Mac vs PC (not really off topic)

[Mike Holbrook]

I think maybe I am more like Lloyd. I actually like the idea of using older, restored tools. I don't even mind the time working on them. Sometimes it is hard to find a time slot long enough to do the wood working projects I would like to be doing but in 30 minuets I can: take the handle off an old saw, clean an old saw blade, work on the jaws of an old brace, make a wedge for a home made plane....

Still I end up buying quite a few of the easy to use tools too. I am about to order a Veritas BU Smoother. I just made a few wooden planes, out of Purple Heart no less, too. I was working an old cupped, twisted, piece of white oak with bad grain. A friend gave it to me as a challenge I think. My buddy is still trying to convince me I am crazy to use all the hand tools. I liked working with the light wooden planes but the Veritas BU Jack's weight and easy to use assortment of blade angles was quicker and easier to use on wood that seemed to stop just about anything that touched it. I decided I wanted an easy reliable smoother that could use the same blades as the Jack, giving me the blade angle variations on both planes.

I bought a couple Record planes back in a time when that was about all that was available. The quality of work on at least some of those planes was obviously not up to the current Veritas tolerances. I hated fiddling with all the adjustments and still having problems. Oddly I find tapping the blade & body of a simple hand made wood plane to be at least as easy as any of the mechanical adjusters. Maybe I am just weird or still learning. I am inclined to think that if we are not still learning we just are not paying attention though.

I started "PC" life with a Mac, with the original Write, Draw...At that point those apps were the only ones of their kind. From my view point Macs are the old tools, pre dating "other PC's". I find it amusing that people still make some of the same arguments against Mac's they always have, despite obvious evidence. Seems to me Apple's success hinges on their staying one step ahead of the always changing "computing" market. I think they were always at least a step ahead, they just were not always savy enough to make money off leading the market. I think we could draw a meaningful comparison between say Apple and Lee Valley. Two companies who spend a great deal of time and energy innovating, trying to build a better mouse trap. It takes money to innovate, especially if that innovation is also by design a simpler solution. Certainly we can see the success of leading the market with those corporate principals.

[Judson Green]

More of a PC guy here. Kind of enjoy the hunt. Enjoy meeting people too. And the price point is usually a bit better. Though I do salivate over some of the "newer" stuff.

[Kevin McMichael]

Mac in theory, PC in practice. I have some old planes that I inherited and they have sentimental value. I have a jointer that could have been in my family since 1879. But I am always on the verge of purchasing something from LV or LN at any given time. In regards to actual computers...I just got an Ipad and consider it the only advance in musical equipment since the late 1950s.

[David Weaver]

If he's gonna be like that, maybe you could observe that Mac users have no choice but to pay more 'cause their limited mental & intellectual resources won't permit the use of anything else. Actually I go along with using what works but when someone is being the trailing end of a horse .....

I like to tell him that when I see an apple computer, I usually figure that someone is going to tell me that I should eat organic food (OK, my wife does that), or show me a receipt where a mechanic took them for a "bucket of steam" when they worked on their cars. I am from the 90s PC generation mostly, though, and in those days you could do a lot better putting your own machine together and paying attention to what parts could be overclocked.

The last go-around, I bought an HP laptop for $600, still have it, it's a little over 7 years old. BIL bought one of those all in one macs on his desk, he paid close to three grand for it. It pooped out after about three years, and a year ago I bought another HP laptop for $750. Admittedly, PC laptops in the lower range usually are either refurbished or of an integrated consumer flavor in terms of the parts, but the price no longer makes it worth it for me to worry about the details and I no longer play video games. I do like to give the rib about a mac for almost three grand crapping out, and he followed it up by buying one even bigger and more expensive, which made for even better follow-up discussion.

If the machines didn't both work well (PC and mac) the ribs wouldn't be so much fun, they'd just be mean for the person on the short end of the stick.

Far as the tools go, I like to have a little bit of everything. I've spent about the last month working almost entirely with three vintage planes and a single washita stone and a bare leather strop (not just smoothing, but a lot of the dimensioning work). I wouldn't give up an infill panel plane I made, it's like magic in wood that isn't that straight. I don't use japanese planes that much anymore, but I wouldn't like to give them up, either. If I was with computers like I am with tools, I'd be tinkering with at least one of all three (linux, PC and mac) but my german sense tells me that tools are money in suspense if bought well, and computers are money in dispense.

[Jim Koepke]

If I was with computers like I am with tools, I'd be tinkering with at least one of all three (linux, PC and mac) but my german sense tells me that tools are money in suspense if bought well, and computers are money in dispense.

Another way to look at this is tools can be an appreciating asset where unless you have something like an Apple I a computer will always be a diminishing asset.

With tools tinkering, fettling and hunting can be fun. My feelings used to be that way with my automobiles. In the heydays of my youth old air cooled VWs were my passion. Finally, my automotive tinkering spirit became burned out. May have had something to do with getting married and having kids.

Kind of the same with computers, spent a few years working in shops fixing computers. For my own needs, something that didn't require constant tinkering to keep going was appreciated. My interest wasn't in the process as much as getting to the finished product.

My journey into woodworking began with less funds than time.

Finding and restoring old tools not only saved money, it also fulfilled my desire to tinker.

CPM and later DOS were just not for me. GUI did what was wanted and have been with it ever since.

jtk

[Mike Holbrook]

Interesting experience with the Mac's David, but mine has been significantly different. I started with Apple in the late 70's, have owned at least 6 myself and another 6 for the family, another dozen or so with friends & family. The only machine I know of that died before it's time took a lightning strike that took out an entire phone system, wires & all. The wife use to use PC's and gave up on them specifically because she could never keep them running, my super gamer sons PC took a dirt nap just last week. The 5 Mac's, 3 iPads, 4 iPhones....we have are and always have run with no issues, and that includes issues with hacker software bugs.

I was laying a track for one of my dogs in a field at the house one day. Up trough the grass I saw a reflection that looked like an Apple. It turned out to be the iPhone my daughter had lost months before. It was in the field for months through rain, sleet...mowing with a tractor...countless dogs running back & forth...I dried it up, charged it and it ran. Which is the same thing I like about products by companies/manufacturers like Veritas, Gramercy...Certainly the Stanley type planes, at least the older ones, are withstanding the test of time. To my mind Stanley, Disston, North Bros....were the innovators of their time, even though the market may have changed their direction or put them out of business. Apple, Lee Valley, Gramercy...are current innovators, who's long term effects are just starting.

I understand the argument against the extra cost of R&D. Certainly it can be argued that NASA or even Veritas waste money, only time will tell, actually is telling, what that high priced R&D will wind up producing.

[David Weaver]

Some people are just rough on things. My mother can make a PC last 2 years and then quit. My BIL's mac stuff always looks rough, and I don't know exactly how you do that to a desktop and an ipod touch, but that's just the way both of them are.

I've had PCs since, I don't know, 1985? Never had one of my own quit*, always sold them when they were still worth money (these days, we just throw one away every 5 years, because that's how often we buy a new one, and a ten year old computer is totally worthless). In the 1990s, I could just start up in dos and remove viruses, but I use free viruscan software now and have never had a problem. That equates to my wife and I spending about $120-$150 per year on PCs, which mac's can't touch. It's the old german thing.

I have an uncle who has used PCs his entire working life, he also seems to never have one quit. There seems to be some component of experience in using them successfully.

* I did have a very expensive gateway computer quit in 1995, but it was struck by lightning. They were so hard core to win the customer service war back then they never asked me to go to the power company for remuneration, they just sent out the parts the next day. I'd consider macs if they didn't have such a huge margin built into them.

[Jim Neeley]

You beat me to it, Adam.. and the analogy is a good one and how my woodworking has evolved over time.

There was a time when each had their weakness: Windows required a fair amount to tweaking to get it to work correctly (minor PITA) while Mac worked right out of the box but had very limited tweak-ability so if it didn't do what you wanted out of the box, too bad (major PITA for me). Windows has gotten somewhat better while Mac re-wrote their OS to put a Unix/Linux under the hood which opened the tweakability doors which was a major shift.

In the Pc world I use all three but prefer the Linux / Unix world for most applications.

In the woodworking world I'm one who has very limited shop time and don't enjoy tuning tools enough to give up my shop time to do it when I can buy one already there.

That said, even most top-drawer tools aren't fully *there*; planes and chisels need honing at least. I very much want the peak-performing tool. As such I will take the time for the one-time polishing of the chisel back to a 16k Shapton however I'll spend the money to buy the chisel that comes closest to what I'm trying to achieve and the best honing /sharpening tools I can find to get me there.

This is not without irony. Over time I've tried most approaches to sharpening: scary-sharp, oil stones, water stones, worksharp, diamond stones and Shaptons with grinder and most of the honing jigs on the market. After investing hundreds of hours self-taught in working with them, I took a week-long class a couple of weeks go that spent the first 12-hour day dedicated to learning grinder (hollow bevel) and free-hand sharpening using my Shaptons. Coming out of this one-day I'd properly prepared the back and sharpened of a couple of chisels and plane blades. Through the rest of the week, while continuing the 12 hr/day work I'd stop and re-sharpen whenever the cutting performance started dropping off and learned that (with proper instruction / technique) I can now re-work a chisel or plane blade edge free-hand in 30-seconds to a minute. This is quick enough to have me resharpen as soon as it makes sense rather than fighting it until it won't perform well.

It was also the time I first worked with a truly *sharp* plane. How do I define sharp? Well, I had a 36" piece of (flattened) 8/4 curly hard maple clamped on its side in my front vice and "pulled" my #8 along the length of the board, taking a full-width shaving of a thou or so, without a hand on the rear tote and only my first two fingers around the front knob (and not pulling with super-strength). The first time i did that it was tough to accept it was possible.

A side note but I find it kind of amazing that one of the big names in hand tool woodworking recently posted an article talking about how they could refresh an edge in 5-10 minutes. Once the back is prepared (one time event) I cannot see taking that much time unless perhaps they were regrinding the primary bevel and spent have their time in the water bucket.

FWIW I think that learning to rapidly get a tool *sharp* was the most enabling step I've taken to date and (again, for me) the most important place to use good equipment and consider taking a class (or get private tutoring by someone who is a master at it).

Just my $0.02.. YMMV.

[Jack Curtis]

You forgot one other major player. . .Linux.

Much like PC/Mac/Linux, it's all about the right tool for the job. Sometimes there is overlap, sometimes there isn't....

Yeah, but Linux runs on Mac's and PC's, kind of mucks up the metaphor.

[Jack Curtis]

I spent several decades developing software, starting on mainframes, moving to PC's, then Mac's. We'd program PC's whenever we had to, say for a Newton to PC/Mac file transfer program; but we always used Mac's. They have a certain grace. I've got several old ones laying about taking up space, kind of wish they'd die now and then.

[David Weaver]

The surprise to me, being that I was in college in the 1990s, is that our labs had windows NT 4.0 on 486 dx 33s and we had a bunch of macs, I don't know what they were called back then "powermacs" maybe, but they might've been before that. The operating system at the time was so bad that there was nobody at the macs but there was always a line for the 486 PCs, and if you remember that era, they were no treat to run with windows NT 4, or even 3.51.

I had a PC in my room, but a lot of kids didn't have them yet back then. That was a shame, because the whole lab and lab tech culture back then was pretty hard on regular users (critical and criticizing).

At the time, the problem with the macs was partially the OS, I'm not mac expert but a couple of times when I changed by the labs the OS was unstable, and I was kind of hoping they'd go out of business. I kind of still hope they do, I like the computer makers to be a little hungry - keeps the prices down and keeps them figuring out how to keep them down.

As far as overall longevity, though, the local champ here is an IBM 515x that a friends dad bought around 1981 or 1982. It still works perfectly. It's just not good for anything. His dad never would throw it away because it cost him so much (and he never learned to use it, either).

There were a lot of bad PCs built in the 1990s that I can recall, though - sold at wal mart and other places. People would bring them to our room and sometimes the problem existed between the keyboard and chair, but a lot of those were just plain junk and some didn't work right out of the box.

How that equates to hand tools, I don't know. We don't have anyone making new "junk" as far as I know, the bar is set too high by LV and LN.

[Jim Koepke]

We don't have anyone making new "junk" as far as I know, the bar is set too high by LV and LN.

Haven't you seen the plane shaped objects for sale at the local HD? How about those green things that look like spoke shaves?

jtk

[David Weaver]

Haven't you seen the plane shaped objects for sale at the local HD? How about those green things that look like spoke shaves?

jtk

Yeah, but we don't take those seriously. (I can't figure out what we'd compare them to - palm pilots maybe)

Back in the 90s, people took the walmart computers seriously, as well as stuff from tiger direct. A buddy of mine got a PC from tiger direct to save a few bucks and in the end, he never actually used it because it wouldn't connect to the internet and tiger direct never would do anything about it. My roommate and I built our PCs and both of them were overclocked, we knew everything about what was in them, but the buddy of mine who bought the tiger direct PC was not interested in knowing the details and he got nailed. I guess that's akin to some of the clifton stories from a few years ago, when clifton had made some planes that weren't flat or their frogs or seats were defectively made, and the users (on woodnet at the time) could not get satisfaction through either the retailer or clifton. Cliftons were slightly cheaper. Walmart computers were slightly cheaper. Most of the cliftons were fine. Most of the walmart computers were fine. Clifton at the time wouldn't do anything about the planes, neither would the retailers. Tiger direct would never do anything other than tell my friend he could call tech support. Walmart probably would've offered a refund for the folks who had defective computers, but they wanted to bring them to us instead.

As I recall, bob feeser was someone who had trouble with clifton and he was extremely knowledgeable about planes. There were others, too, but I particularly remember Bob's reports because he was the best at expressing his disappointment.

[Jim Koepke]

A buddy of mine got a PC from tiger direct to save a few bucks and in the end, he never actually used it because it wouldn't connect to the internet and tiger direct never would do anything about it.

One of the biggest drivers in the mind of computer users and companies buying computers has been the price point. Then it was the person in charge of the computer help department's personal choice. Many knew that if they didn't buy machines that kept their department busy, they might be out of a job to a once a week contractor.

My roommate and I built our PCs and both of them were overclocked, we knew everything about what was in them, but the buddy of mine who bought the tiger direct PC was not interested in knowing the details and he got nailed.

A good friend of mine is a network engineer and computer guru.

It seems his biggest problem interfacing with people has been an inability to realize they do not understand computers as well as he does. He has been getting better at his human interfacing over the years. He can go on for hours telling me why I should over clock my machine or do some other fancy stuff. I listen, smile and drink a few beers. In the end, my clock speed stays the same and my computer runs fast enough for me.

When it comes to hand tools, it is the same way. Yes I know about micro bevels. Most of the time I do not intentionally use them. Yes, I know about the ruler trick. Most of the time a flat back works fine for me. A cambered blade? Well yes, but mine are done a little differently than others do theirs.

And yes, there are a few of those "tool shaped objects" in my shop if only to remind me there are some in this world who do not mind selling you something only once and will not even offer you a glass of water to wash out the bad taste they left.

jtk

[Tony Wilkins]

Built my own PC's through the 90's and built gaming PC's for my wife through the 00's (oughts). However, around 2001 I got tired of Windows crashing and was impressed by the Unix core of OS X. Bought my first Mac and haven't looked back. At this time of my life, I just want something that works.

BTW - first computers were a Vic 20, Commodore 64, and then an IBM PC with that huge 20MB HDD. First video game system - Pong in all it's black and white fast paced action - lol.