Hello all...
I really like OSX but I am stopping myself from buying a Mac. As a bit of an enthusiast I love messing around with hardware. The problem is that the iMac uses laptop parts. The proc and the graphics card are the mobile versions. I am not too happy with the fact that I would end up with separate screens, one for the Windows box and the iMac
Do that laptop parts bother you? Does it matter? What do you do about the screen situation?
Discussion about
iMac and laptop parts
Not sure what you mean by saying you'd end up with separate screens. If you loaded windows onto the iMac you could either choose to boot from one or the other or use parallels / VMware. You could use a separate display through the Mini-Display port for dual monitors. Granted you can't change the primary display as its an all in one but thats kind of the point of it- you trade desktop real-estate and simplicity for configurability. If you want to run OS X on a machine with tweak-able hardware you could buy a Mac Pro or build a franken-mac with 3rd party hardware. I'll agree the GPU is a mobile style card however the only other part inside the machine that is laptop like is the CD/DVD-R/W drive- it has a large logic board and full sized SATA HDD.
I am always going to have some Windows machines around. At the very least a laptop from work that I usually plug into a KVM switch.
I wish the iMac had an input so I could connect other PCs to the screen.
I would Love a Mac Pro, but with a starting price of $2,500 that is not likely to happen.
Isn't the CPU a mobile part also?
I wish the iMac had an input so I could connect other PCs to the screen.
I would Love a Mac Pro, but with a starting price of $2,500 that is not likely to happen.
Isn't the CPU a mobile part also?
Here is a comparison between my 2 year old iMac, and my 1 year old macbook. Both have C2D processor, but iMac has more L2 cache. Current iMac versions have 6MB L2 cache. I assure you that the iMac performs as a desktop.
Model Name: iMac
Model Identifier: iMac7,1
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2.4 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache: 4 MB
Model Name: MacBook
Model Identifier: MacBook4,1
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2.1 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache: 3 MB
Model Name: iMac
Model Identifier: iMac7,1
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2.4 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache: 4 MB
Model Name: MacBook
Model Identifier: MacBook4,1
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2.1 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache: 3 MB
I guess it comes down to what you want to use a Mac for. The only real reason I know for constantly swapping in and out hardware is to keep it with in the recommended system requirements of the latest windows games. Lets be clear an OS X box is not a gaming platform. Sure you can Boot Camp it to XP or Vista but isn't going to do any better than a gaming rig and nor should it.
Mac OS X does excel at photo manipulation and video editing in part because serious application packages are developed for the platform specifically to utilise the hardware running under Mac OS X, outside of that you are comparing Apples with Apples [;-)]. It has managed to address its incompatibility issues with windows due to a bigger community providing quality free or paid alternatives. You need to place a lot of trust in Apple buying a Mac because unlike Microsoft they control the software platform and hardware platform taking some flexibility away from the end user under the proviso that they know best.
I love my Mac and have become an enthusiast but I am also aware that they aren't the be it and end all of computing. Like anything you have pros and cons, if you truly are a hardware enthusiast then Mac OS X isn't for you and a Linux like platform is much more down your alley.
Although the iMac looks like a sexy giant external monitor its so much more than that and wanting to buy one so you can plug a Windows box into it is a miscommunication of what the All-in-one tries to achieve, a clutter free easy to use and set-up small footprint desktop computer.
Mac OS X does excel at photo manipulation and video editing in part because serious application packages are developed for the platform specifically to utilise the hardware running under Mac OS X, outside of that you are comparing Apples with Apples [;-)]. It has managed to address its incompatibility issues with windows due to a bigger community providing quality free or paid alternatives. You need to place a lot of trust in Apple buying a Mac because unlike Microsoft they control the software platform and hardware platform taking some flexibility away from the end user under the proviso that they know best.
I love my Mac and have become an enthusiast but I am also aware that they aren't the be it and end all of computing. Like anything you have pros and cons, if you truly are a hardware enthusiast then Mac OS X isn't for you and a Linux like platform is much more down your alley.
Although the iMac looks like a sexy giant external monitor its so much more than that and wanting to buy one so you can plug a Windows box into it is a miscommunication of what the All-in-one tries to achieve, a clutter free easy to use and set-up small footprint desktop computer.
