Originally posted by SoniCX
DVD burning
Macs are great for that because they come with DVD burners standard, iDVD, and iMovie for creating & exporting DVD movies.
work with digital pictures (graphic design)
Macs are also excellent for these purposes because you can get several great programs for working with pictures, including Photoshop (full & Elements), Graphic Converter, Illustrator, Freehand, Flash, Director, etc. The Mac is great too because the higher end models come with dual processors, the likes of which both the system and programs like Photoshop take full advantage of. Macs are often the graphic design professional's computer of choice; about 30% of Adobe's market share is for Mac. That's still only about 1/3, and it's down from 50%, but compared to the Mac's 3-5% market share overall it's pretty high.
You can get a variety of programs for this purpose too, including Dreamweaver, Go Live, Fetch, Transmit, and many more. Mac OS X has PHP, Perl, Apache, and more tools built right into its UNIX core, so you can use these powerful tools right out of the box.
Final Cut Pro. 'Nuff said.
If you want/need less than that, you can use iMovie and a DV camera's Firewire port, or you can purchase Final Cut Express, Adobe Premiere, or even go all out for Avid Cinema. Plus, you can get pro tools like the (now) Mac-only Logic Audio, Cubase, and MOTU's Digital Performer for audio editing, and Adobe After Effects for special FX.
Mac OS X does not require you to use only 1 browser, and even though it comes with Explorer, you can download at least 6 other quality browsers, including Apple's latest venture, Safari; Netscape 7; Camino; and OmniWeb. Plus, X comes with Mail for checking POP3 mail accounts, and you can find other great mail programs for free as well.
This is, and has always been, one of the Mac's weakest angles. The sheer volume of games available for PC has consistently outweighed the Mac severalfold; however, we like to think that only the "best" games get ported/written for the Mac (though that's not always the case). If you don't mind playing a few popular games, maybe a while after they're released for PC; if you want quality shareware titles from the likes of Ambrosia; if you can afford Virtual PC and get a computer that can handle running games in it; then you should definitely get a Mac. If you
need the latest, greatest games
now, on the absolute
best hardware possible, and you need
all the games you can get, then you should get a PC. (Hell, you should buy a top-of-the-line PC, top-of-the-line Mac, Xbox, Playstation, and Gamecube because you have too much free time!
)
With all these advantages, why would you buy another boring Wintel box? If you're addicted to blue screens of death (BSD! LOL! ::ha:: ); if you actually
like Luna (or actually prefer it over Aquawould you rather be an Aquatic or a Lunatic?
); if you need obscure programs like ___________ (<insert obscure program here); if you're on the tightest of budgets; if you have no personality and you want to blend in with the majority instead of fighting back against mainstream society and buying a classy sports computer.
