Been eyeing an Apple, should I wait for Vista?

For a while now, since Apple finally switched to Intel, and ATI graphics, I have sort of wondered, would Apple become better off than Microsoft? Even tho I have thoughts of trying Vista when it comes to an affordable price point, I may install that on my notebook (which was NOT affected by that battery recall, btw), and I may replace my two, going on three year old desktop with an iMac in late 2007 - early 2008. By then, Vista will become a standard OS for the PC. However (now I know that Macs and Vista PCs are like, well, Apples and Oranges (pun intended)), I'm still wondering whether I should consider an Apple by that time on top of Vista, since I hear people complaining about how Vista's not gonna be nearly as stable as XP, or Mac OS X have been. Still, I'd still have some diversity, a notebook that runs Vista and Linux, then an iMac desktop. iMacs seem to be a bit cheaper than they used to be, even with a little customization to them.

So let me see if I understand the question. You've heard that Vista won't be very stable and so you want to try to run it on a computer it isn't even intended ( let alone supported ) to work on at all?

You should check out the Apple website for their WWDC which was a couple of weeks ago.

The full morning presentation is available online and it shows some of the really neat stuff they have in mind for Mac OSX release : "Lepoard".

IPete2.

Er, aren't Apple notebooks currently experiencing 'The amazing Dell-esque exploding battery syndrome(tm)'? :P

http://www.engadget.com/2006/08/06/another-powerbook-violently-explodes/

Hes talking about a replacment for October 2007

Ram, Post and ask in like august 2007

No, I was mentioning an iMac, not an iBook. I am keeping my current notebook (which is a Dell, but not affected by the battery recall), it's my desktop that I'm replacing eventually in another year or two.

hehe, Sony's sub par hardware again. Dell had about 4 million batteries recalled and Apple about 1.5 million. And its all Sony's fault. Sony is going to have to cough up somewhere in the region of $260,000,000 in compensation for the problem according to the local radio station.

My iMac mini was intel core, and it can install Windows XP and made it work, it took me days to figure out how to make dual boot, but I think worth it.

while it's not a super PC but works well, and BMax runs.

Sure, also, with the Boot Camp, I wonder if Apple has plans to allow Vista to be dual-booted with Mac OS X, if it comes to that. Look at what Apple did opening their doors to XP. I mean, why not have Linux on there, have what I call a "Neapolitan Hard Drive?" The three biggest flavors of operating systems all on the same computer, that'll probably make a diverse computer well worth the price of admission, just as long as your HDD's big enough.

...Or you could just stick with XP, like millions upon millions of others will when Vista hits the streets.

It looks like the Vista uptake will be a lot slower than previous windows versions, since it has little real world benefit, significantly higher system requirements, and especially the corporate world appears to plan to take it slow, in part due to the added hardware cost. XP still has a couple more years of extended support (= security patches) in it, and no one is twisting your arm to force you to get Vista...

Why would you want Vista in the first place if you already have a Mac?!?

Unless you buy a new machine then and it comes pre-installed - you could ofcourse buy the full version of XP and install that.

I think Vista will get quite a good uptake. Especialy with the cut down office versions that will be cheaper than XP and run on lower spec systems.

Well, my plan was to upgrade my notebook (a Dell) to Vista, and dual-boot it with SuSE Linux (once Vista comes to an affordable cost point for an upgrade version, if one exists), and then trade my desktop in for an iMac, when the time comes, and save some space on my desktop there, yet still have a very powerful All-in-One design for the other platform from Apple. Hey, it pays to be diverse in the computer industry, but it can be worth it, if you make it all come together in just the right way.

True.

In the long run, it doesn't matter what you want, it's their ball and they're taking it home.

I wouldn't recommend Vista in the near future. There's just nothing being offerred that XP can't do more efficiently. Ask again when VistaSP1 is out, I suppose.

Here's a mad question, why would you (or anyone) want Vista? What does it do that XP can't?

Well, I was almost gonna upgrade to Vista on my notebook around the same time as I pick up the iMac, by then Vista may already have SP1, I mean, Win XP had the first service pack within a year of release, am I correct?

DX10. Supposedly MS won't release it for older operating systems including XP.

So it kind of depends how 'the industry' will respond: If they switch to DX10 en-masse then people kind of 'have to' buy vista to be able to play any games... OR more realistically, DX10 will be slow on the uptake as well especially *because* there are still so many people running something other than vista.

Well, I wouldn't think that DX10 would exactly be the new standard until, about the time when Bill Gates kisses his CEO or Chairman position, whatever, goodbye, which won't be until about a year after Vista's big launch, either then, or when SP1 is officially announced and/or released. We have to see which comes first.

I switched to Windows XP because of all the bugs in Windows 95,98 and Me.
Windows XP does all I need and is incredible stable for me, so there's really no incentive to switch to Vista.
If there's more people out there who think like me, I think its going to take a good while before Vista and DX10 is a minimum for newly released games.

halo 2 is dx10 only and will be the first vista only title. but i cant say im tempted. maybe tempted with going fully over to linux

Yeah, if I were to do an iMac, I'd make a neapolitan hard drive out of a 250 GB HDD, and have all three OSes, Linux, Mac OS X, AND Windows Vista (maybe XP Pro if Vista tanks (which MS may not sell as well as they've hoped)), just to have that diversity.

Titles that MS have a firm grip on due to Xbox related licensing obviously don't count ;]