Tuesday, February 25, 2014
Just to add a few more data points here: I've had five Macs and none of them had crashed more than three times. I used to own a top model of ThinkPad and its motherboard died within six months. So, there can be some luck involved and you ended up getting a defective unit, but a single data point is not sufficient to say their overall reliability is bad.
To answer Jason's questions, OS X has changed a lot over recent versions, especially Lion and Mountain Lion. But most of the major changes are UI-related, like natural scrolling, mission control, etc. Missing them could affect your productivity but shouldn't prevent you from doing programming tasks. However, I won't recommend an used Mac if it's so overpriced. 50% of the original price for a three year old is reasonable, but I wouldn't pay any more than that. If you don't have budget for a new one, and you can't find an used one, just keep using your Linux box. It might not be as comfortable but wouldn't prevent you from doing anything.
On Tuesday, February 25, 2014 at 5:18 PM, Yin Wang wrote:
--I would suggest a new PC instead of an old Mac if the prices are similar. Macs are good looking but not really that good in terms of reliability. My new macbook pro 13" retina display and Haswell processor crashes badly. Everybody was affected for late 2013 model. Apple released a firmware fix but it's still not really fixed. Now it comes to a deadly stop once per a day or two! Apple is quite loose these days for its quality control. A day's using it would have discovered the problem. I have no idea how they could have released these defective products.
On Tuesday, February 25, 2014 2:00:14 PM UTC-8, Jason Hsu, Rubyist wrote:I realize this is off-topic, but I understand that an overwhelming majority of Rubyists use Mac computers and not PCs. I currently use Linux-powered PCs. Yes, I ditched Windows years ago just like many of you. Using Linux on a used PC is the cheapest way to compute. (I've been able to buy a 4 or 5-year-old PC that works for as little as $40-$50.)
I'm interested in purchasing a Mac to put myself on the same page as other software developers. (I'm used to Linux distros that provide the look and feel of Windows XP.) I will use the Mac for software development projects, but I intend to stick with my Linux-powered PCs for general computing. (I don't want to get locked into the Mac world, because it's so much more expensive. Also, there is a case to be made for being versatile.)
I'm thinking of buying a new mini (starts at $600), a new MacBook (starts at $1000), or a refurbished MacBook (starts at $850).
Some questions:
1. How much has OS X changed over the past several versions? Is something from 5 years ago obsolete? Linux, on the other hand, is free. Any current Linux distro will work very well on a 5-year-old PC, and there are even some Linux distros (like Puppy Linux and antiX Linux) that work well on PCs that are 10 or more years old.
2. Is it just me, or are used Macs so exorbitantly expensive as to defeat the point of buying a used computer in the first place? I looked at Craigslist and found a number of used Mac laptops selling for as much as a new one. Most of the Macs selling for a few hundred dollars or less were very old, such as G4s. (I understand that those are 10-15 years old. Good luck getting even $100 or even $50 from a 10-year-old PC.)
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