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Does Mac OS X require less powerful hardware to run smoothly than Windows 7?
When comparing MacBook's and PC laptops of about the same tier, the specs of the Mac seem to always be much lower. (For example - you'd be getting 4 GB of RAM whereas 8 GB is the norm for the tier of computer.) Is Apple just being cheap or does their OS actually require less beef to run properly (not talking about minimum requirements). In an "apples to apples" comparison (in this case Apple to PC), would a Mac run more smoothly than a PC of the same hardware?
I saw something like this on another blog a while back, in a new iteration of the Apple-addled 'megahertz don't matter' myths.
Remember the original 'megahertz myth' that went away like vapour when Apple switched to the Intel chips and users found how hopeless the PowerPC CPU's actually were in a like-for-like contest? Maybe you don't - but the myth was that clock for clock, PPC's were far more efficient - and Apple trotted out their usual, optimal graphs to prove this. There's a very good reason why Apple moved to Intel, but as far as their marketing was concerned they trotted this out until the very end. And the Apple faithful, as usual, swallowed it wholesale every time and used it as the basis of their evangelism. And of course as soon as the Intel switchover was complete, that myth was forgotten like an inconvenient fart.
There's a good reason why I didn't touch OS X with a bargepole until they switched to Intel (and Boot Camp had nothing to do with it), and there's a good reason why I think most Apple fanbois are truly credulous morons, regardless of their writing skills.
Since I'm not comparing shrivelled oranges to Apples most of the time as in a fanboi's comparison but actually apples to Apples, for general productivity duties I find Macs slower - but that's not really the OS's problem (I don't really see any major issues in that respect), more the applications, and also the hardware's ability to deliver what it has on paper in real-life use.
A lot of these Mac vs WIndows arguments these days are coming from aforementioned parties doing 'testing' solely on a Mac. Doing the comparison under Boot Camp is not necessarily a valid test.
Remember the original 'megahertz myth' that went away like vapour when Apple switched to the Intel chips and users found how hopeless the PowerPC CPU's actually were in a like-for-like contest? Maybe you don't - but the myth was that clock for clock, PPC's were far more efficient - and Apple trotted out their usual, optimal graphs to prove this. There's a very good reason why Apple moved to Intel, but as far as their marketing was concerned they trotted this out until the very end. And the Apple faithful, as usual, swallowed it wholesale every time and used it as the basis of their evangelism. And of course as soon as the Intel switchover was complete, that myth was forgotten like an inconvenient fart.
There's a good reason why I didn't touch OS X with a bargepole until they switched to Intel (and Boot Camp had nothing to do with it), and there's a good reason why I think most Apple fanbois are truly credulous morons, regardless of their writing skills.
Since I'm not comparing shrivelled oranges to Apples most of the time as in a fanboi's comparison but actually apples to Apples, for general productivity duties I find Macs slower - but that's not really the OS's problem (I don't really see any major issues in that respect), more the applications, and also the hardware's ability to deliver what it has on paper in real-life use.
A lot of these Mac vs WIndows arguments these days are coming from aforementioned parties doing 'testing' solely on a Mac. Doing the comparison under Boot Camp is not necessarily a valid test.
Snow Leopard doesn't require less powerful hardware to run than Windows 7, a Snow Leopard Hackintosh install will work on a netbook, just as Windows 7 will - now I haven't used a Hackintosh Netbook, but I do regularly use Windows 7 Ultimate on a single core Atom netbook, and Windows 7 runs fine. They both have pretty low system requirements that are even with the prior release (Leopard and Vista), Windows 7, if configured properly, for sure runs fine on the minimum requirements, so the requirements to run well are either the same or higher for OS X Snow Leopard. Apple is just being cheap - they enjoy massive profit margins on each laptop sold, and they get that by putting in lower specs and charging obscene amounts for upgrades. They also cheap out on the build quality - MacBooks very often have some sort of hardware problem, with the Aluminum UniBody from 2008 being the only one to (relatively speaking) recently avoid this. Before that it was the original clamshell iBook G3 that didn't have problems. You also don't avoid problems on the high end either, with first gen MacBook Pros of a particular architecture usually having a serious flaw. Occasionally there is good Mac hardware that is worth buying, but it's a rare occurrence, and shows up every few years. Otherwise you're paying a lot for crap.
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