Considering purchasing a new Macbook today....

[Amastacia]

If you do decide to spend your money on a Mac, do the world a tremendous favor and actually protect it properly. The number of retards who are 100% convinced of the security/untouchability of their Macs is scary, to say the least.

OS-X has plenty of exploits and security flaws, and more will become apparent as market share grows. A lot of the peace of mind of users comes from "security through obscurity" which is both a terrible thing to rely on, and prone to going away as more units are shipped.

There are malware distributors openly advertising their willingness to pay ne'er-do-wells for each Mac they can infect and add to their botnets. It's not because it's a feat to hack a Mac, it's because many Mac users consider themselves safe/immune from such attacks, and are thus more inviting targets (and easier to exploit for longer).

===

One general piece of advice: Don't ever become attached to a brand.

Draw up a list of things you need your laptop to do, figure out which options will meet those needs, and select the one with the lowest total cost of ownership. Factor in the time/effort necessary to come up to speed on new technology as part of the cost.

Today, the best option might indeed be a Mac. Tomorrow it might be a Netbook running Linux or a Windows machine.

If social trappings (good or bad) are a factor in what is/is not worth buying, I wish you the best, and admit you've probably already made up your mind for illogical reasons and no amount of advice for/against/otherwise is going to matter.

If that last bit sounds like Mac-hating folderol, I guarantee you it is not. There are many people for whom a Mac is genuinely the best option, but the reasoning for that has nothing whatsoever to do with the branding on the product.

[Electro]

To Darus,

I want to use it for surfing web, music, videos ( i edit video's a lot, currently working on a project for a skate company), playing ffxi a little through bootcamp while I am away from home. Also your general laptop features. Getting into recording more music lately too, so will probably check out the new software for that. Also yes "regardless" I do graphic design for my brothers clothing company and would use it for this as well.

To Amastacia
I agree with you that people don't take care of their stuff and it pisses me off too. I have a laptop that I had in college that is still in great condition though its just not up to date with what I need. I'm giving it to my niece though who is about 13 years old. Something she can facespace and mybook on . . .

[Senoska]

To Darus,

I want to use it for surfing web, music, videos ( i edit video's a lot, currently working on a project for a skate company), playing ffxi a little through bootcamp while I am away from home. Also your general laptop features. Getting into recording more music lately too, so will probably check out the new software for that. Also yes "regardless" I do graphic design for my brothers clothing company and would use it for this as well.

What software do you do image design in? What software do you intend on doing recording in? What software do you use for videos?

I'll bet you that the answers are Photoshop, Audacity, and After effects. All of which run the exact same (if not better due to a wider range of plugin support for pc) on a pc.

[Senoska]

For me, as a scientist(specifically a linguist(, you'll find that the science community is very OSX oriented, and there's actually thousands of research specific software that is OSX only.

First: Lol.
Second: Never used Gnu/Linux, have you?

[Darus Grey]

What software do you do image design in? What software do you intend on doing recording in? What software do you use for videos?

I'll bet you that the answers are Photoshop, Audacity, and After effects. All of which run the exact same (if not better due to a wider range of plugin support for pc) on a pc.

The answer is Avid/Final Cut Pro/Motion/Logic Studio, you dumb fuck.

No wonder no one likes you.

[Korietsu]

First: Lol.
Second: Never used Gnu/Linux, have you?

Someone's never opened X11 or XTERM. Even if XNU.

[Linliel]

Hi OP, I think the new Macbooks look pretty nice. I had the previous incarnation of the Macbooks (just upgraded to a MBP recently) and they ran really well. Great resale value on them too when you want to upgrade. I took mine everywhere with me, overseas, to work, back home, etc., wrote my PhD on it, one of the best things is getting a big backup drive and using time machine, it was stupid easy to back things up with that. Saved my butt a couple of times too, when I did stupid things and deleted what turned out to be actually important stuff.

[Celeste]

I had a MBP for 3 years. Bought the Gateway laptop I have now last April. Besides the "Genius Bar" employees acting like I'm stupid when I came in for the paint slowly being chipped off due to perspiration about 3 times(Which took a week to get a new cover for it each time), and the logic board dying on me 2 times(Which took even longer to replace), they flat-out refused to replace the laptop, instead offering me a downgraded refurbished model.

So, being without my computer for several weeks throughout my entire time owning it, it made me bitter. The OS was certainly good looking, and didn't require much working, and was easy customizable, it felt very empty. Having paid $2000 for this laptop, I expected it to be more enjoyable. I have to say this, the operating system felt cold to me, which surprised me because the laptop was so hot it was chipping the paint off the top cover.

I'm not going to bother with OS X, or Apple computers again. In fact, I pray a good MP3 player comes around that can rival the iPod chain, because I seriously want nothing to do with that company again. Have I mentioned how terrible Call of Duty 2 ran on it? Jesus, trying to play WoW was rough too, those were dark times for me. I mostly came back to regular computers for the options open to me, and because of the shitty customer service in-store.

In before Apple fanboys tear me apart.

[Blabj]

Senoska, trolling badly or terrible overly pushy opinions, you decide.

The fact you push After Effects for editing was a bit silly. And the fact that you seem to take this holier than thou I know best approach and basically belittle most people's ideas and uses, instead of just arguing your point, makes you look a bit like a douche.

Also, just going back to your argument of plugin support. You do realise plugins for all those programs aren't platform specific and will run on anything that the program runs on. I have around 35 plugins for after effects that I use on a regular basis, both on my computer and on my MBP.

[Isiolia]

In before Apple fanboys tear me apart.

Nah, people have good and bad experiences with both. I've had Apple laptops for the past, oh, 8 years or so. First one of the original G4 models, and currently a two-year-old-ish Macbook. Nary a problem from them. I don't find the OS "cold", though it does have a different feel to it. However, I've seen a few people that have had bad luck with their Apple machines. I'm kind of like that too, if things go badly with a brand, I probably won't buy them again.

Which is why I wouldn't touch Gateway with a 10 foot pole. Hi2U company who makes crappy products, got bought out n' split, then had the corporate support side declare bankruptcy after stringing people along for months about pending service. Being stuck with ~50 students and ~15 sports medicine GAs using shitty tablets that now don't have the extended warranty support we paid for is -awesome-.

But then, there are folks that seem to have no issue with 'em either.

Granted, Apple has somewhat lacking warranty options (no accidental damage, namely), but I've needed as many replacement motherboards in a week on those Gateways as I've needed on Macs in a year...

[OctavoGilgamesh]

Which is why I wouldn't touch Gateway with a 10 foot pole. Hi2U company who makes crappy products, got bought out n' split, then had the corporate support side declare bankruptcy after stringing people along for months about pending service. Being stuck with ~50 students and ~15 sports medicine GAs using shitty tablets that now don't have the extended warranty support we paid for is -awesome-.

I'm not getting into the Apple debate, personally I have had bad experiences with them, but I know others who love and swear by them.

That being said, I will totally agree with the fact that Gateway is a terrible, terrible company. From service, to quality of parts, to the quality of the NA sales group, the whole company needs a shakeup.

I previously worked for a large company who exclusively used Gateway PC's and my group was responsible for supporting those said PC's. We would constantly push for vendor reviews, but Gateway would just lower their prices below what the competitor's would offer. It's a bit hard to convince the CIO to change vendors when one was clearly lower in initial cost.

[Cephius]

In fact, I pray a good MP3 player comes around that can rival the iPod chain, because I seriously want nothing to do with that company again.

I own a Zune, it's quite good actually :b

[Isiolia]

I'm not getting into the Apple debate, personally I have had bad experiences with them, but I know others who love and swear by them.

That being said, I will totally agree with the fact that Gateway is a terrible, terrible company. From service, to quality of parts, to the quality of the NA sales group, the whole company needs a shakeup.

I previously worked for a large company who exclusively used Gateway PC's and my group was responsible for supporting those said PC's. We would constantly push for vendor reviews, but Gateway would just lower their prices below what the competitor's would offer. It's a bit hard to convince the CIO to change vendors when one was clearly lower in initial cost.

I've had good n' bad experiences with Apple too. Not all of which are directly their fault, but still. Honestly, I've had bad experiences/products from almost every company I've dealt with.

Gateway now is a part of Acer, along with some other not-so-great brands. Outside of Netbooks, my experience with Acer stuff has been pretty bad as well. The irony is, the company that took the corporate/support side was Micron. I mean, I can't exactly blame them for killing off their purchase...I probably had 20 motherboard replacements alone, much less hinge/LCD swaps...but it's still annoying from the end-user standpoint.

[Nattack]

I prefer Creative Zen. they're nifty things~

[Darus Grey]

If it wasn't the fact that I prefer my phone and music/video player to be the same device, I'd definitely get a Zune over an Ipod.

The only thing Ipod has going is the App store, Zune, to me, is a clearly superior music/video device at this point in time.

[Xfaustx]

I've owned PC's my entire life and just recently switched to Mac, mainly because at the time I didn't feel like dealing with Vista when it was still a shit hole. So I worked with XP until my PC crapped out, switched to a MBP. I love the computer and never saw too many issues with it for the 1st year. Recently though I've had an issue where certain keys on the keyboard DONT work. My "y" "6" and "/" keys in particular never work, in fact just to type this last sentence it took me forever smashing on the keys for it to finally type out. I googled the issue and found it's a semi common issue. The OS itself is great and stable, and the only issue I have is gaming support, I don't like that I had to install a separate partition just to play games on, and to buy a gaming keyboard and mouse I had to find Mac compatible ones "Razer Death Adder Mouse" and the "G-15" which just had recent Mac driver support. Debating taking in the computer to get the keys fixed, but I'm no longer under warranty, but the new keyboard doesn't have such issues. All in all the MBP is the way too go though, I've had very few issues with the OS compared to Windows, and the computers are solid. I'm not going to rehash the resale argument because it's been said a million times, or the "I graphic design so I Apple", though I do know quite a few music professionals who swear by Mac. Oh and the Mac Fag Genius Bar, I refuse to walk into that stupid store EVER. That stores customer support sucks ass. I had to wait to talk to someone to replace my power supply (old power supplies were prone to melting, which they've since fixed), for a good 4 hours when there were employees free to talk to me (because I didn't make an appointment [WHY THE FUCK DO I NEED AN APPOINTMENT TO REPLACE SOMETHING]), when they finally took me, all they did was walk in back a grab a new cord, like they couldn't have saved me 5 hours of my time and just done that in the first place, I was pretty furious. I would suggest buying the apple product support package when/if you buy the computer, saves you a ton of time, hastle, money if anything does go wrong. Mac has it's pros and cons just like any company, buy what you like and what specs suite you. And Senoskas argument was retarded.