Windows versus Mac

[teslalab2]

thanks ether, I didn't haz all the grammers, I had none of all the grammerz, I couldn't think of the correct words to use...

[techhelpbb]

Originally Posted by teslalab2

when I was little I used to love linux, and then I grew up and I'm an adult now who needs too use my computer in industry, for which linux is worthless......

Yeah I miss VBA in Microsoft Office when I am running Linux as well.

Then I remember Python.

[pmangels17]

I'd like to provide a bit of insight from the perspective of an engineering student.

I have an older (~5 years) MacBook Pro running OSX 10.8, which I love, and it is great for bringing to class, because it is portable, and the trackpad is unrivalled in quality. I use it mainly for web browsing and MS Office work, but it can even handle Matlab, though not once things start getting really crazy. It is my day-to-day machine, and it serves that purpose fantastically.

However, it simply cannot handle everything I throw at it. Which is why I am shifting towards my Lenovo Y510p (which I also love) running Windows 8.1. My Mac struggles with heavier programs, and doesn't support some of the software that I need for class and for my upcoming internship. My Lenovo, on the other hand, plows through software like SolidWorks and MasterCAM, though in my case, this comes at the expense of portability, though you can get lighter machines that will still run the programs you need.

If you are a prospective engineering student, and you are looking to buy a computer for college, I wholeheartedly urge you to purchase a capable Windows machine, or overpay for a MacBook Pro Retina (the better specs cost $$$) and dual-boot Windows. If you go into engineering, in my opinion, Windows is the easiest and best way to make sure you can do anything you need to do.

[Landonh12]

Honestly it comes down to personal preference. On the software side, if you want an OS that is used by the masses and has the biggest repository of programs to use, then Windows is your best bet. Windows is good for the end-user. It has a relatively easy filesystem to use, has excellent gaming performance, can be used with any hardware (including Macs!), and you can do CAD work on it.

If you want an OS that is nice, clean, easy to use and simple, and has the meat of UNIX under it, then go with OS X. OS X is the best mix of Linux and Windows that anyone has to offer. *.app's are easy to install and use, it has a great development platform in Xcode, uses Objective-C and Swift, and all-in-all is a productive OS for people that need to get work done.

Linux is for the hackers out there. You can do anything with Linux. Build your own OS? Sure! Use a terminal that has all the commands you would ever need? Yea, it has it. Linux is for the more advanced user.


--


Now for hardware. A PC is going to give you mixed results based on how much you want to pay. You can get a crappy little netbook for next to nothing or you can get a gaming laptop that even has a mechanical keyboard built into it. Not to mention building your own PC and upgrading it piece by piece over the years.

Macs are very solid machines when it comes to hardware. I got my Macbook Pro mainly because of the support, build quality, and the relatively good specs for what I do. When I first got it, it was a graduation present. I had a job making an app for a small tech firm, and I needed Xcode for iOS development. I easily made back the money I spent on it just because I got that job that required a Mac.

Apple's support system is unmatched. I drove an hour to New Orleans to get my Mac serviced, as it had problems booting. At the Apple Store, it was an easy process. They diagnosed my Mac, said they had never seen the problem before, and took it in for a fix. They shipped it to Tennessee, replaced the entire motherboard (that includes the CPU, RAM, and SSD!) free of charge, and shipped it back to me within 3 days. I almost didn't notice it was ever gone.

Windows PC's have stepped up their game lately with build quality though - if you look at PC's such as the Dell XPS and the Surface Book (ooo that Surface Book is nice. Feels like a Mac, but with a Microsoft twist).

All in all, it's personal preference, and I prefer my Macbook Pro with OS X and Windows 10 on it.

[TheMilkman01]

For our programming we use PCs and for our video editing and other media, we have a Mac laptop. If teams have sufficient funds to do so and a passionate student body in regards to team media, I highly recommend this. Since Macs have an easier learning curve and you can get iMovie for a few bucks, it's quite a good investment in my opinion. You can get refurbished Macs for a pretty decent deal online and if the students are serious about pursuing media, especially video editing, purchasing a Mac laptop online is close to the best start you can get.

[DinerKid]

I use a Macbook Pro 15" as my daily driver. As a college student it is great for much of what I need in classes, typing documents, reading assignment and web browsing. The trackpad is great, battery rocks, and it does the basic things without any fuss. Additionally the Apple store 10 minutes down the street handles any issues should they ever come up (just because engineering students likely CAN fix their own computers, doesn't mean it isn't advantageous to be able to hand it over and not stress about it sometimes). Fully loaded it handles pretty much everything I throw at it, no problem. As an iPhone user it also comes along with the benefit of having my text messages sync up, photos sync, all that jazz, built in with no fuss.

I dual boot the Mac with Windows 10 and use parallels to have a VM of the windows partition. This is mainly for CAD but also serves to grant me access to a handful of other window sonly programs. The VM is nice for "I just need to swing into SolidWorks and grab a few screenshots" while booting into Windows is nice for "I'm going to sit down and do some CAD for 3 hours and want the performance"

All in all I am pretty happy with it as a daily. That being said I also use a dedicated CAD desktop running windows for when I really mean business I have found that a machine running windows that is used just for CAD and a web browser is pretty nice, many of the cons I would come up with for windows don't occur until it has been bogged down with a million things (antivirus that gives you a pop up daily telling you things are going great, a million programs requesting updates.....)

For me Mac OS is nice because it is just seamless, no annoying messages, most things happen automatically rather than requiring permission and popping up windows with alerts, the basic things work well and work out of sight and for me that is worth something. As a college student who doesn't want my computer to be something I have to think about, a mac has served me well.

I always find the Mac/Windows or iPhone/Android arguments interesting. To me neither one is BETTER, each just serves a different user. My mother loves her iPhone because when she needs help with it her friends have iPhones and can help her. My roommate likes to fiddle with every setting possible, write apps, and play around with every single feature of his phone he can, and he loves his android.

~DK

[teslalab2]

Solidworks, Mach3 CNC,.NET, I mean you got your open source knock offs in linux, but lets be honest with out selfs, productivity wise, they suck. You don't have time too make excuses, it just needs too work. That is why no one in industry uses linux.

[Jaci]

JAPPP - "Just another personal preference post"

Let's look a little deeper.

Windows - Strong when it comes to user interface, compatibility and (arguably) productivity. If you're doing CAD or anything like that, this is the obvious choice. However, it's deviation from UNIX and not being POSIX compliant makes it the worst choice for developers.

BUT WAIT - The Linux subsystem for Windows
From what we've seen on the official linux subsystem for windows (and what I've personally demo'd as a windows insider), this could be a huge thing. Bringing the ubuntu userspace to windows would mean you get the best of both worlds -> being POSIX compliant with a PROPER shell, and having existing compatibility with tools from Autodesk, Solidworks and Adobe. Call it personal preference, but once the Linux subsystem is released and stable, I'm finding linux to be a hard choice when it comes to a daily driver computer. That being said, Linux always has a special place in my heart.

Mac OS X - Strong in the UI department. Considering Mac OS X runs atop UNIX and IS POSIX compliant, it's a nice bridge between having a good interface and being a powerful development tool.

The greatest downside is compatibility though: Mac won't run on any hardware you throw at it, and many existing tools available on windows (such as almost anything by Autodesk or Solidworks) won't be compatible.

Personally, I like using OS X on my portable laptop. It's got a nice UI, lets me develop as I move around and the most important thing: doesn't break. If I'm going to use a portable computer, I don't have the time to sit down and fix it. The hardware and software are all made by the same people, and in my 2.5 years of (fairly heavily) using it, I'm yet to have my macbook crash. It JustWerks^TM

Linux - Developer's dream. Linux is great. It's open source, it's efficient, and it has first-class support for software development. But as with everything in life, it has it's downsides.

Compatibility: Linux is often neglected by software vendors. While you can get Open-Source alternatives, for things like CAD and Design, they often don't even come close to comparing with their Mac or Windows counterparts.

User Interface: Linux is nice to use, if you know how to use it. Now, this next part is EXTREMELY my opinion: Linux is nice, until you put a GUI on it. To me, a GUI on Linux is like a desktop computer in a starbucks, it just doesn't fit in the context of its environment. This is why I'm a big fan of the Linux subsystem for Windows, despite my immense hate for the Windows Operating System.

[techhelpbb]

Originally Posted by teslalab2

Solidworks, Mach3 CNC,.NET, I mean you got your open source knock offs in linux, but lets be honest with out selfs, productivity wise, they suck. You don't have time too make excuses, it just needs too work. That is why no one in industry uses linux.

I guess it depends on your interests:

I have plenty of Mach3 and plenty of LinuxCNC.
I think the LinuxCNC is far more powerful in closed loop.
I also think the LinuxCNC community has far greater number of highly competent developers who can program FPGA to assist with closed loop.

.NET is also a hand hold. I mean I think it is great Microsoft finally delivered on the libraries you had to buy by the truckload with VB6. However even Microsoft realized they can not ignore Linux hence Mono.

Solidworks is good. I run it all the time on a Windows VM on Linux or OSX. I also own a license for Rhino which I helped beta on OSX.

If your shop thrives on mere turn key production I can see why you would want it to just work. My shop thrives on innovation so I want to know how and why it works such that I can completely tune my process. I have always made money by being the guy that could do what the bulk repeat people will not.

I mean let's take that a step further:

Why use Mach3 at all? Haas makes great controls. Spend the $30k and skip the retrofit entirely. Use AutoDesk Fusion 360 and HSMWorks so you can leverage someone else's infrastructure. Now you can skip all the CNC/CAD/CAM engineering and relinquish your cash in exchange for the time to focus on the projects. I assume, of course, you have projects that pay enough to cover these costs and up keep.

In reality no body I know in industry that has paying work of complexity enough to cover the CNC/CAD/CAM work bothers with building controls at all. The industrial guys that do dabble with building controls either have limited operating costs or custom needs. A good place for them to start is probably Windows. Sooner or later all the industrial guys I know that are serious either worked till they could buy the integrated controls or ended up on Linux when their needs became closed loop and their systems got custom enough. One of these guys I know is actually doing all this from his wheel chair with limited ability to control his movement so able bodied people we have no excuse.

[GreyingJay]

Originally Posted by teslalab2

Solidworks, Mach3 CNC,.NET, I mean you got your open source knock offs in linux, but lets be honest with out selfs, productivity wise, they suck. You don't have time too make excuses, it just needs too work. That is why no one in industry uses linux.

So your definition of "industry" is desktop based design and manufacturing?

[techhelpbb]

Originally Posted by GreyingJay

So your definition of "industry" is desktop based design and manufacturing?

Let me put this out there:

I own 3 MaxNC machines with Mach3 software that came with them. Why? I wanted a desktop mill out of the box large enough to teach CNC and do limited runs on soft materials. I bought these for beginners in my makerspace

These machines are closed loop steppers. In the electronics on the machine is a PIC that measures the quadrature encoders and retries steps up to 8 times before failure. I can increase the axis power just by replacing the steppers with cog belt reductions, motors with encoders and LinuxCNC. Just like I replaced the spindles, spindle mounts and made new custom encoder mounts.

A great place to start out hence I bought them to help people who are trying to learn. I use a ShopMaster Patriot VFD at home post 2012 model. It has Mach3 and LinuxCNC. I got that machine from a new Haas owner.

[Boltman]

MY favorite system...

My Surface Pro 4 M3....these Hybrids are the future.

Runs Windows10 and Office 365 to perfection
Checks off every feature including Hello
Pen, track-pad, voice and touch
Best display on any system.
6th gen Skylake
Fanless and dead silent

I love my SP4..and students can get 10% off already reduced prices.
I had laptop prior (Vaio) ...the SP4 blows it away and I held on to my Vaio for four years because nothing was better.

[Toatekua]

Originally Posted by techhelpbb

Why hack ChromeOS when you can hack Google's backend with the real targets of value?
A breach in Google Docs would wipe out some law firms I know.

Then do it.

[techhelpbb]

Originally Posted by Toatekua

Then do it.

I am fairly certain the folks at Google Chelsea Market in NYC whom I spent last night with would be trying to stop you frantically right now.

Just saying: it is much easier to attack than defend.

[FrankJ]

I am not sure how much of the this is true today, but ancient history, Apple had a couple of niche markets. Academia & graphic design. In the early days if you did graphic design IE print page layouts, you used an Apple.