Anyone know anything about Macs?

[rhino47]

I am getting somewhat tired off all the updates and virus crap on Pcs.
I was wondering if the Macs get as many viruses .Do most programs now work on mac?
I basically use the computer for photo editing ,internet and watch ting youtube lol.Is a mac a better choice for me?Are macs hard to learn.
Thank you for your time in advance.

[Nicole]

1. I've never had a virus.

I've been using a Mac since the early 90's.

[rhino47]

2. So macs are more secure then.

Are they hard to use?

[evlbstrd]

4. They're very easy to use.

And MS Office and Adobe Creative Suite are available.

[City Lights]

5. Not sure Macs are more secure, it's just that no one has taken the time

to write viruses for them.

FYI, DU has a Mac Group if you're interested. I've used Macs and PCs, and Macs are easier by far. I will never own another PC.

[Deja Q]

11. OMG, a post containing some common sense!

:wow:

Additionally, no platform is invulnerable and the ability to exploit human nature supplants some of the existing exploits as well...

[Awsi Dooger]

23. OMG, another desperate and empty anti-Mac flail by HypnoToad

Let's see, count the numbers of Macs in use worldwide. Yeah, that's too few for anyone to want to target.

And think about the immediate and long lasting notoriety if someone pulled off the first major Mac virus. A PC virus is just another Tiger Woods 300 yard drive.

So it's actually just the opposite, not a bit of common sense. The Mac universe would be a premier target for a diabolical virus maker, a crowning achievement. It doesn't succeed because of the superiority of the operating system.

[Poiuyt]

20. I seem to recall that some group was offering a $10,000 reward if they could

hack into the Mac OS a year or two ago. No one was able to collect.

Even if there were no viruses because no one was taking the time to write them still means that there are no viruses. The Macintosh operating system is very secure. Vista is supposed to be Microsoft's most stable OS. I'm not sure how it is doing.

[City Lights]

26. Good point about no viruses means no viruses.

I had the unpleasant experience of owning one PC in my life, and I'll never do it again. I'm currently on my third Mac :-) and will never go back.

My husband has a PC, and we often do our own Mac-PC commercial spoofs, which leave us :rofl:. He's had enough problems with PCs that he's considering a MacBook Pro for his next purchase.

[Nicole]

6. I've never owned a PC

so I can't really compare the two.

I used a PC a little at a former job, I didn't do any of the maint. or installation of programs etc.
I bought a Mac for home use. The Mac was easy to learn. My last one was up & running within 5 minutes of opening the box. I was on the internet in about 10 minutes.

[leftofthedial]

3. never had a virus

Apple sends out updates about once a month. Updating is pretty simple and point-and-shoot.

Macs are extremely easy to use. Most PCers have trouble converting because they expect a Mac to be as stupid as a Windows machine.

Your applications are ideal on a Mac.

[SKKY]

7. Mac wouldn't be a bad choice. But I also think you should...

...give serious consideration to Linux, specifically Ubuntu Linux. It's free, gets updated about weekly, and is very, very easy to use.

[bicentennial_baby]

15. Which you can run on a Mac, or at least some of them

As I read yesterday in a long article about it in a Mac mag :)

[SKKY]

21. Well, the Mac OS is really about 85-90% Linux-based OS...

...so many of the same programs you run on Linux you can run on a MAC. I like Linux because it's free, and lets me try many, many distros (Sometimes too many) until I find the one I like. The Important thing about all this, Mac or Linux, is that we just don't get the virus' that Windows users do. I've been using Linux since Redhat 5.2 (circa 1999) and have yet to get a virus. Of course, some of the hardware issues I've had to deal with over the years have made a virus seem like small change in comparison.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

8. I've used Macs since 1987, never seen a virus.

No adware, no spyware.

They are extremely easy to use. Many actions that take 3 steps on a PC involve only one on a Mac -- mostly simple clicking and dragging. You'll wonder why you stuck with a PC so long.

[Redstone]

9. Well, as a longtime holdout on System 9 on the Mac, I've been immune to viruses.

But I just got a MacBook Pro with System 10.4.8, and I have to say that it is nowhere near as bad as I thought it was going to be.

It's going to be a fundamental change in the way I work (yes, I spent the $1800 for the Adobe Creative Suite as well), but from my experience so far...yes, it still beats Windows by a country mile.

Make the change. You won't regret it.

Redstone

[LostInAnomie]

10. Don't be fooled, Macs suck.

People are paid to talk them up on boards like this. :evilgrin:

[Deja Q]

12. No, the majority of them congregate in one or two designated areas.

:rofl:

[Awsi Dooger]

24. OMG, two empty anti-Mac posts by HypnoToad

Do you ever threaten substance? I remember a couple of years ago you tried to list the prices for Mac hardware, and you were so far off it was like the Comedy Store multiplied by Monty Python.

But keep it up. It's very reflective of pure weakness and jealousy. I see the PC threads and can't imagine opening them, not a bit of interest. Yet HypnoToad feels compelled to invade every Mac thread for years on this forum with his laughable desperate posts.

Somehow my Apple stock keeps going up. :rofl:

[Pierre.Suave]

13. Damn

wheres my check?

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

16. Where's my money??

[LostInAnomie]

19. That's exactly what I would expect a paid-Mac endorser to say!

You can't fool me!

[Deja Q]

14. Go to a store and demo one to see how they operate. Judge for yourself.

Compare featured and prices with PCs, though my next PC will be home built and Linux installed.

Personally, because of Steve Jobs' anti-teacher attitude (he's been whining solely because he probably can't get Mac-only contracts into school districts anymore) and how the Mac is nothing more than a PC hardware box with a modified FreeBSD on it, there's little left to "think different" about. (FreeBSD is a free clone of the BSD Unix-like operating system. It is not Linux, though shares the same GUI and some of the Unix philosophies that Linux also uses. Apple took FreeBSD, added some innovations, released it as OS X, and claimed they'd give back to the open source community one day - I need to follow up to see if they've been real or just another worm.)

And given Jobs' comments of recent (Go to GD and do a search, maybe an archive search as this took place a couple weeks ago), I personally am not hot to trot on supporting him or his products with my hard earned money.

I've been using Windows and Linux for years. I haven't been hit once. Like I said in another response, some of this is due to exploiting human nature -- someone else also said Mac users aren't yet a sufficient target for exploitation (though a google search reveals a couple Mac viruses do exist).

[Awsi Dooger]

25. Make it three desperate posts by HypnoToad

Pure hysteria. Notice HypnoToad points us to a Google search to verify a "couple" of Mac viruses. :rofl:

Subtitled: "I know they're out there, dammit. No one's ever heard of them and they damn sure didn't have names or impact more than a half dozen people, but I'm not allowing a single pro-Mac thread to exist in the Lounge without spewing my crap and hoping no one notices it never varies from year to year."

You simply have no threat of class or honesty on this topic. There is no other way to put it. For years you assault the Mac. Now in this thread you say you won't support Apple with your hard earned money, supposedly based on recent comments by Jobs.

That's the equivalent of the people who never vote for Democrats and all of a sudden pick one obscure statement by the Democratic nominee and use it as the stated disqualifier.

[REP]

30. Excellent Advice - Try One and See

The rest of the post was a lot of hand-waving that had nothing to do with how Macs actually work, but the opening line of trying one is a great idea!

[SPKrazy]

17. Big Macs?

have a lot of fat

I wouldn't eat them...

as for Macs getting viruses, rare

Macs aren't hard to learn, but you need to make sure you have the software you need to interact in a world dominated by PC's, if you do, you may be very happy with a Mac.

Personally I used to use Macs, I've used PC's at work so long that I got tired of the differences and use a PC at home too.

[133724]

18. Think Linux...

From what I understand Apple is moving in that direction with the new hardware.

KDE is similar to Windows in it's ease of use.

No viruses.

I would suggest trying OpenSuSE 10.2 an open source software package. The operating system if available online for download (free, but you might want to send in a donation or pay $50 for a boxed version).

This runs on almost any PC (x86) either 32 bit or 64 bit depending on which version you download.

Since you are into photography, you might also look at The Gimp; a photoshop equivilant which is included with SuSE and most other Linux open source S/W.

Most Linux downloads include:
Open Office (think MS Office)
Kontact (think MS Outlook + News feeds)
Video editors,
Many database programs ( mostly SQL some very like MS Access),

[rocktivity]

22. Pay a visit to the DU Macintosh Users Group

link

:headbang:
rocknation

[GirlinContempt]

27. If all you want to do is photo editing and internet

mac would be fine program-wise.

I get pretty tired of this back and forth "mac sucks" "PC's are for idiots" etc crap. Some people prefer mac, some prefer PC. Mac is good for some things, PC for others. Personally, I don't get viruses, and I enjoy a computer I can tinker with myself, upgrade, play games on, run all my programs, and easily move from work to home. So I use a PC. Lots use Mac. They both have their place. But don't get taken in with ANYONES hype (Macs never have a problem!!! or PCs are the only compatible system!!!). All grandiose claims should be taken with a few spoonfuls of salt.

[REP]

28. Aperture, Photoshop, ImageCapture, Safari, Exploder (if you must), Word, Excel...

I've never had a virus. OS X is written in such a way that is not as vulnerable; additionally, scriptkiddies aren't targeting Macs.

As for graphics, Mac is the industry standard. Aperture and Photoshop are two professional programs for photo editing, in edition Macs have ImageCapture, which means you can plug any digital camera into your Mac to transfer images to your computer without any advance set up - just plug it in, select which images you wish to transfer, and there you are. There are also some very cool tools, like MakePDF, which allows you to format a large number of pictures to any size - thumbnails to 8x10s or whatever - and lays them out in PDFs.

As for internet, Apple's Safari browser is easy to use, blocks pop-ups, and can be easily configured to only accept cookies necessary to view a desired website. Cookie management is easy with Safari, too. There's a version of Explorer for Mac, as well as Firefox and other browsers.

For usenet, there's MTNewswatcher, Thoth and others; MTNewswatcher is a multithreaded newsreader with killfiles and filters that's easy to use and set up. And it's free.

Microsoft Office X, which includes Excel, Word, Powerpoint and other applications, is built for Mac but works just like it does on other platforms.

Macs aren't at all hard to learn. They work a lot like other platforms, without the problems. As people say, they just work.

[izzybeans]

29. I just switched and have had zero problems. I have yet to run into

a compatibility problem with office products. But I spent the extra 100 bucks to get it packaged with my computer.

I use a PC at work and transitioning back and forth has not been a problem.

I switched because of what I percieved to quality issues. Viruses and continual hardware problems drove me to try something new. So far so good. But I'm sure some PC defender will think I'm naive. Either way its a crap-shoot. The virus issue has made work more efficient at home than at work. I don't lose operating speed while the network admin runs his daily virus scans on my PC at work, because my MAC at home does not have that issue.

[NewJeffCT]

31. I switched a little over a year ago - some pros & some cons

1) The biggest pro is the lack of viruses.
2) Another big pro is that my computer has locked up only 2 or 3 times in that entire time. There have been applications that have self-terminated several times (Yahoo messenger & AIM being the most common, but those are primarily yahoo/AIM problems) I did not have a lot of problems with Windows XP, but I know it locked up more often than that.

1) On the negative side, while Mac users often talk about how intuitive Macs are, I've found a lot of things very hard to get used to - right clicking is almost like 2nd nature to me on a PC. It's not available on a Mac unless you buy an upgraded mouse. You can get some of the options, but you have to do Click & hit Control on the Mac. The Mac mouse also seems to be on its last legs after only 15-16 months. I've been using PCs at home and at work since getting out of college in 1989 and have never had a problem with a mouse.
2) Using the same DSL modem, the iMac that I have is often slower on the internet than the 5 1/2 year old Dell that we still use on occasion. And, it was not exactly a top-of-the-line Dell when we got it...
3) Several other features did not seem all that intuitive to me, either, like burning pictures to a CD, or loading up software designed for an older version of the operating system.

[REP]

32. Just An FYI - Doesn't Have To Be An Apple Mouse To Right Click!

I'm using a wireless LogiTech mouse with scrollwheel and yes, left and right click buttons. Almost every Mac user I know gets a non-Apple mouse for their Mac.

[NewJeffCT]

33. I realize that

But, that entails me having to go out & buy another mouse when i've never had to do that before.

[REP]

35. Sorry! Was Trying To Be Helpful

Sorry, didn't realize. I guess I'm used to people who didn't know you can right click with a Mac.

[Poiuyt]

34. Cleaning your mouse should bring it back to life

Those new Mac mice are susceptible to dirt, but they are easily cleaned.

FWIW, I spent the $20 and got a 2 button mouse with a scroll wheel.