Mac Questions

[joe_chonk]

Today I was looking at the Apple website and I looked at some of the comptuers they were selling. I was looking at the specs for the eMac. I was very suprised when I found this as the specs:

17 inch flat screen CRT display
1.25Ghz PowerPC G4 Processor
256 MB 333Mhz DDR SDRAM
Combo or Super Drive
ATI Radeon 9200 Graphics w/32MB GDDR
Two firewire ports, Three USB ports
10/100 Ethernet and 56K V.92 modem

There are two models. They seem to be basically the same except the higher version has a 80GB HD instead of 40GB.

These computers are priced at $800 for the lower model and $1000 for the higher model.

A few questions:
1. Why are these computers so highly prices when it seems like the comptuer wouldnt be to fast?
2. I heard Macs are good for video editing...is this true?...if so how could it be good for video editing if it only has 40-80GB Hard drive?
3. Are Macs good for gaming?
4. What are the pros and cons of a Mac when compared to a PC?

[Yuanji]

1. macs are known to be overpriced. that being said, eMacs were a total load. they had horrible performance to price ratio.
2. because it is an eMac. you can also add on HDs later and it is the proc efficiency of a Mac that makes it good at vid editing.
3. no for 2 reasons, you get a crappy vid card on that one and also many games are just not made for Mac OS.
4. macs look better, are better at encoding, and also help attract the ladies . Pcs, however are upgradable, more for gaming, and generally cost less

[joe_chonk]

Thanks for the help. Your answer explained a lot.

[Force Flow]

1) Macs use a different hardware architecture for PCs, so you can't compare MHz to MHz between PCs and Macs.
2) They are good for video editing because of their ease of use for people who are not too experienced with editing. You can always get additional internal or external drives if you need to.
3) Gaming? Absolutely not. The game selection alone is quite limited. In addition, the hardware is not really up to the task of running high-end games with all the eye candy.
4) This debate has gone on for years. You have to take a look at your needs and wants and see if one platform will more fully cover them over the other.

[joe_chonk]

1) Macs use a different hardware architecture for PCs, so you can't compare MHz to MHz between PCs and Macs.

How fast would the 1.25Ghz PowerPC G4 Processor be compared to a pentium 4?

[mystvearn]

1. You pay for that "design' and macs are always expansive. Even the ipod is expansive. Apple hikes every price, including RAM's for their pc.
2. Video editing, in the past/at the beginning yes. Out of the box yes, they are. But on the pc there are lots of software capable of doing that(not WMmaker). The on par program would be Pinnacle studio 9, which is better, faster. Vegas, is good too.
3. No. Most games nowdays need DX8/9 to run, mac don't have this. Mac has games, but few and rare in between. So waiting for a mac version would be either too long, or less choices. G4/G5 has high end graphics are purely meant for graphics design. Another thing is that when you buy a emac, the mouse that comes with it only has one button, though g5 has a 2/3 button variation. You can buy a normal USB and plug in. But try playing CS directly, and you could not use the sniper.
4. Mac's are less vulnarable to attacks(hacks) since less people use it. Reliable, can be used straight away out of the box. Design, and that mac theme does make you hook.
Con: software & hardware are sometimes hard to get, upgrading a Mac would be tedious, then there is the longevity, its really not that long. The most important thing is price, look at the powerbook price and I can buy a super laptop, that is way better than that. Another thing is the temp files make likes to create when moving stuff into the USB drive. I hate it, takes space.
A
how fast, well lets say that quite fast, there is no way to benchmark two things which run on different hardware, running different program codes, even though running the same program. P4 should be faster.
I'm no mac fan, despite using them almost everyday.

[joe_chonk]

Thanks for all the answers. I have been wondering about macs for a long time. Thanks to your answers I have decided it is not worth buying a Mac for me. I use my computer for internet browsing, school work using Microsoft Office, and light gaming. I very rarely do any video editing or graphics designing; therefore, I think I will be better off sticking with home-built PCs. I also frequently upgrade my computer and from all your answers I have learned that would not be easy/affordable with a Mac.

Thanks again.

[kram 2.0]

I personally think for the average home user, Macs are as simply and easy as can get - while it will not play the "latest" games with software compatibility issues, other applications such as MS Office and MSIE will work with Apple Macintosh Computers. I went to a two week course where we used Apple PoweMac G4 exclusively and some have hated it - they ended up liking it near the end. It was because it's different from mainstream that sometimes for some, it's hard to accept.

I personally like Apple computers a lot, and the fact that some may mention them to be "overpriced" is just false. Apple Macintosh Ghz does not translate directly into or either Intel clockspeed or AMD Athlon clockspeed. I've been working with a pretty new Apple iBook G4 - it's certainly faster than any low end (price corresponding) Celeron or Athlon XP laptops I've used

3. For 800 USD was it, you can get yourself a Mac with an ATi Radeon 9200 graphics card - low end, but still fantastical graphics quality in 2D and mediocre in 3D. However, the fact that software compatibility comes into play is a problem.

4. Easy to use. Simple. Fantastical graphics editing/video editing system.

Hope that helps,
kram

[Mac Medic]

Windows Video editing was starting to make some strides in the industry until the G5 came along. At DV Con this year 90% of the workstations were G5's with FCP and shake. Unfortunately even the best windows software in this arena isn't up to the task, coupled with the inherent instability of window machines and their vulnerability to attack from outside the windows platform is slipping. (yes, I know, the windows platform is stable but with all the Mac fallacies being stated here I figured I'd throw one in too ).

Compare a dual G5 to a comparable Dual Xeon and you'll see the Mac is cheaper, then compare notebook prices to powerbook prices and you'll see they're very similar. I agree that the emac isn't a whole lot of machine for the price but the rest of the range is very competitive especially the imac G5 (with 20"LCD), the emac wasn't even available to the public initially, until demand force Apple to make it so, it was strictly for the education market.. Apple have never sought after the low end PC market, there's no money in it, so they focus on the mid to high range and remain profitable every year because of it.

Mac's aren't gaming machines. They're getting better but you need a good high end G5 to play the new games.

Pro's:
Stability and security of OS X.
Built in Apps are second to none.
Ease of use for novices.
Powerful UNIX underpinnings for expert users.
Software is plentiful.

Con's:
Apple support is terrible now-a-days.
Internet Explorer comes pre-installed!!!!