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Why Buy a Mac over a PC?

S

Selvd004

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 3, 2010
1
0
Hi, This is my first post here. I'm sorry if im posting this in the wrong section.

Now I want everyone to know that this is not flaming Mac or anything.

Ok Now I realize the only Desktop Mac that would suit me would be the Imac as the mac mini is not powerful enough and the mac pro is way over my budget.

Firstly, I'm looking at the Dell xps 8100:
Intel Core i5 650 Processor(3.20 Ghz, 4mb)
8Gb DDr3 1333Mhz of Ram
1.5Tb hardrive
1GB ATI® Radeon™ HD 5670 graphics card( Which I realise is not as good as the mac one but this seems to be the only flaw)
Now this would cost me around £800(I live in the U.K) which is $1,174.00 Dollars

Or The Imac 21.5"
Intel Core 2 duo ,3.06 Ghz, 3mb
4Gb 1066MHz DDR3 Ram
500Gb Hardrive( Both of these are 7,200 rpm)
NVIDIA GeForce 9400M with 256MB of DDR3 SDRAM shared with main memory
This would cost me around £1000 which is 1,467.51 USD

Now, I don't mind spending that extra $300 but what am I paying the extra $300 for? The Imac has considerably worse specs and I could easily get a a bigger screen for $300. If I got any good reason to buy a mac I would because I really don't have a personal choice between mac or Pc and have never used a Mac before.

I will be playing World Of Warcraft but nothing hardcore like Crysis. I will also be playing around with a little bit of photo editing but nothing too much again. I overall want a very fast PC which will last me a long time. Thank you for reading and hope I get a few reasons to switch because I don't want to waste my hard earned $300 on nothing.
 
If you like the Dell better and it suits your needs better/aren't able to take the time and learn a different OS then go for it. What do you need more opinions for?

Conversely, I'd break down the extra £300 like this...

The Mac OS.
Better build quality.
The integration of hardware and software, built for each other, that adds more to the specs and ability of the machine than can be written in numbers.
1 Year Applecare Support, which is second to none IMO.
It looks way better.

But thats just me.
 
For me OS X is worth the extra money on it's own. Though I have heard Windows 7 is a vast improvement over Vista.
 
you get to a certain point in your life when you realise that synthetic benchmarks aren't the most important things when using a computer. reliability, stability and usability start coming into the picture.. i have grown up with Macs and never had to worry about any of these issues, no viruses come into the scheme of things too.

games? sure - ill bootcamp it up. they mightnt run at the 100+FPS that you WANT (not need) but they will do the 30+FPS that is required for smooth gameplay.

"macs cant run windows programs, there are 10 PC programs to every 1 Mac program". really? thats cool. that may be the case, but most of the time that 1 Mac game will do everything that is needed, no need for the shareware demo or whatnot.

so yea - you can go with the PC if you want, it will last 2 months then start to fill up with registry junk (Microsoft STILL havent fixed it in Windows 7), inferior RAM management, and various other gripes that us Mac users will argue about - or you can go with a Mac because you enjoy the experience.

its your call in the end, i dont really see a need to start ANOTHER thread about it. i might save this reply to post in future threads. :D

oh: BTW. i DARE you to find a better IPS 27" panel for ~$300. :)
 
When making your decision, ignore the specs - CPU speed, RAM, HDD size, etc. - as they are largely irrelevant since the two OSes are completely different. Just like Linux will fly on a machine that XP will run like treacle on.

Look at the spec of mine in my sig. Real poverty-spec by today's standards yes? Yet the only thing that really stresses it and shows a lack of performance is running Aperture, which is a heavyweight Pro app (and I'm using 10Mpx raw images too). iPhoto on the other hand flies.

Get to an Apple Retail Store if there's one near you, or PC World/Currys, and play with one. Certainly at an Apple there will be no hassle and no pressure to buy (they aren't on commission) and they will answer all your questions.

One more thing, Apple's Support/Service is orders of magnitude ahead of Dell's for consumer PCs - OK, Dell's Business Support is up there with Apple, but business users are paying Apple-like prices.
 
Although I heard great things about 7, OSX is just a breeze to run. Absolute peace of mind. What's the use of specs you can't utilize because of a bad OS? If 7 is anywhere near SL in ease of use, go for a pc if you'd like. The daily comfort is OSX's most prized feature. Many friends have pc with equivalent or better specs than my MBP, but they all can't use them much because of how horrible Vista is. Whereas, I have never had a major problem or a constant annoyance since I bough my first Mac at the times of Tiger. OSX made me love using my computer really. Yet, Win7 has great reviews, but I have yet to try it.
 
Why buy a Mac?.... dependibility, ease of use, basically having a computer do what it is supposed to do without all the constant playing with it, no random shut downs, no viruses... there is much more but that should be enough now.

i am using ancient hardware by todays standards but my desktop is a g3 imac and my laptop is a g4 powerbook and also have a g3 powerbook pismo all three work far better than my newer dell laptop that i am selling tonight for 1/4 of what i paid for it. windows is just plain crap.

apple is far superior and people that have them will never go back to windows.

I for one will never touch another microsoft operating system and i have only been using macs since december of 2009


all i can say is you wont regret the imac
 
About a year ago, me and my friend left School and went to college. We both needed a new computer for all the work. My old Windows 98 craptop just couldn't cut the internet lark and her XP box was being used by her father a lot.

I took the plunge, and went for a Late 2008 Macbook with Leopard whereas she went for a Dell thingermybobs of roughly the same spec with Vista.

Snow Leopard and Windows 7 were released. £29.50 got me Snow Leopard. My friend couldn't afford to upgrade to Windows 7.

A year on, and my Macbook is still going strong. Yes, the plastic casing has a scratch where I dropped it and its turned a little yellow from nicotine, but still runs like it did on day one.

Her Dell laptop is ruined. Her battery is incapable of anything. Her Vista installation is riddled with virus's despite paying for McAfee. She is on her second power supply. Last week the hard drive failed, and we spend an entire day trying to get all her files from it. She is now back on her XP box, which is also rather poorly.

I am so glad I bought my Macbook.
 
This is like asking on a Mercedes forum why one should buy a BMW. It's very unlikely that you'll hear an objective opinion. While I have a Macbook my 2 desktops are PCs (and I wouldn't have it any other way) so I'll attempt to give you one.

First of all, Dell altogether is not a great choice. Their quality in general really is subpar with exception of certain monitors and a few other devices. However, the PC platform in general is quite robust, it's far more easy to upgrade as well. Macs only accept specific videocards so even though it will physically fit lack of drivers will prevent the owner from actually using it. By the way, the 5670 in the Dell will run circles around the Nvidia 9400M.

If you plan to keep your Mac for a long time and eventually something goes, swapping boards in an Imac is very difficult. I won't speak for Dell because they used to use proprietary boards (don't know if they still do) but many other mfrs use standard ATX boards so if yours dies down the road when warranty is up you can just go and buy a new one cheaply and install it yourself. You can also do CPU upgrades which isn't done on most Macs easily.

Mac OS X is very nice but it has its limitations too. I won't go into severe detail (you can do your own research) but if all you need from the machine are the basics like email/browsing/pictures/video/basic games Windows 7 can do all of it just the same with generally more options for various programs available. Of course how important looks are up to you but W7 isn't bad in that department either.

There is a lot more I could write here regarding both but you get the picture already. :) PC platform is more flexible when it comes to both software and hardware while Mac platform is a bit more smoothly integrated mostly because of that limitation.
 
Selvd004 said:
Firstly, I'm looking at the Dell xps 8100:
Intel Core i5 650 Processor(3.20 Ghz, 4mb)
8Gb DDr3 1333Mhz of Ram
1.5Tb hardrive
1GB ATI® Radeon™ HD 5670 graphics card( Which I realise is not as good as the mac one but this seems to be the only flaw)
Now this would cost me around £800(I live in the U.K) which is $1,174.00 Dollars

Or The Imac 21.5"
Intel Core 2 duo ,3.06 Ghz, 3mb
4Gb 1066MHz DDR3 Ram
500Gb Hardrive( Both of these are 7,200 rpm)
NVIDIA GeForce 9400M with 256MB of DDR3 SDRAM shared with main memory
This would cost me around £1000 which is 1,467.51 USD
Click to expand...

If it were me I would upgrade the 5670 in the dell to teh 5770 for $100 and then you will have much better graphics and save yourself $200, trust me there is a big difference between these two cards.

I personally would go with the Dell considering your needs. Mainstream gaming is still optimized on the PC and Windows 7 is a long long way ahead of where Windows was in 98 or when XP was released. The card in your PC will be a desktop card too and the one in the imac is a mobility card which is by far and away much slower.

Pay no attention to people here who say that your parts will break down or that you will have to pay for anti-virus. I've been using PCs for many many years and I have never had to purchase anti-virus software, you can download good free solutions and I've never had a virus. The components are made from a lot of the same manufacturers so you can't say that the mac has superior components.

Other things that you will get with the PC that you won't get with the imac is an upgradeable machine. Lets say 3 years from now you want some more pep in your machine... with the imac, well you have to purchase an entirely new machine which includes the built-in screen and everything. With the PC you can take out your video-card, and put in a new one or possibly even your processor. You get to keep the same screen this way too and you can really maximize the life of your computer.

This is just my opinion, a lot of people will be mad that I'm recommending the PC in this case over the mac but they have to realize that apple has a huge void in their product line for guys like you and me. There is nothing in between the imac and the mac pro and it is absolutely absurd. The imac is underpowered for games (so is the mac pro because apple refuses to put a decent graphics card into their computers) and the mac pro is WAY too expensive since they put Xeon chips and ECC ram in them. The mac pro is fine for professionals who want to do serious video editing or photo work but there is no mac that a user can buy that is good with games and that just drives me crazy.
 
Two Reasons

1. When I came home from work last night, I went to my older iMac (my wife was using the new one). I haven't shut this computer off for months (its sleeps to save energy, of course) and it hasn't crashed EVER. I hooked my camcorder up to it (that I let a friend borrow) and within fifteen minutes, I had checked my email, checked this site, transferred, edited, added titles and pictures to the video and burned him a dvd, all at the same time.

as opposed to:

2. Within half an hour of using my work Dell, today, it crashed while running outlook and i.e. THIS HAPPENS ONE OR TWICE A WEEK.
 
g3imacboy said:
apple is far superior and people that have them will never go back to windows.
Click to expand...

I owned a 2007 imac and 2008 macbook and once Windows 7 came out and I weighed the options and I switched back to windows. I'm pretty sure my experience is not unique. I find the stability of Windows 7 and OSX to be quite comparable actually. The only difference now is that I have more options for software and hardware.
 
I am a new mac user.
I went with the 15 inch Macbook pro after the latest refresh
Im very happy with the change I am getting great battery life everything I have done on the mac has been a good experience .
I have done some photo editing and and also have been burning some DVDs and have not made one coaster yet ( I cant say that with my 2009 HP laptop)
the learning curve was a little tough getting thru but the whole multi touch thing is the greatest !!
yes I did pay a little more for hardware but the build quality is great the machine feels solid. I even dropped it about 5 feet( it was in a travel bag) the third day I had it and it has a very small dent in the corner but its running fine. If I had done that with my HP I cant say it would have faired as well.

So overall if you dont mind paying a little extra it is well worth it.

_______________________________________________________________

MacBook Pro 15" ..iPhone 3GS... 1st gen iPod Touch
 
The OS

OS makes the case for Apple.

Example: In the RARE times that a program has frozen on my Macs (probably only 5 times total since I switched, and this is doing heavy video/graphic/photo work) the program will quit immediately after I hit Force Quit. No need to restart, no blue screen or "Safe mode" to deal with, etc...
 
When I had PC's, over perhaps the last 15-20 years, I'd guess I spent 10-20% of my time on them maintaining them rather than using them. Doing stuff with registries, cleaning crap out , investigating and fixing BSODs, viruses (very very few but thats because of the time I spent protecting against them), fixing incompatibilities between apps, etc. This is every windows from 3 up to XP SP3, and also a close friends Vista over the last 2 years (steaming pile of *&^%&* that is)

For the last year I've had a Mac. I spend maybe 1% of my time maintaining it and the other 99% doing something useful (does this count :D ). Maybe Win7 is better, (or maybe not) I have no experience with that.

Mac is by no means perfect, it does have annoyances and irritations, but there is no way I'd go back again, the main thing you should consider is, will the main apps you want run on Mac OK? Photo editing no issues, plenty out there, WoW, no idea.

One other point, Macs hold their value better, the Mac you buy now can be sold for a decent percentage of its cost price 3 or 4 years down the line. I gave my last PC away - when I bought it it was a decent machine, cost around £1500, 4-5 years later it was worth £100. You should include that in the price difference, though few do, it seems very likely to me that that £300 will easily be eclipsed by resale value in say 3-4 years time. Its no different to including price depreciation in the actual cost of cars.
 
I'd say the OS is the biggest factor. Specs are off for sure, but the different OS's handle things differently.


If you don't have a problem with Windows, and only need to do basic things like light photo work, e-mail, etc.. The PC should be fine for you, especially if on a budget.


I know the mac OS works better for me than my old PCs did. I have a late 2006 iMac with OS X Tiger, and my friend recently was purchased a VISTA Laptop from 2009 by his father. In the time he's had it, he's had a few crashes, and blue screens, yet still trash talks my mac like a PC-fanboy (even though he's never tried it). Every time he talks about how much mac sucks, he'll jump to Linux to compare (which he also never tried) lol. He gets slow downs and crashes on 4GB of RAM and probably other much better specs.


I can work on photos, even edit video montages of video gameplay on here and it works MUCH smoother than it ever did on any old PC I've had. I can edit those videos multiple times on a machine that's been on for 3 days straight, and I'm only running 1 GB of RAM. Of course the 1 GB does eventually hit it's limit on here too and it'll crash if I don't restart, but it's still much more than I ever could expect from 1GB on XP. To be fair though, my old PCs were really bad by todays standards.


Most of all I just enjoy the ease of use of the OS. Aside from incompatibility with things like MSN (MSN for mac doesn't have voice or video because microsoft purposely denies mac users but I don't use voice/video). Safari also hangs on some microsoft sites and microsoft-run servers because of the OS or browser, but where Safari fails, firefox usually prevails.


Installing apps is normally just drag and drop, that's it. Finder looks neat and I love the grid-view compared to the windows-like one folder at a time view. There is a neat thing called applescript which I have never quite understood due to my programming illiteracy, but managed to get a few working. One of them sits as an icon on my desktop that changes my wallpaper automatically to any photo I drag and drop on the icon. Another uses a built-in command called rsync to sync all content in my main folder of files to a folder on an external, making an exact copy of the file/folder structure for a quick backup.

Maintenance is light, and I haven't been really pissed off with contradicting errors like windows XP gives me when it has a problem. That's my experience though.
 
Burnincoco said:
The OS won't piss you off 10 times a day.
Click to expand...

:p:p:p

IN a Nutshell, that's it.
I also found when I added in the continuing cost of virus protection, software updates and all, the PC in the long run doesn't cost as much less as one might think.

Mac is also apparently way more forgiving. My first serious foray into PC worlds has left me going but WHY do they put up with this? i.e A long list of characters off limits in PC file names VS 1 character on a mac. It may be be difficult for people going for PC to Mac, but then, if you've never had such features to take for granted then you'd never had reason to miss them. Whereas having used both, I enjoy my macs, but working with the PC I daydream about things like...well, setting under one of those Star Wars AT At Walkers and watching it CRUNCH.

When I heard someone say 'Mac people are snobs', I laughed. One thinks of snobs as being spoiled. Well maybe we are. Our computers usually work, and if something is off you don't need to be a rocket scientist to find help sorting it out.
 
Selvd004 said:
Hi, This is my first post here. I'm sorry if im posting this in the wrong section.

Now I want everyone to know that this is not flaming Mac or anything.

Ok Now I realize the only Desktop Mac that would suit me would be the Imac as the mac mini is not powerful enough and the mac pro is way over my budget.

Firstly, I'm looking at the Dell xps 8100:
Intel Core i5 650 Processor(3.20 Ghz, 4mb)
8Gb DDr3 1333Mhz of Ram
1.5Tb hardrive
1GB ATI® Radeon™ HD 5670 graphics card( Which I realise is not as good as the mac one but this seems to be the only flaw)
Now this would cost me around £800(I live in the U.K) which is $1,174.00 Dollars

Or The Imac 21.5"
Intel Core 2 duo ,3.06 Ghz, 3mb
4Gb 1066MHz DDR3 Ram
500Gb Hardrive( Both of these are 7,200 rpm)
NVIDIA GeForce 9400M with 256MB of DDR3 SDRAM shared with main memory
This would cost me around £1000 which is 1,467.51 USD

Now, I don't mind spending that extra $300 but what am I paying the extra $300 for? The Imac has considerably worse specs and I could easily get a a bigger screen for $300. If I got any good reason to buy a mac I would because I really don't have a personal choice between mac or Pc and have never used a Mac before.

I will be playing World Of Warcraft but nothing hardcore like Crysis. I will also be playing around with a little bit of photo editing but nothing too much again. I overall want a very fast PC which will last me a long time. Thank you for reading and hope I get a few reasons to switch because I don't want to waste my hard earned $300 on nothing.
Click to expand...



since the dell has considerbably better specs and i hate nvidblows 9400mmurderer. go for dell! though i hate them
 
roadbloc said:
About a year ago, me and my friend left School and went to college. We both needed a new computer for all the work. My old Windows 98 craptop just couldn't cut the internet lark and her XP box was being used by her father a lot.

I took the plunge, and went for a Late 2008 Macbook with Leopard whereas she went for a Dell thingermybobs of roughly the same spec with Vista.

Snow Leopard and Windows 7 were released. £29.50 got me Snow Leopard. My friend couldn't afford to upgrade to Windows 7.

A year on, and my Macbook is still going strong. Yes, the plastic casing has a scratch where I dropped it and its turned a little yellow from nicotine, but still runs like it did on day one.

Her Dell laptop is ruined. Her battery is incapable of anything. Her Vista installation is riddled with virus's despite paying for McAfee. She is on her second power supply. Last week the hard drive failed, and we spend an entire day trying to get all her files from it. She is now back on her XP box, which is also rather poorly.

I am so glad I bought my Macbook.
Click to expand...


What a flippin' brilliant story! I use a Mac because of the quality and the OS. It's just great.
 
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