Submitted by “The 17” iMac has almost everything a silencer could want. It’s quiet, efficient, good value, and can even run Windows. the iMac is a computer for the connoisseur, just as Apple intended. Power users, enthusiasts, anyone who wants to tweak the hell out of everything should probably stick to building their own systems – they’ll be happier molding the computer to their own personal quirks. However, for someone who wants to use a computer, not take up computer building as a hobby, the iMac is among the best there is.”
connoisseur… “you keepa using that word. I dunna think it meansa what you think it meansa.”
Wouldn’t someone with expert training in hardware or OSX (or perhaps someone of informed or discriminating taste) prefer to have a hand-tweaked machine, being that they know precisely what they want?
connoisseur != hobbyist. That is all. 🙂
Sometimes I want to mess with hardware/software and sometimes I want to get things done.
My Mac is for useful production whilst my homebrew is a hobbyist kit. In my case, connoisseur == hobbyist.
I have just recently tried iChat and I’ve gotta say it works well. It’s great that Apple has included a camera on the iMac and MacBook Pros, allowing more people to try iChat. I was impressed.
The iMac has grown into a computer that actually could. Could what? Well, do most things that I want (graphics video etc). A great consumer choice. IMHO
Jb
I noticed that the installed OS for this report is listed as 10.4.2… eh? As far as I know, the Intel chips requried 10.4.5. Maybe just a typo.
This article deserves an award for the most pretentious article summary of all time.
I’m going to go use my self-built machine now. Maybe I will also make grunty noises and kill an animal with my bare hands and eat it. I am a lowly savage.
I think what they mean to say is that “My computer works for me, not the other way around”. This is the general feeling with a Mac and there is no requirement to have a Mac, if you’d rather build it yourself. To each their own.
I think you kind of miss the point. In the silent PC world, there aren’t a whole lot of choices. To get a really quiet computer, you basically have to build your own. SPCR is full of tweekers (except they get off on 15dB fans instead of 512MB graphics cards). In contrast, the iMac is a machine for those who want quiet without having to become a tweeker.
I recently convinced my mom to replace her crashy, noisey XP machine with an iMac. She couldn’t be happier with it. And the thing really is very quiet — I hope Apple does as well with their new PowerMacs.
I did the same with my mom and she’s ecstatic. A few quick “here’s where this is” sessions and she’s loving it. I even got Boot Camp with XP installed on there, but I don’t think she’s ever booted into XP. It was her safety net.
A lot of home users are never as tied to Windows as they (or others) think they are. The idea of the choices available in software are more paralyzing of the mind than of computer usage. If you’re careful about observing what someone uses a computer for, I’ve found that encouraging the ownership of a Mac isn’t regretted by the user.
Most definitely. My mom uses a computer for e-mail, Photoshop, and Illustrator. It was an easy switch.
My older sister had nephews a year ago. I told her about the iLife suite and she’s fallen in lust with iPhoto and iMovie. She’s already convinced her husband that their next computer will be an iMac and, with Boot Camp available, he’ll have his XP safety net.
I agree that off the shelf solutions are not AS quiet, but I’ve recently bought a Shuttle, with the heat pipe cooling, for someone, and that was near enough to silent, and also a couple of Asus barebones, and the loudest thing you hear out of them, after startup, is the disk seeks. You’re right, they are not perfectly silent, but close enough, and the Asus under the desk, you’d never know they are on. Athlon 64s as well.
Yes, you do have to install the OS yourself.
In contrast, the iMac is a machine for those who want quiet without having to become a tweeker.
I’m not quite sure what methamphetamine use has to do with quiet computers
The rarity of quiet PCs / difficulty of reducing a PC’s noise is pretty-commonly exaggerated. I recently installed a quiet heatsink and fanless PSU for someone; it took around an hour and cost him about $200 Cdn (to quiet down a PC which originally cost around $450 Cdn). He has one of the older “desklamp” iMacs in the same office and commented to me that his PC is now so much quieter, he can hear the iMac running.
You are! haha
All joking aside, I will never buy an iMac. I prefer the power and flexibility of the Powermac line. I do NOT like tinkering with my machine. That seems counterproductive.
You start thinking this is a normal review. Then you come upon the remark that the machine is so reasonably priced because it is ONLY 10% more than the parts bought separately.
What kind of a comparison is this? Do we compare to comparably equipped machines from other suppliers? Hell no. And why? Well doubtless because there are only two sorts of possible customers in the world, the ones who will buy Apple because they just want their machines to work, and the rest, all 97% of them, who want to build their machines from parts, strange birds that they are.
OK, turn to the next page, and we come upon:
“The iMac glows with sleek glossy sex appeal, like a powerful, oversized iPod.”
Does it now. Well, now we know for sure where we are, and when the reviewer informs us with the air of one confiding a secret that Matsushita is known as Panasonic outside of Japan – they are the makers of the CD drive, which, amazingly, is slot loading, you throw up your hands and stop reading.
When will the Apple people realise that reviews like this, with the desperate air of defensive superiority and the breathless romantic fiction style of hyperbole loses them more sales than any amount of technical merit in OSX can ever gain them. You read, and you puke, and you resolve never to buy, if buying means joining this particular spectacle!
It is indeed not a very good review, but on more than one front …
The reviewer took the lowest market prices of “similar” components in order to come up with this “10% more expensive”:
A $40 Antec case (umm …)
A cheap Benq 17″ LCD
Generic DDR2 (Apple uses higher-quality RAM)
MSI WiFi card (vs. Airport?! come on)
XP Home (vs OS X, this is a joke)
I guess he forgot a few certain other things, like a one-year warranty on the whole thing, iLife ’06 (at least $200 worth of software right there in the Windows world), and the industrial design (iMac, vs. box under your desk … hmm).
I’m not an Apple apologist, but this comparison is about as fair as apples and oranges. Yet the price difference still only comes out to 10% — heh.
Pure poetry sir!
I kinda like OS X. I generally like the industrial design of Apple products. I absolutely cannot convey, at least not without resorting to crass language, the intense and visceral disgust the Apple “brand” provokes in me.
I’ll admit that I’m rather tempted by the new line of MacTel notebooks, but I don’t think I can purchase an Apple product in good conscience until Apple officially apologizes to all of mankind for their “Think Different” and “Computer’s for the Rest of Us” campaigns.
Edited 2006-04-21 18:37
I think alot of people dont know what SPCR focus on.
They mostly test noise, Power consumption and efficiency
(And are good at it)
63 Watts under load @ 22 dBA@1m is great ! Much more quiet than allot of desktops. With the small power usage and form facter it seems to be a great Machine.
I love Apple, but you’ve just explained why I hate the majority of Apple zealots.
Actually, I just hate all the zealots. I love computers of all types and don’t need some hate-mongering elitists telling me Jack about Jill. ;P
They compared Mac OS X 10.4.2 to Microsoft Windows XP Home OEM which was a big mistake. OS X packs MUCH more functionality out of the box than XP Home. For example, OS X comes includes (unlike XP Home):
(1) Built-in webserver (Apache)
(2) Built-in web app (PHP)
(3) Free development suite (XCode, GCC, devel libraries)
(4) Ability to network with SMB, AFP, WebDAV clients with no limitations
(5) Free X11 suite including devel libraries
(6) Built-in JRE
(7) Free, built-in support for reading AND CREATING PDFs
They should have compared it to XP Pro, and even then you would have to pay for Adobe Acrobat, and don’t even try to compare iLife ’06 to Microsoft Works. Can any app in Microsoft Works seamlessy create Podcasts, create a table-less XHTML web page with RSS, and publish your blogs? If I recall correctly, Works doesn’t include music composition software and a high-definition digital-video / DVD authoring app!
These reviews often mention how Macs are about $150 or more above a PC price, yet they factor in how much value in SOFTWARE is included with the Mac out of the box.
For example, OS X comes includes (unlike XP Home):
In other words, OS X is more bloated/comes with more stuff 99% of users never use, by default?
Ok, that’s exagerated, but wether or not a load of software people can download for free that mostly get installed by default, is an advantage, depends purely on your POV.
Bloat? Hardly. It’s not like all of this stuff loads up at boot and puts an icon in your systray. 🙂
Have you considered the time-expenditure factor? On Linux, setting up all of this to function flawlessly would take days for most users, if they could manage at all. On Windows, all of this working smoothly takes up most of a day.
With OS X, it just comes ready out of the box, and you check off a single option if you want to enable any of its useful network services.
You’re also ignoring the points related to the “it just works” style of usage — I can connect to NFS, SMB, AFP, FTP, and WebDAV through the Finder, and it all gets mounted like a drive (in /Volumes/). I can work with files or programs on such mounts, and OS X doesn’t care. Show me how one does that with Linux/Windows in a *matter of seconds*, and maybe I’ll reconsider.
Crap! I can do all that in GNOME or KDE without breaking a sweat. Oh and only finder can do that? Most GNOME/KDE applications have network transparency built in by default. You are out of touch with regards to Linux. Donwnload Ubuntu/Fedora/SUSE someday when you have time.
The day that a Linux distro works flawlessly on first boot, and has drivers loaded for all of my hardware, and is literally *ready to use* with no configuration, tweaking, or hacking is the day that it becomes even remotely comparable to OS X.
The only reason OS X does that is because Apple sells both the machine and the hardware. You buy a IBM server with Linux installed, and it’ll be ready to go out of the box too…
I haven’t exactly had exotic hardware in most of the cases where I’ve tested Linux distros.
The iBook is hardly exotic hardware — everyone knows exactly what’s in it when someone says “I have an iBook G4”.
Given that Linux is primarily x86-oriented, an iBook G4 is relatively exotic.
Not exotic enough for Ubuntu not to know that it’s running on one, and to provide a daemon for the keyboard hotkeys.
Fair enough. I take it Airport Extreme support is still somewhat lacking?
Indeed. As is graphics performance (even though this is a Radeon 9550) and that touchpad sensitivity slider.
Going by your misguided criteria, I guess it is remotely comparable to OS X today.
Yeah, try telling that to someone who has used OS X for more than an hour.
I just did.
The thing that annoys me about Finder is connecting to servers. With my Ubuntu box, I can write to FTP and, more importantly for me, SFTP servers. You can only mount FTP servers with read access in Finder which is a bit pooh if you ask me. Plus, Nautilus is way nicer than Finder.
Overall I think Mac OS X wins out. Especially when it comes to hardware integration which is a big pain in Linux. GNOME is really nice though. And it’s getting nicer all the time. But so is Mac OS X…
You’re right, it is poo, but there’s a good reason for it: Apple doesn’t want people using FTP as a live file system. It doesn’t support important things like locking, for one.
And Nautilus? Ugh … that is one ugly mofo.
Surely if someone’s writing to an FTP server, they’ll know what they’re doing. Anyway, SFTP support in Finder should be there.
Nautlius spatial is great! I think the classic Finder used to be like it. Finder’s really annoying when you try and use it the way you want it. In order to not get frustrated with it, you just have to accept that you have no power over it and relinquish control.
If you want something similar to the nautilus spatial features in Finder, it really is quite easy….
Remove the toolbar and sidebar (By clicking the tool bar control button in the upper right of the windows. Though I actually prefer having them even when mimicking the spatial look of Nautilus.)
Next open your Finder Preferences and check “Always open folders in a new window.”
Now when you navigate through the folders, a new window opens and if you move it of any other window, they will be spatial and remember where you resized/moved them.
Just a little hint.
I tried that before. The thing that always annoyed me was opening a new folder, like opening Utilities from the menu bar, brought up a new Finder window with the metallic toolbar showing.
That’s what I meant about relinquishing control. Anytime I try and configure Finder a certain way or try and get it to act a certain way, it does the opposite of what I want it to do. Its behaviour is erratic. I really hope they sort it out in 10.5
Having said that though, it doesn’t really bother me that much. I just don’t try to think about it
“Apple doesn’t want people…”
And that right there is the crux of it. Linux doesn’t “want” you to do or don’t do anything. You have the versatility to use it how YOU want to, up to your ability, without a corporation telling you how you should do things limiting your control over your system.
Oh noes, Apple is taking away my Freedom!
Disregarding the comparison between the two because one is open-source and the other is not is idiotic. If you can’t compete feature-for-feature, or design-by-design, and instead have to rest on ideology, then you can’t compete.
Of course some are so used to be told what to do and how to do it that you don’t question it. It’s easier that way, isn’t it though? They give you a nice white box, tell you how and what to do, and that’s that?
Some of us value choice, however. And your argument about feature-for-feature is weak considering you can barely even change the way your desktop looks in OS X, much less changing major functionality. Overall control of your system is the most important feature of all, not some cutesy eye candy.
Apple doesn’t tell me what to do or how to do it. Thinking that only illustrates your misconception about Macs. Is it bad that Apple’s default design is already so close to what is the most comfortable that few people feel the need to change? For those that do, OS X is quite themeable.
You can take your “choice”, and your poor UIs, and constant fiddling with config files. We Mac users will take our OS X and streamlined work. Choice is worthwhile only when all of your choices are good. In the Linux world, you usually have 100 really bad products, and 1-2 decent ones.
Good usability and a system that doesn’t get in your way is the most important feature of all. Ask anyone on the street, and they won’t care whether a company releases this so-called “source code” to the program that generates the desktop. They want a desktop that looks and feels great.
Right, and on OS X all the products are decent. Do you also believe in flying donkeys?
You are deliberately ignoring the point.
I’m done.
You can take your “choice”, and your poor UIs, and constant fiddling with config files. We Mac users will take our OS X and streamlined work.
Yet another Mac fanatic out to make himself agreeable and persuade the doubters, this time by talking silly falsehoods about the alternatives.
This time combined with the mac-fascist point of view that “Choice is worthwhile only when all of your choices are good”. So, you don’t need or even really want anything except what Apple gives you. The other 97% of computer users do not constantly, or even ever, fiddle with configuration files.
Wrong. Choice is worthwhile because it ensures that SOME of the choices are good. This is why we have many terrible candidates for public office, many terrible novelists on the shelves, many awful films in cinema and DVD. That and the fact that what you think is good may not be what I think is good.
You may be able to convince people of the real merits of OSX, but you’ll never do it like this.
I tried and I tried to tell my AMD64 linux to play flash, wmv and support java 1.5 applets without haveing to install an x86 system (wmv is solvable), I tried to make it support my Canon i865 printer. What about cedega? How about adding a webcam? (never owned one)
What about getting the mic to actually WORK in some Linux dists?
Anyway, that has nothing with it todo, but to compare MacOS X with Linux is really stupid, no Linux dist will offer any competition at all. And the Desktop Environments for UNIX are only stealing ideas from Windows and MacOS, so if they didn’t exist everyone would still be running some really old window manager (not afterstep or wmaker or similair either since they are based on nextstep i suppose? maybe CDE qualifies?)
The mac will just work, and the hours, days and weeks (maybe months) spent to learn and make Linux work for you are easily a worse cost when “the apple brand cost”.
Yes, I’ve used Linux/BSD/Solaris for long and I know how to solve the issues I mention, I know it’s possible, but it’s not easy and it doesn’t just work.
I totally forgot about the real problems with Linux compared to MacOS. Things like that you can’t run Photoshop, World of Warcraft, Warcraft III and so on in Linux. (With Cedega you can play some games, atleast sort of, or they might work, actually, maybe..)
“Overall I think Mac OS X wins out. Especially when it comes to hardware integration which is a big pain in Linux.”
Not a very fair comparison when you think that Mac OS X has to support a handful of hardware, whilst Linux runs even on your wristwatch (well almost).
Having said that, though, I am madly in love with OS X.
You’re also ignoring the points related to the “it just works” style of usage — I can connect to NFS, SMB, AFP, FTP, and WebDAV through the Finder, and it all gets mounted like a drive (in /Volumes/). I can work with files or programs on such mounts, and OS X doesn’t care. Show me how one does that with Linux/Windows in a *matter of seconds*, and maybe I’ll reconsider.
You’re kidding right? OS X and linux use the same core underpinnings for remote mounts, and not only can you mount them in KDE, you don’t even have to, you can access them directly via kio_slaves in any kde app.
But aside from facts, let’s talk about “Just works”. My gf was given a powerbook at her new job, and we figured it should be a no-brainer connecting it to our laserjet at home hanging off a network share.
First problem? The laserjet wasn’t supported for remote printing by OS X, and we were politely directed to linuxprinting.org to download ghostscript and hpijs. Fine, no problem.
Next problem? OS X doesn’t want to deal with smb shared printers on a different subnet, it won’t see them and you’re politely advised to contact your administrator.
So after a little bit of googling, found out how to use the advanced settings to connect to a shared windows printer via samba. No problem, samba is something I can relate to.
Except that the version of samba that comes with OS X doesn’t deal well with authenticating on a Windows box. Little more googling, apparently that’s a common problem with Active Directory on Server 2003. Which doesn’t help since we’re not using Active Directory.
A little more granular googling and it turns out that there is a known issue with OS X/samba requiring the username/password combination to be sent as part of the smb uri.
Finally got it working, but I would hardly call that “Just works”. I suppose I can forgive having to update the files for samba to be able to use our 3 year old laserjet remotely, but the authentication thing is just bad. I hardly think it’s a stretch to expect OS X to network with a remote printer that happens to be on a different subnet, it’s not that inconceivable particularly given Apple’s enterprise aspirations.
It’s also worth pointing out that using the same shared printer from my linux laptop takes approximately 15 seconds to setup in KDE.
And performance? My nearly 4 year old laptop with 384MB of memory handles kde with core apps like Opera and OOo2 as easily as it handled XP with Office and IE. On the powerbook, though, the 512MB that comes standard apparently isn’t enough unless you really enjoy looking at that little bouncing ball.
So, ordered in an extra 512MB module, flipped open the little cover in the back, slotted it in, rebooted and presto! Only 512MB showing. Diagnostics showed something about a slot failure. Little more googling, low and behold, another known issue with the powerbooks. We’re waiting for a new logic board to come in at the dealer as we speak.
I will grant that the powerbook is a beautifully engineered machine, Apple does shine in that regard. And OS X is a perfectly fine OS, does nothing for me personally but I can certainly see where people would like it. But it is hardly without fault. Surfing the forums I came across trying to figure out how to get the thing working made it evident that “Just works” is not a reality for every Mac user.
So you’re looking at it from one point of view, and I’m looking at it from the other. The difference is that while I may have personally had issues with OS X compared to the things I take for granted in, say, linux, I’m not willing to summarily write it off for everyone else out there just because of my own failure to get it working the way I wanted to.
It’s called perspective, give it a shot… give it a shot, who knows, you may like it.
Most users don’t need a webserver and development suites; they need an office suite. And the best office suite — OpenOffice.org — is free, and it runs on XP.
That said, ff you do want to run a webserver and related development suites, Apache and PHP are available for Windows, and MS has made their Visual Express series available for download at no cost.
As for Acrobat, there are a number of free .pdf printer drivers out there, so there is no need to buy Acrobat.
All these tools are also available for your favorite GNU/Linux distro, all at no cost. And, while it’s not easy to find, there are resellers out there who will gladly build you a computer preconfigured with whatever GNU/Linux distro you desire along with whatever packages/apps you desire, all for less than a typical XP or Apple box.
Other than PWS and domain functionality, XP Pro vs. XP Home makes no appreciable difference with respect to the enumerated software. Further the indication that someone would be purchasing Adobe Acrobat for comparison is ridiculous.
Software that people do not use and is not practically transferable has no value to them. Microsoft could slap a DVD set archiving sourceforge.net into Vista and claim INFINITY BILLION DOLLARS in bundled software out of the box. A lot of difference that would make to their users. While we’re at it, I have “hundreds of dollars” of bundled software that has come with motherboards, sound cards, and video cards over the years that will eventually find its way to garbage disposal.
All of the stuff you mentions could be get for free thought.
“The 17” iMac has almost everything a silencer could want. It’s quiet, efficient, good value, and can even run Windows.
Yes, but can it kill Windows?
I know very few PC users that are that concerned with the noise of their cooling fans. And the only ones that are – sad to say, are just as concerned about the face-plate’s color and what stickers they can put on it.
In a reverse of this, one of my friends actually added three more fans because it was “too quiet”. The damn thing’s boot-up sounds like a 747 taking off the runway. I suppose it does help cool it (like a friggin HVAC unit)…
To each their own.
If you’re trying to sleep in the same room as your PC, the noise is important. I like listening to music. If my PC is making a bunch of noise, it’s no different than listening to music from a low-quality source.
I was thinking of spending some time this weekend to try and make my PC quieter.
That’s true. Although most PCs generally have ‘sleep’ or ‘hibernate’ mode after they’ve been idle for some time, some don’t control the fans quite properly.
Lucky for my friend, he doesn’t sleep anywhere near his ‘tornado’.
I know very few PC users that are that concerned with the noise of their cooling fans.
That’s why they’re PC users. They have no taste.
I don’t know who you’re hanging out with, but everybody I know considers silence a good thing, and hates loud PC fans.
“That’s why they’re PC users. They have no taste.”
Yet another Apple user out to make friends and influence people the best way he knows how. Keep it up, you’re doing great. Nothing persuades people like insults.
I guess PC users ‘have no taste’ because they don’t buy a McMac? I consider ‘taste’ to be more than just a shiny case, most of us know that the insides are more relevant than the outside. Looks mean nothing.
I’d rather have a loud and ugly PC any day.
>>In a reverse of this, one of my friends actually added three more fans because it was “too quiet”. The damn thing’s boot-up sounds like a 747 taking off the runway. I suppose it does help cool it (like a friggin HVAC unit)…
It’s one of my pet peeves as well. The noisiest machine you can build today almost sounds broken to me – as when the machine stops making noise something is wrong. I miss being able to tell where in the boot process the machine is by the sound of the head seek.
Like the rewrite I did of Al Bundy’s monologue for the fergusson toilet about a decade ago. (It’s kind of out of date now since clones come in goof assed colors too)
Computers today, they’re not worthy of the name. They come in designer colors and they’re too bloated… and when you boot ’em, you get this weak, apologetic sound; NOT the clone – They only come in white, and when you boot ’em – BAWOOSH. That’s a man’s boot bub. Clone says “I’m a PC, give me your best shot.”
Joking aside, these little limp wristed tofu loving namby-pamby fart smelling San Francisco wussies complaining about fan and drive noise on a modern computer need to spend some time sitting at a 8088 with a pair of bernouli boxes, a trash-80 model II with the 8″ floppys, or at a PDP-11 with the nice 18″ 10 meg winchesters… or even better, an office with all three running at once.
The price comparison is stupid.
1) Who pays $110 USD for an optical drive? I can get a dual layer, dual format drive for < $50 Canadian. Lets say $50 US just to be generous. Lets also choose Openoffice instead of MS works.
iMac: $1530
PC: $1380 – $60 – $50 = $1270
That’s a $260 difference. That includes MS Windows. You can knock another $80 off the price if you don’t want it.
You also have to keep in mind that the PC system was configured to match the iMac rather than provide the best value possible. As an example, you could probably get a 250GB drive for only a few dollars more.
I will agree that the iMac is a more attractive form factor and that the LCD is better. I don’t know why they chose a mid-tower case for this comparison.
If you include a better LCD and a case with a more attractive form factor, the iMac becomes more competitive on price.
I’m not here to bash the iMac, but I think the article has some flaws.
Slot-loading?
While I agree that you can get a PC cheaper, a very nice feature on the imac is that it has 1 (or 3 if wired kb/mouse) cable and that is it. With a tower PC, there are cables everywhere.
This makes a difference if you have cats that like to chew on cables or if you just like the cleaner look.
Because they wanted the same drive, also the $50 drives you are mentioning are probably not thin slot drives. Sure about the HDD thought, and the price of more RAM for macs.
Regarding the LCD, is it really that good? The 17″ specs kind of sucks except resultion (viewing angle anyone?), is it good? Don’t you notice? How fast is it? Have anyone made a test about colors?
I would guess the 20″ is better and offer a better value but I don’t know for sure. Could anyone help?
But as a matter of Intrest how big is the Power suppy unit? I’m assuming a brick on the floor?
I believe that you plug a cable directly from your wall into the rear of the computer.
Nope, I have the 20″ iMac, and the only thing between the computer and the outlet is a regular sized grounded cord, so the power supply is integrated.
It really cuts down on the clutter, its nice to have only two cables plugged into computer (Power and keyboard, the mouse is connected to the keyboard).
Or just the power cable for me.
Bluetooth keyboard and mouse. 
Like others have said, the power supply is in the computer. There is no brick what-so-ever. If you order the iMac with bluetooth mouse and keyboard then the only cord you have plugged in is the “standard” power cord.
Is this me or does anyone else feel that osnews is turning more and more into Apple-ubuntu news? While I have nothing against ubuntu news as I perosnally feel it fits in with the topic of Operating Systems. But this article seem out of place. Why is osnews posting a review of a custom built computer? I never noticed reviews of DELLs or HPs. Just because it’s an Apple? I don’t think thats very fair, if you are going to cover desktop computers, why not cover cool stuff in the non-Apple world as well. Maybe an overview of a custom build PC with mods and stuff (a suitable title would be: How to spend the money that didn’t go on Apple’s marketing to build a better PC).
The price comparison was awrful and some parts of the review were so so. One thing that Apple sucks at price. I built my rig with the following specs:
AMD X2 3800+
2gb PC3200 RAM (dual channel mode)
NEC ND4550A optical drive
Gigibyte Nforce4 SLi mobo (external firwire card included in the price)
GeForce 6600GT
250 SATA drive
$100 Thermaltake case with LED and frontal USB/Firewire
And that cost me only around $1050. Granted I already have a nice 19″ LCD (don’t know how much it costs, I wasn’t the one buying it), but hey look at the specs. More RAM, larger HDD, better processor. Plus the rig is expandable, can I add another GFX card to the mac?
I never understoof the fascination of many of osnews’ reader with Apple. You would except people who go to a site like osnews to be enthusiast who would enjoy building a PC from scratch just for the fun of it. I never understood the excuse regarding time. “But with Mac, you dont have to spend hours building your PC.” If you can’t spend time on tech enthusiasm, what the hell are you doing on osnews.com? The whole point of this site is to ‘waste’ your time exploring alternative OSs. Any ‘sane’ person would consider this a waste of time.
Ignoring the time arguement (which shouldn’t be applicable to osnew’s members – you’re tech geeks for f–ks sake, not your average joe), you can build a better box (both in terms of performance and aestetic qualities) for lower price than mac any day.
P.S. If time is such a big issue, why not just get a local computer enthusiast to build an AMD rig for you? It will still work out cheaper than the mac.
[quote]
Is this me or does anyone else feel that osnews is turning more and more into Apple-ubuntu news?
[/quote]
It is just you. There is an option that you can exercise. If you don’t wish to read an article about a specific topic, don’t bloody read it. Next option, don’t bloody post about it.
Some of us who come here regularly may have different likes/dislikes than you. I, quite frankly, like reading some of the many varied opinions you get from many varied reviews.
@ aaronb + Innova
Sorry this probably sounded a bit trollish, but what I was trying to explain was that I feel its unfair that we give additional coverage to Apple products just because it’s an Apple. As far as I am concerned this a site about Operating System, while the review does cover applications and operating systems, primarily this is a hardware review. And as far as I remember we didn’t have dektop reviews from other vendors. So why are Apple’s products mentioned? I don’t mind seeing articles about OS X (both good and bad) and technical discussion related to the the Apple world, but I do think it is unfair to promote Apple. Apple is just another company and it’s not like they are doing anything special for the computing world.
Considering that the Apple integrated hardware and software solution is unique and also allows the user to run XP and OSX at native speed on the same box, I’s say that reading these reviews can be quite useful for users who either want to learn more about their choices or are considering a Mac purchase. Apple is doing plenty ‘special’ for the avg computer user….offering a computing environment that Microsoft is basically doing a poor copy of with its unshipped Vista.
“offering a computing environment that Microsoft is basically doing a poor copy of with its unshipped Vista.”
Of course, Vista is not a copy, of any sort, of OSX. Why do you people keep saying this nonsense over and over again? Along with the equivalent nonsense that all MS does is copy Apple. No they do not.
One of the great mysteries of our industry is the question, what on earth is it that makes Mac people behave in this totally counter productive way?
OSX has real merits. This sort of talk will stop you ever getting anyone to listen to an account of them. Is that what you want?
“Of course, Vista is not a copy, of any sort, of OSX. Why do you people keep saying this nonsense over and over again? Along with the equivalent nonsense that all MS does is copy Apple. No they do not. ”
Funny that you would even question MS plagiarism:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4134446112378047444&pl=tru…
They both take ideas from each other and from Linux and Unix, and always have, and there is nothing wrong with that. MS is not any more of a plagiarist, if this is really plagiarism, than Apple is. Nor is it true that all KDE does is copy XP, or that all Gnome does is copy OS9. The industry evolves, people’s needs and requirements converge, and you see things in all desktop environments that may remind you of other ones. If you want to see true creativity, look at some of the minority Linux DTEs. And how many people want to use them on a daily basis? There is a reason why the majors all look so similar.
The myth that MS just copies Apple is one of half a dozen marketing slogans that Mac people come out with every now and again, without them having any factual basis whatever. Its part of the bigger myth of Apple as the fount of all creativity in the computer business, which is equally false.
New product releases are often mentioned for other platofrms/companies.
You want additional news on the site – submit something you find interesting. I have submitted a few links to things I’ve found on line, and there doesn’t seem to be a change in the probability it will be posted based on Apple versus non-apple.
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Apple is just another company and it’s not like they are doing anything special for the computing world.
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They are doing quite a few innovative things for the computing world. The new iMacs (past year) are very nice all-in-ones, and this is a shift (IMVHO) in the way a company is approaching the computer as a tool.
OS X is a very nice “bsd for the masses”. Not everyone likes it, but I think you have to admit it is a great consumers OS. Their spotlight app is something lots of other systems are trying to copy etc. So, that seems to be something important.
The release of bootcamp is only about 2 weeks old, so of course there’s going to be a plethora of “windows on Mac” reviews for awhile. Further, this is major news. Having the ability (without 3rd party hacks) to boot OS X/Solaris/Linux/AND Windoze all on one machine is an incredible thing. Maybe not for everyone, but it sure as hell is *new(s)*.
These types of debates always seem to occur whenever there is a new release of:
Ubuntu/Fedora/Mac/Madriva/any major distro.
Posters bemuse and moan about bias in the reporting here, where it seems that it is simply a reflection of the number of news postings being put out on the net. Considering a lot of the news posted here are links to news elsewhere, of course there will be a plethora of posts regarding new things.
Of course there’s going to be a lot of news stories related to any new release. Lots of people out there are interested, and publishing reviews.
If you get bored of reviews for a specific system/piece of hardware/ or whatever, just don’t bother reading it.
>>>Is this me or does anyone else feel that osnews is turning more and more into Apple-ubuntu news?
Its just you I’m afraid. See here for a summery by % of news.
http://www.osnews.com/cloud.php
The price comparison was awrful and some parts of the review were so so. One thing that Apple sucks at price. I built my rig with the following specs:
Does the rig you stated have the same form factor ?
Does the rig you stated the same power usage ? (EG < 70 watts)
Is rig you stated as quiet ? (22 dBA@1m full load).
The PC I type on was home built but it does not mean I’m blind to other types of PC.
Please don’t make it seem as if these factors are what give Apple the edge. If I wanted I could easily build a system with a similar form factor, but that wasn’t my aim. What exactly do you mean by ‘EG < 70watts’? I have a 400watt supply, but thats to take in the extra power required for another gfx crad. And please don’t start taking about how low power suage is crucial for a a desktop. If you’re worried about the electricity bills, you would build your own microATX case and you certainly wouldn’t waste money on an Apple product. Silent computing is also an option if you need in custom built rigs.
In the end you can still do everything the Apple does, only better and cheaper with a computing rig. Granted, you need to spend time on building the rig, but this place is called osnews for a reason…
“In the end you can still do everything the Apple does, only better and cheaper with a computing rig. Granted, you need to spend time on building the rig, but this place is called osnews for a reason…”
This place is called OSNews, not PCBuilderNews. Just because someone finds alternative operating systems interesting and likes to spend time reading about them, it doesn’t mean that they want to spend time building and tweaking a PC. Getting a SFF PC down to <22dBA @1m can require quite a lot of research and effort, it isn’t just a matter of spending an afternoon chucking it together.
Apart from the time spent building it, there’s the issue of support when building a PC from parts purchased from different retailers. Being able to send your computer back to a single company is a lot easier than having to diagnose the problem yourself and then RMA a specific component.
You’re willing to take the time to build your own PC, does that mean that you also have time to build a kit car or assemble your own HiFi system from parts?
People have different priorities, is it so hard to believe that even some OS geeks would rather buy a ready built system, one that just needs to be plugged in to be up and running?
As many of the ‘lowest market price’ were a total joke…
Like the Matsushita drive. What retard (apart from people who buy Dells) would spend $110 on a DVD drive? I consider $50 the high end at this point, and that better be dual layer with Lightscribe. $160 for a socket 478 motherboard? Assuming that’s a MSI PC54G2 Wireless card that’s a $30 unit not $50…
Not to mention comparing that grainy mediocre integral webcam to a Logitech WebCam Pro is laughable at best.
Besides, what retard puts 1.5 gigs of RAM in a computer… and spends $150 for it. $150 bucks I expect 2 gigs and that better have COPPER spreaders on them.
I especially love the bit where he’s trying to pull cpu temperatures – given apples habits on cooling this is hardly a surprise as I’d be willing to be there ARE no temperature sensors inside it, because they don’t want you to know how piss-poorly they are cooled. Again, thinking of the G3’s apple built where they put insulating foam over the core chips including GPU and CPU without any heat sinks or airflow, hiding all that under three layers of RF shielding. Ah, that Apple quality people always tout so highly.
It makes me laugh to see people here accuse Silent PC Review of being Apple zealots because of their positive review of the iMac. On the SPCR forums it’s been quite common for Mac fans to criticise SPCR for ignoring Apple.
In fact this is one of the first Apple products the site has reviewed, and as the site focuses on silent computing it’s unsurprising that the review was different to those you see on other sites. If you want reviews that focus on performance and examine the internals in more detail then there are plenty of other choices. I can’t believe how many people are nitpicking their price comparison when that was hardly the main point of the review. SPCR concentrate on the product’s noise, judging by the number of visitors to the site and the number of computer silencing products on the market today, that’s become a surprisingly popular topic.
The iMac is one of the quietest pre-built PCs on the market (apart from very low power systems such as those using Via C3 CPUs), <22dBA is very impressive compared with most PCs. It’s hardly surprising that the SPCR reviewer would find that exciting when that is the focus of the site, how does that equate to Apples zealotry?
Personally I have my PC running in the same room I use to watch TV and listen to music. I’m often downloading software or encoding audio/video so wouldn’t want to hibernate or turn off my PC when I’m not using it. When I listen to music it generally isn’t just a background noise, I want to hear the detail and listen without distractions. I wouldn’t tolerate buzzing speakers or distorted sound from my HiFi, so I don’t want the computer to be audible in the background.
I also find that I work better in peace and quiet, late at night the ambient noise level is very low and I really appreciate a virtually silent computer. I think that really does improve my productivity, much more than the extra speed of an overclocked CPU would. Of course gamers may think I’m nuts for not overclocking the CPU as far as it will go and filling the case with noisy fans, but I have different priorities and I find a low noise computer much more pleasant to work with.
I’m thankful to SPCR for providing so much useful information about PC silencing products. Their reviews aren’t perfect, but no other review site has such accurate testing of noise and power consumption, and that makes the site very valuable.
Much thanks to Apple Canada for supplying the 17″ iMac sample for us to review.
I take it you’re insinuating that they’ve given it a positive review as a favour to Apple?
Have you looked at the other reviews on the site? There are plenty of reviews of products that have been provided for free to SPCR for review purposes. Many of them get very poor reviews, and from what I’ve heard that has led to some companies refusing to send review samples to SPCR. Things like the noise level of the iMac are verifiable, so if you think SPCR are biased towards the iMac it should be easy enough to prove.
This isn’t a Mac advocacy site hosting reviews written by hardcore Mac fanatics, it’s primarily PC focused with an emphasis on tweaking and customising computers. Why is it hard for some people to believe that Apple have made a very quiet and elegant computer for a reasonable price? Personally I thought the review was very reasonably and I think SPCR deserve their reputation for fair and unbiased reviews.
What homebrew PC users refuse – or don’t want to listen to – is a simple fact OSX users keep reiterating time and time again. And the message is simply this.
Computers are useless without software.
And this being the case, the solid set of software that comes pre-installed on Mac’s really need to be included in any price comparison.
For the uninitiated Mac user – the software that comes with any new mac, is not your ad-hock run of the mill DVD with a shit load of bloatware you’ll most likely never use. Software such as the iLife suite are well known for their excellence and ease of operation for a reason.
Bottom line, the modern day Macintosh is without question worth the price you pay for it.