Neither am I. I run Windows XP Pro, Leopard and Ubuntu but the point I was originally making is I would still pay the money for a mac. We can only hope in the coming months those vulnerabilities will be taken care of with Snow Leopard.
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Is a Mac worth it?
- Thread starter killerboots
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One reason alone to buy a Mac: No Conflictor Worm!!!
Macs don't get virus attacks or malware (it would be extremely rare, if ever). Meanwhile many of my PC friends do get virus problems, etc. that slow them down and wreck havoc. Many PC friends have to pay a Geek Squad allot of money to get their computer up and running after almost inevitable problems occur. There is also the $90 or so a year for anti-virus software, plus research time, scares and updates to keep up with on PC's. All non-productive and costly!!!
Macs just work! Plug and play to the max. They have a great OS and come with iLife (easy to use and professional looking photo managing/editing, movie editing, web, music making and dvd authoring software).
I could go on and on. The price is worth every penny and the machines really last. Apple has the best service per every consumer magazine.
Don't miss out on the student discounts, the Apple refurbished units that have the same warrantee as new and the back to school deals!
Macs don't get virus attacks or malware (it would be extremely rare, if ever). Meanwhile many of my PC friends do get virus problems, etc. that slow them down and wreck havoc. Many PC friends have to pay a Geek Squad allot of money to get their computer up and running after almost inevitable problems occur. There is also the $90 or so a year for anti-virus software, plus research time, scares and updates to keep up with on PC's. All non-productive and costly!!!
Macs just work! Plug and play to the max. They have a great OS and come with iLife (easy to use and professional looking photo managing/editing, movie editing, web, music making and dvd authoring software).
I could go on and on. The price is worth every penny and the machines really last. Apple has the best service per every consumer magazine.
Don't miss out on the student discounts, the Apple refurbished units that have the same warrantee as new and the back to school deals!
Your friends actually go to geek squad for their issues?
Even the people who work for geek squad are clueless. I used to work for them, and I was the only one who knew anything.
Personally, I think your friends shouldn't even be using a computer until they understand it better. Same goes for macs. Seriously, anyone who has the go to geek squad is a huge noob.
I'm not the only one who thinks Apple's laptop displays are the cream of the crop out there:
"this screen is the best we've ever seen in a laptop" - Digital Photography Insights
"Oh, and did I mention that screen? You know the difference between regular TV and high-def TV? That's what it feels like using this model." - PC World
"The LED-backlit display is nothing short of stunning here . . The screen is classic, gorgeous Apple" - Engadget
really, reviews are useless to me. I often find myself disagreeing with most reviewers.
In your original post:
..you referred to the MacBook screens, which have been sharply criticized by many critics. Many people find the MacBook displays washed out and disappointing on many levels. The MacBook Pro screens on the other hand have been praised for their quality. Those reviews you've provided are all referring to the LED displays on the 15" MacBook Pros and are not referring to the MacBook displays. I'd agree with the critics of those reviews when they state that these are among the nicest displays available in a 15" laptop. But make no mistake that the MacBook displays aren't up to the same caliber and those reviews aren't praising the 13" MacBook displays.
Sorry, but you are mistaken. The new MacBooks have LED-backlit screens just as the MacBook Pro. Read the Engadget review.
Instead of forming opinions which aren't true at all, you should spend some time reading what people are actually saying in this forum. In my first post, I stated that both the MacBook and the 13" Vaio are using an LED display. Please go back to my first post and read for yourself. I have provided a quote of what I stated back in my first post. I have bolded and underlined my comment for you:
We've already established that the 15" LED screens are great and no one is disputing this claim. But if you did your homework, you'd realize that the screens being used in the 13" MacBooks aren't up to the same quality and have been sharply criticized by members of this form and the mac community.
Your friends actually go to geek squad for their issues?
Even the people who work for geek squad are clueless. I used to work for them, and I was the only one who knew anything.
Personally, I think your friends shouldn't even be using a computer until they understand it better. Same goes for macs. Seriously, anyone who has the go to geek squad is a huge noob.
Wow I doubt that Microsoft or Apple would agree with you there. You shouldn't have to be a mechanic to drive a car. You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to use a computer.
a long post...
I am seeing a lot of BS on both parts of this debate, both from the Apple fanboys and the Window fanboys and a lot of it is from PR and marketing being touted out by both sides, I would say all victims of believing everything they want to believe. I am going to do my best to offer the most unbiased possible answer here. Before that I will give a brief history of myself.
When I started out on computers it was System 6 and Windows 3.1. Hands down System 6 and soon after System 7 where far superior then Windows 3.1. Even when it was Between Windows 9x and System 8 and 9 I would have given the edge to MacOS though they all lacked the technologies of what we call modern operating systems of today.
Since 1998 I have been a service technician for both Macs and Windows with most of my work for the last 8 years or so being on Windows machines because that was where the money was. Thank you viruses, spyware and incompetent programmers on the windows side. I currently work in IT for a large international company and manage 300 Windows machines and another 20 Mac machines hands on and part of a team that manages over 12 000 computers in the company.
I have been building custom PCs for a decade and I have taken apart a few macs.
Before I answer the question, my personal computer ownership.
Macs
PowerPC 5400/180 1997 to 2003 (death due to being rained on when a window was open)
iMac 15 Flat panel 800Mhz Bought used in 2004 to current, still used, still viable machine with 10.4 Tiger. I believe it was the released in 2002 so it is now over 7 years old
Powerbook G4 12 1.33Ghz bought used in 2005 and sold it in 2008. Still working, and still a viable machine and it served me well and was heavily abused. Had to replace damaged hard drive once. (Btw this was the most complicated computer I have ever taken apart in my entire life, I still have a few left over screws from it. I sold it for $500.00 last year just before I bought current mac. This model came out in 2004 so its now 5 years old.
Current and main computer is a early 2008 Macbook Pro 2.5Ghz. Used 16 hours a day, 8 hours a day in Windows, 8 hours a day in OS X. Windows at Work and OS X at home. Just last week its fan failed and I had it replaced under warranty. First experience with Apples Warranty service which was brilliant. Wish all companies had such good service.
Current PCs
3 Dells, 3 custom build computers, over the years I have gone through about 10 PCs. Of the 6 current PCs I have running (3 of them are servers, 3 are in a closet) only 1 is a viable computer and its a year old. That year old Dell is not capable of running Vista acceptable with out some additional upgrades and it has already been upgraded. In-fact the only machine I have that runs Vista and Windows 7 beta well is my Macbook Pro.
Now to answer the question, Yes the price is worth it but not for many of the reasons posted by other users though some have hit on some of the good points.
The fact is you get what you pay for. Macs are no more expensive then PCs and PCs are no more cheaper. You can find PC laptops that cost the same as Macs and you can find PC laptops that cost even more. The difference here is choice. Apple provides a limited amount of products and they all have to meet the expectations of a good experience for the end user. This means the machines themselves are engineered to a certain quality which costs money.
They all come with Bluetooth, they all come with a Wireless card that works on A, B, G, N networks. They all come with 5Ghz N as well something that is just starting to appear as a option in PCs. More important is the little differences that people cant see that also add to the cost of the machines. My macbook pro fans operate at 2000RPM, a very low speed. This was done for acoustic reasons and this laptop is dead silent because of it. To compensate for this apple uses fans with a ton of tinny fins on it. Most standard PC laptops use stranded 4 or 5 fin fans which require operations of 4-5k to cool the machine. This is not a flaw in the PCs. This is just one of the points of how extra engineering goes into Macs to provide a experience.
The magnetic power cord is another example. At work I would have to say about 7 power cords are replaced a year from damage. One of my older PC laptops got tossed out when I broke the power cord after tripping on it. The cost of a new power cord was the value of the machine. The power brick of my laptop is the same width of a plug, this allows for plugs on either side of it to be used by other devices on a power bar. The prongs on the plug are also at the very top of it. This means on a standard 2 plug outlet on the wall, it does not hinder use of the top plug. The end pops off to allow world plugs or the extension cable. The built in camera is really good quality.
The sound quality out of the speakers are by far better then any PC laptop I have ever used. The combination of Analog and Digital Audio jacks which recently I started using the Digital Audio jack. Its been so good I wont go back to analog. The feel of the keyboard is solid but this is a personal preference. Every person is different some will like the keyboard some wont.
Most PC laptops have 2 maybe 3 temp sensors inside. My Powerbook has 10! When you look at the hardware of a Mac its not priced to badly. If you only look at the hardware then yes its pricy for what you get. But the cost of a Mac is not just hardware and I think this is a point to many people over look. You are paying for the Computer Hardware, Mac OS and iLife, and apples excellent world wide warranty and support service.
Can you get all these things in a PC? You bet but not at a price cheaper then a mac. A $700.00 HP laptop will be bigger, heavier, contain less features even if at first you dont think you would use them, had the laptop included them you might have later on. The Operating system is going to be one of the crippled versions of Vista, either Home or Business, nothing that really compares to iLife and a local warranty and support service that isnt even in the same class as Apples. So as I said before you get what you pay for. You can spec out the hardware to include everything a Mac has and even more since card readers and thumb print readers are not in macs, and get the full version of Vista Ultimate and pay for a equivalent World wide, in home warranty service but what you will find is the cost of the machine is that or more of a mac.
So then it comes down to whats better, OS X or Windows.
A Mac can run both, a PC legally cant. On the surface its going to be a personal preference to what a person likes more. Under the hood, OS X is far superior to Windows Vista. Windows Vista is bloated software, requires unnecessary resources to operate thanks to back room deals with PC venders to help force hardware upgrades. Is a patchwork of technologies that do not integrate well affecting performance and built in DRM technologies which will be worse in Windows 7 when the Operating system becomes the police of what you can and cant do with your content to appease copyright owners. Out of the box Windows 7 assumes youre a thief. Vista is slow, and cluttered, and to many things got changed that where just fine in all pervious versions of Windows just to make the system look pretty to compete with OS X. As you can tell I prefer Windows XP over Vista. Windows 7 which will fix the visible performance issues does not address the real performance issues under the hood. But hey as long as your mouse click is faster, and menus appear faster its fixed for the average user.
To be honest for the average computer user who does not make use of his computer, Vista will be fine. But the second you want to do more intensive things like coping movies, large files, photoshop work, movie converting, gaming the performance hit of the OS really hit you. And for many who have no experience with XP who moved from Mac to Vista, you can **** because you will never know what is being talked about until you have used XP or 2000.
So my biggest beef with PCs, say Sony or HP is not really the computer itself. Hardware is hardware, you get what you pay for. You can get it cheaper then a Apple computer or you can pay more then a Apple computer and have a better computer in hardware. The problem is the operating system and right now and for me that means Mac because I cant stomach Windows or Microsoft any more. There CEO does not get it, they tailor all there core products to business not the consumer. Backroom deals to screw people over. Built in obsolesces to force re purchasing the same software year after year after year. Out right lies about there products and total lies in marketing. Deals with companies like Adobe to allow adobe software to punch holes in the firewall to communicate back to its parent company, and built into the OS itself the ability for software companies to disable there own software. No thanx, I have technical griefs with all the current software from Microsoft, I have personal issues with how controls are being built into the software to control my freedoms of usage, I have moral issues with the company itself with how it operates.
Get a Mac. They resell used for much more then any PC does and remain viable much longer. This is more true then ever with every new OS from Microsoft being a pig.a
PS the new screens of the Macbooks are not the best on the market due to the glass cover. Dam easy to clean compared to older LCDs. But I think the rest of the machine and OS X, iLife, and the support makes up for this blunder.
I am seeing a lot of BS on both parts of this debate, both from the Apple fanboys and the Window fanboys and a lot of it is from PR and marketing being touted out by both sides, I would say all victims of believing everything they want to believe. I am going to do my best to offer the most unbiased possible answer here. Before that I will give a brief history of myself.
When I started out on computers it was System 6 and Windows 3.1. Hands down System 6 and soon after System 7 where far superior then Windows 3.1. Even when it was Between Windows 9x and System 8 and 9 I would have given the edge to MacOS though they all lacked the technologies of what we call modern operating systems of today.
Since 1998 I have been a service technician for both Macs and Windows with most of my work for the last 8 years or so being on Windows machines because that was where the money was. Thank you viruses, spyware and incompetent programmers on the windows side. I currently work in IT for a large international company and manage 300 Windows machines and another 20 Mac machines hands on and part of a team that manages over 12 000 computers in the company.
I have been building custom PCs for a decade and I have taken apart a few macs.
Before I answer the question, my personal computer ownership.
Macs
PowerPC 5400/180 1997 to 2003 (death due to being rained on when a window was open)
iMac 15 Flat panel 800Mhz Bought used in 2004 to current, still used, still viable machine with 10.4 Tiger. I believe it was the released in 2002 so it is now over 7 years old
Powerbook G4 12 1.33Ghz bought used in 2005 and sold it in 2008. Still working, and still a viable machine and it served me well and was heavily abused. Had to replace damaged hard drive once. (Btw this was the most complicated computer I have ever taken apart in my entire life, I still have a few left over screws from it. I sold it for $500.00 last year just before I bought current mac. This model came out in 2004 so its now 5 years old.
Current and main computer is a early 2008 Macbook Pro 2.5Ghz. Used 16 hours a day, 8 hours a day in Windows, 8 hours a day in OS X. Windows at Work and OS X at home. Just last week its fan failed and I had it replaced under warranty. First experience with Apples Warranty service which was brilliant. Wish all companies had such good service.
Current PCs
3 Dells, 3 custom build computers, over the years I have gone through about 10 PCs. Of the 6 current PCs I have running (3 of them are servers, 3 are in a closet) only 1 is a viable computer and its a year old. That year old Dell is not capable of running Vista acceptable with out some additional upgrades and it has already been upgraded. In-fact the only machine I have that runs Vista and Windows 7 beta well is my Macbook Pro.
Now to answer the question, Yes the price is worth it but not for many of the reasons posted by other users though some have hit on some of the good points.
The fact is you get what you pay for. Macs are no more expensive then PCs and PCs are no more cheaper. You can find PC laptops that cost the same as Macs and you can find PC laptops that cost even more. The difference here is choice. Apple provides a limited amount of products and they all have to meet the expectations of a good experience for the end user. This means the machines themselves are engineered to a certain quality which costs money.
They all come with Bluetooth, they all come with a Wireless card that works on A, B, G, N networks. They all come with 5Ghz N as well something that is just starting to appear as a option in PCs. More important is the little differences that people cant see that also add to the cost of the machines. My macbook pro fans operate at 2000RPM, a very low speed. This was done for acoustic reasons and this laptop is dead silent because of it. To compensate for this apple uses fans with a ton of tinny fins on it. Most standard PC laptops use stranded 4 or 5 fin fans which require operations of 4-5k to cool the machine. This is not a flaw in the PCs. This is just one of the points of how extra engineering goes into Macs to provide a experience.
The magnetic power cord is another example. At work I would have to say about 7 power cords are replaced a year from damage. One of my older PC laptops got tossed out when I broke the power cord after tripping on it. The cost of a new power cord was the value of the machine. The power brick of my laptop is the same width of a plug, this allows for plugs on either side of it to be used by other devices on a power bar. The prongs on the plug are also at the very top of it. This means on a standard 2 plug outlet on the wall, it does not hinder use of the top plug. The end pops off to allow world plugs or the extension cable. The built in camera is really good quality.
The sound quality out of the speakers are by far better then any PC laptop I have ever used. The combination of Analog and Digital Audio jacks which recently I started using the Digital Audio jack. Its been so good I wont go back to analog. The feel of the keyboard is solid but this is a personal preference. Every person is different some will like the keyboard some wont.
Most PC laptops have 2 maybe 3 temp sensors inside. My Powerbook has 10! When you look at the hardware of a Mac its not priced to badly. If you only look at the hardware then yes its pricy for what you get. But the cost of a Mac is not just hardware and I think this is a point to many people over look. You are paying for the Computer Hardware, Mac OS and iLife, and apples excellent world wide warranty and support service.
Can you get all these things in a PC? You bet but not at a price cheaper then a mac. A $700.00 HP laptop will be bigger, heavier, contain less features even if at first you dont think you would use them, had the laptop included them you might have later on. The Operating system is going to be one of the crippled versions of Vista, either Home or Business, nothing that really compares to iLife and a local warranty and support service that isnt even in the same class as Apples. So as I said before you get what you pay for. You can spec out the hardware to include everything a Mac has and even more since card readers and thumb print readers are not in macs, and get the full version of Vista Ultimate and pay for a equivalent World wide, in home warranty service but what you will find is the cost of the machine is that or more of a mac.
So then it comes down to whats better, OS X or Windows.
A Mac can run both, a PC legally cant. On the surface its going to be a personal preference to what a person likes more. Under the hood, OS X is far superior to Windows Vista. Windows Vista is bloated software, requires unnecessary resources to operate thanks to back room deals with PC venders to help force hardware upgrades. Is a patchwork of technologies that do not integrate well affecting performance and built in DRM technologies which will be worse in Windows 7 when the Operating system becomes the police of what you can and cant do with your content to appease copyright owners. Out of the box Windows 7 assumes youre a thief. Vista is slow, and cluttered, and to many things got changed that where just fine in all pervious versions of Windows just to make the system look pretty to compete with OS X. As you can tell I prefer Windows XP over Vista. Windows 7 which will fix the visible performance issues does not address the real performance issues under the hood. But hey as long as your mouse click is faster, and menus appear faster its fixed for the average user.
To be honest for the average computer user who does not make use of his computer, Vista will be fine. But the second you want to do more intensive things like coping movies, large files, photoshop work, movie converting, gaming the performance hit of the OS really hit you. And for many who have no experience with XP who moved from Mac to Vista, you can **** because you will never know what is being talked about until you have used XP or 2000.
So my biggest beef with PCs, say Sony or HP is not really the computer itself. Hardware is hardware, you get what you pay for. You can get it cheaper then a Apple computer or you can pay more then a Apple computer and have a better computer in hardware. The problem is the operating system and right now and for me that means Mac because I cant stomach Windows or Microsoft any more. There CEO does not get it, they tailor all there core products to business not the consumer. Backroom deals to screw people over. Built in obsolesces to force re purchasing the same software year after year after year. Out right lies about there products and total lies in marketing. Deals with companies like Adobe to allow adobe software to punch holes in the firewall to communicate back to its parent company, and built into the OS itself the ability for software companies to disable there own software. No thanx, I have technical griefs with all the current software from Microsoft, I have personal issues with how controls are being built into the software to control my freedoms of usage, I have moral issues with the company itself with how it operates.
Get a Mac. They resell used for much more then any PC does and remain viable much longer. This is more true then ever with every new OS from Microsoft being a pig.a
PS the new screens of the Macbooks are not the best on the market due to the glass cover. Dam easy to clean compared to older LCDs. But I think the rest of the machine and OS X, iLife, and the support makes up for this blunder.
Forget the marketing bs from both. Computers are designed by engineers, for engineers. Just because everybody can buy them and they appear to be a commodity does not make them one. Their basic design has not changed since they were invented. Even when woz designed the Apple I and had visions of anybody being able to have a computer, he was also thinking about people programming them. It is the way engineers think. Unless there is a revolution and their fundamental design isn't changed, this will not change.
On the up side, everybody is able to learn how to operate these things. But if people don't bother, don't blame the tool, blame the operator.
Great story, but the whole vista thing is BS.
Why are you running Tiger on your 2002 Mac? Because it can't run Leopard properly.
So why do you expect a PC that does not match Vista's real world requirements to run it anyway? Because it is a year old? So you buy a marginal PC from a company that sells marginal PC's and it is the OS's fault? Give me a break.
My PC is about 2 years old, was (upper) midrange when I build it and it runs Vista just as well as it does XP without any discernible speed difference and even faster with some things. But then again, I didn't try to get a dollar for a dime.
You bash Vista DRM provisions, yet you completely ignore a similar scheme in iTunes.
You slam fanboyism from both sides, yet you display the same Apple fanboy behavior through a long post with comments covered with a (false) appearance of objectiveness.
Stop measuring Macs and PCs with two different standards. Like you said, you get what you pay for. A $200 pc will never be more than a $200 pc. If you don't want to spend more, don't bitch if it doesn't do what a $2000 pc does. Buy quality parts or quality computer and you end up with similar pricetags as Apple, with similar capabilities and experience. With similar pricing, the OS is a matter of personal preference. Neither is bad, neither is perfect. And neither does everything better. Recognizing their strengths brings a lot more than slamming either one because you personally don't like it.
People have been saying for years how it is because of apple's market share that they are not a target. Yet, as Apple's market share has slowly crept upwards, there are still no viruses. the iLife 09 torrent contained a TROJAN, not a virus. It was installed by the user themselves, who typed in their password and hit "ok" to do so. And this is the only (or at least the most) publicized trojan out there. At least once a week on CNN there is some new 'windows virus of death' out there. Conficker? Millions of computers...Ring a bell???
You say that OS X has been exploited on numerous occasions, however that was Safari at the Pwn2Own competition (which is sponsored by microsoft) and it was done via local connection. Oddly enough, the top exploiters all used OS X on their primary machines, as it was their OS of choice. And let me just say - I made the switch from pc to mac recently, and I love the design of the notebook, the customer support and service I get, and the fact that malware can't just go on installing itself in the background without me even knowing about it. Also, the fact that there is a brick-and-mortar location (apple store) within 20 minutes of my house where I can bring my computer and have them fix it offers some peace of mind. No help for me when my old HP Pavilion caught a virus.
To expect a PC from 2002 to run Vista would be ridicules, to expect a PC from 2005 to run it would be pushing it. A PC bought in 2007/2008 not running Vista well, unless it's a netbook, is appalling. As hardware for PC's is more advanced in consumer lines. If Vista isn't running well that just shows a huge weakness in the OS.
Put Vista on a 800Mhz Computer with 512MB of ram. For the record Leopard ran good enough unless you wanted to run Divx movies on it then it couldn't play it back smooth. Under Tiger it can. I doubt you can even get Vista usable on a 800Mhz P3 with 512MB of ram but by all means prove me wrong.
2.3Ghz Dual Core, 2GB DDR2 667 Ram, 250GB SATA Drive and built-in Intel Graphics, upgraded to a Nvidia 8600GS Video card. I hardly call that a marginal computer.
Hey if all you do is jackoff to porn and surf a couple web pages, write a few word documents then no you wont notice any speed differences. Play some decent games, movie editing, database work, transferring of files you do.
Last time I checked iTunes was not a system level DRM system built into the OS. Also there is a difference between MP3's which are DRM'ed and a system level DRM that degrades the quality of Video or music if it is being played by a software program that didn't pay the Microsoft tax to be or limited itself to Microsofts rules to get approved. AKA VLC.
Hey would you like a long post of praise for Windows XP and Windows 2000? Before things went wrong?
The last bit is about the only intelligent thing you said. But the OS does play a big part. You take a 2000 mac with a empty hard drive and a 2000 PC with a empty hard drive they are the same and both useless. What separates the 2 is software. This is where Apple currently has the upper hand when comparing to a PC with Vista. Its why I run Leopard and XP.
Am I mad at Microsoft for a lot of things, you bet. But im not sitting here singing Oh OS X is better nah nah nah, I gave you reasons, speed, system level DRM’s, unnecessary changes to elements, extreme system resource usage, backroom deals with hardware venders to force new waves of computer purchases, focus on corporate needs not the consumer, false advertising, lies and built in obsolescent in there products.
Until Apple has something even remotely similar to Active Directory and GPO’s I will still be recommending Windows 200x Server and Windows XP for large business environments if that makes you feel better.
Partly true, on paper Windows Vista is more secure then OS X, but only on paper. There is a few technologies, a couple big ones that Apple needs to put in that exist in Linux (first) and Vista that OS X really needs to be "secure". That said the market share does play a role in it, but more important, the fact that from day one, OS X has been a lesser privilege user environment meaning all the software built for OS X is built for this kind of system. Windows weakness, and this still affects Vista is the fact that Windows had always been an administrator environment. The user was in full control of the system and programs built had that in mind. You can get the same kind of protection on XP as the UAC in Vista by creating a regular user account and learning to use the right click Run As command. I actually find that less intrusive then the UAC. But the UAC was designed more for programs that where built on a user being the administrator then to force a user into good habits. It took me 3 months with a team of 2 other people to get a working lock down of our XP computers at work because so many programs we had did not run or run right because the user was not the administrator. Sometimes it was adjusting a registry value or the permissions on it. Sometimes it was adjusting the privileges on a directory. Sometimes it was adjusting the permissions on a single file in the Windows directory.
Any Windows machine that is patched well and the user is running as a non administrator is pretty safe. If the user does not have the rights to admin stuff, viruses for the most part don't either. Most users run XP as administrators, a lot of the Vista users I know turn UAC off, and software developers still build programs that need administrator rights to run right. This is why Windows is still subject to virus infections and Linux and OS X are not.
Whether a Mac is worth the money or not is purely subjective. Only you can assess what it's worth to you.
Why are Macs more expensive? Well, part of it is brand tax (the Apple brand commands a premium), part of it is R&D (Apple tends to innovate stuff, such as the buttonless multi-touch trackpad, the laser-cut MBP unibody, the revolutionary MBP17" battery etc, whereas most PC manufacturers can't be arsed to bring anything new to the table), part of it is the more expensive materials used (aluminium and glass, vs plastic), and part of it is reimbursement of development costs for OS X.
Many arguments can be made for or against the so-called "Apple tax".
On one hand, you might argue that a Mac is just like a premium car á la BMW or Mercedes, and that the build quality and the status symbol factor that comes with such a car is totally worth the premium compared to, say, a Kia or a Skoda.
On the other hand, you might argue that the "BMW" argument is a false equivalency since Macs aren't made in Germany by high-paid German engineers, but rather in China, using generic PC components made by the usual suspects like Intel, Samsung, LG etc. So from that perspective a Mac is more like a Kia with a BMW badge than a real BMW.
On one hand, you might argue that the relatively small market share of OS X compared to Windows means that fewer end users share the 'burden' of development costs, and therefore it's only natural that an OS X license costs more than a Windows license.
On the other hand, you might argue that it's Apple's own fault that there are so few users to split the development costs, since Apple's high prices for the computers are holding back the OS X market share, causing a catch-22: The computers are expensive because OS X is expensive because the market share is small, but the market share is small because the computers are expensive.
One one hand, you might argue that you get two computers in one when you buy a Mac, since it runs both OS X and Windows.
On the other hand, you might argue that this is hardly an achievement on Apple's part, since all they've done is build an Intel-based PC with hardware components that there are already OEM drivers for, and that the only reason why a generic PC isn't also capable of running OS X and is that Apple refuses to let it do so.
I could go on all day, but you get the picture. Again: Only you can determine if a Mac is worth its price. To one person a Mac may be a ticket to heavenly bliss, and to the next person it's merely an overpriced paperweight.
Well... if OS X was waterproof, Apple wouldn't be releasing security updates on a regular basis.
Think of the Windows universe as a rough neighborhood and the Mac universe as a quiet village in the countryside. In the rough neighborhood you can get shot or stabbed even if you wear a bullet-proof vest, in the quiet village you can walk around in swim trunks and show huge wads of cash to strangers and still have nothing to fear.
The malware landscape is changing. Ten years ago it was all about the fame and "glory" of releasing a worm that wreaks havoc all over the planet, in the hope of making headlines. Windows 98 was a sitting duck, you could basically drive in through the wide open front door. These days it's much less gratifying, not only because PCs are much safer but also because malware barely makes the news anymore (Conficker is the first one in ages to receive any press). The glory & fame thing is dead, today it's about money. Hacker kids are constantly being recruited by the likes of the Russian mafia, who want to employ their services to scam people out of their money. The day they decide to set their sights on the Mac universe (with its millions of unprotected computers owned by people who are comparatively more well-off than the average PC user), it's gonna be like a full scale ghetto thug army attack on a quiet little village in the countryside.
Mac is SO WORTH IT!
Mac is totally worth it! I have 2 mac's, my Macbook Air and my iMac. They both don't have problems and they're fast. My Air is running Snow Leopard and my iMac is running Lion. I am a fan of Mac and I am really happy with it. If you need to use Windows, use Boot Camp.
Mac is totally worth it! I have 2 mac's, my Macbook Air and my iMac. They both don't have problems and they're fast. My Air is running Snow Leopard and my iMac is running Lion. I am a fan of Mac and I am really happy with it. If you need to use Windows, use Boot Camp.
Thanks for bumping a 3 1/2 year old thread.Mac is totally worth it! I have 2 mac's, my Macbook Air and my iMac. They both don't have problems and they're fast. My Air is running Snow Leopard and my iMac is running Lion. I am a fan of Mac and I am really happy with it. If you need to use Windows, use Boot Camp.
People - please read the last post date, and unless you have something to seriously add to the conversation - don't reply if it's over 3 months old... it's annoying.
How exactly? I don't think it is, it's just preference. People think Macs are better for creativity and they are not lol
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Bad advice
os x handles RAM better so that is why a lot of video professionals prefer it. That and FCP if they didn't get sick of it yet.
Better for creativity, nah but they are still industry standard for graphic design (trust me I know because every company big and small I have worked for use them).
Mac is totally worth it! I have 2 mac's, my Macbook Air and my iMac. They both don't have problems and they're fast. My Air is running Snow Leopard and my iMac is running Lion. I am a fan of Mac and I am really happy with it. If you need to use Windows, use Boot Camp.
Dude. This thread is over 3 years old. Let it die.