The new iMac G5

[Richard M]

Superb, so because mine's an FX-53 overclocked by 5% I should be beating a dual G5 by a fair bit.

EDIT: OK make that "beating a dual G5 by a lot".
I just realized that even the FX-51 beats it by a mile - confusing benchmark scoring there...

So er .. do you want to tell me something you can do that I can't do under windows? I can edit movies, I can make DVD menu's, I can burn DVD's, buy and burn music, I surf the net with a better firewall than you have, and it's not OS dependent, who give's a sh*te about a gimmicky gallery? (not me, that's for sure), you can voice chat? oooooh, nearly EVERY laptop comes with a mike and inbuilt speakers, I sync my contacts with my phone using a £2.50 bluetooth dongle, a calender? Outlook 2003 works perfectly, you should try it, PDF's read with any programs? Huh? I can read PDF's with Photoshop, Acrobat Reader (free), or plenty of other free PDF tools, quicktime? Don't make me laugh! I'd rather install AOL that QT.

No, read the post. I said that i can do all that stuff WITHOUT having to buy any programs to all comes built in with mac osx as you have mentioned you need a lot of programs to do that with windows. If i wanna but a really good firewall i can.

like i said all the features needed are already in mac osx, you listed loads and loads of programs to do the same stuff but how much would that cost? Suddendly the mac isnt so expensive....

bbut if i still want to buy programs, not got windows? no problem...

Norton? Check
Photoshop? Check
Acrobat Reader? Check (i dont need any programs to read PDFS though)
Word? Check
Excel? Check
Outlook? Check (again i have a good calander 'ical' for free with mac osx, no need to spend £ÃÆ ’‚£Ãà¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã…¡Ãƒâ€šÃ‚£Ãƒââ‚ ¬Å¡Ãƒâ€šÃ‚£ if i dont want to)
Powerpoint? Check
Final cut pro? Check! that one is even made by apple
IE? Check
MSN? Check
Firefox? Check
Windows media? why, check again!

Try using mac OSX before attacking it. Try reserching mac OSX before making presumtations about it. And try to check how much alll the programs you would need to buy to match the funcationality of mac osx would cost

Bifta you are very skilled at computers but please dont attack another OS/computer without good cause

[Steve H]

I understand that macs have there place in the media industry, but tbh only the real average joe would buy one at that price over a PC. Yeah, I know the PPC processors can perform CERTAIN tasks better and faster than there equivlient AMD/P4's... but looking at it wholly a PC is far better.. and far more can be had for the price.. not much for there designs either.. White gets grubby rather easily

For the price that you quoted, you could have this;

AMD Athlon FX53 - £587.44
IIyama Vision Master Pro 454 19" CRT - £245.93
OCZ 1GB (2x512MB) PC4000 Dual Channel Gold Series - £260.81
Abit ATI Radeon X800 XT PE 256MB DDR3 VIVO TV-Out/DVI (AGP) - £375.94
Asus DRW-0804P 8x DVD±R/±RW ReWriter - £46.94
Asus A8V Deluxe - £85.21
CoolerMaster Centurion - £35.21
Antec TruePower 430W PSU - £63.80
Logitech Cordless Desktop MX - £73.97
Creative Inspire 5.1 P580 Speakers - £39.36

Comes in at ; £1533

Granted that doesn't contain office, etc.. but its a heck of a system and beats a G5 down hands down at everything bar the media side of things.. Yet.. how much faster is the G5 at these things? I'm not sure, but I'd guess its pretty nominal... so again, a PC seems a better bargain. Can't really say Graphics is an issue with the G5.. as they arent based at games. But the FX5200 is a low end graphics card these days .. and it only contains PC3200 memory, my specs got most defiently HIGHER quality memory.. as well as it being a heck of a lot faster if used properley.

With the above spec, I'd probably change the FX-53 to a AMD64 3400.. which would save me around 350 squids to get some more equip

[Bifta]

Originally Posted by Damien

Norton? Check
Photoshop? Check
Acrobat Reader? Check (i dont need any programs to read PDFS though)
Word? Check
Excel? Check
Outlook? Check (again i have a good calander 'ical' for free with mac osx, no need to spend £ÃÆ ’‚£Ãà¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã…¡Ãƒâ€šÃ‚£Ãƒââ‚ ¬Å¡Ãƒâ€šÃ‚£ if i dont want to)
Powerpoint? Check
Final cut pro? Check! that one is even made by apple
IE? Check
MSN? Check
Firefox? Check
Windows media? why, check again!

Is that it? Is that your definitive list of software that's cross compatible with OSX? A very poor show, and how on EARTH do you know that I haven't tried OSX? Strikes me that you're the one making presumptions, not me. But, at the end of the day, if you want to use an underpowered, overpriced hunk of plastic that's got more form than function, it's entirely your choice, me, I'll carry on using my ugly workhorse.

[Richard M]

Why on earth would you want to use IE on a Mac, nevermind a Windows PC?

[Bifta]

Originally Posted by Richard M

Superb, so because mine's an FX-53 overclocked by 5% I should be beating a dual G5 by a fair bit.

EDIT: OK make that "beating a G5 by a lot".
I just realized that even the FX-53 beats it by a mile - confusing benchmark scoring there...

It doesn't just beat "it", it beats "them", apart from the photoshop test, it trounces a DUAL 2ghz G5 system Now, I had a quick look on Kelkoo and a dual g5 system (2ghz) rolls in at about £1900, how much did yours cost?

Originally Posted by Bifta

Is that it? Is that your definitive list of software that's cross compatible with OSX? A very poor show, and how on EARTH do you know that I haven't tried OSX? Strikes me that you're the one making presumptions, not me. But, at the end of the day, if you want to use an underpowered, overpriced hunk of plastic that's got more form than function, it's entirely your choice, me, I'll carry on using my ugly workhorse.

Those statements saying mac osx lacks function pretty much shows you havent used it for a extended amount of time. Also trying to claim that the list i provided was the only applications availble is laughable although i belive it was just a cheap shot.

Mac osx has a lot of applications, more than i can list on the forum. There are currently oveer 10,000 avaible for mac.

Here is just a taster of those programs

http://www.apple.com/uk/macosx/applications/

[Richard M]

Originally Posted by Bifta

It doesn't just beat "it", it beats "them", apart from the photoshop test, it trounces a DUAL 2ghz G5 system Now, I had a quick look on Kelkoo and a dual g5 system (2ghz) rolls in at about £1900, how much did yours cost?

About £1100 I think.

[Bifta]

Originally Posted by Damien

Those statements saying mac osx lacks function pretty much shows you havent used it for a extended amount of time. Also trying to claim that the list i provided was the only applications availble is laughable although i belive it was just a cheap shot.

Mac osx has a lot of applications, more than i can list on the forum. There are currently oveer 10,000 avaible for mac.

Here is just a taster of those programs

http://www.apple.com/uk/macosx/applications/

So what would that be? About a 1000th of the applications you can get for X86 systems? As I said, underpowered, overpriced, go look at the benchmark link I posted where a system nearly half the price sh*tes all over the G5.

Originally Posted by Bifta

So what would that be? About a 1000th of the applications you can get for X86 systems? As I said, underpowered, overpriced, go look at the benchmark link I posted where a system nearly half the price sh*tes all over the G5.

its not about 'power' in the sense of a few crappy tests, other tests shows that Powermac G5s are also on top of tables they vary

Its the OSX, the quaility of the hardware, the designs and the evoulations apple comes up with

GUI and the mouse both started with the first macintosh and the ipod has spured MP3 massivly

if it was over priced people wouldnt buy it, yet it is used by creative professionals a lot and when people buy they first mac they usually keep getting macs. So something must be going on instead of this 'overpriced, not very powerful drivel from windows fans who seem to llove attacking macs. I dont mind windows and i belive mac osx is good for compitation (after all windows steals a llot of ideas from apple, remember folders?)

[Bifta]

Originally Posted by Damien

its not about 'power' in the sense of a few crappy tests, other tests shows that Powermac G5s are also on top of tables they vary

Show me these tests! (and I'm not interested in bullsh*t benchmarks from Apples site)

Its the OSX, the quaility of the hardware, the designs and the evoulations apple comes up with

What evolutions? What has a mac got that a PC can't have?

GUI and the mouse both started with the first macintosh and the ipod has spured MP3 massivly

You need to get your facts straight, gui's started with Xerox and Apple Lisa (not mac)

if it was over priced people wouldnt buy it

Now you're making sense! It is, and I won't

yet it is used by creative professionals a lot and when people buy they first mac they usually keep getting macs.

Yep graphic designers go into agencies with more money than sense, and they're too blinkered to try anything else in the future.

So something must be going on instead of this 'overpriced, not very powerful drivel from windows fans who seem to llove attacking macs.

They are overpriced and they are underpowered, the benchmarks I posted prove that.

(after all windows steals a llot of ideas from apple, remember folders?)

So does the Amiga OS, so does BeOS, so does every single window manager for *nix, what's your point?

[Visibleman]

I thought i would join this debate about the mac's lol

I have to agree with bifta to a cetain extent. Mac's are generally overpriced and dont offer near enough features to what a x86 based system has to offer - especially in the games area. Ive yet to see any decent games for the mac, apart from Quake and Call of Duty (a few others).
But there are reasons for this. The lack of software is down to the fact that not many people by macs as windows/linux has taken over the majority of home/office computers and therefore its not profitable for a company to port a piece of software over to the mac (also hence why there arnt any decent games titles for the mac).
Also, the whole deal of the mac being overpriced is because only a limited amount of software is available, majority of it being professional workstation type software such as Photoshop, DAW software (protools, Logic Audio etc), and therefore apple has targeted the whole mac and their G systems to these professionals...hence why the big prices for the machines (because they know these people can afford them etc).

However, back to the pc vs mac.....well for my studio gear i would love to get a mac to run all my audio software, especially my whole DigiDesign protools systems because it runs about 100x better than it does on XP, and xp crashes on me every other day However, a decent mac will cost be nearly 2k (without screens)...and for that, i can get a dual 19"LCD, dual CPU pc system, that will be nearly as good and cheaper than a G5, and i can live with the crashes everyother day, as the money saved can go towards a new piece of equipment (mic, efx unit etc).

However, if i ever get the cash to spare i will be joining the whole mac group, but only for my professional apps. I could never use it as an everyday system because there just isnt enough software and games to keep me busy and happy with the system. Hence, why i will always have a pc, even if i did buy a mac

[Richard M]

A true gamer would never buy a Mac.

[Visibleman]

Originally Posted by Richard M

A true gamer would never buy a Mac.

yes because theres not games for the mac If you could get every title that was available to a pc and hardware vendors made drivers for all of their stuff, then i dont see what could stop a gamer using a G5 mac

[Bifta]

Originally Posted by Visibleman

then i dont see what could stop a gamer using a G5 mac

what, apart from the better performance you get from gaming with a PC?