domcomm Loc: Denver, CO

Stick with Mac! They may be a little more expensive, but last a lot longer and you don't have all the crashes and other problems you get with PCs. One company here didn't know which way to go, so they bought Macs for 1/2 of their employees and PCs for 1/2 to do a 6-month test, then decide which was best. After 3 months, they threw out the PCs and bought all Macs. Why? As proven before in several tests, you are over twice as productive on a Mac than on a PC! I've tried it both ways myself, and I don't ever want to go back to a PC.

jdmiles Loc: Texas

So I am writing this on an iPhone. I do appreciate things that work well but-
I retired from IBM 10 years ago. I was in a software development group. We developed across pretty much every platform. There was maybe one person in 50 that did the MAC work and not full time. We.used what was needed to get the job done. I can’t believe any of us would have been happier or have stayed longer if we worked on MACs.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

Did you read the article? The former CIO and 15-year veteran of IBM, Fletcher Previn, left in March, 2021, to become SVP/Chief Digital Officer at Cisco. Over the last 5-6 years, he has spoken at JAMF User Nation conventions several times, about IBM's journey into a mixed, "user choice" computing environment. He kept very careful records — for both Windows PCs and Macs — of support costs and support frequency, user performance and satisfaction, initial purchase cost, device longevity, and so forth. It was a successful project. His emphasis was always in favor of ensuring positive user experiences for the roughly 400,000 users his IT organization served.

Despite higher Mac hardware costs, TCO (total cost of ownership) was significantly lower (in the hundreds of dollars per computer over the life of the machine). Productivity was higher, along with user satisfaction and job trajectories, for those using Macs. He wasn't about to replace Windows, though. His emphasis was on keeping workers happy with their tools. Essentially, in most cases, IBMers got to use the platform they wanted to.

https://youtu.be/DIe-F_QjG6M

jdmiles Loc: Texas

Yes I read it. For certain jobs I am sure it works better. I think the article should have clarified what type jobs it worked better for.

repleo Loc: Boston

If you want the computer primarily for photo editing, try contacting one of the computer experts at B&H. They will give you good solid recommendations to suite your needs and budget.

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/find/shared/experts-profiles-all-categories.jsp

Dean37 Loc: Fresno, CA

Not in my personal experience. As I had posted earlier my company management decided to change us to using Mac's and replaced all of the PC's with Macs, because of the excessive downtime because the PC's were reported to be crashing too much.

I have never, in 34 years of using PC's, had a PC crash. When we were switched to Mac's my Mac would crash between 4 and 5 times a day causing me to lose two to three hours of productive time. After 3 months we were all switched back to PC's. The bosses kept their Mac's because their kids were using Mac's in school.

Of course the type of work can have a big effect on what is best. We were developing embedded software to be used in Intel based computers. Much of our work required the use of UNIX computers.

I've never had much use for Apple products, but I know they are capable. My last laptop PC began having problems at 19 years old so I retired it. I have others that are 16 years old, 9 years old and 6 months old and still running just fine. I even have a 486 desktop that still runs just fine.

BebuLamar

Yes because a company that does well doesn't mean their products don't suck.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

Just curious... what year was it that you had the problems with your Mac? Were they hardware or operating system issues?

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

Okay, this is a ramble, but may be helpful to some.

The only issues I ever had with Mac hardware:

1998 — Bad RAM slot in a PowerMac G3 (Apple replaced computer under warranty)

1998 — Loose hinge connector in a PowerBook 500 (I paid to have it fixed)

2005 — Bad Kingston RAM modules in a PowerBook G4-17" caused screen failure (what Apple said, but they fixed it free of charge under a "secret" recall, while Kingston replaced the DIMMs free of charge)

2010 — Bad Nvidia graphics chip in an Early 2008 MacBook Pro 15" (Apple replaced motherboard free of charge, due to a special warranty on those faulty chips)

2012 — Bad optical drive in a Mid-2010 Mac Mini (I bought one on eBay for $40 and put it in myself. It still works.)

The only issues I ever had with Mac operating systems:

Classic MacOS versions 6.0.3 (mid-1980s) through 8.5 (late 1990s) were notoriously prone to crashing. Versions 8.6 through 9.2.2 were much more stable. The issues were structural. System Extensions were known to conflict with each other because there were few restrictions on memory usage. 8.6 came out about the time Steve Jobs returned to Apple after his foray with NeXT and Pixar. Jobs began bridge-building to merge MacOS with NeXT OS.

By Mac OS X version 10.3, the UNIX based rewrite of MacOS and NeXT OS was stable, had all the basic features, and was ready for prime time. We could leave a Mac running for days and even weeks without a reboot. I have a 1999 PowerMac G4 that came with a dual boot of OS 9.2.2 and OS X 10.3. It has OS 9.2.2 and OS X 10.4.11 on it today, and still runs if we need it to.

Mac OS X 10.6.8 was the masterpiece. It was Apple's Win XP SP3. I used it until Mac OS 10.10.5 came out! It was that good. 10.10.x to 10.15.7 are all good after the third point release. The latest version of Mac OS, Big Sur 11.3, is finally about where it should be, too. 11.4 is almost ready.

These days, the key to OS stability is not to be the early adopter! Wait for the third or fourth "point release" to adopt the new OS, unless your software requires it, which it probably doesn't. Most software from third parties lags behind Apple's major/annual OS updates by at least one calendar quarter, sometimes two or three.

The only virus I ever got at work came from our President's secretary, who used a PC. It was a Word macro virus that took down hundreds of PCs at our company. Of course, it only affected Word... which I used on my Mac and my PC. Both were infected.

In 36 years of using Macs, I've only had one other bit of malware. My wife downloaded an Excel spreadsheet from a friend the other night. It came from her PC. McAfee Multi-Access quarantined it immediately. It contained some sort of trojan horse.

Meanwhile, my first office PC was a generic clone running Windows 3.0. It had a bad thermal design. The power supply shorted, frying the motherboard with it. I was working on a training manual at the time. Fortunately, the file was backed up on the network...

That computer was replaced with an identical unit with a better power supply and fans. It had a tape drive backup built into it that failed three times. I never did get a usable tape backup on that PC!

My next PC was an HP tower running Win95. I don't remember any problems with it, other than the lightning strike that hit our building and fried all computers on the same phase of the three-phase power line that were not connected to UPS devices.

My next PC was a Gateway E-series tower. Like the 49 others we bought at the same time, it had a faulty hard drive that had a physical head crash about seven months after I got it. Fortunately, I had just done a full data backup to the server at IT's request. Gateway sent us 50 replacement drives of a better grade. I helped the IT guy install them... Major ass pain.

My next PC was a 2005 Dell 610 laptop. It was okay, but slow. When I got a MacBook Pro in 2008, I installed Parallels Desktop and cloned the Dell to the Mac. The Mac was three years newer, and 2-3 times faster running Windows XP in emulation than the older Dell. Of course, the Dells were underpowered, with just 512MB RAM, and my Mac had 4GB RAM. I gave 1.5GB to WinXP and it was very snappy.

I won't go so far as to say either computer platform sucks. Both are capable. Both have had their moments with bad OS releases.

Microsoft Win 3.0 was ridiculous.
Win 3.1.1 fixed a ton of problems.
Win 95 was a solid release after the first year of tweaks.
Win98 was just okay.
Win Me was not a good release.
Win NT was good if you were a developer.
Win 2000 was probably my favorite... a classic design, clean, stable, and easy to use.
Win XP was awful until the hardware caught up to it and the second service pack (SP2) came out.
Win XP SP3 made it a classic... so good it was hard to kill off!
Win Vista was afterbirth on toast.
Win 7 became like Win 2000 and XP SP3... a classic build that was hard to kill off.
Win 8 was worse than Vista, in some minds. I thought it was biologically tainted nuclear waste.
Win 8.1 was tolerable, but only on Intel hardware.
Win 10 has evolved into Microsoft's best effort ever.

Nickaroo

My MacBook Pro with the M1 chip does DeNoise AI and Topaz Sharpen AI just fine. I think that you may want to try that and then come to your conclusions.

Dalek Loc: Detroit, Miami, Goffstown

new M1 apple 24 inch

vbhargava Loc: San Diego

I am in the market too for a new desktop. I am considering Dell XPS 8940 with 32GB RAM, a good video card (Nvidia or Radion, 2TB SSD, with 11th gen i7 or better i9 processor, Win 10 Pro DVD/CD drive and the Dell U2719Q Dell ultrasharp 4K monitor. This should run total <$3000. It is a very fast machine. The monitor runs ~ $550. I am not buying the 7200rpm 2TB drive but will buy and install Seagate 8TB 7200rpm Barracuda drive for all my photos. You spend once and it should be good for many years to come. I am including with my purchase 4-year extended warranty on my system.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

Sounds like a nice system that will last for many years, but if you haven’t already purchased the HD, consider an enterprise class HGST UltraStar instead.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

Thanks Bill, that’s a fair and honest evaluation. No one’s HW or OS is perfect (there are as many revs to MacOS & IOS as Windows). I will say that the user has a great deal to do with reliability/availability.

I built my current Intel I-7 system in 2012. It’s still plenty fast enough to drive three monitors with half a dozen aps and a dozen web pages open at any one time with essentially zero waiting on the machine. During that period, I have had two failures: a power supply and an optical drive. Total cost to replace: just over $100. During that period, I have: updated Win 7 to 10 (no issues), added another 16GB of memory, and added 3 more SSDs (2 SATA and 1 NVME). I have never had a “blue screen” or any other operational failure, and I expect it to be good for another few years at least.

Capn_Dave

I kind of steer away from Dell computers. Every Dell I have owned the HD has crashed. 4 out of four. Thank the Gods for I therefore backup