Yeah, I think in the end the price thing is the biggest selling factor for those on the fence. If you match dollar for dollar (NOT gigahertz for gigahertz) a PC and a Mac, unless you've got a crappy PC vendor, you'll get a helluva lot more bang for the buck.

Apple in their commercials tends to try to match Gigahertz to Gigahertz. This is foolish. We all know that there IS replacement for displacement, and Ghz just don't matter that much in today's world. It's all about how much overall juice you can get for a certain amount of moolah.

<<<-- Originally posted by Robert Knecht Schmidt : Like Alex, I dislike the way the Mac OS tries to hide the underlying system from the user. -->>>

On OSX, the underlying system is BSD Unix. Open up a terminal window, su, and pound away to your heart's content... all the familiar unix tools are there, and quite a lot of other stuff if you install the developers tools CD that comes with the distribution. In fact I find it really remarkable what Apple gives you with a $130 version of Unix, something that Sun, HP and IBM have charged thousands for. Sure, most people would prefer to have this hidden, but it's there and easily accessible.

Right, Boyd--I should have specified, "prior to OSX"...

Whew, I think we should celebrate... I think this is the only Mac/PC discussion on the Internet that didn't turn bad.

Congrats to all involved.

Oh, yeah, I love the Mac industrial design. No doubt about it. The hardware is awesome. But in the end, however nice the box is, it will end up getting buried under my desk junk and despite what nerds say, the sexy box is not going to get you laid.

Hey...you're right Imran. lol...usually a topic of this nature turns into an ugly bashing of eachothers opinions.

I've said it before, and ill say it again, if it werent for the knowledge, maturity and civilization of the people who make up this community, we wouldnt be able to have this discussion.

That's why Im here. To hear fairly un-baised opinions and facts, and learn from them. Everyone here handles posts very perfessionally, and should be proud of that...

Thanks for making this such a great resource to the world...

I'm bi... platform that is. I have a Final Cut workstation, and Premiere/Mac workstation and a PC formerly running Pinnacle Edition. I was very unhappy with Edition. The user interface was clunky, the DV500 card was pretty unstable, and I was able to get much more work done on my Macs. I don't blame any of these issues on the PC platform, and will likely crossgrade my Mac version of Premiere to Premiere Pro to replace the Edition system I just unloaded.

In terms of system stablity, I have more crashes on my Mac than on the PC. Just about every time I use iDVD 3, I get 2 or 3 hard crashes that require a reboot. Final Cut Pro, however, is rock-solid.

Everyone like to tout the 5% market share argument when justifying their anti-Apple bias. There are a couple of things that you need to remember about market share. First, Apple's market share is close to 50% in the creative industries such as video and audio production. Also, no computer manufacturer has a market share of 95%. Apple's market share is pretty good if you compare them to Dell, Gateway or HP.

I have been very disappointed with Apple's business practices over the last few years. They force you to upgrade your hardware every few years by refusing to make their software backwards compatible. Until I spend a substantial amount of money to upgrade software and peripherals, I will be stuck using an old 0S-9 system for my audio recording system. When Apple abandons a technology, they expect their users to drop a ton of money to stay current.

The bottom line is that computers are tools, not religions. As long as you know how to get the most out of your tool, you'll be able to produce anything you can imagine - on either platform.

Rick

Wow Rick, you raised a lot of points there. Most of them I agree with, and those I disagree with are not vehment, just matters of perspective.

So, to put my perspective (FWIW):That is a general consensus of those who've used the DV500. I wasn't one. But at least one that did has been priviledged to used the pre-release of Pro. What he now says of the Dv500 is probably best left to your imagination! ;-)Amen there, and OSX more than OS9, IMEApple's market share is an unknown AFAIK. In the pro market it's competing not only against the PC but also other *nix flavours. Also, bear in mind that Apple is working in a closed market, whereas many PC manufacturers are competing against not only each other, but smaller OEMs, and even home-brews.And AMEN! to that!...Moreover, with the release of the G5 and advent of the P5, we're about to see another "mine's faster than yours" slanging match. What both sides forget is that (a) they're not directly comparable, and (b) if your computer is fast enough and does what you need, then that's probably good enough. After all, this month's speed demon, is next month's also-ran. Who, except for the marketers and pundits, really cares?