fox-orian's Profile

Well, I'm a Windows user and have been since 3.1. I honestly remember not caring about Macintosh even when OS X 10.0/10.1 came out. Something about it always put me off, like the OS was "empty" or a little limited. Well, along comes 10.4 and this thing called iLife '05 and it finally got my attention. So, with the long-awaited purchase of a 1.8 GHz DualCore G5 PowerMac and OS X 10.4, I've expierienced (for about a month now) what makes a Mac so different from a Windows PC. (iLife and Front Row especially.) -- I do beleive my jaw hit the floor when I played with Garageband 2.0 for the first time. I now plan on getting the Jam Packs just for the mere sake of playing with it. I think I got giddy when I played around with Front Row, too. (using the Front Row enabler program.) It was like I was using a humungous iPod on my screen... Even though I am still a Windows user at heart, I think Mac should keep iLife to themselves. Though iLife would be a nice thing to have for Windows, it would also be (as I have read above) hard to feed to windows users. I agree, most windows users wouldn't know of its existence. Furthermore, most windows users would have no use for it for lack of interest. The small percentage of those who would buy it could then be further broken down into users who would resort to pirating it instead of actually buying it. Overall, it's the way that the iLife applications integrate in with Mac OS X that makes them so valuable. iLife should be an essential part of any Mac users application folder. It seems like these programs on a windows PC would just "be there." Sort of like your car having a different colored door after getting it replaced. As it also stands with Windows XP, it also seems like the workflow and elegance of these programs would be seriously hindered. Like Front Row-- I cannot see Front Row on Windows. It seems like Windows would have to keep a process continually open [consuming resources] in order to have Front Row launch upon calling it. Windows has Widgets, yes, but I was always pissed about Windows widgets because even if they were not being used, the widgets remained open as seperate running programs in the background. I have to say I was NOT surprised to find that iTunes ended up running more efficiently on my G5 than my Windows PC. I built my windows PC from scratch, and it's hardware is much more powerful than my G5 -- and my PC has only one processor. But, the G5 made me realize that the operating system you use can mean the difference between max performance and max squandered power. If Microsoft dosen't get Vista done right next year, I think I may discontinue the upkeep of my windows system and full convert. Having now a good understanding of both operating systems, (and owning both types of systems,) I seriously prefer all creative software for my macintosh. I would definately not want to see iLife abused by Windows. So even though I do all of my creative work (and real work) on my G5, I pretty much now only return to my windows PC to do the one thing I designed it for: gaming.