Apple today announced a faster, more affordable line of eMac desktops for home and schools, including faster PowerPC G4 processors running at up to 1.25 GHz, 333 MHz DDR memory, faster ATI Radeon graphics and USB 2.0 connectivity to peripherals.
Apple Announces Faster, Cheaper eMacs
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Eugenia Loli
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The latter part of this statement illustrates the problem that others have already commented on. Far too often, PC users simply use numbers, or hardware comparisons, to make the case that x86’s are better than Macs.
If that’s the way Mac people think, its time to stop this discussion right now. From my point of view, numbers are the only thing that matter. Numbers are provable, “intangibles” are not. Plus, I don’t think any of the reasonable PC users are trying to assert that PCs are better than Macs. They are trying to assert that, for similar hardware, they are more *expensive* than Macs. This is a provable assertion, and has been proven pretty well on this thread.
Now, it is entirely possible that the Mac still may end up being better for a particular person, by making up for its price premium in other ways. However, those other ways are entirely subjective, and concrete statements cannot be made on that basis. If you really like OS X and the iApps, then a Mac might just be better for you, because the value you assign to the extras offsets the price premium. However, that does not change the fact that there is a price premium. It is entirely understandable that other people would not assign such a high value to those apps.
From my personal point of view, the only piece of Mac software to which I’d assign any value is OS X, and maybe iTunes. I have no use for the iApps, or for Garage Band or whatever. Thus, I’d be willing to pay the box price of OS X ($130 is it?) as the premium for a fast G5, over whatever price I’d have to spend to get equivilently fast hardware on pricewatch or at dell.com.
“”Apple on Wednesday announced a profit of US$63 million on $2.006 billion in revenue, moving 829,000 CPUs and 733,000
iPods in the process.””
I actually misread your original post on that one. Sorry. Either way, the point was that the sales numbers are growing, not falling.
Those intangible things are not important to you, but if they were you’d probably have a Mac.
Exactly!
And if they weren’t and you had a Mac anyway, you would try them out and find that they become important when you see how easy it is to do amazing things.
What amazing things? Will Garage Band make my Python apps run faster? Will iMovie edit my code better than vi? If not, what use is it to me?
And do you really think the difference between leather and vinyl justifies the cost difference between a Taurus and a BMW?
No, but the high-quality interior materials, superbly balanced chassis, high horsepower engine, advanced transmission, better safety equipment, in-dash navigation, etc, do.
if the machines were so good and the software so stellar, then more than 1.8% of computer buyers would be using Macs
Gotta love that statement, except that it is not true. Just because one product may be superior to another, doesn’t mean it will sell highly.
I hate the car example, but I’ll use it. More people drive Fords than BMW’s. Most people would probably agree that a BMW is superior. However, BMW’s cost more. Here’s an example of a product that is probably superior, all things being equal, yet a minority in sales.
Microsoft has a strong hold on the market, and I believe there would be a lot more Mac owners IF it weren’t for Windows XP.
I’m not saying that Macs are superior, because that’s been argued over and over again, a lot of it comes down to preference. However, I will say that the software that comes on a standard Mac OS X computer is far superior than what comes with the base Windows XP box.
However, lets just assume for the sake of this argument that Macs are superior and everyone agrees on that (again– just assuming, I know this is not the case). Even still, Macs would probably still have very low market share, because they have to contend with the Microsoft juggernaut, and that they’re more expensive than the average cheapo PC.
“What amazing things? Will Garage Band make my Python apps run faster? Will iMovie edit my code better than vi? If not, what use is it to me?”
You know how you hear Mac people comparing owning a Mac to a religious experience, blah blah blah. Sounds silly. I know. But it really changes the way you view computers. Those iApps can really change what you do with a computer. Editing home movies and making DVDs don’t sound like much to you now. I see it all the time. Someone uses a PC for a long time, and thinks, hey, why get a Mac, I don’t edit videos, I don’t author DVDs, I don’t have a digital photo collection. Then, for one reason or another, they get a Mac. And those previously worthless applications become the reason to shoot and edit videos, the reason to author DVDs, and the reason to buy a digital camera. And yes, I know how stupid and zealot-like that sounds. But it’s true. I now do that stuff for a living. It’s the same reason iPods are selling so well. People look at them and think, why would I need that? I don’t need to have 10,000 songs in my pocket. The think about experiences with other players, and think, hey, these things aren’t worth using. But the people who have iPods love them (and, yeah, iTunes on Windows sucks). iPods make them rethink how they view (and listen to) music. Good tools make a huge difference in anything. I bought Dreamweaver because I was frustrated with making websites in text editors. I didn’t like writing code, and I didn’t like making websites. After I bought Dreamweaver I rethought the whole concept of web design and development. Now, because I have the best tools for the job, I love web work. I love writing code. I went from not caring for HTML to loving CSS, XHTML, javascript, and eventually Flash on the web (as opposed to using it for animations in multimedia, which I was doing before).
“From my point of view, numbers are the only thing that matter. Numbers are provable, “intangibles” are not.”
Notwithstanding your earlier characterization of my use of the word “intangible” to mean “dishonest”, that people do, in fact, ascribe value to intangible or aesthetic benefits. People do it all the time. People buy things because they are “cool” or people buy an older house in an older part of town because of the intangibles of location, “coolness” or whatever when they could have bought a newer house out in the ‘burbs for less. If you were to simply add up the cost of the bricks and morter of the newer house out in the burbs versus the bricks and morter of the older house downtown, you’d come down on the cheaper house out in the burbs. But people don’t act by the numbers alone. And to arbitrarily draw a line in the sand and say that the only way to measure PCs vs. Macs is by cost of parts alone is silly. It is that same specious reasoning that people use to say the iPod mini is worthless when for $50 more you can get 11 GB more of space. Not everyone is concerned about space. Some simply like the mini because it is “cool.” The fact that Apple can’t make the mini fast enough to meet demand demonstrates that intangible benefits do matter.
Clearly, everyone decides the value of these things when making their own personal decisions. But to ignore the fact that these intangible benefits exist, much less matter, is not fair. Most Mac users do, in fact, buy their Macs because of the iLife software and the other intangibles. Therefore, you must factor that in when making blanket, generalized comparisons, otherwise you are making an unfair and unequal comparison.
actually, ram on mac’s are easy to “install”, just like a pc, however, YOU MUST MAKE SURE THAT YOU BUY CERTIFIED MAC RAM! Apple’s are very timing sensitive (i don’t know if this is due to the mobo, powerpc, panther, ??), I bought some generic pc2700 ddr 512MB spek tek’s from best buy for my dual g4 1.25 mirror door (with 2700 memory slots) and the computer just crashed like every 2-3 days or under heavy load (dumpcheck, kernel trap).
It could have been bad memory from the vendor, but I stuck these in my linux box and it hasn’t crashed at all for days (also an smp machine, dual p3 abit vp6).
I found this article on the web:
http://www.macintouch.com/badram01.html
so I coughed up the dough and bought some memory from crucial
that was certified for my powermac and I’m loving life, the only time
I’ve had to reboot are when the power goes out or for certain updates,
no more fracking kernel traps!
long live apple!!
And the G4 is a great cpu, sure it’s no G5 or opteron, but I like my dualie just
fine thanks! Don’t think that the G4 is so slow that it’s going to make
you unproductive. A G4 is good enough for most common desktop
user tasks. I even do some of the uncommon things like program
java and objective c/cocoa with my machine and i’m happy with the
performance.
Certainly if you want to resale the $799 version, you wouldn’t be losing
that much in say a year versus if you bought a $799 dell computer and
sold it in a year (you’d probably only get less than half of what you paid for a dell). I bet you’d get 65-75% of the value of the mac back. And since it’s so nice and stable, and productive for most users, you wouldn’t need an upgrade as frequently.
Mac OS X runs better and better on most older hardware (of course they do draw the line), unlike windows.
I don’t work for mac, I do have x86 machines that run linux (read: not windows), so take this with a grain of salt.
apple does sell about 3-4 million computers per year
and yes
they used to sell more than that…by about 2x if i remember correctly.
http://www.macdailynews.com/comments.php?id=P2341_0_1_0
“While much of the tech sector has also been in retreat of late, Bachman said Apple’s shares might well have reached the upper limit of their valuation for the time being due to weak sales of G5 PowerMac computers,” Crum reports. “For its fiscal first quarter ended Dec. 27, Apple shipped 206,000 G5 computers, short of many analysts’ estimates. Bachman estimates that Apple will ship 195,000 G5 PowerMacs in its current quarter.”
http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/2004/01/14/q1results/
“Apple noted that it shipped 829,000 Macs during the quarter — a 12 percent increase year over year”
. What they do mean to say is that for the same $X, you can get a PC that is Y% faster or has Z megs more RAM or a graphics card that is W% faster. Its a really simple, black-and-white numbers game. No need for “intangible” (dishonest language for “unprovable”) comparisons here.
Yes if a PC is only measured in cpu speed and graphics speed. The software does make the PC funtional you know. A bare bones PC with the fastest processor and the best graphics card is uselses when sitting at a message “no operating system found”. Using your Y% faster Zmore megs, W % faster menas nothing if it doesn’t do what you want. When making a purchase one must compare the whole package including the software (OS and productivity). So comparisons on provable metrics are not always correct. Companies spend a lot of money optimizing thier compilers for SPEC benchmarks (specific code). So even benchmarks don’t prove realworld perfromance.
They offer a tightly-integrated hardware/software combo at a premium price. If you consider just the silicon and plastic that you get with the Mac, its ridiculously overpriced. And the “BMW vs Taurus” comparison makes no sense — a BMW’s metal and leather is much better than a Taurus’s metal and vinyl. There is a “tangible” difference between the two.
Haev you ever held a powerbook and a dell laptop and compared them in fit an finish? I would say BMW and the taurus analogy definately aplies there. By the BMW interiors are often inferior to those in Audi’s at lower prices.
If you want to compare “tangible” differences like fit and finish an apple product is light years ahead of any PC manufacturer in industrial design. My girlfriend is easily “wowed” by the moveable arm of the iMac. She is total computer agnostic and uses them as a tool.
“While much of the tech sector has also been in retreat of late, Bachman said Apple’s shares might well have reached the upper limit of their valuation for the time being due to weak sales of G5 PowerMac computers,” Crum reports. “For its fiscal first quarter ended Dec. 27, Apple shipped 206,000 G5 computers, short of many analysts’ estimates. Bachman estimates that Apple will ship 195,000 G5 PowerMacs in its current quarter.”
That was an odd event. Apple sold about the number they expected to, but it was viewed as a bad thing because others expected them to sell more.
“”Apple noted that it shipped 829,000 Macs during the quarter — a 12 percent increase year over year”
Hence the growth. They hit a low in the 90s, but have been growing since Jobs took over again.
And if they weren’t and you had a Mac anyway, you would try them out and find that they become important when you see how easy it is to do amazing things.
What amazing things? Will Garage Band make my Python apps run faster? Will iMovie edit my code better than vi? If not, what use is it to me?
Will the X% faster cpu on a PC make help me make music comparable to garageband without the software? Will that better graphics card automatically pull a movie I have on a DV camera, added effects and convert them to a DVD and burn them? if not what use are those metrics when comparing say a cheaper faster dell PC and a Mac.
No, but the high-quality interior materials, superbly balanced chassis, high horsepower engine, advanced transmission, better safety equipment, in-dash navigation, etc, do.
High quality interior of BMW!!! That’s a first the only thing a BMW gets a con on in any review is it’s inerior. A nissan altima comes with a high horse poewer engine and every thing you mentioned and costs $20000 less than a BMW 325i and is bigger. Would you still buy a BMW?
Notwithstanding your earlier characterization of my use of the word “intangible” to mean “dishonest”
Actually, I characterized your use of the word “intangible” as a linguistically dishonest way of saying “that which cannot be proven.”
that people do, in fact, ascribe value to intangible or aesthetic benefits.
I’m not doubting that they do, and I’m not saying that this is a bad thing. I’m saying that because such intangibles are subjective, we cannot include them when discussing the statement “are Mac’s expensive?” Expensive != not worth it. I own an iPod. I bought it because of the intangible aspects of it. However, I would be lying if I said I didn’t think it was expensive.
Will iMovie edit my code better than vi? If not, what use is it to me?
Yes if your code is a DV format movie. Sorry couldn’t resist.
vi user myself. But it absolutely sucks for editing movies:)
Ok… the eMac is a “budget” Mac. But the Mac is still like the BMW of the computer world. They are nicely designed and they work well. Personally what I like about the Mac is the level of integration between the hardware and software. Something that you simply don’t get in the PC world.
Before I go any further here let me point out that I use a PC. I really wanted a Mac. I went down to the local Apple store and played with the things. My wife fell in love with the PowerBook 12″ and bought it, so I waited. I used her PowerBook for about a month and I really like it, but it’s too slow for Photoshop, and in general operation it’s not what I would call fast. Sure it does things and for Internet and Email etc it’s quite nice.
So I ruled out G4 systems for my Mac. I went back to the store and played around on a G5 and I have to say that I was not blown away with the performance of that either. As we had just moved (house/country) and I sold my old PC before moving I needed a computer quite urgently.
To cut a long story short I am typing this on my wife’s PowerBook and she is playing Games on my new $500 PC. The PC feels about twice as fast in operation. Here’s the spec:
Athlon XP 2500+ (1.84Ghz)
512MB PC400 DDR Ram
Nvidia FX5200 128Mb Graphics
17″ Flat CRT Monitor
Speakers
Firewire 400
USB 2
Gigabyte ethernet
Combo Drive
Floppy drive
and the other bits and pieces.
I bought the parts and put it together myself and of course I still have to battle with Windows which I hate, but how could I spend twice the money on a eMac.
I hate to say it, but since we bought the PC my wife (who doesn’t really care about clock speeds, front side bus, DDR Memory, or graphics card specs) just knows that the PC is much faster. And she is less happy using her PowerBook now. I hear her saying, “Oh it’s so slow” as she waits for a Image to load into PhotoShop. She does that stuff on the PC now.
I would have been tempted a little if we saw a G5 fully 64bit eMac, by the time that arrives though, the $500 PC will still be faster.
The PC v Mac argument is silly anyway. They are different machines and they work differently but they are both PCs too. Comparing the eMac to a PC in terms of speed is like comparing a BMW 3 series to a Toyota Camery, For 1/2 the money the Camery offers more room, more power etc, but at the end of the day it’s no BMW. My PC sucks, but that’s only because of the OS.
if not what use are those metrics when comparing say a cheaper faster dell PC and a Mac.
Ah, so you admit it. Dell PC’s are cheaper and faster! That’s all I wanted. If Garage Band is important to you, then great! The Mac’s is a good value for you despite the fact that it is slower and more expensive. I never said that it wasn’t. I merely said it was slower and more expensive. My big beef was that Mac people have been trying to take two orthogonal things (the black-and-white $Y for X% more performance, and the intangible value of the Mac environment) and claim that they are inseperable, and that it is impossible to make comments about one aspect without taking into account the other.
High quality interior of BMW!!! That’s a first the only thing a BMW gets a con on in any review is it’s inerior.
It might not be as good as an Audi, but given the decline of Mercedes as of late, its certainly near the top.
A nissan altima comes with a high horse poewer engine and every thing you mentioned and costs $20000 less than a BMW 325i and is bigger. Would you still buy a BMW?
The Nissan doesn’t have the same acceleration, the same handling, the same quality of interior, the same road->driver response, etc. So yeah, I’d still buy the BMW, because its got *tangible* qualities.
Sorry, I forgot to mention that, the hard drive for that system is SATA 80Gb and the main board has built in RAID controller which I’ll make use of when I get a second drive next month ($70).
I’d say more that Apple is the Cadillac of PCs. Not where you want to go if you want performance + luxury (excepting the new CTS), but good if you want mainly the latter. BMW is a performance leader, and it sticks in my throat to mention them in the same sentence with a company that still manfactures G4-based machines…
Its the experience idiot! I certaintly didn’t buy my eMac for G-Force generating, earth shattering, nuclear blast simulating performance. I went through that phase of my life where all you want is the fast and latest computer, and thats all very nice, however, once you reach the ripe old age of 23, priorities change.
Having run PCs with a mirad of different *NIXs/*BSDs I decided to move to the Mac; well, it was actually a toss between an eMac and a SUN Blade 150 (with a 17inch screen), and due to the current circumstances that surround SUN, namely, their *really* crappy selection of software; no, pointing out Framemaker as an *awesome* example of selection doesn’t count.
I decided in the end to settle for an eMac. The first thing I did was upgrade the memory to 1GIG. Sure, I *could* have bought it off Apple but the price is comparable to highway robbery (which it shouldn’t be, in *theory*), so one tip, if you’re going to upgrade the memory, source the memory from a third party vendor; I’ve got Apacher 2 x 512MB DIMMS; ran the hardware test and everything is nice and dandy.
Later on I upgraded the hard disk from the standard 60GIG to a WesternDigital 160GIG, very fast
So all in all, it does everything I need. I’ve got Simcity 4, Eclipse 2.1.3, 4th Dimension, Microsoft Office X, Studio MX 2004, Director MX 2004 and other assorted grab-bag of opensource software. Everything runs perfectly; like a swiss time piece.
As for one of the posters whine about the CD drive, it is no worse than the cheap crap that comes with HP/Compaq computers. From the cheap and nasty speakers to the cordless mouse that has the yo-yo effect; when you move the mouse too quickly and you have to wait for the cursor to catch up, to the cheap ‘n nasty software bundle which is then topped off with the cheap “body kit” which tries to upstage Apple but looks more like mutton dressed up as lamb.
the cheap PC listed above includes:
Microsoft® Works, Money 2004, Encarta Online (1-yr. trial), Office 2003 Trial (60-day Student Ed.), Quicken® New User 2004, Norton Antivirus™/Personal Firewall (60 days updates), Acrobat Reader®, Yahoo™ Essentials, SPAM Subtract Basic (PRO 30-day trial)
RecordNow, MusicMatch Jukebox, RealOne Video Player, InterVideo WinDVD SE player, WinDVD Creator, Adobe Photoshop Album Starter Ed., Movie Maker 2.0, WildTangent GameChannel (10-game preview), 100 free Emusic.com MP3 downloads
ok
100 free songs at .99 each thats $100 value
ms works is about an $80 value at retail
Encarta is 30 bucks
Quicken is 30 bucks
Music Match is 20 bucks
Windvd is 30 bucks
Windows Movie Maker is 30 bucks
Solitaire is 200 bucks
hp printer is 70 bucks
oh but what about iPhoto? i can pick up Adobe Photoshop Album 2 for 15 bucks this week at Circ City. PhotoShop elements is regulary 30 bucks on sale. My point exactly, with 260 bucks saved you can buy exactly what you need or want.
Garageband has set the world on fire hasnt it? Propelled Apple to steller new sales figures: worldwide they sold 10,000 extra macs to budding teenage rock stars that want to mix their own jams. Oh my!
Seriously folks, the iLife suite is sold for $49 bucks by Apple themselves isn’t it? It’s not worth $300.
Intangibles go both ways. Inexpensive replacement parts, the ability to use replacement parts at all, being able to get help with the software and hardware at more places easily, being able to pick up software at more places easily, less expensive software for the same titles even, better selection of software: both free and retail.
More games.
Works with file formats people are likely to encounter the most.
Networks with the worlds computing standards better.
2 button scroll wheel mouse (can anyone let go of 1984?)
Don’t tell me about aesthetics. The eMac looks like a monitor. So what. Don’t tell me about superior construction when every 3 months we see major reports about apple having problems with their hardware: ibook logic boards, powerbook lcd screens, ipod static, faulty power supply fans, ipod battery failures etc etc.
so again, with that sample pc that is not even a very good choice, you pay less for more and get even better intangibles that add to ever more value.
Hmmmm, not to hard to figure out why over 98% of people choose a non Mac solution.
The intangibles win for the PC….Windows or Linux or whatever you care to run on it.
Apple realy pissed me off with their crappy iPod.
And when I look at iTunes, and how proud Apple is about it, I realy doupt that OSX is a real OS, not just a grafics-demo.
I have a 20GB iPod, both iPod and iTunes works fine (I can say well done). The only thing I could complaint about is the battery life of iPod, but it still rocks!
I just helped my friend select a laptop for under $1000. I was suggesting he spring a little extra($250-$300) get a Dell 8600 with a 1.4Ghz pentium-M and a better graphics card and better display, more harddisk. I explained to him how much faster/better the 8600 was compared to a Dell 1150 with a 2.4 Ghz celeron and integrated graphics and lower quality display.
He still prefered to go with the 1150 ($800) even though it was a slower machine. All he asked me was ” I don’t want anything that I don’t absolutely need”. “Will it be faster than my 500 mhz p3?” the answer was yes. He obviously didn’t need the extra performance. If he need some extra software that he needed which only came on the 8600 he would have bought it.
Performance is subjective to the average consumer, it is just as intagible has a Mac’s software stack. The only people who argue performance are enthusiasts who want the bragging right of owning the fastest hardware.
Most average consumers care about function, Most average consumers care how easy it is to put thier digital pictures on the internet and making DVDs out of thier home movies. The very tiny segment of the market that cares about or even knows about the latest cpu or gpu are the ones claiming apple is over priced for slower hardware. Most people I know who have bought macs have never complained about performance. Including my self. I have dual 1280MHz+ cpu UNIX workstation with 4GB ram and two 36GB U160 10KRPM SCSI disks at work. I am fine using my 1.25 GHz powerbook.
The first thing two of my colleagues told me about thier iMac and powerbook is how thier wives and kids were importing thier CDs into itunes and how easy it was!!!. That’s the market the eMac in this discussion is targeted at.
Don’t even start on that. I do that stuff professionally, and let me tell you, PC’s barely pass the good-enough-to-get-by mark.
The question remains.
Like you said, we are in a thread about an Apple product. That includes more than the hardware. The value being attached to iLife is usually a big selling point in a Mac purchase, so it does count for a lot.
You’re in a Mac thread, and those dollar value aren’t based on personal opinions, they are common opinions of Mac users. Fact is, most Mac users like those iApps a lot, and use them daily. Macs are known for that sort of thing, so when you talk about a Mac, it’s going to come up, just as there is going to be a PC user lurking around to complain about how Apple’s pricing doesn’t suit him.
The thing is, to an existing Mac user upgrading, the iApps (generally) add little value, as they can already get them for free. To a “switcher”, or new user, the value is very subjective, for the reasons I’ve already outlined.
iLife now costs $49.
apple even with sticking 10 dollar 32mb video cards in $1000 machines has to do anything they can to stay afloat.
100 bucks per year for email with .mac …..deal of the century.
apple gonna charge osnews to use its name in threads soon.
Seems that you guys have overlooked the fact that you’re comparing RISC vs CISC.
Since then, I wouldn’t mind if the clock speed is lower.
Tho PC still beat using high clock speed.
Again, I don’t think any Mac user is trying to get you PC folks to use a Mac.
Performance is subjective to the average consumer, it is just as intagible has a Mac’s software stack.
No its not! Performance can be measured, it can be quantified. Its entirely objective. It might not be a high priority to a given person, but its not at all subjective.
The only people who argue performance are enthusiasts who want the bragging right of owning the fastest hardware.
Or people who actually need performance? Developers, media professionals, gamers, engineers, etc?
The Nissan doesn’t have the same acceleration, the same handling, the same quality of interior, the same road->driver response, etc. So yeah, I’d still buy the BMW, because its got *tangible* qualities.
Which BMW? the BMW 325i has the same acceleration as a altima 3.5s???
Altima 3.5s accelerates 0-60 in 6.3 MTseconds and 6.9 with AT.
BMW 325i 8.1 with AT may be 7.9 with MT
A fully loaded altima with leather seats an sports transmission is atleat $15000 cheaper than a BMW 325i, In the persormance metrics that matter to use price performance a altima is better.
The other things that you claim are tangible are intangible to me. Better handling is a subjective term. the only thing that matter is the 3.5s altima is X% faster and has a y% more horsepoer engine and costs less fully loaded.
You claimed that the only thing that matters to you is x performs better than y and is cheaper using provable metrics. But you come up with subjective things like better interior and better handling an claimed them to be intangible. If i never take a curve at 65 mph handling doesn’t matter.
The same applies when you compare a mac to a pc. To me and many others a mac offers a better value tangiles and intangiles comapared than a cheaper PC. Just as a BMW appeals to you more than an altima based on intangibles than a faster cheaper altima.
Can we stop this macs are expensive nonsense. They may or maynot be depending on which metric you use. If i have to stock a PC with 100s of dollars more worth of software to make it comparable funtionality to a mac, it doesn’t matter if it does so much better on any benchmark.
The bottom line is get what appeals to you. That is why there is so much choice out there.
Ack can’t spell today!!!!
Which BMW? the BMW 325i has the same acceleration as a altima 3.5s???
Altima 3.5s accelerates 0-60 in 6.3 seconds MT and 6.9 with AT.
BMW 325i 8.1 with AT may be 7.9 with MT.
A fully loaded altima with leather seats and sports suspension is atleat $15000 cheaper than a BMW 325i, In the metrics that matter (used to compare PCs to Macs) price/performance an altima is better and cheaper by 50% atleast.
The other things that you claim as tangible, are intangible to me. Better handling is a subjective term. The only thing that matter is the 3.5s altima is X% faster and has a y% more horsepoer engine and costs less fully loaded.
You claimed that the only thing that matters to you is X performs better than Y and is cheaper using provable metrics. But you come up with subjective things like better interior and better handling and claim them to be tangible metrics. If i never take a curve at 65 mph handling doesn’t matter, I find BMWs interior to be too plasicy for the price of the car. Altimas are also lower cost to maintain and are more reliable (talk to any BMW owner).
The same applies when you compare a mac to a pc. To me and many others a mac offers a better value, tangiles and intangiles compared than a cheaper PC. Just as a BMW appeals to you more than an altima based on intangibles than a faster cheaper altima.
Can we stop this macs are expensive nonsense. They may or maynot be depending on which metric you use. If i have to stock a PC with 100s of dollars more worth of software to make it comparable funtionality to a mac, it doesn’t matter if it does so much better on any benchmark.
The bottom line is get what appeals to you. That is why there is so much choice out there.
P.S: I adore BMWs.
It would sit there unused by most users, but at least we wouldn’t have these boneheads saying that Macs are crap because they only have one mouse button.
And maybe you can give away your computers and preinstall Windows XP to make them happy too.
Or people who actually need performance? Developers, media professionals, gamers, engineers, etc?
They don’t entry level PCs either. This is a thread on the eMac and people are comparing compaq and dell 2400 with integrated graphics (shared memory) graphics to an eMac aren’t they. We are talking about the sub $1000 dollar market in this discussion to remain on topic.
wait until you get off phone and can free your left hand to hold down apple key so that you can get at contextual menus.
and im sorry Mom if it is hard to line up your cursor perfectly on a scroll bar and keep the mouse button clicked over that little box as you drag down the page all night while surfing the web.
those pc people are clueless using right click to get context and using that scroll wheel to move up and down in deep documents and web pages. Its all trickery mom, no real value in those things.
and dont believe the millions of mac users that add more to their purchase cost by immediately getting a 2 button (or more) mouse with scroll wheel from logitech, ms, or kensington. its all smoke and mirrors mom.
Performance is subjective to the average consumer, it is just as intagible has a Mac’s software stack.
No its not! Performance can be measured, it can be quantified. Its entirely objective. It might not be a high priority to a given person, but its not at all subjective.
I said performance is subjective to the average consumer. To have phrased it better the “value of performance” is a subjective metric. To you performance is an important metric in your decision to purchase a product. To another it is not. Thus the “value of performance” is a subjective thing. To compare one product to another ptoduct in terms of value it provides for the money. The value of performance in a comparison holds the same weight as the value of the bundled software to different people. Therefore the value of performance is a subjective measure.
The majority of the discussions that enuse on OSNews always compare the price/performance ratio as a meausure of value. Some consumers prefer funtionality over the extra 100 points on a SPEC a cpu gets.
MacMad, I’m actually surpised you can use Photoshop at all on the 12″s resolution. That drives me nuts.
(IP: —.chvlva.adelphia.net), that big long list of apps you named are very poor quality apps. And I mean the whole list of PC Apps. You’ve said it yourself, you’ve never used iLife, so you can’t talk.
“Seriously folks, the iLife suite is sold for $49 bucks by Apple themselves isn’t it? It’s not worth $300.”
They don’t make money off software. Hardware pays the bills, so they sell comsumer software cheap.
“Inexpensive replacement parts,”
Another one that’s already been covered, 90% of the parts are the same in Macs and PCs.
“the ability to use replacement parts at all,”
Since when can’t you replace Mac parts?
“being able to get help with the software and hardware at more places easily,”
Yeah, because the web only works in Windows.
“being able to pick up software at more places easily”
Because Circuit City, Best Buy, and Microcenter are so rare?
“less expensive software for the same titles even,”
Only one I can think of is MS Office.
“better selection of software: both free and retail.”
Bigger and better are very different. Macs almost always have better software, but yes, they are limited to about 30,000 choices of commercial applications, and limited to free Linux and OS X software.
“More games.”
No one said anything about Macs being better at games.
“Works with file formats people are likely to encounter the most.”
Such as?
“Networks with the worlds computing standards better.”
Ahh, yes, we all know how poorly unix networks.
“2 button scroll wheel mouse (can anyone let go of 1984?)”
That second button just compensates for bad interfaces. Most Mac software has no need for the other button, but if you really want it just plug your 2 button scroll wheel mouse in and it works.
“Don’t tell me about aesthetics. The eMac looks like a monitor.”
Those awful Mac designs have been winning Jon Ive Designer of the year awards and such for quite a while now.
“Don’t tell me about superior construction when every 3 months we see major reports about apple having problems with their hardware: ibook logic boards, powerbook lcd screens, ipod static, faulty power supply fans, ipod battery failures etc etc.”
Apple has one of the best track records in that department. But hey, we can always look at Dells recent 30% return rate on laptops.
“so again, with that sample pc that is not even a very good choice, you pay less for more and get even better intangibles that add to ever more value. ”
Which ‘better’ intangibles are you speaking of? The rip-off software? The exact same hardware replacement parts?
“Hmmmm, not to hard to figure out why over 98% of people choose a non Mac solution.”
Check you target markets. No, it isn’t a wonder why over 90% of audio pros choose Macs. Or over 80% of video pros. It’s not a wonder why more than half of Adobe’s sales are for the Mac. Same for Macromedia. Check what market makes up over half of that 98%…cheap office boxes chosen by technology inept suits.
“The intangibles win for the PC….Windows or Linux or whatever you care to run on it.”
Still haven’t shown how.
“The question remains.”
The question of have it done it on Windows recently? Yes. Have you done it on a Mac recently to compare? Tried iMovie and iDVD, or FCP and DVD Studio Pro? You already said you haven’t…so how, to use your word, obective, can you be?
“The thing is, to an existing Mac user upgrading, the iApps (generally) add little value, as they can already get them for free. To a “switcher”, or new user, the value is very subjective, for the reasons I’ve already outlined.”
No one is saying it isn’t subjective, just that you not counting it at all isn’t nearly fair. Cutting out software isn’t a good measurement. If we turned the tables, and didn’t count hardware, you wouldn’t have a change at argueing.
“iLife now costs $49.”
iLife always costed $49, only now some of the apps that used to be small enough to download are now too large. It still comes with the computer.
“apple even with sticking 10 dollar 32mb video cards in $1000 machines has to do anything they can to stay afloat.”
Yet they remain one of the only two profitable hardware companies in the industry. That huge bank account and total lack of debt must be sinking them fast, huh?
“No its not! Performance can be measured, it can be quantified. Its entirely objective. It might not be a high priority to a given person, but its not at all subjective.”
Performance is not objective because it’s only part of what makes someone productive.
“wait until you get off phone and can free your left hand to hold down apple key so that you can get at contextual menus.”
The real question is what are you going to do with that contextual menu? In Windows it’s needed because the interfaces are so bad. In OS X, it just does the same thing the buttons in the interface do. It’s not needed.
Rayneir… don’t you have a family? don’t you have home videos? iMovie is great for home videos.
if you do not have a family, then I understand why you have no use, but really… making home movies is so easy in iMovie that I find reasons to get my kids on tape.
my 1 GHz powerbook torches my buddies 2.4GHz P4M Dell notebook. Why? not hardware. spyware. Average PC users can’t keep their machines free of bloat, so they end up running fast machines *much* slower than the G4 Macs.
Linux is your only speedy option on the PC, but then again beginners can’t really do linux either.
eMac is a good value. Maybe not groundbreaking, but as an overall package its pretty good.
It is clear that you have never used a Mac: it is control, and most of the programs I have seen with contextual menus support click and hold. Not ideal, but very few programs rely upon context menus.
(I’m an old enough hat at this game to remember a time when Windows zealots were arguing that the contextual menus in OS/2 were a bad thing, so IBM eventually added menu bars in the WPS, sometime after Stardock did it for them.)
You don’t have to drag the thumb either. You can click anywhere in the scroll bar to achieve the same effect, Apple placed has the arrows on the same end of the scroll bar so that you don’t have to move the mouse much to scroll either up or down or left or right. Then there is that mysterious device called the keyboard, which can be used to scroll or do keyword searches at the click of a button or two.
I’m not saying that context menus or scroll wheels are useless, I’m just saying that they are not do or die. While I don’t know how many people use scroll wheels (my guess is a lot of them do), I have also found that rather few people use contextual menus.
I’m with you on the performance metrics argument, however, I think RISC vs CISC is a dead issue, intel went around that by creating a backend emulator
and generator that basically creates risc instructions from cisc, [somebody correct me if i’m wrong].
RISC and CISC are looking more and more like each other.
http://www.arstechnica.com/cpu/4q99/risc-cisc/rvc-1.html
How come everyone only has one computer? I have many computers, (yes, I’m a geek thank you very much!), a fast athlon xp for freebsd, a pentium m laptop for winblows stuff at work, and a dual mac for most tasks. Isn’t it better to have the best of all worlds? Ok, so I splurged a little, but I get it all, mac, winblows, linux, x86, powerpc, risc, cisc, risc-cisc!
Stop the flame wars! Let’s all stop the frugality arguments, mac’s cost too damn much if you’re looking at price/performance–true. If you can afford it then it’s a wonderful platform!
Wtf is this, I have to side with one architecture and well-wish the other architectures to hell so I can say in the end that my platform lived longer than yours? Bullocks!
use whatever you god damn want.
if someone *gave* you a nice dual mac g4 with software being a moot issue eherm… http://www.carracho.com/www.neo-modus.com eherm… and then an amd-64, which would you probably use more? Who the fuck knows!
Got Mac?
“use whatever you god damn want.”
I agree with your post, but if we didn’t do this every once in a while foums would become dull and limited to tech support and compliments. I learn a lot from debating. The net’s all about the exchange of ideas, and if we all thought alike it’d get pretty old pretty fast.
you dont read very carefully: i owned macs from 84 to nov. 03. i used mac os up to 10.2.4.
i played with iApps since the day they were released…all but garageband. the iApps that make up iLife have not always cost something…they used to be to download. .mac used to be free too.
dont go chucking garbage out as i will know better. i am intimately aware of what apple has done and does do.
contextual menus are a feature of apples os, you just cant access them with a stock mouse. pay more to get two buttons or use your second hand….that is bad design and is generally accepted as being so. pay more is standard for mac users though.
as you dont make any defense of the lack of a scroll wheel, i assume you have to agree not having one is pathetic.
uh no macs and pcs dont use the same parts in many cases. can you put any nvidia or ati card in mac or does it have to made for mac? can you pick up replacement cpus and motherboards at thousands of retailers for mac? can you pick up replacement modem or network card that works in a mac easily? no no no no.
want me to make a list of software that is cheaper on windows than on mac? including nice pro apps like from adobe and macromedia? more retailers sell windows software than mac and the competition drives those skus down in price. simple, check it out. you clearly havent looked.
you can replace mac parts if you can find em, if they are priced right, and you can get inside those convenient emacs and imacs.
……………………………
“Inexpensive replacement parts,”
Another one that’s already been covered, 90% of the parts are the same in Macs and PCs.
The only thing at is inter-changeable between a Mac and a PC is the hard drive and RAM modules. Video cards have to be purchased specifically for your platform. CPU… that goes without saying. Then things like modem, NIC, sound card, are negligible, but not always inter-changeable. External devices and peripherals most often are inter-changable as long as you have the right interface (Firewire, USB). So it’s far less than 90%.
Look, when people say that Macs are too expensive, they don’t mean to say (usually, anyway) that Macs are bad machines. They don’t mean to say that they might not be the best purchase for particular types of people. What they do mean to say is that for the same $X, you can get a PC that is Y% faster or has Z megs more RAM or a graphics card that is W% faster.
So? Don’t you think that the Mac users already know that, and that they simply assign a different importance to it? Why is the same old price comparison trotted out again and again and again?
Because – unlike you – the average troll apparently does not distinguish between ‘expensive’ and ‘priceworthy’, and is generally lost when it comes to immeasurable qualities.
No need for “intangible” (dishonest language for “unprovable”) comparisons here.
Be civil – using ‘intangible’ is by no means dishonest language. Webster’s lists as one definition ‘that cannot be easily defined, formulated, or grasped; vague’, which is an apt description of the non-numeric criterias one employs when choosing a computer.
a .rar or .zip file on my desktop
i can doubleclick and go step by step through a wizard or moving my mouse several inches to reach unzip here buttons etc.
or i can right click the file and choose extract here. or choose delete or send to or several other basic choices. once right clicked i dont have to move the mouse again across my desktop to the trash or to any new buttons etc.
meanwhile my left hand was free to use phone or whatever.
folks that have at least a two button mouse and have tried it see the benefits.
its a superior UI element.
“you dont read very carefully: i owned macs from 84 to nov. 03. i used mac os up to 10.2.4.
i played with iApps since the day they were released…all but garageband. the iApps that make up iLife have not always cost something…they used to be to download. .mac used to be free too.”
So you missed out on Panther and the latest iApps. iLife got too large to download, and .Mac isn’t the same as iTools. .Mac is much much better, and $100 isn’t so bad. That’s $8 and change a month, the few extra cents go toward OS integration, which if you’ve had .Mac you know, it integrates really well.
“dont go chucking garbage out as i will know better. i am intimately aware of what apple has done and does do.”
Stopping at 10.2.4 is a did do, not does do.
“contextual menus are a feature of apples os, you just cant access them with a stock mouse. pay more to get two buttons or use your second hand….that is bad design and is generally accepted as being so. pay more is standard for mac users though.”
A very small feature of the OS. Nowhere are they needed to do anything that isn’t in the interface to start with.
“as you dont make any defense of the lack of a scroll wheel, i assume you have to agree not having one is pathetic.”
No, actually I never liked them as they are very uncomfortable. In fact, if Apple sold them I would keep the mouse I have now.
“uh no macs and pcs dont use the same parts in many cases. can you put any nvidia or ati card in mac or does it have to made for mac?”
You can put any one in and it works. Just because Apple doesn’t sell it stock doesn’t mean it doesn’t work.
can you pick up replacement cpus and motherboards at thousands of retailers for mac?”
That’s the main difference in parts. But then again, we are talking about the lower end of the spectrum…anyone interested in replacing a motherboard knows where to get them.
“can you pick up replacement modem or network card that works in a mac easily? no no no no.”
Actually, yes yes yes. Almost all of them work. But hey, can you pick up the latest pro hardware and have them work in Windows? No.
“want me to make a list of software that is cheaper on windows than on mac? including nice pro apps like from adobe and macromedia?”
Adobe and Macromedia have the same prices on both platforms…I own their products on both platforms.
“more retailers sell windows software than mac and the competition drives those skus down in price. simple, check it out. you clearly havent looked.”
Prices don’t drop based on which platform the overall sales go to, the drop because of individual product sales. A sale of a Mac title and the same title for Windows adds up to two sales of the title, not one of each platform. The retailers don’t set the prices anyway, the software companies do…retailers only, and this is even rarely, control their markup. So yes, please make me a list.
“you can replace mac parts if you can find em, if they are priced right, and you can get inside those convenient emacs and imacs.”
I’ve never had a problem finding or replacing parts, I know where to get them. And those iMacs and eMacs aren’t set up for expanding much. That’s why they sell towers.
umm…I double click on those files in panther and stuffit opens up and unpacks them with no more input from me…
so what other file formats are you trolling about?
“a .rar or .zip file on my desktop
i can doubleclick and go step by step through a wizard or moving my mouse several inches to reach unzip here buttons etc.
or i can right click the file and choose extract here. or choose delete or send to or several other basic choices. once right clicked i dont have to move the mouse again across my desktop to the trash or to any new buttons etc.
meanwhile my left hand was free to use phone or whatever.”
Yet I can do all that with the same amount of clicks…you neglected to mention choosing where you extracted to.
“folks that have at least a two button mouse and have tried it see the benefits.
its a superior UI element.”
I use two button mouses (mice?) all the time. I’m a multimedia developer, and thus have to support Windows, Mac, and Linux. I have to know my way around all of them and use them all a lot. I know what a second button offers, and I also know the higher productivity rates a better interface offers…the interface benefits highly outweigh the second button benefits, especially when the second button doesn’t do anything that shouldn’t be in the interface to start with.
“so what other file formats are you trolling about?”
Lol, was that a file format thing? I was wondering when he’d get to that.
has clearly disqualified himself as someone that knows not what he talks about.
“uh no macs and pcs dont use the same parts in many cases. can you put any nvidia or ati card in mac or does it have to made for mac?”
You can put any one in and it works. Just because Apple doesn’t sell it stock doesn’t mean it doesn’t work.
dead wrong, there is no ati 9800 xt pro 256mb video card that works in any mac made. there likewise is no nvidia fx 5950 256mb video card that works in any mac made.
“can you pick up replacement modem or network card that works in a mac easily? no no no no.”
Actually, yes yes yes. Almost all of them work. But hey, can you pick up the latest pro hardware and have them work in Windows? No.
dead wrong, go to linksys, netgear, d-link, us robotics sites and look at their full product lines and you can count on one hand the nubmer that work in macs (nics, wireless nics, and modems) and those are the companies you commonly find in retail stores in the USA. sure you can get modems and nics for a macs but with difficulty. if i had to i could get a 56k modem or nic at walmart at 3am for a pc.
how do you replace the modem or network card in an emac or imac if they die….not expand, replace? you go usb. find us a selection of both that work on mac compared to the choices and prices you have that go in pci slots and work with windows….
find me the wireless cards made by third parties that work in a mac.
pick one pro app by either adobe or macromedia and i bet you i can find an online retailer that sells it for less than you can find the same product for a mac anywhere.
you name the single product, i dont have time to do a list for you.
So? Don’t you think that the Mac users already know that, and that they simply assign a different importance to it? Why is the same old price comparison trotted out again and again and again?
Do they really? The second comment on this thread:
“No more complaints about Mac systems being too expensive.”
*That’s* why these price comparisons keep getting trotted out. In these threads, every time somebody says something like: “I’d buy a Mac if they weren’t so expensive” some Mac user chimes in with “but Mac’s aren’t expensive!” Remember the “slightly more expensive, the same price, slightly less expensive, or significantly less expensive” troll several months back? Then the price comparisons get trotted out, and the Mac users wonder why the PC users don’t take into account “intangibles” when calculating price.
The truth of it is that most often when somebody says “I’d buy a Mac if they weren’t so expensive”, he likes OS X and its environment, but assigns no value to the extra apps Macs come with, and couldn’t care less what the machine looks like, or what the “cool” factor is. The original poster merely wants a fast machine at a low price, and sees OS X as a nice bonus, not something worth shelling $500 extra for.
that takes 30 minutes to unstuff a medium sized archive
that unstuffs for you whether you ask it to or not
the worst compression utility ever made, bar none, but the defacto standard on a mac. so sad.
nothing beats initiating a download and returning to your desktop or download folder to find it littered with new files you had no intenition of using then or there. what a helpful little application it is.
I have seen people whine about multiple mouse buttons, because they don’t know which button to press or they unintentionally hit the wrong button — blame it on fat fingers if you will.
I have used two, three, and four button systems and personally don’t care. Some systems need them (OS/2 and Unix), some systems work well with them (Windows), some systems are fine without them (Macintosh). I’m just tired of people saying that you need that extra button for a computer to be useful. It simply isn’t true and, as I said, I remember a time when Windows zealots said that contextual menus were unnecessary or confusing.
Scroll wheel are another one of those “I just don’t care things.” They are nice and I use them when the are available, but I use alternative methods when they are not available. Keep in mind, people used the internet for many years before the scroll wheel caught on. They simply used page up or page down or whatever.
There are many things which can make or break a computer in particular markets. Many people say the Mac is a bad gaming platform. Maybe they should use something else. A lot of people I know don’t have time for games, so they really don’t care. It is my understanding that a lot of important engineering applications are not available for the Mac. The Mac is probably a bad choice for them too. On the otherhand, I know of a couple of important Unix applications which are available for the Mac. The Mac also provides a lot of free development tools which are installed or easy to install. If you need a portable Unix box, maybe the Mac is for you.
The iTools are half decent too: I had a friend who wanted to post photos to his website. Even though he played with the XP tools for some time, he couldn’t figure out how to do it (even though I’m sure XP could do it and he was an intelligent guy, in linguistics). I installed iPhoto on my machine and figured it out in under ten minutes. Understand, this was a first run because I don’t care for this type of thing. Maybe people who want to do simple things will be happy with iLife and will find the added value worthwhile.
But I like the Mac because of the OS. I keep an old system for System 7.1 and a new system for Mac OS X and its Unix tools.
so set it up not to….gee…that was hard.
ummm…anonymous, all you need to do is flash the rom on the card to be able to read open firmware and the card works just fine.
http://ati.com/products/mac.html
ati has products listed on special mac page
all products listed are different for mac but the one remote wonder.
i guess you were completely wrong.
the ati cards you see on a typical store shelf work in pcs only. you need to buy the models made for mac. not all models are ported to mac. the ones that are always come after the pc version. they all cost more. the only third party maker of ati cards that work in a mac are made by apple. on the pc side ati now sells gpus to third parties and you have greater competition and hence less expenisve choices for pcs.
way wrong. try again.
There are legitimate reasons to complain about StuffIt, such as their tendancy to ignore backwards compatability and change the file format quite frequently.
The speed: it always seemed slow to me, but I never quantified it.
The automatic expansion: it is great if you double click on a file in the Finder (you don’t have to wade through a user interface). Besides, you can probably buy a version which does the same thing as WinZip (I know they had such tools in the past), they simply don’t give it to you because they want you to buy it1
As for it automatically expanding when you download a file: check your web browser settings. It is probably set to open files by default for convenience. You don’t like that behaviour, so turn it off (I don’t blame you for not liking that behaviour).
“dead wrong, there is no ati 9800 xt pro 256mb video card that works in any mac made. there likewise is no nvidia fx 5950 256mb video card that works in any mac made.”
Ever actually tried it? All Apple not selling it means that you will have to get the drivers elsewhere.
“dead wrong, go to linksys, netgear, d-link, us robotics sites and look at their full product lines and you can count on one hand the nubmer that work in macs (nics, wireless nics, and modems) and those are the companies you commonly find in retail stores in the USA. sure you can get modems and nics for a macs but with difficulty. if i had to i could get a 56k modem or nic at walmart at 3am for a pc.”
Again, that just means they don’t support it, not that it doesn’t work. I’ve had guys from Bellsouth tell me that Macs can’t use DSL simply because they don’t support their own software on OS X. Yet, I’m on Bellsouth DSL with OS X right now.
“how do you replace the modem or network card in an emac or imac if they die….not expand, replace? you go usb. find us a selection of both that work on mac compared to the choices and prices you have that go in pci slots and work with windows….”
Actaully, for the market we are talking about you go take it to be fixed, just as you would with a PC. If it were me, I would fix it myself, as I am sure you would. I know where to get parts, just as you do. And replacement parts shouldn’t require extra pci slots…they should replace what broke.
“find me the wireless cards made by third parties that work in a mac.”
Wireless cards go by standards, standards that Macs support. It’s pretty common to see Macs with non Apple wireless cards.
“pick one pro app by either adobe or macromedia and i bet you i can find an online retailer that sells it for less than you can find the same product for a mac anywhere.
you name the single product, i dont have time to do a list for you.”
You were talking about stores a few posts ago. If you go online we could have software price wars to no end. I’ve seen Director MX (before 2004 came out, so it was current) sell on eBay for $300. And if we are talking Adobe and Macromedia…notice that both platforms are now on the same discs…so a sale is multiplatfrom with them no matter what.
Oh and Stuffit isn’t the same since Panther came out. There are now net enabled images, and Safari cleans up all those littered files for you. The OS has it’s own zip features built in now too. Keep up, will you.
“http://ati.com/products/mac.html
ati has products listed on special mac page
all products listed are different for mac but the one remote wonder.
i guess you were completely wrong.
the ati cards you see on a typical store shelf work in pcs only. you need to buy the models made for mac. not all models are ported to mac. the ones that are always come after the pc version. they all cost more. the only third party maker of ati cards that work in a mac are made by apple. on the pc side ati now sells gpus to third parties and you have greater competition and hence less expenisve choices for pcs.
way wrong. try again.”
Again, unsupported and not working aren’t the same thing. And btw, Apple doesn’t make video cards.
some ati cards are flashable
most are not.
same deal on nvidia side.
the ones that are and you do wrong you are out of luck. warranty is voided. and how many consumers feel comfortable doing stuff like that?
if you want to see the real results of flashing video card roms check out xlr8yourmac.com
“some ati cards are flashable
most are not.
same deal on nvidia side.”
They are all flashable…it’s the standard.
“the ones that are and you do wrong you are out of luck. warranty is voided. and how many consumers feel comfortable doing stuff like that?”
A surpisinly small number are even comfortable installing a video card to start with.
the things you write are just flat out wrong
how do you replace a modem or nic in an emac or imac if they are soldered to the motherboard ? you have no choice but to take to pro repair shop or go usb.
again in a standard pc you have choice to use unused pci slot even if dead part is a part of the motherboard. and the part can be purchased for little at thousands of retailers and installed easily in a case that has panel that just pops off.
no trips to pros in warranty for free service.
no expensive trips to pros when out of warranty.
im going to bed all you write is exactly the opposite of reality.
“how do you replace a modem or nic in an emac or imac if they are soldered to the motherboard ? you have no choice but to take to pro repair shop or go usb.”
Been a while, huh?
“again in a standard pc you have choice to use unused pci slot even if dead part is a part of the motherboard. and the part can be purchased for little at thousands of retailers and installed easily in a case that has panel that just pops off.”
If you insist on pci, then get a tower. Apple sells those too, and Gateway sells all-in-ones.
“no trips to pros in warranty for free service.
no expensive trips to pros when out of warranty.”
I was refering to people who won’t work with hardware at all. There are a lot of people who can’t even hook up a mouse.
“im going to bed all you write is exactly the opposite of reality.”
You sure do complain a lot. Relax. Lol, I didn’t start this debate.
I don’t know where you would find a new one, but the modem on my last iMac was a module which you could swap. Maybe you can find one from one of the legions of people who have dead CRTs. Yes, I was being sarcastic on that last point.
Besides, I have only seen a handful of broken NICs, modems, or video cards on the PC (none on the Mac). I have handled hundreds of computers and can say that the probability that you would need to replace these parts once you have it installed and working is next to nil.
And there is nothing wrong with USB or FireWire for expansion. Having dealt with the Apple II onwards, I’ve done a lot of expansion externally and generally find it easier to deal with when it comes to setting stuff up or upgrading components.
The truth of it is that most often when somebody says “I’d buy a Mac if they weren’t so expensive”, he likes OS X and its environment, but assigns no value to the extra apps Macs come with, and couldn’t care less what the machine looks like, or what the “cool” factor is. The original poster merely wants a fast machine at a low price, and sees OS X as a nice bonus, not something worth shelling $500 extra for.
I just thought that that person was trolling. Funny I don’t know of any average consumer who reads OSNews. On the “average” a person who reads OSNews and posts coments belongs to a very small niche of the computing market, for lack of a better word is prosumer.
Let’s take camcorders, I don’t pretend to know much about all the various technologies in a camcorder or what manual features matter to the prosumer. But camcorder discussions usually end up like PC vs Mac debates here on OSNews. They talk about features and minor differences in CCDs that make a very little improvement in picture on and on and on. For me all I care is that the damn thing takes videos in a simple way and gets a good picture in automaic mode. I might like canon for some reason one might argue that sony has a better picture if one tweaks it manually than a canon would at the best mamual setting. To me it doesn’t matter as long as I get a picture and sound. Most computer users are like that, they care what they can do with thier computers not every detail in thier machines. Same with cars and car enthusiast markets. Most people who buy cars care about things like price, mainatenence costs, fuel economy. A car enthusiast puts performance over everything else.
So a person who posts ” i would buy a mac if it weren’t so expensive” or “macs are expensive” is looking for a flamewar. The fact that almost every mac thread here has in excess of 100+ messages is a testament to that.
“I just thought that that person was trolling. Funny I don’t know of any average consumer who reads OSNews. On the “average” a person who reads OSNews and posts coments belongs to a very small niche of the computing market, for lack of a better word is prosumer.”
I always called us geeks.
that takes 30 minutes to unstuff a medium sized archive
that unstuffs for you whether you ask it to or not
the worst compression utility ever made, bar none, but the defacto standard on a mac. so sad.
nothing beats initiating a download and returning to your desktop or download folder to find it littered with new files you had no intenition of using then or there. what a helpful little application it is.
Go to Applications->Utlities lauch stuffit expander go to preferences and turn it all off, you can configure everything you are complaining about.
how do you replace the modem or network card in an emac or imac if they die….not expand, replace? you go usb. find us a selection of both that work on mac compared to the choices and prices you have that go in pci slots and work with windows….
I have owned many machines in my life and I have never had a network card or modem just die. If an extra PCI slot is what you want buy a tower. Nobody is forcing you to buy an all-in-one unit.
Stop trolling.
2500 NZ dollars? WTF???
So how have you managed to pay 1600 US$ for an eMac? Did they cover it with gold?
You never bought an eMac you liar.
I just thought that that person was trolling. Funny I don’t know of any average consumer who reads OSNews. On the “average” a person who reads OSNews and posts coments belongs to a very small niche of the computing market, for lack of a better word is prosumer.
I don’t see how. If somebody can talk about how Macs are a great value for them because of the “Apple experience” and all the iApps, I don’t see why it should be considered trolling for someone to point out that Macs are a crappy value for them because the hardware is more expensive and they assign little extra value to software they won’t use anyway. This is especially true now that the Mac-faithful have started pushing Mac as a platform suitable for “normal people” and UNIX geeks alike, and calling MacOS X a better Linux than Linux.
I don’t see how. If somebody can talk about how Macs are a great value for them because of the “Apple experience” and all the iApps, I don’t see why it should be considered trolling for someone to point out that Macs are a crappy value for them because the hardware is more expensive and they assign little extra value to software they won’t use anyway. This is especially true now that the Mac-faithful have started pushing Mac as a platform suitable for “normal people” and UNIX geeks alike, and calling MacOS X a better Linux than Linux
It is trolling for some one to come to a discussion on a topic about macs and start a discussion with a word like “crappy”. On OSnew what is the ration of linux or windows discussions where you see mac people intervene and claim macs are superior? Every mac article becomes a flame war because some one brings a useless comaprison claiming PCs are cheaper and faster.
I develop kernel software for a living. I have debugged IDE, SCSI, PCI systems using logic analysers. I have used/worked windows3.1-XP, linux 2.0-2.6 based distros, HP-UX, Solaris, FreeBSD and now MacOS. I use a powerbook along with a variety of hardware PC, SPARC, PPC hardware everyday. I find my 1.25 GHz powerbook adequate for my needs, It networks well in mixed environments and just works. That matters to me more after having compiled kernel after kernel to get suspend resume to work on linux or ACPI. Yes linux is improving but I have work to do on my machine not configure it to do basic things that a laptop should do. Yes MacOS X is a better desktop/laptop OS than linux any day of the week, you must be kidding yourself if you think otherwise.
I know so many people who have had to reinstall XP three times since the have bought thier cheaper dell laptops, because of spyware and viruses, While my powerbook just chugs along being a perfect little computing appliance.
Apples are as close to a computing appliance it gets, it just works. My athlon PC crashed becuase of bad memory win2k killed itself and would keep rebooting in an inifnite loop all I had to do was get data of the harddisk. I had to reinstall winxp on another disk and then pull data. If the machine had been a Mac all I would have had to do would have been to put the dead machine in target mode and mounted the internal drive on my powrebook over firewire in a few mniutes, rather than spend hours reinstalling windows/linux(compile in NTFS support) mount the disk move data to FAT32 FS then reinstall widows and move the data back.
Apple puts thought into its products and to some it matters alot more that a trolls who has nothing better to do an post on a topic realted to which they have no direct experience.
In the last two threads about the Mac, the “mac’s are expensive” comments came out explicitly in response to Mac evangelism. The last thread was called Mac OS X the “Grand Unified Platform” for god’s sake! When comparison is explicitly invoked like that, all comparisons, positive or negative, are warrented.
Apple puts thought into its products and to some it matters alot more that a trolls who has nothing better to do an post on a topic realted to which they have no direct experience.
Apple puts thought into desiging it’s products and to some that matters a lot more (worth its price) than to a troll who has nothing better to do than to post on a topic realted to which they have no direct experience. Many have never used a Mac but post price comparisons.
If you want to buy a dell. build your PC go ahead. Do you eat as restraunts? it is often lot more economical and healthier and you food is more customisble if you cook at home. Why do people eat at reastaurants it makes no sense, it’s so expensive. These precept of these PC vs Macs discussions are as idiotic as a discussions on the cost benifits of home cooking vs restarunts. And a troll would be a person who goes to a restaraunt enthusiast site and makes a claim that home cooking is cheaper, more customisable and healthier therefore restaraunts are expensive.
In the last two threads about the Mac, the “mac’s are expensive” comments came out explicitly in response to Mac evangelism. The last thread was called Mac OS X the “Grand Unified Platform” for god’s sake! When comparison is explicitly invoked like that, all comparisons, positive or negative, are warrented.
No they are not. They might be if Mac zealots posted superiority claims on every windows based article posted on OSNews.
If it is a mac related thread it invites people who are interseted in Macs and they might evangalize it. The mature thing to do would be to let them indulge inot start trolling.
Also the “Grand Unified Platform” is an article not the thread. Don’t read the article if yout think it is ridiculous, why start a flamewar.
If you want a cheap ppc with radeon gpu buy a Gamecube and support the homebrew-scene….
If it is a mac related thread it invites people who are interseted in Macs and they might evangalize it.
That’s the thing. The last Mac article was explicitly designed to evagnelize. If you’re going to evangelize, then you should expect opposition.
The mature thing to do would be to let them indulge inot start trolling.
I don’t indulge people spreading misinformation. Macs are expensive, its as simple as that. If somebody says that they are not, then they are spreading misinformation. At the same time, my saying “Macs are expensive” means nothing more than that, and nothing less than that. Its not an attempt to troll, declare PCs as better than Macs, or otherwise annoy Mac users, but a simple statement of fact, offered in response to unfactual statements.
I don’t indulge people spreading misinformation. Macs are expensive, its as simple as that. If somebody says that they are not, then they are spreading misinformation. At the same time, my saying “Macs are expensive” means nothing more than that, and nothing less than that. Its not an attempt to troll, declare PCs as better than Macs, or otherwise annoy Mac users, but a simple statement of fact, offered in response to unfactual statements.
Expensive is a relative word. Making a statement like “Macs are Expensive” is also spreading misinformation. Your measure for value is performance my measure is functionality. So I think macs are priced right for what they offer to me. I don’t think I can get a comparable functionality stack hardware and software from a competing product so for me the price is right. For you it might be expensive if your needs are not as elaborate as mine. But don’t make general statements like ” Macs are expensive,its as simple as that.”
Get me an computer that offers me similar funtionality and ease of workflow that MacOS X on a Mac offers me on any hardware for cheaper, I will take it. The only condition I have is I don’t want MS Windows.
and the INQ got it all right:
“Others reckon it is to do with the fact that the company has a huge backlog of stock that no-one wants to buy. Sales of Apple kit plummeted by 40 per cent in December, leading to the January fire sale.”
However, this will not disturb the usual Apple crowd here in telling us what a good bargain Macs are…
I was suprised to read about the bad eMac experience by CLR.
I have a power mac three year old G4 733mhz and it still chugging away nicely and easily as fast on day to day tasks as my PC commorade’s spangly new machines (at the time I bought it destroyed its counterpart PC’s on Unreal). On certain tasks and Games, my G4 now shows its age. But somehow some way it still leaves my PC mateys drooling.
More to the point though. I recently took my mothers old iMac (600Mhz)and upgraded to 512MB and Panther. I have no problem with it all. I’m not sure how graphics or audio intensive apps would work but Its never crashed and it certainly doesn’t suffer from fits with CD’s (regardless of where they were formatted) and iPhoto and iTunes work find.
I have no problem with confessing that I am a Mac zealot. But I have to say I disagree with many other Mac Zealots. The value for money at apple is in the HIGH range desktops and powerbook Laptops. The life spans and upgradeability of these machines is phenomenal. I have always questioned the viability of eMac machines beyond classrooms or people limited to browsing, photo’s, listening to music, word processing. It does those tasks better than any PC but I would not venture so far as to say its worth the price.
Does ibook G4’s has wireless LAN?
S-video out integrated?
and one bad thing i noticed on ibooks.. u can only upgrade your ram up to 640mb:(
how do they think we would work with bigger files on adobe photoshop with poor 640mb ram?
for an intelligent community supposedly interested in operating systems, I am surprised that so many of you lack arguably the most crucial element to this equation.
The factor is this. the consumer.
many of you fail to acknowledge the average consumer which, in this equation is the target market of the eMac, has about 99% interest in purchasing a new computer, and about 0.2% knowledge about the product.
The average consumers don’t want to run cron scripts or squeeze 5 more fps out of a game. they could careless for system tweeking. You must remember a vast majority of consumers don’t want to even open up their case. Nor are they interested in doing so.
The average consumer wants to pay for a reasonably priced system, with which they can read their emails from cousin Bill, browse the web and look at Kate’s new baby photos and perhaps do their banking online- and download and listen to music.
*these* are the primary functions that their computer should do, and it must do all of the above with all the bangs and whistles. The mob loves to be *entertained* -and they just want to do it without worrying about the computer itself.
The fact of the matter is, the eMac goes beyond the primary functions that is required for the average consumer of today, and packages arguably the most simple, graceful and powerful *free* iLife software, showing consumers what they can now do with modern home computers tomorrow.
Not to mention at this point in time, the chance of virus infection is incredibly low, the Mac is very user friendly (it should be; the Macintosh was the first to be so) and it has more than enough power for the average consumer. Even if you think other-wise.
Leave the marketing strategies to the professionals.
“Does ibook G4’s has wireless LAN?
S-video out integrated?
and one bad thing i noticed on ibooks.. u can only upgrade your ram up to 640mb:(
how do they think we would work with bigger files on adobe photoshop with poor 640mb ram?”
The iBook was the first OEM PC to ship with 802.11 networking, took Dell 18 months to catch up to that. No S-Video, just VGA out and the 640MB limit is not a problem. S-Video is not a consumer feature that’s why it’s in the powerbooks. If you NEED more than 640 MB RAM buy a powerbook, that’s the professional solution. The ibook is for consumers.
I’d do it in a second. And I’m not even a mac person.
typing this from XP(w/mozilla), but I dual boot slack.
Well…well, we’re up to about 180 now. No surprise really considering how all Apple threads turn out.
Notice how the second post tried a pre-emptive strike with “No more complaints about Mac systems being too expensive”. Of course that was going to fail miserably.
TASTYTASTE is right about the mini-VGS connector, but what it actually is, is a port to plug in a dongle that provides the full sized VGA connector. I think there’s also another such dongle that provides S-video (or was it composite?) to output to a TV screen.
“TASTYTASTE is right about the mini-VGS connector, but what it actually is, is a port to plug in a dongle that provides the full sized VGA connector. I think there’s also another such dongle that provides S-video (or was it composite?) to output to a TV screen”
I don’t have an iBook (I use a PowerBook), but yeah, there are adapters for just about everything.
“and the INQ got it all right:
“Others reckon it is to do with the fact that the company has a huge backlog of stock that no-one wants to buy. Sales of Apple kit plummeted by 40 per cent in December, leading to the January fire sale.”
However, this will not disturb the usual Apple crowd here in telling us what a good bargain Macs are…”
Apple stock has been on the rise for a long time now. Last summer it was trading in the $12 range and now it’s in the $28 range.
“So? Don’t you think that the Mac users already know that, and that they simply assign a different importance to it? Why is the same old price comparison trotted out again and again and again?”
Do they really?
Most of them, yes.
The second comment on this thread:
“No more complaints about Mac systems being too expensive.
I am inclined too say that the emphasis is on ‘too’ here, but since I’m not the poster, I won’t.
The original poster merely wants a fast machine at a low price, and sees OS X as a nice bonus, not something worth shelling $500 extra for.
Life is tough.
I don’t see why it should be considered trolling for someone to point out that Macs are a crappy value for them because the hardware is more expensive and they assign little extra value to software they won’t use anyway.
Because such a postings are mostly written to imply that the authors perceived lack of value is a general and not a personal problem.
I don’t like Cadbury Creme Eggs – but imagine what would happen if I went around making housecalls on Candy Egg Afficiados complaining that all Creme Eggs suck because they are overpriced and underdelivering? They’d throw me out for pointless whining, and rightly so.
I just wish Apple would make an affordable Mac like this without a little monitor built into the case. There’s no way I’d be happy web browsing on a monitor that small, let alone using it for graphics and DTP. But I’m not going to buy a tower case Mac when the cheapest models cost about twice as much as I would spend on a PC.
Well since I’m the guy who said “No more complaints about Mac systems being too expensive” let me elaborate more on what I said since different people have different impressions of who I am and what I said.
I’m a former Mac user. I had an iMac G4 and an iBook G3. All along I still had my Dell PC within reach. I sold my Macs because they were just sitting there rarely used, and I came across 2 individuals who had better use of them than I did.
As for this statement:
“The original poster merely wants a fast machine at a low price, and sees OS X as a nice bonus, not something worth shelling $500 extra for.”
In the 8-12 months I was actually using my Mac systems I learned to deal with the fact that they are not “fast” in any way you want to define “fast.” In terms of MHz they were lower than my Dell PC. I was using MacOSX 10.1 at the time and the UI responsiveness and general feel of it was sludge. I upgraded to Jaguar, did a few tweaks I read about online, and I was satisfied. It’s not zippy like BeOS but I could live with it and use it day-to-day. OSX isn’t just a “nice bonus” and I spend thousands on computer hardware. So I’m not looking for a “fast machine at a low price”. I bought those Macs specifically to try MacOSX, I took the performance hit like a tough pill to swallow but I took it anyways and I was happy.
10.1 and 10.2 were definitely slugs for responsiveness. You should check out 10.3, it’s much, much faster, even on old hardware.
I don’t care about your “rig”
I don’t care about your neon lights
I don’t care about your games
I am not a k-cool l33ty g4ym3r
I don’t care what your platform of choice is
I don’t care what your opinion of Windows, Mac, or Linux is
I think flame wars are retarded
I think platform wars are retarded
I use what works for me, which isn’t an eMac, an iMac, or Windows. My Commodore 64 crashed less than my sister’s XP machine.
Let’s have a pleasant discussion and stop arguing. This isn’t an AOL chat room.
If all those folks (trolls included) think that they have the best hardware/software combination that matches their ‘style’ of computing are as smart as they claim to be then why haven’t they figured out that slamming a different system does not make them look smarter. Unfortunately, it simply bares the fact that they haven’t a clue about what is going on.
I like computers and operating systems because they do work for me. I do have preferences but those are not facts for all and i would never think that slamming someone elses choice just because it does not coincide with my way of thinking and doing things shows intelligence.
So, please, stop exposing your ignorance and be nice to all. Why can’t you just say that, “OS such and such is my preference” or “Low cost is important so I build my own system” rather than “yours sucks and is crappy”, etc.
Thank you.
how small do you think the emac monitor is?
it is a 17 inch monitor… that is pretty standard for people…
Expensive is a relative word.
“Expensive” is relative, but its not subjective. It is relative to physical value, not to perceived value.
Making a statement like “Macs are Expensive” is also spreading misinformation.
Are you denying that relative to the physical value of a Mac, its price is high?
Your measure for value is performance my measure is functionality.
Stop confusing “value” with “cost.” The former is subjective, the latter is objective. The two are related, but not the same thing. “Expensive” (look it up in the directionary) refers to latter, not the former. It makes no sense to make general statements about the former, while general statements about the latter are matters of fact.
The reason I’m being so anal about definitions: It is fuzzy definitions that lead to these stupid flamewars. When you confuse “value” and “cost”, you make it impossible to have an objective discussion. When you seperate the two concepts, its possible to come to a sensible conclusion. Specifically, that Macs have high prices relative to their physical value, and depending on the person, that price premium may or may not be offset by subjective qualities.
Because such a postings are mostly written to imply that the authors perceived lack of value is a general and not a personal problem.
Says who? The fact that it is a personal judgement is implicit in the statement. Nobody said “Macs are bad values because they are expensive.” People said “Macs are bad values for me because they are expensive.” The only degree to which you can generalize that statement is to cover other similarly-minded people.
I don’t like Cadbury Creme Eggs – but imagine what would happen if I went around making housecalls on Candy Egg Afficiados complaining that all Creme Eggs suck because they are overpriced and underdelivering?
Who is claiming that Macs suck? I’m certainly not. I’m stating the fact that they are expensive. Further, this is a *discussion forum*. Commentary, negative or positive, is implicitly expected, completely unlike your example where the comments are completely unsolicited.
This wasn’t started because of the terms ‘value’, ‘cost’, or ‘expensive’. It was started because of the term ‘overpriced’.
With close to 200 posts it seems that the Mac is popular among computer enthusiasts whether you own one or not and regardless if you like it or not.
“With close to 200 posts it seems that the Mac is popular among computer enthusiasts whether you own one or not and regardless if you like it or not.”
I was just go to say something like that. Sheesh, some nerves have been struck here…
the “hertz myth” never even came up. Or did I miss it?
But still, this is about the best pro/anti mac discussion I’ve ever seen. Very informative.
“the “hertz myth” never even came up. Or did I miss it?”
Didn’t come up…it’s moved from myth to fact now that Intel admitted that GHz don’t count for much and took them off the names of their chips.
Adios you zoo boys. There must be some out of the way little corner of the web where this infection doesn’t thrive. The nitwits have again ruined a semi-decent site, and pull your goddam pants up, nobody wants to see your stanky underwear.
Interesting discussion… 200+ posts.
Expensive is a relative word.
“Expensive” is relative, but its not subjective. It is relative to physical value, not to perceived value.
Expensive is a subjective word. Whether an object is expensive is a value judgement made by the observer.
Let me explain, there are people in this world who spend $400 on a pair of Gucci shoes and they find it perfectly reasonable to pay the “cost” of acquiring the merchandise. For another person, who shops at payless, the gucci shoes are expensive, as he/she can’t afford to do so. This doesn’t mean that the cost of the Gucci isn’t justified. It is a judgement made by the purchaser if he/she considers the shoe to offer a good value to them for the cost.
dictionary definiton.
cost
Cost, n. [OF. cost, F. co[^u]t. See Cost, v. t. ] 1. The amount paid, charged, or engaged to be paid, for anything bought or taken in barter; charge; expense; hence, whatever, as labor, self-denial, suffering, etc., is requisite to secure benefit.
Expensive is an adjective that applies to the cost of a merchandise determining whether the merchandise is valued correctly (note value used as a verb).Note the above example wether two different observers perceive a good to be expensive, or not, is dependant on their points of view. Which makes the adjective “expensive” a subjective word.
“The DOW went up 100 points today”. Is an objective statement. “The price of Beef went up 10 %” is also an objective statement. “A BMW is expensive” is a subjective statement.
Making a statement like “Macs are Expensive” is also spreading misinformation.
Are you denying that relative to the physical value of a
Mac, its price is high?
Are you claiming that an x86 PC bought at the retail level from say Dell/Compaq, is bought at cost price of the physical components?
Stop confusing “value” with “cost.” The former is subjective, the latter is objective. The two are related, but not the same thing. “Expensive” (look it up in the directionary) refers to latter, not the former. It makes no sense to make general statements about the former, while general statements about the latter are matters of fact.
The reason I’m being so anal about definitions: It is fuzzy definitions that lead to these stupid flamewars. When you confuse “value” and “cost”, you make it impossible to have an objective discussion. When you seperate the two concepts, its possible to come to a sensible conclusion. Specifically, that Macs have high prices relative to their physical value, and depending on the person, that price premium may or may not be offset by subjective qualities.
val·ue
n.
1. An amount, as of goods, services, or money, considered to be a fair and suitable equivalent for something else; a fair price or return.
2. Monetary or material worth: the fluctuating value of gold and silver.
The value of a good or service determines its cost. So value and cost are linked, infact the dictionary treats them as synonyms.
Entry: value
Function: noun
Definition: worth
Synonyms: amount, appraisal, assessment, charge, cost, equivalent, expense, market price, monetary worth, price, profit, rate
Concept: financial entity
To go with definitons, value and cost are used as nouns and expensive is an adjective that applies to both the nouns.
You are right, the confusion of these two terms is what leads to flamewars. Most people who claim “Macs are expensive” seem to confuse the two.
Says who? The fact that it is a personal judgement is implicit in the statement. Nobody said “Macs are bad values because they are expensive.
“hmmm, yes they are still radically overpriced and underpowered.” This is from one of the comments on the first page of this thread, and the whole extent of the statement the post made.
Who is claiming that Macs suck? I’m certainly not. I’m stating the fact that they are expensive. Further, this is a *discussion forum*. Commentary, negative or positive, is implicitly expected, completely unlike your example where the comments are completely unsolicited.
Right, bad example. But you don’t mind if I now go over to the Linux 2.4 discussion and complain, in these words, that Linux is still an inferior product because it doesn’t come with MS Office pre-installed? After all it’s a true, albeit negative, commentary, so by your logic the readers over there should welcome me with open arms!
Says who? The fact that it is a personal judgement is implicit in the statement. Nobody said “Macs are bad values because they are expensive.” People said “Macs are bad values for me because they are expensive.” The only degree to which you can generalize that statement is to cover other similarly-minded people.
Since I have already answered this I’ll keep it short.
If an item is deemed expensive isn’t it already a bad value?
A statement like “Macs are expensive” if hypothetically considered to be an objective statement, would imply that “Macs are bad values, as the cost doesn’t justify the return”. Most posters who claim such things don’t qualify it as thier opinion they state it as fact.
Infact, majority of the thread between you and Raptor was based on the premise that you claimed “Macs are expensive” to be a fact and an objective statement.
It’s been a fun discussion. Ciao.
Another profitable quarter for Apple!
Apple shipped 749 thousand Macintosh® units and 807 thousand iPods during the quarter, representing a 5 percent increase in CPU units and a 909 percent increase in iPods over the year-ago quarter.
“Apple had a great quarter with 29 percent revenue growth and 200 percent earnings per share growth year-over-year,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “We experienced growth in most areas of our business—most dramatically in selling a record 807,000 iPods, up more than 900 percent over the prior year.”
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2004/apr/14results.html
Keep holding your breath haters, it looks like its still going to take longer for Apple to die.