card (pound for pound.) And no… that hardware WONT play BF3 very well on a 27 inch screen at its native resolution.

Want to avoid viruses? Dont believe the hype. Interesting link here…

http://news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-10444561-245.html

Blows the myth about Apple being more secure out of the water. The less niche it gets the more at risk they will be.

Superb marketing and a lot of fluff…. don’t get sucked in.

[Author]

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