csmuk

No. The PC is a modular standardised architecture. There are no COTS components that would fit in such a case. This is by design. Apple forked their own design.

Pro Tools. I've used Logic Pro: it's horridly unreliable. I no longer have a DAW in favour of a Triton as it's all I need personally but my experience with Logic was awful.

Adobe After Effects + Adobe Premiere Pro. The guys I know who use it do it on Windows because OSX is a moving target from hell. You get reliable iSCSI support on Windows and better SAN performance. Plus it's easier to get 10Gbit ethernet cards to your SAN when you have some real PCI express slots available.

They don't use internal disks but some of us do for storing virtual machines in my case.

See my other comments about how my Mac experience has gone. Also look at Apple forums. Nothing but bitching from people about endless stupid problems.

Microsoft get a bad rep for beta testing their products on the customers but if you've used iWork on an iPad recently you'll see what I mean.

Not pleased. People need to look at these problems pragmatically and stop defending something which has descended into the same hell as everything else.

Do it. I still use a T400 every day and have a T61 as a fallback. There's nothing like them out there.

Long post. This should cover it. Family of 5 history of Apple and Lenovo/IBM kit:

2010 MacBook Pro (DEAD 2011 - caught fire after water spillage next to it - WTF). 2006 MacBook Pro (DEAD 2008 - logic board failure). 2007 MacBook (DEAD 2010 - logic board failure). 2006 Intel iMac (DEAD 2008 - backlight). 2007 Mac Mini (sold 2009 - worked fine at the time).

2005 IBM T43 (ALIVE - sister's daily driver). 2006 Lenovo T61 (ALIVE - backup machine - stopped using it in 2012). 2007 Lenovo T400 (ALIVE - bought 2012 second hand. My daily driver). 2008 Lenovo X200 (ALIVE - mail server because it's cheap to run).

All of the above have lived a HARD life.

The only Apple kit I have that is still alive is a 2008 iPod Nano that barely works (to be expected here). Two iPad 2's (one barely manages 2 hours on battery - replacing that will be fun!) and a brand new iPad Mini Retina.

Apple kit stinks from my experience.

I don't want to hear the favourite defence of "anecdote" to this post. Once probability. Twice coincidence. Thrice certainty.

The shipped BIOS is a little rough as well.

The T61 which is where my main experience lies has hardware whitelists for WiFi cards and restricts the internal SATA port to basic SATA speeds rather than SATA2 speeds which the chipset supports.

There are many hacked BIOSes (I use Middleton's BIOS) out there which fix this though.

This. I worked for a company that had lots (3000+) T60's and they were all Core2 units.

The X60 that they advertise does not.

However, you can disconnect the hardware pretty easy. I've done this on my T400. Took about 5 mins with a Swiss army knife screwdriver (all you need to service a ThinkPad!).

I'm not sure it should be allowable.

WiFi firmware can in theory allow passive monitoring and forwarding of data. This is because the WiFi card is a small self-contained embedded system.

The CPU microcode (and arguably architecture) is more difficult to modify but it's possible that the microcode for an AES round opcode could be intentionally flawed. Enough press is around not to have to explain this.

USB is the one I find interesting. Anything (webcam/keyboard/mouse) could arbitrarily register itself as an HID device and inject data into your OS.

The whole systems architecture is a mess.

I'm not suggesting we go back to discrete wire-wrapped PDP11's but something needs to be done by putting security and privacy first. That means starting again as where we are isn't good.

T60p was far superior build to any MacBook ever made. My old T61 which is virtually identical had the living crap beaten out of it 10 hours a day for 5 years solid and it still works fine today. It had a new battery and a new fan and that was it.

Well worth the investment.

The OS really doesn't matter is the point. Big apps: after effects, mathematica etc - that sort of workstation stuff doesn't make a difference.

Virtualization is fine for non desktop apps. That's exactly what I do.

Until you have to compile something major...

Then both OSX and Windows are awful.

All computers are trade offs but when you start trading sensible things for appearance then it's just idiocy.

It's the Ugg boot of computers. Looks pretty and keeps your feet warm but you can't get it wet and it isn't waterproof, they fuck up your feet and fall to bits.

I'd rather have a pair of Berghaus explorers, warm and dry feet and for them to still be on one piece after a 20 mile hike (HP Z820).

Don't really care about the OS - you can get where you need to with virtualization.

This. See my comments for another bad XServe experience.

That's fine until you take your Pro back to apple and they don't have your configuration available and you have to wait 3 weeks for a replacement (this does happen a lot with non standard apple build to order devices). Even worse with an XServe I inherited: they couldn't replace it in warranty. Ended up with a supermicro 1U with debian on it in under 24 hours from buy to install.

My HP: redundant PSU, disks, next day service for all parts or replacement unit.

No competition. I can't afford the downtime.

Or you can buy an HP Z820. OSX is pretty much moot for workstation grade machines. The software is all cross platform.

And wires dangling everywhere? To get anything other than comedy storage, you're going to need a pile of lightning devices hanging off it.

And don't give me all that crap about Apple being tried and tested - last MacBook Pro I had was totally unreliable.