Personally, my reason is simple: I like the OS. I like having an OS that lets me go all UNIX on it whenever I want… but that never actually forces me to. Now, maybe some of the latest Ubuntu versions have caught up to that standard by now, but as of the last time I was buying a computer, they hadn’t quite.
Prior to Win 7 I’d agree but Microsoft has been forced (by being the target of so many viruses/trojans) to change. At this point a newbie Windows user is just as likely to have problems as a newbie OS/X user.
When talking of admin mode there are a few subtleties. You can have accounts that have admin privileges - that is they are allowed to perform admin functions and access files as admin, whereas the OS would prevent use of the functions or access if an attempt was attempted from a user account.
Then there is kernel mode. Where the system and programs run with no protection art all, and no attempt is made to even check of access is available or not. Very early versions of Windows and MacOS ran in kernel mode. It was vastly easier to make an OS that didn’t need to transition between user and kernel mode, and it ran faster. It was also utterly insecure. This was in the days before ubiquitous Internet connectivity (if you were connected it was via a bulletin board, and you didn’t have and IP connection) and file transfer was on floppies. Viruses and malware could come directly in an email, and infect you by just reading the email or inserting the floppy. Macs and PCs were equally vulnerable, simply because they were utterly open.
For Windows it was the advent of NT, where the OS was essentially new, that brought with it what you might call a real operating system. I won’t call it a modern OS, as NT was heavily based on VMS, and OS that saw light in the late 70’s. (Windows NT - aka WNT, just move one letter back.) NT brought with it proper protection modes and operating system mediated access control… Where it failed to provide adequate protection was in two ways. Microsoft had a vision of a fully integrated single environment, where code libraries were available to any running program, and new programs could augment this environment essentially automatically - via the dynamically linked library capabilities. This was both a neat idea, provided a platform in which lock-in was essentially forever, and which was insecure by design. Also, the added security mechanisms proved to be unwelcome to most naive users, and so the habit of running everything from an admin account - avoiding the troublesome and annoying road humps (as perceived by most users) become the norm. So Windows remained really difficult to secure. XP remains riddled with holes, holes that will never be plugged. Modern version of Windows - 7 onwards are pretty good. But the desire to maintain a very long term backward compatibility, plus working out how to make the OS both secure and not full of annoying security messages that were mostly ineffective, took a log time.
Mac OS had its major change in underpinning technology when OSX came out. OSX is for all useful intents NeXT. Steve Jobs brought the OS with him from NeXT, and he brought one the chief architects of NeXT’s underpinning OS (Mach) (Avie Trevanian) and the NeXTStep development environment with him.
Mach brought with it a BSD Unix environment, and a highly advanced modular micro-kernel architecture. Its security model leveraged decades of experience from the Unix world. Similarly a lot of the system admin and security was directly taken from BSD Unix. This has proven to be a very solid base.
I have a NeXT computer, and if one boots it up, it is uncanny. This is an OS that came out in the late 80’s and yet any Mac user would instantly recognise it, and be comfortable using it. Windows took over a decade to even be a pale shadow of what this OS had. In many respects it is still behind.
Ironically, Rick Rashid, the head guy of the Mach project at CMU took a job at Microsoft. Microsoft have a habit of hiring high profile guys, and then they vanish into the Borg and never seem to surface with any contribution to the art ever again.
The Apple that was created after Steve returned totally turned around. What they have is a laser focus on what it is they believe their products should be. This includes the “walled garden” of the iPhone/iPad iOS line. Some dislike this. But there is more to the product than the sum of the parts. In comparison Microsoft has been a rudderless behemoth of a company that has failed badly to innovate in any meaningful way for almost a decade. Highly ambitious projects (for instance Longhorn) simply withered on the vine, and what was once a grand vision of the next generation of operating systems technology never saw the light of day. Microsoft’s core clientèle remains business, not home users. Big businesses and governments is where it makes its money, and where it devotes its energies. But even here it has miss-stepped quite a few times, delivering really simply the wrong product. It remains to be seen if they can turn the ship around.
“Cheap Windows computers vs. Apple” is a false dichotomy. Even if we ignore other operating systems for the moment, the reality is:
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If you want a cheap computer, you get a Windows system.
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If you want a high-end computer, then you have a choice between an Apple and a high-end Windows system. Where similar systems are available from both, the prices are similar. The choice usually depends on the software you want to run, requirements for special hardware, and personal preferences.
This (and other posts here) are just completely wrong.
Apple computers are in no way “better” than PCs except, perhaps, aesthetic design.
I buy PCs for my company. They had previously bought iMac desktops for their video production. It took me awhile to beat into their heads that I could build a substantially better (fault tolerant) and faster PC for less money. They fought me on this because, ya know, Apple is just better for this stuff.
Well, it isn’t and I get thanked regularly by the people using the video production PC. In fact they fight over who gets the PC and who gets stuck with the iMac.
That said they iMac looks sexier. That’s about it though. On ANY other metric apart from looks the PC I built handily outperforms the iMac (by a lot really) and is more reliable.
Some people like the Mac OS but that is more what you are used to than it being “better”. Yes there is more malware for PCs but that is simply because they are what most people use. There is plenty of Apple malware out there and if Apple became predominant in the computing world they’d get the majority of malware too.
Frankly I do not understand why all the hipsters dig Apple products. It is a closed ecosystem. There is no freedom. You get what Apple says you can get and that’s it. Hell, they even recently censored the “nudity” in the very well regarded game Papers Please.
In short Apple sells at a premium because they are “cool”. They are charging a premium for image and that is about it. I would seriously doubt you can ever find a Mac that is better in any meaningful metric than a PC at the same price point.
I didn’t say Apple computers are better. I said Apple computers are comparable to similarly-priced Windows computers. Even the iMac - if you want a compact all-in-one Windows PC with a high-quality (IPS or similar) display, it’ll cost as much as an iMac. (Compact size and uncluttered configuration are important features for some people.)
Of course, if you want a computer with some features of the iMac but not others (e.g. you want a similar processor, but don’t care about the size and configuration), then you can do much better than an iMac.
p.s. Here is an example of a high-end Windows all-in-one PC. It’s comparable to the base spec 27" iMac, and priced similarly.
This is just plain wrong.
Apple design is not only more attractive from the outside, but better thought-out and better manufactured on the inside. For example the last generation Mac Pros had their hard drives on sleds, which meant that the inside of the machine wasn’t the typical mess of cables that typify PCs. Also, Apple machines have had a lot more thought put into acoustic design, so they are much quieter than a generic PC.
The hardware may be similar, but the system design is very different.
I already pointed out that this is wrong.
For example, the computer with the highest display resolution for <$2500 is the 27" Retina iMac. (Because the only other way to get a computer with 5k display is to get a desktop plus a Dell 5k monitor, and that monitor by itself costs the same as the 27" Retina iMac.)
A year ago I looked for the fastest laptop with >14" display and <5 lb weight, at any cost. The Macbook Pro was the only <5 lb laptop that had a quad-core i7 processor. Unfortunately this is a work PC and I needed several Windows-only software, so I had to settle for an HP Zbook-14 which only has a dual-core i7 chip. Today I could get a Dell M3800 or XPS-15 with a quad-core i7 chip, but it would cost as much as a comparable Macbook Pro. And the Mac would be better in several important respects - for example, it has a much smaller and lighter AC adapter.
Bolding mine.
The “closed ecosystem” thing is really getting old. My Macbook is loaded with as much third party software as my Windows machine. The only time the ecosystem is remotely closed is within the app store, which you are not forced to use.
Oh, and from your link:
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“Just talked to Apple. The initial rejection for porn was a misunderstanding on their part. They suggested I resubmit with the nudity option,” Papers, Please creator Lucas Pope wrote on Twitter today. “I’ll make an update to restore the nudity over the weekend (default to off) and it should be available next week.”*
Mac Pros are the biggest ripoff in the Apple store. If you need that level of power in a computer steer way clear of Apple (although they do look sexy).
Frankly at that pricepoint you are better off building your own PCs. I work at the Chicago Board of Trade and see a lot of power setup-ups for high speed trading and they are all custom builds. They cost a lot less and are faster than pretty much anything off the shelf (PC or Mac).
iOS is a closed ecosystem. OSX is not.
That’s $950 from Best Buy. If there’s a lesson here, it’s not to buy your computers from Office Depot.
I did a quick Google search, and the first non-Apple Xeon E3 12-core workstation I found was this HP, which costs exactly the same as the 12-core Mac Pro. Where would I find one that’s much cheaper?
If you found an ASUS ET2702 for $950, please post a link, I want one. Or any all-in-one PC with a 27" IPS screen. I searched on Best Buy web site and the only result I got was this refurb for $2650.
My mistake, was looking at a 23" model. Still, just googling the model shows it for several hundred less. It also seems to be discontinued so it’s a poor point of comparison.
As I said at that level you are far better off building your own PC.
What mac hardware did PC adopt? The only thing I can think about mac users pointing to as an example is firewire, which isn’t an Apple invention and is an industry standard, and that flopped, and it was never widely adopted.
This isn’t true. They design the internal layout of their devices, obviously, and they sometimes integrate CPUs and GPUs into a single modular unit, but the actual design work for the processors is done by companies like ARM and nvidia.
Only if your time is worth nothing.
This was covered right at the start of the thread. One you talk own build the OP doesn’t apply.
Once you get into a “build your own” regime you are not comparing any brands at all. If you work for a company and you are building computers from parts you are being disingenuous if you do not include your wages in the cost of the build. This includes all taxes and other on-costs on your employment. If you are doing it for yourself you need to decide what your time is worth. Typically this means pricing your time at zero.
Only companies that have need for very large numbers of identical machines will contemplate in-house builds. Once you get a real accounting process involved, and they work out the real cost of ownership you will swiftly find that very few companies will entertain some geek they employ building their systems. Not unless he works for free, and will guarantee to provide a multi-year support contract - also for free. The cost of having a machine fail is typically measured in hundreds of dollars an hour until you either fix it or provide a replacement. Reliability that comes from well integrated design and testing, plus the ability to get enterprise level service contracts pays for itself in the first machine failure you have.
This isn’t an Apple versus PC question. Same logic also applies to Unix and Linux installations as well. Whatever your platform, once you are using it for commercially critical work, within a company where money is properly managed, you simply won’t consider building your own. It is neither cost effective or good commercial sense.
For enterprise systems this means the usual big brands, those that understand commercial realities and enterprise level service requirements. Apple are so-so at this, but they are much better than they once were. Keeping their model range simple helps them a great deal here. But there is a very good reason why Dell, HP, IBM dominate in business environments. Dell’s build quality is way poorer than Apple, but they understand enterprise service and finance very well. HP own the remnants of DEC, and they were one of the best. IBM, well they invented enterprise computing, even if they have now sold all the PC divisions off to Lenovo.