I bet you'd love to be at my university, Paladin.  We just signed a huge deal with Adobe and I was able to purchase the entire Design Premium CS4 package for $20 through our school!  Photoshop, Flash, DreamWeaver, Fireworks, Illustrator, InDesign, Acrobat Pro, the whole shabang!  I have it installed on my home PC right now that I built for $600 and has the following:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 5400+ BE OC'd at 3.22GHz via Core Contact cooler
Foxconn 780G mobo
4GB G. Skill PI Black 4-4-4-12 DDR2 800 RAM
Asus HD 4830 512mb (a tad above the 9800GT in performance)
Vista Home Premium 64bit
Wind Ryder 2 case with upgraded red LED fans

(I went with AMD just as an experiment since I have never owned an AMD cpu or overclocked one before.  I'm actually kind of glad I did, because now I can upgrade to a Phenom II 940 if/when I need more multitasking and higher performance).

Yes, I would like to get in on that, especially the CS4 production premium package.

And THAT is the point. Macs don't exist. They are PCs just like windows. The only difference is I can't just buy the OS and install it on my machine, apple expects me to buy a whole new computer! 

Technically you can install OSX on any PC although

a) it does require a bit of software hacking, which for the most part has already been done by others, available as an ISO image

b) not 100% legal even if you are using a purchased/licensed copy of OSX

The main problem with making an OSX86/Hackintosh is driver support. Unless you have the programming chops to customize drivers yourself, you're at the whims of those with greater skills than your own to do the updates and make things work smoothly.

This is actually one of the main reasons for using OSX in the first place; driver conflicts are virtually non-existent relative to the PC/Windows world.

So for most, it's a case of running OSX on a PC "just because."


Also, there are some companies that currently sell PCs running OSX for far less than comparable Macs. Unfortunately, these too charge a premium for their "customized" systems and when comparing price to spec ratios, a regular PC running Windows is still going to be cheaper and or use faster components.

And while this choice does provide OEM user support, I'd be surprised if it extended to driver support for any PC card/device you wanted to install in your PC/Mac, negating the primary advantage of the PC platform (as not all hardware may work until drivers can be written) as well as the primary advantage of the Mac platform where everything that's Mac compatible WILL work with your Mac.


Ultimately, it makes little sense anyway since most people making or buying Hackintoshes are either students who are buying student priced software (greatly discounted, but not always given away for under $100), or in most cases, using another person's license or cracked/stolen software. In other words, users that don't actually matter since they're not paying customers.

And if you're a 100% legit user for a legit business, it means having to buy two different sets of software for running two different operating systems. Buying Adobe CS4, for instance either gives you a Mac license or a PC license, not a dual platform install license.

Don't you speak for me.

In the last two years I'v learned to HATE Mac's,  overpriced, underpowered husks of a computer comparing to a PC I bought TWO YEARS AGO that can run all the programs I need. 

I got my girlfriend a new PC this year, that was literally half the price, yet literally double the power (quad core, 4 gigs of ram and a gig graphic card holy shit!)

This whole ""artists and hip people use mac's"" image needs to seriously burn in a fire.

Yea, the big reason I use Macs is that I have to. At least the university buys and maintains them. 

Ditto, except we don't get our stuff maintaned, our dean who runs and gets funding for the project listens to a retarded film teacher.  Basically it goes like this.

""We need to update to CS4!""

""Sure, how about the computers updated?""

""Nah those three year old, one gig, G5 single core Mac's can handle it...also can I have more money to buy a new HD camera so my students won't be allowed to use it?""

""THAT SOUNDS LIKE A GREAT IDEA!""

Yeah....

I'm surprised it got this far without anyone saying anything....  Command line software installs aren't mandatory anymore.  AFAIK most distros use a GUI interface, Ubuntu uses Synaptic Package Manager which lets you browse through your repos and get some information on a package before you install it, also installing all the required packages to make whatever you're installing work.  Granted there may be some tweaking you may have to do with the command line, but the method you speak of exists.

Networking is easy too....  Wireless is the only bitch, LAN is as easy as being setup automagically when you install. :P

So is that a driver support issue with Linux as far as WiFi adapters go? It seems a bit odd that more distros wouldn't have basic support integrated considering the number of web enabled netbooks available these days.

I have Asus ExpressGate installed, but don't use it specifically because it won't recognize my WiFi adapter, making it pretty much useless.

The main reason I don't run Linux for productivity is that frankly, there just aren't any apps that I need to run on it that I couldn't run in OSX or Vista where industry standard professional productivity apps go.

A netbook would probably be the only thing I'd use Linux on for all the basic tasks that you don't need to run on an overclocked quad core desktop (which use at least ten times as much wattage, even on low/idle use).

These Mac vs. PC wars are already quite tired and I probably shouldn't even post this, but I don't have anything better to do right now.

IMO, from a design point of view, Macs are far superior to PCs, even high end PCs that I've seen. The mechanical build quality is top notch and the attention to detail just isn't there on PCs. Also, if you consider the size / weight vs. performance, Macs are at the top of the pack, even considering price.

For laptop use, the Mac trackpad is lightyears ahead of PC trackpads, which is something most people conveniently choose to overlook. The battery is good, and the MagSafe connector is pure genius. I'm not saying those things are worth the price difference, but IMO the total package is well worth the price. Now, I'm not really keeping an eye on the PC laptops, so I'd be curious to know how much a really comparable PC laptop (size, weight, display, battery, keyboard etc.) costs these days? You can take the current 15" MacBook Pro with default setup and find a comparable PC, I'd really like to see how much cheaper it is.