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Help Me out Mac Guys

G51989

G51989

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Feb 25, 2012
2,530
10
NYC NY/Pittsburgh PA
This could be in the wrong fourm, but I have only expericnes with PowerPC Macs, and alot of you guys have been using them forever. So I need to ask this question. I'll get to it in a Bit. There is a bit of intel mac in this as well. DISCLAIMER: My whole non total dedication to Macs seems to set off a few people here. I LOVE my G5, I’m not dissing Macs in any way.

Now, some of you know, from my threads and postings. I am a hardcore PC guy. Right now I'm running a pretty beast of a main machine, I won't go into it's specs. ( I have dumped about 3400 just into the tower alone, thank god for tiger direct, and that might sound like alot, but its paid for itself, if anyone actually cares about specs PM me. its a NICE machine. ). And now I have a couple of really old Macs, and my G5. And I still have my old PC’s from high school, I keep em around.

Now here is what I want to know, exactly. What makes a Mac, better than a PC? I know there is personal preference and all that, and I think OSX is an awesome operating system.....but.

Going from back in high school, I actually had built a AMD X2 system in high school ( oh, all that over time at the super market lol ). Which had similar performance to a mid range G5 ( this was RIGHT before the Intel switch ). And, we had some G5‘s at school, some of my freinds parents had G5‘s and I knew alot of “ Mac “ people who would go on and on and on about how “ Macs are more stable, more secure, last longer, better deal, built better, blah blah blah blah Windows doesn’t work. “

Now, here is the thing. I always had XP Pro rigs that I built myself in that time period, I used ME and 95 when I was much younger, so I can’t say to much about them. But what I am trying to say is that, in the years that I used XP Pro. I NEVER had Virus Problem, never had stabilty issues, never had slow down issues, so I don’t buy the whole “ Windows Sucks at everything blah blah “, Because I don’t think XP sucked, Vista did. But 7 does not, I think OSX and Windows ( Anything XP and newer ) are both great operating systems.

But here’s what it comes to for me. Back in the day, my PC I built with comarable performance to a mid range G5 cost almost 1800 LESS than a G5 would have with the same performance. As today, if I bought a Mac Pro with similar specs to what I’m running now, would run almost 1900 dollars more ( we are talking no monitor with either system of course ) now here me out.

My System and a Mac Pro ( depending on the model of course )

Both of them are EXTEREMLY well built ( I built my own, but I used VERY nice components )
Both of them are rock solid stable
Both of them are super easy to expand
Both of them perform very very very well
Both of them are responsive, fast, run quietly and cool.
OSX and Windows 7 are both VERY stable, very fast, and very useable OS’s.
Both have tons of support.

Whats the difference? Just in the tower your looking at a 1800 dollar difference between the PC and the Mac.

So in the same sense as my higher end PC rig in Highschool, and the mid range G5‘s back in the day. What Makes Macs so much better than a PC? I’m trying to understand it. I LOVE my Mac, so don't say I'm a hater for a second. But I fail to understand what justify spending almost 2000 dollars more on the same computer at least in terms of performance just to run OSX?

Now I am not doubting the build quality/engineering put into a Mac, they are are AWESOME computers. But I just couldn't justify spending that almost 2K more on a Mac pro rather than on a PC I built myself.

And before anyone flips out at me for being a " Mac hater ", I wanna say that I bought my G5 because It was a good deal, and I wanted to try out macs that were not OS9 running piles of crap in high school. ANd I love it, its made very well, its pretty quick, and does 95% of all non serious tasks I ask it to, I love mine., hell even when I use my main rig ( I moved the G5 to my regular desk away from the legacy desk, and hooked it up to that router/dvi switch and gave it its own keyboard and mouse ) I love just touching my G5, feeling that wonderful smooth case, and I just love how well its made

But why do you guys spend that much just to run a Mac? Maybe I'm missing something.
 
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It's the software. The hardware is nice, the newer Macs and older Macs both look better than any Windows machines ever made, but the software is what makes a Mac infinitely better.

If you're using a Mac and haven't realized how much easier they are to use than Windows, how much less time you spend running ant-virus, anti-malware, anti-this, anti-that, (that is a required part of Windows) and the simplicity of every facet of the OS, then you are barely using the Mac.

I am much more productive on a Mac, while spending less time on the computer as a whole, than using Windows. And I'm a guy who used Windows for 20 years and thought Mac users were idiots.
 
I'd boil it all down to the "experience". There isn't really a logical reason why Macs are better for some instead of PCs, (Well, the pretty designs I suppose. :p)

Some find OS X much nicer to use in their daily lives, some just enjoy owning a Mac and being different, and others like the user interface and simplicity of the designs of Macs themselves and of the OS.

Yes, you could build a PC yourself for less than half the cost of a similarly spec'd Mac, but for some people the cost is worth it just for the experience.
 
I think I can answer a lot of your questions (though I am a PC guy myself).

First and foremost, you hear talk about viruses. being that you build your own PCs, you already have a ton more knowledge than the average computer user, so you know where not to go to get viruses. By that, I mean you don't click every pop-up, choose "yes" whenever asked to download some strange add-on, and choose not to download every stupid flash game on the web. This is where most viruses come from, and let's face it, more viruses are coded for Windows than OSX. There is also the fact that the OS's are fundamentaly different in how they allow code to run. Windows has gotten better, but on OSX you literally need to give permission to jsut about everything you do.

There is also sex appeal. I know this is silly, but every house I go to that has a Mac, it is somewhere in the living room, often front and center. They look nice, hence are nice to look at. People are willing to pay for beauty, especially when this machine is kept in main living space.

Support-wise I don't know another company that backs their products like Apple does. Sure, plenty of companies provide a warranty, but how many companies allow you to bring your computer in where they trouble-shoot that day. You can also buy added "one on one" learning tools (again, this isn't geared towards you, but rather the noobie) to get to learn how to use your new computer. I don't know any companies that do that either. Sure, there are computer classes everywhere, but that is a third party offering.

Stability is also something you mentioned. Remember that you are comparing a machine you built to a machine you buy in the store. When making these comparisons, the fundamental error I find is people say "it's cheaper to build". Simply put, it's cheaper to build a lot of things (cabinets, etc) if you know how. There are far, FAR more people that need their computers to be plug and play. I know people that pay someone good money to do a simple ram upgrade for them. It seems crazy to the person who knows what he is doing, but to the person that does not, this is added value. So then ask yourself, why are you building your own PCs? I know I build them because I research stability, cherry pick parts and get to perform tweaks that most plug and play PCs (we are talking HP, Comaq, etc. now) don't necessarily allow. Most of these builders go for "the cheapest components that get the job done" approach. The systems I build may be just as stable and wonderful as a store bought Mac, but that isn't the case with many store bought PCs.

My conclusion is that for me, the only mac that is worth it is the laptop (something I cannot feasibly build). But I can easily see why the Mac, in almost any form, shouts value (yes, value) to the average customer.
 
What makes it better? Before Apple switched to Intel it was just that, it wasn't Intel the exact same cpu that is in your Dell, HP, Gateway, Compaq, whatever a PC, in the G4's you got cpu's from Motorola which at the begining had a much lower speed but ran comparably as fast due to the lack of bloatware in OS9 and OSX, there were virtually no viruses do to the fact that Mac's ran on a completely different architecture, it did what you told it to do, and if you took the time to learn it inside and out can pretty much do whatever you wanted it to do. The G5 lines offered double the speed of Intel considering they were still single socket and with the IBM cpu and logic boards, fast forward to Intel they now use the same architecture same chipsets, and same parts you find in off the shelf cpu parts and the same as Dell,HP,etc... The only diffrence now is OSX and the aluminum enclosure/finish. It was also secure do to the fact that it only ran on its own hardware, which is not the case today.
 
Cassie said:
I'd boil it all down to the "experience". There isn't really a logical reason why Macs are better for some instead of PCs, (Well, the pretty designs I suppose. :p)

Some find OS X much nicer to use in their daily lives, some just enjoy owning a Mac and being different, and others like the user interface and simplicity of the designs of Macs themselves and of the OS.

Yes, you could build a PC yourself for less than half the cost of a similarly spec'd Mac, but for some people the cost is worth it just for the experience.
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Hate to say it, some PC cases are pretty looking lol.

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=6269869&CatId=1510

Thats what I run.

But yeah that's what im trying to get, my PC can do everything the majority of Mac Pros can do for 2K less? Why get the Mac Pro? No point if you ask me.

And as far as OSX goes. I do like it, a few things are pretty annoying but I am slowly getting used to them.

That's the thing, is OSX really any better than Windows 7? It might be, I have no idea, I only have power PC experience. The main thing I don't like about OSX is how a couple of things work, but overall its a great OS. I couldn't blow 2K more on it tho. I could afford it, but why would I ?

Macs just, spark alot of " hmmmm " in me lol
 
so yeah back pre intel there was a reason to justify the price difference also you couldn't acquire the parts, present day not so much, like you said you can build a comparable system for thousands less with the exact same components.
 
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G51989 said:
But yeah that's what im trying to get, my PC can do everything the majority of Mac Pros can do for 2K less? Why get the Mac Pro? No point if you ask me.
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I think Apple has realized this. Aren't they supposed to be canning that product line alltogether?
 
G51989 said:
Hate to say it, some PC cases are pretty looking lol.

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=6269869&CatId=1510

Thats what I run.

But yeah that's what im trying to get, my PC can do everything the majority of Mac Pros can do for 2K less? Why get the Mac Pro? No point if you ask me.

And as far as OSX goes. I do like it, a few things are pretty annoying but I am slowly getting used to them.

That's the thing, is OSX really any better than Windows 7? It might be, I have no idea, I only have power PC experience. The main thing I don't like about OSX is how a couple of things work, but overall its a great OS. I couldn't blow 2K more on it tho. I could afford it, but why would I ?

Macs just, spark alot of " hmmmm " in me lol
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That is a pretty cool looking case, but you won't find anything looking like that in Apple's lineup. A lot of people like the clean, smooth, sleek looking products Apple comes out with. I wouldn't know, but I'd bet you could find PC case manufacturers that try to copy Apple's design to try and capture that side of the market. That says something about how highly regarded Apple products are despite the cost.

Personally, I don't much care for Apple products these days, but I do see why they're very appealing and tempting. I don't know if it's still true, (what with switching to Intel and mainstream components) but as the old saying goes, "you get what you pay for". Apple certainly backed that one up for many a year.
 
lordofthereef said:
I think I can answer a lot of your questions (though I am a PC guy myself).

First and foremost, you hear talk about viruses. being that you build your own PCs, you already have a ton more knowledge than the average computer user, so you know where not to go to get viruses. By that, I mean you don't click every pop-up, choose "yes" whenever asked to download some strange add-on, and choose not to download every stupid flash game on the web. This is where most viruses come from, and let's face it, more viruses are coded for Windows than OSX. There is also the fact that the OS's are fundamentaly different in how they allow code to run. Windows has gotten better, but on OSX you literally need to give permission to jsut about everything you do.

There is also sex appeal. I know this is silly, but every house I go to that has a Mac, it is somewhere in the living room, often front and center. They look nice, hence are nice to look at. People are willing to pay for beauty, especially when this machine is kept in main living space.

Support-wise I don't know another company that backs their products like Apple does. Sure, plenty of companies provide a warranty, but how many companies allow you to bring your computer in where they trouble-shoot that day. You can also buy added "one on one" learning tools (again, this isn't geared towards you, but rather the noobie) to get to learn how to use your new computer. I don't know any companies that do that either. Sure, there are computer classes everywhere, but that is a third party offering.

Stability is also something you mentioned. Remember that you are comparing a machine you built to a machine you buy in the store. When making these comparisons, the fundamental error I find is people say "it's cheaper to build". Simply put, it's cheaper to build a lot of things (cabinets, etc) if you know how. There are far, FAR more people that need their computers to be plug and play. I know people that pay someone good money to do a simple ram upgrade for them. It seems crazy to the person who knows what he is doing, but to the person that does not, this is added value. So then ask yourself, why are you building your own PCs? I know I build them because I research stability, cherry pick parts and get to perform tweaks that most plug and play PCs (we are talking HP, Comaq, etc. now) don't necessarily allow. Most of these builders go for "the cheapest components that get the job done" approach. The systems I build may be just as stable and wonderful as a store bought Mac, but that isn't the case with many store bought PCs.

My conclusion is that for me, the only mac that is worth it is the laptop (something I cannot feasibly build). But I can easily see why the Mac, in almost any form, shouts value (yes, value) to the average customer.
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I agree with alot of this, but as far as sex appeal goes, there are a TON of PC cases out there, and alot of them look VERY nice.

And as far as me ever having virus;s and whatever, I've been building my own PC's since I was 15 ( 22 now ), and I can't say on XP Pro, Windows 2000, Vista or Windows 7 I've EVER had a problem with anything. All I do is run the windows firewall and run ad-aware every once in awhile.

Support wise I think your wrong, no personal offense of course, it took Microsoft 10 y ears to dump support for the XP OS, Apple dumped power PC within a 2 or 3 years of stopping production, don't tell me that's good support. There is still ton's of support for Window's OS's as old as XP, where as a power PC Mac, your **** out of luck besides iTunes.

As far as building my own PC goes, I take the time to find out what hardware works good with other hardware, and weather I build a low end rig for a friend, or a high end one for myself, I always use decent parts, and I'm sorry. I"ve never ever ever ever ever ran into these " crash's all the time, gets virus's, doesn't work, slows down, ' lags ', can't do this blah blah blah " that I get from alot of Mac guys. Maybe I'm different but I can't say I've EVER ran into a problem with any Post ME Microsoft OS.

Macs are cool for sure, and I love mah G5. But I would NEVER buy a new Apple product, I can't justfity that much of a price increase when I can build something better for the same money.

Now, alot of my Mac experience has also come from deaing with iMac G3s in high school they attempted to keep running. Oh em gee
 
lordofthereef said:
I think Apple has realized this. Aren't they supposed to be canning that product line alltogether?
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I hope not. Believe it or not there are a lot of people who depend on Apple Towers to get their jobs done in the creative industry, purely because the software (Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro etc) that people like to use tends to require expansion cards to make it do what you want. For instance Video Capture Hardware, or Specialised cards for Synthesisers. Pros like to have the widest choice available so there are quite a few (me included), who own Mac Pros but switch between Windows and Mac OS X on them depending on what we're doing/ which apps we want access too at the time.
 
G51989 said:
Macs are cool for sure, and I love mah G5. But I would NEVER buy a new Apple product, I can't justfity that much of a price increase when I can build something better for the same money.

Now, alot of my Mac experience has also come from deaing with iMac G3s in high school they attempted to keep running. Oh em gee
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I've never purchased a new Mac, only used. (I had a new one gifted when I was younger, but no longer own) Used Macs are usually good value compared to new, and they'll still last for a few years.

iMac G3's ah... I remember those in school as well, always a pain with that OS 8. But, OS 9 isn't half bad and OS X is even better. I've got an old iMac G3 running 10.3, it isn't a speed demon but it's a cool experience. (The early OS X design really fits the colorful Macs :) )
 
Cassie said:
I've never purchased a new Mac, only used. (I had a new one gifted when I was younger, but no longer own) Used Macs are usually good value compared to new, and they'll still last for a few years.

iMac G3's ah... I remember those in school as well, always a pain with that OS 8. But, OS 9 isn't half bad and OS X is even better. I've got an old iMac G3 running 10.3, it isn't a speed demon but it's a cool experience. (The early OS X design really fits the colorful Macs :) )
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I have a hate for those iMacs, they look cool for sure, but I'm not sure of the Specs on them ( by the time i was in school they were ONLY in the libary and a few classrooms, P4 Dells had taken over, thank god ). As in ' tech club ' ( learn IT and all that in high school for 2 periods a day in addition to regular classes ), we'd get a call on every day, at least one of these G3 iMacs, wouldn't shut down, or respond to a command of any type, same with the calmshell G3s we had, had one cart of them left before the Dells took over ). OS9, wouldn't shut down. No nothing, had to unplug, and restart of course, not hard to do but most people wouldn't know how to do it for whatever reason.

I know this sounds sick, but when we got rid of them and the eMacs, I loved throwing them into the dumpster. Good machines now I realize, but they caused us a TON of problems when I was in high school.I beat the **** out of a ton with a baseball bat, I'd do it again to. ughhh! Maybe ****** education models? They had so many issues, and because we had so few of them, we never learned much about them, if I knew what I knew now, I would have taken a few home and upgraded them

What was funny, is that some kids would steal the CD-ROM drives and RAM out of the dells...lol

I WILL ADMIT, my first real computer experience in school was on these black and white Macs, in like i dont even know, like 3rd grade? I will never ever forget " SRC2 " for as long as I live. I forget what it actually does, but I know my first experiences were on a Mac. My first real home computer experience was on a Packard Bell 486 With Windows 95...oh the memories!
 
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G51989 said:
I agree with alot of this, but as far as sex appeal goes, there are a TON of PC cases out there, and alot of them look VERY nice.

I agree. I have a bitchin' cooler-master that I have had for two years now and can't see myself getting rid of it. But again, you are building this yourself. Most people don't do that, and most computers, out of the box, are fugly

And as far as me ever having virus;s and whatever, I've been building my own PC's since I was 15 ( 22 now ), and I can't say on XP Pro, Windows 2000, Vista or Windows 7 I've EVER had a problem with anything. All I do is run the windows firewall and run ad-aware every once in awhile.

Most people don;t even do that. And, as I said, they go to those sites and click on "click here and win a trip to tahiti" nonesense. It sounds like common sense, because it is. Joe Blow user doesn't have it and OSX is less likely to get attacked by these means.

Support wise I think your wrong, no personal offense of course, it took Microsoft 10 y ears to dump support for the XP OS, Apple dumped power PC within a 2 or 3 years of stopping production, don't tell me that's good support. There is still ton's of support for Window's OS's as old as XP, where as a power PC Mac, your **** out of luck besides iTunes.

You misunderstand what I am talking about as support. I am not talking OS support. I am talking about your PC, as a unit, because to Joe Blow user, that is what it is. A computer isn't an OS on a hard drive hooked to a motherboard with a cpu and some ram. It's just a computer. With Apple, Joe can take his computer in and have them fix it lightning fast. With HP, Compaq, gateway, etc. he doesn't really have a quick option like that. Microsoft provides the support, sure, but people don;t want that support. They want to bring their system in, have the magical pixies wave their wands, and have it back to them, working, in the shortest time possible.

As far as building my own PC goes, I take the time to find out what hardware works good with other hardware, and weather I build a low end rig for a friend, or a high end one for myself, I always use decent parts, and I'm sorry. I"ve never ever ever ever ever ran into these " crash's all the time, gets virus's, doesn't work, slows down, ' lags ', can't do this blah blah blah " that I get from alot of Mac guys. Maybe I'm different but I can't say I've EVER ran into a problem with any Post ME Microsoft OS.

No reason to be sorry. My point still stands, though. You aren;t seeing crashing because you do your research. You are also using stable versions of Windows. You said you used windows ME back in the day. How did you like it? I had more crashes in the year I used ME than I have all together since then by a long shot!
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Responses in bold.
 
G51989 said:
I have a hate for those iMacs, they look cool for sure, but I'm not sure of the Specs on them ( by the time i was in school they were ONLY in the libary and a few classrooms, P4 Dells had taken over, thank god ). As in ' tech club ' ( learn IT and all that in high school for 2 periods a day in addition to regular classes ), we'd get a call on every day, at least one of these G3 iMacs, wouldn't shut down, or respond to a command of any type, same with the calmshell G3s we had, had one cart of them left before the Dells took over ). OS9, wouldn't shut down. No nothing, had to unplug, and restart of course, not hard to do but most people wouldn't know how to do it for whatever reason.

I know this sounds sick, but when we got rid of them and the eMacs, I loved throwing them into the dumpster. Good machines now I realize, but they caused us a TON of problems when I was in high school.I beat the **** out of a ton with a baseball bat, I'd do it again to. ughhh! Maybe ****** education models? They had so many issues, and because we had so few of them, we never learned much about them, if I knew what I knew now, I would have taken a few home and upgraded them

What was funny, is that some kids would steal the CD-ROM drives and RAM out of the dells...lol

I WILL ADMIT, my first real computer experience in school was on these black and white Macs, in like i dont even know, like 3rd grade? I will never ever forget " SRC2 " for as long as I live. I forget what it actually does, but I know my first experiences were on a Mac. My first real home computer experience was on a Packard Bell 486 With Windows 95...oh the memories!
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Yep, I remember kindergarten, 1st grade dealing with OS 8 on those original iMacs. While the classic Mac OS wasn't a bad OS overall, it sucked horribly with networking. A lot of public schools like to network, makes it a ton of less work for the IT department in the long run usually. But unfortunately, there were tons of issues that I remember, including ones you mentioned thanks to this. I wish my school had stuck with Macs instead of going to HP and Windows, but just bad timing I suppose. (They had old Macs in all the classrooms and some spare computer labs running system 6 and 7, even some old Apple IIe/c's!)
 
G51989 said:
As today, if I bought a Mac Pro with similar specs to what I’m running now, would run almost 1900 dollars more ( we are talking no monitor with either system of course ) now here me out.
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Does your computer have dual socket Xeon procesors and ECC memory? Also keep in mind that Mac Pros are 2 years out of date now.... :)()
 
Jethryn Freyman said:
Does your computer have dual socket Xeon procesors and ECC memory? Also keep in mind that Mac Pros are 2 years out of date now.... :)()
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My computer at the moment is an 6 core monster, that can destory almost everything I do very quickly. I'm not saying a Mac Pro is not as good, it is. If you spec it with the same specs. But it will cost almost 2,000 dollars more. WHats the point?
 
G51989 said:
My computer at the moment is an 6 core monster, that can destory almost everything I do very quickly. I'm not saying a Mac Pro is not as good, it is. If you spec it with the same specs. But it will cost almost 2,000 dollars more. WHats the point?
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I kind of agree with you... at least for my uses, I have no use for Xeon chips over Core i7, or for ECC memory over normal memory, if I were to buy a Mac Pro all that those fancy features would be doing for me would be inflating the price. I recently bought a quad core PC with 3+ GHz, Radeon 6770, etc, for $600, if I'd spend another $200 more I'd have had a much faster Core i7 system and a Radeon 6870 or something. Honestly Mac Pros are really for the people who for some reason *need* a Xeon CPU or ECC memory, at least that's how I see it. Component for component though, you probably pass proportionally less "apple tax" with a Mac Pro compared to other Macs, though.
 
Setting aside aesthetics for the moment, I'll just chime in with my observations. I'm pro-Mac because of my experiences, but I am not anti-PC. I have a PC in the house, an out of the box Compaq circa 2000 (which I bought used at the Goodwill) and it does very well and has been the best PC I've ever had.

In any case, I've been in the newspaper industry doing ad design and page layout for almost 13 years. When I started the very early G4s were coming on the scene and the B/W G3s were the norm. Except for my first job, all my jobs in the industry have been one or two man operations for small community newspapers. There is no IT department and I have to fix all of my own problems including hardware. On top of that I'm often called to fix other people's machines.

Things may be very different now, but back then, I often noticed that a Mac running OS9 (and later OSX) could be crippled (hardware or OS) and still be able to function and get the work out. Maybe slower than normal, but still possible. I once went several months putting out two weekly newspapers with ads and doing website maintenance on my work Mac that had a serious error in the B-Tree disk directory. But I still got the work out. Later I went for a few weeks with only 2GB of ram because of one bad ram stick.

Which leads me to quality. The only issue my boss has ever had with the two Macs in my department has been one bad ram stick. In the same time period (the last seven years) he has replaced three PCs and one server. Two other PCs are currently on borrowed time and the wizbang vertical dual monitor my boss bought for the production PC broke over a year ago.

I have a late 2004 G5 with 4GB ram (maxed) and a 1.8Ghz single processor. Every day I have the Adobe CS4 suite open (Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign), Suitcase Fusion2, Acrobat Pro 6 and Acrobat Pro 9, Word, Entourage and Excel 2008, QuarkXPress 8.5 and a browser open. Not too big a deal for a G5, even one running Leopard. But my coworker is running the EXACT same apps I am on Leopard on a G4/450 with only 1GB of ram. It's a 12 year old Mac and it's producing the same volume I am every day in a production environment. It's slightly slower, but it's doing the job.

What off the shelf year 2000, 12 year old PC is still doing this kind of thing with what is by now standard ports? 100Tx Ethernet, Firewire and USB? Sure, there were high end PCs of that year and custom builds. But I'm talking about the kind of machines that business is going to bulk order. Our oldest PC has USB ports, but no firewire and is not capable of running Vista, let along Win7 or 8. It's barely getting by on Win2k right now.

Again, I am speaking of off the shelf type PCs that a business would order. Like the ones my boss bought and are barely functional right now. And those PCs are four years younger than the 12 year old G4 I mentioned. BTW, I have another Mac, a G4/400, also 12 years old that is fully functional and being used as an Applescript server.

One last observation. You mentioned Apple abandoning support of OSX after a few years. True, but Apple stores will still work on Macs that are 5 years old. You may have to pay, but they will work on them. And even outside of that range the Apple store genius people will still look at your Mac and offer suggestions. I've brought in my 9 year old Powerbook and my 6 year old Powerbook and although they would not work on them my Macs were diagnosed and they even gave me referrals to local third party Mac repair stores.

Again, this has been my experience. Others may have had something entirely different. It does not mean to me that Macs are better than PCs, but it makes ME very willing to continue to buy Apple products.

EDIT: Just wanted to add. The PCs at my job, and especially the G5 and two G4s I speak of, are all on 24/7, including weekends and holidays. The Macs are usually on at full power and the G5 has never been allowed to sleep (although the monitors turn off) due to an old habit I formed before Apple fixed a firmware bug causing it to not wake up after sleeping.
 
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Good post.. though the Apple retailer I worked at would even service any Mac, regardless of age. Though we never got anything that wouldn't run OS X..
 
You don't get it nor are you going too..I personally think you don't want to. Install OSX on your PC that way you triple boot and have the best of all three.
 
GermanyChris said:
You don't get it nor are you going too..I personally think you don't want to. Install OSX on your PC that way you triple boot and have the best of all three.
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It's not that I can't or don't want to get it. I get Mac, big time. I don't get the cost associated with one.

Why would I want to install OS on my PC when I have a pretty beastly G5 sitting right next to it already running OSX lol
 
G51989 said:
It's not that I can't or don't want to get it. I get Mac, big time. I don't get the cost associated with one.

Why would I want to install OS on my PC when I have a pretty beastly G5 sitting right next to it already running OSX lol
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Then you don't get it..

It's like a Harley I simply cannot understand why anyone would pay so much for a slow heavy motorcycle..

My old man would give-up a kidney, before his Harley..
 
GermanyChris said:
Then you don't get it..

It's like a Harley I simply cannot understand why anyone would pay so much for a slow heavy motorcycle..

My old man would give-up a kidney, before his Harley..
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Now I get it.

People call me an idiot blowing money on a 69 Z28 Camaro its such an old bad car and you could have got something so much better for the same money. But for me its worth it.

I think thats it.
 
G51989 said:
Now I get it.

People call me an idiot blowing money on a 69 Z28 Camaro its such an old bad car and you could have got something so much better for the same money. But for me its worth it.

I think thats it.
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I would never spend any money on an old Camaro..

Put a 2002 Ti or Tii in the driveway and I'd be on a ramen diet..
 
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