Is that you Mr. Jobs?
You spend nothing on a PC getting it "up to par" with a Mac. Even if you did buy extra software, you'd still be as much as $1,000 richer than you would be if you had bought a Mac.
No. About the only free software you can get that's up to iLife standards is Picasa. The others? Sorry, nothing else compares. You're going to be spending hundreds to get those features in software that good.
OS X is not a fantastic operating system. Why can't I cut and paste in the OS? Not copy and paste, cut and paste?
You just shot your credibility. Command-X, Command-P.
And you want to talk about downloading updates? If I do a fresh install of OS X right now, I'll have to download more, file size wise, than I would with my original copy of Vista.
Really? Because I have an original copy of Vista too. I recently re-installed. I had to update Windows Update before Windows Update would even work. Then I updated, again, and again, and again, each update I did meant there were now several more updates available. I counted this time. Wanna know the total? Ten. Ten updates and restarts. That's absurd. The total file size was somewhere north of 2GB when all was said and done. It's kind of hard to keep track of all that after ten restarts.
Downloading drivers? Vista gets drivers from Windows Update if it even needs it. Common things like Printers, scanners, digital cameras, memory card readers, game controllers, etc. work out of the box. Unlike OS X which requires drivers for printers and scanners
Really? Because I just plugged in my printer. It worked. Oh, and the scanner, too (MFP).
Oh and all 3 of my Macs have had 2 pieces of trialware, the same way my 3 HPs have had 2 pieces of trialware.
I recently helped a young lady near me set up her laptop (Acer, I think). The total number of trial software icons was something like 8. But it was a low-end system. See below for more comments on this.
No, no, no. I'm not arguing the fact that they have to use the same components as everyone else, or that they have good reason to build the machines in China. That's all fine and well. What I'm critical of is that they put a 25% Apple tax on generic hardware, or ask 6 times the street price for options such as extra RAM, when other computer brands are content with 2 times the street price for those options. BMW can give you a list of a billion things that explain why their cars cost more than a Kia, and all of those points will be valid and relate to the production costs. Apple couldn't produce such a list. The only reason they can produce is their extraordinary greed. Sure, you're in business to make money and I'm all for that, but there's a tipping point where it goes from healthy money-making instincts to disgusting, raw, blood-sucking, step-over-corpses greed, and Apple is waaaaaaaay beyond that tipping point.
For monitors I'd agree. And RAM. That's just insane. But for the computers themselves, again, think of the software included. That stuff isn't made in a magical EZ-bake oven. It costs money.
There are PCs of excellent build quality too, you don't have to buy a low-end plastic bucket from Acer or Dell. Aluminium casing, backlit keyboard and LED screen aren't Mac exclusives.
And how much you wanna bet that those cost more and are more on par with Macbook costs? Also, if nothing else Apple *does* have a point about such systems not only being nicer to use but also nicer to the environment. (Recycling = awesome. But hey, Macs have higher resell value. Why not sell it instead? And at least when it's finally time for it to be put to rest more of it can be reused.)
Still doesn't warrant the higher cost. Every computer comes with software. You can argue software quality all day, but we're strictly talking about production costs here, and it's not like Apple spent more man hours on OS X than M$ did on Vista or Windows 7.
No, no, we're talking business and supply and demand. Which means quality DOES matter. If you have a piece of crap product competing with my quality product, I'm going to charge more.
And MS does make Windows. But they don't make anything like iLife.
I really don't know what they put on PCs in the U.S. that warrants all this talk about "garbage trial software". I've bought 4 Dell PCs here in Sweden, and all of them have been 100% clean out of the box with nothing other than Windows and hardware drivers installed. My first Mac on the other hand (a Mac Mini G4) came with loads of trial crap like iWork, Office for Mac and a couple of lame trial versions of games (something with dinosaurs, I don't remember). It was probably the same on my Intel Mac Mini and my iMac, I haven't bothered to look.
Higher-end PCs have stopped using excessive trialware, thankfully. However, what is there is almost invariably more damaging to overall system health than on the Mac. This has to do with both how OS X is designed and the, to be frank, horrid quality of most trialware software on PCs.
And that's it for me. I've got too much to do over the next few days to keep this up.
