Macintosh for Astronomy?

Buying a Mac for astronomy (all uses for that matter) is the most ignorant,
dumbest thing anyone could do. Here are the cold hard undeniable facts as to
why.



The PC is much faster. Sure the Mac G5 may have caught up somewhat but the
PC is still faster and that gap will only grow.



The PC is far cheaper. You can buy a faster more capable better quality PC
for half to even a third of the cost of a Mac.



The PC offers much more variety. With a Mac you have a few way overpriced
and under powered models to choose from. With a PC you can have a Dell,
Gateway, Alienware or an ABS all of which have far more models then Mac. If
you are real smart like me you can build your own. You can pick and choose
among hundreds of components to suit your needs.



The Macs look cool. Maybe to some but they are mostly one style. With the PC
there again is a lot more variety. Look at Alienware computers or ABS.
People even like to customize their own computers. Look at this web site for
examples http://www.twistedmods.com/ . My computer's case is made with all
acrylic and has a way cool blue neon light, a fan that has blue neons and my
power supply even has blue neon lights inside of it.



Windows XP is easier, far more stable, more secure and much more flexible
then Mac OS X.



There is no comparison between the Mac and PC as far as astronomy goes. The
Mac just has Starry Night. See my review of Starry Night here
http://www.knoxvilleobservers.org/be...snpreview1.htm as you can see
from the review it is great for education but sucks dirt big time for
observation planning, chart printing due to the **** poor deep sky database
and poor in general field use.

But hey you have TheSky oh wait that is level 3. TheSky level 4 on the PC
has a very small and incomplete database compared to other software and its
feature set is much smaller and the Mac gets even less level 3. Ha ha.

There is Voyager 3 but its deep sky database is poor and short on features.
Also it is more expensive then many better PC software. There are other odds
and ends software but for the most part there isn't dick for the Mac

Those of us who used our brains and got a PC there is a huge world open to
us. We not only have TheSky level 3, Voyager 3 and Starry Night Pro just
like Mac users do but we also have far better software such as Guide,
Skytools, Megastar, CDC, Skymap Pro, Desktop Universe, Deepsky 2003 and many
others. Many of these programs have millions of deepsky objects. And the
worthless ignorant people of this uninformed usergroup are saying we can't
see a million objects with our telescopes. True but with databases that
large it includes dark nebula and non m/ngc/ic open clusters that are
treasures in binoculars that Mac software doesn't have. See a Mac is so
crappy you can't even take advantage of simple binoculars.

Databases are not the only strengths of PC software over the Mac. There are
far more features in PC astroware then Mac astroware such as occultation
prediction, better accuracy with full VSOP, observation planning and
logging, Lunar map with Clementine data and much much more.

PC astroware is far cheaper. Mac TheSky level 3 is $199, Starry Night Pro is
$199 and Voyager 3 is $120 . For the PC Skytools is $99, Guide is $89 and
Skymap Pro is $99. Each of those 3 software packages have much larger more
accurate deep sky databases, better accuracy and more features. Also CDC is
free and it even has more features then Mac astroware.



In light of the info above then why do some people buy a Mac. There are
several reasons why. One they are still stuck in the 80's and haven't woke
up to the fact that times change. See in the mid 80's to very early 90's the
Mac really was a better machine. It was faster, easier, more stable and
better quality. Now the PC not only has caught up with the Mac in all those
areas it has surpassed it in huge leaps and bounds. Some people are too
bigoted to see that fact.

Others have a serious mental illness. They know the PC is better and faster.
They know the PC is easier to use. They know the PC is far cheaper. They
know the PC has far more and better software for absolutely all needs.
However, they are brain washed by Steve Jobs to religiously stay with the
Mac no matter what. They need serious help and need to take strong doses of
medication to be successfully deprogrammed.

To sum up why some people use a Mac over a PC even though the Mac has no
advantages is because they are worthless, stupid idiots who are borderline
retarded.



Say no to Mac

Windows is freedom.

Ok, I'll bite. What the heck- it's snowing.


On Tue, 9 Dec 2003 10:07:59 -0500, "Shawn Grant"
wrote:


The PC is much faster. Sure the Mac G5 may have caught up somewhat but the
PC is still faster and that gap will only grow.

Yeah, PCs as a rule tend to be a bit faster than Macs as a rule. I can't say
that I see much real difference in practical apps, though.


The PC is far cheaper. You can buy a faster more capable better quality PC
for half to even a third of the cost of a Mac.

More or less. But there are some pretty powerful Macs for less than twice what
you'd pay for an equivalent PC from a good supplier like Dell.


The PC offers much more variety. With a Mac you have a few way overpriced
and under powered models to choose from. With a PC you can have a Dell,
Gateway, Alienware or an ABS all of which have far more models then Mac. If
you are real smart like me you can build your own. You can pick and choose
among hundreds of components to suit your needs.

No doubt, the PC is the platform of choice for the do-it-yourselfer. But you
know what? Get away from our geek-intensive community here and you'll find that
just about everyone who buys a computer, PC or Mac, buys it configured and never
changes it.

The Macs look cool. Maybe to some but they are mostly one style. With the PC
there again is a lot more variety. Look at Alienware computers or ABS.
People even like to customize their own computers. Look at this web site for
examples http://www.twistedmods.com/ . My computer's case is made with all
acrylic and has a way cool blue neon light, a fan that has blue neons and my
power supply even has blue neon lights inside of it.

You are talking personal taste here. (I think the Macs look horrible- I hide
mine).


Windows XP is easier, far more stable, more secure and much more flexible
then Mac OS X.

I don't think either OS is easier than the other. Both are a pain in the butt if
you want to do anything fancy and you aren't a bit of a computer guru. Both are
pretty easy to work with if you are a technical person and you have some
experience with them. I agree that XP is more secure, but again, only if you
know what you are doing. Out of the box, XP is a security nightmare (not because
there is anything wrong with the OS, but because so many things are
misconfigured). Flexible? How so?


There is no comparison between the Mac and PC as far as astronomy goes.

long list of comparisons snipped g

There are far more choices of astronomy apps that run on the PC. This is
especially true when talking about apps that control hardware. I think that
people who try doing this in a Mac only environment are making things hard on
themselves. Given how cheap and easy it is to network a PC and Mac, the obvious
thing for a serious astronomer who prefers Macs is to simply have (at least) one
of each. I like PCs, but that doesn't stop me from having a Mac and a Linux box
sitting on my network. Very convenient sometimes.


Say no to Mac

I remind you that if everyone says no to Macs, Apple will go out of business. If
you don't think that Windows is a better product for the pressure put on it by
Mac operating systems (and visa versa, of course) you don't have a very good
grasp of how the world works.

_________________________________________________

Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com

Are you Bill Gates lapdog?

The PC is far cheaper. You can buy a faster more capable better quality PC
for half to even a third of the cost of a Mac.

The best computer should be the one between your ears! Gates and Mac
had nothing to do with either and this one came for free!

Chris L Peterson:
Yeah, PCs as a rule tend to be a bit faster than Macs as a rule. I can't say
that I see much real difference in practical apps, though.
Haven't used a G5, have we? Especially with a practical app like a
non-linear video editor, which is a very practical app for some people.
Telescope-control software is also practical for some people, but it is
not likely to tax a processor very much.

Shawn Grant:
The PC is far cheaper. You can buy a faster more capable better quality PC
for half to even a third of the cost of a Mac.

Numerous independent studies have shown that TCO is less for Macs than
for Wintel machines.

No doubt, the PC is the platform of choice for the do-it-yourselfer. But you
know what? Get away from our geek-intensive community here and you'll find
that just about everyone who buys a computer, PC or Mac, buys it configured and
never changes it.

If you're talking about internal MoBo swaps, Mac users generally can't
do this. If you're talking additional peripherals, OS configurations,
and software, I agree that most people who buy computers don't change
them. But a typical Mac user (Jane MacSumer) is more likely to do this,
because he knows that it it'll work. Joe WinSumer, on the other hand,
had so much trouble making his computer work out of the box -- printer,
scanner, Internet -- that there is no way he's going to try to install
anything else, hardware or software.

You are talking personal taste here. (I think the Macs look horrible- I hide
mine).
Valid opinion, but in the minority. Even diehard Wintel critics concede
that the Wintel world can't touch Apple in style and elegance -- in
hardware or software.

Windows XP is easier, far more stable, more secure and much more flexible
then Mac OS X.
This is too laughable for comment.

There is no comparison between the Mac and PC as far as astronomy goes.

There are far more choices of astronomy apps that run on the PC. This is
especially true when talking about apps that control hardware.

I attended the November, 2003 meeting of the Howard Astronomy League
(www.howardastro.org). There was an informal Mac/Windows discussion
before the meeting, in which it was unanimously concluded (I stayed out
of it) that no one who is serious about astronomy uses a Mac. Then the
evening's speaker strolled in. It was Professor Richard Henry
http://henry.pha.jhu.edu/rch.html, a Professor in the Henry A.
Rowland Department of Physics and Astronomy at The Johns Hopkins
University , where he is also Director of Maryland Space Grant
Consortium; a member of the Principal Professional Staff, Johns Hopkins
Applied Physics Laboratory; and a member of the JHU Center for
Astrophysical Sciences. Computer of choice: PowerBook running BSD Unix,
aka Mac OS X. Dr. Henry's page is at

There are two key apps for CCD astronomers that are not available for
the Mac, though they run just fine under Windows emulation. Technically
speaking, my PowerBook 10.3.1 and my Vaio XP Pro laptop are on a par in
controlling my LX200. Factor in the above-mentioned style and elegance,
however, and it's no contest. Then, too, we tend to think of the Mac OS
in the old way, when it was an entity unto itself. This is no longer
true, of course. It's plain old BSD Unix, and has available to it the
entire spectrum of Unix applications.

As for "far more choices, for those apps that run only in the Mac's
Aqua GUI, in astronomy as in most areas, there are more low-end
(shareware/freeware) choices available for Wintel. This excited me when
my Vaio was new; I bought a ton of astronomy shareware and d/l'd
astronomy freeware by the gigabyte. The shine went off when I
discovered that the quality of this share/freeware was nowhere near
what I was accustomed to on the Mac -- partly due to the the innate
ugliness of the Windows interface and lack of human interface standards
for Wintel.

Say no to Mac

The fact that the Mac just won't go away must really give Shawn
heartburn. Delightful.

Bad news, Shawn: With a market share that is greater than the
*combined* U.S. market shares of BMW, Infiniti, Jaguar, Lexus,
Mercedes Benz, Saab, and Volvo, the Mac won't be going away anytime
soon.

If you don't think that Windows is a better product for the pressure put on it by
Mac operating systems...

Y'all would be staring at the C: prompt while waiting for the floppy to
spin up. But you'd be entertained by your ASCII art. I'll take Apple
and its innovations, FireWire, e.g., any day!

Davoud

--
usenet *at* davidillig *dawt* com

Shawn Grant wrote:
Buying a Mac for astronomy (all uses for that matter) is the most ignorant,
dumbest thing anyone could do. Here are the cold hard undeniable facts as to
why.

snip snip


To sum up why some people use a Mac over a PC even though the Mac has no
advantages is because they are worthless, stupid idiots who are borderline
retarded.



Say no to Mac

Windows is freedom.


Did someone drop an Apple II+ on your head as a child?

I know i shouldn't feed the trolls, but I'm only 97% sure that Shawn is
trolling - since I actually *know* people that are like him - no, I
don't call them friends...

Shawn Grant wrote:

Buying a Mac for astronomy (all uses for that matter) is the most ignorant,
dumbest thing anyone could do. Here are the cold hard undeniable facts as to
why.

Undeniable is what people say when the don't have any sedondary
arguments to back up their "facts".

The PC is much faster. Sure the Mac G5 may have caught up somewhat but the
PC is still faster and that gap will only grow.

Simply not true. And you know that.

The PC is far cheaper. You can buy a faster more capable better quality PC
for half to even a third of the cost of a Mac.

No way. The general rule holds. You get what you pay for.
But I'd like to see a match for the new iBook G4.

The PC offers much more variety. With a Mac you have a few way overpriced
and under powered models to choose from. With a PC you can have a Dell,
Gateway, Alienware or an ABS all of which have far more models then Mac. If
you are real smart like me you can build your own. You can pick and choose
among hundreds of components to suit your needs.

95% of PC users don't do that either. But some Mac users do.
But variety is much greater - along with compatibility issues.
Remember - Mac hardware and Mac software are made for each other.

The Macs look cool. Maybe to some but they are mostly one style. With the PC
there again is a lot more variety. Look at Alienware computers or ABS.
People even like to customize their own computers. Look at this web site for
examples http://www.twistedmods.com/ . My computer's case is made with all
acrylic and has a way cool blue neon light, a fan that has blue neons and my
power supply even has blue neon lights inside of it.

I've seen people do a lot of cool stuff with their Macs, too.

Windows XP is easier, far more stable, more secure and much more flexible
then Mac OS X.

Don't do that - I almost choked on my ginger bread...
That was the laugh of the day.

There is no comparison between the Mac and PC as far as astronomy goes.

As for as available software you are right. Apple is not to blame
though. It's up to the developers to make software.
What *is* available is enough for maost of us.

The only PC program I really miss on my Mac is Dance Of the Planets.
OTOH it's a DOS program with very modest system requirements,
so it runs just fine under Virtual PC.

Then there is a big lack of support for CCD cameras. There is really no
valid excuse for that, now that most cameras are available with USB.

Databases are not the only strengths of PC software over the Mac. There are
far more features in PC astroware then Mac astroware such as occultation
prediction, better accuracy with full VSOP, observation planning and
logging, Lunar map with Clementine data and much much more.

PC astroware is far cheaper. Mac TheSky level 3 is $199, Starry Night Pro is
$199 and Voyager 3 is $120 . For the PC Skytools is $99, Guide is $89 and
Skymap Pro is $99. Each of those 3 software packages have much larger more
accurate deep sky databases, better accuracy and more features. Also CDC is
free and it even has more features then Mac astroware.

Celestia and Xephem are free. OK. you have to install X.11, but that is
also a free download from Apple (comes on the CD with Panther).

[snip]

To sum up why some people use a Mac over a PC even though the Mac has no
advantages is because they are worthless, stupid idiots who are borderline
retarded.

You are completely out of arguments. You do have some valid points, but
they are completely lost in your religious praise for Windows

Say no to Mac

Windows is freedom.

That last comment ruins whatever credibility you had left.

War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is power.
-- George Orwell, "1984"

"You recommend Macs to your friends, and Intel machines to those whom
you don't mind billing by the hour." -- Anonymous

On Tue, 09 Dec 2003 19:24:19 GMT, (Anders Eklöf) wrote:

Then there is a big lack of support for CCD cameras. There is really no
valid excuse for that, now that most cameras are available with USB.

It doesn't really matter what the interface is- USB is no real help. Someone
still has to write the driver, and someone still has to write a camera control
app that uses it. The problem with Macs is that the user base just isn't large
enough for most companies to do either.

The real solution to this is platform independence for cameras. This is very
easily achieved by giving a camera an Ethernet interface and including a GUI in
a set of embedded web pages. Such a camera will work on any platform without any
special software at all. The camera can still have an API accessible via Telnet
so that third party programs can be used (mostly on PCs I expect).

_________________________________________________

Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com

"Anders Eklöf" wrote:

The PC is much faster. Sure the Mac G5 may have caught up
somewhat but the PC is still faster and that gap will only grow.

Simply not true. And you know that.

The PC is far cheaper. You can buy a faster more capable better
quality PC for half to even a third of the cost of a Mac.

No way. The general rule holds. You get what you pay for.
But I'd like to see a match for the new iBook G4.

Whilst I don't support Mr Grant's views, it has been noted by Mac users
such as Davoud comp.sys.mac.system that the speed of new Macs fall
quite a bit behind cheaper Wintel machines. Here is that message:

(If you don't want to read the whole text, here is the key paragraph):

"(3) We Mac-heads live inside a permanent reality distortion field. I
hate to puncture yours, but in a side-by-side test with real-world apps
manipulating the same files (Photoshop, Excel), my 2.6GB Vaio laptop
beat the G5 1.8 by a decent margin, and cost a lot less with bells &
whistles added. These were unscientific results -- the only kind that
matter to me. Don't flame the messenger."


------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: Davoud (comp.sys.mac.system)
Subject: G5's Not Fast Enough, So I Switched
Date: 27 September 2003

Though I have six Macs, four of which are desktop Macs, the only
machines that I use regularly are my TiBook 667 with Cinema Display
http://www.davidillig.com/cinema.shtml and my trusty old WallStreet.
I'm in love with PowerBooks, and have said that I won't buy another
desktop machine -- but read on.

The objective was to replace my TiBook with a faster PowerBook, then
replace the WallStreet with the Tibook, but the fastest PB's just don't
cut it at this time (1) -- maybe if or when a PB G5 comes out... I
haven't been terribly impressed with speeds I have seen from the new
G5's. I've had my hands two different dualies, and I have seen the
benchmarks and some real-world tests (2). It's unquestionably fast
relative to anything that I have -- but in absolute terms, I don't
think that it's fast enough for the money (over $5,200 configured my
way, more or less configured your way). I have more experience with the
1.8GHz G5, and I am unimpressed (3).

I swore that I would never switch, but I have -- I replaced my old
WallStreet G3/300/384MB/20GB PowerBook with a new iMac
1.25GHz/1GB/160GB/AP/BT (4).

Rationale: This is an interim machine to replace the WallStreet. The
iMac is nice machine, and is faster than any of my other Macs, yet at a
reasonable price.

John Steinberg summed it up when he said that, for the foreseeable
future, one must lower one's expectations on PowerBook speeds -- or
continue to be disappointed (I paraphrase). I love my PowerBooks, and
would really hate to be forced to switch to a desktop Mac as my main
machine. I've bought myself a year or so in which to see what Apple
comes up with. 2003 -- "The Year of the Laptop" -- has been a bust so
far.

At the same time, I purchased a 250GB external FW drive for backup. I
was using computers before you were born, and I have never lost so much
as a bit of essential data due to my own failure to provide backup
capacity. If you don't regularly back up your essential data, you will
eventually regret it.

I have spared you my full rant about PowerBooks being so much slower
than Wintel laptops, but the full tirade is still available in a
26-volume leather-bound set from outtamyfreakinmind.nut.

-- The iMac reached my door 25 hours after my wife ordered it from the
online Apple Gov't Employees store.
-- I don't know why people knock the "Apple Pro" speakers; I've tried
them with all kinds of music today, from Mediaeval to Hip-Hop, and they
sound great for their size.
-- FW Target Disk Mode is a great time saver for moving lots of files
during a computer changeover.
-- The iMac has an AirPort Extreme card, but my network runs on the
original AP Base Station. Yet the iMac is considerably faster on the
network than the WallStreet.

***

(1) A very recent test, linked on one of the popular Mac news sites,
showed that the newest PowerBooks are faster than one of the *slowest*
Wintel laptops that one can buy today -- in most tests.

(2) See http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,1274637,00.asp, a link
kindly posted by Mr. Steinberg in an earlier thread. Forget the middle
column -- we don't care that the Dell is faster than the Dual G5 -- and
look at the right-hand column. The Dual G5 isn't terrifically faster
than the Dual 1.4GHz G4 in most tests.

(3) We Mac-heads live inside a permanent reality distortion field. I
hate to puncture yours, but in a side-by-side test with real-world apps
manipulating the same files (Photoshop, Excel), my 2.6GB Vaio laptop
beat the G5 1.8 by a decent margin, and cost a lot less with bells &
whistles added. These were unscientific results -- the only kind that
matter to me. Don't flame the messenger.

(4) This is not the first iMac I have purchased. Earlier I purchased a
CRT model as a gift for a deserving person -- but I hadn't expected to
buy one for myself. OK, I didn't buy it. My wife bought it for me.

Davoud

On Tue, 9 Dec 2003 12:06:10 -0600, Davoud wrote
(in message ):

snip

Computer of choice: PowerBook running BSD Unix, aka Mac OS X. Dr. Henry's
page is at

Would you please post the URL? Thank you.

--
Harry F. Leopold
aa #2076
AA/Vet #4
The Prints of Darkness

"The space time you are trying to reach has been disconnected..." Stony