I went to the Apple store over the weekend and got a chance to mess with a few of the current macs. The way that they run and operate is just so GORGEOUS and smooth and flawless that I was almost immediately sold on getting one. I’m in the market for a new PC, and since I built my last few PC’s, I was expecting to spend around $500 - $1,000 for a new tower (I’m a power user who sets up SATA RAID arrays for audio and video editing).
I didn’t really look at the prices until I got home and started looking at apple’s webstore.
GOD-DAMN, THEY’RE EXPENSIVE!
A basic Mac system comparable to the PC one that I’d build for $1,000 was close to $7,000. That’s more expensive by a factor of SEVEN! It’s just totally bonkers.
After a ton of compromising and settling for their crappier “for dummies” Imac system, I was able to get it down to around $2,500. This is just insane.
Who buys these things? I’m completely serious - I wonder how people can afford to get Macs, but I see people using them everywhere.
$7000 is pretty nuts even for a Mac. What are you putting in the thing?
Apple tends to overprice their components like RAM and secondary HDs – you can do fine getting those from a third party. No need to get a fancy-pants Apple monitor, either; any DVI-capable monitor will do.
I don’t think that was VCO3’s point; I think he was saying that Apple itself markets the iMac as a “for dummies” machine, basic and easy, not the sort of thing the 1337 computer geniuses would use.
You’re either nuts, on Microsoft’s payroll, or you’re looking at Apple’s prices in Elbonian dollars. Macs are more expensive than a PC with equivalent hardware specs, sure, but only by about $200 or so. I don’t know what you’re smoking to come up with that $7,000 vs. $1,000 figure.
Last I heard, the Mac Pro was actually cheaper than a Dell workstation with the same specs.
Why don’t you post the specs on your $1000 PC - perhaps you’re not really picking “comparable” components.
I don’t understand that “gorgeous” part of it. The cases, maybe, though PCs can be built in cool cases. But don’t Macs have those rounded rectangle windows (or whatever they call them) with the battleship gray borders and oversized control buttons? Or am I think of older ones?
I just priced out a ‘basic’ Mac Pro (tower) - $2,100.
For $7,000, you can get two 3 GHz Xeon processors, 4 GB of RAM, three graphics cards (or a single, very high-end one), and 4 750 GB hard drives. There is no way you are finding that for $1,000 anywhere - the processors alone cost about $800, each!
And there’s nothing crappier or ‘for dummies’ about the iMac.
Thanks for that link. It does look much better now, but I’m not sure about “gorgeous”. Funny thing, though. IE blocked a script, saying it was from “Apple Computer, Inc.”, which it called an “unverified publisher”. Gah, they must hate each other.
Bite your tongue. The Mac has been a solid, often exquisitely superior computer since its inception. The release of OS X marks the beginning of a period in which the Windows PC has ceased to close the gap (although it’s still coming along nicely and not losing any ground, IMO).
early days: the Mac was this, and, more importantly, running this, while the PC was this.
late 80s: the Mac had become this; you could run multiple monitors, plug in a daisy chain of SCSI devices, stuff 128 MB of RAM in them and run Photoshop to your heart’s delight. Plug and play. The comparable PC was a fast and way cheaper, but full of archaic architectures like the ISA bus with its IRQ conflicts, nothing even approximating plug and play or other ease-of-use technologies; and what y’all were running on them was windows 3.1 and its apps.
mid 90s: OK, not the Mac’s finest hour. Our OS was getting long in the tooth while the new architecture kept getting reinvented but never born and released. But we still had solidly decent computers; MacOS 8 and 9 matched up solidly against the architecture of Windows95 and 98. (We had no protected memory but still crashed no more often and could run more apps concurrently; could handle large amounts of RAM better; didn’t have a registry to content with; still had a better, more intuitive GUI; still had a lower total cost of ownership). Still, the PC ditched the awful GUI of Windows 3.x in favor of W95 look and feel, much nicer; much better memory management than ever before; the first attempts at Windows plug and play; and under Windows 98, finally, multiple monitor support. Then NT was coming onto the scene: not ready for end-user prime time but no way was OS 9 going to go up against that successfully once it grew up a bit. Hardware-wise, lots of fast chips but lots of cut-rate cost-cutting boxes and board… the PC had become an applicance and lots of mediocrity of hw quality. The Mac was still more solidly built. Still a lot of peripheral interfaces that weren’t standard outside of the Mac world, meaning fewer devices available and those that were were more expensive, but this was starting to change. NuBus gave way to PCI, for instance, and SCSI internal drives to ATA.
Concur. At work I was looking at new laptops for our analysts (who need more crunch power than the crappy basic three standard Compaqs that corporate thinks are fit-all machines). The HP that met the spec totalled up to US$3199.00 and weighted 7.5lbs. The comperable Sony was US$3199.98 and weights 8.4lbs. The MacBook Pro that met the same spec is US$2799.00 and weights 6.8lbs, not counting that you’ll have to purchase XP and install it, which will bring us back around the same price. (These are all 17" machines; going down to a 13" or even a 15" machine knocks off several hundred to a thousand on all.) Macs do have limited hardware compatibility, and the hardware that Apple offers tends to be of higher price (and quality) than the base-level commodity hardware, but on a price-per-feature basis Apple is pretty comperable to “PC” hardware.
Mac peripherals are pricy–what Apple charges for memory, hard drive space, and monitors is extravagent, egregious, and extraordinary, respectively–but no one is forcing you to buy “Apple licensed” hardware. There are third party vendors for memory that sell it t 50-60% of what Apple charges (you just have to install it yourself, which can be a bitch), and you can use any SATA drive or DVI monitor on the market. I’ve found Apple hardware, though, to be of almost uniformly high quality and compatibility and am personally inclined to pay the premium for a “daily driver”. If I were building up a render farm or computing cluster, I’d certainly go for more generic components (and AMD processors, which are still the best bargin), but I’d be running FreeBSD or some flavor of Linux and would anticipate the occasional problem or driver conflict. At home, my plan is to use a MacMini as the head node to my entertainment system/rendering server (the latter running FreeBSD) whenandif I ever get around to it, and I’ll pay the premium to get reliability in the head.
My biggest bitch about Mac and OS X is twofold; one is that their permitted hardware configurations are money-grubbing–if I want a “SuperDrive” I have to buy the faster processor instead of just paying a couple hundred more for a DVD+RW drive–and second, that OS X will only run on Mac hardware, so I can’t just buy the OS and run it on a nominally compatible non-Apple machine. Both are “smart” marketing moves, guaranteeing that even knowledgeable users who like OS X will be forced to also purchase Apple machines, but it personally irritates the crap out of me, though not enough that I’ll use a bloated, halting, and insecure Microsoft OS. So I have a Mac for doing basic stuff that is GUI intensive, and use FreeBSD for back-end serving and HPC.
Eh? Just looking at processors and a comparable motherboard for the cheapest Mac setup is going to blow your $1000 dollars. Windows or Mac, a Xeon 5130 will set you back $350. Your motherboard is going to be at least $400. How do you reckon you can build a twin processor xeon system for $1000?
Exactly what substance did you smoke before arriving at the ridiculous conclusion that you could ever build a $1,000 Windows machine that rivals whatever in God’s name you priced out for $7,000 on the Mac website? I’m a dyed in the wool PC user who realizes that there’s a deserved price premium with Apple products, perhaps understandably so, but you’re just being plain absurd.
So, where are these magical $1,000 specs you dreamt up in Na Na Land?
$1000 vs. $7000 aside, I’m depressed by the expense of the Macs as well. I went to MacWorld, fell in love, decided I HAD to have a MacBook and have been saving all the money I can ever since. The one I want is the 2nd from the very bottom of the line, not even a pro, and only 13", and it’s still $1299.
Mostly it hurts because I know I can get a bottom of the line Dell for $600. I just looked at Dell’s site though, and their Intel Core 2 Duo processor models start at…$1299.
It appears my sticker shock comes from the fact that Mac’s bottom of the line is way higher in terms of components than a bottom of the line PC. It’s still discouraging though, putting $100 away here and there. I feel like I’m excluded from the great big happy Mac family because I’m poor.
Here’s what y’all oughta do: buy a copy of MacWorld or MacAddict magazine, thumb to the back where all the 800 and 888 ads are, and go price-shopping for the cheapest Mac of one-version-ago.
Four years from now (when you’re still using the same Mac, either way) it’s not going to matter much whether you got the spring '07 Mac or the fall '06 Mac.
That can’t be right. I got a Dell Inspiron E1405 with Core-2 Duo, 2GB RAM and 160GB HDD for under $1000, including tax and shipping. And that was 3 months ago.
Unless you happen to buy today’s equivalent of the Mac IIVX.
The latest, greatest Macs occasionally turn out to be dogs, quickly orphaned, but not forgotten. It’s generally safer to stay a step back from the bleeding edge of Macdom. Six months to a year after release is a good time to buy.
Are you sure you didn’t get a Core Duo, not a Core 2? Maybe you had a coupon or something. I paid ~ $800 total in September-ish for the previous refresh of the e1405:
[ul]
[li]Core Duo T2250 1.66GHz[/li][li]1GB RAM[/li][li]100GB HDD[/li][li]1440x900 glossy display[/li][li]Dual layer DVD burner[/li][li]85Whr battery[/li][/ul]
I’m most fond of the display and the bigass battery. I get about 7 hours of web surfing (or 5 hours of divx watching) with wifi usually on and the screen dimmed one notch. The RAM and CPU are plenty, given I’m running Ubuntu with xfce. I kinda wish the hard drive were bigger, but that’s what the file server’s for.
Sure, the Macbooks are prettier and slightly smaller and lighter, but I’m happier with the Dell than I would be with one of those for several reasons:
[list=a]
[li]My screen kicks their screens’ asses[/li][li]My keyboard kicks their keyboards’ asses[/li][li]Thanks to my awesome battery life, I almost never have to mess with AC adapters or any of that shit. Just slip it in the sleeve and go.[/li][li]When I bought it, the “equivalent” Macbook (with a smaller screen and a downright shitty battery) would have been something like $500 more.[/li][/list]
d) is the kicker. Macs are almost never a good deal on the low end, if you know what you’re doing. But that’s never a segment that Apple has really ever aimed for. They make boutique hardware for specialized professionals and the style-concious, and in those markets, they’re pretty competative.
Hell, I’ve recommended i/MacBooks for friends with college-age kids, for the mostly selfish reason that it’s unlikely they’ll ever have to get me to do anything but fix obvious hardware issues.
