Will the 'easy-to-use' Mac OS do everything for me?

I'm an electrical engineering student, going into my final year of college, and have thus far been a windows user all of my life. I've used Mac Pros in my research labs but never owned one. I'm considering buying a new macbook, but I want to know whether there is any justification for the price difference. Now i know this question has been asked loads of times already, but what I want to know is, with the mac os (which is the main benefit of the mac) will I have the amount of control over my system as I have in windows? Right now, I know about most of the processes and services running on my windows machine, know the registry, know of little tweaks and hacks and stuff that helps me in little ways. What I want to know is, will the 'easy-to-use' Mac OS do everything for me and cause me to relinquish control, or can i still be an 'advanced user' (don't know if i've used the term right).

I'm sorry this has gotten so long winded, but i'm honestly quite confused. I want a mac, but i want my purchase to be justified by more than that.

P.S. Hope I've posted in the right section of the forums...

Thanks a lot.

If you know what you're doing you can be a pretty advanced user. If you need your machine to do something you can write a shell script and have it execute through Terminal.

I can't particularly think of anything that you do already on a pc that you can't also do on a Mac. You may have to give a different command or push a key in a different place, but it can be done.

I use a Mac because i like to work with my machine, not work on it...

mazyiar said:

I'm an electrical engineering student, going into my final year of college, and have thus far been a windows user all of my life. I've used Mac Pros in my research labs but never owned one. I'm considering buying a new macbook, but I want to know whether there is any justification for the price difference. Now i know this question has been asked loads of times already, but what I want to know is, with the mac os (which is the main benefit of the mac) will I have the amount of control over my system as I have in windows? Right now, I know about most of the processes and services running on my windows machine, know the registry, know of little tweaks and hacks and stuff that helps me in little ways. What I want to know is, will the 'easy-to-use' Mac OS do everything for me and cause me to relinquish control, or can i still be an 'advanced user' (don't know if i've used the term right).

I'm sorry this has gotten so long winded, but i'm honestly quite confused. I want a mac, but i want my purchase to be justified by more than that.

P.S. Hope I've posted in the right section of the forums...

Thanks a lot.

Click to expand...

Getting a mac has the added benefit of introducing you to the Linux/Unix world. Many of the worlds computers (especially servers) run Linux or Unix. Only the Mac can run OS X, Windows, and Linux. Windows and Linux can be run in a virtual machine or natively by dual or triple booting the machine. As an electrical engineering student you'll be doing programming.

Macs are very customizable. They also correct my three biggest issues with Windows - the registry, the lack of a good command line, malware. I used windows for many years. I switched to the Mac 3 years ago and have no regrets.

It can do whatever you want it to, but it will do it DIFFERENTLY than a PC. So don't think that knowing Windows will mean you can magically make a Mac do things in the same way. But there's no reason why you shouldn't be able to tweak it however you want.

rsmithgi said:

Many of the worlds computers (especially servers) run Linux or Unix.

Click to expand...

Aside from the erroneous claim (Windows runs a majority of the computers), OS X is a Unix OS . OS X is certified Unix.

Control over the system? Yes and no. You can abstract yourself from the inner workings if you wish but can also get down to the "nitty gritty" should you wish by opening up a bash prompt (Terminal.app). I wouldn't recommend this though if you are unfamiliar with a *nix setup. Your *nix experience should come from a machine that can die and go down (best way to do so might even be with a virtual machine).

Ultimately though, only you can answer the question. Do you feel that you have enough control when you use the Mac Pros in the lab?

I was a BS Comp Eng (in '99), now a MS Elec & Comp Eng. If you're in your senior year, you will most likely benefit from Mathematica and/or MATLAB (student versions, of course). Control over your laptop/desktop/OS doesn't really translate to being able to perform in your senior year of coursework or your senior design project...unless it's focused somehow on being able to tweak your computer. ...Justification for price difference? Probably not for your needs.
That being said, I bought a few things near the end of my undergraduate studies that didn't contribute to the task at hand. If it's stuck on your brain, and you won't starve due to the purchase, you might as well buy the **** thing. Or get over it, maybe by asking yourself, "six months down the road, I'll have had a chance to work with this, now it's a tool that I'm using to complete my 'wee-hours-of-the-morning' work, but am I also stressing about being a few thousand bucks in the hole?" Good luck in your decision. And good luck in school.

p.s. Usable workspace is definitely more important to me than portability, and so is price. After months of looking at the Mac Pro, I scooped up a deal on a iMac 24 2.66 (new, 3yr apple care, approx $1320 after rebates)- performance-wise, it will meet all my needs as a grad student, so I suspect something like that will meet yours as well. Another thought: I attended a presentation by Edward Tufte (The Work of Edward Tufte and Graphics Press)
this January, and at one point he said (paraphrase) "for working, buy the biggest display you can." I can say I am continually frustrated by the lack of workspace available on my laptop. FWIW.

mazyiar said:

I'm an electrical engineering student, going into my final year of college, and have thus far been a windows user all of my life. I've used Mac Pros in my research labs but never owned one. I'm considering buying a new macbook, but I want to know whether there is any justification for the price difference. Now i know this question has been asked loads of times already, but what I want to know is, with the mac os (which is the main benefit of the mac) will I have the amount of control over my system as I have in windows? Right now, I know about most of the processes and services running on my windows machine, know the registry, know of little tweaks and hacks and stuff that helps me in little ways. What I want to know is, will the 'easy-to-use' Mac OS do everything for me and cause me to relinquish control, or can i still be an 'advanced user' (don't know if i've used the term right).

I'm sorry this has gotten so long winded, but i'm honestly quite confused. I want a mac, but i want my purchase to be justified by more than that.

P.S. Hope I've posted in the right section of the forums...

Thanks a lot.

Click to expand...

If you're comfortable with Windows and completely satisfied with it, then no, there is no reason to switch. If you are frustrated with Windows and are truly ready for something different, then it may be worth a look.

Don't listen to the zealots. OS X is great for some people, for others not so much. If you don't like change and aren't ready to learn something new, then stick with what you know.

mazyiar said:

... but what I want to know is, with the mac os (which is the main benefit of the mac) will I have the amount of control over my system as I have in windows? Right now, I know about most of the processes and services running on my windows machine, know the registry, know of little tweaks and hacks and stuff that helps me in little ways. What I want to know is, will the 'easy-to-use' Mac OS do everything for me and cause me to relinquish control, or can i still be an 'advanced user' ...

Click to expand...

I'd say you have the wrong impression of what it is you do with Windows - I wouldn't characterize all that stuff as "control" over the OS, but a wrenching of control from the OS. All of that stuff is needed to be done to maintain a smooth running machine and the tweaking is needed to get and keep it performing at peak efficiency. It's needed, because if you don't do all that and let the OS do what it wants, you'll have a machine running slow as molasses.

I went through tweak withdrawal the first month on my Mac. There really is not a whole lot to be done. OS X does seem to take care of itself without the need for you to spend 25% or more of your computing time maintaining the OS. That time can now be used for doing what you bought a computer for in the first place.

What you're relinquishing is not control of the OS, but the need to be in control of the OS.

If you really want to be able to do all that under the hood stuff, then you've got the heart of Unix lying underneath and a new learning experience ahead. For me though, after my tweak withdrawal subsided, I was more than happy being able to leave all that behind with that "other" machine.