A big factor is most people have the software then need already on their computer. It doesn’t matter for the OP how that software was aquired, just that they have it, and know how it works, and depend on it.
Going to a Mac might incure lots of additional expense replacing software then know how to use with alternatives that might not be as useful - or at least I think this is a fear factor.
Congratulations; you’ve proven that Microsoft Marketing’s campaign of FUD – “Using anything other than Windows will make you an outcast” – is working beautifully. 
As others (including myself) have said, the boring truth is that Tiger’s biggest changes are under the hood. Apple is laying the architectural framework for really big things in the future, but from a user-behind-the-keyboard perspective, it’s No Big Deal.
A few examples of these “hidden” geek features in Tiger, which will probably show up publically in future MacOS X releases:
[ul]
[li]Arbitrary, dynamic, user-scalable user interface – drag a slider, and all your windows/text/icons grow and shrink accordingly.[/li][li]Arbitrary user linking of data – drag your Mom’s favorite MP3s and pictures to her entry in your Address Book to teach your Mac that a relationship exists between them. Then, three years later, when you search for stuff related to your Mom, those items will be retrieved for your consideration.[/li][li]Unlimited arbitrary file attributes – Grab a bunch of files and mark them as your favorites. Grab another bunch and mark them because they remind you of your first girlfriend. Grab a third and mark them as stuff related to your new car purchase. Then search or filter based on these (and other) criteria as desired.[/li][li]Advanced searching – “Find all files from Manny, Moe, or Jack, that are not PDFs, are at least 25K in size, haven’t been modified in at least a year, and pertain either to cars, trucks, or RVs.”[/li][/ul]
[QUOTE=rjung]
[ul][li]Arbitrary, dynamic, user-scalable user interface – drag a slider, and all your windows/text/icons grow and shrink accordingly.[/ul][/li][/QUOTE]
We have this since Windows 95! We call it screen resolution slider 
Erm, not exactly the same thing… I’ve been able to change my screen resolution for a very long time, too. I think rjung is talking about being able to scale individual GUI components in relation to each other.
But hadn’t you just finished saying that most of the benefits will come after developers release new software? How is that worth $129 now?
If I recall correctly, they were HFS format; we tried installing a utility to read them and we could eventually see a list of what was on the media, but couldn’t get at the actual files.
I’ll emphasise again, this isn’t an anti-Mac post; the sole purpose of ALL of my posts in this thread has been merely to describe the perception of incompatibility that exists in the minds of Windows users.
Sure, if you can be bothered, which probably isn’t the case for most Windows users, certainly much less the case, say, five years ago, hence the perception of incompatibility.
Doesn’t matter; because most of the users are running Windows, they perceive this as Not Their Problem.
I’ll emphasise again, this isn’t an anti-Mac post; the sole purpose of ALL of my posts in this thread has been merely to describe the perception of incompatibility that exists in the minds of Windows users.
Nope, sorry, I’m describing prejudices that exist in the minds of the Windows user base I’ve personally supported - prejudices arising as a direct result of the problems they have found themselves dealing with.
I’ll emphasise again, this isn’t an anti-Mac post; the sole purpose of ALL of my posts in this thread has been merely to describe the perception of incompatibility that exists in the minds of Windows users.
[sub]Are we there yet?[/sub]
Are these things that would be of use (or will be used) by the average non-geek Windows user? No.
Are they things that, in most cases, can be done with reasonable ease by a geek user? Yes. (I mark files relating to my parents by putting them in a folder called ‘parents’. It’s not hard.)
Are decent search facilities freely available already, for all platforms? Yes
Does the average user have so many files that they can’t use these search facilities to find what they want? No.
In your opinion, anyway.
In my experience, asking geek users to predict what the non-geek market wants is like asking Eskimos to predict next summer’s popular beachwear.
At work we’re in the process of upgrading from Windows NT to XP. 40,000 desktops. It’s a huge exercise.
The desktop I’m working at right now cost $400, and it was all-inclusive too - keyboard, mouse, monitor, speakers, even a printer tossed in for good measure. Faster processor but less RAM than yours - but I can add RAM easily if I want. It’s got a bigger footprint, but that’s really not an issue for me.
The cost differential between Macs and PCs has always been pretty significant, and one thing that’s always kept me from even considering switching is that I’ve never really understood what I was going to get that would be worth the extra money.
Apple marketing likes to call it a “user experience”, which is largely subjective. I think a reasonably tech-savvy individual can do fine with a Windows box, as they can manage the various conflict issues with minimal pain. To use my Mom and Dad as examples, a Dell box caused excessive pain. But that didn’t make them switch.
A while ago I wrote on the Dope about some positively bizarre things that were happening to my Dad’s fastest PC, which completely stumped me and Dell tech support, and refused to go away after several clean sweeps of the hard drive. Turned out he was catching malware that neither his firewalls (one software, one hardwar), nor his anti-virus software (Norton) were catching. Whatever bug he finally caught essentially destroyed half his files, including the photos he took at my wedding. He should have backed them up on something other than Zip disks (which also got infected), but never imagined he would just lose it all. He now has only the hard copies, few of which were printed at photo-quality. Recovering what he could took over three weeks, but much of value was lost for good. As he runs his own business, those lost two weeks cost him dearly, far more than the price he paid for PC. In the midst of this nightmare he called me. Ever get a virus? Nope. Ever get your hard drive replaced? Nope. Power supply ever fritz out? Nope. Ever crash? Two or three times in three years. What anti-virus software you using? None. I took it off because it caused problems with installations. Don’t need it, because there are no viruses for OSX. He bought an iMac two days later, and loves it.
I really don’t think the “user experience”, in terms of differences in GUI (which are pretty minimal) or relative ease (people will put up with a fair amount to so save a few hudred bucks…usual human limitations for calculating cost:benefit) can realy justify the Mac markup for performance parity. But now that I’ve seen this security issue cause significant harm firsthand, I think the “user experience” issue has taken on a whole new dimension. It’s relatively rare that people get hurt as badly as my folks, but not rare enough. And the minor harm with spam and bots and the constant onslaught of viruses make a pretty compelling case to pay a premium if you can afford it, IMO. I’m hardly 100% thrilled with Apple or its CEO as a company, but comparing their business with that of rapacious monopolists who sell a reltaively buggy, totally insecure system, there’s increasingly less cause, in my mind, to favor a Windows box just because you save a few hundred bucks. And Macs hold their value very well, something few people consider when they purchase a PC. A Windows box depreciates to worthlessness in a year or two. Not so the Mac. It’s the Toyota Camry of the computer world, so when you figure that into ones next purchase of a Mac, the price disparity isn’t quite as outrageous as some may claim.
USB ports? Firewire ports? Decent graphics card with dedicated video RAM? DVD/CD-RW drive? Integrated wireless antenna? Audio line in? Digital audio out? A footprint that doesn’t require hiding a PC case under the desk? As with any other thing in life, the devil is in the details.
Not from the comparisons I’ve seen, but those are the ones when you take an Apple computer and then spec out a comparable Dell or HP PC. And the folks who tout the savings in building their own computer never figure in the costs of the time and labor involved.
A fair point - but probably a lot of PC users don’t need (or even know about) those things when they first get a computer.
It’s when they get a camcorder for Christmas and can’t find a way to connect it that the problems start. Or find out that their neighbour listens to internet radio, but they’ve got no sound card. Or their daughter sends them a DVD of their grandchildren, and it won’t work in the CD drive.
The market for ultra-basic, bottom-cost computers is shrinking in an increasingly multimedia world. However the chances are that budget-buyers will start out getting second hand multimedia enabled PCs (eg their son’s or daughter’s old computer - like my parents got my brother’s old one) before they splash out on the latest and best.
Yes.
Damned if I know. I’ve got Ethernet ports, and the house’s desktops are networked with Ethernet cables.
You’re asking the wrong person. Sound and images on the computer are more than satisfactory, that’s all I can say.
Yes.
Nope, can’t see that I need it. The wireless antenna’s integrated into the DSL router.
Hell, even our 1998-vintage computer had that.
Can’t say.
Nope, but as I already said, that isn’t an issue for me; there’s plenty of room under the desk. I don’t live on a boat.
That’s pretty nasty; that had to hurt.
One of the computers on our house net is now there basically as a backup. It’s a 2001-vintage Dell, and pretty much every file on my $400 laptop is also on the Dell. If I download a set of pix onto this computer from my camera, it’s really easy to push them over to the Dell too - just drag and drop, and it makes its copies while I’m yapping here on the Dope. So I feel like I’m already fairly well insured against that sort of disaster.
I didn’t come here to argue the superiority of PCs over Macs; I literally haven’t had the opportunity to use a Mac in over a decade, so I honestly don’t know what I’m missing. I’m just here to add my anecdotal account to the discussion of why more PC people don’t try Macs.
But still, it looks to me like whatever the Mac has that I don’t, is stuff that’s geekier than my needs. That’s just my story; YMMV.
That’s “$400 desktop.” Haven’t seen a laptop under $600 that I’d advise even a complete non-geek to buy.
I like Apple for its pluckiness and its GUI.
What I don’t understand is its refusal to conform to the facts of life. If you go on BT sites and get video, it’s likely in Divx or Xvid codecs. I’m told by the “Genius” at an Apple store that there will NEVER be native support for any kind of .avi file, because “that’s a Windows file-type.” Well, guess what. That’s called “life”. Deal with the reality.
I did find that there are third-party players for this stuff, but the GUIs suck. What I need for my iBook-owning brother is Zoom Player for OSX.
Though I’m not RTFirefly, here are my general responses.
USB–of course. Even the cheapest PCs have 4 to 6, including 2 up front.
Firewire–far less common. If you get it, it’ll be integrated on the motherboard. It might take off with more multimedia and the popularity of the iPod, but the average user doesn’t care about the difference between USB2 and 6-pin FireWire.
Graphics card–not at the bargain level. Any graphics will be onboard at that level. If someone wants better graphics, they can easily buy a card.
DVD/CD-RW drive–Yes. Just as likely, if you’re buying when Dell is having a deal is getting a DVD-R drive, though I can see why having the CD-RW capability is more useful as the media is cheaper and completely standardized.
Integrated wireless antenna–unneeded. Many people don’t go WiFi or network. If they are setting up a home network, they’ll know if they want to get one.
Audio line-in–of course. Either onboard the motherboard or as part of a seperate sound card. There will generally be a microphone in and a line-out as well.
Digital audio out–probably not, but once again, not used by a whole lot of people. I don’t think I have it (my sound card is nearly 5 years old, but I might have S/PDIF) but I’ve never had anything with which I could use it. Besides, if I need to use the analog hole, I need the audio line-in.
Footprint–I’ve never liked the total to near-total integration and lack of upgradability in today’s Macs, from the iMac to the G5. As a guy who homebrews and does hardware upgrades fairly often, I don’t like having my hands tied by something like an iMac. The G5 is basically a minitower, which doesn’t prove anything on the under-the-desk criticism. If you can fit the G5 tower on your desk, you can fit a small PC tower. As for the flat-panel, well flat-panel generally comes standard on most bargain computers, especially when someone is running a deal. Personally, I prefer a flat-screen CRT, especially for gaming, despite the size.
I’m not going to be switching any time soon. I have too much already tied up in software and hardware. I’m a homebrewer–I could build a system as good or better than the G5 for the same or less cost. 64-bit computing? AMD has 64-bit mobos and CPUs out there, and Microsoft just released XP-64. Dual-processing? I could find a mobo that could handle it, but I don’t need it by any means.
Look, you’re right that for the average user, a Mac is a perfectly fine choice. Even better, in some ways, especially if someone is afraid of doing anything to their computer or want to think of it as a toaster. But if you’re like me, you upgrade. A lot. You don’t go Linux for the same reason you don’t go Apple. You have hundreds of dollars already sunk into software that you want to keep using, as that saves money that can go to better hardware. You have hardware that you want to carry over, which can save money until you decide to upgrade the carried-over video or audio card. You know how to lock down a computer and how to keep it clean. Give me 2000 bucks and I’ll build an XP system using some of my current gear that will blow away a $2000 G5.
