Reasons why not to go Macintosh

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Reason 7 : "Macs are slower"

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Macs are slower... compared to what? Compared to Windows based PCs? Where could such an assumption come from? Here's a few possibilities:

1. Unfavourable 'Bang for the buck'
2. Top of the range
3. Historical factors
4. The 'Megahertz Myth'
5. The operating system

There are some PCs that are faster than some Macs; there are some Macs that are faster than some PCs. A top of the range PC will be faster than a bottom of the range Mac for instance. But that doesn't really tell you anything. If processing power is your prime consideration, then you buy the top of the range. If price is your prime concern, then you have to sacrifice processing power. This is the same for any platform.

There is the big question of 'Bang for the buck' though. Being as there is much more choice or custom configurability in the PC world than with Macs, you could potentially configure a PC with much better performance than a Mac of similar price – which is great if performance is all you're concerned with – but does this Mac have something of a non-performance enhancing nature included as standard that this speed-demon PC doesn't have? If so, then the Mac might be slower for this price point, but that doesn't necessarily make it less value.

Just remember, Apple certainly isn't the cheapest brand name out there, but it's often for good reason.

See also reason 3 – 'Macs are too expensive'

As for whether top of the range of other brands of PC are faster than a top of the range Mac, that's highly debatable considering their technical similarity. Technology advances from one day to the next, so which brand has got the latest bleeding edge components today, will probably be just one of many tomorrow. And anyway, when you're talking about top end of the range, slower doesn't mean slow by any stretch of the imagination.

At the end of the day, what you do need to ask yourself is what do you want to do with this computer? Internet, word processing, digital photos, playing MP3s; any moderately modern computer of any brand or platform, of any price, will handle this quite adequately. Bleeding edge performance will be wasted on such common tasks. It's like a 200mph supercar. Granted, all that power is nice to have under your foot, but is it worth putting right at the top of your priorities if all you do is commute to work with it?

Where such a myth could have been cultivated, was in the past. There was a time not too long ago when the Macintosh architecture was based around PowerPC processors; one of the very few PC manufacturers to do so. The vast majority of the remainder – the whole Windows PC platform in fact – used architecture based around compatability with the Intel processor (x86). With these two platforms having such a different architecture, there would inevitably be times when one or the other had the advantage, and the other had to play catchup. As such, there may very well have been times when the Mac had the inherently slower architecture than the competing Intel based platform.

But that was yesterday. Today however, The Macintosh platform is based around the x86 architecture too. So if Macs are inherently slower, it is not so compared to the Windows PC platform, being basically the same. Down side of that of course, is that they're never going to be inherently faster either.

Incidentally, another historical factor is the common misapprehension among the not so technical minded, that came to be commonly known as the 'Megahertz Myth'. That is, the assumption that clock speed of the processor, is the sole or main measure of a computer's speed.

Firstly, the processor is only one factor of many which determines the power of a computer, but also, this clock speed – effectively the processor's heartbeat – is only one factor of many which determines how powerful a processor is. To assume they are the same thing would be akin to assuming a car whose engine can rev higher, while disregarding every other factor, must be the fastest.

As touched on above, there was a time when Macs used a different architecture of processors (PowerPC) than the rest of the PC world. These processors were often of a lower clock speed than the Intel processors of the time; culminating in the Pentium 4 processor, which were purposefully designed to run higher clock speeds, but were not actually as fast as their higher clock speed would lead one to believe. As such, someone not familiar with the 'megahertz myth' may assume the Mac's processors were a lot slower. They were not. Processor speed is a lot more complicated than can be summarised into a single number.

But now, the old high-revving Pentium processors are history, and as said, Macs are using the same processors as the PC platform anyway, so it's all moot.

All this of course, has only looked at raw, number crunching power that largely comes from the hardware. But there are other aspects to consider. A computer may be powerful, but still not 'feel' fast. That 'feel' will largely come from the software, or more specifically, it's operating system. Not necessarily how efficient it is, but more endemic of the generation of hardware it was designed to run on.

For instance, modern hardware running a last generation OS, will usually feel more 'snappy' compared to running a modern OS, which may appear comparatively 'sluggish'. In general, the more recently the OS was developed, the more likely it is it will expect to find hardware that can feed it with the kind of resources it needs to run such niceties like its graphical eye candy. An older OS will not have those niceties to such a degree, and as such, will make much fewer demands on its hardware; a consequence of being designed at a time when hardware was much less beefy.

So it all comes down to preference and individual opinion. Some may prefer the consequential snappiness of running an older OS, like Windows XP or Mac OS 9; others may prefer the niceties of a modern, good looking OS, like Windows Vista or Mac OS X. Horses for courses.

...in short, for all practical purposes, Macs are just as powerful as any other comparable model from any other brand of PC.

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