Advice on Switching to Apple

I've been thinking for some time about "crossing over to the dark side" and buying an Apple as my next PC. I've seen some issues that Mac users have posted. Do any current Mac users have any thoughts/advice on this for SL?

Only buy a MAC if you need it for stability for professional music or video production and you don't really do much else.

The rest of the planet has PC clones...

Most programs are written for PC clones, and maybe they might include some kind of MAC port if enough people gripe about it.

Most people who can afford it, have both for different applications.

I feel there should be at least 5 different OP systems to choose from myself, this monopoly of microcrap has to stop. MAC is better, but also too different to change for me now. Actually LINUX should be perfect for SL. Only if you know CODE that is.

I love my Mac. I've owned Macs since 1998. If I could, I'd convert the world. There is a reason why Mac users are so passionate about their machines.

BUT, Second Life runs much slower on Macs than on PC's. The Lindens have NOT done the work to get it to run smoothly, nor have they used the Mac interfaces (which is what makes a Mac so easy to use).

(Torley Linden uses a Mac by the way. *MWAH* to Torley)

SO, because the Lindens don't support the Mac well, You must be sure of two things:
1. The machine must be quite fast to compensate for the bad code. (and that means a Mac Mini is barely usable. I know, I use a Mini. Its slower than a 4 year old cheapo PC laptop)
2. The Video Card in the machine must be supported. Read the Mac forum with a search on 'Video Driver' for a discussion.

All of this totals up to this: If you're buying a Mac 'cause you want a Mac and do a lot of other stuff, cool. Just buy one that you are SURE will run SL. If you are buying a new computer only for SL, then buy a cheapo PC. (Still be sure to check the Video card for compatibility.) In either case, Stuff it full of RAM.

There is a saying........ Once you've tried a MAC you'll never go back........ and this is generally true for the vast majority of users and I can only whole heartidly advise you to give it a try.

I use an IMAC G5 with 1GB RAM and due to the overall lag issues that SL has had for the past 14 months I don't see much difference in speed to my fellow PC residents. Yes the PC software is better optimised but I can live with that for I have the better machine (IMO)!


Lee

I have one of the latest iMacs, the Core 2 Duo ones, and it runs SL with pretty much equivalent performance to the high-spec PC that I had just before - which had twice as much RAM, too. (Plus the machine is a lot nicer to use generally.) I've used SL on various different Macs and PCs and I certainly wouldn't say it is "much slower" on Macs. Prior to getting the PC, I used a G4 Powerbook, which can still run SL, just about - don't move around too quickly, that's all.

Do check the graphics card though.

All

Thanks for the comments.

My interest in moving over to Mac is watching how it is being positioned to take handle the entertainment needs in the living room. In the past, I've always needed a PC to run AutoCad. Laptops have progressed to the point where I run Cad off one and now my home PC is used for SL and surfing the net. I was all set to jump, then saw some issues people were posting regarding video drivers and sluggishness. I am looking at the Mini and loading it up with RAM and HD space.

The good thing is that the Intel Mac's can run Windows (via Boot camp), so you can boot to Windows if the OS X client is not up to your expectations. You basically get the best of both worlds. (there's also a Mac product called "Cider" that lets you run PC games inside OS X without needing Windows, but not sure if it's SL compatible yet.)

If you're looking for a Mac to handle your entertainment needs, google Apple's upcoming iTV. It's a $300 device similar to airtunes but for video.

You might want to consider that its Apple who hasn't done enough of their homework to get OpenGL running at its best on their platform. Tasty looking buttons and scroll bars doesn't actually make things easier to use either.



Torley uses both macs and PCs. I believe part of the job also includes testing user experiences on all platforms, so its inevitable.

http://torley.com/home-computermy-new-setup-runs-second-life-really-nicely/

Everything above is "All Good Advice".
Just one more point, Perrin, "don't be afraid of the comments in the forums about macs and drivers, etc. Learn from them."
If you really want to be afraid, wander over to the PC tech forum and read about some of their nightmares!

OBTW: That's a great Link to Torley's setup, Cottontail! I bookmarked it. And its true that Apple can be slow with driver updates. There's plenty of blame to go around.

If you're looking for a living room PC, then Windows Media Center Edition is a ready to use, mature product. And the driver support for tuner devices is much better for Windows, so when you go to put a second tuner in later (lets you record 2 shows at once), you will have an easier time finding one that works with your system. MCE is one of the few things that Microsoft actually does better than most of the competition. (Although there is a free, open source DVR application out there that's also supposed to be really good. I haven't tried it in about 3 years)

If your entertainment needs center around iTunes, or you just want a Mac, then by all means get one. But your multimedia options are actually much wider on the PC platform than on the Apple platform. (Keep in mind that if you wanted to, you could install Windows Vista via Boot Camp, but then you've just basically spent too much money for a PC.)

Stability, proifessional ANYTHING (even for novices), lack of viruses/worms/trojan horses, ability to open ANY e-mail without fear, ease of use, the million little things that you barely notice but make life so much better for the user...

The reasons to switch are innumerable - how many times do you need to be whacked in the head by a Microsoft stick before you move away from the lumber yard?

I can't think of any other company in the world that actively cares more for their customers than Apple.

Look at the Apple commercials - do you think they were written to convince non-Mac users to switch? Not quite - they are written for present Mac Owners to let them know they are with a company that puts THE USER (and the user experience) first above all else.

Don't even think twice - switch - and never look back.

Go towards the light, and you'll realize which side is REALLY the "dark side".

You can stop there.

Well, stability, and security, and reliability, and avoiding frustration.

I'd turn it around... unless you know you have a need for a specific program that you can't run on a Mac (even under Parallels), or you're a heavy gamer and consoles don't cut it for you, get a Mac. And if you are... get a Mac anyway, so you don't have to depend on your spyware-infested game box for anything important.

I have a PC for running one program. It's a game. I built my PC not because I couldn't play the game on a Mac, but because I couldn't afford a Mac good enough to play the game... it was cheaper to get a Mac mini and a PC than a Powermac.

If it wasn't for Second Life I wouldn't have a PC at all. There's plenty of Mac software outside the realm of games, often better than the PC version. Alas, the current low end Macs are still lousy at 3d, so...

Refernce, please? Microsoft's support for OpenGL is nowhere near as good as Apple's.

I'll be a switcher as well, going with the 24" iMac and Nvidia 7800 card. It's not for SL though. Like someone mentioned above, I'll use the PC for SL, and do everything else via the Mac. I was recently given a Mac G3 B&W for free, and as old as it is, the statement above is true for me... "Once you go Mac... you (rarely) go back." (I did bump the CPU from 450 to 500mhz.)

Anyway, back to the original topic... I had a recent help question from someone running SL on a new 24" iMac with the Nvidia 7300 card, and reported severe texture problems. After playing SL for several minutes, textures began to rapidly cycle on objects (textures that weren't applied to those objects.) The computer was a day old, and automatically updated itself with the lastest drivers when first connected to the internet. We couldn't find anything via Nvidia's website since I believe Apple handles driver updates for Nvidia on Macs.

My suggestion is to go to an Apple Store, and run SL while you're there, maybe for 10 minutes or so. Also, read through our own SL Mac Discussion forum to see what problems others are having with their Macs vs. SL.

Its common knowledge that Apple's OpenGL support has always been flaky at best. In the mind of an Apple user, its always the opposite, of course, since Apples are the fastest computers in the world. But nevermind, the concern was blaming LL for poor SL performance on Macs, which I think is wrongly placed blame.

There is recent talk of Maxon and Apple updating something to bring Cinebench performance results on par with a PC here :

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=344274

http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/8300945231/m/419004168731

But that probably only benefits Cinema4D at the moment, and not all Apple apps yet, including SL.

Interestingly enough, I have seen exactly the opposite on another piece of software: X-Plane.

X-Plane is a flight simulator that uses OpenGL, and is developed on the PC, the Macintosh, and Linux. For machines with the same basic configurations, the Apple version of X-Plane outperforms the PC version. However, since PC's are generally available with faster processors than the fastest Macs, X-Plane is still faster on the top-end PC systems.

I can't comment on OpenGL in OS X with any authority, but it seems that since OS X is basically BSD Unix, then OS X's OpenGL implementation ought to be as good as what's generally available for BSD. It's also my guess that nVidia and ATI are developing their own OpenGL libraries independently of Apple, so OGL on an Intel Mac, running OS X, with a GeForce card ought to be as good as anything in the PC world.

I used a mac back in high school days. Yes they are friendlier then a PC, but they lack on one thing. Content! Not enough programs are ported to them. There have been many times i wished to emulate one on my PC but all i can do is old BIOS's like the G3 and lower. Probably not good enough to run SL. If i had the extra cash i would just buy one.

MACs are one of the funnest and easiest computers to use, and i learned on one. After i left high school i joined a tech school that only used PCs using windows 3.1, so i had to learn DOS and that junk. They finally upgraded to 95 one day. Well now i use XP pro, on my home computer. I use it only cuz it's the most used, and has the most content.

I used Linux before aswel, but i'm not a advanced coder. I only know some of the oldschool languages like BASIC and Pascal. I know a few scritping languages like Java, PHP, HTML, LSL, DS, and such, but ntohing to help me build my own alternative to SL or anything. I'm more of a RPG gamer myself.

Get a C64 jk... yay 8Bit Avvies! beats the pants off of ultima 1!

Common knowledge where? And when?

I'm not an "Apple user". I don't like Apple's hardware, and I don't like Apple's old operating system, and I only use Apple's current hardware because it's the only way to get an operating system that doesn't suck that has applications available for it.

I'm not *currently* a "Windows user", but I just quit my job as a Windows network administrator after 20 years... not because I wasn't doing well in my job - nobody wanted me to leave - but because I had a better opportunity and frankly I was fed up with Windows.

There's a lot of "common knowledge" about Apple's software that's based on people's experience with the previous Apple operating system. In this case, Apple's native graphical API under OS 9 was Quickdraw. I haven't used OpenGL under OS 9, but OS 9 was such a desperately bad OS that I can't imagine it was any better than anything else under OS 9.

Meanewhile, it's not just "common knowledge" but documented fact that Microsoft has deliberately limited the capabilities of OpenGL on Windows to promote DirectX. In Vista, OpenGL is even more a second-class citizen than on XP or 2000.

I play SL on both platforms, and while the Macs are generally anemic compared to comparably priced PCs SL has far fewer problems with OpenGL on Macs than on PCs. In fact I have yet to have any OpenGL "flakiness" exposed in SL on a Mac, and I've had to upgrade my video card on my PC twice to keep up with SL... despite the fact that I'm using "flakey" ATI video on the Mac and the preferred nVidia cards on the PC.

Um, "performance" and "flakiness" are different concepts. You can have a system that performs really well but has graphics glitches all over the place, and you can have a system that's rock solid and slow.

In fact, pushing performance at any cost is a really good way of making a system flakier. Just ask anyone who suffered through the NT 3.51 to NT 4.0 transition... even Windows Server 2003 isn't as solid as NTAS 3.51.

I'll take slightly lower FPS in exchange for an OS that doesn't mix up applications, device drivers, services, DRM, web pages, and uranium mine tailings in a kind of toxic gumbo, thanks.

Common knowledge as a matter of personal experience and by those who use 3D apps and those in the 3D graphics community. This is in reference to OS X, not OS 9 and using software other than SL.

This is the first time however, that someone who uses Apple that isn't an Apple user. Must be a closet Apple user then.

windows in a pro enviroment is, for the most part, futile and pointless i will agree ... but untill 2000 apple wasnt even a contestant in the pc market

with the unix based osX and the recent switch to x86 hardware platforms there is no software reason not to go with a mac

but i still find it hard to cope with apple's snobbish hardware policy, you still have to have hardware with that apple sticker on it (which makes it compatible with apples own bios) or hack it with a 50/50 shot ... this makes hardware for the apples generally cost as much as 3x more than the same thing on a generic x86 pc platform

so if your locked in a price range it becomes a harder choice, do i spend 1200$ on this slow crappy mac or a pretty pimpin PC ...

shure apple's os is much nicer ... but in a price vs performance market there is no challenge, pc's usually offer much greater power @ a lower cost

mainly becuase there is not just 1 company making PC's

if software and price are not a big deal to you, get a mac... make shure its really fast (no budget mac's) and has a lot of ram and a uber video processor, you WILL be happy

else get a pc, and use windows... which altho has its big issues, millions of ppl use everyday with NO issues at all

Alright, I was a mac user before and I am telling you, there is nothing on a mac that you need that isn't on a PC. PCs get everything macs do years before apple even knows its exists. So to cope with thes they where forced to bend over backwards and let windows run on their systems.

Simple answer, don't switch, your comp sucks (if it even sucks at all) because you need a better graphics card and a duo core (apple stole that too >.>. Don't switch to the "'tard side of the computer world", just go strong and "stay the path".

Thank god I own a PC now...... thank god.....

...and I thought I could avoid them here....

It also seems to be a reference to "flakiness" that means "lower performance" rather than "flakiness".

I have to suspect you of being deliberately obtuse here. You know what I mean by 'I'm not an "Apple User"', it's a direct reference to your 'In the mind of an Apple user, its always the opposite, of course, since Apples are the fastest computers in the world. '... that's kind of quote-apple-user-unquote is the counterpart of the quote-windows-user-unquote who worships Bill Gates. Both types exist, of course, but not everyone who uses a Mac for any reason is absorbed into the Steve Jobs Collective. Apple's hardware and software are not perfect, by any means.

That's an issue, though I would say that the "Mac Tax" is more like 40-80% rather than 200%. If game performance is a requirement, and you can't afford two machines, then you pretty much have no alternative to Windows.

Spend $600 each on a PC and a Mac. The Athlon 64 X2 is so cheap now that you can get a pretty pimped PC for 600, and add a Mac Mini and a KVM for everything that actually matters.

(what a change from the '80s and early '90s where the Macs were toys and PCs serious.