OSNews

Why should I switch? I am fine with what I have. Everything is working swimmingly for me. Why should I fork out another few grand for another computer?

ditto

I have nothing against Macs or Mac users. Mac OS is very nice. And Macs in general are very good looking computers. But I'd rather, and, if fact, will, have a dual G4 Pegasos. That way, I get the benefits of PPC, use hardware of my choice, and just feel more like it's "My" computer. It's a geek thing.

I just hope that I'll be able to get a G5 upgrade for it. Those CPUs look *sweet*.

Hmm .. I can't vote because I can't identify with any of the options. What I would like to vote for is something like: "I would really like to get a MAC, but for the value, I think they are way too expensive"..

I hate the fact that macs are prebuilt ... you can't make one yourself with the parts that *you* want and not what apple offers you ... also PC's are much cheaper than macs and you can get a far more powerful pc for the same price of a mac.

My computer has been stable and running for months now. Why would I need a new computer? It's incredible how much money I saved over tech support and repairs with this one. Oh, did I mention that I have a Mac?

Hey, Linux_baby, do you get the poll or not? The polls give you that option exactly. You vote first for the "I don't need a Mac" (which is similar to the "I won't get a Mac") and then you simply vote for the first option for the second poll, which is THE poll where you exactly elaborate WHY you won't get a Mac.

This is why I put two polls there. One poll to show how many our readers have/want/don't want a Mac and from the ones who won't get a Mac, WHY they won't have one.

Phew... some times I am really wondering guys if you actually "get me".

I want one badly, it just really sucks I wont be able to afford one. and yes, before i get snapped on by the mac fans saying that macs are really cheap for their value, even 2k is too much. I payed a few hundred for the hardware i have now. With school starting relatively soon i'm thinking the G8 will be out before i'm able to afford one. I just wish apple had a REALLY cheap low-end model for us openstep fanboys-to-be to learn on.

I see no advantage to switching to a mac. Wether I run a mac or not, I would still use my same OS. In hardware alone I see zero advantage. The hardware is much more expensive than a PC, especially if you build your own. Generally there isn't as as great of a range of hardware selection on a mac either, because you're locked into whatever Apple lets you use for all of your main components. The only reason I see to buy a mac is if you want to run OSX. And even if I prefered OSX, I wouldn't be able to justify the price of the hardware required to run it.

I agree. I would lovfe to get a Mac...but the price vs. what comes with the machine just seems very high. I realize that Macs are very nice machines...but My Dell is just as nice as what I see with Macs, but less than 1/2 the price with a monitor against a Mac with NO monitor.

Further, I like the fact that I can very easily upgrade any part of a PC...I can't say the same about Macs. I have built many machines over the years and would be more than happy to build a Mac...but alas that option does not exist. If Apple would start making components available for those would like to build their own computer, I am sure that a large number of PC users who look at Macs and think "wow...that's a nice machine" would jump on the chance to build a Mac.

I voted that I personally don't own a mac with no strong incentive to switch. (But I have worked a lot on OS X.)

Even if we assume that the Mac is a better machine, there's this interesting principle I've observed, that the more experienced a user is, the easier it is to get away with a worse machine. It is like the Soviets in the cold war -- America had an insurmountable lead in hardware, so the Soviets studied mathematics very hard to become better at software.

For some users, it is time to switch. That time is definitely not for me. Maybe if they had a better dev environment, who knows... but I already have a sufficiently powerful one on x86.

Cost and performance is not so much of a factor; I buy notebooks. Whenever I need performance, I use the magic of networking.

Ooops .. sorry .. I missed the second pool ..

>> some times I am really wondering
>> guys if you actually "get me".

Hmm .. don't put thoughts into our heads

You know eugenia, I think you really need your valium today. You dont need to snap on the dude. And, just in case you didnt get the small details of language, he said he would like to get a mac. "i dont need a mac" doesnt quite click with "i would like a mac but i cant". so, just to recap for you:

he cant vote "i dont need a mac / wont get a mac" because he would like to get one and so that answer is a bit misleading. there is a difference between "i want a mac but cant afford it" and "i dont want a mac and also it is expensive".
he cant vote "i am planning to get a mac" because while he would like to get the mac he has reasons for not being able to.

the options dont make intent clear. why saying so is enough to have you snap on him like that i have no idea.

Hello,

Technically speaking, the operating system I use has been proven to be superior, in most facets, to that of the Mac. From a performance, productivity and price stand point, there is absolutely no incentive, or reason, for me to switch to a Macintosh system, except for almighty eye-candy.

Regards,

Mystilleef

...the point in building a computer yourself when you can have a computer that has been build by experts and whose components have been tested to run flawlessly with each other. And it seems to me that a lot of people are comparing the price of a product from Apple with the price of a product build from components found on a scrapyard. Even if the prices for Apple Computers are higher you will save a lot of longterm money on the machine.

Sorry, but he said "I would like a Mac, but they are too expensive". What that tells me is that "I won't get a Mac because they are too expensive IMHO". The fact that he "would like" to get a Mac doesn't return any value to me or Apple.

I also would like to have Ferraris. But I won't get one, even if I "would like to". So, even if I would like to have one, Ferrari, Inc. won't see a dime out of me. This is the exact same as "I Won't get a Ferrari" for the company. It does go under the same option on the poll, because my poll was done with the frame of mind of "Me being Apple and would like to survey stuff to see what people think". It was not a poll that we can put one thousand useless options that are too close to each other.

And no, I don't work for Apple. But I do like to help companies and projects sometimes with my polls. And no, I didn't snap to Linux_baby, you misunderstood. We email each other with Dominic quite a bit.

>You know eugenia, I think you really need your valium today. You dont need to snap on the dude.

I think you should be careful of how you talk about me because I have very little patience on the web anymore.

And it seems to me that a lot of people are comparing the price of a product from Apple with the price of a product build from components found on a scrapyard. Even if the prices for Apple Computers are higher you will save a lot of longterm money on the machine.

Sorry Mcfly, but if that is the best you mac zealots can come up with than Apple has absolutely 0% chance of even getting 8% of the market.

"I think you should be careful of how you talk about me because I have very little patience on the web anymore."

Why do you still bother? for your helth's sake, give it up for a while. take some distance from it, and think whether it's worth a nervous breakdown .... you'll discover that it isn't.

It is my belief that Apple can get back to 5% of the market share (today they are between 2% and 3%), but it will take a lot of effort, time, and low prices... Also, I don't believe that they can go more than 5% in a timeframe of 2-3 years (sorry, can't predict for more years in the future in this instance as there are many variables here . Apple has stated that their goal is to get back to 5% indeed, they said a few months back.

Yeah, it shows. Chill out. There's more important things to life than the net.

> for your helth's sake, give it up for a while

I will be going to Europe soon, for a whole month (as I did last December, I was away from OSNews for a month).

"...the point in building a computer yourself when you can have a computer that has been build by experts and whose components have been tested to run flawlessly with each other. And it seems to me that a lot of people are comparing the price of a product from Apple with the price of a product build from components found on a scrapyard. Even if the prices for Apple Computers are higher you will save a lot of longterm money on the machine."

All components in a Mac G5 ,except the CPU, case and some motherboards are completely standard OEM wintel parts. A high quality homebuilt PC is as good or <better> than <any> commercial machine whether it is from Apple or Alienware. It is very easy to build a cheap very high quality PC - 30 mins to buy the components and 2-3 hours to build and install the software.

Macs are made in China with cheap labour in the same factories that make inexpensive PCs!

I was one of the many people hoping for a port of OSX to Intel, so when news of the G5 came I was suddenly really interested in Macs again. But when I later read about the DRM integrated into OSX I lost interest. I think I'll wait for Zeta instead. Read http://www.toad.com/gnu/whatswrong.html if you need to understand why the current DRM push is wrong.

I voted for "because PC are cheaper" but it's not true that it's no 1.
all 3 first choices combined are number one for me.
if macs would be as cheap or even a little bit cheaper than PC i still wouldn't buy it because it's generally slower, and it doesn't have software i want to use (namely operating system .
Another reason for me to not to buy Mac is "I don't like Apple" ;] So there is more chance i'll buy PowerPC (i heard IBM's are fast and good) based machine from some other company (maybe Genesi future comp?) than from Apple.

I vote on the first one, I vote on the second (the first one looks as though I haven't voted). So I vote differently on the first one (now the second looks like I haven't voted). So I vote the second one again, and again differently.

The cycle continues, I can vote as many times as I want.

They work fine for me here. Please report the bug to www.go2poll.com. Thank you.

I don't like OSX. I don't like Mac hardware (despite having owned four Macs in the past). I think Steve Jobs is a deranged hippy. I would not buy a Mac ever. I have also owned a Mercedes and I would probably never buy another. There other considerations in this world such as value for money, practicality and common sense.

I have looked at the best laptops out there in wintel land and not one compares to the powerbook.

One of the biggest problems with intel mobile chips is power. They consume loads of it which make intel laptops heavy and have low battery life. The centrino line will help but not by much, preliminary tests and reviews show that they still can't compete with thier mac counterparts in terms of battery life.

The argument that wintel machines are cheaper and offer more power falls apart when it comes to laptops. The mobile pentiums ( p4-M and pentium-M) use speedstep which basically halves the cpu freq when the laptop is on battery. My friend returned his Dell 8500 with a 2.0ghz p4-M out of frustration because it would run at max 1.2 ghz or most of the time at 700 mhz. Calls to dell support couldn't help in disabling speedstep. He go frustrated and returned it because it was too slow on battery power. He bought a celeron based one instead.

After researching for a few months and just recently getting bitten by win2k sp4 (which destroyed my win2k install on my 800mhz celeron toshiba satelite). I decided to switch to the mac. I had figured out it was best to run win2k only on the toshiba after numerous failed atempts to get linux to work decently as a laptop OS (support PowerManagement APM/ACPI, suspend/resume).

I have finally decided to get a powerbook that I have wanted for a while. The reason being no wintel laptop matches what an apple laptop provides at any price.

1. Decent Power Management. No the cpu halving in speed is not decent PM.

2. light weight and sleek design
wintel latops are heavy (require two batteries to provide decent battery life) and if are thin and light are not full featured (no CDROM drive) and slow (1 GHZ ulv pIII).

3. And a great OS that just works
I am a UNIX person and I am tired of trying to make things work with linux. I have tinkered with it for 4 years on various machines. After debugging drivers and unix kernel panics at work all day I don't want to come home and further debug problems. With macos X I get the best of both worlds UNIX and a decent GUI with tonnes of cool apps. There is no UNIX or linux distro that even comes close on x86 to being a decent multimedia OS and laptop OS.

"All components in a Mac G5 ,except the CPU, case and some motherboards are completely standard OEM wintel parts."

Hum, how many wintel parts come with 1GHz bus, custom chipset, open trasport, support for 8GB 400DDR Ram, 64bit X-PCI, Gigabit Ethernet, optical audio, firewire 800. All of them standard in the motherboard?

Oh. they are all made of PCB and traces, so yeah... maybe you are right. So in the same spirit the G5 and P4 both are made of silicon so the G5 must be standard Itel OEM parts.

" A high quality homebuilt PC is as good or <better> than <any> commercial machine whether it is from Apple or Alienware. It is very easy to build a cheap very high quality PC - 30 mins to buy the components and 2-3 hours to build and install the software."

So do it, but you will not get a system like the G5 by a long shot. Independent thermally controlled fans, no. Superdrive, no, almost no wires running through the case, no. A low noise overall machine, no. Dual G5's, no.

I am pretty sure that you must be superduper putting things together, but believe me you seem to overstimate your skill with the soldering iron on this one pal.

I voted for the "I'm too cheap" option too.
This was the closest to my mindset, but not exactly true either.

My problem is that I would love to run OSX, but the price to performance ratio is just too far off.

The G5 gets closer to the mark. But for a high end machine, they have a second rate video card, little ram and not much drive space.

For my budget, it just doesn't make sense. I own a dual 2.4Ghz Xeon with 10,000 RPM scsi drives, $3000 NewTek video editing card and it is still out of my price range.

If I won't pay the price, who does?

"It is my belief that Apple can get back to 5% of the market share (today they are between 2% and 3%), but it will take a lot of effort, time, and low prices..."

I think they can achieve this by increasing getting more software on their platform. This what would stop me from switching if I had €5000 to buy a new computer be it an Apple or Dell. I'm concerned about not just applictions that are now but those that will come and on which platform. For now chances are higher for it being an exclusive to Windows. So I voted software is important to me.

"Hum, how many wintel parts come with 1GHz bus, custom chipset, open trasport, support for 8GB 400DDR Ram, 64bit X-PCI, Gigabit Ethernet, optical audio, firewire 800. All of them standard in the motherboard? "

How about AMD? AMD is an x86 company. But on the other side I have not interest in gigabit and firewire. And I think my three year old soundblaster has optical audio. The only thing Apple about the new computer is the CPU, the rest is x86 tech however all as standard companents.

Looks like the polls are expressing the most widely held misconception: "that PCs are generally cheaper."

This is true:

1) only when you build your own machine
2) only when a PCs hardware and software are not matched to the Macs
3) only when you buy a system so low end its only slightly usable.

The main reason I am not switching to Apple is the pricing. We don't have a choice. Apple prices are through the roof. I can get all that Apple is providing for a half price and probably even less! Now tell me why should I switch to Apple when I can get the same things for a half price? Do I have a choice? Nope. I voted for "I am not getting a Mac option" At the moment, I am running a P4 2.0GHz with 256MB RDRAM and WinXP on top, I have never been happier. WinXP never crashes and it runs flawlessly. However, I am playing with Linux and considering to swith to it as soon as I feel the same as I feel with XP. I am looking towards Ark Linux but we'll see

"Apple prices are through the roof."

No more so than the prices of the average PC manufacturer. When you match a Mac and PCs hardware and software, the Mac is either slightly more, the same price, slightly less or significantly less.

This is the type of poll that BEGS the forum trolls to come out of the wood work.

Its nice to see OS news is being consistent and giving them a home.

Interesting that there have been no comments regarding Total Cost of Ownership. Macs are cheaper than PCs: despite a _sometimes_ higher initial cost they
• last longer
• use less electicity
• are easier to install and maintain
• are (still) easier to use
• are easier to fix when they do break down
• are (virtually) free of viruses

My previous employer was a university with a large IS department. My new PC needed to be reimaged. It took a day. I have reimaged a Mac and had it back in operation in less than an hour and I am not a technician.

In my current position (a high school), the cost of maintaining the PCs is about 50% higher than the Macs.

some other references
http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/2003/03/27/xserve/
http://www.pcmag.com/article/0,2997,s=1564&a=7559,00.asp
http://www.consumerreports.org/main/detailv3.jsp?CONTENT%3C~*~@...
http://www.pcworld.com/resource/printable/article/0,aid,105854,00.a...
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,364590,00.asp

"Hum, how many wintel parts come with 1GHz bus, custom chipset, open trasport, support for 8GB 400DDR Ram, 64bit X-PCI, Gigabit Ethernet, optical audio, firewire 800. All of them standard in the motherboard? "

How many Macs: come with one or two 3+Ghz CPU's? This should not matter any more than the bus speed, but you brought up meaningless ratings.

Custom chipset: I was an Amiga user too. How does this help? Lack of options?

Open Transport: I have no idea what this is. Is it like Intel Netburst or some other super-duper marketing thing?

8GB DDR 400 ram: My Xeon does 12GB, Athlon 64's can do plenty too if you use Linux. See above for Mhz ratings.

PCI-X, Gigabit ethernet: Again, right here in my system built into the motherboard

Optical audio: Most motherboards with onboard audio have this today. If not it is $50 away.

Firewire 800: Name one device to use it on. Please. Normal onboard firewire is quite common and cheap to add.

And all of these devices stop working the minute your motherboard goes out.

As you can see, there is not much to set Mac's apart from the Intel pack. Until the price to performance ratio gets better, I'm stuck on Intel.

I'd be happy to pay a little more, but it seems like such a huge difference right now.

Why I bought an iBook

First of all, I wanted to buy a laptop. It was meant to be portable, not to be a desktop replacement. This means: compact (< 15"), lightweight and good battery life. But it still has to have some basic features like a dvd reader, if I want to watch a DVD while I'm on the train.

Second of all, I'm a student, so it shouldn't be too expensive.

Third, I was a linux guy, so the hardware should be supported by Linux.

On all of these points, the iBook scored pretty good, and had the added advantage that it had a very interesting operating system I never used before. So, it has an extra learning advantage.

Why did I stay with Mac OS X, and didn't install Linux on my iBook

Strangely enough, Mac OS X was more Unix-like than either KDE or Gnome. What I mean with Unix-like are three things: scriptable, KISS, different applications can work together.

KISS
You won't see a filemanager that doubles as an internet browser on mac os x for example. Mail.app isn't a calendar.
Safari does one thing, and does it well. iTunes does one thing, and it does it well, same goes for iChat, iPhoto,...

Scriptable
Applescript, although it has a weird syntax, is pretty useful to extend and automise the graphical applications. Add, "do shell script", and you have something powerful.
Example: I have a simple MySQL database for my divx movies. If I drag and drop a movie to my "Movies" folder, it automatically adds it to my MySQL database. (thanks to folder actions, applescript and perl)

Applications integrate and work with each-other
I can actually just copy an image from my web-browser, and paste it in another application. Very shocking for a former Gnome user :-)
iTunes, iPhoto and iMovie are separate applications, but they work well with each-other. Add a picture from iPhoto in iMovie. Play an mp3 from iTunes in iPhoto.
The services menu adds extra integration between applications. Select a text, and directly mail it to someone. Make a post-it note from it. Stuff like that.

Besides the above points there is a good software selection. Ranging from the Adobe/Macromedia/Microsoft selection, to stuff like OmniGraffle, Keynote and iLife.

Generally I'm just more productive. If I can save 1-2 mouse clicks or key strokes on each operation, I will save allot more time, than I would have running Linux on a fast processor. I wouldn't use it on the server, but as an advanced Unix-like desktop, Mac OS X is king.

I'm using Macs from October 12th, 1985 and I very pleased, so I did not vote in the second poll, but I would like to see the results.

Is it possible to put a See the results page_

Thanks

Notebooks are an intirely different matter.

Apple notebooks are the best IHMO.

I guess I was too "intired" when I wrote that.

God I wish there was an edit button...

I have loads of Macs, but I'm not certain that I qualify as a Mac owner in the poll, since the strongest ones are 601 based.

"I have loads of Macs, but I'm not certain that I qualify as a Mac owner in the poll, since the strongest ones are 601 based."

If I own a first generation Pentium, do I not own a PC?

Well, they are macs, aren't they? Even a Macintosh 128k is a mac, I think. But our Performa 180/6400 is sitting upstairs for a year already, unused.

Come on are you trolling or what ! Why would a personally hand built computer be any different then what you would get in the store ? Pleeeease ! If you know what the hell you are doing ( which I and others do ! ) you can build yourself a pretty mean and lean powerful machine with less cash and with parts you we personally hand selected.

Oh yeah don't give me crap about how parts in a computer that was built by someone has cheap parts in it. You know that's a bunch troll baiting BS ! I can get very good quality PC parts from motherboard to a highend video card and put it all together and it will not cost me my freaking bank account like a high-end Mac would. If you don't mind paying for over priced rigs then that's your choice but don't talk out of your arse-hole when it comes rolling your own pc. It's obvious you have had very little if any experience with the subject and you sound like freaking Apple zealot when spouting off such non-sense.

Well, since Eugenia's poll was very obviously business oriented, my owning a Mac would be of little consequence. I don't plan to buy a Mac. I'm an Amiga user, and as much as I admire MacOS, I'm not fond of its latest incarnation, and all my computer funds go to maintaining the Amiga, which the Mac can't replace. So I really should have voted in both polls, despite owning lots of Macs.
You could say, that I own Macs, but I'm not a Mac owner.

The whole paragraph had me laughing but when he actually had the nerve to say, "and you sound like freaking Apple zealot when spouting off such non-sense.", the combination of the two had me falling out of my chair.

When will the pots ever learn about the kettles before opening their mouths?....

I voted "Not planning to buy" and "PC's cheaper" even though those answers are only marginally true.

At home I use a Celeron 400 w/ Win 98 and it does most of the things I want to do. I dabble with Linux occasionally. The onboard video is not good enough to run even the bargain bin games that I might want to purchase if they require 3D, but that's why my kids have Playstation and now PS2.

So, my requirements aren't that steep.

Checking the prices for emacs and ibooks, they actually seem to be a good deal for all of the features (extra software) that you get. I've read a lot of the articles here about "What Apple Should Do(tm)". While I think that Apple prices are pretty competetive with what I can otherwise afford (sub $1000 but better than WalMart $199) I just wish that they would include 256-512 MB RAM and at least a ComboDrive on their lowest end machines AT THE SAME PRICE POINT. That would probably make me buy at least an ibook and maybe an emac.

Until then, my limited funds will go towards building my own systems and/or recycling the parts out of my old PC's.

Macs: too expensive in the country I live (.gr)
No evidence of support.
Binding with one platform, why can't independent vendors construct apple compatibles like IBM comparibles a million years before.
The idia of binding my computing experience with one company is something I can't tryst: Didn't like M$, switched to linux, the one who sold me my PC stops business: I can have it repaired/upgraded elsewhere. etc etc

"Hum, how many wintel parts come with 1GHz bus, custom chipset, open trasport, support for 8GB 400DDR Ram, 64bit X-PCI, Gigabit Ethernet, optical audio, firewire 800. All of them standard in the motherboard?"

Except for Firewire 800 and IGHz all are readily available on Wintel. Hypertransport and PCI-X are industry standards not Apple proprietary items.


"Oh. they are all made of PCB and traces, so yeah... maybe you are right. So in the same spirit the G5 and P4 both are made of silicon so the G5 must be standard Itel OEM parts."

Most of the motherboard technology is standard x86 except CPUs and some custom components. The CPUs are built by IBM - the other chipsets are mainly AMD.

" A high quality homebuilt PC is as good or <better> than <any> commercial machine whether it is from Apple or Alienware. It is very easy to build a cheap very high quality PC - 30 mins to buy the components and 2-3 hours to build and install the software."

"So do it, but you will not get a system like the G5 by a long shot. Independent thermally controlled fans, no. Superdrive, no, almost no wires running through the case, no. A low noise overall machine, no. Dual G5's, no."

How about water cooling <20dB (below ambient noise) with no fans. How about a Sony DVD that supports <all> formats.

"I am pretty sure that you must be superduper putting things together, but believe me you seem to overstimate your skill with the soldering iron on this one pal."

The only tool needed to build a computer is a Phillips head screwdriver - there is no soldering whatsover in building a personal computer.

Because I would tick the first 4 boxes.

PC's are cheaper

Macs are underpowered (G3,G4 and G5) for the price

Macs have many fewer Games (which drive the PC market upgrades)

There is no incentive to switch at all for most people.

Macs are currently a nitch market and unless the price comes down, the power Stays competitive and Game makers start releasing Mac versions at the same time as PC versions I , and multitudes of others like me,will never switch.

I really wanted an ibook because, as a linux user, it makes more sense for me to buy something that will work rather than buy an XP laptop that I will trash to install Linux, that will likely struggle to get everything working.

But it's too underpowered and too expensive. I will buy a laptop when a vendor will propose with mandrake or suse preinstalled, with everything (including soft keys) configured.

Well to all of you who disagree with me, that's your opinion. I will not pull back. I am sticking with Intel/AMD

When people compare Macs with PC and say that they aren't so expensive they are usually comparing brand names like Dell or Compaq. But what is often forgotten is the still very large component and white box market. Sure, that G5 doesn't seem so expensive compared against that top of the line Dell, but many people would never buy said Dell either.

For exactly $1000 I can get a 2.4GHz P4C (these things are the new Celeron300s! They go easily > 3GHz with the _standard_ cooler), 512MB DDR400, a special quiet computer case, a serial ATA 120GB drive, and a Radeon 9700 (non-pro). This is why the Macs don't compete in the enthusiast/white box market, which is around 30% of the whole market (just Google it).

I would like to own a Mac, I like OSX a lot. But when the entry level computer is $1,999 for the 1.6 GHz model, Macs are right out of the question. I have never put $2000 on a new machine, and I must have owned a dozen top of the line (at the time) systems over the years. The Mac laptops on the other hand are pretty sweet and much better bang for the buck, I might buy one second-hand some time in the future.

I've about to get a new laptop (which my parents are paying for ). I was considering buying a Mac, but in the end decided against it. Why?

- The only other experience I've had with proprietary operating systems has turned me off them. I have a—perhaps unfounded—fear that I'll be stuck with something I don't actually want.

- MacOS X costs money. I don't have the funds to be able to constantly upgrade an OS.

- Fear of the unknown. As an example, I don't know exactly how customisable a Mac is, but I understand it isn't much. The screenshots I've seen of the Aqua interface look bad. I'm not going to support an OS that has close, minimise and maximise buttons on the some side, let alone distinguished only be color... Not to mention that I'm not too fond of the bubbly look.

Of course, I could deal with all of those simply enough by putting Gentoo on (which is what I'd be doing with an x86-based lappy, anyway). But given I would only be able to get an 800 MHz G3, I wasn't sure whether the compile times would be bareable. But you compile once and run many times, so the extra time spent compiling wouldn't've been too much of a problem.

The real thing that made my mind up was the mouse. I'm going to have a hard enough time adapting to a two-button mouse, a one-button mouse would be impossible... (No you cannot buy an n-button mouse for a laptop. Or, you can, but you want a laptop to be pretty much self-contained so you can use it without peripherals sticking out.) I imagine this would be more of an issue if I used Gentoo, but I didn't want to run the risk.

APPLE, PUT MORE BUTTONS ON YOUR LAPTOPS!

If I ever get the money to, though, I'm going to buy a Mac desktop. Among others (a RiscOS desktop, an Amiga desktop etc.).

My previous employer was a university with a large IS department. My new PC needed to be reimaged. It took a day. I have reimaged a Mac and had it back in operation in less than an hour and I am not a technician.

Please elaborate on this. Using Norton Ghost on Windows, reimaging doesn't take 1/24th the time you claim. Claims like this make it nearly impossible to take Mac TCO claims seriously.

I can buy a little army of 8 Dell PCs for the price of that Dual 2Ghz Mac. So yeah, they'll drink more electricity and need more admin, leading to a higher TCO, but they'll also provide 8 people with PCs. So TCO is a flawed argument.

The notebooks seem cool though.

I ordered my PB on 7-2-03 and should get it this comming week The main reason I made the switch is because of OS X. I love the fact that it is UNIX based. I don't like windows so I tried some different distros of Linux (using RH 9 now) but I'm not that crazy about it. I tried FreeBSD and love it but I don't want my OS to be hard to set up. I had to recompile the kernel just to get sound. I want a UNIX OS that just works and from what I have read, OS X is it.

I really like Mac OS X and I would like a Mac, but really the advantages over a PC with Windows XP aren't that great. The new G5s are quite well priced systems compared with very high end PCs, but I don't need a very high end computer.

For me spending more than $1000 on a computer is a waste of money. A cheap PC meets my needs quite well and there's no desktop Mac of an equivalent price, apart from the iMac/eMac which have too many limitations.

"Binding with one platform, why can't independent vendors construct apple compatibles like IBM comparibles a million years before."

Because when Apple tried licensing clones, customers bought the clones instead of Macs, not as well as Macs. The total sales did not increase, and Apple made less money.

That's why Jobs stopped it. Maybe the experiment did not run for long enough, but so far as it ran it was not successful from Apple's point of view.

"APPLE, PUT MORE BUTTONS ON YOUR LAPTOPS!"

Truer words have never been spoken -- I BADLY want an iBook, but I cannot for the life of me see using a goddamned one button trackpad. Yes, I know about cmd-click, and that is horseshit. I love my mac, lust after a G5, but simply cannot fathom how anyone could use a 1 button mouse and [i]like it. I don't need 8 buttons, but I need 2.

I'd want vote for all the options in the last poll, they are all good reasons to not have one. I ended up choosing "Don't like Apple" though, the company is waaaaaay too evil for me to want to support. Even if they were nice and cuddly though, I still wouldn't want a Mac. Decisions, decisions.....

The poll show price as the overwhelming reason why someone would not get a Mac.

Much has been said about that for a long time. I think - and I know Eugenia and others think - that Apple should come out with a true entry level Mac price-wise. Perhaps the eMac or a headless Mac like the Cube or something else.

The yet-to-be-released Macs are pretty high priced with only the dual 2 GHz being worth ists true value. There are grat deals on the current Power Macs - dual 1.25 GHz.

But, I do tyhink it's true - a snappy entry model is needed. It should be attractive and stylish and Apple should simply bite the bullet if it doesn't make a profit. It would be worth it in new users buying iPods, etc. With the iLife apps, an entry level couldn't be beat.

...but not a G5, as 2000 U$D is a ludicrous price to me. I can get build a powerful computer like I want (from the high quality "scrapyard") for about 1000 USD. I might get a second-hand PowerBook as they look great. I also like its high battery life. Perhaps they ain't as powerful as a P4, but I don't need that power for mobile computing.

Btw, people claiming that computers pre-built by "experts" (straight from China) are better than self-built computers are morons. Fact is that you can choose ANYTHING you want for self-built computers, even hardware of a much higher quality than the standard onboard crap, and usually for cheaper. There are good reasons to get a Mac, but this one is not. In fact, it's a good reason to NOT get a Mac because you are stuck to use what they want at the price they want (for PC hardware that is not compatible with Macs).

I was a long Apple user, from the Apple II to the IIe to the IIc to the original Mac before I finally switched over to x86 in the late 80's. I've been longing for a Mac ever since.

As others have said, I really wish there was an entry level headless Mac. Still, I may just go for that 17" iMac or maybe a Powerbook or maybe one of those reduced PowerMac G4's.

Now I just have to convince the wife...

The PC was running NT4 SP4 (from memory). I questioned their need to have it for 24 hours. They said they needed to let it run overnight to see if everything was OK. True story.

People really need to look past initial price.

And of course a lot of people on this forum could (and do) build their own PCs quite cheaply. But most people don't know how to build a computer. Just as most people would like to build their own houses for a fraction of the price of hiring someone to do it. But they can't so they spend a lot of money and buy one off the plan.

Apple have their faults but because they make the box and the OS they work better and more cheaply together, but not as fast.

If contributors to this forum think otherwise can they provide references??

I gave my iBook to my mother-in-law (really) and run Libranet 2.8
on an old P3 ThinkPad. I can update ad infinitum for free and have all the apps I need. I shelled out les than a grand and I'm a hero to boot..

I would like to have a G5 based personal computer but no a Mac. If would like to buy a cheap chinese G5 motherboard and assemble my computer by myself. Apple could receive money by licensing your hardware specifications to Asus, Abit, Soyo, etc and selling an OEM version of MacOS X. Apple would have 2 sources of money, while M$ has only one...

I'd hate to have to use a one button mouse with a desktop, but on a Powerbook a single button doesn't seem like a big problem. The Ctrl key isn't much further away from the trackpad than the button, you can easily Ctrl+click with one hand.

eh... you get used to the single button on the desktop... it isn't so bad. in fact it's sometimes real fun to see how fast and with what finger combinations you can do ctrl+click... it's fine on the powerbook too.

All of the above.

1st POLL: I already have a Mac(iBook) but I plan on getting a G5.

Someone's already asked if I wanted to sell my iBook!

2nd POLL: I'm waiting for the first revision of the G5 to get my hands on one.

I'm not sure if what I answered on the poll really applied to my feelings. Before the G5, I felt the Macs were too underpowered for their price. I think the G5 makes Macs competitive (although probably not the "fastest PC on earth" as the Jobs reality distortion field puts it). I've toyed with the idea of getting a Mac, but I'd hesitate to buy in at the low end (say an eMac or an iMac) because I'd worry I'd outgrow the system if I really took to it. Also, space is an issue... if I could KVM in a cheap Mac box, I'd not have to set aside another desk/table for the Mac.

One thing I've not heard anyone talk about is the cost of software in this whole equation. I've been over to Adobe's site, for example, and I can't seem to find any price breaks (i.e. a "crossgrade") on their products for people switching platforms. Since I use some fairly pricey stuff (Photoshop, InDesign, and FrameMaker from Adobe alone) switching to a Mac for all of my work would probably mean I would have to buy all of my software again from scratch, spending more in software replacement than in the initial hardware cost. None of the software companies that do have cross-platform products seem to offer crossgrade pricing (at least, not that I have seen. If they do, then Apple really needs to tout this). Meanwhile, 99% of my old software stayed as is when I went from Windows 2000 to XP, or in the rare case where software wouldn't work between the windows versions (there was only one in my case: Partition Magic) the upgrade price was in the neighborhood of $40.

Yeah, I know, I could use an emulator as a bridge between going from the PC and the Mac, slowly replacing software as I go. But that really defeats the purpose of switching platforms, in my book. I'd get significantly less performance, and I would still be using Windows.

Of course, this is the same in the other direction... if you have a hefty software investment, switching from a Mac to a PC makes less sense than staying with the Mac.

I voted that I would not purchase a Mac, but if MicroSoft manages to take control fo the PC platform (via Palladium) then I will switch to the PPC architecture. My OS of choice is GNU/Linux, so I may look for a way of avoiding an OSX tax (like people pay to MS when they purchase prebuilt PCs).

Even if underpowered, there hardware is excellent, and they readily provide drivers for GNU/Linux.

I would rather have a Sony Vaio than any Apple Mac :-)

Sony always have a better design, better hardware, better software, better price, better performance, better compatability, better support than Apple ;-)

Sony is the best.

A Mac is simplicity, grace and style. Its easy to use, easy to upgrade and has the best OS (Mac OS X) on the planet. I get my work done without the OS getting in the way. These things make a Mac well worth the price.

I read on another software forum that if you contact / email marcomedia / adobe. They will give you the mac version or sell it at upgrade costs, this depends on what version of the software you are at. If it new you get the mac version else for upgrade cost.

First , because I wanted to use OSX. That's pretty obvious, that's why MOST people switch ( I don't like that term , it makes it seem as though you can't use everything. I have a Linux fileserver , an openbsd firewall and an old windows machine running kazaa )

Second , because the ibook was the best choice for me. The combination of inexpensive , well built hardware with *very* good WiFi along with a very nice LCD and a 6 hour battery life ( realistically , if your screen is using much backlight and you're using wireless you'll never get 6 hours. But then , 5.5 hours isn't bad at all either )

So for me my ibook was the best decision.

Would I buy a desktop mac ? Well , with what I've found with OSX and mac hardware I'd certainly be tempted. But I'm to the point where I doubt I'd buy *any* new desktop machine, PC / Mac / Sun / blah .

But I must admit , the 12" powerbooks are in a very nice price range. And the 17" powerbooks have all the funky bells and whistles ( breathe deeply , count to ten , think of the damage to the bank account )

"The argument that wintel machines are cheaper and offer more power falls apart when it comes to laptops. The mobile pentiums ( p4-M and pentium-M) use speedstep which basically halves the cpu freq when the laptop is on battery. My friend returned his Dell 8500 with a 2.0ghz p4-M out of frustration because it would run at max 1.2 ghz or most of the time at 700 mhz. Calls to dell support couldn't help in disabling speedstep. He go frustrated and returned it because it was too slow on battery power. He bought a celeron based one instead."

I have a speedstep laptop and it only lowers the speed by 100Mhz on my machine (I'm sure it differs depending on the speed of the processor). Saying that the speed is "halved" is a bit misleading. Secondly, disabling the speedstep is not hard at all, it's in the BIOS.

"3. And a great OS that just works
I am a UNIX person and I am tired of trying to make things work with linux. I have tinkered with it for 4 years on various machines. After debugging drivers and unix kernel panics at work all day I don't want to come home and further debug problems. With macos X I get the best of both worlds UNIX and a decent GUI with tonnes of cool apps. There is no UNIX or linux distro that even comes close on x86 to being a decent multimedia OS and laptop OS."

More propoganda. How were you having kernel panics all day? Especially if you are a Unix person? I never used Unix and I had no problem setting up and maintaing a Linux machine. Maybe you just shouldn't be using Linux but don't discourage other people. I run Linux on a speedstep laptop and I never have a problem. My machines is also very multimedia capable. I can't think of one thing I can't do on my Linux laptop that I've ever wanted to do.

I have been a long-time fan of Mac OSes. I have a 68K Mac running OS 8.1 and 601 PowerMac running OS 9.

But I don't generally use these anymore and can't conceive buying another Mac unless the total cost of acquisition changes.

I would love to run Mac OSX. But I also want to use my perfectly good 21" monitor and SCSI peripherals. OSX also needs lots of horsepower. For these reasons, I would want/need the $2500 G5 Mac, with an added SCSI card. Even then, I'd have to buy a new Postscript Laserprinter, since my current one only supports Appletalk and Parallel connections.

Bottom line, I'd be spending $3000+ to get what I want.

Instead I'm running Linux on a PC that cost less than $1000.

I should also mention that Apple quality isn't there anymore. I stopped recommending Apple to friends after two of them got burned by iMac hardware defects that took *months* to get fixed. Problems that came back again after warranty, too. So add to that $3000 price, the cost of an AppleCare contract, too.

But if Apple comes out with a headless G5 with USB2 and a slot to support a SCSI card for $1000 -- I'll be there in a minute. I want my OSX!

Well, I didn't see an option of "I own a PC because they were better value than Mac, however, today I am getting a mac because they deliver the price performance I want".

Back when I bought my PC, macs were bloody expensive, however, today, they are very reasonably priced to the point that any one who is willing to save up for one can afford it.

When I bought my PC, it was back in the days of the PowerPC beige boxs and the price of them were around $7000, and worse still their all-in-one combo was terrible for the performance they delivered.

Again, today you can pick up a iMac with a sexy flat screen for a reasonable price and the workstations are comparably priced to the Dell Workstation line.

Anyone who says otherwise must be either anti-apple zealots or Percy Poverty cases who can't be bothered getting off their ass, saving up some cash and buying something which the software and hardware work nicely together rather than having the bullcrap we have today in the PC world of a half-baked operating system riding ontop of el-cheapo hardware made by some dodgy third rate operation working out of a toilet cubical. But of course the PC-zealots will scream "competition" even though you would still have to pay a premium for quality components.

This place should be renamed from OSNews.com into iWhiners.com! There are so many of them here! Always, iWhining how expensive and bad Apple products are and Apple in general... It is like Smith from Reloaded! They are trying to copy their miserable selves over others like there is no tomorrow! Well, for those miserable iWhiners actually there is no tomorrow but this is a story for some other time... :p

Grow up and quit iWhining for a change! Starting NOW!

Well, I don't think you know too many people who have bought Vaio laptops. All my friends who own them, curse them for Sony's proprietary mumbo-jumbo. Drivers are a pain in the ass (ever want to install a new OS on a somewhat old sony laptop, to find that drivers are a pain in da shazam to find?). In my book, memory-stick is just a joke. Expensive proprietary solution to something already fixed with products where competition exists (CF, SD etc). How about all their DRM-stuff? The list goes on (don't get me wrong, I like alot of other Sony stuff, just not their computers).

I actually like Apple for what they've been trying to do lately. They're moving towards open standards, and using the open source community. That's what it's for. No need to re-invent the wheel. Take good code, improve, and give back changes to the community. I think that open-source is all about sharing knowledge and information, but I might be wrong Anyway, a little bit back on track. Can you give examples? You name things that apple are known for (good support, design etc), but you say that Sony is better. I want examples!

Speed, they've got the G5. Design? We're talking Apple, they're known for poor performance, but good design (not true anymore, one could hope). Software is top-notch for the end-user (I think iLife is perfect for the average user who organize photos, listen to music, edit the dv-movie from the last birthday party etc) . I give you price, but you get what you pay for. Compability and support, my vote for apple, but that's totally subjective, so don't flame me into oblivion.

By the way, I'm typing this on my new iBook with my old trusty Sony earphones.

More propoganda. How were you having kernel panics all day? Especially if you are a Unix person? I never used Unix and I had no problem setting up and maintaing a Linux machine. Maybe you just shouldn't be using Linux but don't discourage other people. I run Linux on a speedstep laptop and I never have a problem. My machines is also very multimedia capable. I can't think of one thing I can't do on my Linux laptop that I've ever wanted to do.

What do you think sunshine? crappy drivers privided with the kernel. Atleast when one runs FreeBSD, one can be assured that although the driver selection is limited, they are actually QUALITY drivers and are NOT riddled with bugs.

Also, why should I need to run Linux then turn around and find there are no bloody applications to run on it? I don't give a shit about replacements, I want the exact applications I can get on Windows or Mac. Simple as that. They can be delivered if there is some leadership by distributions, however, none of them are willing to sit down, sign an NDA and port the applications over to Linux.

Until I can get Office, Corel Graphics Suite, my Wacom tablet working adequately, and various other applications, you can scream about Linux or what ever till the cows come home, however, the only alternatives there are out there to Windows is MacOS X. Screaming and shouting will not change that fact.

Closed architecture.
Getting a closer look at Mac OS X would be tempting, but I'm not going to buy a special computer for that.

Apples tend to cost 50% more for something which is 10% better. For the most part they are difficult to customize. Equipment capabilities change quickly in modern times.

As a company Apple has no competitive fire. They are content to have a paltry 4% market share as long as they can charge more for the few boxes. They enjoy too much the adulations of devoted fans. As a group they are declining into insignificance.

I voted "doesn't have the software I need." Max os x is pretty, but my development experience on it has been a nightmare. Apparently (/please/ correct me if I'm wrong) there is only one malloc debugger - MallocDebug - and it's a GUI app, which is worthless to me (how do you debug remotely?) Besides, when your app crashes it (which mine did), you are more or less out of luck. There does not appear to be anything like Valgrind, Purify or Insure++ for this platform. So I'd say that memory access debuggers are the main thing keeping me off the platform.

"Also, why should I need to run Linux then turn around and find there are no bloody applications to run on it? I don't give a shit about replacements, I want the exact applications I can get on Windows or Mac. Simple as that. They can be delivered if there is some leadership by distributions, however, none of them are willing to sit down, sign an NDA and port the applications over to Linux.

Until I can get Office, Corel Graphics Suite, my Wacom tablet working adequately, and various other applications, you can scream about Linux or what ever till the cows come home, however, the only alternatives there are out there to Windows is MacOS X. Screaming and shouting will not change that fact."

First of all you seem to be the one screaming and yelling not me. There's no need to be angry just because you can't get Linux to work right. I've set up numerous machines with Linux and never had a problem. I don't doubt that some hardware is not as supported as others but the same holds true for MS. I had more buggy drivers for Windows than I had for Linux. The applications are there and anyone who says otherwise has not used Linux. You are right that not all of the same applications are there but who needs them? The Linux replacements work better in most cases for me. You seem to be too tied up in the fact that you are not willing to learn something new and instead wish to call Linux inferior because you don't have the 5 mins it takes to check out a new application.

an "underpowered" notebook is ok with me (longer battery life), and software isn't an issue since I run linux.

I like that the airport adapter doesn't stick out like my Aironet 350 PCMCIA card.

My last (current) i386 laptop didn't have a serial port, and that proved to be a pain. I bought a USB to serial converter, so I have the functionality I need, but I think that when the time comes to replace this thing, I'll get one with a serial port on board.

I use my right mouse button a lot to "open link in new tab" and other stuff -- yeah, I know you can simply hold the one mouse button down longer in MacOS -- so I'm partial to two mouse buttons.

Lastly, Slackware Linux isn't available (officially) for the G? processors. I guess I could try the unofficial Slackintosh or try a new distro, but I've been keeping up with the biggies on i386, and I don't like them as much as my beloved slackware.

I just find it amazing that there's more Mac users or future Mac users than people who don't want to buy or don't need a Mac.

This might work, I had to vote (other).

http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=3971

You can malloc debug with GDB, gdb is included with X even if it's highly modfied by Apple.

You have othe tools you mention but do have cool tools like : http://www.aaa-plus.com/joy/desc.html.

--
http://homepage.mac.com/softkid/

I don't think that you can...

GDB won't tell you if you overrun a buffer, or double-free. You get "oooh, segfault in gethostbyname" and can infer that you have some memory error, but gdb can't help you there (unless you throw breakpoints in malloc/free and count yourself...)

In other words, gdb doesn't check *every memory access period* , which is what you need for a useable memory debugger.

gdb is good for logic bugs though.

and the next machine will be one too. and the next, and the next.

the one i own now is my first, but OS X is what linux promised it would be for 6 years of my using it. thank you apple!

Bullcrap, if you were a regular osnews.com reader, you would know that for 8 years I have run Linux and *BSD. This year I've given up.

Every year I hear the same promises of things being fixed. Sorry, I've given 8 years for the *NIX community to get their shit together and it seems that the *NIX community are more interested in making something 200000x more complicated than it needs to be.

GIMP is a prime example of crappy usability. I spent a good 30minutes finding the bloody save function. Why should I need to spend all that time? had they designed and implemented it properly using commonly used layout of menus and so forth I would have simply gone to the menu at the top of the window, click on file then save.

Sorry, after 8 years I expect improvement. Sure, the desktop has been made more attractive, however, that doesn't make up for its crappy usability. Heck, any moron can make a 24bit icon. Even I could do it!

MacOS X is the only REAL alternative out there and whether you like it or not, I am moving to it.

As for the lack of adoption by Joe and Jan average, they only have themselves to blame. You can point to the occasional change in the wind, however, if one were to be mature and look at the facts, Windows still has 95% of the market place.

As a server operating system, sure, no problems, but as a desktop, I wouldn't touch it again with a 40foot pole. Heck, just read the interviews with Linus Torvalds in regards to Linux on the desktop. Maybe you should read up about his comments and whether or not he believes it is ready.

hey good poll. The results, pcs are generally cheaper, say a lot i think.

> hey good poll. The results, pcs are generally cheaper, say a lot i think.

yeah..... you get what you pay for........ unless you buy MS software, then you get .010% of what you pay for. ;-)

ouch! I guess you could read it that way as well. By the way i don't think the G5s are overpriced. I intend to buy one in fact in the next year. OS X, G5, available audio software and fire wire audio interfaces have won me over.

Jaguar will run fine on a CRT iMac with 16MB VRAM(the minimum for Quartz Extreme), and Panther, from all reports, is noticeably smoother on even that outdated hardware. You could translate this to similar outdated Blue & White or Graphite PowerMac hardware if you want something headless. All of these are available at reasonable prices.

No, it's not bleeding edge, but if your emphasis is just on being able to run OS X software, even the best blindingly fast Wintel machine isn't going to do a better job.

And if your goal is software development, these machines won't compile things as fast, but they'll let you get a taste for the dev environment and go far beyond.

Just something to mull over for those complaining about prices.

I love it when the Mac users use that "you get what you pay for" argument. Macs are thought of as "built by professionals" or "of high quality" etc. etc. Are you forgetting the whole "dead pixels" issue with Apple LCD screens and Apple pretty much said "TS. just rub it alittle"? To be fair so did all LCD screen manufacturers. All I'm saying is Apple hardware is no different from other off the shelf PC hardware... just more prettier and more expensive.

How about my internal 56K modem in my iMac G4 flat panel? It could not hold a connection for more than 5 minutes, even after all the updates that promised to fix the issue. Negative.

Macs are more expensive *up front* than PCs, no one can deny that. Whether or not the quality of the hardware is worth the cost, that's subjective and can vary by each person's experience. And for those who question: "Why build your own computer when you can buy one made by experts?" my rebuttal is because we *are* experts :-) Seriously, the question is: Why not?

>Jaguar will run fine on a CRT iMac with 16MB VRAM(the minimum for Quartz Extreme),

Sorry, but this is not true. Quartz Extreme, yes requires 16 MB VRAM for 1024x768, but it also requires either a Radeon or a GeForce card, while the Classic iMacs CRT only had ATi Rage Pro cards in them.

My G4 Cube also came with ATi Rage Pro and I had to upgrade to a GeForce2MX in order to activate QExtreme. Too bad that the Classic CRT iMacs can't upgrade though, as the graphics cards were soldiered in the motherboard AFAIK.

The cheapest machines, QE-enabled, that people can buy are older G4 Powermacs, or Radeon-based iBooks or eMacs.

Funny... I had QE running on an Indigo iMac. (500MHz version)

I'd like a Ferrari, but it's too expensive. Why should i get a Ferrari when i can get a Honda that's just as fast? The Ferrari is just eye-candy anyway...

Oh? And how do you know that QE was active?
Apple said that minimum is AGP Radeon or Geforce with 16 MB of RAM. These CRT iMacs had ATi Rage cards, therefore QE was inactive and MacOSX is working on software mode instead of compositing in accelerated mode.

>Looks like the polls are expressing the most widely held misconception: "that PCs are generally cheaper."

>This is true:

>1) only when you build your own machine
>2) only when a PCs hardware and software are not matched to the Macs
>3) only when you buy a system so low end its only slightly usable.

That's just not true.. I was pricing a very nice 2.6 Ghz Dell P4 the other day, came out to around $1,200 with 512mb ram, cd/dvd writer, free 17in monitor, everything...

It beats the crap out of the $1,300 iMac and the $1,300 G4.

So no... Macs are more expensive. Try pricing some PCs from Dell and see for yourself.

I switched to Mac 3 years ago this summer and have not looked back. PC's tempting, yup that's why I'm typing to you on this cheapo Dell. But in the case of OS's, OS X has XP beat, heck even OS 9 was better then Win 95 and 98 which I was using on my old pentium. The fact is that XP isn't the GEM every gates distorted buddy talks about. XP looks to CARTOONISH,,, clear my throat, it needs AQUA and I had the start button and menus on xp.

The fact is that Apple is leader at making OS's and have made more than anyother company. Prove me wrong if you can. If I'm wrong, I will be corrected.

So yup I will be getting another Mac the fall.

The only reason I have not gotten a nice lil mac to lie around here with all the PCs is the price. Frankly, despite its supposed better "media" capabilities, for the same price I can get 5 AMD based systems that I can network-render on Maya. There is NO reason that I should pay more than $1000 for any computer.

That's why I build mine.

Homebrew forever!

The MAC is not really more expensive than a high-performance PC. And you don't have to use an Apple display, if that is too expensive. I've read somewhere that the Apple monitors are based on technology from Sony, but I'm not sure of that.

Anon said,

"the more experienced a user is, the easier it is to get away with a worse machine"

This statement is analogous to saying because I am a good driver, I can get away with an old crappy car. Is the statement true? Maybe, but that's besides the point.

I WANT a nice sports car. It's nothing to do with what I can get away with.

Err, no. When you buy a Falcon Northwest that costs $5000, yes, I would call that more expensive than a Mac. But if you built a system yourself with an Athlon 3000+ XP, more RAM than your average user would care to use, a Radeon 9800 Pro, great Mboard, basically everything. Let's throw in water cooling and a large array of fans. And home-made window, we'll include cost of dremel blades and lexan. Hmmm, and paint, to paint the case. And lights, too, how about that?

That total would be under $1900. I did NOT add the prices up, as I do have better things to do. But if you care to, you can get that for even less than $1850. All as long as you go PC, and build yourself.

Oh, and the display on the 900 Mhz G4 I work on is made by Sony. Its this black flat-screen CRT. The fact that its black doesn't fit with the gray plastic G4, but oh well, that's what you get.

I would characterize apples pricing as slanted to make the G4 power macs the margin provider, in the past.

The laptops have always seemed like good deal, especially when one considers power consumption. While i would have preferred cheaper, the original iMAcs were tolerable price wise. The new emac and imac also seem okay. The G5 is actually a pretty good deal (at least i think it is for what i'll do with it..audio), especially once you get rid of that extra $200 DVD super drive thing.

The item that i have always thought was overpriced was the entry level mini tower, in both absolute terms and for what you get. $1599 was just too much for those devices. The deal on the next product up and the high-end mini-tower was more reasonable. I think Steve Jobs might agree with us as evidence by that fact that that entry level G4 power mac is now obtainable from apple at $1299, a reduction of $300. $1299, while i'd prefer $1199 or $1099, is fair enough.

@abraxas

"More propoganda. How were you having kernel panics all day? Especially if you are a Unix person? I never used Unix and I had no problem setting up and maintaing a Linux machine. Maybe you just shouldn't be using Linux but don't discourage other people. I run Linux on a speedstep laptop and I never have a problem. My machines is also very multimedia capable. I can't think of one thing I can't do on my Linux laptop that I've ever wanted to do."

Not at all. I work with UNIX (not linux linux!= Unix) source code and development hardware as a OS systems engineer, I also look at SCSI/IDE/PCI bus analysers at work debugging driver and chip problems for a major UNIX systems vendor. Thank you for letting me know I do my job well so customers like you don't see panics.

I have installed linux on many laptops/desktops and have used it extensively and exclusively and also evangalized it at one time. But me personally I am tired of always having to keep configuring it to get it to work. On my toshiba laptop I have spent hours and days pouring through the linuix kernels ACPI code (found a bug as well they blacklist all toshiba laptops when they only mean to blacklist two models) and the Xservers driver to get my trident video card to work with XVideo so I can watch DVDs.

I gave up because No linux distro just works. You have to install some library to get something to work and that obviously changes something else. Drivers you get off the net just don't work on any kernel. The linux developers do a great job and linux is a wonderful OS. But it is just not geared towards endusers. I am a developer and can sit and compile and get things to work. some times I love doing that but after a hard days/weeks work I am too drained to come and go at it again at home. I still have a PC actually two and can fool around with linux but I want my main machine to just work. MacOs X will integrate better at work because it is UNIX and has decent wireless interface. Every tried getting wireless to work with linux( I am to tired to go to google search the 10 different tools, download them, compile them fiddle around with them get them to work). Not that I can't but I don't want to, I shouldn't have to.

Oh and speedstep the dell inspiron 8500's phoenix bios only allowed it to run at 1.2 ghz if speedstep was disabled. I sat with him and tried everything and I was just shocked to see speedstep in action. That was not the only problem with it though the display resolution can't be changed from 1900X1200 or the display looks like crap, Dell copied apples wideascpect ratio but didn't implement it as thoughtfuly.

So, now Apple is the evil company, thinks like spyware DRM, closed TCP computing asf., or what? Anyone recently heard of Microsoft? Of Intel? Who´s closing the market with it´s hardwar/softwar? You don´t have so much more choices in WinTelTubbyWorld. 90% of the user base buy hardware which is far out of reach of their user profile and makes them less productive in their home environment. Selling all those P4 3Ghz to old ladies and othert computer novices. none of them is capable to tweak and twister MS software and Intel hardware so it will run clean, without spying around, with easy setups etc.pp. It´s not all geeks around, fortunately, you are no superheros, just plain tinkertoy guys.

You seem to forget that most technologies which come out of the Apple weren´t supposed to be supported, but are now supported and implemented in the consumer market. The new G5 presents a quite nice package not to be found yet in the windows intel world. That´s it, you can´t built such a system with your trillions of choices in hardware. Technically yet NOT POSSIBLE. We´ll see whether Intel will follow this step, because their Mhz traumata is coming to it´s final scene.

Apple is one of the – if not THE - leading company in supporting open standards in terms of system cores, software technology and file formats.

So what do you want? You want to have all for nothing. Won´t work, never worked. Fight for freedom (of choices) locks you in platforms. Apple is as much closed as the intel world. For a single company it competes pretty well. Because any comment sounding like "ah, too expensive, would buy it for $99 though" didn´t get it.

You buy a Mac because you won´t come into trouble. Simple as that. Or can you find me a 75 year old retired clerk who installed and keeps his machine running all on his own. Guess what he uses? No PC, no Windows, sorry. OSX and a G4. And he´s as fast doing his stuff as your PC guys on your superfruggermegomanomachine.

Most comments sound a bit too harsh regarding the fact that the G5 made Apple pretty much top again. And it is not about switchers, boys and girls, it´s competition. You feel the pain again beeing possibly second for a long long time, haha, that´s what keeps you bashing right now. We´ll wait another 6 months and talk again. Then we have a broad comparison whoiswhatwhyfasterthanthisorthat.

G.

When people compare Macs with PC and say that they aren't so expensive they are usually comparing brand names like Dell or Compaq. But what is often forgotten is the still very large component and white box market. Sure, that G5 doesn't seem so expensive compared against that top of the line Dell, but many people would never buy said Dell either.

Well first of all current market share figures would say that you are dead wrong. MOST people are buying a box from some name brand like Dell, Compaq, HP or Gateway for example. Secondly, this comparison is at least an "Apples vs. Apples" comparison (pardon the pun). Why would it be fair to compare the prices on something you assemble for yourself, with something you buy and just plug in?

It would be fair to say, "The Mac platform does not provide me with a 'build it yourself' option, and I really want that." But it is not fair to simply say Apple is more expensive when comparing only to the build it yourself option. Comparing Apple to Dell, HP-Compaq or Gateway seems much more reasonable. Big companies supporting the product after purchase and what not.

Some nice rumors, I forgot to add:

"The following information is from an unconfirmed and anonymous source. As such, authenticity is always uncertain, but due to the content of the piece, was felt to be of sufficient interest for publishing. Of interest, MacBidouille has posted similar (but fewer) details in their unconfirmed rumors of the PPC's timeline. This information below may represent corroboration -- or simply a common source. Take, as with all rumors, with an appropriate amount of skepticism.

Apple and IBM have been working on parallel development of the Power5 and PPC 980. The PPC 980 is a single core version of the Power 5. While prototype forms of this chip exist, it is almost a year away from shipping in Macs.

Improvements in the PPC 980 include Hyperthreading, eLiza error correction, and more massive parallelism. IBM's implementation of hyperthreading provides a 30% gain over Intel's. eLiza technology will reduce the bottlenecks when the branch prediction unit fails. Altivec will split into 3 pipelines (vs 2 in the 970), 4 Integer and 4 Floating point units. 980 will have to be built on a 90nm processor due to heat dissipation requirements.

Steve's comment of 3GHz in 1 year will not be accomplished with the G5 (970) - which will top out at 2.6-2.8GHz. The PPC 980 will start at speeds of 2.6-3GHz and top out around 4.5-5GHz. The G5 will make its way into PowerBook lines in Jan/Feb, Xserve's later this year, and iMacs in approximately one year.

Marklar's project size has decreased, but remains ongoing. There are four generations of the PowerPC including and beyond the 970 that are in development and planning. Besides the 980 chips (targetted at end of 2004), there are plans for 990 chips on a 65nm process in 2005/2006 @ 6GHz and scaling up to near 10GHz. Beyond this, the PPC 9900 starting on a 45nm process is targetted in 2007/2008 running up to 20-25GHz."

So how does this sound?

G.

sure you can get a home built pc for 1000$ and have a great pc, but if you add in the cost of software it'll go up... way up, 200$ for OS, 500$ for office, etc. etc. etc. if you go the windows route, if you go with linux you get what you paid for . sure there are a lot of ppl that dont need all the software or all the capabilities of OSX/XP and are more than happy with linux, but macs or brand name pc's arent made for that kind of people, all of my pc's since an old compaq i had have been custom built, and i've gotten what i've needed out of them, but now i want a OS that i dont have to keep fiddling with to get it to work fine.

the only reason i don't own a mac is i don't have enough cash for it, i have other things to do with my money.

altho i'm thinking of tighten up the belt and save up for a powerbook. i've always thought about how funny it is that mac owners defend their macs so fiercely, i've always thought they felt the need to justify the huge amount of $$$ they spent on them, but why justify it? i mean, you want it you buy it, that's why i bought a digital camera, i just wanted it, saw it at a price i was willing to pay for and got it, and i would do the same for a mac, but truth is until the G5 the macs have had too high a price/performance ratio atleast for a while and for desktop. the powerbooks on the other hand are the best apple has to offer IMHO.

why defend your purchase? aren't you happy that you got it? isn't that enough? why ridicule someone that bought a mac? do you wish you could afford one and are jealous?

I might give OS X a shot if it ran on x86. But I'm not giving up on x86 compatibility for that. I know you can run Linux / the BSDs / BeOS on a Mac, but:

- I need Solaris, it's x86 or SPARC
- I need my games. If I'm going to be windows-free (as I am now), I need my Linux games (intel only!) and one other one that runs on WineX.

This comes into the equation even before price considerations. As for price, well.. Apple is only slightly more expensive than HP, maybe. But I'm not buying HP, I'm building my own system, so I don't have to care about that. Bottom line, it's expensive, and incompatbile with two important aspects of my computing. Shame because I'd like to give Macs another shot.

I have built my PC at home from the best parts available after researching many websites. In the one year I have had it I left it on 24x7 doing something or the other. The disk died with in the first two months. I sent it back and got a new one and it too died within the first two months. My Sony DVDROM suddenly stopped working in DMA mode and would only work under PIO mode. I couldn't find out any think about the drive from sony's site (the worst support site I have ever used no firmware upgrades or even specs available online). I started thinking it was heat but couldn't have been the airflow in the case was good. Then I thought it was the power supply or power problem with the board. Can't be Enermax makes decent power supplies vendor like Falcon and voodoo use it, soyo makes decent boards. Even though as an engineer I can understand that bad pieces do get shipped how do I as an customer return it after 90 days of purchase? How do I debug this? I have since stopped using it much because I am afraid to leave it on for long time periods because I don't have the money to buy and new powersupply and mother board to try and debug which of them has power issues or it could just as well have been bad drives because my other drive in the system didn't fail.


One thing why I think most people pay top dollar for name brand is becaue of testing and support. At work when we choose a drive vendor to use on our products we put them through a pre-Qual process and most PC land components don't even pass out pre-Qual process. And most of the times we go back to the vendor with a few firware bugs in thier products even though they have been in the market for a long time. Our Qualification process weeds out bad vendors with quality issues. After the qual we put our systems through many hours of stress testing. After all of this amount of testing we ship to customers. I am sure Dell, Apple and most vendors do follow similar processes to ensure that thier products meet thier standards and customers face very minimal problems.

Also most vendors (disk, drive) ship different and mostly better quality products directly to OEMs than to retail stores (dell, hp sell more units, the enthusiast system builders market is small and want cheap, qualification and testing cost vendors money and they usually do more testing for large volume customers to meet their required quality). This becomes evident when you deal with them and place volume orders.

So you get what you pay for is true. You pay for the added quality from all levels of the supply chain when you buy from dell or apple. The retail market for individual PC components is not as large as the the system vendors market.
As evidenced by most of the posts in this very forum most of the customers in the system building market want cheaper components so vendors cut costs somewhere.

I don't care about Mac pricing, heck I live on a college income. Mhh most of it seems to go on books, and I still have a mac. I must be rich, and the few who can afford one how people talk on here.

Ever price Sony?

"MacOS X is the only REAL alternative out there and whether you like it or not, I am moving to it."

"As for the lack of adoption by Joe and Jan average, they only have themselves to blame. You can point to the occasional change in the wind, however, if one were to be mature and look at the facts, Windows still has 95% of the market place."

"As a server operating system, sure, no problems, but as a desktop, I wouldn't touch it again with a 40foot pole. Heck, just read the interviews with Linus Torvalds in regards to Linux on the desktop. Maybe you should read up about his comments and whether or not he believes it is ready."

This is such crap. You can have your own reasons to use whatever you want but that doesn't make it the law. For me and others Linux is perfectly usable. The fact is that more and more people are using Linux which makes it more and more desirable to make drivers and applications for Linux. You seem hell bent on trying to prove that Linux is useless on the desktop despite the fact that many people use it on the desktop. The point being that although you say it's unusable, I, and others, have used it without missing a beat. I haven't run into a single issue where I cannot do what I wanted to do with another OS. In fact I can do more. What I don't appreciate is slandering Linux because it didn't do what you wanted it to do. Fine, then use another OS. It wasn't made for you. The issues you raise are not what a typical user encounters. I had more trouble keeping my Windows box from obliterating the driver for my soundcard than any problem I have had in Linux. If a problem does arise it's usually easily fixed. I do understand wanting to use something like a Mac where you don't have to think about anything but that's your choice. I prefer my choice which is Linux because it allows me to do whatever I want to it and it easily installed on my computer. You have a different goal than I do but that doesn't make my choice worse than yours and it doesn't give any validity to your claim that OSX is the only real alternative.

The poll show price as the overwhelming reason why someone would not get a Mac.

I'm not sure I seeit that way. I see a lot of ignorant statements ("Apple prices are through the roof", "Macs cost twice as much...") which are not based in factual comparison of fairly equipped products, from fairly similar vendors.

Instead what I really hear is that people want more choices in hardware including build it yourself options. This is fair. But it is also fair to say that perhaps Apple does not wish to provide this. And they don't have to. These requests typically come from the "geek set". The typically business user or consumer user cares not one bit for building their own machine. They simply want something that works (preferrably right out of the box) and doesn't change its working condition every time I install something new.

Apple is not for everyone. This is not a religious, life and death choice. Find the product that best meets your needs. Buy it and shut up. Apple is selling products to people who's needs (apparently) are being met. They sell (approximately) 5 MILLION computers a year. They have revenue in excess of $6 BILLION. They are a Fortune 300 company. They are selling products profitably to a segment of the market that finds their products useful. Boom.


I think - and I know Eugenia and others think - that Apple should come out with a true entry level Mac price-wise. Perhaps the eMac

Uh...there already is an eMac.

In regards to why it is good to use the control key instead of a second-third-forth click button.
There could be an ergonomic advantage to this. For example, Apple's implementation puts less stress on the tendons in one hand, by dispersing it over to bundles of tendons and nerves (in two hands).
Just a guess...the saying goes two are better than one, maybe this is why we have two hands, two eyes, two legs, and so on?

Sort of of topic, but #$%^&$#@ about what other OS/Computer someone ELSE is using just seems reflect insecurity in yourself, just as it would with any thing other than as a computer. If you're really happy with what you've got you wouldn't care about what others have; especially to the point that you would just insult/complain to them for the sake of complaining.

It is along the lines of Freud's comments on the male pre-occupation with size? Is it now power?

I have a G3 iBook, 600MHz, 640MB of RAM. Great machine. Does all I need.

MacOS X costs money. I don't have the funds to be able to constantly upgrade an OS.

Of course. But Windows doesn't.

Perhaps you are using Linux. But again that comparison to OS X is flawed as well. A direct comparison between OS X and XP is probably more fair to all involved. Linux, as a desktop OS has a long way to go.

I've been happy with Linux for a while now, but I'm 20 now. As I grow up, I'm finding computers can be useful for more than just dinking around. Linux is a LOT of fun, and serves my family well as a server, but I'm gonna get a Mac soon. Why? Because I can stick with the UNIX stuff while also using iTunes, iPhoto and iMovie, and a good deal of other polished apps. I do a LOT of driving, so I need to buy a laptop (I've been trying not to use the word "need" for a long time, but damnit, I'm just away from home too often!).

I need a new computer, and I need it portable, and I need it polished. Who to go to?

I know the point of the poll was just to see if the OS News readers are even considering a Mac, and if not why.

No surprise, price is the major barrier for most. Windows and Linux are seen as 'good enough' (dysprosia in post 1), which is interesting because it never seems to be said that they are actually better from a user's standpoint. Is Mac OS still seen as the holy grail for usability? Did anyone even argue that point?

The readers of OS News are not typical. Of course you can build your own machine, and you can build them for your friends and neighbors. I think this site also is disproportionaltely visited by Linux users/adopters also, people who know how to put computers to work and solve software issues.

In my opinion, most computer owners are not that knowledgeable. Judging from the people I work with and relatives, a typical user can surf the web and view email. They can usually work a word processor well enough to type a letter and print it, although they may have never realized they could cut and paste.

I've heard the same opinion from Linux promoters when saying that Linux was 'good enough' for most user's desktops. What they mean is that we know most user's will only have need to surf the web, check email, and print letters.

I was in a book store this weekend in the computer section, and there was a couple with their high school age son talking with one of the bookstore employees (!) about what computer they should buy. It was hard for me to listen without saying anything, as the bookstore guy told them not to buy a Mac because they would be stuck, but the Sony was good because it could "emulate" everything a Mac could do. Obviously false, but I don't care to be a spokeman or salesperson for any platform.

(In my younger days I would have interrupted and shared my own opinions with them, but this is Apple's battle to fight, not mine.)

The irony is that in years past I would have stood in that bookstore and been limited to a small shelf or two of Mac books. Maybe a few Photoshop books, something about PageMaker or After Effects. Now, fully over half, if not 75% of the books were applicable. Books on Unix, Apache, PostgreSQL, MySQL, sed, awk, perl, Ruby, Oracle, etc; along with the commercial applications like Office. About the only things Windows specific are Access, Visual Studio and MCSE (and who cares?).

Rather than being stuck, a Mac user is really empowered with a lot of great software, a lot of it freely available.

OS X is a great platform. It's really professional, stable, easy to use, auto-detects and works with most hardware, and has opened up a whole world of software to Mac users. I don't expect it to draw Windows users so much as I think it will keep Mac users like myself from leaving the platform.

Switching to Mac would be expensive for any Windows user, and the hardware price is only a small part of it. Having to buy new copies of commercial apps would be a big barrier for most, and I'm surprised that anyone does it really.

It would be cool to see Apple really reach out to new users with an inexpensive machine; but for myself, I only hope for Apple to remain profitable and continue to exist. The platform as it exists today is a great place to be. It would do nothing for me personally to have the endorsement of an additional fifty million users (but for Apple's sake I won't argue against it).

My first computer was with Apple, and work on Apple machines for years. But during that time Apple wasn't going anywhere fast, so migrated over to the PC world. Have been working on PC's since. Both platforms are great, both have their ups and downs, but you can't control that.

Just recently I decided to switch back to Apple. Bought myself an old G3 PowerBook (firewire). Nothing to oh or ah about, just a simple machine with not that much power, only 400 MHz. But this machines ranks up there with a 2.4 GHz P4 I use at work. Or a dual AMD MP a friend of mine uses for his 3D work. I was shocked to see that this old PowerBook can still play with the big boys. True, I will admit, some process will be extremely slow compared to the P4 or dual MPs, but hey I don't mind the wait!

Now that I made my second switch to Apple I have decided to stay with the product, and I'm not bugeting for a new G4 PowerBook, or possibly the new G5 PowerMac. Yes, it does suck that actually have to buget yourself in order to buy a new computer. That's the only thing the PC world has. With PCs you just have to take out the old credit card and have no worries that you'll be able to afford it.

Plus, OS X is a quality operating system. LOADS better then OS 9, and I believe is a lot better then any OS Microsoft has developed. People that are on the fence, should just go to an Apple store, get your questions answered and spend 15 minutes, or however long, on the machines and play around. I think that's the best thing you can do.

Yes, it does suck that actually have to buget yourself in order to buy a new computer.

Yes it does suck that you have to budget for anything. Sadly it is reality.

If you enjoy tinkering with a PC, if your machine seldom has a case on because you frotz with its guts too much, you're right, a mac probably isn't for you. A mac is a different animal. It's a package - a tightly integrated OS and hardware, and yes this can sharply limit the changes you can make to the system.

The payback you get for this is a system that just works. And when you're tired of mucking about in the machine, as I am, and dealing with what are frankly very inferior operating systems (I got very spoiled by BeOS and would never go back to anything Microsoft writes, and I think Linux's desktop offerings are embarassingly bad) it's nice to have a machine that just works. Yes, my debugging skills are atrophying a bit, but I'm tired of fixing computers, it's not fun anymore. So I have a mac. And it just works.

Your milage may vary. If your computer and OS makes you happy, then clearly it's the right choice for you. Mine makes me happy.

-HH

IBM will make similar machines and if it is an open standard then anyone might be able to produce these boards. This is finally a great personal computer/small business computer/workstation. I will probably switch if IBM comes up with a good price and some people make a port of beos or windows to it. This really is a much more powerfull machine than the not well tuned tests return. Finally an Intel crusher product.

I have a G4 Dual processor 1.25GHZ and and a whitebox AMD AthlonXP1600+. Both are good systems but the G4 has a more polished OS and good hardware. Adding a HD to both is easy but the G4 does not require that you use screws. Just slide the drive in and plug the ATA and power cables. Set the drive to CS and you are ready to go. Access to the internals on the G4 is easy too. No cable clutter on the G4. The G4 multimedia apps work great and are consistant. The only thing that I have to say about my PC is that it is inexpensive to build and upgrade. XP is ok. Stability wise they are both the same. XP gets far more updates that are bug, virus or security related. MacOSX gets bug, security and feature enhancements.

If your first priority in choosing a platform is price then a Mac is not for you. If you prefer convenience and a platform designed to work without a lot of fiddling in the BIOS or OS then consider MacOSX.

As far as Macs being more expensive, this is true but my dual G4 only cost me $1300 brand new. the resale value of my G4/400 was over $650 at powermax which I used as a trade-in. I recently inquired how much they will take my G4 for and they told me $1100. So a new G5 will cost me about $900. Its not cheap but it does have a better resale value than my AthlonXP system.

Well this past Dec. I decide to switch after years of being on the PC, building my own comps and using that knowledge as a tech. Well I got tired MS, using linux towards the end of my PC life and gave Apple a shot. I thought it was risky and expensive, but said why not only to fall in love with OSX. OSX rules, linux is good but its not ready for the average user and most likely for some time since it reacts to what occurs on the hardware side after its release, while MS and Apple have a say into the hardware being drawn up or at least with plenty of lead time. Other than games I don't miss my pc at all, sure I would like to save some cash, but I think its worth the price. Now that the G4 has gone down in price I will get one in Aug. especially since I am not looking forward to Pallidium or Longhorn with its DRM. Apple needs to lower its profit margin to increase marketshare as that seems to be the main complaint. Personally Apple should license others to make hardware, but not some small company that will use cheap parts and save, but some one like Sony who also inflates their prices.

I owned five Macs for my graphics arts business. Decent machines, but as far as the owners go, I could do without them. The true reason I sheepishly admit to people that I own a Mac (as well as a bunch of other stuff) is the innate fear that someone might think that I'm one of them. Most Mac owners (in the graphic arts industry anyway) have pompous one-sided views about their beloved computer. (Kinda like Linux users - phht! No flames, just kidding - or am I?). Most of them would spout speed figures from MacWorld, while staring slack-jawed at the performance I was getting from my NT4 box with Photoshop 5 opening files from my lowly p166mmx RH5.1 SMB server

The only neat thing is that since I no longer own my shop, my iMac no longer needs to run any MacOS. It happily runs YDLinux. It goes with me to NASCAR (Yes I did say that) races and it gets hooked up to my band's PA system for our tunes. The best part is having a Mac owner (Yes, there are redneck Mac owners too) come up and start jawing about how great the Mac is... Lol, they don't know what hit 'em when I say "Ahh, the only good part is the fact that it has a built-in monitor and a handle, I run Linux on it to keep it stable". Hehe.

So, I would have liked an option in the first poll "Own one but hate the users" or perhaps an option in the second poll "Would like one but don't want to be one of them"

Of course, this last line is an apology to all of the Mac owners out there who like them because they are an option and not a way of life. I own a bunch of different machines for that reason myself. From an Indigo (Anyone have a newer copy of IRIX laying around that they could *accidentaly* copy?) to an Atari 800 and everything in between. Tinker, enjoy and keep computing fun, 'cause that's what it's all about. Oh yeah, and tell opinionated bastards like me to piss off

Peace

Fordboy0

i'm a mac guy basically (although i have a win2k box sitting on my desk for various tasks) but i've never really been one to push macs on PC people. mainly because then it's my ass if they don't like it and i feel obligated to give them a ton of free help and software to make them like the damn machine. granted the people i know that have bought macs end up liking them just fine, but i'd rather have them come to platform on thier own and not be swayed by me.

but i have to say that over the years i have known many many switchers. most of them are ripe for a mac after some sort of huge meltdown with their pc - whether it be hardware, software, drivers, an upgrade, new external gadget, whatever, and the bottom just drops out on them. it's usually not the first time. they ask me for all this high-end tech support that is out of my league on the PC side. then they want to know how i am such a geeky computer guy and don't really know how to mess with jumpers and drivers and registry settings and reformats. i let them know that i'm a mac guy and haven't had to worry about much of anything since OSX became stable except working and enjoying they gizmos and eye candy that apple provides. i can troubleshoot OSX as good as any power user out there but the point is that i don't have too! they seem to understand that really easily.

then they bring up price to which i price out some mid-to high level systems from apple & dell and show them that the price difference usually comes down to $100-300 when comparably equipped. i mention that macs have much higher resale value when it's time to upgrade and the hardware is generally of higher quility. not necesarrily higher performance specs, but higher quality. drives, cases, fans, pwoer supplies, other innards are usually slightly higher quality on apple machines. many of the switchers realize that paying another $300 now pays off down the road.

Being a long time Windows guy with side trips into the Linux world (mostly Mandrake and Debian), I would consider myself a non-geek power user. My main OS has been Windows XP Pro. This on a rig I put together following Arstechnica's "God Box" guidelines. I'm not doing any scientific or creative arts-type work on it. I have a small personal business but I like POWER... I've ALWAYS considered Macs to be overpriced near-toys.

By coincidence I picked up a stock Dual Gig "Quicksilver" Mac at an Estate auction for about $400. That's an excellent price for this unit as I later found out. I bought this for my neice whom is a budding (and poor) art student always going on and on about Macs.

I'll cut to the chase. I had it upgraded to the "Jaguar" OS. Since her birthday is still a few weeks away I have been playing with this thing. You guys want to know something, OS 10.2 is the cat's pajamas... Obviously there are a number of things to get used to and the overall feel/snap of the Mac OS feels lazier than Mandrake, Debian and XP feel on my PC. Big power difference... I have already investigated what programs I will need to run my business, I'm going to have to replace many programs, that's the way it goes. I don't have the time or the inclination to run/search/install libraries/figure out kernal panics on Linux distros any longer. To all the geeks that say they never have a problem with Linux installations, more power to you! I just want my gadjets to WORK. I'm a 48year old guy that LOVES gadjets.

It's going to gouge my bank account but I am going to buy a Dual 2 Gig (and software) when they are available. It's a lot of machine for the money. It runs OS X.

People who complain about the costs of Macs are comparing the costs of apples and oranges. Configure a PC equivalent to any high end Mac and it will likely be more expensive than the Mac. Macs simply come with better equipment. Gigabit ethernet, 64-bit processor, expandable RAM up to 8 GB, built-in fireware, built-in USB 2, built in support for 802.11b and bluetooth, dual processor. Macs are not more expensive than PCs, they simply do not come with shitty options like a Dell or a Gateway.

The posts where people are complaining about having to learn to use a one button mouse are pretty darned funny comming from the people who espouse giving up windows to learn something different.

Then there are the posts about being locked into the Apple hardware system and how you can't choose your own hardware you want in the system. Oddly enough the same people who say that are the ones who turn around and say Apple doesn't use proprietary parts and everything but the motherboard is standard oem stuff. Get a clue already. Its restrictive because your too lazy to click no video card on the website, and run out and buy the "cheaper/better cards" from bestbuy.

As for Macs being more expensive, yes they are. So are a lot of things - firewire peripherals are more expensive than USB, Microdrive Cameras are more expensive than Memory Stick cameras, Memorex CD-Rs are about 17 cents more than Verbatim CD-Rs. People don't always buy cheap, they buy what they want. Big difference.

This is where the real kicker is, you all WANT Apples. You all want them bad too. The only threads that get to around 100 posts here are the Apple threads. This is quite simply because after a while the thread gets hijacked by everyone and their mom giving opinions as to what Apple should do so they can justify buying a Mac to themselves. I'm not sure what kind of group psyco-therapy you all are performning on each other but it really is funny to read about.

Basically the posts take on the form of, "I can justify buying to myself if:

-they have more than 1 mouse button
-they knock off 100 dollars
-if its faster than the P4 3.2ghz that I wasn't going to buy anyway
-if they let me run the OS I want like, uh Debian, but the i386 version
-if they let me build my own from scratch"

Its 1 mouse button. If you can learn to setup init scripts, one button isn't going to kill you.

The 100 dollars. Please, I spend at least that much on beer in a week. My liver could use the break.

Faster than a 3.2 p4 - why do people use "the dual 2ghz isn't as fast as they say it is" to justify not getting the 1.6?? Why not benchmarks that acutally show a 1.6 vs what you'd actually be willing to buy?

Running Debian i386 would be pretty sweet but then whats the point of buying something non-x86?

Building it from scratch. I take it you etch the mobo yourself? Or maybe you mold the case by sitting on it? Quite literally you can buy those two things only from Apple and then have your own BestBuy-fest for the rest.

Third, she exhibits this incompetence through frustration, which tends to manifest itself with anger that takes little, if any, provocation.

Manners are not about making others feel better. Rather, they're to keep you from making an ass of yourself.

Essentially, she's providing a service, and people in service-oriented positions tend to suffer stress. Most people are frustrated at their jobs, but they keep it bottled up. Guess what, she's doing this for free and doesn't need to kiss your butt.

Anyway, people on this thread are providing their consumerist feelings. This is not an objective intellectual topic. Obviously there are justifications for paying the Mac premium.

I think a lot of the readers here are really missing the point... Apple has never tried to attract the "build it yourself" or "buy cheap components and throw them together" kind of guys.

Apple is all about ease of use, simplicity and having an OS that just performs and doesn't get in your way. Apple also dears to think different, and actually drives the industry forward, something that can not be said about Dell or HP.

A Mac is not the right machine for everyone! And frankly, I don't want Apple to be another Microsoft either. 10% marketshare would be nice, but any higher than that would probably be negative. Apple performs much better when they're small, and when the users are just a fraction of the PC segment. That makes Apple flexible and keen to invent and to "think different"!

Being a part of the Apple wagon is exciting, and has a certain klan feeling to it - in a good way! I really think a lot of Wintel people miss a lot of the fun going on in the computer industry. And I say that, as a frequent user of both platforms!

Oh well, just my 2 cent...

Before you say that PC's are cheaper do alittle research! Go to the apple site and see what is included with the G5.
Now go to the dell site and equip a machine with similar specs. I just did and found the dell to cost $150 more than the 1.8 Ghz G5. Wow what a shock! The great thing about the internet is that it is so easy to do research instead of just argueing about facts.

>Before you say that PC's are cheaper do alittle research!

I did...

>Go to the apple site and see what is included with the G5.
Now go to the dell site and equip a machine with similar specs. I just did and found the dell to cost $150 more than the 1.8 Ghz G5. Wow what a shock! The great thing about the internet is that it is so easy to do research instead of just argueing about facts.

yes... on the high end it's pretty close as far as cost goes. But in the area of more normal computer prices ($1,500 and less) PCs beat Macs easily.

I priced out a Dell system that totally wasted the $1,300 iMac and the single processor $1,300 G4 tower.

How many people actually buy high end systems? Most people aren't going to spend more than $1,500 on one.

The Dell I priced was less than $1,200 came with a 2.6 Ghz P4 with HT, 512mb ram, 128mb GeForce FX 5200 video, SB Live 5.1, cd-rom drive, a cd/dvd burner, 80 GB hard drive, your choice of either a free 17 inch CRT or a 15 inch flat panel monitor, and all the other usual things.

That Dell would easily out perform either of the Macs in the same price range...

I may be mistaken, Eugenia, but I was under the impression that the shadow under the mouse cursor was at least one indication that QE was active, whereas it's been automatically off on any machine I've seen running Jaguar with less than 16MB VRAM.

Perhaps it's a case of the official "requirements" being slightly overstated. After all, I've also seen OS X (albeit, pre-Jaguar) running wih less than 128MB of RAM, and fairly well, considering how much paging was going on.

I'm open to the possibility that I'm wrong, but I've seen what I've seen and I've seen what I haven't. :-)

If you're trying to help Apple, you should let people have multiple selections. In fact, you managed to list all of them for me:

1. Price. Even if they're worth it, I can't buy something I can't afford. And, let's face it: the people doing the "comparisons to Dells" tend to not understand that just because the Apple has two 2ghz CPUs does not mean the Dell has to...
2. Software selection. If I want a bad selection of software, I may as well use Linux - at least most of that's free.
3. I don't think Apple is any better than Microsoft, just less successful. Why should I lock myself into a proprietary platform?
4. The Mac community seems more and more like a cult. Even Linux users can sometimes acknowledge a piece of MS software that's superior to open source. Mac users seem to be loathe to admit that anyone's better than Apple, ever, and are ignorant about PC-land to boot. A generalization, yes, but it's what I've seen. Just glance the list of responses to this thread if you don't know what I'm talking about.
5. MacOS X has constant upgrade cycles that I have to pay for. If that doesn't tack on to the price, I don't know what does.

In other words, cheap hardware, a Free (as in speech) OS, and a better community is what keeps me with Linux x86. I think that's reasonable enough.

-Erwos

RE: xander (IP: ---.247.54.63.mon.mi.chartermi.net)

Funny you bring up dell for two reasons:

1) Their hardware is crap. When I bought this machine I am running now I ended up spending another few hundred dollars more buying an external modem because the internal PCI winmodem was more buggy than Windows itself. Yes, I tried updates both driver and firmware. It made no difference.

2) The majority of consumers do not buy computers from dell. Anyone can tell you that if you look at the stats, the vast majority of Dell sales in the Asia-Pacfic reason go to large businesses and government departments while Joe and Jane Bloggs by their computer from Dick Smiths or Harvey Norman which will either be a Packard Bell, Compaq or HP.

The average consumer has NO idea about MB's and GB's let alone being able to configure a computer on line. If you are going to do a comparision, compare like with like. A off the shelf, from the reseller, HP or Compaq vs. an iMac or eMac.

TLy (IP: ---.client.comcast.net)

Regarding the modem issue, how is that different to the other crap PC vendors throw into their machines? the cheap crappy PC-Tel modems, the Lucent "chipset" modems. Lets compare like with like and do you what you would normally go and go out an buy a external modem.

RE: marcm (IP: ---.forhls01.nm.comcast.net)

The only monitors Apple sell now are LCD, which are a little steep in price. The price in Australia is aorund $1399 for the low end 17" machine. As for the use of other monitors, just look at the vendors website. Mitsubishi is one company that sells mac compliant monitors.

"People who complain about the costs of Macs are comparing the costs of apples and oranges. Configure a PC equivalent to any high end Mac and it will likely be more expensive than the Mac. Macs simply come with better equipment. Gigabit ethernet, 64-bit processor, expandable RAM up to 8 GB, built-in fireware, built-in USB 2, built in support for 802.11b and bluetooth, dual processor. Macs are not more expensive than PCs, they simply do not come with shitty options like a Dell or a Gateway."

get it through your heads allready, aspecialy the Anonymous person who post every other post macs are cheaper. There not cheaper. It does not matter what stev jobs said a the keynote with the G5, that whole thing was BS. Aside from the CPU and abitlity to have a 1 ghtz bus, which doesn't much matter, every thing you people keap mentioning is common in PC motherboards. Also, you do not have 64bit or 8 gig of ram yet, the X86 world has for a few months with the opterons, and will again in the fall with the athlon 64's . Most the features you brag about are things the rest of the world has had for some time and you people were saying it didn't matter, like usb2, apple is just finaly getting it out there. As everyone has pointed out, wintel boxes are still much cheaper, there is no differance in hardware quality etc.. There's nothing wrong with macs, but there is nothing making them any better then pc's.

OSX is nice, but big deal. I'm content with both macs and wintels just fine. But seeing people pump apples lies pisses me off. I will probably have a mac soon anough, but the hardest thing is going to apples websight and seeing their bullshit they pump, and so many just eat it up.

People just don't have much of a reason to switch. Others are like me and have never really bought a new computer. We just change parts as we go. I now have a wonderful shuttle XPC, it's small, rather quiet, very well built. I put it together in 20 mins with no effort, anyone could do it. It takes nothing to get the bits for it, looking for quaility parts is easy, if it has a brand name its good. It's the most from nothing to a full computer i have done and was easy, my mom could do it. and it cost me 600 bucks, i could build it today for 450 bucks. And it by no means slow, athlon 2100. Sure apple puts together a nice computer, but most people arn't looking for what they offer. Even my freinds who know nothing about computers do there own upgrades, walk into a best buy and ask a few questions and go home. Just accept that macs are much more expensive and be happy. Apples laptops are much differant story, I would very much buy one of them if i was in the market right now.

Hearing people talk about how macs are cheaper and tco and last longer and are better built, (all things that are BS) make me want to invent a way to sock people in the nose through the internet.

Before you say that PC's are cheaper do alittle research! Go to the apple site and see what is included with the G5.
Now go to the dell site and equip a machine with similar specs.

Okay, and here are the results:

Dell Dimension 8300:
Pentium 4 3.2GHz w 800MHz FSB (200MHz QDR)
512MB Dual Channel DDR400 RAM
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro w 128MB RAM
200GB Ultra100 7200RPM HDD
16X DVD-ROM
4x DVD-R/RW Drive
56K PCI Data/Fax Modem
XP Home
WordPerfect Productivity Pack
15" LCD (free with system)

Total: $2,587

Apple PowerMac G5:
1.8GHz PowerPC G5 w 900MHz FSB (450MHz DDR)
512MB Dual Channel DDR400 RAM
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro w 128MB RAM
250GB Serial ATA - 7200rpm
SuperDrive (DVD-R/CD-RW)
Mac OS X
AppleWorks
56k V.92 internal modem
No Monitor

Total: $2,874

That's a price difference of about $300, and the Dell comes with a 15" LCD, as well as two optical drives for easy copying of DVDs/CDs.

It's so odd... I found myself siding with the Apple advocates so long (being an Apple owner and advocate myself) but the level of intellectual discourse coming from the Apple side seems to have greatly diminished following the release of the G5...

"No more so than the prices of the average PC manufacturer. When you match a Mac and PCs hardware and software, the Mac is either slightly more, the same price, slightly less or significantly less."

Look at the poll results... I guess you can't understand that MOST PEOPLE CAN'T FORK OUT USD 2000+Monitor(adapter)+Taxes for the WORST G5. And no, we don't want old G4s thanks.

... but I remember when Apple offered all the choice any user could ever want. In the PowerPC/Performa series of approx. the 1995-1996 time Apple's goal was "a computer for everyone", and they meant a different computer for everyone, so there was a perfect option no matter who you were.

Want proof? go to apple.com, click on support, then the specification database. look at the performa and powerpc line.
Its literally pages of just the names of the models, with details on each.

Know what happened? People didn't buy them. No one could figure out exactly which one was for them, and the whole scheme failed miserably.

Besides which, they filled up inventory with all the individual models, which is expensive space to maintain. (just ask any company)

This is the reason Apple has the simple product grid these days. There aren't a bazillion choices, one for each buyer. A low, mid, and high-end model for each type (G4, G5, ibook, powerbook) and thats it.

See, Apple spent the time to provide for everyone shouting "More choice!", and no one stepped up to support it, so Apple moved on.

Wow, I feel old.

One should note that you didn't list some of the software included with the G5. Apple includes its best of breed consumer authoring tools with the machine for free (no nagware, spyware, adware, guilty consciences, or even setup hassles).

Try adding software to match (or possibly exceed, but at least match) the capabilities of things like iTunes, iMovie and iDVD. Your price differential is suddenly quite different.

At least now anyone complaining that Apples cost twice as much looks like an even bigger fool. We're in the neighborhood of 10% now aren't we? I think it's worth paying 10% more just to not have to subject my eyes to Dell's website
:)

>>Try adding software to match (or possibly exceed, but at least match) the capabilities of things like iTunes, iMovie and iDVD. Your price differential is suddenly quite different.<<

Sony Vaio has all above Apple's mumbo jumbo capabilities plus more = more productive out of the box.

More powerful yet compatible hardware e.g. Sony DVD+-R+-W.

Still yet - cheaper ;-)

"Sony Vaio has all above Apple's mumbo jumbo capabilities plus more = more productive out of the box."

Sony does give similar software although not as good as Apple's. (mumbo jumbo... you people are really sad)


"More powerful yet compatible hardware e.g. Sony DVD+-R+-W.

Similar in power, similar in price, similar in capabilities.


"Still yet - cheaper"

Nope, about the same.

I read these comments about "just OEM PC parts in a Apple", and laugh my rear-end off everytime I read them.

You kid yourself if you believe you can build a machine as good Apple from garden parts and end with a gem. You are totally wrong, and better yet, you are totally ignorant as to why as you make no attempt to explain away a entire dimension of problems that routinely occur in most PC owner's lives.

It's called matched components and software. Picking dozens of high quality garden variety parts can get you a "decent" PC. But a Apple grade internally compatible machine, it will not assemble. The reason is ---- drum roll please --- unforseen interactions. All pieces of hw and all pieces of sw have problems. It's not just a rumor, it's real. If you haven't found one in a PC assembled from the plethora of cheap hw that is available (and expensive for that matter), you don't really need the machine you built, because you aren't pushing it hard enough. Even a piece of sw that drives a piece hw that sits in your machine, that has the WHQL mark, will undoubtedly generate a occasional hw fault. WHQL is not omniscient and cannot test every user presented situation. Matter of fact, it leaves a lot to be desired when testing actual user interactivity with a running system. Mix that in with the fact that the manufacturer probably did NOT test his piece of hw with the mobo you are running. You have a recipe for disaster. I will give MS one thing --- they seem to have at least got most PCs to boot with their OSs. That is a impressive feat in and of itself. That many run for extended periods of times, owes to how large of a compatibility testing suite WHQL is. The fact that unforseen interactions continue to occur -- is proof that MS will always be condemned to this travesty of the commons, at least until they start producing their own PCs (another story entirely).

Apple, on the other hand, picks parts that fulfill the specs of the equipment, no more, no less. Then they whip it up and produce boxes. Then they have their live human QA department do real life operations on the systems. Driver problems are shipped off to vendors when outside vendors are handling software for a given component, or they fix it internally, if they are handling that component. The result is that in most any daily use, the system "just works", because it was not tested in a synthetic environment that will probably never occur, but in the box that is going to ship. No amount about of blathering about how well you can throw decent parts together in a decent way to make a decent box for a decent price can take away from this. Your machine will never be as reliable as the Apple while both boxes are going about doing their daily functions. Never. No amount of hot air and pontification can change that very fact. MS has produced more complex driver interfaces at every revision of their OS, but they can still not insulate the NT kernel from the perils of the interactions of disparate hw. DELL/Toshiba/etc. reach decent levels of reliability by attempting to have in house test cells like Apple, but given what you read online, it's still not nearly as successful as Apple. Apple knows user experience and user abuse, and they engineer the product to take that abuse.

ChipSlush (melting in the heat of the South)

and I have done engineering design,done sales and marketing, run a company and managed all my personal affairs on a Mac. Yes, I do have a Solaris for serious CAD work - but with Mac OS X that expense should go away soon.

8 years have proved that Mac hardware and software last longer (without upgrades) than a PC. I have spent $2000 on PC hardware - buying cheap PC laptops - but have hardly used them for more a few hours a month. The difference of $3000 vs $2000 over 8 years is negligible for me.

Yes, Macs are a bit more expensive initially than PC's - but then which one do I "use" most ? - the Mac ofcourse! and thats what counts.

I wonder what kind of hot air is going to come up next to try to convince people that what was said is complete bullsh**. I don't know how many experts you can have saying the same thing and you still get people that rather buy a cheap pc and pay a lot later. And I don't know about most people but I regard the word cheap as being a bad word. If somebody goes up to you and says: You're cheap!

How would you react?

An Apple product equals quality and it's the quality you are paying for and not some deliberate attempt by Apple to suck more money out of you.

To Bascule
The price is the same if you add windows xp pro and notice that the hd is smaller. We could argue all day and go back and forth and never agree. So apples are not more expensive than pc's but one cannot get a $300 brand new apple. I am cheap and use a pc that I have built myself. I have used and new parts in it. I think that I only spent $400 to build it. If I am honest with myself and actually add up all the expenses, it comes out to be around $1200. It works great most of the time except when I really need it and push it hard, it will crash hard and reboot. Lucky for me I am just a student and my work does not have a dollar value or that cheap pc would sure be very expensive.

Here's my post from a few days ago re cost and tco. Still waiting for references from anybody to show that PCs are cheaper (last longer, more reliable, easier to fix etc etc).
Anyone?????????

quote...
Interesting that there have been no comments regarding Total Cost of Ownership. Macs are cheaper than PCs: despite a _sometimes_ higher initial cost they
• last longer
• use less electicity
• are easier to install and maintain
• are (still) easier to use
• are easier to fix when they do break down
• are (virtually) free of viruses

My previous employer was a university with a large IS department. My new PC needed to be reimaged. It took a day. I have reimaged a Mac and had it back in operation in less than an hour and I am not a technician.

In my current position (a high school), the cost of maintaining the PCs is about 50% higher than the Macs.

some other references
http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/2003/03/27/xserve/
http://www.pcmag.com/article/0,2997,s=1564&a=7559,00.asp
http://www.consumerreports.org/main/detailv3.jsp?CONTENT%3C~*~@.....
http://www.pcworld.com/resource/printable/article/0,aid,105854,00.a.....
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,364590,00.asp

No amount about of blathering about how well you can throw decent parts together in a decent way to make a decent box for a decent price can take away from this. Your machine will never be as reliable as the Apple... Never.

There are multiple holes in this argument.
1) 95% of hardware problems at Google are due to RAM and disks dying. (source: Hennessy & Patterson, _Computer Architecture_) Macs will be no different; the major hardware flaws will be just as uncontrollable if they use mainstream RAM and drives.

2) OS-hardware flaws can become arbitrarily low as products mature. Microsoft and Linux have had a long time to work with vendors.

3) Apple is motivated to use less than stellar suppliers to reduce costs. As long as system stability is above a certain point, they will maximize their revenues by buying OK quality parts, not the great ones.

4) Apps are notoriously buggier than OSes. Many problems blamed on OSes are actually apps written by people who don't boundscheck screensaver passwords, like Apple employees did.

5) With the price premium of Macs, you can buy redundant PCs to make up for stability problems.

6) There are feedback loops between parts manufacturers and Microsoft. I would be very disturbed if Asus had no communication with Microsoft, which you assume.

7) There are many sites like storagereview.com that grill components mercilessly. So you don't have to be stuck with Apple's default.

I could go further, but I gotta get back to work and anyway this bores me. Had you gone for the argument that third-party developers had fewer headaches when testing, you might have scored a point.

Most of you folks sound positively PROUD to say you would not buy a Mac. Sounds to me like the usual bash em cause I don't know jack syndrome.
What I know is the the guy at work who was taught on PCs and works on PCs is fed up and he is getting a Powerbook for home and freelance development. He has been doing some testing with a Mac and he always tells me these stories with glee how something worked so well. Add to that no virus problems, no crashes, no reboots! I just tell him "welcome to OSX. Now ya'll go back to your pieces of junk.

To Bascule
The price is the same if you add windows xp pro and notice that the hd is smaller.

Okay, those are both valid points. Let's factor those in:

Dell Dimension 8300:
Pentium 4 3.2GHz w 800MHz FSB (200MHz QDR)
512MB Dual Channel DDR400 RAM
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro w 128MB RAM
240GB Serial ATA RAID-0 (2 x 120GB SATA drives)
16X DVD-ROM
4x DVD-R/RW Drive
56K PCI Data/Fax Modem
Windows XP Professional
WordPerfect Productivity Pack
15" LCD (free with system)

Total: $2,439

Apple PowerMac G5:
1.8GHz PowerPC G5 w 900MHz FSB (450MHz DDR)
512MB Dual Channel DDR400 RAM
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro w 128MB RAM
250GB Serial ATA - 7200rpm
SuperDrive (DVD-R/CD-RW)
Mac OS X
AppleWorks
56k V.92 internal modem
No Monitor

Total: $2,874

Looks like the price of the Dell has dropped recently.

We could argue all day and go back and forth and never agree.

The only advantages I see pricewise are the bundled software with the Apple, potentially the processor, and 10GB of additional storage. The Dell comes with a 15" LCD monitor, a second free optical drive, and a Serial ATA RAID-0.

So apples are not more expensive than pc's but one cannot get a $300 brand new apple.

I simply don't understand why people still argue that Apple systems are not more expensive...

I don't have any weird problems with my PC that Apple users insist I'm supposed to have. The hardware is much, much cheaper, especially since I always build my own PC from carefully handpicked parts, and fine tune it to perfection. Now Macs even use the same graphics cards as PCs, so where is the graphics advantage anymore? And if I want Unix, I can obviously get it on a PC same as a Mac. Is there a stability advantage with Macs? Speed? More quality software? I don't see it.

I don't have any weird problems with my PC that Apple users insist I'm supposed to have. The hardware is much, much cheaper, especially since I always build my own PC from carefully handpicked parts, and fine tune it to perfection. Now Macs even use the same graphics cards as PCs, so where is the graphics advantage anymore? And if I want Unix, I can obviously get it on a PC same as a Mac. Is there a stability advantage with Macs? Speed? More quality software? I don't see it.

1) Sure, you can get UNIX on the PC, but do you have access to any Adobe, Macromedia, Corel, 4D, Quark, Microsoft, or any other software?

2) The vast majority of users don't build their own computer. I have built computers for years and I certainly do no want to build and maintain another one. I'll pay the premium and if you can't see the difference when using a Mac vs a PC, then you're not Apples target market.

Stick with your PC and allow us "Apple zealots" get back to work. You know what that is? when you use your computer as a tool rather than trying to hack around with bits 'n pieces trying to get things working rather than conflicting.

While I cursed my PC everyday, I love my mac running OSX.....

And call her babey & sweety...

#1 reason for not buying a mac yet? Not exactly a balanced poll.

Here's the answers for me:

I bought a powerbook g4 with 10.1 and upgraded to 10.2. A bit over a year later, I sold it and went back to an x86 machine.

I don't plan on buying another mac at any time in the future, though I expect I will be tempted by the reality distortion field around G5 powerbooks early next year.

I switched back because the overall mac experience is much more expensive than the x86 experience. I don't just mean the hardware (which /is/ expensive still - i got a super fast machine built for $800 on x86 side) - I am willing to pay more for a better machine. I am talking about the cost of apps, and the "high end" culture around it. The cost benefits just aren't there for me, and I am not a fan of pirating software.

The other reason I switched back is that the mac made me feel trapped. There really wasn't a good alternative to the latest OS X as the OS on the hardware. And OS X switches out every 12-18 months or so (though I think that's speeding up recently) - Thats like 129$ a year. Plus .mac is pushed pretty hard, etc.

I dunno, all that "ease of use" just made me feel stuck. So I switched. Again.

Now I run linux, and love it.

Having been through the zx81, spectrum 48, commodore 64, amiga, st, bbc b etc etc...

and dos, win 3.1, 95, 98, Gnome, Redhat, 2000, XP pro etc

over a few years...

there is nothing i cant do with Mac os X with a rather lovely looking 1Ghz tibook running Win XP pro and Linux in virtual mode.

Enuff is enuff..stop this boring banter..

"I didn't bothered to read the thread again" would be a more accurate answer. Read the 56th post...

What is it with all this mac bashing?
I like the fact that OS news is a cool place to find out about OS news (I am an OS junkie even though I prefer to use a mac), but please stop with the mac bashing and the "the mac is underpowered and I dont want one".

The mac is not underpowered, different processors function at different speeds, the speed is not what matters, what matters is the amount of work that the processor can do! Does it matter is a ferrari can outrun a ford pickup truck? or is it more important that the pickup truck can tow a winobego with it in half the time that the ferrari can?

If you dont want to buy a mac, fine. This reminds me of the Atari vs the Amiga era... come on! just grow up PC people and stop bashing macs, and mac fanatics grow up and stop proselitizing people. I love my mac, and I would hate it if apple went out of business. I promote the platform but I dont become annoying.

As they say in my father's village "Ama thes, kalos, an den thes, pote sou!" (in computer terms: If you want to switch, good for you, go for it, if you dont want to, just go on your merry way" )

...but I can't. I used MacOS almost exclusively in the early 90s, but I can't stand to use either OS 9 or OS X now (I'm typing this in Safari on an 700Mhz PowerPC 4 iMac running 10.2.6 at this very moment).

The machine (which cost four times as much as my my Athlon XP 1800+ at the same date) is just insanely slow. I was adding ten pieces of music to my iTunes playlist right as I began typing this, and Safari locked up for a full minute as the machine chugged along. I've set the mouse to the fastest tracking speed, but it still crawls -- and on a Mac, you've got to use a mouse since keyboard shortcuts are virtually non-existant. It's also a pain in the rear to try to open programs -- at least in OS 9 I had a useful Apple menu with all my apps right there; now I have to make do with a terrible dock that eats up screen estate (no, I don't care for auto-hiding it). And I still don't understand why Apple loathes allowing me to maximize my windows.

Why is Apple so devoted to making products for some small band of zealots who worship the group Jobs walks on? Why can't they add options that make their machines actually usable for the rest of us? OS X is two steps forward, one step back -- we can finally multitask with a robust underlying operating system, but the GUI just blows. Why, Apple, why?

all you linux and mac os x guys should stop argueing. first of all both of your systems are unix based and what that means is that the same blood runs thru the veins of your harddisc (complete bullsh** but sounds good to a newbie). anyway, when I heard that the next version of mac os x will have lots of popular linux APIs I found that interesting. Apple wants the kitty to come out and play and not necessarily eat the competition alive.

I'm a mac user myself and I found it very good news that the city hall in Munich is deciding to abandon the Microsoft world in favor of Linux in their offices. We're fighting on the same side and that is against Microsoft. We can pick up the fight and post our a**es off the day that Linux, Mac OS X and any other non-Microsoft OS can account for more installations than Longhorn, Snail, Nobelium or any other f**k up Microsoft comes up with.

Wouldn't it make your blood boil if the Dancemonkey came to your mayor's office and tried to talk him out of your plans to switch to Linux?

The sweaty baldy Dancemonkey?

And I'm not even anywhere close to Munich.

You know the top reason for larger companies in Germany not to switch from Windows to some other OS? Answer: The system administrators don't think that's a good idea.

I talked to some of those system administrators and they all told me that they're afraid that they lose their jobs or earn less if the whole company switched to Linux or Mac OS X.

If you want to custom built your computer then please do so, but you have to respect the fact that Apple wants to do the hardware, the software and sell that as a package. I know people that built their own cars and know every screw that was used in it and I believe them when they say their cars run better than any Beamer that ever rolled out of a factory. When you build a computer you never wrote the driver for the graphics controller in regards to the manufacturer's specs. So please excuse me if I refuse to believe that you know your computers because you built them yourselfs. I'm not convinced. Why do you think there's no driver needed when installing a new ATI or GeForce graphics controller into a Mac nowadays? So before I go out to the next Radio Shack or whatnot and get myself a box full of computer components to proudly proclaim a few hours later that I built my own computer I rather go out and buy a package that was built by Apple. I actually might offend some of you who really do write their own drivers, kernels and solder ICs on boards. But the rest of you just has to realize that that's not building a computer. It's replacing LEGO toys with a motherboard, AGP cards, RAM and Windows XP.

As a long time user (IIe and IBM PC days) of computers and related technologies, I cannot understand why people need to stick their heads in the sand and pretend to ignore the basics of a market driven economy and its' effects on the tech-world.

Platforms, system underpinnings, peripheral options and general standards have ebbed and flowed since the earliest days...and some outstanding 'choices' simply run their course and die as a result of market competition...a great example is the battle won by Iomega v. other backup devices.

The market has always driven change in technology...and just because someone has a better product doesn't mean that huge sales are guaranteed...just look at Betamax.

Folks...it is ok to use different platforms (I use and foster the growth of the 3 'currently' biggest ones everyday in my job...Windows, Mac and Linux).

Choice and the freedom to steer technology is what drives innovation and stirs the imagination of the developer, business person and end user. Today we have X-Y-Z choices...and 10 years from now we will have something totally different.

What were you using 10 years ago? What do you use now? The central question you should ask is...'does the technology do what you need?'. Are you happy with today's choices? How can you participate in helping to bring new changes that you want to see?

We will always have emerging technologies that shift the dynamics of the market and ultimately the user base. There will always be upgrades. This happens in other sectors of our lives...autos, appliances, etc...etc..etc.

Short of a total 1984 style scenario, we will always have choices...regardless of total market share.

Does your choice (or choices) work for you? That's what really matters...do the research, spend your money wisely and enjoy your choice.

Cheers!

but they're so damn expensive...I was gonna possilbly get one of those G4 clones that some guy was making that was reported on either slashdot or here. However, I saw that his suppliers got stopped by apple or something. Anyways, if they do come down to pc level prices, im jumpin on...or if they make an x86 version of MacOS ;D

Stick with your PC and allow us "Apple zealots" get back to work. You know what that is? when you use your computer as a tool rather than trying to hack around with bits 'n pieces trying to get things working rather than conflicting.

That's pure rotten horseshit. I've used PCs for years and I've yet to see any conflict between my "scrap". Perhaps because I know how to put my scrap together. PCs wouldn't be THAT popular if they were crappy as you pretend to be.

You know, many people (including me) don't want (or are scared) to "switch" because they want to be identified to an elitist assholes community ( http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=2002-07-12 ). Yes, PC users are spreading much FUD over the Macs. They're far from being as bad as they suggest. However, you fight fire by adding oil in it. That's a smart thing to do, isn't it?

IMO, Macs are not better than PCs. OS X is not better than XP. They're just taking different approachs to solve different problems for different people.

> GDB won't tell you if you overrun a buffer, or double-free.

Not the same as the debugger catching every memory access but take a look at http://developer.apple.com/documentation/ReleaseNotes/MallocOptions... for some extra memory testing tips.

But the rest of you just has to realize that that's not building a computer. It's replacing LEGO toys with a motherboard, AGP cards, RAM and Windows XP.

But Lego are so fun! You can assemble them like you want and create your own world!

That's why I don't plan to get a desktop Mac soon. I love to assemble the stuff I want like I want. I'm sure that it's because of this industry that some components like video cards are evolving quickly. Manufacturers wouldn't bother to develop faster cards if they know that people ain't able to get it. Of course, that's my opinion.

Er, sorry if I'm a bit thick here, but if I own a Mac and am not supposed to vote in the second poll, how do I view that poll's results?

It's the competitive nature of people when they get behind something. Some people will bash Fords and will praise Chevy. Some people talk up Bose but bash "inferior" products from Sony or Pioneer. It's always there, it's always a fun debate until the loud zealot elite spoils it all.

Anyhoo...I'm not going to lie and say I'm NOT interested Macs. I've never owned on, worked on some back in the early 90's and didn't like them. I read a book on OS 8 and it was a very interesting read. I've dabbled in Linux to find out what the hub bub is and would like to dabble with OS X. It's something new and funky fresh. But I can't justify the initial price of admission. Other than curiosity, the Mac platform doesn't broadcast to me anything I can't do on a PC. Sure it may do things faster, but is it a NOTICABLE faster?

Love 'em, hate 'em, or don't care: the Windows platform works. I don't get these problems others do with hardware compatibility issues and such. I also don't view Microsoft as any more evil than any other major company on the planet. They produce a tool. I use it. I like it.

moo said: " The PC was running NT4 SP4 (from memory). I questioned their need to have it for 24 hours. They said they needed to let it run overnight to see if everything was OK. True story."

The 24 hour thing was your tech's discretion, not because it actually takes that long or that it won't run OK. NT 4 can be a pain, but when I worked in a place that used it, I just took the finished machine (with all the apps installed and tested) and imaged the sucker to a CD. Then if something DID get screwed up to the point where it couldn't be fixed any important files got backed up and the system got re-imaged. Usually took minutes to do, then maybe an hour to install any additional programs that weren't a part of the standard image and to do network and app testing. Usually, barring something REALLY oddball (which happened from time to time as I worked for a software development company) the person got their PC back that day.

To be honest I rarely had OS issues with users that weren't PEBKAC related, other than the mandatory Win 9X reboot (when we still used Windows 9X for most everyone) people had to do from time to time.

Where's the option for "I have a Mac, but I'm going to sell it ASAP because it's gathering dust."? :-

I'd love an OS X box, but they're too much $$$/bang, and don't run most of the software I want/need to use. And I've already gone down the "we can write all the software ourselves!" road before...

- chrish

First problem with OS/X: I started to use BSD once but gave up trying to sort out the fragmented community of NetBSD - OpenBSD - FreeBSD - whatever other mutations there are; I decided Linux was a better bet since there is still a single point of control for the kernel and the success of Linux seems assured by IBM. (But I think that the Linux Standard Base is too little, too late, so I'm not blind to similar problems within the Linux community.) OS/X is better than Windows and better than the earlier MacOS versions, but I am not going to bother to switch from Linux to it.

Second problem with OS/X: I went to several stores a week ago - including a Comp USA with it's Mac Ghetto in the back corner of the store, and a Mac-only specialty store! - and nobody stocked an IDE controller card with Mac support, although they had disk drives which mentioned on the box that such a card was necessary for some Macs. The Apple Expert at Comp USA admitted that he was allowed to carry very little in the way of spare parts or additional hardware.

Third problem with OS/X: Apple going back on their word about cheap upgrades to point releases.

Fourth problem with OS/X: It *seems* like they aredropping support for an earlier generation of hardware with each new release, which makes me reluctant to invest more money in their hardware.

I owned a Mac (IIsi) years ago and loved it. I also owned a NextStation (insanely expensive, couldn't do much with it, but I absolutely loved it).

For the past few years I've wanted a Mac because I'm interested in creating my own DVDs. Everything I've seen says that it's a much easier process on a Mac.

What stopped me? Macs (especially in Canada) were soooo expensive. When Jobs unveiled the G5 I ran to Dell's site and was pleasently suprised to find the similiarly configed Precision workstation was $1000 more.

So I am now seriously considering getting one (will wait till later in the year to see how others fare with the new boxes, shake out any bugs etc.)

The one thing that still bugs me however is the fact that you cannot simply upgrade your Mac when a faster version comes along, you're forced into buying a completely new system. I guarantee you that when the 2.5Ghz G5's comes out existing G5 owners will not be able to simply upgrade their CPU's to the faster version. Now I also realize that people typically use their Macs longer and they have a higher resale value - but it's still annoying.

you can get 8gb of ram, 2X2ghz processers, all for the measley price of 11,877(not bad).

and useful if the poll had allowed for the possibility that a mac owner might not want to upgrade/replace the mac he owns, and will either stay with what he has or check out a different platform. a "switcher", if you will.

after all, *no one* owns panther or a g5 yet, save for a few beta users.

instead, we have the implicit assumption that "mac owners" are mac zealots who are in it for life. or it's just laziness, take your pick.

"The one thing that still bugs me however is the fact that you cannot simply upgrade your Mac when a faster version comes along, you're forced into buying a completely new system. I guarantee you that when the 2.5Ghz G5's comes out existing G5 owners will not be able to simply upgrade their CPU's to the faster version."

Nah, there are upgrades - check out http://www.powerlogix.com to get the most from your mac. and here: http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/

I like Macs, I think the OS is great. But I'm a gamer. Enough Said.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I came to Mac from the BeOS world. As a former BeOS (on x86) user, when Be folded, (and also saddled with a 300mhz pII in a p4 world - it was time for a new machine anyway) I had to consider my facts. Yes some of them are entirely opinion. I still have to live with them.

1. I don't like Microsoft operating systems. I switched to BeOS in the first place because Win95OSR2 was so unstable on my PC, particularly after I uninstalled Exploder 5. On the same PC, BeOS hung maybe a dozen times in the 3 years I used it. In fairness it turned out one of my drives was failing, but windows didn't *tell* me about that, so I still count it against windows. I also used NT4 at work at one point (at Intel, no less) and it managed to crash once a day at least. I don't remember the last time OSX crashed on me, or even hung the Finder. It's happened, but it's so rare I really don't remember when it happened last.

2. I don't like Microsoft as a company. I don't believe in supporting convicted monopolists and do so as little as I can. (he says, typing on his microsoft keyboard). I know what tactics Microsoft used to kill BeOS (and Be, Inc, although Be's bad management was an equal partner). I'd use Windows before say, eating glass, but I'd have to think about it.

3. I do like Unix based OSs. I have been a Unix sysadmin since the early 1990s and am comfortable dealing with unix. Unix is a good second choice to my all time favorite OS, Vax VMS. Yes, I do have a Vax in my basement, why?

4. I don't like Linux's desktop options. They stink, they're inconsistant, applications don't play ball well together, and they're ugly. Okay, the last time I looked at one was KDE on Mandrake 8 (I think), so it may have gotten better. Linux is a fine light to medium weight server on a garden variety PC. But I don't want it on my desktop. I don't want Open Darwin either for the same reasons.

5. I want access to the software mainstream. This was a biggie for me, and it narrowed my choices to either MacOS X or some flavor of Windows. See, after 3 years of using BeOS, I want to be able to go to CompUSA and buy software. I don't do it much, but it's nice to know that I can. I'm burned out on hobbiest OS's where everything is shareware from companies that may evaporate tomorrow, or freeware/opensource with crummy documentation and no support. (Nothing against shareware, I bought a lot of it for my mac, but it's nice having the option for shrinkwrapped software too. And for reference, yes, I use opensource software too)

So I bought a Mac and OSX. I bought the mac to run OSX on. I bought the mac for no other reason - the hardware didn't impress me any more than the equivilant PCs (yeah, it's blue. So what?) but I wanted to run the OS. Which is as Apple intended, and which is why you'll probably never see an x86 OSX. Apple's a hardware company.

Now, of course, I've since fallen in love with the GUI (when I first started using it after small, *Fast* BeOS, it felt overdecorated and slow), learned to love the dock, and grown to appreciate how much work Apple puts into their hardware, etc etc, but the bottom line is I bought my first mac to run OSX.

Anyway, I have yet to have cause to regret my decision. My mac isn't a speed demon (G3/350 with a cpu upgrade to G4/450) but it goes, and it's reliable as sunrise, despite the fact that I have tinkered with it quite a bit (for a mac). Ultra160 SCSI drives (The SCSI Bigot's last hurrah), new video board, Firwire board to replace the onboard ports that didn't work right, ram from my PC, CPU upgrade. I have done a lot to this machine. And when I want new photomanip software? Off to CompUSA or MacMall I go. Photoshop? Maybe. Elements? Possibly. Heck, even Microsoft makes apps for this thing (and they don't suck like MS's operating systems do). And you know what? "It just works" isn't just a marketing slogan. 90% of the time it really has just worked. The other 10% of the time I had to read the directions.

So the folks who are talking about buying a Mac to run yellowdog on, I'd say, get a PC and x86 Linux. You'll spend less money for more cycles, and you're not getting the advantages of buying a Mac anyway. IMHO, the only good reason to get a Mac is MacOS and the software that runs on it. For me, that was reason enough.

-HH

Bravo Adam T, you expressed admiration for the Mac, you explained why you won't buy one, and you did it without grouping all Mac-users into the "Maclot" cult. All in three sentences.

Maybe because I'm getting a little bit older, I just don't see a reason for so much misplaced anger, resentment and/or ridicule directed at Mac users. Not to say that some Mac users don't stick their foot in mouth defending their love of the platform. As I stated before, I'm a long time Windows+Mandrake/Debian user. Yes, I agree that Job's is a master RDF spinner. However, I'm Mac-hooked after using a G4 Quicksilver that is way underpowered compared to my ArsTechnica "God Box" inspired rig. Macs are expensive, yep, you want one, you'll have to pony up. Does that mean your a cultish loser with no common sense? For MOST Mac users probably not.
I run a small business that I have built up being very frugal about how I spent my hard earned cash. Yes, it would be nice if Apple offered a $700 upgradable machine. They don't. Most people don't need a PC God Box or a Dual 2-G5. Don't buy one (Mac) or pay for the parts (PC) if you don't need or can't afford one... As for you Linux heads... well, you geeks really have my admiration. If I were a youngster starting out again (that is, broke), I would probably throw myself head first into the way of the Penguin...

people here own more than one computer? Being as this is a self proclaimed geeksite, I figured that the numbers would have been rather high. I have 5 that see regular use, though honestly one of those is mostly for testing new OSes or seeing if things blow it up. Of those, right now I have 1 OSX, 1 WinXP (I'd rather run 2k, but my wife is the primary win-user, so we installed XP for her), 2 linux, and one Solaris for x86 (this is the test machine, and honestly I havent done much more than poke around at it). I move around a lot, but lately I have been using my Mac more than any of the other boxes.

I game on occasion (my wife works for SOE/Verant), so I use the winbox for that. It doesn't scream --it's an athlon 2 GHz (forget the cool codename), geforce3ti, 512 ddr ram, and I think 7200 RPM disk -- but works fine for gaming. My mac is a crappy old 900MHz G4 quicksilver w/ 256 MB PC 133 SDRAM. Strange thing is that it really doesn't seem much slower than the PC. It *is* slower, but it certainly isn't being "crushed." Granted, it cost nearly 3 times what the homebrewed winbox did. I'm toying with the idea of upgrading the CPU and loading up on RAM to give the Mac a kick in the ass. Oh, and a decent soudcard would be nice too.

I dunno what the point of this post is - I guess its that I use windows where windows makes the most sense, Linux where linux makes the most sense, and Mac for mostly everything else. This is a recent development, but one that I am actually finding that I enjoy. I guess I'll see where I go with it.