Before I get into this: I used Windows on custom-built PCs and was a rabid windows fanboy until March, 2007. I shared a lot of the same points of view as the OP, and frankly, the me from now would give the me from pre March 2007 a pretty heavy beatdown if that encounter ever were to occur.
Why did I switch to OS X? Vista. I see that Windows 7 is vastly improved and I recommend it heavily to to PC-using friends, but Windows 8 I don't like much.
And I still custom-build PCs. They tend to run linux, usually Ubuntu or OpenSuSE. But I don't use them for enterprise deployments, and would never recommend doing that to anyone.
I used to be a network admin at a college that uses only custom built PCs, specially made for different uses like modeling, game design, distributed computer systems;
"Used to be" is a pretty key statement. In the higher ed environment I work for, the sysadmin whose stubborn philosophy of going with only custom-built systems became a "used to be" as well. He was fired because his approach didn't scale and wasn't reliable, among many other reasons (his smug attitude towards "uneducated users" was another).
There isn't a whole lot of customization required for game design and modeling that a commercial vendor can't offer you. Distributed computing is also handled quite competently by commercial vendors who have economies of scale to their advantage and can pass the savings on to a significantly large institution if it means making the sale.
Most colleges I've been to also shun the custom-box approach except for very limited, justified, specific circumstances where research applications demand a very specific hardware approach that can't be obtained commercially. And even then, those projects typically consist of buying commercially-built systems and then modifying them to suit the need.
If you're home brewing a system, it's very easy to tout reliability and then blame yourself for the actual failures. When you buy custom, you're on your own for support. And frankly, any IT department for an organization of decent size isn't going to pay an IT professional to sit with screwdrivers and spare parts bought off newegg replacing failed components, when a PC vendor will express ship you a replacement for far less cost. The IT folks are busy enough deploying, budgeting and handling software and system administration duties.
So, that's my
first red flag about you.
and we never considered using macs because of the lack of compatibility and freedom.
Elaborate. what lack of freedom? Have you actuallly
used a Mac, and by "use" I mean, not just poked at it an an Apple Store and talked trash about it because you couldn't find a start menu?
No, you clearly haven't. There's a LOT of things I do with my Mac, beyond the app store, beyond the Cocoa interface, beyond the pretty icons not he dock menu, that I find work
far better than what I'd have to do to make those same things work on Windows.
So, that's my second red flag.
And, what incompatibility? I've not run into a single thing I can't do on my mac that Windows machines can do. Yeah, fewer FPS games exist on the OS X platform, but if you really want that, you
can boot into Windows.
If you want to stick with Windows, fine. There's nothing wrong with that. But don't spout "lack of freedom" and "incompatibility" as reasons unless you can back it up with specific examples... not just because these are things you've heard OTHER people within your windows-centric clique say.
The 40+% failure rate of foxconn motherboards/PSUs make me uncomfortable when buying them in large amounts, so we never used them.
There's this old axiom that holds true here:
you get what you pay for. If you're gonna buy the
$45 foxconn motherboard from newegg, or
even the $68 model, then you shouldn't be surprised at seeing a 40% failure rate. If you buy a homebrew commodity component and press into service in an enterprise application, your failure rates are gonna be high. There should be nothing surprising about that.
On the other hand, I doubt that Apple is paying homebrew prices for its components, and from my experience and the experience of others around me, the failure rate is way, way lower than 40%. We still have some 8 year old quad core Mac Pro G4s that are still running to this day, and have never been sent in for any kind of service.
As for the problems that you had with windows, the computers were improperly maintained unless it was a manufacturing defect(windows will not disobey unless the software running on the windows OS does what you do not want it to do. It is YOUR fault for blaming the OS instead of the software developer. Who uses Cytrix anyways?).
This is a poor cop-out from someone who feels they must rabidly defend the perfection of Windows. You don't know his situation. Not everyone problem is caused by the user.
By rights, it's very easy for me to say that the hardware issues you're having with foxconn are
your own fault for going homebrew.
Everyone at the college who went for a degree in CS/EE/MA preferred a PC, and only the students who majored in liberal arts prefer the mac due to lack of knowledge of computers in general.
I can assure you that isn't the case in every college. Perhaps it is in small technical colleges, that require PCs as part of their curriculum to run mandated pieces of software that they no doubt get vendor kickbacks for requiring their use. But in
real universities, the platform choice is eft to the student, and I see lots of CS students running linux on laptops and OS X on Macs.
Not to mention, if we go ahead and accept your stereotype of the dumb liberal arts student, then their choice of using a Mac points out an important fact: non-tech-savvy people tend to use and recommend things
that don't break down on them. If they use macs, it's because it's easier for them and less of a hassle for them to deal with.
Hanging by your thumbs and using something more obtuse and difficult to work with doesn't make you smarter.
Now that I think back to this, I might not want a mac anymore
I think you'd be doing us all a big favor by not getting a mac.
That is an opinion, I dislike mac only software due to its heavy limitations and poor portability/compatibility compared to a PC alternative.
Examples, please.
Also, a $1000 PC can render a video over 5 times faster than a $1000 mac, 15 times if GPU accelerated.
That hasn't been my experience, at all.
many people like it, I want to be part of it as well. However I do not see why someone would prefer a Mac to a PC, and I want to know.
I think it's more accurate to say: you see an increasing number of people with these shiny silver laptops and cute looking phones and tablets, all with this iconic fruit-shaped logo on them, and you feel threatened by the fact that they seem to prefer to use them over
your preferred platform. You can't
possibly understand why
anyone would do that, and want to know what their
silly, stupid, clearly illogical reasoning is for it.
On the other hand, most people in IT who tend to stay it for any appreciable period and gain any of level of respect understand that PCs aren't for everyone, and neither are Macs, and neither are linux boxes. The needs of the user need to be understood, and there is no reason to put down someone's use of a platform different from your preference, so long as it works out for them.
Bottom line: Enjoy your PC. I'm happy using my Mac.
I bet you think ASUS is worse than Foxconn.
Actually, I've used Asus to build some custom PCs. They have their good components that will run forever, and really bad components that have horribly high failure rates.
All in all, they're
as good as foxconn in the homebrew market. And like foxconn, they probably reserve their higher quality components for commercial, large scale hardware vendors who will pay more for that higher quality.
I have never had a problem with finding drivers for Lunix.
I seriously doubt that if you spell it "lunix" (which you have twice already), you're ever actually used "lunix."
If I REALLY need a driver, I can just make one. Can you do that on a Mac?
As a matter of fact, you can.
And many do just that. But you'd know this, if you actually used a Mac and were truly informed enough to validly criticize it.
By the way, if you've ever printed a document using a printer on "lunix,"
you can thank Apple for the print engine,
and for most of the drivers.
