Quote - Can I ask what the appeal of a MAC computer is?

There are so many things that are made for PC users that MAC users can't use. Lots of poser related items from installers to scripts to who knows what else.

that's funny... I was thinking the same about Windows-based PC's. For instance, goodies like NFS for instant disk space expansion, a handy terminal session with familiar commands, spare CPU cycles I can use for rendering (and not for running an AntiVirus package)... stuff like that - no joy on a Windows box for 'em. Of course, I do realize that most folks have little-to-no use for such things, but I find tehm to be helpful.

The few Windows-based utilities I do want to run are sitting comfortably on a Win2k-based VirtualPC instance (I have an older G5 box - newer ones can use Parallels to get the same thing).

So, in effect, you can get both Windows and Mac apps running on a Mac.

Quote - When I was looking for a new computer early last year I saw a nice looking MAC at the computer store.  And while I gave it some thought, I passed on it because of all the problems I've seen where people can no longer make use of certain things because they are PC compatible, not MAC compatible.

Such as ...?

I made the jump in 2003 - at first it was a PITA, until I began looking around a bit. For instance, there is a free UVMapper (UVX) for Macs. RTE works just fine on OSX. I even run GIMP just fine on a Mac, and at first I never thought that would be possible.

At first I fired up Windows 2000 in a virtual instance at least once every couple of days... I think it's been sitting dormant for the past 8 months now (and the last one was to open an old Rhino file I couldn't find the .obj export of).

I basically re-thought my workflows, and sat down to figure out what I really needed and could easily live without. I found that with very, very few exceptions, I really didn't need Windows for much of anything.

I think the last graphics professionally-imposed Windows requirement I had was in 2005, because the D|S manual (and many of its graphics components) was half-built in Adobe Framemaker, which had no OSX version (Mssr. Hernandez is still on my sh!t list for doing that :) I mean, it's not like you can't build a PDF with Acrobat, or even OpenOffice at the time).

Most folks I know that have made the switch have gone through the same process to some extent - at first you think there's no way you can do without this or that little app... then you realize/discover that there are already equivalents out there, or that you really didn't need to use the thing in the first place, because you no longer have the limitations that Windows placed on your previous workflow.

/P