I think we have different ideas of equivalent, and definitely different values on the use of the operating system. I'd pay 20% more just to use OS X in an ugly machine, and more than that for the elegant, well-constructed machines that I've had for quite some time. In twenty years of macintosh use, I've never had to take one to a dealer to have it fixed, and I'm not an IT professional that has any kind of special link to repair manuals.
Of course, I've already gone on about how I want the 750vx to replace the G4 in the PowerBooks. To me, that's the best solution, because it runs at a better clock, a better FSB, and yet puts out the same or less heat. How can we lose, especially with IBM doing the fabbing and selling them more cheaply than G4s?
Yes, it is unfortunate, because you can have all the components you want, but if the system has to be replaced every two to three years just to be
functional on the current incarnation of the OS, then it's not a value. We still use, actively, macs that are five or six years old. They run OS X just fine, if given a simple RAM upgrade.
I don't know a single person on the PC side who uses their computers as actively as my family does, yet has the same hardware retention rate.
Actually, there are a couple of things they have going for them, and they're on both sides of the hardware/software divide. They've got a quality that surpasses anything I see in PCs (I'd ask anyone who wants to bring up the iBooks, to keep in mind that the suit is 3,000 out of some 250,000-300,000 sold. Take a look at Dell's mistake rate.). They've got control of the OS and its integration, while also supporting the open source community in a way that no other major PC manufacturer does. There's a suite of powerful, easy, user-friendly apps that come with every new mac, and they go far beyond the negligably "comparable" offerings on the PC side. They have Jonathan Ives and Steve Jobs, who continue to push the industry in ways that are always emulated, no matter how much people like to say that innovation is dead at Apple. Let's not leave out the small factor of a partnership with the single largest, longest-lived computing company in the history of the field, who just happens to be supplying us with some of the fastest chips on the market.
Oh, yeah... Nothing at all, DHM.
What the hell, man? First you complain about their components, and now you say that they use the same parts as "better quality Pcs?" Can you at least maintain some degree of consistency in what you're going to whine about?
Name me one company, other than IBM, that does as much of their own R&D and design work as Apple. Name one that uses parts as specialized and limited, by comparison, as the PowerPC, while still being competitive.
Stingy? Only if you have no understanding of economics.
So get an Alienware, which won't cost you any less than a G5 and will perform right around the same level. I honestly don't understand you, DHM, because you constantly whine and gripe about
everything Apple does, but you don't do the one thing that really matters. In business, you vote with your dollars. Want Apple to change their ways? Then go buy the competition and quit cluttering the board with your poorly reasoned, illogical screeds, because you don't even grasp the simplest aspects of the computer industry.
