I like the ‘I’m a Mac’ commercials. Because the PC is John Hodgman.
Nerdy looking schlump. Discovered Jonathan Coulton. Acted on BSG, Venture Brothers. Written multiple successful incredibly nerdy books of awesomeness. Lived his life as the bible said for a year. Shows on the Daily Show as a correspondent. Shows up on This American Life a few times. Repeatedly published in the NY Times.
versus this really hip looking guy
who acted in a bunch of B-movies. Including, admittedly, Galaxy Quest… and Herbie Fully Loaded.
I’ll accept that as a fair depiction of the two. Seriously, which of the two would you rather spend an afternoon hanging around with?
The major advantage of the Mac OS, to me, at least, is that most software applications are self-contained units. Installing an app is just a matter of copying it to the hard drive. Uninstalling it is just a matter of deleting it from the hard drive. There are exceptions, but this is true in general.
This alone makes maintaining a Mac over its lifetime far easier than a Windows machine, where, if you do any amount of software testing (which requires frequent installs and uninstalls), you wind up wiping and re-installing Windows at least yearly.
I manage a 150-workstation Windows network, so this is not a Mac fanboy opinion.
I agree with this, and i really wish that Windows program installations were more like this. The thing is, if written correctly, most of them could be; in many cases, all the fucking around with the registry and stuff isn’t really necessary.
There are quite a few programs that i use, mainly freeware programs, that offer the opportunity to download either an installation exe or a zipped folder. Whenever i’m given such an option, i always choose the latter, because then all i have to do is extract the folder and link to the start file. You can do this even with browsers like Firefox, where installing the portable version gives all the functionality of the regular version, without adding anything to the registry.
I just went to Dell and Apple and configured basically the same setup. The difference is $600.
Studio XPS 16
Intel® Core™ 2 Duo T6600 (2MB cache/2.2GHz/800Mhz FSB)
Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium, 64bit, English
Edge-to-Edge FHD Widescreen 15.6 inch WLED LCD (1920x1080) W/2.0 MP
8X Slot Load CD/DVD Burner (Dual Layer DVD+/-R Drive)
4GB Dual Channel DDR3 SDRAM3 at 1067MHz (2 Dimms)
500 GB4 7200 RPM5 SATA Hard Drive
ATI Mobility RADEON® HD 3670 - 512 MB
Soundblaster X-Fi Hi Def Audio - Software Enabled
Dell Wireless 1520 802.11n Half Mini-Card
Obsidian Black High Gloss Finish
$1,348
Mac Book Pro 15 Inch 2.6 Gig
Intel Core 2 Duo
4GB Memory
320GB hard drive
SD card slot
Built-in 7-hour
NVIDIA GeForce 9400M + 9600M GT with 256MB
$1,999.00
If I up the processor on the Dell to match the Mac, it is another $100. A Dell with the same screen size, same memory, bigger hard drive and a better video card is $500 cheaper. Which is 1/3rd of the price of the Dell.
I grew up with Macs but got my first PC around four or five years ago (it’s definitely time to replace it soon). I have to point out that the virus issue is way overblown. I have AVG Free as my antivirus software, and have had zero problems with viruses. It’s not nearly as intrusive as Norton sounds; the amount of time I spend dealing with it probably adds up to a few minutes per year.
In my experience, Macs are far from crash-free. Until recently I had an iBook or somesuch with OSX on it that I mainly used for web browsing. Firefox crashed or glitched out way more on it than on my PC. Not to mention that updating software was way more intrusive when it was automatic, and way more of a hassle when it wasn’t automatic.
The appeal of Macs is not mostly image and status, but it is partly image and status.
Like many other products, there is a market for a high-end (and high-priced) item with an added “cool” factor. You pay a premium for quality, but also a premium for cool.
Macs and PCs are hard to directly compare sometimes though. The hardware on a Mac is no different than the hardware on a mid- or high-end PC, so that’s not really an issue in my mind. And when it comes to OS issues, there’s a lot of subjectivity. When I maximize a window, I want it maximized, dammit. But many Mac users find that baffling. Not to mention questions of whether you consider PCs to include just Windows, or if you throw Linux and the BSDs into the mix.
I mean, if we compare a PC with good hardware running Darwin with a glitzy open-source UI designed to mimic OS X, to a Mac booting into Windows Vista using BootCamp, then things get really, really blurry.
(And for every “Start button in order to shut down? WTF?”, there’s a “Drag icon into trash in order to eject? WTF?”)
Apparently, in Rumor’s opinion, “hardware” is all that matters in a computer. So if the hardware on a Mac is no different than that of a PC, then they’re functionally identical, thus no room for one being more “high end” or “cooler” than the other.
Then again, he does say “slightly,” so probably he realizes the above has exceptions.
Mac vs. PC is more a Lifestyle choice. Try out both and see what you like more. If you are used to one and don’t have some real problems with it, stay with it. There is nothing one side really does better. Most people choose the side they want to like, as far as I can see.
Since I’ve suffered from computer gaming addiction before, I’ve actually installed Linux on my PC before just to eliminate the possibility of game-playing. It worked, no questions about it. But how much money would I pay for an enforced self-limitation?
high end products are either high end because they are superior products, or because they are status symbols.
as you are content with the assertion that “The hardware on a Mac is no different than the hardware on a mid- or high-end PC”, then you’re not paying a premium for quality. you’re paying a premium for image and status.
I bought a M-Audio MIDI controller last week (manufactured in 2010), plugged it in and it worked with my Macbook and Prologic instantly. The manual has 7 pages on setting up with many, many, many versions of Windows. All of them require downloading and installing drivers from the net.
Speaking of living in 1993, that was the last time any Mac i’ve owned froze or crashed.
Since then, never. How 'bout you, Botty? :dubious:
Looks like the “Apple Tax” for the Macbook Pro is more than for the Macbook. The only thing I’d add to your config is an update to Win7 Pro or Ultimate. I run Ultimate on my Win 7 box and find it closer to OSX than the Home version. Still would be a $350 delta though.
It’s true that Macs in the 1993-2001 era occasionally had massive lock ups. These usually occurred when the computer had been on for an extended period of time, and as Mac users tend to do, ten or so programs were open at once (I currently have 16 programs open.). Restarting always fixed the problem. PC troubles tended to be more ingrained in the system itself, so a mere restart, didn’t do it.
That was why when computer shopping in the mid-nineties I went with a Mac. I’ve never regretted it or looked back.