MAC or WINDOWS?

I regularly developed my visual basic 6 application using Laptop i7 8gig memory and Windows 8 with 1366 x 768 resolutions. For almost a decade.

Now, I discovered XOJO and I was amazed by its power, so I decided to buy licensed to take full advantage of it. I also bought some 3rd party library to resolved my thirst.

for few weeks evaluating xojo with my experimental project, I realized that my current screen resolution is not convenient to work with xojo. So I bought 2nd monitor which as 1920 x 1080 resolution. It works fine now!

However, I noticed most samples in video uses MAC, and it seems most of you guys are also using MAC?

Do I get better performance using MAC?

We do tend to use a lot of Macs as it lets us

  1. work on OS X (any one of several version - I have 5 that I can run)
  2. run any number of VMS with Windows (I have 7, 8, 8.1 and 10)
  3. run VMS with any number of Linux distros (I have 9 different ones)

all this on my laptop

But we do have people that do use Windows as the primary machine

Being an x-platform tool kind of requires us to work on all of them :slight_smile:

You get better everything … :wink:

I’m always amazed at the poor resolution of screens on Windows PCs (“Full HD” is a joke that most PC users don’t get), but you get what you pay for.

The screen is what you stare at for hours every day. I’m amazed how people care about a few GHz but not about what is the most important item of them all.

I tend to buy my Macs second-hand and am very happy with them. Running Windows and Linux on them too.

Thanks for insight Guys.

Anybody here who experienced transformation from Windows to OSX? Any performance difference?

I am one “misguided soul” working on a Windows machine as my primary computer. Worse, I am enjoying every minute of it. (go figure!)

Yes, there are lots of budget laptops with dismal resolution, and lots of cheap desktops with cheap displays. My laptop has a built-in 1920 X 1080 which is sufficient for most purposes. My desktop has higher resolution monitors and I am looking to replace one monitor with a 4K, where I will be able to stack a few VM’s.

When I am on the market for a new computer, I never buy packages. I select every part, from case to memory sticks and assemble the beast myself. And I am quite sure I can to pit my home built Windows computer against most Macs of the same class, and come out not too ashamed. I am also pretty certain that for an equivalent machine with an equivalent build quality, I saved a few dollars. Your mileage may vary.

Only if you don’t value your time :wink:

I assembled about 600-700 PCs from broken ones that I bought at auctions (out of four broken ones you could usually make three working ones), and I have a custom-build high-end PC as well, but at some point tinkering lost its attraction. I rather did other things.

Well done on higher resolution monitors, but what is the point of 4K? That you can’t see pixels when you put your nose to the screen? Do you really need “nose control”? I’m not yet convinced that 4K is worth it. There is a lot if hype, but a blind test at the shop (not looking at the signs) did not show any difference from a normal viewing distance (30-40 cm). And while I might be able to read point 6 text on screen if I put my nose close I will simply not sit close enough to read it anyway.

Oh dear. A Mac vs PC debate. I can see where this is going and it’s… drum roll please…nowhere!

I’ll be happy to run a book on how long it is till someone mentions Hitler… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_Hitlerum

FWIW I’m a lifelong Mac user but have never been in any way snobbish about it. I’m just glad we have a choice.

[quote=214244:@ronaldo florendo]Thanks for insight Guys.

Anybody here who experienced transformation from Windows to OSX? Any performance difference?[/quote]

To me Mac OS X is faster/smoother. That said, a SSD makes either pretty slick. A MacBook Pro with a SSD can handle OS X and a Windows VM simultaneously without breaking a sweat. I cringe whenever I sit down at a computer with HD now.

My recommendation: MacBook Pro or iMac with 16 GB of RAM and a SSD. Clone your current Windows machine into a VM and off you go.

I’ll bite. I predict the first will be Richard Brown in the seventh post…

Hey, what do I win?!?

If you really want to develop cross-plattform then a Mac is the best plattform for you.
But when it comes down to ship a piece of Windows Software you have to check it on real PCs.

So I use both a 15" Macbook Pro with crisp Retina display, 1 TB SSD and 16 GB RAM with additional external display AND
an “older” Windows 7 PC, i5 something, with 6 GB RAM, 64 GB SSD and 500 GB HDD for testing (heck sometimes for playing too)

Tomas, do you find that the actual machine will show behavior different than a Win7 VM?

You won’t win much if you don’t check my odds before betting! :wink:

@Kem: Yes there are differences! Most displaying problems when using Software within Remote Desktop/ Terminal Services. These could be flickering or somehow invisible input controls. You have to move a window, or minimize and restore it in order to view them.

Just checked my feedback from 2010… it’s still open: <https://xojo.com/issue/11940>
There you can find 2 screenshots…

But that’s with a remote desktop solution, not a VM, no? Or did I miss something?

I have been using Windows XP and now 7 with my Mac Pro using Bootcamp for years.

I could not be happier. The Mac hardware is better (IMO) and I get the benefit of development under two OS.

Back in 2010 it occured only on real RDP connections on real PC’s and not on virtualized ones within VMs… can’t say if this is still today. It took me long nights to get a workaround. Finally I’ve rearranged all affected inputs and windows…

Occasionally yes
Often I dont see flicker on Windows VM’s because the mac inherently double buffers as does parallels
And any specific hard ware may be an issue

I may have to test a DB-driven app of my own on Windows - I’m thinking of buying a ‘lowest-common-denomiator’ POS £200 laptop for this if I have to. Any experience-driven comments on why this may be good/bad vs the VM approach most welcome!

This is always my favorite thing to share in a Mac vs. PC debate - though it doesn’t quite apply here it’s still a chuckle.

I loved those commercials, but my biggest annoyance (a “pet peeve”, if you will) were the parodies that didn’t quite get that the characters represented the machines themselves, not users of the machines.