Mac Hardware, IT Value, and whatnot
Hi. I'm new here. I thought I'd kick off my macrumors forum experience with this long post. Kinda addresses everything that's been said here.
On "Inferior PC Hardware":
We live in a Sad World where the Mac Addicts want to keep the flame burning but don't know how. Is it the hardware anymore? 'Fraid not. While the G4 is a behemoth of a processor, and very competitive in terms of performance right now, the standard mac line strict memory limitations that only the XServe has even begun to address. Hopefully Apple will correct this design flaw in the next models. The PC world has Apple beaten down in that department. It's a testament to the power of the G4 that's it's competitive at all, and just using a little L3 cache bandaid doesn't solve the problem. I love my powermac dearly despite this
Still the fastest machine I've ever owned.
On "the IT Argument":
However, despite some nay-saying, we can keep the flame burning in the reduced maintenance cost department. Why? A mac is essentially a very fancy BSD box. This means all the powerful and free BSD-based backup, administration, and auditing tools function perfectly on the mac. Those that would require the use of /etc/* files will be supported properly under Jag (and work passably right now). This, along with the ability to use NetBoot and integrated, comprehensive imaging support (which people always seem to overlook! /Applications/Utilities/Disk Copy is only a place to start, people!)
For an IT person, Netboot, imaging support built into the core application suite and OS, and the entire BSD maintenance library at your fingertips is a compelling argument (if you know anything about what I'm talking about, that is). The problem is the unit cost. I can't give contrived figures like everyone else, but clearly there is less cost here in just the software you need. There are huge unix networks out there that only need minimal repairs every so often, because of the all the automation a good sysadmin with netboot and imaging support can do.
Most IT people aren't that bright though. In many companies (big one's I've worked at) the IT manager is just someone the Boss thought knew a lot about computers. It's still necessary and a huge money sink, so this kind of argument, while difficult to nail through many IT manager's thick skulls, is very compelling once it hits the frontal lobe. Hmm.
If you are a bright IT person, please accept my apologies. Without you folks the corperate world would go crashing down
On "The Redeeming Factor":
The most compelling argument to Switch, right now, is the OS. It's an incredible piece of art, and not just visually. It's an elegant, powerful, flexible system, everything we've been looking for in an OS since back in the day. Thousands of people every month switch their home systems to linux looking for an experience like what a mac has. And, unlike linux where you pay in hours and hours of time (usually fondling Xwin hoping that THIS config option will fix your most recent problem), OS X is a steal at $129.
On "The iTools Complaint":
Hmm, while I'm on the topic, is iTools really that expensive? Nope. $100 / 12 is about $8.34 a month. This gives you 100mb space, mail, virus protection, backup options, tight integration with your machine, WebDAV support... and interesting tools to quickly generate web pages (if you don't know or don't feel like working with HTML). A competitior to this is
http://www.maganation.com/services/. They're doing less for $5 a month. Come on, people. iTools is quite cheap for what you're getting. People are just pissed they have to pay for something they didn't pay for. Instead of looking at the glass as half empty, look at it in the half-full light. You got iTools free for a long time. Now you are being asked to pay a small and competitive price.
