“Apple really is is the better way, but why? No, not for the trendy industrial design, not for the OS, not for the CPU, but for the money. It charges quite a bit, but it is not the ‘reassuringly expensive’ factor either, the price/performance is nothing to brag about. What makes Apple better is quite simply the fact that it doesn’t compete.”
Apple => “I did it myyyyyyy wayyyy.”
True; thanks for the smile.
You are comparing a stacked apple against a cheap PC. If you actually compared hardware to hardware PC’s are cheaper! Any “option” that apple picks for their machines you can get in a PC, but you don’t have to! I like choice, I’d rather not have my computer manufacture tell me whats best! But hey, people use AOL because they don’t want to think or they believe the lies that they say on TV! Same thing!
Actually, you do not have much choice in the PC world. Unless your choice is industry-class server components. But these will cost same (or more) as Apple stuff.
Yes, you can, but the level of integration will never be there. This is one of the selling points of Macs: every components works together well and quirks are rare compared to any PC you will build yourself.
The integration does not stop at the level of a machine that works relatively flawlessly, but also on a higher level. Applescript is an example of higher level integrations.
“Yes, you can, but the level of integration will never be there.”
And if, like normal people,…
you add some cheap memory from different vendors since you don’t want buy standard RAM from applestore paying it double than ECC Corsair and default RAM is ways not enough?
you add a real videocard replacing the cry-poor standard videocard?
you add a serious disk from third part vendor?
you attach different vedor’s external devices like photocam, HD, videocam, usbkey, webcam, wireless desktop set, graphic tablet, phone etc?
you install third parts software never tested on your unique hardware combination and creating an unique software combination?
Were does the “level of integration” goes?
Everytime I hear that song “I did it My Way” I think of Steve Jobs.
I am tired of crappy PC hardware.
Almost all computers have essentially the same stats and they have essentially the same internal hardware from the AMD or Intel chips to the Hitachi or Seagate drives back to the ATI or Nvidia video cards. So what is the difference if any between brands?
It is about how the box is designed and how it is put together. I am less than impressed by Dell, Compaq/HP and their ilk. Even Sony laptops now feel cheaper somehow than they use to back in the day. And on top of that they are ugly as hell and have little to no style and this is supposed to be a Personal Computer?
Now, I could build my own but considering I would buy the best components I only end up saving a couple hundred bucks especially since its been so long since I bought a computer I have no re-usable parts to cut the costs. And even if I do build my own its still just a plain box usually depending on my case and even if I mod my case it ends up looking like one of those cruddy looking hotrod throwback cars you see. What do I mean? It will still look like an old car with a tacky new paintjob. Oh you put flames on the side of your hotrod guy? Wow, I never saw that before.
There is another factor.
I do not like Windows. No, I don’t have a hate-on for Microsoft or Bill Gates not in the least though I do think they have some illegal business practices that need curbing.
But I do like Unix.
Since Mac OS X is built on Unix despite the differences between it and other *Nixes it is still not as bad as a Cygwin environment on top of Windows.
And I am tired. I love linux. I have been using linux since 1997 and that is a very long time to live life on an alternative OS. I think my fights with my sound on Ubuntu and my struggle a while back with a Stage 1 install of Gentoo that did it for me. I am just tired.
People have no problems paying more money for a car that has no real performance benefits to any other car just because they know its designed well, stylish and not a hunk of junk. But this kind of consumer mentality has not filtered down to possibly for some one of the most important consumer purchases, a computer.
I am beyond caring that I can get an e-machine or Dell for less money than a Mac. I just want to be happy with my next computer purchase regardless of price.
What do I get for my extra money with a Mac?
1. The computer is designed well.
2. It is stylish.
3. It is based on a Unix OS.
4. The OS and hardware put together by the same company so the OS doesn’t feel tacked on.
There is also a factor not easy to define. People are happy with their Macs. I have asked everyone I see in a coffee shop or bookstore with a Mac. They love their Macs. I have worked in the IT industry for 10 years and I have been very happy with the Dec/Alphas and my Sun Enterprise 450s but I have never felt as happy about my purchase of a PC.
Some people seem very happy with their Sony laptops but the quality does not seem as good as used to be and some people seem very happy with their Lenovo/IBM Thinkpads but those are ugly as sin.
None of it seems to match the love most Mac owners have for their computer purchase.
Maybe its all an illusion a reality distortion field around the cult of Mac. Still, I want a computer that I will love to own.
Is that so bad?
Get a Mac, you wont regret it. I got my first this summer, felt I wanted to do it properly and got a Powermac a few months back. Haven’t looked back since.
I did, and I regret it. If you tend todo hardcore kinds of things, such as infosec or kernel hacking, Apple’s arn’t for you. My old ibook now runs Linux, wish I’d gotten a laptop with PCMCIA slots so I could have hotroded it with a powerfull wireless card and an external antenna for wardriving.
Point is, no product is 100% good for everyone. Trying to make the argument that “Apple’s are teh win” is just silly marketing.
I second that. To both the Mac and Windows people: Just because an OS works for you doesn’t mean that everyone likes it, different strokes for different folks remember.
I take a lot of flack from some people for liking Linux and being curious about OS X, just because I don’t like Windows. I don’t have to imply any measure of dislike towards Windows to get that flack, I just have to say I like something else instead and all of a sudden there’s a stampede of people trying to tell me why they think my OS sucks and theirs’ rocks.
I used IBM architecture PC’s since 84. Like you I had found that the fun had gone out of computing. Like you I had used Linux for quite a few years, but I just couldn’t do all the things I needed to do with Linux. Two years ago I came into my computer room to do a 10 minute task in Windows before retiring for the evening. About an hour and a half later, after fixing the problem that had cropped up in Windows I was finally able to get the task done. As that had been happening to me rather often of late I was facing a complete rebuild of Windows.
Anyway, after thinking about it the next day I sat down the following evening and ordered my dual processor G5 instead. When it arrived and I got it set up, guess what? I found that computers were actually fun again. I was spending more time every month fixing wintel problems than I have in the last two years doing that on my Mac.
So go into an Apple store and play with the Macs when you are ready to buy your new system. As a Linux user it should take you all of about 15 minutes to get used to the Mac way of doing things. And when you get your system home be prepared to enjoy computing again.
Bill
Thanks protagonist it does sound like we are in the same boat so to speak.
I am a Unix sysadmin with about 10 years of experience and have worked with linux, DEC Unix, and Solaris primarily.
I am with another person who has already posted just sitting in hold formation till the new Intel based Macs come out for a while (no first generation for me typically but not sure if I can wait
).
Anyway, thnx again for the words.
Glad I could help. One thing to keep in mind is that there may be some good deals on the PPC Mac’s when the intel Mac’s come out. The advantages to waiting would be that you could run x86 versions if Linux and even Windows on the Intel Mac’s. For me that is not a problem as I have a couple of old machines to run those on. When they come out with the high end Mactel’s I will probably get one of them, although the dual dual core PPC machines are very tempting.
I actually enjoyed the article as I have made the same point to people as well. Unfortunately for the author many people seem to be missing the main point of his article.
Too bad the Alpha chip got killed off. That was a processor that was way ahead of it’s time.
Bill
If you’re hardcore into unix, and are hoping that with OSX you can get an ultra usable desktop ontop of a full *nix workstation, think again. Like someone else said elsewhere, think of the relation of OSX to Unix as that of Plan 9 to Unix. Sure there’s a relation, but if you’re used to being able to really tinker in /etc, see something useful in /var, check out stats in /proc, and easily compile your own software, you’ll be rather disappointed. Shoot, if you even like to do things like change the theme of your desktop, you’ll be disappointed. It may be a pretty one, but OSX is still very much a straightjacket. If you don’t like something in it’s behaviour, you’re either stuck, or have to pay $20 for some shareware app that mimics something you can do for free in linux.
Myself, I use both. I largely consider myself more of a linux sort of guy, I like the freedom to do what I want with my system. I like the fact that if I don’t want the behaviour in say Gnome, I can try out KDE. If I don’t like that, xfce, fluxbox, etc… I like that I have easy access to a wide selection of quality free software. That said, the mac is pretty good for my family, particularly the kids, with it’s nice selection of educational software. Mind you, that same software will run on windows, but it’s just hurts too much to see the young ‘uns get hooked on that 😉
I purchased a Mac Mini after my desktop continually gave me the dreaded bluescreen of death everytime it booted. I fought with it for nearly a week, reinstalled windows, replaced a hard drive, went with older drivers that I knew had given me no problems in the past. One day I grew tired of it. Linux worked fine on the system, but I grew tired of trying to fight with it to have it do what I wanted on our home network. I knew the cause of that, but why give me options for a command that should have helped me work around the problem if they don’t work?
So I went to the Apple Store, waited for someone to help me and left about 30 minutes later with my Mac Mini. Aside from a problem with a logitech bluetooth keyboard, I have had no problems or regrets with my Mac Mini. My PC, for the most part, is now an over glorified print and file server. It still has some annoying quirks that never popped up before, but at least it works now and I can get any work that needs doing done on my Mac. I don’t quite know if the guy writing the article gets why Macs are so successful as I can name more than a few PC companies out there that don’t do their parts shopping in the bargain bin, but he does bring up some interesting points.
“1. The computer is designed well. ”
“2. It is stylish. ”
It’s VERY subjective.
Usually Apples have awesome design both from functional and from aestethic point of view (in the HW and in the SW too).
But, someone may like the rounded, soft grey style of Sony, some other may like the black and silver squared look of Toshiba, some othet may like the black and silver rounded style of HP, some other may like the alluminium look of Centurion cases (not so diffenent, inside and outside, from G5 cases), some other may like the geeky look of Alienware, some others may get crazy for Dice barebones or Cappucino mini PCs that were out before Apples’s Cube and Mini…
The problem with PC’s is that designs changes quickly and there are plenty of different lines, really PC makers should invest more in researching and promoting best designs and giving more continuity in design families (likewise Nokia did for cellphones in past years, in ages when designs was seeming simply copying 3-4 base concepts).
However, is still possible to build or buy stylish PCs, or find custom solution to niche requests that Apple simple doesn’t address, i.e. there are ULV Centrino notebooks half in weight of ibook 12, or toughbook for working outside in mist and rain, or mobile workstations with 64 bit CPUs and so on.
There simply is much more choice, and an AVERAGE lower level of style in PCs, but odds are that you may find or build more exactly what do you like or need.
“3. It is based on a Unix OS. ”
It’s not so a decisive factor.
With SP2 XP’s security is fair good for home users.
More reasonably i’ll tell to an home user to browse and get mail with Linux and work and play with Windows.
You have not to wrestle with Linux (since you do only basic tasks with it) if you don’t like, and you have not to wrestle with Windows’s security because you use it offline. But however you have the best from two worlds.
And there are plenty of good *xes, maybe OSX is the nicest from the usability point of view, but in some cases other *xes may be preferred, maybe because of niche requests of some sw developed or supported better for one particular *x, or simply because usually open softwares get released before for windows and linux, or because of the price, or because the fidelization to some distro’s look and feel, or because doesn’t pose issues in running in machines not locked by the vendor… I don’t see OSX overcoming all other *xes from a technical or commercial point of view now or in near future.
“4. The OS and hardware put together by the same company so the OS doesn’t feel tacked on.”
Well, Apple doesn’t manifacture the hw, and however the customer can customize his machine with third parts hw and sw, so this point is not decisive.
And also if Apple usually did a good job in the past, it had his hw problems too, like ibook mobo, pbook lcd panes, Cube overheating and so on, like all PC manifacturers.
Everytime I hear that song “I did it My Way” I think of Steve Jobs.
Ever seen the Sid Vicious video of his cover
It’s not that I don’t like Macs, on the contrary I think Apple produces some really neat computers, but this article is just to dumb to believe.
It’s nothing but stupid fanboy babble. Not one sane argument, nothing.
Truth hurts, loser.
I agree entirely. Macs are great, but the article is unbearably stupid.
I have always been fascinated with a Mac. The only grouse I have being that it is expensive. But once Apple releases the Intel Mac, I believe prices are bound to tumble (though I doubt if it will come to the level of a PC ).
Then I will pamper myself by buying a mac.
One thing you have to remember when pricing Windows vs Mac machines is that OS X includes probably 95% of the software most users need to get things they want to do done. It is my experience that you wold have to spend several hundred dollars just to get the PC software up to the same level.
I have spent an additional $200-$300 dollars on software for my Mac, but that is because of the things I am doing with my computer. To get the equivalent software for the PC would have been at least as much if not more. Most of that money was spent on software to use to import and clean up my vinyl audio collection of music.
I have had to purchase no additional software to work with video files. iMovie and iDVD do a great job of that. I would have to buy software to do that with a Windows bases system.
Bill
You forget that the reason most home users are happy with Windows is because it makes them feel that pirating software is OK.
Keep wishing. The prices wont’ change much at all.
I hope you are ready for the negative comments on your article because I can see they have already started. I will say I enjoyed it and I think you have a point here. People will be accusing you of providing no examples, but they are missing the point. You are not comparing PC’s to Mac’s, you are comparing the way they are built.
I took your main point to be that Steve Jobs cares more about producing a good product for a reasonable price than he does about producing a product to market to the masses. And I agree with that design philosophy. When you buy a $300 PC folks, guess what? You just bought a cheap PC and you usually get what you pay for. And to all you flamers, before you start, I have a number of PC’s here as well that have been running for years. None of them are cheap PC’s, however and I will not go that route if I need a reliable machine that I need to have running 24×7.
Come on people. Give the guy a little slack. What he is saying is that when you pay almost nothing for a product like a computer that is exactly what you end up with. He is talking about a difference in design philosophy in the two camps. At no point in the article did he say that if you went out and spent $1,500 on a PC would you get a system that was inferior to a Mac.
And finally, as someone who at times built his own PC’s and has used them for over 20 years, far more than that if you count the old hobby computer kits, I have to say I like the “Apple way” better.
Apple does make good machines. However I dont know if they use quality parts on their machines or not cause this is the second time I have seen my Mac friends of mine have hard drive failures and motherboard failures. I have used a 17 inch Powerbook for the past few days using Final Cut Pro and it is sluggish at the best. I really tried to enjoy the Apple way but for over three grand on that laptop, I would rather have gotten something from Dell. The machine was very very slow in using Final Cut Pro. When I would replay the work I had done, the sound would be totally out of whack with the video even though I had spent the last 15 minutes aligning all the tracks. I think that G5 is where things started getting better. If I get a Mac it wont be anything less than a Quad mac g5. Then I think the Apple way will make sense.
G4 is ancient. Thats a sad fact. The fact that Apple still sells it, doesn’t throw a good light at the company. Thats like Intel or selling chips from 6 or 7 years ago.
Any kind of high end app is just too much for G4. Lets hope that will change with the new intel chips.
I’m running Photoshop CS quite well with a 1ghz G4
I do a lot of RAW photo shooting, and working with RAW files, is horrible slow. And that just need pure CPU power (I use Canon DPP)
It’s on older CPU, sure, but for many (or even most) users it is still perfectly fine. A 1.42GHz Mac mini can do the things that a majority of users need it to do and it does it quickly enough. This is a bad argument “gullevek”.
Well perhaps I am expecting too much from my Mac Mini. But after one year usage, its just too slow for me. But I doubt I would be the average PC user. I do a lot of Photo Shooting in RAW format, I have tons of emails, browse a lot of webpages, etc …
“At no point in the article did he say that if you went out and spent $1,500 on a PC would you get a system that was inferior to a Mac.”
RTFA.
From the article, “This is what all PCs out there have to contend with, $299, even if they cost $2999. The same vicious cost cutting philosophy that brings you those price points pervades the rest of the motherboards, hard drives and components…”
I did read the article and I will not resort to your language. There is still no place in there where he says A high end PC is going to be the same junk as the $299 PC. At the high end you can still try to cut costs without offering the same junk you do at the lower end. I would suggest you practice up on your reading as well as your tact. And I can see why you prefer to remain “Anonymous”…
Bill
Why do we need Linux, BSD, or OSX???
Why do we need Linux, BSD, or OSX???
Aren’t those among the least competitive OSes, along with OS/2 and Amiga? If competition is bad then get rid of the most competitive OS and leave the little guys to gather up the crumbs in the aftermath rather than slowly starve to death in the shadow of the AlphaOS. Have a [bleeding] heart for the little guys! (o;
“Almost all computers have essentially the same stats and they have essentially the same internal hardware from the AMD or Intel chips to the Hitachi or Seagate drives back to the ATI or Nvidia video cards. So what is the difference if any between brands?”
And what kind of hard drives are in Macs? What kind of video cards?
Actually now that you mention it, Mac video cards happen to be the equivalent of the FireGL and Quadro cards on the PC side. You can actually buy an X800 for mac and flash it to the fireGL version of the card. As for the Hard Drives, those are chosen based on Power/Heat/Noise requirnments and not necessarily based on the lowest bidder. So yes, you are still getting better quality than in a typical beige box.
Nope. Mac video cards (aside from the actual FireGL and Quadros, which cost money as an option), are decidedly *not* the equivalent of FireGL and Quadro cards on the PC. They can be flashed as such, but that flashing process activates hardware on the card that is there anyway, but is latent in the original BIOS. The PC versions of the card have the same hardware (well, in the chips themselves), but they are disabled by the BIOS.
I challenge you to hold both in your hand and tell me the difference. They *are* the same cards, just with a different ROM. Try getting Dual link DVI on a standard PC card. Now as to why apple has just now decided to market a “Quadro” that is left for another discussion. And for what its worth there is no “FireGL” option for the Mac. The name is of no consequence, as the hardware is identical.
IT’s the ROM that makes the difference. Quadros and GeForces use the same chips, in PC cards as well. The difference is in a ROM in the Quadros that enables workstation level features like anti-aliasing for GL_LINES and extra video overlays. Unless the cards in the Macs are sold as Quadros (and some are), they are just reguler consumer-grade GeForce cards.
*) Yes, the people who build them the cards do put an extra TDMS transmitter on there to support dual-link DVI. That doesn’t make the card a Quadro!
Edited 2005-12-19 20:14
The article doesn’t explain why a specially-crafted “$999” PC made with quality hardware wouldn’t sell just as well as an Apple.
You can always add money to overcome hardware problems. If you’re worried about a power-supply breaking, you can put it two. But what if two break? So put in three. Or four.
At some point, the increase or perceived increase in quality is no longer worth paying for. And if you are willing to pay for it, you don’t need vendor-exclusive lock-in to get it.
> Taiwanese ODMs will kill to save $.12/1000 on parts.
And the very same Taiwanese ODM build all the Macs. What makes anyone thing they are not cutting costs on parts once they have won their contracts?
> have a power supply that may cook after a few weeks […]
> Can you say bad caps?
Sure I can:
http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=08080
http://emperor.tidbits.com/TidBITS/Talk/[email protected]@
http://www.pbase.com/johncoggi/image/40667989
> It doesn’t compete against anything at all.
If that were true they would still be prices like they were 10 or 20 years ago. (Look up the prices in old catalogues!)
The question: Why Apple Is Better ?
The answer: Because :-p
LOLOLZ YOU DIED!! HAHAHAH! You’ll never win at 13attleships sucker!
I cant believe moronic posts like that got modded up to 3!
Actually, it’s more like that episode from Seinfeld: “I chose not to run…”
It seems to me that with every new generation of macs, the Macintosh gets closer to the PC.
The author has a good point. Cutting corners can burn you if you don’t do it well. Failing capacitors and cheap power supplies (that often take out other components when they fail) are two of th worst offenders.
If you’re smart about it, you can still put together a PC using good parts for relatively little money.
I think saying that Macs don’t compete is a cop-out by the author. I am interested in building computers that use relatively high quality parts and I think I can do so for less money than buying a Mac. So they do compete and in my mind, they lose.
You could build a pc for less money than a mac with same quality than a mac, but is there any company that does it for you? If there were than there is compition.
Competing on your own is kinda silly.
Apple rocks cause they ship quality reguardless of price?
It’s entirely possible to do this in the PC industry:
Thinkpads.
Alienware desktops.
High Quality DIY parts.
Just because the author can’t get his head off the Dell magazine they shipped to him against his will doesn’t mean the rest of us are too stupid to find quality hardware outside of our local Apple store.
Apple stuff is nice, I won’t argue. But there’s a lot of nice PC equipment too; and you have to pay for it.
>Alienware desktops.
You mean “Jacky Desktops”…
Apple rocks cause they ship quality reguardless of price?
It’s entirely possible to do this in the PC industry:
Thinkpads.
Alienware desktops.
High Quality DIY parts.
Here is the sticking point. How much does a high end alienware desktop cost? The same price range as a PowerMac. High End Thinkpads? Again the same price range of Powerbooks.
I did the comparisons 18 months ago. Powerbooks and PowerMacs were roughly equal to their PC brethren if you match parts identically. No going with cheaper parts(which is an advantage of PC’s)
I switched a year ago. I haven’t been upset. i can easily use the good features of Unix( full Commanline, and X-windows), while having an easy to use interface.
To top it all off no more Windows. Not using MSFT products just feels good. Even if Apple is worse than MSFT for being properitery.
“Here is the sticking point. How much does a high end alienware desktop cost? The same price range as a PowerMac. High End Thinkpads? Again the same price range of Powerbooks. ”
I couldn’t agree with you more. Two years ago when I switched to a Mac I speced out dual processor systems from Alienware Apple and several other sites. When I threw in the value of the included software, guess what? The Mac actually came out to be the least expensive high end machine. And as a bonus, it wasn’t obsolete six months later.
When I was running Windows I was beginning to dislike computing in general near the end. Apple put the fun back in it for me and for that I am grateful.
Bill
The reason why Macs dont get obsolete is because they are not evolving besides their OS. If you look at the same amount of time and look at the changes that have happened in the x86 market it is staggering. I hate usnig XP but there is no other alternative OS that would let me do anything I want. If I want to install cracked software I can. If I want to download free random small 3rd party softwares from the web I can. If I want to game I can. If I want to install high end corporate apps I can…not so with any other OS. Unfortunate but a reality.
A good alienware is several hundred less than a comparable PowerMac. But you don’t need to go to Alienware to compare to the Mac — they are a step above Apple’s quality. Comparing it to Dell is much more accurate — both make high-volume (relatively) mass market machines.
Not sure about Alienware but Thinkpad did not cost the same as Powerbooks when I was shopping because the base configuration was truly base. I could choose what I wanted not get dumped with whatever the manufacturer decided I wanted. Not sure why I should match parts with a Mac when it has parts I don’t need. I used high quality parts but only the ones I needed and it was cheaper. That is the logical thing to do (unlike that last line confession of yours).
“Just because the author can’t get his head off the Dell magazine they shipped to him against his will doesn’t mean the rest of us are too stupid to find quality hardware outside of our local Apple store. ”
You are missing the point here. The average computer user does not build there own PC’s The author never says you can’t get a quality PC if you build it yourself, or even if you get a high end PC. He says that the PC side of the equation is pushing low end PC’s and in an effort to see who can sell one the cheapest they are cutting costs by putting lower quality components in the systems.
And your final sentence really says it all. You can get a high quality PC, but then you are paying just as much as you would for the equivalent Mac.
As someone who owns a Dell and a PowerMac, I have to point out that the comparison is entirely unfair. Aside from the case, there is nothing in a PowerMac that you won’t find in a Dell. Dell uses pretty good parts for a low-cost mass-market manufacturer — ones that are comparable in quality to what Apple uses. They both use good motherboards (Apple makes their own, and Dell uses Intel’s excellent motherboards — which Apple will too next year). They both use generic RAM (my Dell had Micron, my Apple had Samsung). They both use standard hard drives (Maxtor in the Dell, Western Digital in the Mac). They both use slightly custom graphics cards (NVIDIA in both).
There is just nothing in the Mac that makes it more special than the PC. No exotic RAM, no fanless CPU cooler, no noise-isolation in the case, etc. They’re both just good mass-market machines, a step above eMachines, and a step below something like Alienware.
Apple wins with their ever decreasing market share… It’s been some years since I’ve seen the last Mac here in Europe.
Where are you from? I live in Spain and spend quite a lot of time in England, and the opposite couldn’t be any more different from the truth. A few years ago you couldn’t find Apple stuff in any shop, yet now they are slowly reappearing in “normal” shops. Moreover, I didn’t know anyone with a Mac until last year, and now I know about 7 people with them, and a lot more that are considering buying one.
Even more important is that now, when you mention Apple, most people I talk with know that they still sell computers. Three years ago it was hard to find anyone (non IT related) who knew what a Mac was(!)
That’s not to say that a Mac is anywhere near as popular as a PC. But their market is certainly increasing, and the shops they are opening in England are a good sign of that.
Apple wins with their ever decreasing market share… It’s been some years since I’ve seen the last Mac here in Europe.
Actually, the owner of the Apple shop where I buy my stuff has a different view on things. Over the past 12 months, computer sales (so only Macs, *not* iPods) at his three Apple shops has increased by 69%, while ‘normal’ x86 resellers have seen a decrease of a few percent in computer sales.
Makes you think. And yes, I live in Europe (the Netherlands).
“Apple wins with their ever decreasing market share…”
Strange, all the reports I read say that the Apple market share has been increasing over the last several years.
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1778538,00.asp
http://www.computerworld.com/printthis/2005/0,4814,100548,00.html
To site several examples. Would you care to share the source where you got your figures from? And would you care to let us know who you are?
Bill
“Mac rule because of quality”. I can still build quality PC at lower price. Also, Apple has same, low end guts, as cheap PC’s has.
As someone said: fanboy bable — ,,We’re so elite with our iSomething on the desk.”
Not compete? haha. I like Apple I like the design look and feel. But saying Apple isn’t competing? Is just plain stupid.
Silly post if you ask me.
It’s only “crap” if you buy that $299 PC. But for us more advanced users that can build our own computer AND know enough not to get the thing loaded down with viruses and spyware (if using Windows), we can build a PC that will outperformed any Mac and look just as beautiful.
I like Macs, but the bottom line is that they are ideal for novice users and professionals but terrible for us technies that want to get our hands dirty.
“I like Macs, but the bottom line is that they are ideal for novice users and professionals but terrible for us technies that want to get our hands dirty.”
Where did you come up with that idea? The HW selection might not be as great, but it is available. You can install and run Linux on a Mac. You can use the CLI if you so desire. There is a lot you can tweak and play with on a Mac. Do a little reading and you will find that you can be e “techie” on a Mac if that is what you want.
BIll
The HW selection might not be as great, but it is available. You can install and run Linux on a Mac. You can use the CLI if you so desire. There is a lot you can tweak and play with on a Mac. Do a little reading and you will find that you can be e “techie” on a Mac if that is what you want.
As a Linux user the one thing that has stopped me from getting a Mac in the past and probably in the future is their proprietary hardware that they don’t release the specs for. I’ve heard too many complaints from other Linux users about sound, wireless and other things not working. Not because there aren’t many Linux developers that would make drivers for these things, but becasue they can’t because there are no specs. That makes it a non-techie machine IMO
I really don’t love any OS as I loved BeOS. It’s somethink kind of difficult to explain, but it simply grows on you.
OS X is nice, XP is kinda nice, Linux is nice.
But I really don’t love any of these OSes nowadays.
Apple hardware is very well built, as are Alienware PCs.
if quote “The same vicious cost cutting philosophy that brings you those price points pervades the rest of the motherboards, hard drives and components, Taiwanese ODMs will kill to save $.12/1000 on parts. Can you say bad caps?”
why do they still come with legacy ports such as serial parallel and ps/2 ports? wouldn’t a manufactorer save money by not including these obsolete ports?
why do they still come with legacy ports such as serial parallel and ps/2 ports? wouldn’t a manufactorer save money by not including these obsolete ports?
They aren’t obsolete at all. *cough*corporate desktops*cogh* I could never buy a PC without ps/2 and parallel ports.
“I could never buy a PC without ps/2 and parallel ports.” Ditto. Also never (as far as my psychic powers and commons sense can see) without a 3.5″ floppy drive, for inexplicable reasons that seems to be growing popular too. I haven’t used floppies on any sort of scale for several years now, but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing of use on all the floppies I still have.
Better to have them and not need them, than to need them and not have them.
Sometimes, Apple goes overboard in not including legacy support. My new PowerMac has no PCI slots! PCI isn’t legacy yet, not by a long shot. What if I need to put a sound card in there? There aren’t any PCI-E sound cards!
5. when you buy software you get the privalege of going to 3 or 4 shops before finding one that stocks mac versions and then you get to meet some egor-like guy that goes to get it from the basement.
4. you get a “stylish” case that still doesn’t really match your room decore, but all the other mac users agree that it looks better than a pc
3. everything is more expensive so therefore it must be of higher quality
2. you get to convince all of your friends/family that your mac is worth more than their dell that does everything your mac does
1. You get to endure all of those IT guys snickering and mumbling words like fag under their breath
lmao.
I totally agree.
On that note I will say that the only place that a mac is worth it, is with their ibooks
5. when you buy software you get the privalege of going to 3 or 4 shops before finding one that stocks mac versions and then you get to meet some egor-like guy that goes to get it from the basement.
4. you get a “stylish” case that still doesn’t really match your room decore, but all the other mac users agree that it looks better than a pc
3. everything is more expensive so therefore it must be of higher quality
2. you get to convince all of your friends/family that your mac is worth more than their dell that does everything your mac does
1. You get to endure all of those IT guys snickering and mumbling words like fag under their breath
Wow, its almost like you are a complete f–k-tard. That is your best response? I guess I shouldn’t expect much from a windows fan boy. Wait, whats that? Sounds like 14 more viruses in the wild! Time to update your definitions!
This is dumb and goes agains everything that Economics had found out about the market in the last 100 or so years. First of all you cannot compare free markets (PC) with a monopoly such as Apple has created. The only reason why Apple manages to get away with it’s bussines model being so monopolistic is the fact that no industry relies on Apple computers and hence no economy in the world is affected by Apple’s good or bad decisions. Though this might change very fast depending on how serious Apple is about their Intel CPU computers. ALl that economics left aside, I think that if you would compare Apple to PC you should compare apples to apples and the comparison should go something like Apple vs. Voodoo computers, Alienware, Falcon or any of the likes. The price level is very much the same and if the author had ever had any experience with any of the companies listed, he would have never even though of saying that every one tries to cut cost even if ment using lesser quality parts. I have experience with Voodoo computers but I am pretty sure that Falcon and Alienware are just as good. You get premium parts all over with that extra touch that Apple has never been able to offer. Compared to a Voodoo computer Apple’s products are cheap and I mean that qualitywise.
Apple cannot handpick every componenet and they also cannot afford to offer a custom paint job and will be able to do so. Also when you get a computer from a company like Voodoo liquid cooling comes standard most of the time. You get optimized and well tested computer that a real life person has verified to work as well as the hardware allows withing reasonable bounds. I am not sure how much testing Apple does on their hardware before it ships to the store but it is by no means optimized or anything like that. Plus with a custom PC you get the ability to overclock your hardware without voiding any waranties and this is jet another thing that Apple does not do. Considering that the price of a custom buid PC and an Apple computer are about the same I really don’t see how an Apple would be better especially since we are not talking about the software.
Sorry but this is jus another one of INQ’s BS stories.
What planet does apple have a monopoly on?
Apple does have a monopoly on the Macintosh platform. In fact, it is just as much of a monopolist as Microsoft was ever accused to be on the Intel platform. The two domains just don’t compare in terms of popularity.
One reason why Apple isn’t often accused for it, though, could be because they created the platform with their own sets of hands. It looks like people might start thinking about this just a bit differently now that Apple switches to Intel CPUs, but still won’t let their software run on chips sold by others.
Mac OS is far from being easy. Infact, in terms of usability, speed, and stability, I find both Linux and Windows far superior. For example, try starting a file transfer and then disabling your wireless card. This is what we did yesterday and it crashed the computer thoroughly. We could not even reboot the system. We had to hard power the thing off. Also, whenever I use Mac OS, I find the interface constantly getting in the way of things. I guess Apple went for a cool, I’m a different interface rather than a cool, this is really usable interface.
Yeah, whatever, dude.
I agree. I tried using FCP on a Mac and granted it was a G4 but I darn near tore my hair out…it is so unusable I think…I guess u need to get used to it. Coming from Linux and from Windows desktop environments doing the mac way of things is just not easy. I mean where the hell is the right click?!
Aw come on. You can hang a multi-button mouse on a Mac and it will work great.
And we have Mighty Mouse now, maybe you’ve heard about it.
I plugged my wireless desktop to several Linux distros and it usually worked well with nealy all distros, and also with PC-BSD, a really user friendly BSD distribution, that really worth a try (not only because let me use mu wireless desktop set, of course!
Don’t think of buying a Mac as getting an expensive computer. Think of it as getting a cheap religion.
Thanks, you have made me go LOL. 🙂
That was so funny. Thank you.
Don’t think of buying a Mac as getting an expensive computer. Think of it as getting a cheap religion
Thank Heaven for this guy, whoever he is, and for rayiner too. Without them, this thread would be totally unreadable. Particular thanks to rayiner for his patience, and the solidity of the factual information. Especially the patience.
Every now and then you’ll see some funny posts on OSNews. Sometimes I try to bring some laughs too but I’m more the kind of nonsense guy…
And it is inherently limited, like luxury foods and luxury shoes.
I like those red Voodoo’s.
I’m quite sure they are equall if not better than most mac’s.
Indeed!! ^_^
is that it never comes out and says just what “better” is supposed to mean. I can infer some of it, it seems to focus on hardware quality, but then suddenly jumps to units sold when comparing to similar quality PCs. That makes it hard, at least for me, to say whether or not the article has a point. I have nothing against Macs, though I’ve never really used one myself what I’ve seen of them isn’t bad and the people I know who use them certainly have no complaints, but with no definition of better, or worse, it’s hard to judge whether the article is right.
On the whole Apple almost has to be better from some perspective, or it just wouldn’t selling any units at all. But that doesn’t have to mean there aren’t people whose personal situation means they’d be better off with a cheap, low-specs, PC. For that matter it’s probably still possible to do a good quality cheap PC, the problem in my opinion (though I won’t claim to be an expert on this) is that companies are trying to compete in two ways at once. They want the lowest price, but also the highest possible superficial specs, rather than lower specs with quality parts to give what would in the end be a better, more durable and stable system for the same price.
My next new computer will probably be a year or so from now at the earliest, mainly for financial reasons. Right now I’m pretty sure it will be a 64bit AMD system, dual core if it’s possible in my budget at the time, and built by me personally, with quality components. For now I get a lot of pleasure from precisely the thing Apple doesn’t seem to need, playing around with things to get them to work. When I get tired of that a Mac may well be an option. I think they’re certainly some of the best looking systems out there (though of course there’s no accounting for taste).
I think in the long run, speak 50+ years only open source os would survive because they dont depend on the company and accumulate knowledge and skills of many people. They provide the infrastructure and cost savings for businesses and encourage people to develop on them. They are like a common foundation, they are more portable , more flexible an everyone profits from the source and is free to contribute to them. Microsoft/apple will die some day, but i dont think open source os will die as long as it is good enough to spark interest in people. As time passes by open source os’es will have more features and better quality imho than commecial ones because they could benefit from far more knowledge.
I also think most developers dont strive for the recognition of the end users very much when they program for an open os and this doesn’t acutally matter. What they do is more for themselves and their beliefs. They dont have to stisfy the market or please the customer. So the customers attitude is not that important. For me the year of Desktop on Linux was 2002 when i swiched and when I contribute to the open source software it’s not because i care that some joe sixpack couldn’t install gentoo from stage1 or whatever , i care about the quality of software and the idea of open source.
Although Macs are obviously more expensive, I would not want one even if it were free. I think the interface is archaic, the one button mouse mentality the longest running laughfest in computing history and Apple Computer itself a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
Like the title of this article, I am an anti-Mac-er through and through:
http://www.acm.org/pubs/cacm/AUG96/antimac.htm
There are major reasons why Apple is last in marketshare. But no Mac bigots want to hear them, so I’ll sign off now and take my kids to play in the snow.
Yeah, just go compile a kernel or something.
“I am an anti-Mac-er through and through.”
Well, you’re also and idiot.
Its his choice and he gets name called for it? Who is the idiot? If someone can be as productive regardless of the platform, thats all that matters be it Linux, Mac or Windows. So far Windows offers the most flexibility sad tho it is.
There are personal computer platforms that have even lower market share than the Mac, you know.
I’m well aware. I was pointing out that, contrary to the article, expensive PC hardware does exist.
The article seemed to think that no one would sell a $3000 PC because there is a $300 PC.
No. The article proposes that there aren’t high end PC’s because it would be market suicide.
He readily says in the article that Mac’s bang to buck ratio isn’t competitive (which it is if you actually want some bang). But where he’s horribly wrong is in assuming that high end PC hardware is non-existant which is just plain false.
yep, choice is good, and for some, the best choice is apple.
i’d rather have more USB ports, or external serial ata ports, or wireless g or audio jacks, or even fax/modem or wireless g ports, dvi ports than legacy ports.
a lot of miro-atx motherboards have a vga port and a parallel port. i would rather have a dvi port than a parallel port.
imo, the ONLY thing good about apple is their os. they need to get on the ball, and release it for all pc’s. that way everyone can run apple if they want. apple could instantly be on top of the pc market. but they are either unwilling or too stupid to see that people are interested in their software.
The fans on your $300 dell are cheap sleeve bearing fans; that limits its life (for the non-technical who buy them) to 2-4 years.
I bet Apple only uses high quality fans because they want to keep their resell reputation.
Dell uses under-quality plastics in their laptop cases; and their $1000 range laptops suffer from a range of stupid issues: A friend of mine has one which has been in 6 times in a year for repair. Now, this laptop doesn’t exactly spend its nights on a pillow but it doesn’t spend them in a bad environment either.
The high end Dell’s aren’t bad. The ones that start over $500 aren’t bad at all (the desktops). The cheap Dell’s are just cheap crap mixed with outdated parts Dell probably needs to get rid of.
I wouldn’t call Micron or Samsung generic RAM. It’s not Corsair or Crucial, but it’s not “Brand X Value!” either.
I’m quite sad to hear they’re using WD drives in Macs. I hope they give them a long lemon test before picking each model
.
Now, what about the parts which you can get away with going cheap on. What brand CD drives? CD drives will fail far more often than RAM and Motherboards, especially cheap drives. Like I said earlier, cooling solutions. Power supply?
You have to look at the parts that fail most often.
Sine you are using “my friend’s dell” examples, my iMac came with the CD drive not working. And that too in an interesting way. I put in a software installation disk. It got sucked into the slit. And then nothing. Can’t get it out. No way to do that. Keeping the mouse click on boot. Paper clip in the slit. Nothing worked. The drive is not even on the system profiler. Called Mac support. They had no better ideas either. Of course, since we are this big academic institution, we twisted their arms to swap this dud for a fresh Mac. Sent this one back but they still don’t seem to have managed to retrieve the disk and send it back to us. Must be all the high-end CD drives that tehy use. I know this totally anecdotal but so is your friend’s Dell.
The fans on your $300 dell are cheap sleeve bearing fans; that limits its life (for the non-technical who buy them) to 2-4 years.
1) Sleeve bearing do not have that short a life, and are preferable to ball bearing fans because they have less bearing noise. Good sleeve bearing fans are hardly cheap — I have a Papst sleeve bearing fan that costs $20.
2) The machine was a $3000 Dell, bought in 1998. It will be 8 years old next month. It’s still working perfectly, though it’s been relegated to server duties now. So much for “cheap fans with limited lifespan”!
I bet Apple only uses high quality fans because they want to keep their resell reputation.
Apple uses rather mediocre fans (Deltas). They’re not the cheapest you can buy, but they’re rather mass-market, and only cost a couple of dollars each.
Dell uses under-quality plastics in their laptop cases
In some of their machines they do. My Inspiron 8200 has really crappy plastics. My dad’s latitude sub-notebook has quite good plastics, however.
The high end Dell’s aren’t bad. The ones that start over $500 aren’t bad at all (the desktops). The cheap Dell’s are just cheap crap mixed with outdated parts Dell probably needs to get rid of.
Why are you comparing low-end Dells to Macs? My comparison was between two machines that cost about the same.
I wouldn’t call Micron or Samsung generic RAM. It’s not Corsair or Crucial, but it’s not “Brand X Value!” either.
Generic != “Brand X Value!”. Anyway, would it make you feel better if I called it “OEM” RAM instead? Either way, the two machines use the same quality of RAM.
Now, what about the parts which you can get away with going cheap on. What brand CD drives?
Pioneer in the Mac, NEC in the PC. I cannot vouch for the quality of the Pioneer, but the NEC works just fine 8 years later…
Like I said earlier, cooling solutions.
The cooling solution on the Mac is more likely to fail simply because it has more moving parts (9 fans). Though, to be fair, the Pentium II 300MHz is a much cooler chip than the 970MP.
Power supply?
Custom specced Apple in the Mac, custom-specced Dell in the PC. Both likely made in China. Again, the Dell is fine 8 years later, though I’ve heard a lot of bad things about Apple power supplys from the same time period (chirping, etc).
except no dell laptop will run Final Cut Pro..
heh, well, not _easily_ or fast
Oops…but I don’t need it…so what should I do? Can I buy a Dell please?
Neither does any mac laptop. And I have used one…for 3 painful days.
I just bought a brand new PS/2 keyboard about 4 months ago. I paid $60 for it, a nice Unicomp keyboard. Why? Because PS/2 isn’t legacy, the only people who need more are FPS players.
Now, I could buy a PS/2 to USB adaptor; but that’d be silly since ATX, I think, includes 2 PS/2 ports
.
And a lot of people have parallel printers, and USB->Parallel adaptors are expensive.
My favorite would be an HP 5L; a WONDERFUL little laser printer.
The article is pretty shallow. You get excellent price/performance on a Mac vs a NAME BRAND PC. I am concerned that the switch to Intel will adversely impact performance in the short term, though, although I expect OS X will squeeze out more speed than XP or Vista on EQUAL hardware.
If by “adversely” you mean Yonah and Conroe are going to stomp the G4 and G5, respectively, then yes, you’re correct. And no, OS X will not squeeze out more speed than XP. OS X’s OpenGL drivers are quite slow relative to XP (or Linux, for that matter!), as is its I/O performance. These are all well-documented facts, btw.
I hope you are right about the Yonah– since it’s dual-core– maybe you are. We’ll see. As for your comments on OpenGL and I/O– surely you have links to back up your wild claims? And what about the fact that XP balks when you try to do more than one task at a time on it?
“Wild claims” my ass. It’s common knowledge! Geez, Mac users simply assume that OS X is good at things until proven otherwise.
For OpenGL: I’d point to really bad SPECViewPerf tests, but those are “unofficial” (OS X isn’t an official platform for those tests), so I won’t. Instead, I’ll point to results from a Mac site: http://www.barefeats.com/macvpc.html (see second page). Note that even in the case (Quake III), where the Mac version was specially optimized (with AltiVec, etc), it was still slower. Note that on the PC, the Linux version of Quake III is marginally faster than the XP version.
For I/O, I point you to AnandTech’s second OS X vs Linux on G5 benchmark. Or, find anybody who owns a comparable PC and a G5 Mac. I do, and I/O intensive tasks like compiling large source trees run at 2/3 the speed on my Mac as on my PC.
And while you are at it, can you back up “your own wild claims” about XP balking at multiple tasks. I always have multiple tasks going on. Never seen any balking that was worse than the ones I see on my Macs.
I’m sorry but this was very poor journalism. First off apple does compete like every product. It competes for your dollars which you can choose to spend somewhere else on something else. Also, it competes against PCs. Secondly, the premise of this article goes against the laws of free markets. Competition encourages better price/preformance, yes, but it also encourages innovation. There is plenty of innovation in the PC market. Only the predominant OS (windows) suffers from lack of innovation and this because of a lack of seriously threatening competition. Its not responsible to write articles of this nature, and by extension its not very responsible to link to them either.
Even though Im on a top of the line HP pavilion laptop loaded with a 64bit Atholon chip. It doesn’t compare to my Mac mini, no dock bar on xp and it seems xp was made with the wrong side of the brain to be neat and intuitive as Apple’s products, wares and os x.
I will always continue to buy Apple for the way they think and make better software and computes.
A company like Dell has to worry about HP/sony, etc and Apple. Whereas Apple just makes great products that people buy and use because the really get the job finished better!
1) Sleeve bearing do not have that short a life, and are preferable to ball bearing fans because they have less bearing noise. Good sleeve bearing fans are hardly cheap — I have a Papst sleeve bearing fan that costs $20.
Silentpc says the same (ALL ELSE BEING EQUAL) and i bought a sleave bearing fan and am quite happy
Yep, they’re awesome. I’ve got a couple of Yate Loons, and they are excellent. Spin it with your finger, hold it up to your ear, and you hear nothing.
Even as a Macintosh user I never believed this sort of crap.
Seven years ago I bought my first Mac for the same reasons quoted in this article. It’s a better computer.
Seven years ago the uninformed Mac hating faithful were saying the same things they are today, absolute crap.
Seven years of bliss not having to deal with all the crap from the PC side of computing. It was worth every penny and and I have no regrets.
My next computer will be a Mac regardless of the price. Why? Its a better computer at any price.
My decision is not based on popularity sticker price or options but on performance.
My Macs have performed admirably compared to my friends Windows PC’s.
I have zero downtime on my OS X powered G4 iMac.
Not even a reboot unless a power failure occurred or an update required it.
If my time is worth $10.00/ hr as an IT person, I’m at least $10,000 to the good for having owned Macs, not to mention power savings and unfailed components.
I could have bought a cheaper mass produced truck for less money, like a Volvo or Freightliner, but I chose Kenworth for the same reasons I chose a Mac.
It’s a superior product.
If I feel like getting my hands dirty, I have a 63 Dodge I built that will kill a Viper. (for the first 1/4 mile)
Way more fun than building a computer.
I’ve never seen anything that comes close to this in terms of praising and rejoicing about vendor lock-in.
Of course, the people agreeing with the vendor lock-in argument, saying that it’s a good one and has a strong point are the same ones who buy any old iProduct ( http://www.gizmodo.com/gadgets/images/iProduct.gif ); they’re the ones who don’t mind losing choice and freedom (which, while it can give great highs ( http://www.alienware.com/ ), can also give you great lows ( http://www.e4me.com/ ) ).
Honestly, I don’t care. I like to think I’m immune to marketspeak and buzzwords, which is why the Cult of Mac hasn’t been able to convert me; it’s why I’m unmoved by Vista, and why I look at open-source and find myself strangely… disinterested.
So, if you want to cheer about being forced to pick One Brand, One Chip, One OS, One Music Store, go right ahead. Live in your cloistered, choiceless world. I’ll live out here where there’s fresh air and innovation, with more disruptive technologies and new toys to play with, warts and all.
F*ck (Apple) vendor lock-in.
Incidentally, am I the only one amused by the fact that Apple shook up the black-box world of 1980’s computing with an 1984 ad, and now virtually all of their machines are exactly the same?
Identical, white/silver machines, just like everyone else?
And that their ad campaign for the iPod is everybody looking exactly the same, black silhouettes with zaaro diversity?
1984? Thy modern name is Apple.
Well, you can buy “skins”…..
I think the 1984 ad was about Apple trying to introduce the idea of using a computer for fun and creativity; not just spreadsheets and databases. Turns out the picked the smaller market,
It’s about software and usability.
If the heart and soul of the Windows world is MS Office, the heart and soul of the Mac is iLife. I suspect that as the digital hub takes hold and every man woman and child has an iPod, the number of macs is only going to get greater.
WOW! For one a inteligent opinion on a OSNews comment!
I take my hat for you!
All this article is designed to do is troll. By looking at the comments, it has accomplished that very well.
I would congratulate Mr. Demerjian on his fine trolling abilities, but writing a troll such as this one is like shooting fish in a barrel; takes no skill whatsoever.
So send it back. Most states have laws about products which ship broken.
I’ve seen a lot more bad Dell laptops than one lately; it’s just an example and it is anecdotal and not proof. However, I imagine many have noticed that while Dell used to ship nice stable laptops; about a year ago they stopped.
I have no idea what Mac uses for CD drives. Probably whatever manufacturer is willing to do that odd design.
I was extremely clear that I was only accusing Dell of using CHEAP sleeve bearing fans in CHEAP computers RECENTLY.
I’ll skip the rest of your post since you obviously skimmed mine.
To the inquirer author:
Ofcourse Apple competes!!! I know what you mean, but that means more and more that Apple does compete. By delivering more expensive hardware and software and delivering quality, instead of what Dell does, they DO compete with EVERY other hardware/software vendor in the world. it’s that their unique selling point is “quality” instead of “low price”.
Their hardware and software designs are awesome and stylish, and that’s part of this selling point. They understand that lifestile and design is more important to a certain target audience compared to how much you get for $500.
But, still, they compete. In order lose too much pressure from competitors is to distinct yourself.
Your article sounds as if Apple is an exception to all the large companies out there. But Apple wouldn’t be this big if they didn’t compete and distinct from the others somehow.
And your article sounds if you are one big apple fan-boy flaming “MS”. Get over it! I use both systems, both with a lot of pleasure and sometimes annoyances.
I didnt buy a Mac for its design or its hardware really. It was the OS that i wanted. The reason why i like Apple to choose the hardware? We’ll for the most part, its not bad hardware at all. Secondly i like the fact that there is only a few configurations, due to the fact that no matter what you plug in it works. That kind of tight intergration is what i want in a multi-media machine. What i use the Mac for it does the job very well. Records my music,edits my photos and video and acts as my media server. I just dont think windows can do better. It does all my office work. My Windows computer handles my gaming fun. I dont have to worry about my Mac going down for the count. Makes sense to me.
First hand experience: I bought a Dell Precsision 470 complete with dual Xeons & Gigs of RAM. I was reasonably happy with performance, until the motherboard sizzled. Ok, it happens…. then the power supply went…. then the motherboard reported RAM errors (which were tested by a local vendor and passed). I’m still using it, but I no longer trust it.
Contrast that to my experience with my older G4 & dual G5. Good performance for both, the G4 is still happily running as my app/file server without those other issues. The G5 has moved into my primary box (even above the Ubuntu Precision). I haven’t looked back and can’t imagine taking a chance on the cheaper boxes.
KJ
Those ignoring competition always get in the last place. It’s stupid to not compete if you have competition, Linux is competition, Windows is competition. All three need to compete to keep going.
innovation is a word that MS coopted when creativity fled Redmond
Very insightful article thanks.
First a bit of background:
I’ve been a PC user since around ’92, with loads of other experiences in the pocket back then already.
I’ve come to know and hate windows over the time, and still use it for the odd job where I just can’t find the right unix stuff (DVD mastering with more than ONE video track, more than ONE audio track, and a graphical menu (or more than one), and now lets do this NOT by hand-coding XML but with a proper menu designer…)
Lately, I’ve been working for a company that has as many mac users as customers as it has windows users, hence I have to support mac + windows, as well as administer a rampaging horde of linux servers. So they gave me a windows laptop, a linux box, and a G4 powermac.
Guess which one sucks most?
It’s the mac.
Here’s what I’ve experienced so far:
First: the keyboard. No ‘delete’ key, no PgUp/PgDown/Home/End/Insert keys. the @ is at alt-l instead of where i’m used to it… and IT IS NOT LABELED!
Second: the mouse. only one button, and you have to grab it between thumb and index finger, from the sides, unless you don’t care where you click.
Third: the noise. I’ve seen vacuum cleaners that were more noisy… but not very much.
Fourth: the OS. Sure, Mac OS X Tiger looks nice, and it’s pretty simple to use… Unless you want to do non-simple things. Like, Delete a file, or look at file properties, or install software. For example, i download firefox, I get some weird .dmg file, which I open. There I see an icon. After a while i figure that i can drag this into my applications folder. But can I delete the .dmg file now? In fact I can, but Mac OS didn’t care to tell me about it.
summary: If I ever were to buy/otherwise acquire a mac, here’s what I’d do: throw away the keyboard and the mouse, get some logitech stuff. Then, throw away Mac OS, get some linux/ppc on it. Then, I’d suffer from the serious lack of ppc binaries for the commercial linux games that I own, not to mention the “web essentials” like shockwave and realplayer… So, over shorter or longer time, the mac would most likely end up on ebay.
You are kidding right?
You are complaining that you can install an application by dragging and dropping it to the applications folder.
Well frack me, that is confusing…
I agree with you, i bought an G4 workstation digital in 2002 and was dissapointed with the noise and the performance.
next Mac was an PB 867 w. 512 ram and widescreen then the performance sucked but it was a nice looking laptop. I have had better luck with videoediting with my Ubuntu and Kino then Imovie on the PB.
luckily I didnt loose any money when i sold the PB, but the G4 did cost me several $ to get rid off.
now i dualboot XP and Ubuntu on T40 thinkpad.
So clearly your lack of familiarity with OS X = a poor OS? Here’s some help. Apple + I = look at file properties. To delete a file drag it to the trashcan. OK still with me? We can take a break if you like. Learn an OS before you trash it.
Sorry, this article is utter bs. Apple hardware is not that special. PC can be built a million different ways to suite specific purposes and personalities. Foreign concept to Mac’ers. Apple: What you buy is what you get. Don’t like it? Too big/slow/noisy = buy a new mac. There is a lot of PC junk out there (lots and lots) but theres also some good stuff too. In my opinion (and probably a minority) OS X is what makes the mac with all the black magic and spoke in mirrors that runs it. BTW, OSX86 runs KA on my Dual Opteron.
If you use special Apple software like FCP or Logic Pro, then an Apple makes sense. If you use your machine for almost anything else, I do not see how Apple is better from a hardware point of view, it may be, it may not be, it depends. One thing with Apple, there is one point of contact, versus building your own Linux box with dozens of components. I could be wrong, but I think many people would do just as well with Ubuntu on a Linux box, if they have just a bit of patience to look some things up. At least they can look the things up. Some Apple issues are not as easily found due to less people using them. Some box vendors even customize linux to work specifically with the exact hardware they sell you.
>>First: the keyboard. No ‘delete’ key, no PgUp/PgDown/Home/End/Insert keys.
WTF are you talking about? I’m typing this on an Apple keyboard right now and there most certainly ARE delete, page up, page down, home, and end keys. You must be using a keyboard from the candy iMac era if you don’t have these keys.
>>the @ is at alt-l instead of where i’m used to it… and IT IS NOT LABELED!
@ is at shift+2 on the Apple keyboard, same place it is on any keyboard.
>>Second: the mouse. only one button,
I guess you haven’t heard, but Apple released a four-button mouse with a scroll wheel this year. It’s called the Mightly Mouse and it’s standard on the iMacs and soon to be standard on all Macs, and you can pick one up at the Apple Store or CompUSA if you want one.
>>Third: the noise. I’ve seen vacuum cleaners that were more noisy… but not very much.
My Mac Mini is silent. The liquid-cooled G5s are silent as well. Don’t know what machine you’re using but the silence if golden nowadays.
As for your 4th point about not knowing how to install an application, how is this Tiger’s fault? If you were using Windows XP for the first time there would be tons of stuff you wouldn’t instantly know how to do. Don’t blame the OS for your lack of practice.
My Mac Mini is silent. The liquid-cooled G5s are silent as well. Don’t know what machine you’re using but the silence if golden nowadays.
Obviously the Mini is silent. It’s about as powerful as a pocket calculator
The G5’s are, well, are far from silent. They’re barely quiet. My dual-core PowerMac is pretty loud (and that’s with the fans spinning at their most lowest settings). This is compared to both my Athlon PC, and my roommates’ Dell PCs. The hard drive noise in particular is unbearable, thanks to the Mac’s aluminum case. I recently bought a Western Digital Raptor. The drive has quiet idle, but loud, sharp, high-pitched seeks. In the Antec P180 case in my PC, the drive is quite tolerable. Not as quiet as my Seagate, but not intrusive unless you’re listening for it. In the Mac, it’s very loud. During heavy disk access (eg: a compile), the grinding is positively painful.
Current PowerMacs are quiet compared to gamerz PCz, with their leaf-blower graphics card coolers and 100CFM heatsink fans, but compared to corporate desktops from Dell or HP, they’re pretty loud.
I said the _liquid cooled_ ones. Don’t blame apple if you got the fan model. Fans make noise. You knew that when you bought it.
How much do those liquid cooled Powermacs cost?
I can get a PC that’s very quiet despite having hot components that are being cooled by fans. Simply use well designed heat sinks, low speed 120mm fans, a case with decent airflow and some vibration damping for fans/harddisks. All pretty cheap and simple options compared with something more exotic like liquid cooling, but they can make a huge difference.
Apple are meant to produce higher quality hardware, yet they haven’t bothered with basic sound reducing techniques and their high end computers (at least the ones with fans) make more noise than many equivalent “low quality” PCs.
I’ve used several G5s and have yet to hear more then a few times this tornado of noise everyone is going onabout
The _liquid cooled_ ones use the same fan setup as the fan cooled ones. The fans are simply on the water radiator instead of the heatsink. Actually, the concensus on macnn seems to be that the liquid cooled models are marginally louder, generally because they use the 2.5 and 2.7 GHz 970FXs, which dissipate a lot more heat than the 2.0 and 2.3 GHz models.
LOL Shift+2 !! I don’t know where you are from, but I haven’t seen that in my entire life… so don’t jump into conclusions
.dmg is an .iso equivalent. Is that so hard? Double click on the file, and its like inserting a CD. The application doesn’t need to be installed, compiled, etc. Just drag it to the HD- anywhere on the hard drive will work.
All macs sell with a 2 button scroll wheel mouse now, and the keyboard is much more standard than what you saw.
If CMD-DELETE is too hard to delete a file, then maybe you should write lazy on your forehead. You can also change that or any shortcut easily. Macs have by far the most straight forward keyboard shortcuts.
You can’t build a laptop, and only Sony competes (and loses) in design and lenovo in engineering and build quality in this growing segment.
Time is money. Shopping for separate PC parts, making sure they’re compatible, and constructing your own PC, installing all the necessary basic software- all takes time. 1 day on average would equal about $250 of my workday time.
Open up a G5 tower and take a look inside. Try to find another machine that even attempts to compete with that level of forethought/attention to detail.
vs Linux) First of all, you have to realize that people are *really* into linux because it is FREE (beer and freedom!). Also because it is tinkery. As in, it is fun to mess around with. Also, update junkies love it. There is a ton of gossip. I absolutely love linux. People who say it is more usable than anything are full of crap and even if they were right, that isn’t why anyone uses it. The gnome hypothetical user *does not exist*! It may one day but doesn’t yet.
So, for the areas where Linux users care, both OSX and Windows lose big.
vs WinXP) Zero downloadable apps? Can’t share cd installs with friends? Techie brother and cousin can’t help you install/fix whatever? Can’t update any hardware? That’s right. The usability thing is seriously mitigated by the real limitations of this environment.
The reality is that there is no market segment (except the niche visual design guys) that really really love OSX — ** EXCEPT ** people who love to have their hands held and feel totally safe and loved by, uh, their computer.
People, these are the same people who love, I mean LOVE, their Volkswagen Beetles with the little flower in the dash. These people are gay. These people are Canadian. They love more than life itself to tell you how great their life and VW Beetles are but don’t be fooled!
OSX may be great for them but don’t let them make you feel bad about your favorite OS or envious of theirs. They act as if *everyone* agrees (which irritates me more than you can imagine since I *detest* OSX). So VIVA Linux! And XP (which I also like much more than OSX).
Werd.
Love, Foo.
You’re an idiot.
WTF???? Zero downloadable apps????
**tp://www.macupdate.com
**tp://www.versiontracker.com
**tp://mac.softpedia.com/
OpenSource Software:
**tp://fink.sourceforge.net
**tp://www.darwinports.org
**tp://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/gentoo-alt/macos/index.xml
Remember: if you dont know what are you talking about, dont say anything… Apple Computers and Mac OS X are not perfect but if compared with some other computers and OS are a good and viable anternative. I run a software company, we only use mac’s and we are happy.
Just courious… what type of software company? Does everyone there have a Mac?
Thanks
Accounting/Management/Built to Order Software.
We use Filemaker (www.filemaker.com), RealBasic (www.realsoftware.com) and sometimes XCode (www.apple.com/macosx/features/xcode/).
article.
Nothing but an extreme mac-zealot flaming the world, because of Apples failure.
And of course the author just have to compare apples with oranges – the only way he can make anything look reasonable.
Hmm, well I convinced by your Mac hating argument, I don’t know whos worst the zealots or the flamers
There is nothing mac-hating in my comment. I don’t hate macs. I just can’t stand the “religious” part of mac-users like Charlie Demerjian.
Yawn
” I just can’t stand the “religious” part of mac-users like Charlie Demerjian.”
Just a dumb comment to belittle others whos opinions you don’t agree with
Nope. Just a way to express that comments like:
“The reasons why Apple is better”
“Because they are not a PC”
“APPLE REALLY IS is the better way”
The whole content of 2nd and 3rd paragraph,
“Things smoke out, innovation is a word that MS coopted when creativity fled Redmond”
And the rant goes on, with absolutely no evidence or argument.
Just a lamer praising Apple and spreading lies btw.
Apple has larger hardware woes than any hardware vendor for PC has ever had.
I don’t hate mac. I like their desktop implementation which is the best one on the market (not perfect but the best one none-the-less).
But fanboy rants like that article doesn’t belong to OSNews and is brought only because it’s Mac.
“I just can’t stand the “religious” part of mac-users….
Its really just shills for Cupertino marketing.
I used to think it must horrify Cupertino because of its negative effect on people outside the cult of Mac. Lately however it has seemed more likely that it reflects the Cupertino Party Line. You recall the Business Week article a while back that talked about Cupertino in quasi-religious terms, and described a visit there as being among people who were conscious that they were among the specially favoured on earth.
An essential part of the mentality is that the number of the elect has to be kept very small. This enhances the feeling of being special, and it allows for endless conversion attempts, whose real purpose is not to make converts, but to alienate the unfaithful and provoke rejection. This then reinforces the members’ sense that they are in a specially favoured group, under constant attack.
The interesting question that occurs to one reading this and similar threads is: yes, its mostly shills. But how many of the shills are paid, and how many are just brainwashed cult members? I know of no evidence, but out of a perhaps increasingly desperate faith in human rationality, keep hoping that the proportion of the paid is high.
That stands for any platform, have you seen the Open Source & Linux shrills when someone dares question there platform
Or the Windows Fan boys
Get over yourself in trying to make Mac users worse then others, cause the other platforms are just as bad
You really have no evidence of that. You can argue that all platforms are equally bad, and it sounds reassuring in an egalatarian sort of way, but that doesn’t make it true. Considering real religions — would anyone argue that Mormons aren’t more fervent and confrontational than Jews? Or Babtists aren’t more fervent and confrontational than Lutherans? Anybody who lives in the American midwest, or American southeast can immediately tell you which religion takes their conversion attempts most seriously!
In my experience, Mac users are both more fervent and more deluded than either the Windows or OSS cults. The Windows cult tends to be passive — they’re the majority after all, and they don’t need to go around picking every little fight. I won’t speak for the OSS cult, since I’m a member and my opinion is thus biased. The Mac cult, however, is something else. When Bill G. says “Windows XP is the most secure OS!”, only the truely bent believe it. When Jobs says “The G5 is the fastest processor!”, everyone believes it, and will continue to believe it despite any evidence that may be presented. To this day, there are people who believe that the G4 was a kick-ass awesome processor that totall 0wned the PIII and Athlon. They’re like people who deny the Holocaust!
” In my experience, Mac users are both more fervent and more deluded than either the Windows or OSS cults”
I’ll add that Apple fanatics are really more “world-haters” than a gpl integrist.
They got a word to tell “you saw the light ! you SWITCHED !”
http://www.apple.com/switch/
The OSS “cult” is more open. Hey, some of the oss “cult” ports their app to windows and use it.
Mac users can’t even touch a “pc”, the creation of Satan. Before the Apple to intel conversion, they were singing how bad x86 architecture is, and how good the G5 outperform any x86 processor. Now, they are saying “Apple hardware selection will be better than your pc”. duhuhuhuh. Bigots.
I know many linux users. Even the gpl integrists are more tolerents and open than mac users. Sometimes, they even defend windows when they see some other linux users making FUD on it.
You don’t see that in the mac community. For the mac community, everything else sucks big.
I forgot one thing : i will never understand how someone can turn into a commercial product fanatics.
Hey, you PAID for it. And you are making free publicity. You truly are a capitalism victim.
We all know that Apple’s hardware quality is no better than your average PC, so once again we get this kid who must feel bad about his Mac purchase so goes on a delusional rant to make himself feel better. Hopefully he’ll get professional help.
Haha well said. I have said this before myself. The ranting and raving is purely to overcome the feeling of technical isolation in the computing world and being ripped off by Apple.
>You are missing the point here. The average computer user does not build there own PC’s The author never says you can’t get a quality PC if you build it yourself, or even if you get a high end PC. He says that the PC side of the equation is pushing low end PC’s and in an effort to see who can sell one the cheapest they are cutting costs by putting lower quality components in the systems.
And your final sentence really says it all. You can get a high quality PC, but then you are paying just as much as you would for the equivalent Mac.<
Well, here is the thing, the vast majority of people that buy a $300-400 pc know they are getting junk, they don’t care, either they can’t afford something better or they simply have no use for the better hardware.
If my dad went to get a new computer he would buy a $300 pc, not because he’s dumb, but because he simply dosen’t care, he would use it for word processing, that’s it, he would know there is something better, but again, he wouldn’t care.
Point is this, if you eliminate the $300-1000 bargin pc’s you are also eliminating a huge portion of the market, people that don’t have much money or people that are just tossing the whole computer idea around are much less likely to buy when they see that $1000+ price tag.
I think the vast majority know they are not getting a beast of a computer that will last them 20 years.
Onto another point, if I was to buy a $3,000 Dell it will be fairly equivellent to a $3,000 Mac, however, if I spent $3,000 on building a pc it would be equivellent to a $5,000 Mac (Keep in mind, this is shopping for components online)
Oh yeah, one more thing, the average user does not buy a Mac either if you want to get technical about it.
Having said all of that, I really do like Mac’s, and I like OSX, I just had to put in my 2 cents.
Edited 2005-12-20 02:37
I can understand not being able to afford more than $300, and usually I advise those people to look to someone who’s got a PC they’re getting rid of; that way it can be obtained for around $50 and it is probably of a higher quality than the $300 PC (it’s been running for years already
).
If you want a new PC it’s best to spend some, not a lot, of money and buy what you want. Don’t buy something cheap because it will be “outdated.” That’s simply not true. Outdated is so subjective. For some people outdated is 6 month old graphics technology; for other’s it’s that Microsofts new OS doesn’t support their architecture anymore (TMK, XP is i586; I’ve run it on a K6-2) or is just waaay too much for it. These are the sort of things which a decade ago meant a few years or more; and today it means 5-8 years depending on your patience.
If you just want your foot in the PC door; there’s a huge number of useful PC’s hitting the dumpster these days.
Just don’t buy a “refurbished” PC; it’s small-business code for “I’m about to steal your money by charging you $300 for a 4 year old PC.”
“usually I advise those people to look to someone who’s got a PC they’re getting rid of; that way it can be obtained for around $50 and it is probably of a higher quality than the $300 PC”
Well, ok, an used machine usually is more than enough for personal use, but I’ll advise people to buy an used computer only from a really trusted vendor.
It’s not nice to buy a severely weared disk or fan or power unit (like in office PC’s used 8-10 hours a day for 4-5 years, or in even an higher quality server used 24:7 for 3-4 years) just to have to change it after a bad crash, loosing time, money and perhaps some data.
Moreover, it’s not nice to buy a past generation hardware and then find to be not capable to attach your current generation photocam or videocam, in example, or to have to rely on slow USB1 ports, or to be bound to obsolete RAM or videocard slots, that will not allow you to remove the most common bottlenecks suffered by old PCs.
If you buy a new baseline PC, you will definitely buy underpowered hardware but not junk (well, at least if you rely on an honest vendor!), but you should have a machine that will not feature severe bottlenecks in what you can do with it. It will not be a bolt, but will quite surely have recent kind of ports and slots and so on.
I can’t tell why Apple is so successfull because I know absolutely no one owning one. I guess that gigantic success and revolution didn’t reach my area/city/country/continent.
A shame I’m quite curious about OSX.
Hopefully I still have the net with nice pictures of cool designed MAC and screenshots AND those nice articles explaining why Apple is #1 to the lame masses using PC (shame on me, shame on you guys lol).
Lemmy,
It would help to know more about your situation, specifically the specs of your Mac. Often people get used and abused PCs or Macs and compare some ancient relic they’ve invested a fraction of time with compared to what they’re used to running.
Some specifics:
“First: the keyboard. No ‘delete’ key, no PgUp/PgDown/Home/End/Insert keys. the @ is at alt-l instead of where i’m used to it… and IT IS NOT LABELED! ”
Well don’t blame Apple. It’s not their keyboard. Apple has always had the @ key as Shift-2. It’s possible (as a second hand Mac) that someone changed this. Again, PC or Mac, it’s always a good idea to reformat a used computer.
Apple also has had the full keyboard available with the Delete key and others you mentioned. The only exception to this was an old mini-sized keyboard that came out before the PowerMac G4.
And Apple has never not labeled any of the keys on any of their keyboards.
“Second: the mouse. only one button, and you have to grab it between thumb and index finger, from the sides, unless you don’t care where you click. ”
What does the Apple mouse have to do with the Macintosh? You can use pretty much whatever mouse you want. Oh, and for a while now, Apple has had a multi-button mouse. I think it’s ironic that people like you blast Apple for their mouse, but yet so few people actually use a 3rd party mouse with their Mac as compared to PC users.
“Fourth: the OS. Sure, Mac OS X Tiger looks nice, and it’s pretty simple to use… Unless you want to do non-simple things. Like, Delete a file, or look at file properties, or install software. ”
The first two are the same in OS X and Windows, though OS X gives you more power with what you can do with a file’s properties.
How you can compare installing software is totally beyond me. In OS X, you drag the app to where you want it in your Applications folder for the overwhelming majority of software. Unless you’re counting viruses as software, I don’t see how anything could beat OS X on this point.
“For example, i download firefox, I get some weird .dmg file, which I open. There I see an icon. After a while i figure that i can drag this into my applications folder. But can I delete the .dmg file now? In fact I can, but Mac OS didn’t care to tell me about it.”
How is a .dmg file any weirder than a .zip or .tar file? And of course they’re normally named based on the application…as compared to Windows Setup.exe or Installer.exe.
Can you delete the .dmg???? How did you figure you could delete the Installer.exe in Windows? Do you ask yourself this question every time you drag an app to install it, or did you learn something along the way?
Heh. Charlie (and the Inq, god bless ’em), I generally love. But this article, really, is it telling us anything, really? Nope.
Apple have had plenty of problems with their quality control. So have Dell and Toshiba and whoever…
Things break. Some are plain faulty. Some have design faults. Apple has never been immune.
The point is, Apple plays the SAME game any other OEMs do. They want items as cheap as possible from their suppliers. Be it Samsung, no-name taiwanese corporations, etc. And you just can’t compare Apple vs. The World (or vs The White Box vendor) so generally.
There is LOTS of differentiation between motherboards, for instance. If you want to pay MORE on the PC side, you can get quality Japanese capacitors, too.
What didn’t I like about this article? It’s an over-generalisation and paints Apple as “the best” while the others as “cheap knockoffs”. If only it were that simple.
He doese make a point, but it’s heavily one-sided, and not completely true in the overall scheme of things – yet the article pretty much paints it as an ‘absolute’.
I guess you don’t get hits having more well-reasoned articles up there, Charlie. And I’m disappointed.
Come on Thom – this is not good for OS News. I am a devoted Apple/Mac fan and I’m as nutty about them and their products as anyone but this is not a good article and it’s not good for OS News. This kind of “fishing” for reactions is just destructive and cannot lead to anything good. You’re just going to drag up the same old (tired) arguments. So stop posting this stuff Thom, for the good of this site.
35 parts MAC FANBOY RANTS
4 parts LINUX ROOLZ!
10 arguments WINDOWS KICKS LINUX ASS
500 parts ONGOING REPLIES AND ARGUMENTS
People talk about the PC like its gods gift to man – now lets take off the idea of ‘industrial design’ as what is sexy to one person, is completely repulsive to another; lets look at the bare system itself.
Once you’ve purchased all your pieces and put it together, you need an operating system – the only viable desktop operating system with all the big name hardware support and software availability is Windows XP/Windows 2003 – and for me, I don’t want to run Windows, I want an operating system that allows me to have access to all the UNIXness without needing to use a half-assed, second rate system system called Services for UNIX.
So basically, my only choice is Mac – if tomorrow all software producers sarted producing FreeBSD based applications, and there was improved support for hardware on FreeBSD by hardware vendors, I would sell this iMac G5 in a second, but the sad fact – I need the applications, they’re only available on either Mac or Windows – Windows doesn’t have the quality UNIX’ness that I want, so the only choice for me is Mac.
For ME, Apple is superior, but like I keep hammering on again and again on each thread, its about using the right tool for the right job – and neither one is superior to the other as each customer has a different set of requirements that must be met – and none of the ones out there, including Apple, hit perfectly on every customers need, so the customer has to compromise.
As for building a computer yourself, I have nothing against it, and like I said, given the perfect scenario with FreeBSD – I would assemble a computer using top quality components and base it around a dual dual core Opteron (4 cores in total) – but the simple fact of the matter, like I said before, I would then be locked into Windows if I wished to use x86; the question is this; MacOS X/Mac or Windows/x86 – they’re the only two choices out there.
Have you ever tried Cygwin? It provides a wonderful Unix environment on Windows, including bash and X. I’ve always found it much more useful than services for unix
What’s the point in commenting about this article? People have different views on things, in life. Or, he might have shelled-out more than he should to buy his spanking new Mac…so much that he feels bragging about it online kinda justifies it. He’s stuck in his own mindset for now. Let him be…
that apple’s laptops and desktops have their share of hardware problems. So much for the quality, no price cuts, no compromise mentality in cupertino.
You don’t see Macs in Spain so easily. Normal shops don’t sell it and you have to go to a Big Store like FNAC or El Corte Ingles to see a Mac, and even there, they are in a reduced stand near hundreds of PC hardware.
In Spain is very difficult to see a Mac. I don’t know about anyone that has a Mac and I’ve only seen a pair of Powerbooks in the University. Even the iPod that’s selling very well in the rest of Europe is a minority here, in Spain.
He uses a powerbook with OSX. Ah!
“Apple does have a monopoly on the Macintosh platform. In fact, it is just as much of a monopolist as Microsoft was ever accused to be on the Intel platform.”
….and that stinking Ford motor co. makes 100% of Ford’s
…another stinking monopolist
well duh!
The problem with the mac is that there is no single processor powermac. Because, hey, a real pc user would never ever want a f–king iMac, with a gay graphic card, a gay chipset soundcard, a gay harddrive, ONE dvdrom writer, an obsolete processor..
For 1500$ i can get a PC that outperform a 2000$ powermac for ALL but the processor. A *good* graphic card, a *good* soundcard, a *big* harddrive, one writer and one dvd reader, a *good* proc.
Wait. The 2000$ powermac got 512 mo of ram ! my 1500$ PC can have 2 gig. Your 2000$ powermac graphic card is a SHITTY nvidia 6600 LE.
You *must* be stupid to buy a 2000$ computer today that don’t include by default at least 1 gig of ram. And a graphic card like the LE series, MX, SE, all the craps like radeon 9200SE, geforce 4 mx, 6600 LE.. Crap.
Assembling your own pc is truly better. You get a decent graphic card, a real soundcard, a bigger harddrive, more ram. Ah, the softwares? free. Linux.
“For 1500$ i can get a PC that outperform a 2000$ powermac for ALL but the processor.”
It’s not all exact.
You can match or outperform all the hardware of the cheapest Mac with less of 1500$.
I just configured one high end PC – low end workstation on an european online shop (remember that prices, in euro, include taxes so are higher than prices in dollars).
Silent power supply, aluminium case, XPPro, warranty required by EU law, building and delivery, burn in test, plus:
dual core athlon (Athlon X2 3800+) that quite matches the 2 GHz G5 for most uses;
only 512 MB of ram, like the counterpart (gee, I’ll really expand to 2 Gigs if I were gonna buying it!);
160 GB SATA II HD
NVidia GF6600LE 256MB (twice the Apple, I didn’t find the 128MB version…) with passive cooler (nice!)
DVD+-dual layer recorder.
It’s 1.162,00 Euro (taxes included).
If you want Linux on it, you save some other bucks.
The Apple counterpart is the cheaper (in Europe) PowerMac with 2GHz G5 and, apart for the 128 MB only Gefo, the same hardware.
It cost 2.079,00 Euro (taxes included).
Ok, if you think that OSX bundle is 900 Euro better than the software that you may find, almost for free, for win and lin, or if you absolutly need it, let’s buy the Mac.
Apple is not a technology company. All they do is rebrand, put out ads, then charge a premium. Take a look at all their bread and butter as of late. The PPC by IBM, coming soon a scaled down version of intel so you cannot install Apple OS on your PC. Which consists of the Darwin kernel, a crippled version of Linux. To run your Ipod, any generic MP3 player would have cost you $50.
Yeah, your cool in your Pinto pal. A fool and their money…
sorry to say but your wrong about darwin being a crippled version of linux. i belive its based on freebsd. its a *nix but not linux…
I, for one, welcome our Mach-Kernel/*bsd-userland overlord.
The kernel is a modified Mach, the userland is from the *bsd (and not ONLY from freebsd)
No wonder why in multithreading OS X sucks big time.
If my PC has a hardware problem I can go down to the local PC store, pickup what I need, fix the problem, and be on my way. I can’t do that with a MAC.
Jay Leno once related a conversation he had with someone famous (he didn’t identify him). Since Leno is a car nut, the other person asked about a good model to get. Leno mentioned a model of Ferrari he liked. The other person replied, “Well, I don’t know….. EVERYBODY has a Ferrari.”
Leno then advised him not to say this in public (to avoid alienating us normal-income folks).
Apple products are like Ferraris to people less wealthy. Nothing wrong with the car or the computer, but the perceived higher quality is absurdly out of touch with reality.
This is all just about pathetic attempts by people trying to boost their own self-esteem.
*Ouch* Taking the “PC Is Ford, Mac is Ferrari” analogy and doing a complete 180 on it, aren’t we?
I like how quick you are to point out that BSD is NOT LINUX. But pretty much accept the fact that MAC is still a cripple.
Let me get this straight. You dont want to give your money to a corporation like MS. Yet you want to give your money to a corporation like @pple. It is not like your M@c is hand made by the indigenous people of whereever.
Not to mention corporate @pple aims their computers for the morons who cant figure out LINUX, much less w!nd0ws. You rebel! Allow your self to be numbered by the evil corporate @pple shareholders :0
With Intels inside they will become more competitive and will need a new logo http://www.tinyimage.de/image.php?img_id=7133