Er…is your point now that Dell users are constrained in their choices because MacOS is unavailable to them? I guess that’s a fair point. Maybe Dell users should switch to using Macs so that they have more choice in what OS they can run.
I don’t care about having choices. I just want a computer that works, and lasts for more than a year and a half.
No Dell users are not limited. They can run Windows or many flavors of Unix/Linux.
Running Windows on a Mac is nice, but it has nothing to do with my original point that if you want to use Mac OS you don’t have a hardware choice , at least not without a lot of problems.
Was your original point about Mac OS specifically? I must have missed that, probably because you failed to mention it in your first several posts.
Oddly, there don’t seem to be many Mac users that are slavering for the chance to run MacOS on a piece of Dell or HP hardware. Of course, the Dell laptop I had became almost unusable after only a year of ownership due to severe overheating and power supply problems that were endemic to that model, whereas my MacBook Pro hums along beautifully with no problems at all, so that might have something to do with it.
The point is, I have plenty of choices. I can choose to buy a Dell, or an HP, or a Lenovo, or Mac, and if I buy a Mac, I can choose to run pretty much any OS I want on it. I chose a Mac, because the hardware is well-made and extremely reliable, the price was right, and I like the OS. You seem to have been laboring under some misapprehensions about how Macs work these days, so hopefully this thread has helped clear them up.
I have to give Jobs credit because he has created a bunch of users that seem to always buy Windows machines that crap out real quickly. Almost every single one of them!! By talking to Mac users I would think Windows machines have about a 90% failure rate after a year.
I did years of technical support for desktop publishing software on both Windows and the Mac OS, so I have used plenty of other computers. For my own use, I choose the Mac. It does everything I want it to do in what is, IMO, a logical, elegant and predictable way. When I first got my MacBook, I partitioned the drive and installed the Windows OS, just in case I was missing anything. After a year, I took the the thing off with no regrets. I love my Mac.
I’d be happy to ship you my Dell laptop if you don’t believe me. I’m not even kidding. You want a Dell Inspiron 1501 that won’t work if it’s not plugged in and critically overheats if you try to run Microsoft Office and any other single program at the same time? It’s yours for the cost of shipping.
PS: Until about a year ago I wasn’t a Mac user. My shitty PC laptop experience made me look into Macs as an option, and wow, I’m really glad I did. Night and day.
I’m quite sure PCs die , just not at the rate I hear from Mac users.
I would argue that for the laptop form factor, the MacBook (well, now all you can get is the MacBook Pro) is better than almost any other hardware manufacturer except for maybe Lenovo. In my experience, other laptops (especially ones from around 2006 like my MacBook) tend to be bulkier, heavier, with a poorer overall design and more hardware problems.
To be fair, I’ve replaced a good bit of my MacBook. I’ve upgraded the RAM once and plan to do so again (it’s possible to get it to use 3 gigs), changed the hard drive, and had the entire top including keyboard and touchpad replaced when something in the display failed. Something like $1000 worth of work (almost the cost of a replacement) covered by the extended warranty. Normally I never buy an extended warranty, but I made an exception for the laptop (and would for any laptop) as I can’t fix it the way I could my desktop. And I think the optical drive is failing, but I bought a $30 portable external one, and now I finally have DVD burning capability for the laptop.
That said, I don’t think I’d buy an iMac or a Mac Pro. I’d want the desktop mostly for gaming, and I can build a better gaming setup cheaper myself and would be running Windows anyway.
So, to sum up:
Mac users don’t have any choices. Except we do, but, ah-ha!, we can’t run our OS on another hardware platform. Except we’re quite happy with our hardware platforms, but really we’re not because we’re just making up imaginary PC hardware failures.
I’m going back to Civ 4 now. 
Maybe I just had bad luck with PCs. I don’t really care. I’m not going to start buying them again to check.
I wonder why products with such a horrible failure rate manage to have 80% of the market? I’m sure somebody here can explain that.
Because PCs are cheaper.
This stupid argument has been going on for years. Look, if you want to know why the Wintel is so popular, you can go all the way back to the early 1980s with IBM PC compatibles. Operating systems meant to run on the IBM PC (and following hardware) are written to deal with a very large amount of possible hardware, not that it always works. Apple has always written their software to work with only a very small amount of hardware, at least when we’re talking CPU architecture (and more in the past.) This tight integration can give a better user experience in terms of ease of use.
Look, I could ask the same question about people running Solaris 20 years ago. “It only runs on SPARC. Don’t you feel limited? Do you like the lack of choices?”
Apple hardware is more expensive. I’m sure there’s some price inflation in there, but when you buy Apple you are buying higher-end hardware. It’s not as obvious these days, but try configuring a laptop from Dell with the same specs (or as close as you can get) with a MacBook Pro. I bet the prices will be very similar. When you’re looking at similar prices, then other factors come into play. Form factor and other features mostly, though more intangible factors like image are there too.
Bought my son a laptop for college. For similar specs the Lenovo was $1100 and the Mac $1600. And the Mac screen was 13 inches vs. 15 for the Lenvo.
I think the OP question is disingenuous. I doubt anybody in the conversation thinks the point of choosing a Mac is to limit one’s own range of choices.
A similarly disingenuous question I might post would be “PC users, why do you like constant frustration and disappointment and failure?”
I wish there were more computer companies that made things work as well as Apple does. But it is more important to me that Mac computers are really, really nice computers than it would be to have more manufacturers to choose from. My iMac just seems to keep working right, without my having to join various online discussion forums about its various weaknesses and vulnerabilities, and without turning owning the thing into a hobby. Its display is the nicest to look at of any computer I’ve seen, and its construction quality the nicest, and its software the most robust.
I’ve had now about 30 PCs, from a 4.77 MHz IBM PC to my 3 month old corporate laptop, and I am so glad not to be dealing with all their foolishness when I am at home. Damn, I just love this thing!
There it is again! That dead guy did his job very well.
Okay, what about the other parts? The display quality? The touchpad? The weight and overall size (not just the display?) The arrangement of the ports?
If your son is happy with the Lenovo, great. I’m just trying to point out that even though the CPU and RAM may be similar, there are other places they can differ.
PC users who change to Mac probably only do so if they’ve had bad experiences with PCs (otherwise there’d be no incentive to change,) therefore you will find a lot of Mac converts who had hardware/software problems with Windows machines. This doesn’t mean they’re lying, or unfairly biased it just means the group is selected for people who’ve had problems with Windows.
To your OP, fewer choices is not a bad thing if the choices you have fit your needs.
Since you’re looking for opinions, I’ll move this to IMHO.
twickster, MPSIMS moderator