Top 5 Reasons NOT to buy a Mac

[Dynamyk]

Ok I've pretty much decided I'm going to switch when the updated Ibooks come, I just want to hear what you think the 5 weak points of Apple are. In the other thread you only hear the good things.

Anyone ? :)

[skubish]

Well I will give it a try:

1. You want to play games or more specifically you want to games that aren't available for Mac.
2. You are in Law School and required to take exams on Windoze-only software.
3. You enjoy building your own PC.
4. You enjoy viruses and system crashes :)

[njmac]

well... once you use a mac, it's pretty difficult to ever use windows again, so you'll suffer if you have pc's at work :p

[dmw007]

well... once you use a mac, it's pretty difficult to ever use windows again, so you'll suffer if you have pc's at work :p

Very true njmac.

Hmm, lets see...Top 5 reasons not to buy a Mac...

1) You are fond of having viruses.
2) You enjoy having spyware on you computer.
3) You like system instability.
4) You think Windblows XPee and Bill Gates are the two best things in the world.
5) You hate enjoying your computer.

[IJ Reilly]

6) Bill still isn't rich enough to afford a decent haircut.

[FoxyKaye]

It's true: Once you go Mac, you don't go back.

But, there are a few reasons I can think of:

* Niche Windows markets: law schools seem to hate Macs, as do a number of vendors of very specific kinds of nonprofit software (not the everyday Office/Email, etc...) - I'm sure there's others, too.
* If you're really, deeply, seriously, into gaming - I'm not much of a gamer, but there does seem to be a dearth of games in the Mac market.
* If you like DIY computers: there's a lot of hackintoshes out there, but you can't just go down to Fry's or CompUSA and pick up a G4 MoBo and start outfitting it to your tastes.

Believe me, I'm really trying here to think of more legitimate no-go-switcho reasons, but contrary to my other post today on the upsides of Macs, it's a bit of work...

[mpw]

1) You have to use AutoCAD
2) You want the absolutely cheapest purchase price (not necessarily the cheapest total cost of ownership)
3) ...err
4) ...Oh yeah...no that's not it...
5) ...ballast?

[Bern]

1. You don't mind rebooting your computer
2. You accept the idea that software freezes most of the time as a usual event.
3. You love downloading security updates every week.
4. You appreciate that Internet Explorer sometimes has it's on unique set of html code that no other browser uses.
5. You enjoy the fact that an image looks different on every PC as opposed to looking the same on every Mac.

[dmw007]

6) Bill still isn't rich enough to afford a decent haircut.

If Bill can not afford a decent haircut then none of us can. ;)
If Bill got a decent haircut then he would lose his nerdy look - something that he is unwilling to do (that mans gotta keep his image).

[grapes911]

On a serious note:
1. Cheaper to build a PC
2. Linux is free
3. If configured properly, Gentoo is faster than OS X
4. Linux has more options, (ie: easier to change look and feel)
5. Most Mac hardware is not upgradable

[powerbook911]

Don't buy a mac if...

You want to prevent urges to buy additional Macs.

You want to prevent urges to buy other Apple products.

:)

[dmw007]

3. You love downloading security updates every week.


Ah yes, how could I forget about how much fun constant security updates are.

[dmw007]

Don't buy a mac if...

You want to prevent urges to buy additional Macs.

You want to prevent urges to buy other Apple products.

:)

Two horrible ramifications of going with a Mac.

[sbb155]

Realistically, from an enthusiastic buyer of both pc and mac products

1. XP isn't that bad, rarely crashes... about equal crashes to the # of "spinning beachballs" I get
2. You are more interested in powerpoint/word/excel in a corporate enviroment rather than ilife/video/music (more a personal environment)
3. Cheaper - this is a positive and a negative. Macs are actually just as cheap as Pc's , but apple makes a huge gross margin (>30%) vs dell which is less than 10%. You are not paying for quality - you are paying for profits for the shareholders. This is often misunderstood. Case in point: you can get 2 dell 24" displays for the price of 1 23" apple display... profits are amazing at apple for a reason.. gross margins!
4. You need 100% compatibility with windows.. again usually a corporate issue with proprietary software
5. The customer support from apple is really hit or miss, similar to most PC makers. You can find an equal amount of disgruntled users from both.

I use both PC and Mac products. Macs for music/video/some powerpoint and PC for corporate work. it works well. There is enough cross compatibility. I don;t see why "switch" is a big deal. I happily use both products and I am very satisfied with both. 10 years ago, both products cost a lot more and offered a lot less. Everything else in the world except high technology has increased in price. I am happy with both.

[katie ta achoo]

Don't buy a mac if...

You want to prevent urges to buy additional Macs.

You want to prevent urges to buy other Apple products.

:)


I hear that!!

Here are my five reasons:
1. I loves me some spyware/adware/viruses! cleaning up after them is SO FUN!
2. The blue screen of death has such a beautiful glow..
3. I NEED TO RIGHT CLICK! I just can't deal with Macs! ONE BUTTON! OMGWTFBBQ!! I can't plug in a USB 2-button mouse!
4. The lack of quality software.. I love crashes. It lets me be less productive in a longer period of time.
5. Solitaire.

Oh, also I want to tick people off by NOT using a PowerBook that I got for free. I like for it to gather dust in a corner.
:rolleyes:

[Lacero]

5. You work for Microsoft, so you have no choice.
4. Trojans and spyware actually turn you on.
3. Pointless, time-wasting tinkering is your one passion in life.
2. Peer pressure from your redneck PC friends.
1. You were dropped as a baby. (for this i feel sorry for you)

[dmw007]

2. The blue screen of death has such a beautiful glow..


Oh, but don't you just love the pretty blue glow - so very peaceful and serene after your peecee crashes and you lose 3 hours of unsaved work.

[Doctor Q]

We often say that Macs "just work", and the problems are indeed fewer and further between, but I don't know a single computer user who has never needed a question answered.

For that reason, I advise people to get a PC if their one and only source of support is from a family member who knows nothing about Macs. For example, a senior citizen new to computers asked me for advice about getting a computer, and told me that everything would be set up by his PC-expert nephew (not a Mac guy). I knew he would not be going to retail stores or going online for advice, so his "support department" was PC only. My advice? Not the time to get a Mac.

This could apply to a work situation too. If the I.T. department in your company does not know about Macs, and you aren't in the position to be the pioneer that changes their mind, or survive on your own in a PC-centric company, that's a valid reason that a PC would suit you better.

Neither of these situations seems to apply to you, Dynamyk.

[dmw007]

5. You work for Microsoft, so you have no choice.
4. Trojans and spyware actually turn you on.
3. Pointless, time-wasting tinkering is your one passion in life.
2. Peer pressure from your redneck PC friends.
1. You were dropped as a baby. (for this i feel sorry for you)

Great post Lacero! :D

[Benjamin]

1. Games.
2. Job related.
3. On the spot economic related.
4. Peers.
5. Change problems.

[YS2003]

Don't buy a mac if...

You want to prevent urges to buy additional Macs.

You want to prevent urges to buy other Apple products.

:)

I second powerbook911's post. Everthing started from my first Mac purchase by getting the Ti PB about 4 years ago (I have not used Mac before that; I had to buy that Ti because it was a very beatiful notebook). Since then, additional PBs, ACDs, USB hubs, Firewire hubs, iPods, iPod accessories, many many mouses from Logitech, Wacom tabelt, keyboards, LaCie external hard drives, speakers, iCurb, cleaning goods, bags, CS2, Macromedia MX2004 Studio, and on and on. I am always at the look-out for new accessories I can use with my Macs. It is very addictive.

[Sun Baked]

Well I will give it a try:

1. You want to play games or more specifically you want to games that aren't available for Mac.
2. You are in Law School and required to take exams on Windoze-only software.
3. You enjoy building your own PC.
4. You enjoy viruses and system crashes :)You forgot the most important one about style...

5. You like black plastic notebooks, and ugly $10 PC desktop enclosures.

[dmw007]

You forgot the most important one about style...

5. You like black plastic notebooks, and ugly $10 PC desktop enclosures.

The pinnacle in peecee design & style!

[Bern]

2. You are more interested in powerpoint/word/excel in a corporate enviroment rather than ilife/video/music (more a personal environment)

The Mac version of M$ Office is fully compatible and mostly better to the window$ counterpart :rolleyes: So this would be a moot point I think.

[brianus]

1. Web development. You CAN NOT develop for IE on a Mac unless you either have a PC or have memorized every conceivable compatibility problem between Explorer and.. everybody else
2. Mac versions of PC software tend to be kinda chintsy, at least in my experience. Office v.X is ok but there *are* certain quirks between it and the industry-standard PC version. And then there's the Mac IE.. *shudders*
3. Considerably less choice when it comes to hardware and hardware upgrades. But thank god for USB and Firewire
4. Price, of course; and related to that, 'bang for your buck'. My dad just bought a brand new 3.2GHz PC for $700, monitor included. That was a steal, but it's not unheard of. Apple doesn't even offer speeds that high, and to get close to it you'll have to shell out $3000. Blahblahblah, megahertz myth, come on: deep down you all know it's true that Apple's behind (as, indeed, the folks who've received the Developer Macintels have now confirmed...)
5. If you're expecting a cure to all that ails you in the PC world, think again -- Macs do crash, they can be painfully slow, and their software is sometimes buggy. The lack of viruses/spyware is true (then again, it's also true that it's very easy to run a spyware-free PC without much effort. The key: completely ditch Internet Explorer and any program that uses the IE browser control), but a lot of the other stuff you hear about OS X is just hype.
6. As far as software goes, backwards compatibility is practically a forbidden concept. By way of contrast, old shareware programs written for Windows 3.1 in 1992 still run perfectly fine on my XP SP1 laptop (and yes, I still use them, dadgummit!).
7. Every year and a half when Apple releases a new minor upgrade to OS X they treat it like it's a brand spanking new OS -- and expect you to pay for it. To a longtime PC user, this sounds utterly ridiculous and inappropriate. Tiger is little more than OS X Service Pack 4, with some cute bells and whistles thrown in.
8. iLemmings, and the possibility of being perceived as one

..oops, that was a little more than 5. Well, as you can tell I'm not totally enamored of Apple. Don't get me wrong: I could probably write a list thrice as long for reasons TO switch, as I myself will be doing just as soon as they can get their act together and release the next Mini. But let us not be blind to their faults.

[dmw007]

The Mac version of M$ Office is fully compatible and mostly better to the window$ counterpart :rolleyes: So this would be a moot point I think.

Weird how M$ puts more bells, whistles, usefull features, etc..., in the Mac version indstead of into the version that runs on their own OS. Perhaps, M$ realizes how crappy their OS truly is. :rolleyes:

[Willy S]

Don´t buy a Mac if you want the *suddenly* excellent Intel processors. Steve used to hate them but know he loves them. :rolleyes:

Just buy a Dell and it might probably last you (if you are really lucky) until Apple ships the Mactels.

[dmw007]

Don´t buy a Mac if you want the *suddenly* excellent Intel processors. Steve used to hate them but know he loves them. :rolleyes:

Just buy a Dell and it might probably last you (if you are really lucky) until Apple ships the Mactels.

Buying a Dell computer is like buying a lottery ticket - both are forms of gambling!

[jefhatfield]

in the past there were two major reasons

1) macs cost more

2) there is more software easily available for the PC

but today, in 2005, the macs cost marginally more than a similar PC, and catalogs and the internet are a good way to get mac software...it's just that you don't get to drive down to the local computer store and see hundreds of titles like the PC users are used to when shopping for software

[Doctor Q]

1. Web development. You CAN NOT develop for IE on a Mac unless you either have a PC or have memorized every conceivable compatibility problem between Explorer and.. everybody else
2. Mac versions of PC software tend to be kinda chintsy, at least in my experience. Office v.X is ok but there *are* certain quirks between it and the industry-standard PC version. And then there's the Mac IE.. *shudders*
3. Considerably less choice when it comes to hardware and hardware upgrades. But thank god for USB and Firewire
4. Price, of course; and related to that, 'bang for your buck'. My dad just bought a brand new 3.2GHz PC for $700, monitor included. That was a steal, but it's not unheard of. Apple doesn't even offer speeds that high, and to get close to it you'll have to shell out $3000. Blahblahblah, megahertz myth, come on: deep down you all know it's true that Apple's behind (as, indeed, the folks who've received the Developer Macintels have now confirmed...)
5. If you're expecting a cure to all that ails you in the PC world, think again -- Macs do crash, they can be painfully slow, and their software is sometimes buggy. The lack of viruses/spyware is true (then again, it's also true that it's very easy to run a spyware-free PC without much effort. The key: completely ditch Internet Explorer and any program that uses the IE browser control), but a lot of the other stuff you hear about OS X is just hype.
6. As far as software goes, backwards compatibility is practically a forbidden concept. By way of contrast, old shareware programs written for Windows 3.1 in 1992 still run perfectly fine on my XP SP1 laptop (and yes, I still use them, dadgummit!).
7. Every year and a half when Apple releases a new minor upgrade to OS X they treat it like it's a brand spanking new OS -- and expect you to pay for it. To a longtime PC user, this sounds utterly ridiculous and inappropriate. Tiger is little more than OS X Service Pack 4, with some cute bells and whistles thrown in.
8. iLemmings, and the possibility of being perceived as onePossible reasons to get a Mac:

1. Web development. You CAN NOT develop for Safari on a PC unless you either have a Mac or have memorized every conceivable compatibility problem between Safari and.. everybody else
2. PC versions of Mac software tend to be nonexistent.
3. Considerably more variation when it comes to hardware and hardware upgrades, resulting in less of a change that plug and play will work or that your separately purchased components will be compatible at all.
4. Price, when looking at total cost of ownership.
5. PCs do crash, more often than Macs, they can be painfully slow, and their software is sometimes buggy.
6. As far as software goes, backwards compatibility is practically a given. By way of contrast, old shareware programs written for Mac OS 7 still run perfectly under Mac OS X.
7. Every decade when Microsoft releases a new OS, it causes major pains for customers trying to upgrade. Mac upgrades are generally easy.
8. the possibility of being perceived as someone who must follow the masses

My point? The facts can be stretched either way when you make such generalizations.

[Willy S]

Buying a Dell computer is like buying a lottery ticket - both are forms of gambling!
Yea, I bought on 5 years ago and it lasted for 1 year.

[dmw007]

Yea, I bought on 5 years ago and it lasted for 1 year.

:eek: -that is terrible, one bloody year- :eek:

[jsalzer]

Yea, I bought on 5 years ago and it lasted for 1 year.

That's one heck of a lottery ticket! Mine only lasts half a week!

And, hey, let's not knock black plastic laptops. You don't want to make us Pismo owners angry. We're a cult within a cult. ;)

Hehe.

[CubaTBird]

1. Games.
2. Job related.
3. On the spot economic related.
4. Peers.
5. Change problems.

makes the most sense i think... :o

[dmw007]

And, hey, let's not knock black plastic laptops. You don't want to make us Pismo owners angry. We're a cult within a cult. ;)
Hehe.

Pismos are very nice laptops, nothing wrong with them!

[wide]

3. Cheaper - this is a positive and a negative. Macs are actually just as cheap as Pc's , but apple makes a huge gross margin (>30%) vs dell which is less than 10%. You are not paying for quality - you are paying for profits for the shareholders. This is often misunderstood. Case in point: you can get 2 dell 24" displays for the price of 1 23" apple display... profits are amazing at apple for a reason.. gross margins!

So you're saying the amount of money Apple pays for its products is around the same as Dell would pay for a similar product. That's untrue. And if it were, it still wouldn't take away from the fact that most Dells are cheaper than Macs for consumers (i.e., everyone on Macrumors) and that Dells are a better deal in the short run.

Apple's gross margin last quarter was not over 30%. It was a little bit less (29.8% or something). That's compared to Dell's 18% gross margin. So yes, Apple does charge a premium for their products. But those numbers also tell us that Apple does spend more money on one of of its 23 inch displays than Dell does on one of its 24 inch display. If you can buy two 24 inch displays for the price on one 23 inch Apple display, and one of the Dell displays costs the same as one of Apple's 23 inch displays (as you said, each of the products cost the same when the companies manufacture them), then Dell's gross margin would have to be negative...Dell would lose money if it sold such an expensive display so cheaply.

Of course, we have to assume that Apple has around a 30% gross margin on its 23 inch display:

So Apple's display (retails at $1500) gives Apple a profit of $450. Gross margin = 450/1500 = 30%. This means that that display costs $1050 for Apple to make (1500 - 450 = 1050).

There is no way Dell could sell two displays that cost $1050 for them to make for a mere $1500.

But if we assume that Dell has a 18% gross margin on its 24 inch displays...

...then Dell's two displays (together retailing for $1500 -- as you said) give Dell a total profit of $270. That means that Dell must pay around $615 to make one of its 24 inch displays ([1500 - 270] / 2 = 615). To check those figures: gross margin = 135 / 750 (<-- 750 = the retail cost of one Dell displays) = 18%.

So...there you have it. Dell's larger 24 inch display costs about $415 less than Apple's 23 inch display. PCs actually are cheaper than macs...lol

---

On a side note, if you look at the net income applicable to common shares for both Dell and Apple, Dell's shares' net income is 14.33% of Dell's total revenue and Apple's shares' net income is 11.18% of Apple's total revenue. So while you may think Apple makes more money than Dell for its shareholders based on its total revenue, it's actually the other way around.

That is, of course, because Apple spends an enormous amount of money on R&D. Apple spends a few million more on R&D than Dell does per quarter, and it's revenue is less than 1/4 of Dell's. Still, Dell gives more of its money back to shareholders. It is arguable that the money spent by Apple on R&D will lead to more profits in the future for Apple (and Apple could then redirect more money to its investors), but that's another story...

Essentially, you pay more for Apple products to ensure that Apple products will remain consistently great. Apple needs higher gross margins than Dell because it spends so much money on R&D for it's consumers, really. The higher gross margins are not entirely for the shareholders (it just lets Apple gloat about high revenues).

In case you're wondering where I got these numbers:

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=DELL
and
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=AAPL

[dmw007]

Wow, I feel kinda dizzy and disoriented after reading that post ;)
Thanks for crunching the numbers wide.

[brianus]

Possible reasons to get a Mac:

1. Web development. You CAN NOT develop for Safari on a PC unless you either have a Mac or have memorized every conceivable compatibility problem between Safari and.. everybody else
2. PC versions of Mac software tend to be nonexistent.
3. Considerably more variation when it comes to hardware and hardware upgrades, resulting in less of a change that plug and play will work or that your separately purchased components will be compatible at all.
4. Price, when looking at total cost of ownership.
5. PCs do crash, more often than Macs, they can be painfully slow, and their software is sometimes buggy.
6. As far as software goes, backwards compatibility is practically a given. By way of contrast, old shareware programs written for Mac OS 7 still run perfectly under Mac OS X.
7. Every decade when Microsoft releases a new OS, it causes major pains for customers trying to upgrade. Mac upgrades are generally easy.
8. the possibility of being perceived as someone who must follow the masses

My point? The facts can be stretched either way when you make such generalizations.

Uh, they're not "generalizations", nor are facts being "streched either way." This thread is devoted explicitly to reasons why a PC person might think twice about switching to Macs. Most of your points would not even occur to a non-Mac person, making them kind of, well.. pointless. Like so:

1. Nobody cares about developing for Safari unless your audience is the (relatively small proportion of users who are) Mac people -- in which case, you probably already own a Mac. On the other hand, everyone who develops for a general web audience *must* keep IE in mind , whether they like it or not (and I do not).

2. Again, this is not a "why a mac user shouldn't buy another mac", thread it's "why not to SWITCH (from windows, linux, etc) to a mac." In other words, it's talking about PC users. In other words, people who really don't give a crap that, if they buy another PC, Mac software they have never used and have probably never heard of won't be available for it.

3. True enough, but again, for PC users who LIKE the variety, the Mac might seem a bit constricting.

4. "TCO" is highly subjective. What I cited is not.

5. Actually, I have not experienced a single XP crash in the 3 years I've been using it -- and I keep it on 24/7. OS X is another story; in fact, I just had one this morning (one of the much talked about 'wake up from sleep' crashes). This isn't something that can be evaluated objectively, since everyone will have their own experiences, but then, I wasn't saying one OS was superior to another -- that's the point. OS X is NOT crash-free, bug-free, etc or in any way especially better in this regard as some of its proponents claim. The "unstretched" fact is that both OS's are far more usable and stable compared to their predecessors, but are not completely crash-proof, so if a Windows person is moving to OS X thinking it will solve these sorts of problems, he or she might be in for a surprise.

6. Assuming you feel like firing up a damned emulator, that is (and a buggy, slow one at that - half the time it hangs). I wasn't even referring to Classic programs though -- there have been plenty of software compatibility problems just between the minor versions of OS X itself. Again, in my experience, this is *far* less common in Windows. It's a tradeoff, of course: Apple feels free to make major under the hood changes whenever it pleases if it thinks it'll help or if it will make some new feature possible, but this can introduce frequent incompatibilities. Windows on the other hand maintains excellent compatibility with older software, but at the expense of making significant overhauls.

7. False comparison. Again, Panther -> Tiger is like SP1 -> SP2, not WinME -> XP. And don't even try to tell me the switch to OS X was completely painless; my coworkers, most of whom have never touched a PC, will tell you otherwise.

8. Most people use Windows because it's cheap and works, not because they want to "fit in." Whether you care to admit it, Apple does have a sometimes disturbingly cult-like following that many find offputting. I would find it offputting (not to mention completely inexplicable) if MS had the same thing, but it just doesn't. It's just sort of "there".

[Dynamyk]

Thanks for a serious reply :)

I can't wait for the Ibooks to update so I can get one :D

[dmw007]

Thanks for a serious reply :)

I can't wait for the Ibooks to update so I can get one :D

Ah yes, updated iBooks...next tuesday I hear. ;)

[dejo]

1. Web development. You CAN NOT develop for IE on a Mac unless you either have a PC or have memorized every conceivable compatibility problem between Explorer and.. everybody else

5. ... (then again, it's also true that it's very easy to run a spyware-free PC without much effort. The key: completely ditch Internet Explorer and any program that uses the IE browser control), but a lot of the other stuff you hear about OS X is just hype.

Unfortunately, as mentioned in your first point, if you are developing for the Web, you cannot ditch IE.

[prp134]

:confused: :( :mad: Really?? I cant believe Law Schools hate Macs, Im going to law school in two yrs and I had already decided to switch to a Mac, guess I'll rethink that??? :(

[Capt Underpants]

I went all mac for a while (6 months?), but ultimately I wanted my PC back. I'm a gamer at heart, and as much as I love my powerbook and Mac OSX, gaming is it's weak point (and that's putting it lightly). So I went back to a PC for gaming.

I guess you can go back after you go mac...

So ultimately, for me atleast, there aren't 5 reasons not to buy a mac. There's 1: Gaming

[mcarnes]

1. Web development. You CAN NOT develop for IE on a Mac unless you either have a PC or have memorized every conceivable compatibility problem between Explorer and.. everybody else
2. Mac versions of PC software tend to be kinda chintsy, at least in my experience. Office v.X is ok but there *are* certain quirks between it and the industry-standard PC version. And then there's the Mac IE.. *shudders*
3. Considerably less choice when it comes to hardware and hardware upgrades. But thank god for USB and Firewire
4. Price, of course; and related to that, 'bang for your buck'. My dad just bought a brand new 3.2GHz PC for $700, monitor included. That was a steal, but it's not unheard of. Apple doesn't even offer speeds that high, and to get close to it you'll have to shell out $3000. Blahblahblah, megahertz myth, come on: deep down you all know it's true that Apple's behind (as, indeed, the folks who've received the Developer Macintels have now confirmed...)
5. If you're expecting a cure to all that ails you in the PC world, think again -- Macs do crash, they can be painfully slow, and their software is sometimes buggy. The lack of viruses/spyware is true (then again, it's also true that it's very easy to run a spyware-free PC without much effort. The key: completely ditch Internet Explorer and any program that uses the IE browser control), but a lot of the other stuff you hear about OS X is just hype.
6. As far as software goes, backwards compatibility is practically a forbidden concept. By way of contrast, old shareware programs written for Windows 3.1 in 1992 still run perfectly fine on my XP SP1 laptop (and yes, I still use them, dadgummit!).
7. Every year and a half when Apple releases a new minor upgrade to OS X they treat it like it's a brand spanking new OS -- and expect you to pay for it. To a longtime PC user, this sounds utterly ridiculous and inappropriate. Tiger is little more than OS X Service Pack 4, with some cute bells and whistles thrown in.
8. iLemmings, and the possibility of being perceived as one

..oops, that was a little more than 5. Well, as you can tell I'm not totally enamored of Apple. Don't get me wrong: I could probably write a list thrice as long for reasons TO switch, as I myself will be doing just as soon as they can get their act together and release the next Mini. But let us not be blind to their faults.

Wrong on every point. Bah. Join the National Inquirer.

[brianus]

Unfortunately, as mentioned in your first point, if you are developing for the Web, you cannot ditch IE.

Well, I meant it should be ditched for ordinary surfing. I use IE to test out my own code; I *never* use it to visit a domain other than my own. I don't know if it's easy to uninstall -- I've heard that it can be done but there's no built in way -- but I think people who don't absolutely need it should seriously consider doing so.

[Zukatah]

- Games
- The fun of choosing what you want in your computer, not being stuck with the same manufacturer for almost everything
- The ability to constantly upgrade your computer in a relatively cheap way
- The lower price of PC components
- Solitaire (god I loved that one but it's true...... addictive as hell)
- The ability to install software that others use at school and at work instead of having to ask if this runs on OSX (which people never heard of or they look at you like you're out of this world)
- Software availability, there's so much more things for PCs than for Macs
- Piracy, do you really think that PC users actually pay for most of their software? It's easily available without those annoying features (someone said Windows activation?)
- Current hardware! I'm sorry but if a PC product hasn't been updated in 8-9 months, the company would go out of business. The iBook fiasco would never had happened, they would have done something to sweeten the deal!

Basically people would prefer to buy a PC instead of a Mac since a PC is cheaper and it's the industry standard. That way they can get more support if they run into problems, they know they'll be able to get more software and play games too.

That being said, I use PCs since I first touched a 286 back in the days, then got my first computer (an IBM 386sx 25mhz!!!) up to now (Athlon 64 3000+, 1gb of Dual channel RAM, GeForce 6600GT, double layer DVD burner, slot-loading DVD player, a very nice Antec case, etc...). I've been let down by Macs each and every time I tried to use one, part because I didn't know how to use them and also because that I hated how they looked (remember the original iMac, that atrocious piece of plastic), how they feeled with their 1 button mouse and I hated the OS with a passion (never worked on OSX yet but each time I worked on a Mac, I had a crash and couldn't find a way to kill the processes to resume work, I had to do a hard reboot).

Today, I'm receiving a 20gb iPod (with color screen) along with a 12" iBook and this is going to be my first real experience on a Mac after almost 15 years of using PCs. I bought this laptop for school so specs weren't all that important, the price was honest considering that to get an equally well built machine, I would have got an IBM (or Lenovo) for twice the price. Since I hear so much good things about OSX and the iBooks/Powerbooks, I decided to give it a try and see how it goes but I'm very confident that I made the right decision. I don't think I could ever switch completely because I like to game from time to time and the ability to upgrade for really cheap but I think that I won't regret having an iBook as my secondary machine...

[dejo]

Basically people would prefer to buy a PC instead of a Mac since a PC is cheaper...

...I bought this laptop for school so specs weren't all that important, the price was honest considering that to get an equally well built machine, I would have got an IBM (or Lenovo) for twice the price...

?????

[Zukatah]

To match the quality of the iBook/Pbook, you just can't buy a Dell or HP or whatever since they're all competing for lower prices, not really putting the emphasis on durability and the quality of construction. The only other company that I trust is IBM for laptops and when I try to configure a T or X series with the same features that I get with the iBook, I'm nowhere near the iBook price tag! In fact, I got my iBook for 1354$ CAN (plus a little more because of the RAM I got from Crucial) and there's no way I'd get something similar under 2000-2400$!

Edit: If in fact you pointed out that this part made no sense, I'm sorry. What I was trying to say is that my other option was an IBM and it was far more expensive than the iBook..... English isn't my maiden language and it's 1:30 am here!

Edit 2: finally noticed what you meant! Okay, a desktop PC is cheaper, a laptop with similar specs is also cheaper but when you ask for the same quality, it gets through the roof on the PC platform. So, while a much cheaper alternative is available to you, it might not be a good decision to go for it since it wouldn't last all that long anyway!

[steve jr.]

Ok. Here is another point of view. Yes, you can buy a $400 Dell, but you have to dish out a ton of money for software. What, MS Office runs between $149 (excel, ppt, outlook, word) to $499 (access, excel, outlook, outlook w/ business contact manager, ppt, publisher, word (full versions for both examples, not upgrade)). So what you don't pay for in the computer itself, you do in software. And if for some odd reason you would have to buy a new OS cd, it can be either $299 (xp pro) or $199 (xp home) (full versions both, not upgrade)

With mac, you pay a little more for the system, but the software is quite a bit more reasonable. iWork with Pages and Keynote for $79! iLife installed on most computers automatically, $79 if not included. A new OS if a person chooses to upgrade, $129. Now, this is just Apple software. Things like PhotoShop are through the roof, but just company made software is a big difference. I guess it all eventually works out about even in the end.

My dad and I were just talking a little bit ago, and I said to him, I wonder how much Gates makes on average every time a PC (preloaded with windows) is sold. I would have to bet it is no more than $50 or $60. I could be completely wrong. Well, this is my rant. Sorry it's so long.

-Steve

[Doctor Q]

Uh, they're not "generalizations", nor are facts being "streched either way." This thread is devoted explicitly to reasons why a PC person might think twice about switching to Macs. Most of your points would not even occur to a non-Mac person, making them kind of, well.. pointless. Like so:

1. Nobody cares about developing for Safari unless your audience is the (relatively small proportion of users who are) Mac people -- in which case, you probably already own a Mac. On the other hand, everyone who develops for a general web audience *must* keep IE in mind , whether they like it or not (and I do not).

2. Again, this is not a "why a mac user shouldn't buy another mac", thread it's "why not to SWITCH (from windows, linux, etc) to a mac." In other words, it's talking about PC users. In other words, people who really don't give a crap that, if they buy another PC, Mac software they have never used and have probably never heard of won't be available for it.

3. True enough, but again, for PC users who LIKE the variety, the Mac might seem a bit constricting.

4. "TCO" is highly subjective. What I cited is not.

5. Actually, I have not experienced a single XP crash in the 3 years I've been using it -- and I keep it on 24/7. OS X is another story; in fact, I just had one this morning (one of the much talked about 'wake up from sleep' crashes). This isn't something that can be evaluated objectively, since everyone will have their own experiences, but then, I wasn't saying one OS was superior to another -- that's the point. OS X is NOT crash-free, bug-free, etc or in any way especially better in this regard as some of its proponents claim. The "unstretched" fact is that both OS's are far more usable and stable compared to their predecessors, but are not completely crash-proof, so if a Windows person is moving to OS X thinking it will solve these sorts of problems, he or she might be in for a surprise.

6. Assuming you feel like firing up a damned emulator, that is (and a buggy, slow one at that - half the time it hangs). I wasn't even referring to Classic programs though -- there have been plenty of software compatibility problems just between the minor versions of OS X itself. Again, in my experience, this is *far* less common in Windows. It's a tradeoff, of course: Apple feels free to make major under the hood changes whenever it pleases if it thinks it'll help or if it will make some new feature possible, but this can introduce frequent incompatibilities. Windows on the other hand maintains excellent compatibility with older software, but at the expense of making significant overhauls.

7. False comparison. Again, Panther -> Tiger is like SP1 -> SP2, not WinME -> XP. And don't even try to tell me the switch to OS X was completely painless; my coworkers, most of whom have never touched a PC, will tell you otherwise.

8. Most people use Windows because it's cheap and works, not because they want to "fit in." Whether you care to admit it, Apple does have a sometimes disturbingly cult-like following that many find offputting. I would find it offputting (not to mention completely inexplicable) if MS had the same thing, but it just doesn't. It's just sort of "there".First of all, it is not fair for another poster to say "Wrong on every point" to your post, brianus, any more than it would be to claim the same of my post. We are discussing reasons that someone might want to buy a PC rather than a Mac, and you've brought up some points worth discussing.

My post wasn't "pointless", as you claim, even if you missed my point. My point is that the reasons you describe are not clear-cut factors that favor a PC, and that the same criteria can lead you to reasons to favor a Mac. I gave counterexamples (not proofs, because absolute proof is not possible here) matching each of your points to show that they are subject to interpretation and that either side (for those who insist on taking sides) can find factors in their favor. I think you took my comments to be blind favoritism for Macs (and off-topic), while in fact I can see both sides of these issues and hope others will too. Example: Looking for a quick purchase of a throwaway system? A PC will likely save you cash up front. Looking for longer-term investment? Consider whether Macs give you a lower total cost of ownership. Just because TCO is subjective doesn't mean you should ignore it.

In claiming that your experience, your coworkers' experience, or even my experience (I've had a PC and a Mac side by side for years) prove something, you are generalizing. I've upgraded from Jaguar -> Panther -> Tiger without a glitch. I just finished a frustrating two weeks dealing with a major SP1 failure that I finally traced to a driver that had to be upgraded before a seemingly unrelated Windows application installer could each launch. Does that show that Macs are better purchases? No. Does your personal experience show that PCs are better purchases? No.

Nitpicking the issues you brought up shouldn't be necessary for me to make the point that for these tradeoff issues either a PC or a Mac can come out ahead when evaluating price/value, stability, compatibility, etc., especially for the purposes a specific buyer has in mind. Perhaps you are making the same point.

[budugu]

1) Browsing on MAC is next to hopeless! IE probably is the fastest but i cannot tell the difference from mozilla (any platform - HPUX /solaris / windows) ... Safari simply is darn slow to load and i am not getting into all compatibility issues here

2) Compatibility ... it is picking up but if you use PDAs and other printers (other than HP) etc ... you will end up spending a lot of money on poorly written software ... cell phones may be an exception

3) Connectivity ... any thing with a GUI plainly costs money ... SSH/SFTP clients are free on windows where as transmit is 25$ ... (ofcourse you can use ssh/sftp from command line) ... Messengers ... only ichat (with video/audio) ... and it will not work properly if you have a person even on AIM / Windows! Most VPNs and other stuff ....

4) you write any decent software ... you are ********* ... the learning curve is totally stupid ... No standard C++/C libs ... all the apple marketing crap aside you have to learn objective -c and that darn thing is not useful any where else! Also add the backward compatibility ... any thing written for 10.4 does not work in 10.3 and in 10.3 will not work in 10.2 ... you can go on ...

5) hardware incompatibilities ... from RAM to usb connectors ... DVD writers and what not ...

6) Hopelessly slow burning ....my HP laptop burns DVD faster (with an external DVD drive - USB 2.0 based for you Firewire fanatics) than Dual G5 1.8 Ghz without any other single process running... both at 8X and you can go on ....


Most of the people hardly would have seen a latest generation windows laptops ... ever see the new HP business notebooks (<1.2" think) ? and new dell 700m is not bad either ... i do agree that old dells look horrible ... I have never had a Virus or Spyware on any of the machines so far ... and yes i donot even spend 2 mins on maintaining them every day ... just get the regular updates and you can even automate them ... For all this they cost a heck a lot less and can run any OS of your choice ... Networking for a layman is probably the single most impressive thing about Mac OSX and windows systems are not that behind ... Last but not the least .... i hardly ever switch off my computers ...laptops/workstations .... and they have not crashed in the recent past that i can (workstations over a year) think of.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Apart from look at me i am cool .... and some how superior to rest of the people attitude because i use a mac... (which these forms are full of!) there is probably little that people on windows miss on Mac OS X ...

[sw1tcher]

The only reason I can think of off the top of my head right now as to why I'd want to get a Windows PC is because I want to see Microsoft's red screen of death (http://blogs.msdn.com/michkap/archive/2005/05/07/415335.aspx).

[budugu]

So you're saying the amount of money Apple pays for its products is around the same as Dell would pay for a similar product. That's untrue. And if it were, it still wouldn't take away from the fact that most Dells are cheaper than Macs for consumers (i.e., everyone on Macrumors) and that Dells are a better deal in the short run.

Apple's gross margin last quarter was not over 30%. It was a little bit less (29.8% or something). That's compared to Dell's 18% gross margin. So yes, Apple does charge a premium for their products. But those numbers also tell us that Apple does spend more money on one of of its 23 inch displays than Dell does on one of its 24 inch display. If you can buy two 24 inch displays for the price on one 23 inch Apple display, and one of the Dell displays costs the same as one of Apple's 23 inch displays (as you said, each of the products cost the same when the companies manufacture them), then Dell's gross margin would have to be negative...Dell would lose money if it sold such an expensive display so cheaply.

Of course, we have to assume that Apple has around a 30% gross margin on its 23 inch display:

So Apple's display (retails at $1500) gives Apple a profit of $450. Gross margin = 450/1500 = 30%. This means that that display costs $1050 for Apple to make (1500 - 450 = 1050).

There is no way Dell could sell two displays that cost $1050 for them to make for a mere $1500.

But if we assume that Dell has a 18% gross margin on its 24 inch displays...

...then Dell's two displays (together retailing for $1500 -- as you said) give Dell a total profit of $270. That means that Dell must pay around $615 to make one of its 24 inch displays ([1500 - 270] / 2 = 615). To check those figures: gross margin = 135 / 750 (<-- 750 = the retail cost of one Dell displays) = 18%.

So...there you have it. Dell's larger 24 inch display costs about $415 less than Apple's 23 inch display. PCs actually are cheaper than macs...lol

---

On a side note, if you look at the net income applicable to common shares for both Dell and Apple, Dell's shares' net income is 14.33% of Dell's total revenue and Apple's shares' net income is 11.18% of Apple's total revenue. So while you may think Apple makes more money than Dell for its shareholders based on its total revenue, it's actually the other way around.

That is, of course, because Apple spends an enormous amount of money on R&D. Apple spends a few million more on R&D than Dell does per quarter, and it's revenue is less than 1/4 of Dell's. Still, Dell gives more of its money back to shareholders. It is arguable that the money spent by Apple on R&D will lead to more profits in the future for Apple (and Apple could then redirect more money to its investors), but that's another story...

Essentially, you pay more for Apple products to ensure that Apple products will remain consistently great. Apple needs higher gross margins than Dell because it spends so much money on R&D for it's consumers, really. The higher gross margins are not entirely for the shareholders (it just lets Apple gloat about high revenues).

In case you're wondering where I got these numbers:

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=DELL
and
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=AAPL


Yes Indeed you can get two 24" dell flat panels for the cost of 1 23" ACD ... please look here: www.deals2buy.com

dell 24" -780 shipped .... ACD 1500$ + tax

I probably have not seen a more naive argument. I think there was a review i guess at anandtech that says the panels totally the same ... dell had more features etc ... You are getting confused on margin on a single product vs average margin ... DELL makes more money of large deals Servers etc where as apple makes out of home users ... ipod margins are close to 15-10% or even less and that is the bulk of the revenue ... so they could be ripping you off dearly ... it costs apple <265$ to make the Mac Mini you do the rest of the math!! Bottom line if you are a home user/student ..yes APPLE is RIPPING you off... for the the looks (and people are ready to pay for designer merchandise!) !!

Enough said!

[feakbeak]

3. You love downloading security updates every week.Microsoft only releases security updates once a month. They've been doing this for a while now - second Tuesday of each month.

[budugu]

To match the quality of the iBook/Pbook, you just can't buy a Dell or HP or whatever since they're all competing for lower prices, not really putting the emphasis on durability and the quality of construction. The only other company that I trust is IBM for laptops and when I try to configure a T or X series with the same features that I get with the iBook, I'm nowhere near the iBook price tag! In fact, I got my iBook for 1354$ CAN (plus a little more because of the RAM I got from Crucial) and there's no way I'd get something similar under 2000-2400$!

Edit: If in fact you pointed out that this part made no sense, I'm sorry. What I was trying to say is that my other option was an IBM and it was far more expensive than the iBook..... English isn't my maiden language and it's 1:30 am here!

Edit 2: finally noticed what you meant! Okay, a desktop PC is cheaper, a laptop with similar specs is also cheaper but when you ask for the same quality, it gets through the roof on the PC platform. So, while a much cheaper alternative is available to you, it might not be a good decision to go for it since it wouldn't last all that long anyway!


This is a classic example of stereotyping ... if you want magnesium alloy (the latest and greatest ... yes it is better than al -stonger and lighter) notebooks you can buy also buy from HP ... even few dell models ... PRICE != QUALITY ... i am not saying IBM latops are bad here ... others are also equally good ... most Business laptops (HP atleast) have 3year warranty built into the price ... so you can save the 250$ even with education discount ... on a refurb ... you have to pay 120$ for 3 year World wide warranty ... People just wake up and look arround !! IBM had to sell its business because in the PC world people resist being ripped off ... in the mac world the same thing continues and they hardly have a choice !!

[edwin.bossier]

Realistically, from an enthusiastic buyer of both pc and mac products

1. XP isn't that bad, rarely crashes... about equal crashes to the # of "spinning beachballs" I get
2. You are more interested in powerpoint/word/excel in a corporate enviroment rather than ilife/video/music (more a personal environment)
3. Cheaper - this is a positive and a negative. Macs are actually just as cheap as Pc's , but apple makes a huge gross margin (>30%) vs dell which is less than 10%. You are not paying for quality - you are paying for profits for the shareholders. This is often misunderstood. Case in point: you can get 2 dell 24" displays for the price of 1 23" apple display... profits are amazing at apple for a reason.. gross margins!
4. You need 100% compatibility with windows.. again usually a corporate issue with proprietary software
5. The customer support from apple is really hit or miss, similar to most PC makers. You can find an equal amount of disgruntled users from both.

I use both PC and Mac products. Macs for music/video/some powerpoint and PC for corporate work. it works well. There is enough cross compatibility. I don;t see why "switch" is a big deal. I happily use both products and I am very satisfied with both. 10 years ago, both products cost a lot more and offered a lot less. Everything else in the world except high technology has increased in price. I am happy with both.

At last some common sense! Thank you! Ik hate al that 'switch' crap. I never 'switched' but I use Mac's as well as PC's with equal pleasure...

[Veldek]

Yes Indeed you can get two 24" dell flat panels for the cost of 1 23" ACD ... please look here: www.deals2buy.com

dell 24" -780 shipped .... ACD 1500$ + tax

I probably have not seen a more naive argument. I think there was a review i guess at anandtech that says the panels totally the same And how can a 23" and a 24" panel be the same? This point already weakens your argumentation. (What's true is that the 20" panels used by Apple and Dell are the same.)

You are getting confused on margin on a single product vs average margin ... DELL makes more money of large deals Servers etc where as apple makes out of home users ... ipod margins are close to 15-10% or even less and that is the bulk of the revenue ... so they could be ripping you off dearly ... it costs apple <265$ to make the Mac Mini you do the rest of the math!! Bottom line if you are a home user/student ..yes APPLE is RIPPING you off... for the the looks (and people are ready to pay for designer merchandise!) !!

Enough said!Well, he made assumptions for his calculations and these assumptions might not be true. That doesn't make his calculations wrong.

And where can I find figures about how much it costs Apple to build their Macs (e.g. Mac mini <$265)? Do they also include R&D into these costs?

[budugu]

And how can a 23" and a 24" panel be the same? This point already weakens your argumentation. (What's true is that the 20" panels used by Apple and Dell are the same.)

Well, he made assumptions for his calculations and these assumptions might not be true. That doesn't make his calculations wrong.

And where can I find figures about how much it costs Apple to build their Macs (e.g. Mac mini <$265)? Do they also include R&D into these costs?

23 (viewable*) - as per apple and 24" -> dell ... which i pressume is the same as the resolution is exactly the same... 1920x1200 ... most of these panels conform to standards. it is the exact same thing as 21" and 22" CRTs .. your viewable is exactly the same 20.8" !!!

As a side note if people are not interested in making custom processors i doubt they will make custom LCD panels for Apple ! :D

i read about the mac minis about a couple of months ago ... (from a pretty reliable source) ... i can look it up ...

from my basic math ... what matters is accurracy (assumptions _ solution are correct) and not just precession (correct calculations!) ... for it is largely useless with out accuracy

*panel could be larger

[Applespider]

For that reason, I advise people to get a PC if their one and only source of support is from a family member who knows nothing about Macs. For example, a senior citizen new to computers asked me for advice about getting a computer, and told me that everything would be set up by his PC-expert nephew.

I'd agree but I'd want to be sure that their PC-expert in the family really is an expert and not just someone who uses one that's already administered for them in a work environment and doesn't have a clue about the security aspects that you need to run yourself at home. If their PC-expert isn't comfortable with installing and configuring firewalls, anti-virus, willing to check the PC for spyware and comfortable with reinstalling Windows if necessary.

If not, then I'd be suggesting a Mac with the knowledge that I'd make myself available when it arrived to give a quick Mac tutorial and be on the end of a phone if there were problems (since chances are if there were PC problems that the 'expert' couldn't fix, I'd be getting calls too that I wouldn't be able to sort as easily)

[theISHkid]

1. Web development. You CAN NOT develop for IE on a Mac unless you either have a PC or have memorized every conceivable compatibility problem between Explorer and.. everybody else
2. Mac versions of PC software tend to be kinda chintsy, at least in my experience. Office v.X is ok but there *are* certain quirks between it and the industry-standard PC version. And then there's the Mac IE.. *shudders*
3. Considerably less choice when it comes to hardware and hardware upgrades. But thank god for USB and Firewire
4. Price, of course; and related to that, 'bang for your buck'. My dad just bought a brand new 3.2GHz PC for $700, monitor included. That was a steal, but it's not unheard of. Apple doesn't even offer speeds that high, and to get close to it you'll have to shell out $3000. Blahblahblah, megahertz myth, come on: deep down you all know it's true that Apple's behind (as, indeed, the folks who've received the Developer Macintels have now confirmed...)
5. If you're expecting a cure to all that ails you in the PC world, think again -- Macs do crash, they can be painfully slow, and their software is sometimes buggy. The lack of viruses/spyware is true (then again, it's also true that it's very easy to run a spyware-free PC without much effort. The key: completely ditch Internet Explorer and any program that uses the IE browser control), but a lot of the other stuff you hear about OS X is just hype.
6. As far as software goes, backwards compatibility is practically a forbidden concept. By way of contrast, old shareware programs written for Windows 3.1 in 1992 still run perfectly fine on my XP SP1 laptop (and yes, I still use them, dadgummit!).
7. Every year and a half when Apple releases a new minor upgrade to OS X they treat it like it's a brand spanking new OS -- and expect you to pay for it. To a longtime PC user, this sounds utterly ridiculous and inappropriate. Tiger is little more than OS X Service Pack 4, with some cute bells and whistles thrown in.
8. iLemmings, and the possibility of being perceived as one

..oops, that was a little more than 5. Well, as you can tell I'm not totally enamored of Apple. Don't get me wrong: I could probably write a list thrice as long for reasons TO switch, as I myself will be doing just as soon as they can get their act together and release the next Mini. But let us not be blind to their faults.


1. Completely wrong about web design, not to mention that this is more of a software issue versus a mac/pc issue. In dreamweaver there are a few bugs such as scroll down behaviors acting funny on a mac, but if you know how to clean up your code you can eliminate most problems. Code is code... it might look slightly different (because you're looking at a different monitor) but that's just computer to computer, not mac to pc.

2. This isn't really fair to say... what problems are you having with which programs? We run pc/mac offices with pretty much the same software photoshop, studio mx 2004, quicktime, avid, etc. Not to mention certain games warcraft, sims 1 & 2. I've never really had too many problems with either platform. Sometimes installation is harder on windows because it can't find certain drivers or it's missing a .dll where "usually" as long as you have the requirements on the box with a mac we don't have any problems.

3. I think this is one of the biggest myths in the mac community, that you cannot update your mac. Video cards, sound cards, modems, processors, memory, hard drives... it can all be done with a mac. "Technically" it is more expensive to upgrade a mac, but that's because they make you upgrade to a quality part that is tested to work with the mac. You can't just go pick up a $50 video card from walmart and plug it in like you can with a pc...

4. Check out a while back (might have been a year or so) a pcworld/macworld article comparing (as close as possible) dollar for dollar testing of mac vs pc. I will admit that the pc won 60 percent of the test but they were all very close (yes even the ones that the mac won, they did not blow each other away). Keep in mind this was dollar for dollar. Complain about macs being expensive... but if you want your pc to equal the mac you're gonna have to shell out the dough too.
Now at the same time you got a great deal on your pc... my friend bought a 1000 dollar dell about 6 months ago that he is having so many problems with he is considering throwing away... this does not happen to everyone but what good is buying a cheaper computer if all you're getting is a "cheaper" computer. You still hear people talking about using macs that are 7 and 8 years old because the things were built to last. Again I'm sure there are pc users that have the same old computers... but they don't brag about it.

5. You are completely right here... macs are not a cure all for crashes and bugs. For some strange reason when running a program I might get a "program quit" error every now and then... it happens to both. I think the only difference is that with a mac if you have a problem with software your whole computer won't quit (blue screen of death), the program will just shut down.
Now here's what I find funny... you say it's easy to avoid spyware and viruses on a PC if you "completely ditch Internet Explorer and any program that uses the IE browser control"... aren't you the same person talking about how great IE is on a PC over a mac and that IE sucks on a mac, and how you can't design for IE on a mac yet you can on a PC? How are you gonna ditch the entire browser if it's so much better on a PC? And you say to avoid these problems you have to get rid of IE on the PC... well why do I not have to get rid of IE on my Mac? I don't have any viruses... hmmm. Maybe it's not just the browser but the coding and security issues of the pc. That's something to think about.

6. Don't really have much to say here about backwards compatibility... I know I have tried to run some older games on a newer PC and usually have problems because the system runs the old game too fast. Classic runs older mac software just fine for me but maybe I'm not trying to run old enough software for the comparison. However this is not really even worth bringing up because a new user of any computer pc or mac is probably not going to go find software from 5 years ago that they would rather use.

7. It's kind of funny that you mention apple releasing new software just to get more money every year... lets see... microsoft released windows 95, and then came out with windows 98, windows ME, Windows 2000, and windows xp; I'll have to check my old credit card statements but I'm pretty sure I had to pay for those updates... maybe you got them for free though?
Apple releases updates to each system 10.3.1, 10.3.2, 10.3.3, etc, that pretty much equal the service packs that microsoft sends out. Lets also not forget that the new updated osx cost $113.88 at macmall.com; while windows xp professional that is getting old is 208.99 for the upgrade and 309.49 if you need a fresh copy. Now you can argue that "you gave the price for professional and not home," well apple gives you "everything" for that price... to get "everything" for your pc will cost you two to three times as much. Now that's food for thought and something to think about when considering total cost and not just initial hardware cost.

8. ok...



I'm sorry for the long rant... this guy just almost sounds like a pc user that has a friend with a mac and is pissed off by it. I'm sure that's not the case so sorry if I offended you... He brings up a lot of good points that macs are not perfect, that pretty much goes without saying for pc's. You have to remember that a computer is a computer, they all have the same basic components, but it's how those components interact with each other (which is what apple does right when making their computers as opposed to throwing in parts that work but not as well together with companies like Dell.
I am a pc user turn mac user a few years ago and will never again use a pc for my primary computer again. I will probably always have a pc but I too like so many others made the "switch." If you want my honest opinion of problems with a mac... I would say that it takes games a lot longer to come out on the mac... I think sims 2 took about 6 months longer before it came. Also it's a little weird getting used to a single button mouse but after you learn a few of the keyboard shortcuts you really don't have a need for it. I think one user posted that you could not hook up a 2 button usb mouse to a mac but that is also incorrect. My mouse went out on my mac so I used one of my pc mouses and it worked just fine for a while. Of course by then I was so used to a single button that I was glad to get my apple mouse back. Another thing is the initial cost of the system... it may be a little higher but you're getting (in my opinion) a much more quality machine.

That's about all the reasons I have for not getting a mac... but I want to give you a couple of good reasons to get one... you can pretty much just plug something in and it works... I have bought wacom tablets, external hard drives, microphones, cameras, etc and they all come with cds and manuals. Read those manuals they are hilarious... 30 steps for installing on pc's... then you read the mac side... Step 1: Plug device in. Thank you for buying. Also for a new user to a mac... the greatest thing is the ease of learning the system. If you think about how much time it took you to learn windows you might be discouraged about learning a new system but it is really easy and you'll have a lot of fun doing it. Windows has tried to make their system easier to use but I really think they just caused more problems with XP... I don't hate the system I just know more people that curse at it than applaude it. That's my rant... hope it helps... hope I didn't offend anyone.

[Diatribe]

1) Browsing on MAC is next to hopeless! IE probably is the fastest but i cannot tell the difference from mozilla (any platform - HPUX /solaris / windows) ... Safari simply is darn slow to load and i am not getting into all compatibility issues here

Yeah, whatever. I don't know what version of Safari you're using but Safari smokes the **** out of IE and Firefox is only marginally faster. And compatibility? I have met like two pages that didn't work and for that there's always Firefox. Then again I regularly find pages that don't work with IE.

For all this they cost a heck a lot less and can run any OS of your choice ...

The HARDWARE costs less. Once you get all the software you want and consider the total cost of ownership they're at least equal, but I guess it is easier to say that the purchase price is lower... lol

Apart from look at me i am cool .... and some how superior to rest of the people attitude because i use a mac... (which these forms are full of!) there is probably little that people on windows miss on Mac OS X ...

That's only because people haven't used OS X... how can you miss sth. you haven't used yet?

Anyway, if you're content with your limited view on the topic, that's fine with me. Ignorance is bliss as they say. :rolleyes:

[Mord]

but apple makes a huge gross margin (>30%) vs dell which is less than 10%.

partly because apple has to put that money into OS R&D.

[DarkNetworks]

One reason is probally enough, Macs are slow!
Are they?
:confused:

[Diatribe]

One reason is probally enough, Macs are slow!
Are they?
:confused:

Yep, real slow, they can't even run the 60 yard dash in under 10 minutes. Don't buy one. :p

[After G]

1) Browsing on MAC is next to hopeless! IE probably is the fastest but i cannot tell the difference from mozilla (any platform - HPUX /solaris / windows) ... Well if you can use Mozilla (Firefox, anyone?) on Mac OS X and speed without comfort makes you happy then ... I say go for it. I prefer the "fit and finish" of Safari, something which is hard to quantify, but all the same I prefer it.2) Compatibility ... it is picking up but if you use PDAs and other printers (other than HP) etc ... you will end up spending a lot of money on poorly written software ... cell phones may be an exception Well I have a Samsung laser printer and it works fine for me with the default driver ... does that mean I spent my money poorly? Generalizations make weak arguments.3) Connectivity ... any thing with a GUI plainly costs money ... SSH/SFTP clients are free on windows where as transmit is 25$ ... (ofcourse you can use ssh/sftp from command line) ... Messengers ... only ichat (with video/audio) ... and it will not work properly if you have a person even on AIM / Windows! Most VPNs and other stuff .... Well that's the good thing about Mac OS X ... if you don't want to pay, you can always write your own interface to command line SSH/SFTP, and there's nothing wrong with the command line ... as for Messengers and VPNs ... now this is something to complain about. I'll give you this one, though people are always working on it. Personally, I like Adium and I don't miss too much from video chat ... but I remember how frustrating it is on Windows to use anything other than a webcam for video chat. I tried using a Firewire camcorder. Had the hardest time on Windows. Plugged it into my Mac and it worked fine. So there's two sides to every story.4) you write any decent software ... you are ********* ... the learning curve is totally stupid ... No standard C++/C libs ... all the apple marketing crap aside you have to learn objective -c and that darn thing is not useful any where else! Also add the backward compatibility ... any thing written for 10.4 does not work in 10.3 and in 10.3 will not work in 10.2 ... you can go on ... I thought Objective-C was a superset of C ... or am I completely in the wrong here?5) hardware incompatibilities ... from RAM to usb connectors ... DVD writers and what not ... I tend to find that most crappy hardware is not supported by Mac OS X. I mean in a $300 Dell you truly get what you pay for...6) Hopelessly slow burning ....my HP laptop burns DVD faster (with an external DVD drive - USB 2.0 based for you Firewire fanatics) than Dual G5 1.8 Ghz without any other single process running... both at 8X and you can go on ....Try burning that DVD on your HP with 20 other programs running. Mac OS X will handle it gracefully. Windows will not. Linux could, but getting started with burning may be a problem if you are a beginner. I remember it was for me.Apart from look at me i am cool .... and some how superior to rest of the people attitude because i use a mac... (which these forms are full of!) there is probably little that people on windows miss on Mac OS X ...If you buy a computer just to look cool, you have some self-image issues.

Now for some real reasons why NOT to buy a Mac:
(1) You support the Open Source Software movement.
Now, I remember that there are some fanatics that will not buy any sort of proprietary software in the Linux camp. It's a reason not to buy Mac OS X. I mean the roots are open source, but the GUI is closed ... so it's no go for these kinds of guys. Personally, I like it closed. If it's open, you get the mess that is the Linux GUI. But it's a reason.

(2) Gaming.
Sad to say, but if you don't go for the $5/$10 time killers, and want games like Half-Life 2, then you shouldn't buy a Mac to game. PC Games really are for PCs. Honestly, though, the Mac only misses out on things like RTS and FPS where a mouse/kb is the best control, and a gaming fix can be had with a console. Personally, I can't wait for new consoles. If a console can help you get your gaming fix, it's about as cheap as a PC. Try serious gaming on that $300 Dell ... hahaha. Real gamers will laugh at you more than I am right now.

(3) You feel insecure with having only one motherboard manufacturer.
Some people like flexibility in their hardware choices. Personally I see this as a non-issue because BSD runs on every imaginable processor out there. And Apple can convert to any processor architecture if they feel like it, just like they're doing right now. And with Windows, really you only have the choice of Intel or AMD, and only on X86. There used to be a PPC version, but nobody bought it. It's really a duopoly. This is in contrast to the early days of computing, when EVERYONE was a hardware vendor, and sold software to supplement the hardware. Much like Apple is doing today.

(4) Esoteric specialty operations.
Let's face it. Because anyone can brew up a PC, people can make apps for it that just aren't available on the Mac. Things I can think of are CAD/CAM/CAE or business software built in-house. I just wish they in-housed it on Macs instead, but that's wishful thinking.

Well, other than that, there's really no reason not to buy a Mac for your own personal use. Apples are intended for home users, and I see nothing wrong with not supporting everything and anything. It makes the Mac more stable. And there's no reason you can't buy a PC for those special things. Just make sure you need it. Goodness that was long winded ...

[chaosbunny]

[QUOTE=wide]So you're saying the amount of money Apple pays for its products is around the same as Dell would pay for a similar product. That's untrue. And if it were, it still wouldn't take away from the fact that most Dells are cheaper than Macs for consumers (i.e., everyone on Macrumors) and that Dells are a better deal in the short run.

Apple's gross margin last quarter was not over 30%. It was a little bit less (29.8% or something). That's compared to Dell's 18% gross margin. So yes, Apple does charge a premium for their products. But those numbers also tell us that Apple does spend more money on one of of its 23 inch displays than Dell does on one of its 24 inch display. If you can buy two 24 inch displays for the price on one 23 inch Apple display, and one of the Dell displays costs the same as one of Apple's 23 inch displays (as you said, each of the products cost the same when the companies manufacture them), then Dell's gross margin would have to be negative...Dell would lose money if it sold such an expensive display so cheaply.

Of course, we have to assume that Apple has around a 30% gross margin on its 23 inch display:

So Apple's display (retails at $1500) gives Apple a profit of $450. Gross margin = 450/1500 = 30%. This means that that display costs $1050 for Apple to make (1500 - 450 = 1050).

There is no way Dell could sell two displays that cost $1050 for them to make for a mere $1500.

But if we assume that Dell has a 18% gross margin on its 24 inch displays...

...then Dell's two displays (together retailing for $1500 -- as you said) give Dell a total profit of $270. That means that Dell must pay around $615 to make one of its 24 inch displays ([1500 - 270] / 2 = 615). To check those figures: gross margin = 135 / 750 (<-- 750 = the retail cost of one Dell displays) = 18%.

So...there you have it. Dell's larger 24 inch display costs about $415 less than Apple's 23 inch display. PCs actually are cheaper than macs...lol

---

Let me add that of course you are paying for the design of the apple display. Designers need to get payed too. Putting a display into a black plastic frame isn't much work, but getting that display to look cool in a silver reduced alu frame is an underestimated amount of time and money. It's the same thing with cars, clothes etc.

[sbb155]

As far as price, everyone knows macs are a total ripoff for what you get hardware wise. Hopefully it will change when mactels come out. However, I bought mac because I like the hardware and I am willing to accept those inredibly high gross margins because I have no choice. But I am not stupid enough to ignore the financial statements... Apple is making a ton of $$ from gross margins, way more than dell, and that is why macs are more expensive on the hardware end. We mac users are suckers for tolerating such high profits, but we keep buying and that keeps prices high. But quality? Ha. It is about profits - that is why gross margins are high. Financial statements cannot be ignored. It is all about putting money in the apple shareholders' pockets - WHO ARE MOSTLY PC USERS!!! Isn;t that ironic! PC users are profiting off of the mac cult's buying prowess. Kind of makes you sick, huh? So when we overpay for a mac, we are putting $$ into shareholders pockets, the majority of whom purchase PCs.... If that isnt a financial lesson for you, then what can we say?
Thank goodness I can afford macs, and I don;t care about the margins. But, that is the reality.

[Hattig]

...About dell...
Don't forget Dell's direct sale mechanism. Apple sells via its stores and third party retailers in addition to its online store, and the price is the same at all of them.

If Apple is making 30% margin over the manufacturing cost, and the store has 30% margin, then, err, a $1000 device is around $600 for Apple to make*.

Dell has 18% margin. They sell the same $600 device for $710 because they also avoid the store markup.

* I don't know how the Apple store profits are calculated into the 30% profit margin figures.

[Hattig]

It is all about putting money in the apple shareholders' pockets.
I thought that Apple didn't pay dividends.

[admford]

1) Browsing on MAC is next to hopeless! IE probably is the fastest but i cannot tell the difference from mozilla (any platform - HPUX /solaris / windows) ... Safari simply is darn slow to load and i am not getting into all compatibility issues here

Granted that Safari versions before 2.0 were slow, since it was a new project from Apple. Over the iterations it had, general browsing speed and rendering speed has improved greatly. As for compatibility? try the Acid2 test (http://www.webstandards.org/act/acid2/) in IE. Currently only Safari (with new webkit compiled) and Konqueror (open source browser based on Apple's Webkit) have passed it successfully.

2) Compatibility ... it is picking up but if you use PDAs and other printers (other than HP) etc ... you will end up spending a lot of money on poorly written software ... cell phones may be an exception
Hmmm.... At the university that I go to, there are tons of printers from various companies. Lexmark, Cannon, Epson, Brother and yes, HP. They all seem to work fine with my PowerBook whenever I need to print something. Same thing goes for various plotters. PDA sync? PocketMac Pro is the best way to go if you need software that will sync your PocketPC pda, or Windows Mobile phone. Provides full integration with iCal, Address Book and iSync. Plus it has the possibility to install applications onto the palm top. Palm even with it's OS 5 is still quite compatible with Macs thankfully enough.

3) Connectivity ... any thing with a GUI plainly costs money ... SSH/SFTP clients are free on windows where as transmit is 25$ ... (ofcourse you can use ssh/sftp from command line) ... Messengers ... only ichat (with video/audio) ... and it will not work properly if you have a person even on AIM / Windows! Most VPNs and other stuff ....
Ok, so FTP in Mac OS X is a pain in the butt at times. But you can use the "Connect to Server" command in Finder to browse through FTP shares without any problems. As for chat clients, well Yahoo IM is available natively, MSN is going to be updated soon, AIM is available natively, so is ICQ. If you don't want that, then try AdiumX, which is like Trillian for the Mac. Still not a 1.0 version yet, but it works nicely.

4) you write any decent software ... you are ********* ... the learning curve is totally stupid ... No standard C++/C libs ... all the apple marketing crap aside you have to learn objective -c and that darn thing is not useful any where else! Also add the backward compatibility ... any thing written for 10.4 does not work in 10.3 and in 10.3 will not work in 10.2 ... you can go on ...
No standard C++/C libs? Learning curve too high? Ummm... I'm a programmer that has experiance in Borland C/C++ (which is ANSI C/C++ compatible) and I have to say that I've not really encountered any such problems. Apple provides a very good tutorial and documents with any version of XCode, so that if you know how to program in C/C++, you can program in Carbon quite fast. While the Coacoa libraries are Objective C, which is quite a bit harder to learn, it's not impossible. Plus, the developement enviroment in XCode is quite friendly for the average user who's getting started in programming. As for compatibility with older OS versions, well it's just a case of library use at most times, but to put it into prospective, only software that needs a specific quality of a version of Mac OS X will not work properly before it. And most of these cases, it usually comes down to a graphics library version.

5) hardware incompatibilities ... from RAM to usb connectors ... DVD writers and what not ...
Ummmm... Incompatible RAM??? Yes it's true that Apple did make certain types of RAM incompatible with Macs, but that was around four to three years ago with G4 PowerMacs that used PC133 RAM. Currently you can go to any store, get a SODIMM or DIMM of DDR 333 or 400 RAM and plug it into any one of your Macs easily. USB connector incompatibility? That I don't understand, get a converter for the connector. If you mean chipset, I've tested a number of USB 2.0 products that were only ment for PCs, and they worked fine on my Macs. I've got a Bluetooth dongle attached to my PowerMac from Hauppage that doesn't support Mac OS X at all, but still it works nicely. Certain DVD writers are problematic when connecting to a Mac, that's true. It usually comes down to the standard drivers Apple makes in the OS to cover the drives it uses in it's Macs. Known to most Mac users, Pioneer drives are the ones most compatible at the moment, but there's a piece of software that in a way replaces the drivers used in Mac OS X and allows compatibility with most applications for almost any DVD writer now (called "Patchburn").

6) Hopelessly slow burning ....my HP laptop burns DVD faster (with an external DVD drive - USB 2.0 based for you Firewire fanatics) than Dual G5 1.8 Ghz without any other single process running... both at 8X and you can go on ....
I dunno, My drives burn at normal speeds, if you're talking about something like a couple minutes difference then I just don't see it. For my usual burning I never use OS X's standard Finder function, I just pull out Roxio's Toast and away I burn. Burning speed usually depends ont he speed of the medium. Put in a 4x DVD-R, and on the Mac you can't burn it at 8x, And I don't believe it's possible to do that on a PC either. Firewire vs. USB 2.0, mind I say one thing on this? Just give it up. Both standards are well designed, while Firewire will always work at about 400MB, many companies advertise their products as being USB 2.0, while not activating the high speed data rates it can use. These things depend on the product and the company that makes it, and at times 480MB/s isn't required (like mice). Each standard has it's good points and bad points, on Macs it's your choice to use what you want, since both USB 2.0 and Firewire are on all current Macs.

Most of the people hardly would have seen a latest generation windows laptops ... ever see the new HP business notebooks (<1.2" think) ? and new dell 700m is not bad either ... i do agree that old dells look horrible ... I have never had a Virus or Spyware on any of the machines so far ... and yes i donot even spend 2 mins on maintaining them every day ... just get the regular updates and you can even automate them ... For all this they cost a heck a lot less and can run any OS of your choice ... Networking for a layman is probably the single most impressive thing about Mac OSX and windows systems are not that behind ... Last but not the least .... i hardly ever switch off my computers ...laptops/workstations .... and they have not crashed in the recent past that i can (workstations over a year) think of.
Running the OS of your choice? Well, other than Mac OS X, ther's Linux for PPC in various flavors (Debian and Gentoo for example). You can emulate Windows on a Mac without any major problems, other than speed. But the same goes even more so for emulating Mac OS X on a Windows machine (i.e. PearPC). My PowerMac runs as a graphics workstation and file server at the dorm where I am, it's been up for over a year, the only times i've had to reboot are when I update the system's software. Automated updates are possible with Macs, but as for protection, they require the admin's password to install (something that Microsoft is implementing in Longhorn too). As for the aesthetics of PC laptops, they're starting to catch on that good looks help sales. The thiness of these new PC laptops is only thanks to the new Intel Pentium-M processors and AMD's Turion. If you want a desktop processor in a notebook, either way you'll end up "hot and heavy".

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Apart from look at me i am cool .... and some how superior to rest of the people attitude because i use a mac... (which these forms are full of!) there is probably little that people on windows miss on Mac OS X ...
For every person, an OS of their liking. I've sold off all my windows machines now and i'm quite happy with my Macs. Though I'm not saying that everyone should get one, it depends on your tastes and what you need to do on a computer. Yes I do "evangelise" Macs to a point, but only when I see people who are undecided about what type of a computer to buy. Many of them don't even think of getting a Mac because, well they think they're incompatible or something similar. I'm only giving all the information that one can use to make an informed purchase, i'm not running around screaming "GET A MAC! GET A MAC!". Certain computers are better suited for certain people, and making an informed buy is important to the customer's satisfaction.

I'll probably be the only one here that will out right say that even though Mac OS X is great as an OS for stability and ease of use, if you're doing very heavy graphics work such as 3D modeling, and need to render on one machine, and don't have that much of a limiting budget. It's better to get a good PC with a professional PCI-Express video card, since the PowerMac G5's main bottleneck is the AGP 8x bus which hampers it's graphics performance in games and 3D rendering. But a family who's parents want to keep an eye on their children's browsing and work, but who don't know enough about computers to fix them if there is a virus or spyware on them, a Mac is a perfect choice. There may be less games, but at least the games are good ones.

So don't just go against Macs or any other platform blindly. Do your research and then try to post something more reasonable. Please.

[derboy]

1. If you are a proper designer. Any professional 3D program will not be available on the mac. Only programs for other "creative professionals"!

2. Chances of getting the latest technology in a mac are small.

3. Design Team can only work on one thing at a time. (year of the laptop) (Putting a G5 chip in a desktop)

4. Apples high rated opinion of itself. In relation to treating its dealers and customers.

5. The amount of spin put on apple "innovation." Then move on to completely dismiss it (64 bit) or to publicly congratulate themselves on thier greatness. (people having to buy another version of OS X)

[admford]

1. If you are a proper designer. Any professional 3D program will not be available on the mac. Only programs for other "creative professionals"!
Ummmm.. I routinely use Maya 6.5 on a Mac, that I would consider quite a professional 3D program.

[Diatribe]

As far as price, everyone knows macs are a total ripoff for what you get hardware wise. Hopefully it will change when mactels come out. However, I bought mac because I like the hardware and I am willing to accept those inredibly high gross margins because I have no choice. But I am not stupid enough to ignore the financial statements... Apple is making a ton of $$ from gross margins, way more than dell, and that is why macs are more expensive on the hardware end. We mac users are suckers for tolerating such high profits, but we keep buying and that keeps prices high. But quality? Ha. It is about profits - that is why gross margins are high. Financial statements cannot be ignored. It is all about putting money in the apple shareholders' pockets - WHO ARE MOSTLY PC USERS!!! Isn;t that ironic! PC users are profiting off of the mac cult's buying prowess. Kind of makes you sick, huh? So when we overpay for a mac, we are putting $$ into shareholders pockets, the majority of whom purchase PCs.... If that isnt a financial lesson for you, then what can we say?
Thank goodness I can afford macs, and I don;t care about the margins. But, that is the reality.

Sure. That statement would have been true a year ago but now? Apple's price do still contain a premium but that is so low it's nothing to get worked up over. Dell has none of the following...

- R&D costs for both software and hardware
- Support for software
- Retail stores

As soon as Dell has those we'll talk again.

[derboy]

Ummmm.. I routinely use Maya 6.5 on a Mac, that I would consider quite a professional 3D program.

Maya is an annimation program, Which is lovely. However if you want to really get into design, where stuff actually gets made then the point is still valid. What program do you think Jon Ive's team use to computerise thier industrial design. Certainly aint mac based.

Sorry to burst the bubble - admford. :eek:

[admford]

Maya is an annimation program, Which is lovely. However if you want to really get into design, where stuff actually gets made then the point is still valid. What program do you think Jon Ive's team use to computerise thier industrial design. Certainly aint mac based.

Sorry to burst the bubble - admford. :eek:

No need for the eek emoticon. Maya is not only an animation but a generic modeling program. It certainly doesn't model objects like let say, Catia or Autocad does (since Maya only does the "skin" of the oject). How ever it's more than usefull for the average user. If you want a true 3D Cad program for Macs. Get Vectorworks 11.5.

[derboy]

No need for the eek emoticon. Maya is not only an animation but a generic modeling program. It certainly doesn't model objects like let say, Catia or Autocad does (since Maya only does the "skin" of the oject). How ever it's more than usefull for the average user. If you want a true 3D Cad program for Macs. Get Vectorworks 11.5.

Oh dear, i think you may have your Steve Jobs Glasses on. No Designer is going to manhandle a project through maya, only to have to take it over into a real 3D application to make it manufacturable. They may however render, and animate "it", and it might look nice.

As for Vectorworks, Have you ever used it? Its for designing houses and structural layouts. Lovely...

So yes, there are no reasons for a mac to be deemed the "creative Professionals" choice. The sheer grunt of a company to program a fully featured comercial 3d modelling program is beyond the realm of the Mac.

Or is that the reason behind the ipod consisting of a Rectangle extrusion with 12 fillets... :eek:

[Hattig]

Oh dear, i think you may have your Steve Jobs Glasses on. No Designer is going to manhandle a project through maya, only to have to take it over into a real 3D application to make it manufacturable. They may however render, and animate "it", and it might look nice.

As for Vectorworks, Have you ever used it? Its for designing houses and structural layouts. Lovely...

So yes, there are no reasons for a mac to be deemed the "creative Professionals" choice. The sheer grunt of a company to program a fully featured comercial 3d modelling program is beyond the realm of the Mac.

Or is that the reason behind the ipod consisting of a Rectangle extrusion with 12 fillets... :eek:

So what is the name of the 'wonderful' Windows-only industrial creative professional design applications that you use then?

I think you are merely trolling, I mean 'beyond the realm of the Mac' - the non-existence of a specific application doesn't mean it can't do it. Vectorworks appears to have a mechanical module amongst others for detail modelling, it isn't just house design.

[admford]

Oh dear, i think you may have your Steve Jobs Glasses on. No Designer is going to manhandle a project through maya, only to have to take it over into a real 3D application to make it manufacturable. They may however render, and animate "it", and it might look nice.

As for Vectorworks, Have you ever used it? Its for designing houses and structural layouts. Lovely...

So yes, there are no reasons for a mac to be deemed the "creative Professionals" choice. The sheer grunt of a company to program a fully featured comercial 3d modelling program is beyond the realm of the Mac.

Or is that the reason behind the ipod consisting of a Rectangle extrusion with 12 fillets... :eek:

There is Vectorworks mechanical. Over all product design is hard to find on a Mac. There are more specialized products available, but generic software packages much like AutoCAD are hard to find. If you look hard enough, i'm sure that most people will find an equivalent piece of software that they use also on the Mac. You can always try Argon, Graphite and Cobalt from Ashlar Vellum (http://www.ashlar.com/sections/products/argon/argon.html) for Mac.

[derboy]

[QUOTE=admford]If you look hard enough, i'm sure that most people will find an equivalent piece of software that they use also on the Mac. QUOTE]

I do love that most mac users love Apple so much that there is nothing it cant do! Ever since my apple plus, to my duel G5 i have known what they can do and what they cant. 3D design is one of the later. A lot of people have had a go, you miss cinema 4D from your suggestions.

But at the end of the day, how many cars, kettles, phones, engines....etc have been conceptualised on a mac? The mac is not a viable tool for any professional project of this nature. Period.

Apple as a Creative brand is shifting. The times of Adobe and apple against the world are over. Now its about consumers using Iphoto and Itunes and feeling a warm glow inside for doing so. :rolleyes:

[Applespider]

Apple as a Creative brand is shifting. The times of Adobe and apple against the world are over. Now its about consumers using Iphoto and Itunes and feeling a warm glow inside for doing so. :rolleyes:

And with far more consumers taking pictures and listening to music than professionals designing industrial products, it's a bigger market for Apple to grow into which is why they are spending their R&D cash in that area and in the pro-media market. Apple's getting less esoteric and more populist which isn't all bad. I'd far rather have a bigger company keep pumping out the Macs and applications that I can use on a daily basis in normal life (consumer and general business developement modelling) than knowing it was trying to be all things to all people and doing none well.

[derboy]

Thats right, But i do still cringe when Apple proclaims itself as 'the' creative company, for creative users.

The product design market is Huge and, in terms of revenue, puts non linear editing in the total shade. After all, this is apple's only serious creative application. The rest are from adobe...

I'd love all the applications i use to be available on the mac but that will never happen. The intel change will benifit my type of duel use needs the most. Perhaps Apple finally realised they cant be all things to everyone, and did something usefull to that end.

[oingoboingo]

Oh, but don't you just love the pretty blue glow - so very peaceful and serene after your peecee crashes and you lose 3 hours of unsaved work.

If you're not saving your work at all during a 3 hour period, you deserve to lose it all.

But yeah, I'll jump in. WINDOWS IS TEH SuX0R!!!!

[Ti_Poussin]

1- Slower machine for the same price (will change soon, but I still prefer PPC over X86 architecture and OS X over XP).

2- Impossible to upgrade video card or processor in all machine except PowerMac those day.

3- AutoCAD, Catia not avaible for OS X, wich is a true pain for me. There's VectorWork, Strata3D, Carrara Cobalt, ArchiCAD, but they don't cut it for ingineering design.

4- Games on OS X often s*ck a big time, not very optimize, multiplayer not compatible with PC version, completly unavaible. Except Blizzard, the port are often a hell more buggy.

5- Road Map unknow, slow adoption of some feature (PCI Express, USB2 took a long time to come to us, LCD Gloss screen,...).

I'm still enjoying my old PowerBook Ti 1GHz, it's always a pain to use Windows again now.

[512ke]

1. If your job makes you travel a lot, and you want to connect your Mac to local ADSL in non-Mac-friendly countries. You can get stuck as the only Mac user for miles with no modem drivers.

2. In the city where I live, the city government's website has internet tax paying forms and traffic ticket paying programs that are Windows only.

3. If you're office is non Mac, you may have problems using their Microsoft Exchange Server to synchronize your calendar and contacts. It forces you in some instances to use Entourage, which is a pain.

4. Sometimes the latest Blackberry type devices don't work at _first_ on Macs.

5. Nothing in this world is perfect. For me, the minor inconveniences from time to time using a Mac are far outweighed by the numerous benefits.

I can do more (video, audio, calendar synching, iChat, file searching, automating etc etc etc) with many fewer problems (not so much crashing, fewer update hassles, almost zero viruses etc etc etc).

And a person's reaction to point 6 will vary:

-You are not with the herd.

[Doctor Q]

2. In the city where I live, the city government's website has internet tax paying forms and traffic ticket paying programs that are Windows only.That's nice. I guess Mac users don't have to pay traffic tickets! :)

[theISHkid]

1. If you are a proper designer. Any professional 3D program will not be available on the mac. Only programs for other "creative professionals"!

2. Chances of getting the latest technology in a mac are small.

3. Design Team can only work on one thing at a time. (year of the laptop) (Putting a G5 chip in a desktop)

4. Apples high rated opinion of itself. In relation to treating its dealers and customers.

5. The amount of spin put on apple "innovation." Then move on to completely dismiss it (64 bit) or to publicly congratulate themselves on thier greatness. (people having to buy another version of OS X)

Man it is so funny hearing someone talk when they have no clue what they are talking about.... Yet again another pc user that has no idea because they have not tried a mac.

1. "Professional Designer" come on are you kidding me... Cineama 4dxl, Maya, RenderMan... if those aren't professional 3d apps then what is. Just because 3d studio max is not on a mac doesn't mean macs don't have 3d programs... I mean all of those freakin pixar movies were done on renderman.

2. Wrong... are we talking software or hardware? Macs may be slightly behind when it comes to games... but you especially cannot make that argument for design software... both the adobe suites and macromedia suites came out at the same time for both platforms... and isn't it funny how the system requirements are usually a bit higher for a pc than for a mac? Just because windows (for now) can spout off higher processor numbers than a mac... it doesn't mean that macs don't get the latest and greatest. It's also kind of funny how innovative apple is and you see other companies trying to follow.

3. Whose design team are you talking about? Just because that's news that people want to hear... that doesn't mean it's the only thing apple's design team is doing. They are just like any other company with offices all over... one group is working on one thing while another is working with something else.

4. I've never had good feelings dealing with apple... sure you hear about bad things... but that's just because the news never advertises good things. Besides that people with apples are actually happy and like their computers. Pc users either don't care or they are usually pissed about their computers.

5. Isn't microsoft releasing a new operating system soon... oh yea forgot about that... it just hasn't made it out yet because of all the PROBLEMS.

You know... if you love your pc then that's fine... but stay off boards trying to get others to be as miserable as you are with your pc.

[Tahko]

5 reasons not-to-switch from regular students viewpoint:

1. Games
2. DC++
3. Possible corruption into technology-retard thanks to minimal configuration required & having most of the software needed ready 'n kickin from day 1
4. Inability to use my banks internet service
5. Microsoft frontpage doesn't show correctly on any other browser than IE :p

[theISHkid]

5 reasons not-to-switch from regular students viewpoint:
5. Microsoft frontpage doesn't show correctly on any other browser than IE :p

That's because frontpage is like using mspaint instead of photoshop.

[realmcenter]

Here's some of the things that I see as a downside to Macs compared to PCs running Windows:

1. Not nearly as much software available for the Mac as oppossed to Windows, and/or it costs more for something comparable for Mac OS. Examples include software like DVD Shrink, VirtualDub, Tag&Rename, BitPim, etc.

2. Initial purchase cost might be higher. I say might because it depends on what hardware you are getting. An 12" iBook costs less than a similarly-configured Windows laptop of comparable size and weight, but a $600 store-bought PC easily bests a $600 Mac Mini in capabilities out of the box.

3. PCs generally support more legacy hardware than Macs. For example, my 12-year-old HP LaserJet 4L works just fine on my 2-year-old PC, while a similar vintage printer for a Mac would be using a serial port that dissapeared on Macs around 5-years ago or so. This legacy support also still holds back PCs somewhat in some areas (modern PCs can still boot DOS thanks to their BIOS) but at the same time it keeps older hardware that still works useful for longer.

4. Many more peripherals are available that are supported on Windows than Mac OS. Manufacturers are going to cater to the largest audience so Mac users have to be more careful when choosing peripherals and some just may not be available at all for a Mac.

5. Far smaller user-base. It's the simple reality that Windows PCs are the standard and more people know how to use Windows than Macs. That makes support easier to find than with a Mac. This can be a really big deal for new computer users.

I know Mac users like to assume that all Windows machines are bug and virus-infested machines that are next to impossible to keep stable, but that is simply not the case at all. Both Mac OS and Windows have their merits and downsides. My own Windows desktop machine is rock-solid stable, quite fast, and I have never had a virus infection on Windows. It is showing signs of needing an OS reinstall as I have not reinstalled XP in well over a year, but still runs just fine and the only way I can tell it needs a reinstall is by noticing that it takes a slight bit more memory than it should, still less than OS X Tiger does. But my iBook has become my daily-use computer because it is more fun to use, portable, and is simpler for some tasks.

[OnceUGoMac]

The Mac version of M$ Office is fully compatible and mostly better to the window$ counterpart :rolleyes: So this would be a moot point I think.

Nope, he's right. Office for Windows is geared towards a corporate environment and includes features for that. Office for Mac is geared towards personal use and has exclusive fetures such as Entourage.

[Kelson]

I use a TiBook for everything, work and play.

1. Java support is lousy and slow. We use alot of Java at work, primarily applets on web pages that I need to do my job. While it may be the java coders faults, the applets run fast and smooth on windows boxen, they often choke and crash on my Mac. (10.4.2, latest Java 1.4.2 & J2SE 5.0)

2. Can't read Visio diagrams. Yes, I know you can get Omnigraffle and read the "XML Drawing" format, but everyone uses the proprietary .vsd format. It really sucks having to always ask people to re-save it as .vdx and re-send, or load it in Virtual PC and convert it. Plus, I can't create Visio's w/o using Virtual PC.

3. Microsoft Office incompatibilities. I save a file in Word 2004 on Mac, formatting in some instances is messed up on the windows version. Or when I load a .ppt and it has to go through and "convert" all of the "metafiles", of which there is one for every image in the PPT, w/ a 200 slide deck, that can be a heck of a lot.

4. Applications. Most of the time, there is a servicable alternative, but sometimes there just isn't. Like the clients for on-line poker sites or something.

5. Hmm...can't think of a 5th that is really annoying me right now, mainly those first 3 drive me crazy. I suppose the last one would be playing some windows media files that complain about the wrong codec, or flash not working quite right, mainly in conjunction w/ a video on demand setup, etc.

- Kelson

[derboy]

Man it is so funny hearing someone talk when they have no clue what they are talking about.... Yet again another pc user that has no idea because they have not tried a mac.

1. "Professional Designer" come on are you kidding me... Cineama 4dxl, Maya, RenderMan... if those aren't professional 3d apps then what is. Just because 3d studio max is not on a mac doesn't mean macs don't have 3d programs... I mean all of those freakin pixar movies were done on renderman.

2. Wrong... are we talking software or hardware? Macs may be slightly behind when it comes to games... but you especially cannot make that argument for design software... both the adobe suites and macromedia suites came out at the same time for both platforms... and isn't it funny how the system requirements are usually a bit higher for a pc than for a mac? Just because windows (for now) can spout off higher processor numbers than a mac... it doesn't mean that macs don't get the latest and greatest. It's also kind of funny how innovative apple is and you see other companies trying to follow.

3. Whose design team are you talking about? Just because that's news that people want to hear... that doesn't mean it's the only thing apple's design team is doing. They are just like any other company with offices all over... one group is working on one thing while another is working with something else.

4. I've never had good feelings dealing with apple... sure you hear about bad things... but that's just because the news never advertises good things. Besides that people with apples are actually happy and like their computers. Pc users either don't care or they are usually pissed about their computers.

5. Isn't microsoft releasing a new operating system soon... oh yea forgot about that... it just hasn't made it out yet because of all the PROBLEMS.

You know... if you love your pc then that's fine... but stay off boards trying to get others to be as miserable as you are with your pc.

haha, I'll Reply, but not to get your hopes up on an argument. Just to clear up some bits in your post. So if i may;

I've been using macs since they pretty much came out. Think that shows my commitment, and so i dont feel bad having a bit of a moan, on a forum that has a negative title! Oh yea, and i only recently(relativly) bought a pc because i have to.

1. Maya, renderman. Maya is an animation program, and has little use for anyone who wants to 'tolerance' or actually create something. You do know that every single injection moulded, machined, 'made' component to 90% of anything you can buy in the shops has been modelled on a computer. This is a serious buisness and one which requires serious software that is fully featured and supports international standards. Ring any bells o the mac?? Thought not

Renderman is a utility for that program for film quality results. Cinema 4d is an application made in the same vien as maja. Because you quoted a few 'Pro' apps at me, i'll inform you of the real ones. So that if you really care you can take a look! (now theres novel!)
Catia
Rhino
Proenginer
Solidworks
SDRC Ideas

-Sorry though, no films have been made using those. But the keyboard, and monitor you are using probably has. Also, All of those mentioned make finite element analysis easy. Heard of that?

2. I'm talking about hardware. You only have to look at the laptop threads, to see how desperate people are for upto date technology. They are literally holding off purchases. For such disparity amongst what is essentially a large proportion of all apple computers offered, I'd say it is a bit serious. Feel free to disagree

3. This point was trying to get at the fact that apple is a large enough company to properly find and motivate various projects at the same time, in one or various design teams. (for them to make concurrent varied releases)

4. Of course i know people have good/bad experiances with apple. I dont like the way they leverage thier suppliers. An example i can think of is moving to intel for politcal/internal reasons then publically critisising IBM. I know this is a contentious issue. (a lot of interpretation)
I dont like the way they treated my dealer, when my G5 went wrong. Apple gave them the runaround and they had unpaid costs. Having a good relationship with my dealer leads me to believe them when they say apple act high-handedly. This attitude is continued with customers, unless they are closer than arms reach. (like in a retail store)
And the call centres in the far east, for the UK consumer...

5. I wont go into this too much, as it looks like you agree. This is demonstrated my you having to bring windows to the thread, and suggests you cant think of a relevant comment. i cant remember quite how many annual releases apple has made of os x. i would say too many at £100ish a time.
The point is that they congratulate themselves, on what is essentially a compulsary purchase. whilst neglecting to mention what happened to the 'Big thing' they were recently touting.

I hope that reads succinctly theISHkid, and addresses your misconceptions in a logical way. You mention 'Love' for ones computer, that is a funny thing to say. But i do hope the umbilical relationship between you and your apple is nice for you.

-Sorry to anyone else who read that whole lot (+previous posts), and suffered a spell of misery for the duration, as theISHkid felt he did.

[sbb155]

I have said it before and I will say it now. It is all about profits. Apple is owned by shareholders who demand profits. It is a complete myth that the cinema display is better or that XP crashes (i get beachballs on my powerbook). BUT apple is smart enough to do great marketing to sell the machine to the masses. And guess what... we like it!

The apple is good in a personal environment. For the corporate world, it stinks. If microsoft wanted to end apple's business all they would have to do is stop making office. 100% compatibility and workgroup environs are needed in the corporate and university markets. MS provides this. iWork? Are you kidding? Could never work in the corporate world.

Apple's marketing, however, is second to none. We pay gross margins of 30% on apple computers, much higher than PC manufacturers. This accounts for a large difference in price - corporate greed for the apple shareholders.

And think about it... apple shareholders buy mostly... WINDOWS PCs! So as the stock goes up and profits go up, the shareholders purchase more windows based PCs. Remember, the people who invest in the stock OWN apple. And they overhwhelmingly buy PCs. Isn't it odd that the owners of a company largely prefer PCs over their own companies' products?

Frankly, I don't care if macs are overpriced and slow. I use them for video and music and personal things which are easier than on a pc. I freely admit and accept that it is an inferior product for word processing, spreadsheet, and corporate work.

The whole idea of the switch campaign is flawed. Why do people have to switch? Some people own sony and panasonic tvs. Why can't people own dells and apples? Both are better at certain things. There is no one superior product overall, but undoubtedly for video the apple is better. For the corporate world pcs are better.

Why is it so difficult to accept that both are good for certain things?

[jiv3turkey748]

i can think of one, no rollercoaster tycoon... thats about it though

[GeeYouEye]

1) Browsing on MAC is next to hopeless! IE probably is the fastest but i cannot tell the difference from mozilla (any platform - HPUX /solaris / windows) ... Safari simply is darn slow to load and i am not getting into all compatibility issues here

2) Compatibility ... it is picking up but if you use PDAs and other printers (other than HP) etc ... you will end up spending a lot of money on poorly written software ... cell phones may be an exception

3) Connectivity ... any thing with a GUI plainly costs money ... SSH/SFTP clients are free on windows where as transmit is 25$ ... (ofcourse you can use ssh/sftp from command line) ... Messengers ... only ichat (with video/audio) ... and it will not work properly if you have a person even on AIM / Windows! Most VPNs and other stuff ....

4) you write any decent software ... you are ********* ... the learning curve is totally stupid ... No standard C++/C libs ... all the apple marketing crap aside you have to learn objective -c and that darn thing is not useful any where else! Also add the backward compatibility ... any thing written for 10.4 does not work in 10.3 and in 10.3 will not work in 10.2 ... you can go on ...

5) hardware incompatibilities ... from RAM to usb connectors ... DVD writers and what not ...

6) Hopelessly slow burning ....my HP laptop burns DVD faster (with an external DVD drive - USB 2.0 based for you Firewire fanatics) than Dual G5 1.8 Ghz without any other single process running... both at 8X and you can go on ....


Most of the people hardly would have seen a latest generation windows laptops ... ever see the new HP business notebooks (<1.2" think) ? and new dell 700m is not bad either ... i do agree that old dells look horrible ... I have never had a Virus or Spyware on any of the machines so far ... and yes i donot even spend 2 mins on maintaining them every day ... just get the regular updates and you can even automate them ... For all this they cost a heck a lot less and can run any OS of your choice ... Networking for a layman is probably the single most impressive thing about Mac OSX and windows systems are not that behind ... Last but not the least .... i hardly ever switch off my computers ...laptops/workstations .... and they have not crashed in the recent past that i can (workstations over a year) think of.

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Apart from look at me i am cool .... and some how superior to rest of the people attitude because i use a mac... (which these forms are full of!) there is probably little that people on windows miss on Mac OS X ...

This, ladies and gentlemen, is an example of Trollius regularus, subspecies macrumors or more commonly, "board troll". This--

*person in crowd raises their hand* How can we identify a T. regulus?

Glad you asked. The first sign that you are being "trolled", or seeing a troll in action is that it will attempt to deride the members of the forum it is residing in. For example, this troll used a classic "accuse many of the board's population of an undesirable trait" attack, in this case of having an attitude of smug superiority.

Occasionally, as here, a troll will provide anecdotal evidence that is incredible and highly unlikely. Typically, this should be ignored, unless you can definitively refute it with an eyewitness.

Another action a troll will take is to deliberately post information that is obviously wrong, hoping to get other, smarter, impulsive people to flame him. A troll feeds on flames, twists them, and uses them to his own nefarious purposes. So remember kids, don't feed the trolls.

[iHateWindows]

Here's why someone would actually WANT a PC:

1. You enjoy viruses, adware, worms, bugs, crashes, overpriced software, and horrible tech support
2. You have a crush of the ugliest man alive, Bill Gates'
3.You enjoy an ugly, cluttered UI
4. You would rather say "Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 3 Longhorn Operating System" than just simply "Tiger"
5. You have an IQ lower than 2 and feel comfortable using the command prompt just to check your email.

[Capt Underpants]

meh... Windows isn't half as bad as you guys make it out to seem. I don't have any anti-virus software, but I don't have a virus (I know because I use a free online virus checker). Once you firewall windows up, there really isn't much to worry about.

If you don't know how to take care of windows (AV, anti-Spyware software, Firewall), though, it does get bloated. If you know your stuff, though, windows is a good OS.

[tech4all]

Here's why someone would actually WANT a PC:

1. You enjoy viruses, adware, worms, bugs, crashes, overpriced software, and horrible tech support
2. You have a crush of the ugliest man alive, Bill Gates'
3.You enjoy an ugly, cluttered UI
4. You would rather say "Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 3 Longhorn Operating System" than just simply "Tiger"
5. You have an IQ lower than 2 and feel comfortable using the command prompt just to check your email.

1) Most of those are true, yes, but you have to admit, OS X does have some bugs in it.

2) Not sure if that's the best reason to use/not use an OS, but ok.

3) Agreed.

4) Why would Windows XP's name be with Longhorn?

5) I've never used the command line to check email on a PC.

I don't have any anti-virus software, but I don't have a virus (I know because I use a free online virus checker).

The anti-virus software may not be on your computer, but you still use one ;)

But you are right, Windows isn't that bad, course its not that great either.

[milozauckerman]

I have to agree with a lot of the people in saying that Windows is getting a bad rap here. Sensible computing wards off almost all malware - my parents have never run anything but Windows and over the last three years have had the same number of spyware/malware problems as I've had running OS X - zero. Their XP (Sony, Dell, Fujitsu laptops) systems have been as stable as my OS X systems and have had fewer hardware problems (my new dual G5 won't wake from energy saver sleep, the first HD on my G4 failed six months in).

That said, would I ever switch back? Not a chance. I'm very picky about my tools - I hated taking essay tests in school when I only had a crappy Bic ballpoint with me, I literally couldn't write as well fighting with the equipment. OS X is streamlined, aesthetically pleasing and rarely makes me feel like I'm fighting back against an interfering OS to work. It's worth the premium for me.

If I were any less picky, I'd probably buy a good Dell system for half of what I paid for my new dual G5.

I haven't drunk the Apple kool-aid (honesty time: I find their 'brand' grating in its uniformity and unimaginative modernity, particularly juxtaposed with the 'be creative' message they're still rolling out, it's worse than MS in some ways) and don't intend to. They make a product I like and I'll keep using it as long as it's the best option, but I feel zero loyalty to any multi-billion dollar capitalist entity.

[AcousticDoc]

Windows does have some advatages guys.

1) Games
2) More expensive compared to equal specs on a PC
3) No "hibernation mode" on laptops
4) Fewer mac users means less chance to encounter another person to get pirated software (I can't find anyone who has Mac Office for me to leech off of)
5) Less future customization for most of their desktop models.

[Jedi128]

We often say that Macs "just work", and the problems are indeed fewer and further between, but I don't know a single computer user who has never needed a question answered.

For that reason, I advise people to get a PC if their one and only source of support is from a family member who knows nothing about Macs. For example, a senior citizen new to computers asked me for advice about getting a computer, and told me that everything would be set up by his PC-expert nephew (not a Mac guy). I knew he would not be going to retail stores or going online for advice, so his "support department" was PC only. My advice? Not the time to get a Mac.

I don't know about this. Using your same example as someone new to computers, I think if they are the customer, then they better get a Mac becuase they won't have to go through the trouble shooting and tech support. Their mac will "just work" as you say and the GUI is sooooo much easier to understand on X than XP. Give this person new to computers the easier computer to use. Ever think of it like that?

[brianus]

1. Completely wrong about web design, not to mention that this is more of a software issue versus a mac/pc issue. In dreamweaver there are a few bugs such as scroll down behaviors acting funny on a mac, but if you know how to clean up your code you can eliminate most problems. Code is code... it might look slightly different (because you're looking at a different monitor) but that's just computer to computer, not mac to pc.

I was referring to the very real incompatibilities between browsers (mostly having to do with JavaScript/DHTML, at least in my experience... seriously, if you have ever done any design in that area, you know the headaches of which I speak). Most of these incompatibilities are entirely the fault of Microsoft and its crappy IE; Safari is a far more standards-compliant browser. My point is simply that, like it or not, IE is what most people use, and you can't be sure that what you've tested in Safari is going to work right for your Windows clients. Again, I know this from personal experience. I wish I didn't have to cross-test between PC and Mac for this stuff, but I have no choice.


2. This isn't really fair to say... what problems are you having with which programs? We run pc/mac offices with pretty much the same software photoshop, studio mx 2004, quicktime, avid, etc. Not to mention certain games warcraft, sims 1 & 2. I've never really had too many problems with either platform. Sometimes installation is harder on windows because it can't find certain drivers or it's missing a .dll where "usually" as long as you have the requirements on the box with a mac we don't have any problems.

I've only really had problems with Office v.X -- I only use Photoshop on the Mac and I only use Quicktime on my PC, so I can't comment on those. But Office.. ugh. The Mac version does a lot of strange things like inserting little paragraph symbols all over Word documents, or refusing to open files that work just fine on the PC. It's also surprisingly slow compared to most of the other programs I use on the Mac. It's serviceable, but I've never had these problems with the Windows version. Like Point #1, this isn't the "fault" of Macs, it's just an unfortunate reality I've encountered.


3. I think this is one of the biggest myths in the mac community, that you cannot update your mac. Video cards, sound cards, modems, processors, memory, hard drives... it can all be done with a mac. "Technically" it is more expensive to upgrade a mac, but that's because they make you upgrade to a quality part that is tested to work with the mac. You can't just go pick up a $50 video card from walmart and plug it in like you can with a pc...

The last line pretty much sums up what I'm saying. People who are used to being able to do that are in for some disappointment. Again, different people, different expectations and priorities. But it will be a legitimate concern for some, and that's what this thread is about. Not everyone will be happy with less choice, and many simply cannot afford to be happy with the greater expense, even if it does mean guaranteed quality. I mean c'mon, the only tower they offer is their top of the line system... I'd love, for example, to get a cheap Mac I could later upgrade with a better video card (as I once did with my first PC), but that's literally impossible. I could get an expensive Mac and do that, or get a cheap one and live with whatever video system they give me. And I can only do the latter because of the Mini; 6 months ago I couldn't have even done that.


4. Check out a while back (might have been a year or so) a pcworld/macworld article comparing (as close as possible) dollar for dollar testing of mac vs pc. I will admit that the pc won 60 percent of the test but they were all very close (yes even the ones that the mac won, they did not blow each other away). Keep in mind this was dollar for dollar. Complain about macs being expensive... but if you want your pc to equal the mac you're gonna have to shell out the dough too.

I'll have to look out for that article. But just in terms of base hardware specs, Apple (at the moment - until the Intel switch, that is) simply can't compete. Its design sense and stellar operating system are why I'm going to buy a Mac; I consider the less impressive hardware and higher relative price to be worth it, but I'm just not willing to kid myself about it, either. For the next year or two, buying from Apple will remain a kind of 'tradeoff' in the eyes of non-Mac users.

Now at the same time you got a great deal on your pc... my friend bought a 1000 dollar dell about 6 months ago that he is having so many problems with he is considering throwing away... this does not happen to everyone but what good is buying a cheaper computer if all you're getting is a "cheaper" computer.

True, it's easier to get burned buying a PC, with the 8 zillion manufacturers with as much variation in quality and cost. But it's also easier to find mindblowingly great deals. With Apple, you know exactly what you're getting, which can be a good thing and a bad thing.

You still hear people talking about using macs that are 7 and 8 years old because the things were built to last. Again I'm sure there are pc users that have the same old computers... but they don't brag about it.

Actually, I do brag about it, check my sig :p And check out the recent article posted on slashdot about Windows 2000's excellent performance on ancient hardware. Most Windows users don't bother doing that because PCs are cheap enough that they can afford new ones fairly regularly. I do it because I hate to waste hardware that still works, y'know? If I were getting a G5 or a PowerBook today, though, it would *have* to last whether I wanted it to or not, since there's no way I'm shelling out that kind of cash every few years. Another reason I consider the Mini a very positive development.


Now here's what I find funny... you say it's easy to avoid spyware and viruses on a PC if you "completely ditch Internet Explorer and any program that uses the IE browser control"... aren't you the same person talking about how great IE is on a PC over a mac and that IE sucks on a mac, and how you can't design for IE on a mac yet you can on a PC? How are you gonna ditch the entire browser if it's so much better on a PC? And you say to avoid these problems you have to get rid of IE on the PC... well why do I not have to get rid of IE on my Mac? I don't have any viruses... hmmm. Maybe it's not just the browser but the coding and security issues of the pc. That's something to think about.

I already addressed that; I use IE to test *my own pages, on my own domain* for compatibility, not for ordinary surfing. Most people do not need to design for the web. Most people who don't design for the web, and who use PCs, use IE because they're not educated enough on how dangerous it is, despite all the spyware/adware problems. Actually, I'm consistently amazed at how many of the Mac users I work with still prefer IE (Mac edition, of course), despite its ugliness, outdatedness and tendency to choke on perfectly standards-compliant pages. It's like anybody who uses IE long enough, Win or Mac, loses all common sense...

6. Don't really have much to say here about backwards compatibility... I know I have tried to run some older games on a newer PC and usually have problems because the system runs the old game too fast. Classic runs older mac software just fine for me but maybe I'm not trying to run old enough software for the comparison. However this is not really even worth bringing up because a new user of any computer pc or mac is probably not going to go find software from 5 years ago that they would rather use.

New users, no, but I was really referring more generally to the priorities of Apple vs those of PC manufacturers and software companies. I use Macs at work, where we have a large library of old software which I've wanted to use to open old files, and the backwards compatibility thing has been just a tremendously major pain in the ass. Coming from my PC background, that was really something I had to get used to, because, just from experience, I literally expected -- no, demanded -- near total compatibility with older products. If something's 10 years old, yeah, ok, maybe I can accept that it won't work -- because the software is long gone, for instance. On the Macs, I've found, even a few years difference between versions of a program can be the difference between having and losing your data. There are other things, again astonishing to me -- like the fact that there are binary incompatibilities between Jaguar and Panther -- that convince me that the kind of respect for 'legacy' stuff that I had come to expect simply isn't a major consideration in the Mac world. That's a cultural issue I think, probably one longtime Mac users wouldn't even realize or consider problematic, but it might be for people unfamiliar with Macs.

[brianus]

7. It's kind of funny that you mention apple releasing new software just to get more money every year... lets see... microsoft released windows 95, and then came out with windows 98, windows ME, Windows 2000, and windows xp; I'll have to check my old credit card statements but I'm pretty sure I had to pay for those updates... maybe you got them for free though?

Actually I did, but that's not the point :p 98 came out 3 years after 95, ME 2 years after that (and almost noone bothered to update to that one, since they all knew by then that XP was coming the following year). 2000 was not a linear upgrade from those, but rather an update to the already 6 year old Windows NT platform. And XP, finally, was a replacement for all of them, but many W2K users waited till Server 2003 came out to replace 2000.

Now, if you had bought Windows 95 in, say, 1996, then over the next 5 years there would have been only 1 paid upgrade you could really justify (Win98). But you wouldn't even have had to -- I didn't notice significant numbers of programs coming out with Win98 as a minimum system requirement until long after its release. So the point is, major upgrades in the Windows world traditionally came at 2-3 year intervals, and don't become really essential for another year or two. Now, they're breaking a record; XP has now been without a paid upgrade for 5 years.

By contrast, over the last 5 years, Apple has asked its customers to pay for relatively minor upgrades to the same system 5 times.


Apple releases updates to each system 10.3.1, 10.3.2, 10.3.3, etc, that pretty much equal the service packs that microsoft sends out.

You are quite correct that these updates are equivalent to XP's "service packs", which is what I was saying; so why should we have to PAY for them? Service packs are free.

Lets also not forget that the new updated osx cost $113.88 at macmall.com; while windows xp professional that is getting old is 208.99 for the upgrade and 309.49 if you need a fresh copy. Now you can argue that "you gave the price for professional and not home," well apple gives you "everything" for that price... to get "everything" for your pc will cost you two to three times as much. Now that's food for thought and something to think about when considering total cost and not just initial hardware cost.

But consider realistic user experience. Most XP users do not need to upgrade from Home, and the Service Packs are free. OS X does deliver more bang for the buck on software, to be sure, but it more than recoups that by forcing you to pay for every .1 of a version number. Guess how much I've paid for XP upgrades since I got my laptop in 2002? $0. And how much would I have wound up paying since then for OS X if I'd bought a Mac that year instead? This will become less of a bother in the future, with Apple starting to stretch out its updates to OS X, but even so, I'm going to have to deal with far more frequent, less backwards compatible, and more expensive upgrades than I'm used to. I'm sucking it up because I love OS X, but I'm not going to pretend that aspect of it doesn't bother me.

I'm sorry for the long rant... this guy just almost sounds like a pc user that has a friend with a mac and is pissed off by it. I'm sure that's not the case so sorry if I offended you...

That's hardly the case. I used Macs in elementary and middle school, never having touched a Wintel box until high school. I wanted a Mac for my first 'real' computer but wound up with PCs in HS and college because they're cheap (and because, at the time, before OS X, not having Windows was more of a disadvantage than it is now). I eventually realized that when properly cared for, PCs, though not terribly 'inspiring' machines, were hardly the beasts I'd been told they were, and moreover their being a de facto standard for computing was a major advantage. And whaddaya know, that weird second mouse button is actually really convenient! So Macs kinda fell off the radar screen for me in the late 90s and I didn't really consider them again until I started working at a place that's all-Mac. OS X, and only OS X, is what has put them back in the running for me. I may be 'pissed off' (not really, more like 'bothered' or 'concerned'; I AM BUYING A MAC, after all, so it's not like I hate them) by some of the 'quirks' of Apple, its hardware, and of a 'culture' whose priorities are a little different from what I've become accustomed to in the PC world; and I also readily acknowledge where I've found Macs are simply not sufficient for what needs to be done. I guess that's a very PC way of thinking: I am as pragmatic about the Mac as I am about any other computer; I could never be a card-carrying Mac idealist; and I definitely see through hype. But I hasten to point out, again, that I am overlooking all of my concerns because of the Macintosh operating system, which I believe, based on nothing more than my own experience with it, to be worth putting up with what I've laid out. I cannot imagine that I will ever find myself saying that about Longhorn or any of the 80 zillion flavors of Linux out there. I will pay for constant upgrades, accept less backwards compatibility, try to make peace with the inability to update most of the capabilities of my Mini, ignore the fact that I've chosen a machine with half the clock speed and RAM of my dad's PC that he paid the same price for, and continue to run PCs alongside the Mac to run programs that aren't available for it -- all, again, because of its superior operating system. But I certainly won't then turn around and pretend that in every facet, Macs, Apple and their culture are superior. PUH-lease.

(And I will, of course, also take some solace from the fact that the Mini is physically attractive, 'cool' and less intrusive than a tower)

[tech4all]

Apple releases updates to each system 10.3.1, 10.3.2, 10.3.3, etc, that pretty much equal the service packs that microsoft sends out.You are quite correct that these updates are equivalent to XP's "service packs", which is what I was saying; so why should we have to PAY for them? Service packs are free.

We don't pay for these the 10.x.x updates. Only the 10.x updates.

10.3.1 > 10.3.2 > 10.3.3 >......10.4.0 > 10.4.1 > 10.4.2, etc. are free updates.

10.3 > 10.4 aka: 'Panther > Tiger' is not free.

[Mechcozmo]

3. I NEED TO RIGHT CLICK! I just can't deal with Macs! ONE BUTTON! OMGWTFBBQ!! I can't plug in a USB 2-button mouse!

Not sure if its a joke or not... but any USB mouse works. :D

[weg]

Ok I've pretty much decided I'm going to switch when the updated Ibooks come, I just want to hear what you think the 5 weak points of Apple are. In the other thread you only hear the good things.

Anyone ? :)

1.) You're investing in a platform that hasn't seen many serious hardware updates lately
2.) You're dependent on a single hardware/software manufacturer
3.) There isn't as much software as for Windows and Linux. You'll have to pay for things that you get for free on other platforms (e.g., think of DVDshrink).
4.) Hardware compatibility: As with Linux, you have to be choosy when buying new hardware for your Mac.
5.) Support: If you have problems with your Mac, no one of your computer geek friends is likely to be able to help you (coz they're all using Linux or Windows). That's of course irrelevant if you're a computer geek yourself ;-)

[katie ta achoo]

Not sure if its a joke or not... but any USB mouse works. :D

I've plugged in many-a-USB mouse. I know it's able to be done.

I'm not sure if I'd "omgwtfbbq" at that, hahaha.

[katie ta achoo]

2.) You're dependent on a single hardware/software manufacturer

That, in many ways, can make it easier! If you have a problem, you can call Apple, and have them help you. With the family PC, we have MS windows on a Compaq *now HP* box, with a seagate HD, with a no-name ethernet adapter... you get the idea. Now, something could go wrong. I get to call 10 places, trying to trouble-shoot instead of one? Yay...
With one stop for HD or screen problems or "ah! OS X is imploding" It simplifies (for me, at least)

5.) Support: If you have problems with your Mac, no one of your computer geek friends is likely to be able to help you (coz they're all using Linux or Windows). That's of course irrelevant if you're a computer geek yourself ;-)
If you have a problem, you can go to the Apple store's genius bar. Or post on here. Or post on Apple Support forums. Or Call Apple. There are hundreds of Mac communities (like this) where you can go get fast, quality help for anything mac-related! (and you get to read fun flame wars like this is turning into.:))

[Doctor Q]

I was referring to the very real incompatibilities between browsers (mostly having to do with JavaScript/DHTML, at least in my experience... seriously, if you have ever done any design in that area, you know the headaches of which I speak). Most of these incompatibilities are entirely the fault of Microsoft and its crappy IE; Safari is a far more standards-compliant browser. My point is simply that, like it or not, IE is what most people use, and you can't be sure that what you've tested in Safari is going to work right for your Windows clients. Again, I know this from personal experience. I wish I didn't have to cross-test between PC and Mac for this stuff, but I have no choice.Same here (although I interpreted what you said earlier as implying that people need only a PC to test web pages). I have found no alternative to testing on both platforms with, at a minimum, IE, Safari, and Firefox (the list changes over time as user choices slowly change). Which is why I don't think browser compatibility is a big factor for getting a PC (or a Mac). To do it right, you need both. Someone said that Dreamweaver almost lets you design once and produce multi-browser-compatible sites, which is good news, but I don't think we're quite there yet.

But Office.. ugh. The Mac version does a lot of strange things like inserting little paragraph symbols all over Word documents, or refusing to open files that work just fine on the PC. It's also surprisingly slow compared to most of the other programs I use on the Mac. It's serviceable, but I've never had these problems with the Windows version. Like Point #1, this isn't the "fault" of Macs, it's just an unfortunate reality I've encountered.After years of use on both platforms, I still find Word on both platforms giving me impossible-to-fathom surprises, such as not letting me delete the last row of a table, switching columns in a table when you arrow one direction but not the other, reversing the boldness of text (bold and non-bold swap places) when I paste, etc. Let's just say it doesn't think like I do.

More people use Windows, so I agree that a Windows Word document is more likely to look as intended on another picked-at-random computer (i.e., more likely a PC), one reason being that the same fonts are more likely to be there, but no guarantees in any case since Word documents seem to be affected by the currently selected printer driver too. And the particular version of Word installed. And you are correct that Word for Mac is often inexplicably slow. I confirm that as a Windows advantage.

[theISHkid]

thanks tech4all... that's exactly what I was going to say... we don't pay for the equivalent of a service pack on the mac... just the major updates. You are completely right that most users have no reason to update from home to professional, but osx gives you everything and in order to get everything with a pc you have to pay 2 - 3 times as much. Now just because it took microsoft longer to come out with their updates is no excuse... with the exception of xp most of those updates were minimal and barely noticable when you took the upgrade. At least apple throws in some goodies with their system like expose or the new widgets... are these alone worth 100 a piece... probably not. But you don't have to upgrade either, just like I still have one of my pc's running windows 98, and I still haven't upgraded to tiger yet...
Look I'm sorry if I offended anyone by saying you don't have a mac or something else... it's just I have this friend, whose dad worked for intel. He swore up and down about how much macs suck and how you can't update them and there are no programs for them, all because macs don't use intel processors... he had never even touched one. Now that daddy's company all of a sudden is going to sell their processors in a mac he doesn't dog them, even though he still hasn't touched one and still hasn't done any research to back up his arguments. Some of the people on here just seem like die hard pc lovers like my friend instead of valid mac users trying to give someone new an honest opinion about what they hate about mac...
Maybe I am not enough of a "power" user to spout off big words and problems that I have with developing complex pixel shader 3d whatchamacalits with my mac; however chances are... this forum was started by someone looking to get into macs that isn't wanting that kind of information either. Most new users want to know real world situations that are frustrating to everyday mac users... So again sorry if I got out of hand with some of my comments... I'm sure you all have valid problems that affect your day to day work, however a few of them seemed a little complex. But again I am sorry.

To address a few others... one person mentioned not being able to find dvd software burning software... check out versiontracker.com, it has lots of dvd software for compressing and extracting dvds, many for free... Also check out roxio popcorn for burning dvds on the mac.

Someone else was mentioning "sharing" software. I don't know if these two sites are still up or not but check out the two file sharing programs poisoned and limewire... those were both pretty good a while back.

[mpw]

We don't pay for these the 10.x.x updates. Only the 10.x updates.

10.3.1 > 10.3.2 > 10.3.3 >......10.4.0 > 10.4.1 > 10.4.2, etc. are free updates.

10.3 > 10.4 aka: 'Panther > Tiger' is not free.

It's also worth noting that although Tiger isn't free it is only £74.99 whereas MS Windows XP is £249.99 (prices from Amazon.co.uk)

[Eric5h5]

I think Apple's insistence on staying with OS X may be causing problems in some people's minds, because that way we get 10.1, 10.2, 10.3, etc, when Apple could just as well be calling them OS 11, OS 12, OS 13, etc. But they want to stay with OS 10. I would say that, for example, OS 8.6 and OS 9.2 are more similar than 10.3 and 10.4, but you can't go from 8 to 9 for free either.

If they were called by whole numbers, would you complain? The "service pack" "point point" updates are, rightly, free. The major "point" updates are at least as substantial as the differences between Win 95, 98, ME, which were certainly not free. It's just that XP hasn't been updated in a long time. (To be fair to Microsoft, they really can't win here...people complained about the relatively frequent updates to Windows, and now they complain that Windows isn't updated. What are they supposed to do?)

And the differences between 10.3 and 10.4 are quite substantial. (Although many of the "200 new features" are in fact trivial.) Problem is, the biggest and most important differences are "behind the scenes" and not immediately apparent to the general user, so Apple is stuck marketing Spotlight and Dashboard.

--Eric

[Jay42]

I love how this INSTANTLY turned into into a "top 5 reason TO buy a mac" thread. Can't blame 'em though. :D

[iDM]

My Number one reason I dislike Macs:
The amount of free time i now have to spend on the internet or playing with pictures/music as opposed to spending hours troubleshooting problems within Windows. I mean how can you complain about Windows when you get to go through driver after driver trying to find the right one to get your mouse or monitor to work properly. I MISS THIS!!!

The second thing would probably be the aesthesis of Windows I mean all those unorganized icons and that hideous taskbar along the bottom that is what truly made windows better, even when they tried to clean things up with XP did it still look like some late 1990's desktop(XP was not even in the same universe when compared to the looks of OSX.1)

And last but not least is I miss having to log in through Task Manager in Windows and eliminate all of those useless CPU cannibals that would slow down all of the other processes the computer was running.

Ok ok honestly thought what I do miss is the fact that at one point I put together a super fast machine with the best components all around for about 800 dollars. Granted I had to buy all the parts from different no-name providers and the case looked like a monster the thing was top of the line for under a 1000 dollars, you can't beat that.

[derboy]

the non-existence of a specific application doesn't mean it can't do it.

Thats exactly what it means.

"I'd like an application to go outside and paint my house". There is no application to do this because no one has written one. The concept of it being possible or impossible is irrelevant. I still cant do it, because there is no mechanism to carry out said painting :D