Some people say Macs are too expensive. Some say they aren’t. I say they’ve got it all wrong. Read on to understand how I came to this conclusion.
It is a touchy subject. If you want to stirr things up, write an article titled “Macs are (not) too expensive” and you’re sure to get a lot of comments, a lot of hits. Basically, there are three camps in this discussion. The first camp says that Macs are too expensive, the second one says they aren’t, and the third group consists of people that just don’t care. Leaving the last one out of this story, I’ll focus on the first two camps.
Expensiveness is a very complicated term. Somehow, the people in the first two camps think that expensiveness (or it’s counterpart, cheapness) is a universally applicable term, equal among all humans, a fact that one can set in stone. Like, ice is slippery. Fire is hot. Fish can swim. You know.
This is of course complete nonsense. Whether something is expensive or not is a completely subjective matter, influenced by many, many variables. In this story, I will concentrate on two of those variables. These two, perceived value of goods and income, are (arguably, however) the two most important factors that control whether an item is perceived as ‘expensive’ or ‘cheap’.
Perceived value of goods
People buy things, because they perceive those things as ‘valuable’. The more valuable something is to people, the more money they will be willing to spend on it. As you can clearly understand, an item’s value is completely subjective. To me, an Aston Martin DB9 is well worth its whopping 202 000 Euros. I appreciate its timeless design, powerful engine, the craftsmanship (Aston Martins are built by hand), the brand’s heritage, the whole nine yards. To someone else however, all that means jack. That someone just sees a car, nothing more, nothing less, and they will call me crazy for being willing to spend all that money on it. This is applicable to almost everything. I don’t see the use in spending money on musical instruments; as I can’t play them, they are valueless to me. To a musician however, they are invaluable, and he’ll be willing to spend a lot of money on it.
The same applies to the Macintosh. I bought my Macs because I appreciate the design, the architecture, and above all, the operating system. I am willing to spend more on a Mac than on an x86 computer. So to me, a Mac is not expensive. Any added costs there might be in a Mac over a standard x86 are completely justified by my personal opinion about the superiority of the machine over the x86. Just like the musician and his instruments.
However, this of course does not go for everyone. Not everyone sees any value in the Mac platform that justifies spending any (if any) extra costs. Good case design is not patented by Apple. Most people don’t care whether or not the PPC architecture is better (leaving the upcoming switch out of the story). Same goes for the operating system. I may find Mac OS easier to use than it’s competitors, but that’s just an opinion. It means nothing, at least not to anyone else but me. So, if we have someone who finds looks unimportant, does not care about architectures, and is happy with using either Windows or Linux– than that person has no personal justification of spending the extra cash for a Mac.
Hence, for this person, a Mac is expensive.
This person will be more than satisfied with his no-name box; it runs Windows (or to a lesser extent, Linux) just fine, he can browse, email, play games, it does all what most people want from a computer. Yet, computers like these are available at much lower prices than Macs. With monitors, that is.
My perceived value of a Macintosh is much higher than that of the person I just described (let’s name him Bob, for the sake of clarity). Therefor, I am willing to spend more money on it, and as a result, I find it not expensive. Bob, however, when we present him with a Mac (any Mac, Mini + screen/keyboard/mouse, iMac G5, PowerMac) and a no-name x86, the latter available at much lower pricing, sees two computers that let him do the same things, but the x86 at a much lower price. Bob will choose the cheapest one, and will deem the Mac expensive.
An argument brought forth by people who say Macs are not expensive is that Macs come loaded with many interesting software titles, like iPhoto and iMovie, and that these software titles make the Mac prices go up– but, you’re getting something in return. This, again, depends completely on if a customer sees any value in that software. I personally sure do– but I know my parents wouldn’t care about it at all; Windows lets them see and retouch digital photos too, and they don’t have a digital videocamera so they can edit digital home videos. So, to them, iLife means nothing. To them, iLife is no justification for spending more cash on the Mac. The same applies to Bob, who doesn’t have a digital camcorder either. And there are enough iPhoto equivalents for Windows and Linux.
Income
The perceived value is not all that matters. As I explained, I really find the DB9 worth its hefty price tag. Yet, I do not own one (sadly enough). Why?
I don’t make enough money to buy one. Really, I don’t (damn it).
Income is the one variable that determines whether or not something is perceived as expensive. I may find the DB9 worth 202 000 Euros, but seeing I don’t make enough money to buy one, the DB9 is still expensive to me. Income is a limiting factor.
If I had the money, I’d buy a PowerMac G5. I’m sure many others out there would too. If Bob earns close to minimum wage, he might want that Mac really badly, but he won’t be able to buy it. I might explain to Bob all the benefits I found in using Macintosh, but if he doesn’t earn enough money to buy one, he will still deem the Mac expensive.
Bob could make enough money to theoretically buy one. However, he can only buy one if he starts spending less on other important expenditures (going out, clothing, music albums, you know). If Bob deems those other expenditures more important, more valueable, than the Mac; then he’ll still say that he finds the Mac expensive.
Conclusion
I hope all of you now understand that something’s expensiveness or cheapness is not a fact. It’s a personal opinion, influenced by many variables, but especially the ones I mentioned in this article. This story was about the Mac, but you could basically substitute it with any other item.
So, from now on, when you are participating in an online forum, or our comment’s section, think about how personal the perception of price is. It is not set in stone. It is not a fact.
It all ‘depends’.
–Thom Holwerda
If you would like to see your thoughts or experiences with technology published, please consider writing an article for OSNews.
Given the amount of time spent on keeping a Windows box reasonably secured and the time spent on doing the same with a Mac, I consider Macs to be EXTREMELY cheap – especially since time is money (not to mention life!)…
That said, I do tech support and software development for a living so this should apply even more for non-tech savvy persons.
/Lennart
I don’t spend any time keeping my windows system secure and I don’t have any problems. It’s behind a firewall, I don’t use IE or outlook.
Macs are expensive to me because all I want is the hardware and the OS, I don’t want all the bundled software. The only software I buy is an occasional game, the rest is freeware.
My Mum’s laptop is behind two firewalls (the routers and Windows XP’s own), has an automatically updated Virus checker, Windows update is set to automatic and she uses Firefox and Thunderbird. Yet every month or two I have to spend a couple of days getting rid of viruses and spyware.
If you are spending time removing viruses when you have antivirus software installed, you are obviously doing something wrong. At the very least, you need to change the software. And some of the more recent ones alos scan for spywares so essentially no user intervention. Not sure what you are upto.
and we all know that antivirus and spyware removal always works
I would rather not worry about it myself.
in the last four years, i have used my desktop extensively. I have had NO virus or spyware that could not be removed. I hit a lot of websites with trojans, and freewares with spywares but I have never come across one that i could remove. No idea what you are talking about.
You SAY you have had no virus or spyware that couldn’t be removed:
1) are you sure?
2) how long was your info getting sucked off of your computer before you actually got it off?
3) how long before your next infestation?
One of the points people are making is why worry about it AT ALL. Get a Mac and stop the necessary spyware removal sessions that you have on your PC.
1) Yes
2) Info sucked off.
3) Can’t see a condition when I will have an infestation.
So not worried about it AT ALL. And therefore use a cheaper PC.
Next question…
“1) Yes
2) Info sucked off.
3) Can’t see a condition when I will have an infestation.
So not worried about it AT ALL. And therefore use a cheaper PC.
Next question…”
Your response sounds like the typical PC user response of “Not me”. There’s how many billion dollars of credit card fraud going on, but to you it’s “not me”. Every adware/spyware/virus program can’t keep up with all of the new problems…but you just believe “not me”. It takes a typical PC user 3 or 4 or 5 (or more) anti-virus utilities to keep their system somewhat clean, but you’re just “not me”.
By “info sucked off” I mean *your* personal info was sucked off of your computer. If you think it’s not happening, you’re a little naive. So yeah, it sounds like you agree with me.
http://macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/6623/ – here’s some good reading (lots of links) on which platform has security issues – how much “value” is this?
http://www.macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/6652/ – “How to avoid viruses and malware? Dump your Windows PC and get an Apple Macintosh” (+ lots of other links)
http://macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/6690/ – Windows worm halts production at 13 DaimlerChrysler U.S. plants (+ lots of other links)
Oh…but *you’re* safe. The point is: what is it worth to not have to run the latest spyware/adware/anti-virus products on a weekly or daily basis? You can’t tell me you’re not spending *time* keeping your computer virus-free.
I suggest you nip over to CastleCops and see just what lengths you have to go to to get rid of some of the smarter viruses and Trojans these days.
http://castlecops.com/f67-Hijackthis_Spyware_Viruses_Worms_Trojans_…
There are loads of malware that can only be removed by running the virus checker or anti-spyware in safe mode, with that automatic system repair thing switched off or it automatically reinstalls the virus. That has to be done MANUALLY which involves me wasting my time. Now you may be a smarty clogs who only visits OSnews (assuming you don’t have port 80 closed off) but my Mother isn’t she surf’s all over the place, she downloads screen savers, games, images of seahorses she found through Google. Tell her to stop doing it, she asks why I bought her a beeping computer for.
All it takes is one downloader in the sweet spot between the Virus being released and Virus checker being updated to catch it or the vunerablilty being patched and you’re stuffed as it downloads the next version of the virus which avoids detection constantly keeping the virus ahead of the virus checkers. Before you know it your desktop is covered in links to hardcore porn sites.
First of all… You can tell your mom that with the way she is running her computer, its almost like her not caring about what happens to her car. (For example worrying about oil or tires, etc…) By not following a few simple rules she is in essence wasting your time.
Another possiblity is… How about disabling her ability to do some things, like run arbitrary programs. That way you don’t tell her, you make sure she doesn’t. (To put it bluntly, that’s how I took care of some problem people.)
Another possiblity is to setup the computer so that her important files are seperated from her OS and other Apps. Then make an easy to restore backup of all of her important programs and viola… It’s easy to get her back to the way it was. Pop in the CD and restore. Barely a waste of time.
Of course… If you believe other OSs are better, you can just switch her to Linux. It’s free you know.
“My Mum’s laptop is behind two firewalls (the routers and Windows XP’s own), has an automatically updated Virus checker, Windows update is set to automatic and she uses Firefox and Thunderbird. Yet every month or two I have to spend a couple of days getting rid of viruses and spyware.”
You are either lying through your teeth in order to make a fanatically anti-Windows statement, or you are not that technically competent and really don’t know what you’re doing.
My wife’s PC is behind the router’s firewall. I have decided to not set up an anti-virus program for her, because I know what I’m doing and I don’t like the performance sapping effects of anti-virus software. I also disable Windows update because, again, I know what I’m doing. Windows vulnerabilities cannot be exploited when the exploiter cannot see the PC. Frequent updates are for the paranoid and skittish. It’s as simple as that.
I have her use Firefox and Outlook Express. She has NONE, ZERO, ZIP, NADA, NO issues with malware and spyware. Internet Explorer vulnerabilities cannot be exploited when that browser isn’t being used. It’s as simple as that.
I then explain to her that cookies aren’t spyware, and a lot of people try to make them scarier than they really are in order to make a buck. And then of course there are some nerds who don’t know any better and help such people propagate fear. Frankly, it’s a massive pile of stinkin’ stupidity.
We still live in a rational universe. Malware authors can’t infect your machine by magic. That’s the bottom line. Chew on that for a while.
That’s exactly how I feel about Linux.
I don’t have to spend any extra time keeping my Linux systems secure. They’re stable and quick and easy to setup, for me. And the hardware costs less than Apple’s for similar performance.
And you have to admit a lifetime of free software, upgrades, updates, patches, new features, etc. is a heck of a deal.
My mom has a windows system. Somehow she lost her video drivers and spent the last few months trying to use the system at 640×480 at 16 colors. She wanted to buy a new computer because she thought this one was broken. For people like that I can understand the need for a Mac and the money and time they could save using one.
For everyone else I can’t understand why they’d spend anywhere from 50% to 100% more for the hardware, just to run an OS that will cost them an additional $120 a year for updates. They could afford to upgrade twice as often in the PC/Linux world, or afford twice the commercial software to run on top their basic system and OS.
The only thing the Mac offered me was the opportunity to work with PPC arch, RISC assembly, PPC Linux, etc. Other than the CPU the Mac is basicly the same as my PC. But it looks like the future Macs will be almost exactly the same, only cost twice as much.
Quoth the nonny mouse
I don’t have to spend any extra time keeping my Linux systems secure.
And how much time did you spend to get Wireless G working?
Yeah, that’s what I thought.
How about just plain jane Wireless B?
(I mean, I’ve thrown in the towel on ever getting my Airport card [wireless B] *ever* working under Ubunutu.)
And how much time did you spend to get Wireless G working?
Yeah, that’s what I thought.
Never had any problems here. Maybe you bought some bad hardware?
The wireless card for my laptop cost me like $50 and just worked, drivers were already included with my Linux distro, Slackware.
All my desktop systems don’t have wireless, but their network cards are always fully supported by Linux. Never had any problems getting an ethernet card to work with Linux. At least not since kernel 1.x.
For the hardware I purchase, now keep in mind I’m a computer professional, I know what hardware is and what hardware I should purchase and how much I expect to pay for it, so I always get a good deal. For the hardware I purchase I don’t have any problems using it with Linux. I don’t make impulse buys on shiny computer gadgets, so I never have Winmodem type problems on Linux.
I also save on average about 50% the cost of Mac hardware for the same specs, performance, features, etc. Plus all the software costs of either a Windows or OSX system, which can be considerable.
All software, nomatter who sells it, has bugs. Its too complex not to. But mine costs me $0 initially and $0 for all bug fixes for as long as I use that software.
And it has no limits.
Would your software vendor bend or break the law to give you fair use access to DRM media? Would your software vendor give you full access to their source code with the option to redistribute and sell it? Would your software vendor give you the next release of your OS for free?
I see how much you’re willing to pay for how they treat you today. How much would you be willing to pay for the same level of support we get from Free Software, like Linux, from Apple or Microsoft? $10/month? $20? $120?
Keep in mind when doing these comparisons there are some things money can’t buy. For everything else, Apple and Microsoft are willing to charge you as much as you’re willing to pay for it.
But I will always be getting the same functionality at at least half the price. If we are competing against eachother, as all people in our society are, this means you either need to make more money, or break the law and steal, to keep up with us Linux Joneses.
Some people say Macs are too expensive. Some say they aren’t. I say they’ve got it all wrong. Read on to understand how I came to this conclusion.
This is what Sybil Fawlty called “Stating the bleeding obvious.”
This is what Sybil Fawlty called “Stating the bleeding obvious.”
Yes, but apparantly there are many to whom this isn’t all that obvious; hence all the discussions and flamewars on this subject…
Sometimes one must state the obvious to make it clear.
This is what Sybil Fawlty called “Stating the bleeding obvious.
That’s because what is obvious is subjective too.
Except standing in a torrential downpour and not noticing it’s raining. You’d have to be pretty far gone to find that non-obvious.
It was Basil who said that, not Sybil,
At least he’s not trying to argue that a company’s dominance of an industry constitutes a monopoly depends on your perspective.
I get sticker shock every time I look at Macs, but I temper that shock by recalling that the Macs I’ve bought have had far longer (typically 1.5-2X) lifetimes than the PCs I’ve bought. This may be luck, or it may be an artifact of OS X releases getting faster instead of slower, but in any case, the Macs I bought in 2001 are still useful. The PCs I bought in 2001 have long since been recycled.
Sadly, I’m still using my PC from 2001. Works fine, though, so that’s a good thing.
My “low-end” $500 PC from 2001 works just fine on the XP that came preinstalled. Not to mention, even in 2001, $500 got you a monitor, keyboard and mouse. I think that beats any price or durability claims from the Mac side. I realise this anecdotal but then so is the parent post. So as valid as that, I guess.
Or maybe it’s because its so expensive you can’t afford to replace it as often
(j/k)
My main PC (toshiba laptop) is circa 1999 and is doing fine.
“At least he’s not trying to argue that a company’s dominance of an industry constitutes a monopoly depends on your perspective.”
The Microsoft monopoly and its attempt to expand that situation are not “perspectives”.
From Websters:
expensive – Bringing a large price.
That’s the -entire- definition.
Nothing about ‘relative value versus cost’.
Just a large price, period. Now, the word ‘large’ is itself comparitive, but it clearly means a large price compared to other items in it general category.
I understand your points, but you’re talking about -value-, not whether something is expensive.
That Astin Martin is expensive, period. I’ll take one, too, when I get rich (or maybe a Ruf-modified Porsche instead), but they’re still expensive, given that the average car runs maybe $30,000.
Macs are expensive, too. Worth it? Probably. But you’re trying to alter the basic definition of the word here with your argument.
expensive – Bringing a large price.
From the Concise English Dictionary:
“Expensive – commanding a high price, costly”
You see, whether or not something’s price is high is subjective– that is what I tried to make clear! To me, gas in the US is cheap, very cheap– however, most Americans will disagree with me.
Why is US gas cheap to me?
Because we Dutch pay 1.45E per litre. Do some maths and you’ll see how expensive we are on that.
“Bringing a large price” – Exactly– for you Americans, gas now brings a large price. Yet, I find your gas prices not high at all.
See where I’m getting at?
well, Americans also use more gas than you all in europe because we built our cities and neighborhoods with the idea that you drive everywhere. in europe, you have resources nearer your homes, or your homes are nearer the resources, so a bike ride or a walk is not out of the question.
on top of that, the idiot in office thinks that fuel efficiency is a measure of how much money an oil company can get in a year from one driver.
Thom, your analogy only works when applied to Gas because Gas is gas anywhere you find it. Its not a perception issue at all because Gas can indeed be more expensive in one area as compared to another.
Macs and PCs on the other hand can indeed be compared equally across the board with hardware software and OS.
You, like so many others before you are equating the PCs increased flexability to buy less and spend less with being less expensive.
Remember most people simply tend to think of hardware vs hardware. If, however, you add the software stack necessary to put the two machines on par then the price difference shrinks incredibly (not to mention the fact the the Mac software integrates much better than the PC software). If, on top of that, you add the extra time it takes to administer the boxes, many people would assert that the value (or TCO if you will) is much better for the Mac.
So, to reiterate Thom’s point, whether a Mac is expensive or not is very subjective.
I really don’t know what software you are adding to PCs (with probably the exception of antivirus softwares, which are recommended but not essential for Macs) that are more expensive in PCs versus Macs?
He means bundled stuff on the Mac that you’d have to buy on Windows. I’ve seen Windows laptops with DVD drives that don’t come with DVD players!
Also you get iLife with every new Mac, this is an incredible value. If you try to get serveral Software Titles for Windows that do exactly the same you’d have to pay far more than for the iLife package and it still wouldn’t be remotely as integrated and easy to use as the iLife software package.
But then the term “Large price” is in itself relative. To someone making a million dollars a year $3,000 dollars for a top of the line Mac is cheap. Which proves the authors point.
“The same applies to the Macintosh. I bought my Macs because I appreciate the design, the architecture, and above all, the operating system. I am willing to spend more on a Mac than on an x86 computer. So to me, a Mac is not expensive. Any added costs there might be in a Mac over a standard x86 are completely justified by my personal opinion about the superiority of the machine over the x86.”
You make it sound as if you pay more for the Mac’s increased refinedness. Thats not true. You pay more because Apple gives you more…. not necessarily in refinedness (though thats true to) but in actual software and hardware.
When you match a Windows PC with the exact same specs (or as close as possible) in hardware, software and OS, the prices are the same. Often times the Mac comes out to be less expensive. The way people get confused in is the PC’s flexibility. it allows you to buy less and spend less. That makes it “more flexible”… not less expensive… even though you are paying less.
If found that anyone who compares PC prices to the Mac nearly ALWAYS comes to the conclusion that PCs are less expensive by either substituting one piece of gear for another to justify a price difference or often times excluding it all together… such as, “I the increased processor size to compensate for the lack of bundled software and the price is still less expensive… See? Less expensive!”
Such analogies miss the point as they only prove the PCs flexibility… a worthy asset not to be mitigated, but does not prove price superiority.
Everybody watch, those that challenge me on this will do exactly that…. and then the response to correct the person will be lost many many posts later.
Kelly, I am a mac user (well a general computer user who has a liking to mac OS X)
please shut up!!! your comments are becoming cliche!
>”your comments are becoming cliche!”
Almost as much as those comments that insinuate that the Mac is more expensive… or that its increased value is the result of its prettier case rather than actually giving you more for the money.
Well !
I think that if grampa does not need a Ferrari does not mean the Ferrari has no value …..
A Ferrari is something quite extraordinary when compared to a Ford. But you can’t apply the same comparison to a Mac: a Mac is no Ferrari, it is something worth slightly more because of a better OS. It is like comparing 2 Fords, one of them has a better engine. Apart from that they are the same.
Actually…it’s more like comparing two Fords, one of them with a more efficient engine [processor] and easier-to-use controls [GUI], as well as more factory-installed options [iLife, DVD player, etc] and a better warranty [better support]. Yeah, you’re gonna pay more, but it’s a nice ride for your money.
😉
kellym, I own a Mac and I really like OS X. But what you said is a load of crap. Macs ARE more expensive if you only count the initial cost (i.e. not the cost of wasting time maintaining your box).
I currently own a Mac Mini 1.42GHz, 512Mb RAM and 80Gb HD, no DVD burner as well as an Athlon 64 3200 with 1GB RAM, 6600GT, duel layer DVD burner, 200Gb Hd.
Guess what? The PC cost less then the Mac Mini and I bought them both at the same time (roughly at the time when Mac Minis first came out in Australia).
Regardless of whether or not you take into account the software I got with the Mac (pretty much just OS X and iLife) the PC is cheaper even though the Mac Mini is hardware wise seriously out of date.
Now if you’re going to argue that you pay premium for the form factor, you have a point there. But Mac Mini is simply THE cheapest Mac there is. To get a Mac with the same specs as my PC at the time when I bought it would have cost at the very least 2.5 times the price I paid.
In fact a top of the line PC is cheaper then a top of the line Power Mac despite having better hardware (Mac hardware usually lags a bit behind PC hardware – PC stuff is always released first and is also always cheaper).
So no, Apple does not give you more. You really are paying just for the Mac being more refined.
A Windows PC with the exact same specs in hardware and software is ALWAYS cheaper then a comparable Mac.
At least thats how things stand now and have stood in the past. What the future might bring is open to speculation.
It’s amazing all of the arguing that goes on about Mac pricing but Thom got it right. To some it’s worth it and to others it’s not. With percieved value the only absolute is that there are no absolutes.
I personally fall into the category of those that think a Mac is worth the cost but don’t have the money to buy one. Maybe someday things will change, but for now I’m using Windows for my video editing and Linux for most everything else.
The problem with the article is that he is making it sound like these issues surround perceptions of value when in fact prices can by compared based on specs. When that happens the prices come out to be the same and sometimes the Mac costing less. His article confuses the issue even more.
“I personally fall into the category of those that think a Mac is worth the cost”
Again, its not an issue of feelings… the an accurate comparison can be made
This whole discussion is pointless. Each side is going to stick to their own beliefs and justifications. If you want a Mac buy it, if you don’t buy something else. Move on with your life.
If you have $400 to spend on a computer you can’t buy a mac. They are too expensive. You can buy a PC though because they are cheaper.
You might argue, “mac’s give so so much more for you money, you just need a few more hundred dollars to get a mac mini”. I agree completly with you (I own a mac), but that has nothing to do with price.
“If you have $400 to spend on a computer you can’t buy a mac. They are too expensive.”
You mean less flexible. Too expensive implies that you can get the same or more for your money if you buy the alternative… yet Macs cost the same (or less) when you match the Windows PC with the same (or as close as possible) OS, hardware and bundled software without substitutions or omissions.
Indeed you can, and it will run Linux. But will it run Windows LEGALLY? Will be as silent and small as a Mac Mini or will it be a noisy, generic box?
As usual, lots pf Windows users compare prices and “forgets” the cost of software since they have this “inofficial” copy. When that’s the case, why bother comparing prices at all since you obviously don’t intend to do so on an equal footing?
/Lennart
Ok, so we already have the apparently obligatory car analogy, now all we need are the people who claim they can “build a computer myself with THX surround sound, dual Athalon-64 processors and 4 Gigs of RAM into a cellphone form-factor for only $299, so why should anyone settle for less”.
Seriously, if you want a Mac, you buy a Mac. Macs are commodity hardware. You pay for the design work, the OS, the integrated applications and the support. This has been said before. The price is worth it to someone who wants Apple.
If you want something that looks good as advertised, but where all the parts NOT advertised are shoddy, get a Dell. They make good money off building fast computers, if you’re willing to accept low quality plastic or speakers or what have you.
Or build it yourself, if you know how. I doubt the ‘homebrew casemod selfbuilt’ crowd would EVER be pleased with a Mac anyway, because if Apple can make a profit off selling these, similar parts must be available for (apparently) less.
I don’t think the analogy with the Aston Martin DB9 is appropriate. The Aston Martin is worth its price tag. Its not just some old ford with a good looking chasis. For the Aston Martin you actaully get something.
A mac is essentially a ford with a good looking chasis. Thats about it. There is nothing that you can do on a Mac that you can’t do on win/lin x86 box.
A mac could be considered a Aston Martin DB9 if they only came with dual CPU/GPU, extra cooling, an ultraquiet setup and invative desktop/application management design.
Mac has none of this. All it has is good marketing. I am pretty sure you can’t say the same about the Aston Martin.
If all I want to do is drive to work and back what does the DB9 give me over some econobox for it’s huge price tag? Do I get better mileage? No. Will I get to work faster? No, not unless the freeways were empty and police didn’t care how fast I drove (not gonna happen). Is it cheaper to maintain? No.
For me there is no advantage to getting an Aston Martin to commute to work but there are a lot of disadvantages. Once again, whether or not something is worth the price tag is entirely subjective.
Many would counter that a Mac does have dual CPUs (although not dual GPUs), extra cooling, an ultra-quiet setup and an innovative desktop/application management design. It’s all subjective.
ps – Although I kind of ripped on the Aston Martin, I only did it to make a point. The DB9 is a beautiful piece of machinery and well worth it’s price tag.
If all I want to do is drive to work and back what does the DB9 give me over some econobox for it’s huge price tag?
What does it give you over some econobox? Easy – dates with HOT CHICKS! No chick even a tad over warm will look at you twice as you cruise by in your econobox, but red hot chicks will be allllllll over you with the DB9.
[quote]A mac could be considered a Aston Martin DB9 if they only came with dual CPU/GPU, extra cooling, an ultraquiet setup and invative desktop/application management design.[/quote]
Macs do have dual CPUs, extra cooling, ultraquiet setup, and innovative desktop/application management design. Where have you been for the last 5 years?
Typical PC user. Has never used a Mac. Doesn’t know what’s inside, and probably doesn’t know that he can quit all the rediculous frustration of Windows simply by going to Linux (probably doesn’t know what Linux is).
Do some research guy. The refrain from talking any way.
You could have at least looked at my posting history, you fool. Why would I even go to a site called osnews.com if I didn’t know what I am talking about.
Of course I have used Linux.
Ridiculous Frustration of Windows? Like? Within 30 min I can setup my windows installation to be literally perfect in terms of productivity and ease of use (only applies to me of course). Perhaps you should do some research and find out that it isn’t as hard as you think to turn windows into a decent system. The only problems you can’t solve is core issues like shitty scheduling.
The point I was making is that Mac doesn’t offer all that much for its price. Its all hype and good looking case. For the same price I can build you a system with better performance and features and case will look good too.
“The point I was making is that Mac doesn’t offer all that much for its price.”
How can you say that when a Mac cost the same as an equally spec’d PC… and often times will even cost less.
“Its all hype and good looking case.”
Thats simply not true. Sure, the cost is more attractive, but thats just icing on the cake for a computer that is already priced the same or less than a comperably equipped PC.
“For the same price I can build you a system with better performance and features and case will look good too.”
You can build a PC for less, but only by equipping it with less (or different) parts.
“The point I was making is that Mac doesn’t offer all that much for its price. Its all hype and good looking case. For the same price I can build you a system with better performance and features and case will look good too.”
Macs used to be really, really far ahead of Windows. No question.
Now? Not anymore. Today’s Macs have a few nice features but nothing truly compelling. You can get close to Spotlight with Google Desktop 2.0 (but not quite there because Spotlight is tightly integrated into the system). Its former dominance in graphics and desktop publishing is no more. I can do just as good a job with Photoshop on Windows as I can on the Mac.
Windows can even claim a few advantages over Macs. ClearType is one of them. Those who are not deluded by zealotry can see in a side-by-side comparison that font rendering on the Mac look fuzzy compared to the razor sharp fonts, even in small sizes, of the subpixel rendering of ClearType — for the simple reason that Macs *only* do anti-aliasing and *no* subpixel manipulation on an LCD screen.
Yes, I know there is a font smoothing setting for LCD. Forget it, it ain’t subpixel.
“Windows can even claim a few advantages over Macs. ClearType is one of them.”
Windows can indeed claim a few advantages over Macs and vise versa, but ClearType is not one of them.
Cleartype was actually a technology that Apple pioneerd years ago for the Apple II. Here’s a good article to explain the details:
http://grc.com/ctwho.htm
“Those who are not deluded by zealotry can see in a side-by-side comparison that font rendering on the Mac look fuzzy compared to the razor sharp fonts, even in small sizes, of the subpixel rendering of ClearType”
Actually, you’re referring to antialiased text. The text on a Mac isn’t fuzzy, but its not rigid either. The reigidness is the product of not being able to render antialiased text. Previous versions of Windows and earlier versions of Mac OS suffer from this limitation, but today’s Mac and Windows machines both benefit from antialiased text…. though neither is fuzzy.
Actually Ford own Aston Martin.
http://www.ford.com/en/company/about/brands/astonMartin.htm
And your point was?
The point is – there is no sense to pay 5x for a mac, if you can buy a pc, install Linux and accomplish everything you want using it and its desktop has all the eye candies OS X has etc etc.
So, to all of you mac fans – shut the fuck up!!!
“The point is – there is no sense to pay 5x for a mac”
But you don’t pay 5x more when you buy a Mac. They cost the same or less than a comperably equipped PC.
But what if I don’t need a “comparably equiped” computer? What if I only need (or can only afford) a $500 machine? How about the customer having some choice?
“But what if I don’t need a “comparably equiped” computer? What if I only need (or can only afford) a $500 machine? How about the customer having some choice?”
Apple sells $500 machines, but I understand your point.
You want to have increased flexability. The PC offers that it spaids while Apple gives it to you in limited configurations.
The PCs flexability advantage ought not be midigated, but it also should not be mis equated as a price advantage either.
Apple sells a CPU for $500 (but let’s not compare that to a complete machine. You can’t compare a transmission to a car. I repeat, there are no Macs available for 500 bucks even today while I have had my $500 PC for the last four years without any problem.
“Apple sells a CPU for $500 (but let’s not compare that to a complete machine.”
Ok, then lets not compare a PC that has lower specs in the computer itself but has a monitor, keyboard and mouse to compensate for them.
If you were to build a PC with the exact same components as a Mac mini (for example0 in hardware, software and OS, the PC would cost the same or more. To make the comparison fair, it ought to be done to the exclusion of monitor, keyboard and mouse.
My PC works for me. And has done so for the last four years. So why exactly should I upgrade with a 32Mb video memory I will not use just so that it is comparable to a Mac mini. I have 8Mb and it works for me never needed to upgrade it. I think it will be better if one could build a comparable Mac. But no, we are not allowed to do that. hence, Macs are more expensive. With a PC, I buy what I need and I can afford. With Macs, you are forced to buy what is allowed which might be a lot higher than you need.
The point is – there is no sense to pay 5x for a mac, if you can buy a pc, install Linux and accomplish everything you want using it and its desktop has all the eye candies OS X has etc etc.
There is no sense to pay 5x for a Austin DB9, if you can buy a Ford, install some chrome tires and accomplish everything you want using it and its engine has all the performance a DB9 has etc etc.
I use all three, in different flavors, but neither linux nor windows is as powerful as OS X on the desktop. Calling it eye-candy clearly states you’ve never used it before, your opinion is most likely based on screenshots only.
“The point is – there is no sense to pay 5x for a mac, if you can buy a pc, install Linux and accomplish everything you want using it and its desktop has all the eye candies OS X has etc etc.
So, to all of you mac fans – shut the fuck up!!!”
Macs are big with creative types so where can I get Final Cut HD or CS2 on Linux?
HAHA thought so…
According to the previous poster, or rather the post he is replying to, Macs are more expensive because of bundled software.
So how much is my PC worth, considering that I can install hundreds of linux distributions and/or more than 20,000 apps?
And please don’t come up with the pathetic excuse that linux apps are no good. They are more than good enough to me and millions of other users.
“According to the previous poster, or rather the post he is replying to, Macs are more expensive because of bundled software.
So how much is my PC worth, considering that I can install hundreds of linux distributions and/or more than 20,000 apps? ”
How many millions of of apps and linux distros came bundled with your PC? Did you realize the Mac can run a large majority of those with a really nice GUI? Try ipfw on MacOSX. You won’t even recognize it but even the most computer illiterate person can be walked through setting it up in less than 5 minutes.
“Try ipfw on MacOSX. You won’t even recognize it but even the most computer illiterate person can be walked through setting it up in less than 5 minutes.”
With other words, a Mac is worth its price only if you are “computer illiterate” ?
Then I suppose for me it would be boring, just like Windows or Linspire.
“With other words, a Mac is worth its price only if you are “computer illiterate” ?
Then I suppose for me it would be boring, just like Windows or Linspire.”
Typical answer for a computer nerd, and you purposefully took the statement out of context. There is nothing wrong with having a computer that is easy to use and at the same time powerful.
You make a valid point, but the underlying implication it sounds as if you’re trying to make is that “a PC can do the same as a Mac… so why pay more?”
But you don’t pay more for a Mac, so I don’t understand your point.
What do you mean you don’t pay more for a Mac? Of course you do!
For the $3000 2.7Ghz Power Mac any computer geek worth his salt can build you a system with far better specs. If you don’t want to build it yourself, just ask your local geek relative to do it for you. Cheaper, better and you wont be paying a $500 extra just for a name.
The whole software thing doesn’t hold as well. For the average user, there is nothing the Mac offers that can’t be replicated via OSS software + Linux/Windows.;l
“What do you mean you don’t pay more for a Mac? Of course you do! “
This is a common misperception. Apple gives you feaer options to buy less and spend less as you can with a PC.
“For the $3000 2.7Ghz Power Mac any computer geek worth his salt can build you a system with far better specs.”
Better in some areas and less in others. You are speaking of the PCs increased flexability to buy less and spend less or buy different and spend less.
“The whole software thing doesn’t hold as well. For the average user, there is nothing the Mac offers that can’t be replicated via OSS software + Linux/Windows.;l”
Agreed. If we’re talking about price though, its important that you add equivilents to each of the bundled applications that come standard with a Mac. All to often people forget about this. But thats not the only thing… they don’t match the hardware or even the OS equally. When you do, the Mac comes out to be the same price or sometimes less expensive.
Do I detect a bit of sarcasm / irony? Surely this is the case…
They acknowledged it was a troll-article in the first few sentences.
(I’m joking, joking …)
Apple has achieved their place in the market by differentiating the Mac from the PC — and controlling the avialability and the cost. Whether the product is better or worse than a commodity PC does not matter — some people will pay the price and buy the product just because it is different. How they justify this in their own minds is irrelevant!
IT’S MARKETING!! It’s also smart marketing. Better to sell one Mac to make $100 than 3 PC’s!
Flamebait/troll article. Hot topic lots of us love to beat the drum on. Apple is in a position where they would love to lock the user in worse than MS does (well with the xbox it seems MS might be looking into trying to control the hardware too).
So you’ve got a system with limited expandability and hackability, the tradeoff being more simplicity & potential stability.
For the vast majority of users this is IMHO not a bad thing, which ultimately should lead to lower TCO. But Apple is totally missing the boat with the hardware enthusiast crowd.
And to use windows as a base of comparison is pretty stupid. In OS courses it’s the poster child of what not to do, and that gets proven over and over again every day.
That’s complete nonsense. It’s like saying that a Porsche isn’t expensive because you get much better car compared to Ford.
(Perhaps you get a better computer, but) as long as it costs more money it IS more expensive.
Mac is expensive. I have a PowerBook which I paid close to two thousand dollars for. I also have a Windows based Averatec which I paid $799 for. I can get more done on the Windows machine because of all the software available for it.
I always find that statement about all the software for a PC amusing. Look on most peoples Windows box and you won’t find anything that you can’t do on a Mac. And usually the software is included on the Mac. I switched to a Mac a couple of years ago because I was getting into Video and Audio editing. Both of these have been far easier on the Mac. I must admit that I did purchase Audio Hijack Pro to use for importing my LP and tape collection, but then you can’t do anything along those lines on Windows without spending some pretty serious cash.
Anyway, 20,000 software titles for the PC makes little difference when most people use just a handful of programs. I have yet to find anything that I need to do on a Mac that I can’t find software for. It has nothing to do with the number of programs and everything to do with the usefulness of them. The hardware was more expensive, but I am spending far less on software for my Mac than I did for my PC’s.
So, relatively speaking, the total cost to me is less with the Mac than the Windows boxes. I would not consider buying a $400 PC. You get what you pay for…
That anology would be just as accurate if you were to say that you had a dump truck and a pickuptruck. The dumptruck is more expensive.
“I can get more done on the Windows machine because of all the software available for it.”
What a crock. You need to get out more, or at least open your eyes.
“”I can get more done on the Windows machine because of all the software available for it.”
What a crock. You need to get out more, or at least open your eyes.”
Hey lets play a game of counterstrike
…oh wait =D
MACs get regularly owned when it comes to the software, be it applications or even OSes in comparison to PCs.
Personally, the apple desktop machines are very expensive, because i can get MUCH better hardware for much less money. Of course a Mac argument isnt a mac argument without a bunch of deluded people saying Macs are just ‘better’ for no reason at all.
The Mac laptops at this point and time is VERY reasonably priced. I got my low end model 1.33 ghZ ppc ATI 9800 40 gig. machine for 999$ and with my employee discount its 899$. That is very reasonable considering I like the smaller sized laptops much better than the bigger ones.
However I know I can do more with the PC. This is a bare bones fact. Another bare bones fact is that I will have to spend more time maintaining Windows. Another Barebones fact is that, like with clothes and cars, you are spending more for the Mac name, then the actual product. Especially after the intel versions come out whats going to be the difference between PC and Mac hardware…..just the price, the name, and i guess the mobo.
And we all know how PPC is better then Intel chips…. that would explain the reason why Apple is switching to Intel. **roll eyes**
that the only comparisons that happen here are mac vs win when one can get a better deal on a x86 os then win
stuff your avarage linux distro into a box and it can match the mac software from my point of view.
sure the interface may not look as refined but it gets the job done. and at the end of the day, thats what counts in my book.
but all is allready coverd by the article so…
It would be much more to the point to publish an article saying just what the difference was. Never mind, is it worth it. Just write down what a comparably equipped mac and pc cost.
We can argue later about viruses and all the rest. Make sure to include the cost of service packs and upgrades.
The problem is, half the world is denying there is a difference, the other half is saying its about double. Lets have the facts. Branded or generic, but they should have the same memory, hard drives, opticals, comparable keyboards/mice….
Someone must have the time and inclination to do this.
Expensive is an item which is significantly more costly (in units of barter) than the median price for all competitive item. IE, since today most people buy $500 computers (argue that if you like, it doesn’t matter to my thesis), a computer which costs twice that value will be called expensive by most people. Why?
Because the median value smalls to the middle. Making half buying more expensive, and half buying less. The half buying less thing it’s expensive because they considered the median or lower value to be the best. The half buying more consider it expensive because they recognize the existance of the cheaper half: They think they’re buying something awful nice cause of all that other cheap stuff.
Expensive is relative. But it can be narrowed down in some very objective ways. An alternative way to objectively define expensive would be to simply poll consumers.
I’d like to add, because I neglected this:
Mini’s aren’t expensive because they fall pretty close to a median value for desktop computers. And iBook’s aren’t expensive for the same reason.
Powerbooks are expensive. So are Thinkpads
.
Macs are actually priced right so Apple can make a profit. PC’s are underpriced due to the tough competition. As a result the screwdriver shop makes $0 on the sale of the PC and actually makes money on upgrades, installs of the upgrades, repairs, etc… Big box vendors such as Dell, HP, etc… make their profit on mass volume.
So Macs are actually priced correctly by comparison.
“Macs are actually priced right so Apple can make a profit. PC’s are underpriced due to the tough competition. “
Actually, Macs and PCs are the same price. The difference is that Apple has much fewer options to b uy less and spend less while PC manufacturers have several systems that give you less thus allowing you to spend less.
That doesn’t make PCs less expensive though it does make them more flexable
If the flexibility decreases the minimum cost someone “HAS” to spend to possess a computer, I think that by definition makes PCs cheaper.
That argument would be akin to me saying that my wrist watch is less expensive.
Perhaps now you see how the “PC is less expensive” argument falls short.
Theres a quote, im not sure where i heard it but here goes -> “Apple makes products you didnt even know you needed”
that pretty much sums it up
“I get sticker shock every time I look at Macs, but I temper that shock by recalling that the Macs I’ve bought have had far longer (typically 1.5-2X) lifetimes than the PCs I’ve bought. This may be luck, or it may be an artifact of OS X releases getting faster instead of slower, but in any case, the Macs I bought in 2001 are still useful. The PCs I bought in 2001 have long since been recycled.”
I don’t think this has anything to do with a Mac versus a PC as it is to do with general computer technology. I bought an AMD Athlon 1.2 ghz in 2001 and still use it as my primary system. That makes it about 4 years old. It is extremely fast at all tasks I give it. It is extremely stable. The only thing I’ve changed during it’s lifetime is to add a new hard drive and add a 4x DVD+/-RW drive. I plan to keep using this system well into 2007, when processors, os, applications are 64 bit, capable of taking advantage of multicores, and need 4+ gigs of ram.
“To me, an Aston Martin DB9 is well worth its whopping 202 000 Euros. I appreciate its timeless design, powerful engine, the craftsmanship (Aston Martins are built by hand), the brand’s heritage, the whole nine yards”
Aston Martin, worth the price or not is still expensive. You are trying to apply some sort of relativity which is pretty naive.
Apple’s products are expensive. It is up to you if you find them worth the price or not.
I do like Aston Martin, if I had money I would buy the car. It does not mean that this is not expensive.
You are getting into philosophical divagations without right background.
It is sort of information noise, not information per se.
You should change title to “Are Macs worth the price?”
Then if so, explain why. Otherwise this is pretty stupid writing. Sorry.
Aston Martin, worth the price or not is still expensive. You are trying to apply some sort of relativity which is pretty naive.
To YOU it might indeed be expensive. But would someone as rich as Bill Gates say the same? To that person (shall we name him Bob again?), 202 000E might be nothing more but mere pocket change.
Rendering the DB9 an inexpensive item *to him*.
To YOU it might indeed be expensive. But would someone as rich as Bill Gates say the same? To that person (shall we name him Bob again?), 202 000E might be nothing more but mere pocket change.
Rendering the DB9 an inexpensive item *to him*.
It makes it affordable, not cheap. I’m sure Bill Gates knows the value of money well and will consider DB9 expensive, if asked
“Apple’s products are expensive. It is up to you if you find them worth the price or not.”
You make it sound like its subjective. Its not. MNacs cost the same as any comperably equiiped Windows PC.
Is that people always just talk about the computer itself and never the extra software, hardware, etc…
For example… One time when I was shopping at a local computer store, I saw Starcraft for my Windows PC for $10 and Starcraft for my Macintosh for $50.
Yet… When I was at my university’s store they had Adobe Acrobat in the clearance section for $100 for my Mac and I believe it was $200 for my PC.
(My numbers may be slightly off and I apologize for that)
Anyway… My point is that just about everyone gets stuff to go with their computer and as a result, we need to take the prices of that other stuff into account as well.
Expensive or cheap very much depends on your needs. For me a mac would be somewhat expensive because I do not need many of the features that apple offers and the features I do need I get with Linux.
On the other hand for a person doing doing say video/audio editing and dosen’t want to rebuild their pc every 3 months because of problems (I know people who do this) an Apple is definitly the way to go. The extra money is well worth it to save money and time in the long run.
If Games are your thing an Apple will seem insanely expensive because it dose nothing you want it to do.
I just bought a new whitebox PC for a friend to run Linux on. These are the specs:
Intel D945psn motherboard
Intel P4 3.0 ghz 521 (Hyperthreading, EM64T)
2x512mb DDR2 Dual-Channel 533 mhz
1xATI Radeon 550 256 mb video card
1x200gig 7200 RPM, 16mb cache HD.
The motherboard uses PCI-Express for the video card, has 6 usb 2.0 ports, 1 firewire port. It came out to $650 dollars. He could have gone with a Dual Core Athlon 64 ($450) with a Tyan motherboard and mostly similar specs for about $900. Finally, he could have gone for a system that will run circles around a $2000 Mac for $1300. Alas, he isn’t rich, so instead he chose an awesome system for $650.
This is why Mac’s are expensive.
The PC may have been able to run circles around the Mac you spec’d in some areas but not others as the two machines were not equally spec’d. Match them up in hardware, software and OS and then the two would be equally priced… the Mac may actually come out to be less expensive.
The point he missed is that when you add all the top of the line components that come standard in a Mac to that “cheap PC”, the PC always ends up costing the same. It’s just up to whether the buyer wants a bare bones PC that can’t do more than the basic functions, or whether they want a good video card, a great sound card, excelent software, and a processor that doesn’t take till hell freezes over to open photo editing software. Buy a really cheap PC and what do you get? No software. Not even Windows. Ok sure, if your a bit adventurous, you can get Linux for cheap or free, but Apples come as a very useable machine that can do way more than just the basics. I also agree, being virus/adware/malware free is a very valuable commodity. I wouldn’t buy a Windows machine at ANY price. They are all way too expensive in terms of my frustration and stress.
you get more dollar for dollar when you buy a mac.
the amazing software bundled with it, the os, the ease of use, not dealing with spyware and virus all the time. its just a better experience. period.
It was true that older MACS and early power MACS seemed to run for years and years while PCs all around them just died or where thrown away. At that time MACS genuinely where expensive and built well.
These days the MACS are not expensive and I dont think that they are built well either, take the original iMAC, how many of them still work?
They seem to fail with power supply faults, the power supplies are more expensive than the iMAC is worth.
So the iMAC goes into bin.
Recently (since the G3) Apple have been building disposable computers like everyone else does.
I enjoyed your article. Thanks for taking the time to write it. I think you were right on about the whole debate. When I bought my Mac I speced out a G5 dual 2.0ghz model against top of the line Intel and AMD boxes. If you compare high end on these systems the price is about the same. You run into problems when you try to compare the low end. The $400 PC you can buy is pretty much obsolete technology.
Anyway, thanks again for the article. I always start my day off reading OSNews and thoroughly enjoy the debates that follow.
naah,
even dictionary will not help.
“Why is US gas cheap to me?
Because we Dutch pay 1.45E per litre. Do some maths and you’ll see how expensive we are on that. ”
Again, I am afraid that you don’t understand the definition you just cited.
Gas in U.S.A. is more expensive than it was, but it is still cheap when compared to the price in Netherlands. Everybody living in States knows that Europe is insanely expensive. In other words your example does not prove anything.
You are trying to apply relativity where there is no place for it. You should really lose this sort of “philosophy”.
This has nothing to do with computers, this is simply flawed logic.
The i/power-books are extremely expensive and underpowered compared to equally prized laptops from other vendors.
Take for example this one:
http://www.lidl.nl/nl/index.nsf/pages/c.o.oow.20050912.p.Notebook_V…
Turion (amd64) 1.8GHz,1024 MB DDR,fsb way higher than the meager 133MHz of the cheapest i-book with 256MB DDR (still €1200>),hybrid (both cable anolog and digital ) TV-card,and all for less than €1200.
Unless you require a lot of hand holding,than everything is better than MS.
Over 1200 Euros? I own the cheapest iBook and I didn’t pay it that much (in swiss francs).
Just look at some European store (more expensive than the US shops). On apple france (apple.fr) today, the 12″ ibook is 1049 Euros, with 512mb ram not 256.
Yet it’s true that most of the components in the PC you’ve linked to are slightly more powerful. More ram, more HD space.
Not sure how the x300 compares to the ATI 9550 in terms of performances. I’ts probably better. And the 1.8 Ghz AMD is probably faster than the 1.2 Ghz G4.
Other than that, In order to match your system, If I add a 80GB hd and a GB ram the price is 1319 Euros, including 216 Euros of the french VAT (rather high, it’s only 7% here).
Basically the mac is 119 Euros more expensive for an ultra portable 12 incher instead of a 14″. What sucks is that the 14″ iBook is more expensive and the resolution isn’t better. That’s if you buy the ram from apple (overpriced).
But on the whole It doesn’t look that horribly overpriced to me. Especially once you’ve used OSX for a while. Frankly I’d pay 300 Euro more any day to get OSX with iLife instead of windows and notepad…
“Over 1200 Euros?”
I also mentioned the same price, funny enough, but for that money you can get a really good one: AMD64 or P4, 1 Gig ram, DVD writer, good graphics…
On the other hand have a look at the prices and the specs of PowerBooks at Apple Italy:
http://store.apple.com/Apple/WebObjects/italystore.woa/91508/wo/F55…
Some place, far or near?
The weather, hot or cold?
Man, what a title…
Is that it will run Linux, and for that a commodity PC is much cheaper for comparable horsepower.
This argument is so stale. It’s to the point where I don’t care anymore because I read something about this on OSNews once every other month. It’s stupid.
No shit.
A better two word description…
Bull shit
The best way I’ve found is to compare the yearly total cost of ownership.
I do this by figuring the life of a product in years and adding it’s costs for those years to maintain (including my labor, lost productivity due to anti-virus ware etc), then I divide that by the life years of the product.
When Mac users upgrade, they do so and then you won’t hear anything out of them for several years for DP PowerMac’s, 3-5 years for midrange desktops and about 3 years for laptops.
Everything seems to work better on a Mac, it’s more smooth. My stress IT stress level went down considerably since using one.
http://www.linuxinsider.com/story/36120.html
http://www.linuxinsider.com/story/But-Macs-Are-Slower-Right-36964.h…
http://www.linuxinsider.com/story/But-Theres-No-Software-for-the-Ma…
http://www.systemshootouts.org/processors.html
http://www.networkworld.com/columnists/2005/052305schwartau.html?vo…
http://www.esm.psu.edu/Faculty/Gray/movies.html
http://homepage.mac.com/hogfish/PhotoAlbum2.html
I take it you just took an ‘Economics 101’ course ? Perceived value ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Customer_perceived_value ) isn’t really something new you know.
Preferences that depend largely on taste and peronal preference are best left undiscussed, like what wine is tastier, which girl is better looking or what OS is better (is worth the higher price).
The problem with his article is that he’s equating the Macs supposedly increased price to that of personal preference when in fact that are quantifiable assets that allow it to be measured against a PC for price.
When the two are matched up equally, the Mac comes out to be the same or less money.
Sure, the Mac also has increased value, but thats just icing on top of the cake… not the justification for the supposedly increased price.
Macs typically cost more, because Apple gives you fewer options to buy less and spend less as you can with a PC. Once you understand that, the whole “PCs are less expensive” argument falls short.
The problem with his article is that he’s equating the Macs supposedly increased price to that of personal preference when in fact that are quantifiable assets that allow it to be measured against a PC for price.
You are missing my point completely, as usual, Kelly.
Look, the whole point of my article was to explain that various people experience the same price differently. I’m not talking about the price itself, I’m talking about how people *experience* that price.
Some people experience the price of a Mac as expensive, some don’t (I’m of the latter). Whether or not people experience that price as expensive is based on, among others, the things I mentioned in my article. Income, perceived value, personal needs, and more.
You can go on and on rambling about how a ‘comparably equipped PC’ (whatever the hell that might be) will cost the same or more than a Mac– but that is completely besides the point. The point is how people *experience* that price.
I experience the price of a Mac as “not high” or “not expensive”. Someone without the need or want for Mac’s strong points (integration, iLife, nice design) will experience the price of a Mac as “high” or “expensive” because he or she does not need the features that come extra on a Mac. He or she is all fine and dandy with a 499E (including monitor) no brand computer.
Deal with it. Expensiveness or cheapness is not a fact, it’s all relative.
“Look, the whole point of my article was to explain that various people experience the same price differently”
Agreed. I’m not saying otherwise, but you’re making it sound as if the price is about someing relating to perceived value rather than specifications that can be measured equally.
Essentially, your article adopts the same misleading analysis as so many have before you in that you’re interchanging the PCs flexability (the ability to buy less and spend less) with actually costing less.
“Some people experience the price of a Mac as expensive, some don’t (I’m of the latter).”
See, you’re talking about perceptions of value… not cost.
“I experience the price of a Mac as “not high” or “not expensive”. Someone without the need or want for Mac’s strong points (integration, iLife, nice design) will experience the price of a Mac as “high” or “expensive” because he or she does not need the features that come extra on a Mac. He or she is all fine and dandy with a 499E (including monitor) no brand computer. “
here you’re talking about flexability not price. Some people prefer the flexability of the PC… (being able to buy less and spend less).
So that you or anyone else doesn’t misunderstand, thiss asset ought not be mitigated, but its not an equation of price.
“Deal with it. Expensiveness or cheapness is not a fact, it’s all relative”
Actually it is a fact. Value however is relative, and that is what your article mistakenly lacks to mention when speaking of price.
Spave = spending to save. It’s a long term plan.
If you’re minimum wage Bob, over the long run, the Mac, with it’s longer useful life, lower overall software cost, lower overall cost of time (and this is where Linux loses, btw) will be the more economic computer for Bob to own.
Short term, it’s “cash” cheaper for Bob to buy that Dell for $300 and use it for a year before laying out another $300 for a newer computer because this one’s “broken”.
Bob can also afford to come up $100 once or twice to pay for AV software and/or a trip to the “geek squad” to have the hard drive cleansed.
The sad thing is to be Pound wise and Penny foolish means that you’ve got the Pounds.
I thought the article was very good and pointed out the fact that it’s a very grey area well. For me, I would never consider using Windows so the argument is between Linux on x86, PowerPC or MacOS X. I have got an x86 box from when I did use Windows, but it now runs Linux. Most recently I’ve had the best computing experience I’ve ever had with a PowerBook running Debian.
In the future I’d hoped to keep buying Apple PowerPCs but now I think I’ll give the PS3 a go — Cell goodness at probably 1/4 to 1/5 the price of a new x86 Mac :-).
Still to pick the article apart on this point would be missing the point — I think it demonstrated we’re all unique, just like everyone else, quite well :-).
//My Mum’s laptop is behind two firewalls (the routers and Windows XP’s own), has an automatically updated Virus checker, Windows update is set to automatic and she uses Firefox and Thunderbird. Yet every month or two I have to spend a couple of days getting rid of viruses and spyware.//
You spend a couple of *DAYS* — like, 48 hours — *EVERY TWO MONTHS* ridding your mum’s “secured” laptop of virii and spyware?
If that’s the case, then there’s a definite PBCM.
Either that, or you’re totally bullsh*ting us.
If it walks like a dog and barks like a dog it’s a dog. If it’s wrapped and stylish case, has an apple imprinted on the box and runs OSX, it’s expensive. What’s wrong with Macs being expensive? They cost more than you cookie cutter X86 box and if your able to buy one and like the software which does relatively the same function as most other software in the same category, then so be it. Were talking about duckets, fat backs, dollar bills, and no matter how you splice it, a Mac of any variety will out price the same similarly equipped cookie cutter PC. That’s the way Jobs wants it. That’s why Mac users are often referred to as elitist. That’s why they defend their position so feverishly. And to all the Mac user, I say, you have every right to say hey it’s not more expensive because of blah, blah, blah; because hey in the end you paid for every word that comes out of your mouth. As for me, I could buy a Mac, probably will one day, but I’d never really fool myself into thinking that a shiny 800 to 3000 dollar, word processor, email/internet terminal, game console, sudo telephone (instant messenger), compiler is really cheaper than it’s equivalent x86 brethren. Hey, if the label fits (expensive) you must wear it (with pride)!
“If it’s wrapped and stylish case, has an apple imprinted on the box and runs OSX, it’s expensive.”
I don’t see how you can say that when a Mac actually costs the same or less than a comperably equipped PC.
“They cost more than you cookie cutter X86 box”
Only because they’re giving you more. Spec the PC up to match those specs of the Mac and the PC will end up costing the same or more.
“a Mac of any variety will out price the same similarly equipped cookie cutter PC.”
That’s simply not true.
“That’s the way Jobs wants it. That’s why Mac users are often referred to as elitist.”
And your comment and those that adopt it explains why many PC users are ignorant of the facts.
“I’d never really fool myself into thinking that a shiny 800 to 3000 dollar, word processor, email/internet terminal, game console, sudo telephone (instant messenger), compiler is really cheaper than it’s equivalent x86 brethren.”
I don’t know why you would go out of your way to fool yourself. In many instances the Mac may be less expensive than the comperably equipped PC.
I agree with:
“I don’t spend any time keeping my windows system secure and I don’t have any problems. It’s behind a firewall, I don’t use IE or outlook.”
…except I find IE perfectly fine and most compatible. [I’ve used Eudora longer than most here have computed.]
This is also true:
“Macs are expensive to me because all I want is the hardware and the OS, I don’t want all the bundled software. The only software I buy is an occasional game, the rest is freeware.”
…except that I’ve spent a few bucks for gems such as xReminder Pro (a whopping $20).
Finally this really hits the nail on the head:
“A mac is essentially a ford with a good looking chassis. Thats about it. There is nothing that you can do on a Mac that you can’t do on win/lin x86 box.”
…to which I would add there is plenty one can do on a Win machine that is difficult or impossible on a Mac or Linux box.
This also is accurate:
“Apple has achieved their place in the market by differentiating the Mac from the PC — and controlling the availability and the cost. Whether the product is better or worse than a commodity PC does not matter…IT’S MARKETING!!…”
What has not been said is how much the Mac interface sucks. And yes it begins (but doesn’t end) with a one button mouse. Apple’s attitude is like NASA’s — why change/improve things as long as we keep fooling ourselves that we are the best. Mac’s notion that an app’s menus should be global is ludicrous. This is like having all books in only one room of the house, or having only one room where anyone can “talk” (i.e. give commands). Most importantly, it completely defeats the purpose (or even ability) of having apps in a window. How can you window (i.e. organize) something when you have to go outside that organization to do something?
In terms of interface attractiveness, I would say Linux is tops (due to diversity and “life” in the product(s) right now), Windows is second due to design solidity (i.e. proven, standard, etc.) and flexibility (keyboard OR mouse for everything, etc.) And the Mac is so far in the rear that almost no one buys one or uses one — heck they are even moving to Intel _out_of_desperation_.
A FREE Mac is too expensive for me. I would immediately sell it, give it away or destroy it. Seriously.
This flame bait article carefully avoids the question “Is a Mac worth using at any price?” to which I answer “No!”
The marketplace has spoken, Apple. Time to surrender.
And Apple is — their OS is now *nix, their hardware now Intel.
I see Macs as expensive full stop.
I’ve just built myself a nice new 3GHz Linux box for about 500ukp, and it’s lovely, I got enjoyment out of building it and setting it up properly too (although I’m a programmer and UNIX geek by trade so…)
Anyway, I really can’t see me getting the same from a Mac, of course I couldn’t build it myself and it would cost more (especially with software on top) plus there’s the non-standard peripherals to cope with.
Don’t get me wrong, I’d like a MacOSX box for development purposes, but I can’t justify the cost for a ‘testing’ box, and I earn pretty good money.
That said, I also wouldn’t go out and buy a Dell Wintel box either, for their design and build quality are as bad as the Mac’s is good.
Look, the whole point of my article was to explain that various people experience the same price differently. I’m not talking about the price itself, I’m talking about how people *experience* that price.
Experience:
Some people have so much that they can afford to buy whatever they want.At a certain prize level the specs don’t matter that much anymore.For example a dual G5 2.7GHZ performs just as well as many first class equivalent prized workstations, perhaps somewhat better.If you have the do to buy an Alienware but don´t like the style of the outer space box than the dual G5 might be more attractive.
Rational:
What do i need,what am i going to do with the box,do i need the OSX/MS limiting and hand holding or do i want ultimate freedom and no pop-ups bothering me with obsolete messages when i want to change .html in .sgml
Is my program going to be better functioning with a stylish case or should i invest in a more powerfull graphics card,does The vendor (mobo) support SLI for example.
Even if you have spend a lot of money it doesn’t per se equip you with the best hardware,still some research has to be done.
“Is my program going to be better functioning with a stylish case or should i invest in a more powerfull graphics card”
Its important that people recognise that Apple’s prices aren’t dictated by the case design. Thats just icing on the cake… along with increased value. If we’re talking solely about price, then a Mac is the same price as a comperably equipped PC…. the Mac just also has increased value and better looking case while the PC has increased flexability.
Why does every Machead assume, every user needs the very same tools that are provided by Apple by default. Maybe there are people who don’t do video editing on their computer for instance. Now what if I have to buy a Mac witout the 32Mb video memory? “Oops! We can’t do that. And no you are not allowed to compare the price of Dell box which has the configuration you actually want because that will not be ‘fair’.” On the other hand, I think the fact you can’t configure a lower spec Mac means that they are expensive by definition. When they let you do that many people might buy Macs but not until then. A vast majority of people have trouble with their OS, no matter what OS it is. I know. I take care of 5 Macs and 4 Wintels.
Macs, Windows.. for the average user they’re just toys. Very few personal users get any profitable activity out of them. And in business environment, many pc’s could profitably be replaced by a competent secretary. In general, pc’s often don’t pay for themselves.
(In these comments, I am talking about personal computers, not central servers and thin clients or terminals)
I worked in datacom for a large company for well over 16 years. I never once saw a pc that paid its way. We spent thousands each on personal pc’s to feed egos, and manipulate personalities, rarely gaining any profitable output. I seen thousands of dollars spent on a graphic-cabable pc to make 50 single page brochures. Most of the productive work was using software providing dumb terminal client access to mainframe and unix servers. A few people use’d networking to access word and excell documents, but the activity rare, and if productive, it was hard to see.
My 4 pcs are just toys, I do not have any business case to own them. Macintosh, Windows, whatever, it’s just curiosity and opportunity to learn.. and speaking of learning, Linux is a better and cheaper way to learn personal pc’s.
Windows and Macintosh both are in business to extort money from the masses. That is their PRIMARY objective, you cannot say that about linux, although RedHat, Novell and others obviously want to get your money.
Macintosh/Windows are affordable as a toy, yet like the DB they are not necessarily profitable in business use. Windows only gives an impression of being cheaper than Macintosh, both rarely pay for themselves.
IT professionals will of course deny all of this because we’re talking about jobs. (consider– if everything worked right, they wouldn’t need 90% of themm.)
So as a toy, anything is affordable if you give it priority, but for practical and productive use, an objective TCO would probably rule out even owning a personal computer.
retired old luddite, jerry
If we’re talking solely about price, then a Mac is the same price as a comperably equipped PC
When you have in mind the high end i might agree with you.I consider dual G5 high-end.
I hope you don’t have i/powerbooks-books in mind.
the Mac just also has increased value
Such as?
What did or does increase the value?Is it suposed experience?Is it hype?Is it superior hardware you can’t buy anywhere?What makes a mac so competitive in your opinion?
This lad got his facts wrong from the begining: ice is not slippery at all. It is the thin water film that is created over it with friction that is slippery. Ice, as a matter of fact, is quite sticky.
:-)…so true
True
IT COMES TO THIS
If you want to work for the machine, you get a PC.
If you want the PC to work for you, you get a Mac.
I don’t know what your time is worth, but mine is $35 a hour.
Which is smarter? Losing $35 a hour fixing a PC 10 hours a week on average or spending a bit more for a quality Mac and making that $35 a hour instead?
There is a reason Mac users on average are smarter than PC users on average.
We realize getting sucked into fixing computers is a waste of our time and money.
RE[4]: For me, Macs are extremely cheap
Internet Explorer vulnerabilities cannot be exploited when that browser isn’t being used. It’s as simple as that.
Um actually no, it isn’t as simple as that. There are several vunerabilities that can be exploited regardless of whether or not it is running. But being the consumate computer specialist that you think you are I am sure you already knew that.
Your Mother sounds like she have a Mac rather then a PC
reminds me of my brother in law, ringing me up every week or so complaining that he has a virus, asking how does he get rid of it.
He didn’t like Zonealarm, thought it slowed down his machine too much, not behind a router and probs visits dodgy sites, theres not a lot I can do to stop it getting a virus.
I’m trying to persuade him that when its time to upgrade to just get a Mac
Write the article so the Title caption looks like a Title and not a Subsection, the retarded Vonage money grab is float left or right with the article wrapped around it.
Space may not be that important but solid layout makes one more interested in reading a column with 99% useless conjecture.
It all depens on your own definition, which probably depends on the situation. A few examples:
4 months ago, I bought a car costing Euro 80.000,- which I thought to be value for money.
A good friend purchased a buggy (such a thingy to walk your kid), costing Euro 1500,-. It was used in Sex and the city and the Dutch Crown princess (yes, the lovely Maxima) used one …. I don’t like kids, so I thought it to be a complete waste of money.
I see a good technical book of 90,- (python, os x, something like that) as cheap, while I regard 7 euro for a populistic right winged magazine (HP/De tijd, for Dutch) a lot of money (good column though by Cindy Hoetmer, might be worth Euro 7, hahahah).
Don’t mind paying Euro 80 for a bottle of decent Irish Whiskey, while I regard Euro 1,20 for a bottle of milk expensive.
Personally I think Euro 200.000,- is cheap when talking about it as salary for someone important, someone controlling a lot of people, stuff and regulations. On the other hand there is our Dutch Minister Donner who with euro 200.000 gets handsomely paid for all his screwups (He might be related to Cheney … now I come to think of it).
As long as you cant get any descent software who cares if it is more expensive or cheaper.
The amount of available software to compete with what is available on windows, makes the osx useless to me.
I can’t live without:
Ultraedit
Microsoft Visual Studio for C#.net development
IrfanView
Nero burning rom
and many more.
only one peace of mac software i use and that is iTunes, and that stupid program forced me to after it completly screwed up the way i handle my music. I hate software that thinks it has a better way to do it.
PC and Mac on equivalent hardware are not priced the same. You Mac Zealots can say they are over and over again but just because you say it a lot, it won’t make it come true. Mac’s are expensive, period. The only decent system Apple has is the G5 and that is outrageously priced. An AMD processor will run circles around it at half the cost. Regarding bargain priced PC’s, don’t even get me started on POS mini.
I was thinking about getting a Mac Powerbook for my music composing & gigging, but after reading a recent Future Music -magazine’s article about laptops, I’ve understood how good decision it was to get a Sony Vaio laptop instead..
The reason is that the Powerbook can only run 3 heavy-on-the-processor music tracks at a time, where as all the competing PC laptops could do 13, 14 or even 15! Needless to say this has an effect on the value of the laptop as well.
A Powerbook with similar specs (not the processor) would cost $2,399.00, where as you can get the Vaio for even less than $1,800.00. That means that for 3/4 of the price of a Mac, you get four times more power in real life situation with a PC! And Vaios are not even close to being the cheapest PC laptops.
To me this suggests that Macs are indeed expensive. Nevertheless I’m probably buying one when they finally get some Intel power into them…
A few years ago me, my colleague and third friend each bought a big Sony Vaio with 16″ screen (quite new at that time). The beast cost like 4500 swiss francs each. Which is like 3000 Euros. Those were high-end laptops I guess.
After 11 months both my colleagues PC and mine were dead. The motherboard had severe problems (would turn on and off randomly) and the power plug was broken (it just burns alone with the heat because the plastic is so cheap). The guarantee was for 12 months so we brought them back.
Guess what… it costed 170 Swiss francs to know how much it would cost at the shop where we bought them. Result? It was 1400 CHF to repair them. The guarantee? What guarantee, we broke them ourselves they said! God, did I feel screwed. I didn’t want to pay to repair that shit. It’s still in a corner somewhere.
A few months later my other friend’s laptop motherboard just died, the same way. He was lucky the motherboard died before the power plug.
I will NEVER EVER will a sony laptop again. Not only were they built with very cheap material but they have absolutely no respect for the customers. If there’s anything worse than apple marketing it’s sony’ marketing. If you need a PC get a thinkpad. Those are good solid beasts, worth their price.
When I wanted to get a small, stylish laptop (12 inch) I was quite sad to find the Sony Vaio’s were the most good looking. Yet, of course I didn’t get one and tried an iBook.
I have not yet had a problem with my iBook but so far seems good. I could get a free replacement for my battery becausee it was supposed to heat too much (it doesn’t seem to heat but since it’s a gift from Apple…). Another of my friend got a free replacement for his iBook motherboard far after the guarantee expired.
For Obvious.
worth different stuff to different people.
my 12″ PB is my first Mac, cost me close to $2000 by the end (ram, applecare, case)
And you know what? I wish I went for the 15″ :p
“(I mean, I’ve thrown in the towel on ever getting my Airport card [wireless B] *ever* working under Ubunutu”
Just because you can’t do it doesn’t mean it can’t be done and in a timely manner. Your experience with Linux is how much again?? Oh that’s right, almost none at all.
About 2 or 3 years ago I did spent several days getting wireless working on my linux machine (mandrake 8 -or 7? – at that time on the same Vaio I mentionned above in my rant against Sony).
I gained a lot of experience configuring Wireless card in linux. What did I gain? Absolutely nothing. I filled my brain with useless information on configuration files and other kernel patching things while I could just have clicked connect and it would have worked on a mac (hell it did work in windows quite easily).
How is that useful to me today? It will take me less time to do it again sure. Maybe I could have learned Russian instead of linux config files.
I just can’t stand people valuing their own experience setting up linux. Setting up shouldn’t require any experience. How come people can write high-quality software (like drivers) and not provide a simple way to get this working.
“About 2 or 3 years ago I did spent several days getting wireless working on my linux machine (mandrake 8 -or 7?”
Mandrake 8? Have you tried any recent version of, for instance, SUSE or Kanotix?
It has been said ad infinitum: linux is a fast moving target, and mentioning something like Mandrake 8 is not fair, it is like comparing the medical science of today to that of 50 years ago.
Why is this argument still going on? Isn’t everybody already well established in their positions on this subject and hasn’t everbody had their say repeatedly? What more is to be gained by dredging up this argument again and again? Why keep posting articles like this?
Most Italians, including many people who own a computer shop, have never heard about Macs. Why?
There are many reasons.
1)Italians don’t care very much about computers. Computers mean work to them. They prefer to spend their money on fashion, food, restaurants, good housing, cars, mobile phones… (and don’t forget that we have nice weather, beautiful cities, great scenery…so we prefer to be out in our free time)
2)The current economic climate is very bad: cost of life has more than doubled since the Euro became the official currency.
3)In Italy you can get a very decent desktop for about 800Eur, a good laptop for about 1,200Eur. You’ll never manage to convince an Italian that he/she should (at least) pay double that price in order to have similar hardware specs.
4)Did I mention that Italians couldn’t care less about computers? And in any case they firmly believe that computers and MS Windows are the same thing. Even linux doesn’t stand a chance: just slightly better because it is free, and the word “free” has a magic in Italy which I have never found in any other Europen country, and I have lived in many of them.
As to me, if I wasn’t living in dull England at the time, I would be like the others. Probably I wouldn’t even own a computer.
That was mine. I forgot to log in.
I built an AMD 64 box to run Linux. It works, I enjoy it, it didn’t cost much — but I do spend a heck of a lot of time getting it set up to do things like Samba, ftp, finding video codecs, etc. I use a Dell Windows PC at work, and it’s ok, but it’s not mine, and I don’t like Internet Explorer, I’ve had spyware and virus issues even through our company firewall, and it occasionally at random locks up and I have to call our computer support people.
It’s a long commute to work, and I have an iBook to keep me occupied. I’ve found I use it at home also, more than Linux. I use both Safari and Firefox almost equally. I use Open Office 1.1 on Darwin X, as well as Appleworks. I do javascript and html development with jedit. I bought Photoshop Elements, but I also have the GIMP on both the Mac and Linux.
It’s the “just works” factor. Installing new software is quick and easy on the Mac. Mail is simple and easy. Sharing is simple and easy. File serving is simple and easy. The iBook’s battery holds its charge better than any laptop I’ve ever seen.
Linux is cool, and inexpensive, but it takes a lot of tweaking. Windows is just something I’m used to — there’s nothing else to recommend it.
Windows has the edge in specialty apps. Linux has the edge in flexibility, freedom, and raw performance.
Is the Mac more expensive? Only if your time is worthless. At some point, as my Linux expertise develops to the point where I can intuitively do all the things I want to do, I’ll say Linux is less expensive. I know in the long run it will be the better value.
Until then, however, and I think for your average user, the Mac wins hands down over both Linux and Windows.
“At some point, as my Linux expertise develops to the point where I can intuitively do all the things I want to do, I’ll say Linux is less expensive. I know in the long run it will be the better value.”
Exactly, that is my case. But I’d like to suggest that a newbie friendly distro (SUSE, Mandriva, Xandros, Linspire…) can be good value right from the beginning.
As to AMD 64 support isn’t quite there yet even under linux.
“And how much time did you spend to get Wireless G working? ”
about zero my intel wireless pro works fine thank’s
“Yeah, that’s what I thought.”
thats what i thought to i guess you thought that it would
take no time to
“How about just plain jane Wireless B?”
yeah i have no truboule running on b networks with the iwp or my older b cards
That’s news to me. How much money do you make when you’re watching the boob tube?
Your time is your life and how you spend it is up to you. But its worth nothing to me unless you contribute to society or the products I use.
If you waste your time watching TV instead of learning Linux then most likely your time is costing you potential money you could be making, either by leveraging this new *nix knowledge to automate some tasks or get a job, etc.
And instead of learning Linux… He could spend that time learning quantum mechanics instead.
Or maybe astrophysics… Or some other thing that might increase his earning potential.
Indeed… Maybe he should produce all of the software he uses with assembly language instructions! Or maybe machine code!
And of course. Everyone knows you need to work all the time… You can’t relax in front of the “boob tube” for even a few minutes.
So… I guess you (Anonymous (IP: 64.95.123.—)) and I had better get back to work. Because we sure aren’t working right now.
so i had even mor hassel with wifi on macosx the first time i tried. but then i did not use a wifi card from apple. if you buy hardware that isnt supported then you will haveto work to get it working.
i decide software first then i buy a machine that can run that software.
I was right with ya until you brought personal income on board, then you lost me. Whether you can afford something or not has no bearing whatsoever on perceived value. A lot of people can’t even afford a low-end no-name PC for $200.00 USD. Does that make it more of a value to them? No.
“Does that make it more of a value to them? No.”
I disagree. Most people who cannot afford any computer would say that all computers are expensive and therefore highly valued. How can this be so difficult to see? Or were you born with a silver spoon.
Economy-theory speaking, macs are expensive if you don’t derive much use from them based on what you paid for them, and inexpensive if you derive more utility from them than what you paid for them. It’s all a matter of who is regarding the cost and who is using.
In my opinion:
I’ve been a mac user since 1994. Experienced very few crashes, glitches, incomatibilities. Use it everyday. It was my “digital hub” WAY before steve jobs even coined the term. At work – I can really be at ease about administering macs and maintaining them. no biggie.
Since I swing both ways, I am also a windows user. I have been using a PC since they were still known as “IBM-compatibles”, using DOS, Windows 3.1, and so on. I admin XP machines at work. Compare computer to computer and the mac makes my life, both as a user and an admin MUCH easier. This is why *I* think that it’s worth it’s money, and is somewhat cheap (compared to TCO of a standard off the shelf dell)
I can predict when apple will finish my task, before going to the 2nd job but in Windows I cannot predict that ..a virus here a trojan horse there a nagging popups here a spyware there ….. You understand. So macs are cheaper if your time is priceless ( Doctors, lawyers, designers, engineers,…..other imp jobs) If you work on cash registers or if you are a janitor or a security guard then time is not that important and macs are so horribly expensive. that is called “the relativity”
i haven’t had a virus since flu in 2000 and haven’t seen a “trojan horse” (sic) since Troy. So I guess that makes me the Dibertesque trash guy whose time is worth nothing but seems to be somehow more intelligent than you in avoiding these things. Hmmm. Oh, well, go ahead and stuff your ears with money to block out reality but wait, you already spent your money on your Mac. Ever wonder if it is a PBKAC.
“i haven’t had a virus since flu in 2000 and haven’t seen a “trojan horse” (sic) since Troy. So I guess that makes me the Dibertesque trash guy whose time is worth nothing but seems to be somehow more intelligent than you in avoiding these things. Hmmm. Oh, well, go ahead and stuff your ears with money to block out reality but wait, you already spent your money on your Mac. Ever wonder if it is a PBKAC.”
Believe it or not your case is the exception not the rule. Millions of people have problems with viruses, its gonna be hard for you to refute that. Go to any PC repair shop and ask them how many PCs they’ve cleaned up due to malware, viruses and spyware.
And how would you know that his case is the exception and not the rule?
How many millions are there who don’t have problems?
Oh… That’s right… You wouldn’t know because we don’t come in for help, hence, we are an unmeasurable quantity. (Or at least not a convenient quantity to measure)
Also… Going to a PC repair shop for any real info is like taking a shot in the dark from my experience. I remember one that I worked at in particular… The best way to describe it would be “the back room had ‘millions’ of CDs littering the floor and no one had any idea what was what.” Or one of my other experiences… When one of my coworkers sent a customer out the door with a piece of hardware that wouldn’t work on her computer, fortunately I caught it as she was leaving and sent her back.
I’d never go to one again to ask any serious questions. I’ve always been let down.
From the WSJ
“Pressed about security by Mr. Mossberg, Mr. Otellini had a startling confession: He spends an hour a weekend removing spyware from his daughter’s computer. And when further pressed about whether a mainstream computer user in search of immediate safety from security woes ought to buy Apple Computer Inc.’s Macintosh instead of a Wintel PC, he said, “If you want to fix it tomorrow, maybe you should buy something else.”
http://online.wsj.com/public/article/0,,SB111684809888140520-CB7pf4…
Yeah its not a problem, thats why its a billion dollar industry. Don’t believe me?
http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/technology/2004-07-20-spam…
Microsoft is getting into the antivirus business. Yeah, no one has problems. Dream on…
http://news.com.com/Details+of+Microsoft+antivirus+software+leak+ou…
Who are you guys trying to kid that there are no problems with Windows?
Anonymous (IP: 68.227.205.—): Who are you guys trying to kid that there are no problems with Windows?
You said that just a moment ago. We did not. Don’t put words in our mouths and then strike ’em down.
Or let me put it another way…
“Who are you guys trying to kid that there are no problems with Linux?”
“Who are you guys trying to kid that there are no problems with Macintosh?”
I’m a crossplatform guy myself. (Right now, I run SUSE, FreeBSD, Windows XP x64 Professional, and this Windows XP Professional system. My Mac was just retired, because its old and I could use a new one.)I couldn’t care less about the platform wars. But I don’t like you guys making problems look bigger than they are or making advantages look bigger than they are. (Like one of my friends who once said that “No games run on the Mac!” Pfft. I have a number of games for my Macs.) I also don’t like a lot of people covering for their OWN deficiencies like a lot of computer people do. (For example, when one of my students claimed that you can’t make compilers, etc… work under Linux. The dope was used to Visual Studio. gcc works fine.)
And yes… All the different communities do this to varying extents. “All” platforms are quite usable if you know what the heck you’re doing. In fact, I’d say that’s the #1 problem for all platforms. Clueless people (many of whom believe they are actually geniuses) trying to operate the computer and then when something goes wrong, rather than trying to figure out what they did wrong, they blame it on the platform and thus absolve themselves of all problems from that point forward. For example, they are no longer expected to make “Linux work” or to take care of the “Virus problem”. Because it’s not possible, it’s the fault of the platform. Not their’s. All responsibility gone.
It’s not that different platforms don’t have their strengths and weakness. (For example: Linux is free (both meanings of the word), I’d say the Mac is generally easiest to use, Windows has tons of support from 3rd parties, etc…) But some people take these things too far and then… As I said… Use them as an excuse.
Oh right, and if you went to a Mac repair shop, they will tell you about hardware failures that they fix and we will conclude that all Macs have lousy hardware.
Apple hardware fails as frequent as windows hardware, BUT I guess not the software Right?!
And where exactly do you come up with that statistic? I am in the middle of three hard drives on various Macs dying on us. But we have as many Wintels and no hard drive problems, so going by the anecdotal evidence everyone is throwing around, the apples are rotten hardware-wise, at least? More seriously, for Windows, you have the option of buying whatever quality hardware you want if you are picky. With Macs, you get what they bundle in.
If what you say is true; then you must be either not on a network or a Pro MS.
I have worked in repairing PCs for money for 7 years. All of my customers were PC owners and most of them were from branded companies all frustrated with the spyware their systems come with out of the box. Dell, HP, Gateway,..others stuff their PCs with spyware to know how you use your computer and then bomb you.
And now thanks to linux some customers send me invitations to their home for tea or coffee just for saving them the time they already wasted when they were using windows crap OS (Windows 95, 98, Me, 2000, XP)
Not on a network and not Pro MS (my home PC is a dual boot with Ubuntu). And I do browse a lot. But I do have commonsense.
If Macs are ONLY more expensive due to the fact that “they bundle so much more with it from the front”, then theoretically, I should be able to lower the price of a Mac by simply asking that they disinclude some of the high-tag software that I don’t see myself using. However, will they (Apple) do that? It’s kind of like going to a (sigh) car dealership and being presented with a wonderful car that has top of the line “factory” everything. But I know for a fact that I can beat the steroe for less money at several shops around town, installed. I also HATE sunroofs, but it’s always part of the “package” deal. Why? Because cutting in a sunroof is cheap, and you can easily overcharge for it in volumes and make back whatever you lost on (or just ran narrow on) in drivetrain and suspension bits. Apple should sell “barebones” Macs that merely have the OS and a browser built in, then charge for each of the other halo products separately (making sure they let people know what they’re missing), but they won’t because it takes nothing to bundle them in, they then force a higher price and they are the main argument of the Macs higher value. Sad truth, in my opinion, is that they are missing a large bundle of potential Mac addicts by charging so much for the initial dose of Mac goodness. This whole argument would end if Mac decides to a la carte their apps, but they’d be downright silly to do so, considering their audiences.
It’s too bad that the flamewars still rage on.
Clean install of ME being done right now, 21 Critical Updates and Service Packs, 45 Windows ME updates on a Dell Dimension 8100 P4 1.3. This will take a long time.
Custom install of Tiger with updates would take 1/2 an hour on B/W G3/350 and about the same amount of time with Panther.
Kubuntu LIVE on either feels about the same…weird.
Sorry most of those ME updates are unnecessary language modules.
Once upon a times macs were very expensive. Even now you can get $399 Dell PCs and $699 Dell laptops. My agency just bought a bunch of these Dell laptops while I elected to buy a more EXPENSIVE iBook for $1200. These Dells have superior numbers to my iBook. However, it is very apparent that these Dells have vastly inferior performance. However, my boss purchased a $1300 Thinkpad that is very equivalent to my iBook in performance. So the bottom line is you get what you pay for.
Look at your article, now look at the comments. You wanted to make a point, yet everybody is arguing. You REALLY should ask Apple for money because you advertised for them… That’s exaclty what they expect you to do: that’s MARKETING, they make you LOVE the brand so you will try to convience the others to buy it… It’s, again, totally useless, unless you earn money from them.
Instead of arguing on your mac price you should give feedback to Machintoch for further imporvement.
– Bouh
It is a truly strange experience to read the chorus claiming that Macs are no more expensive than comparably performant and equipped x86 machines, when one reads any of the popular computer mags and can actually see what things cost. Get down to cases, and this is what you see:
1) The mini is a special case, since you cannot buy 1.2Ghz machines anywhere any more on the new market. But a used Dell of comparable spec will sell for around half or a quarter of the price of a mini. Otherwise you can buy a better performance laptop for what the high end mini costs.
2) Then there’s the G5. Well, go take a look at what AMD 64 machines from a well regarded vendor in the UK sell for. Evesham. They are about half or two thirds what a G5 is, and…they include a flat screen. European prices are about the same.
It is flat false to say that comparable hardware costs the same if its Apple or if its x86.
It may or may not be better value for other reasons, it may be worth it to run OSX, viruses etc may be an issue with Windows, you may like it better, it may be what you feel like owning, yes, all of that may be true.
But when it comes to hardware, Apple hardware has a premium. You will pay between half as much again to twice as much for roughly comparable hardware. Its a publicly verifiable fact, and people should stop denying it.
You’re missing the point. Just because something is appealing to you it doesn’t mean it’s worth the money.
I can look at two irons and realize that one is overpriced and the other is value for money even though I have no interest in irons whatsoever.
Most of the people out there make the common error of separating the hardware form the software when talking about almost everything. So Let me ask these questions:
1. When something goes wrong with your computer and you send it for repair Do you send the software alone or the hardware alone or both?
2. Do you like to have the best hardware on earth with the worst or lets say under-powered software on top of it?
3. Do you like to have the best software on earth with under-powered hardware?
Computing Experience is like Pizza, you cannot say I like the water in the pizza or the eggs in the pizza or the cheese But rather you will say I like the Pizza or not that’s it.
I know that you can get the best hardware to run on windows or linux (Like IBM dual opteron workstations with dual core for each CPU,SCSI 15000rpm disks, 4GB memory,…fitted with windows xp or Redhat enterprise linux 4WS) But are these OSs hold a candle on the face of Mac dual G5 water cooled running a true UNIX OS with all its stability and versatility? No, I don’t think so.
Macs cost less to run for five or six years. NO viruses, malware, trojan horses or spyware. Most of all, Macs don’t have to be patched monthly. Just ask anyone who has to earn money with their computers. If you’re just dicking around on the net, well, yes you can buy a cheapo windows box.
So I guess I am wasting my time patching my Macs with the nearly monthly patches they have been sending out. Wonder why Apple bothers to send out these patches if they are not necessary? I mean on the latest count X.4.3 will have more than 500 bug fixes. A bit much for the “oh-so-perfect” software. No software is perfect. There is some truth in protection from obscurity. The Dashboard implementation flaw was out in the public for three months before Apple fixed it, which is exactly the kind of behaviour MS is often blamed for. If Macs ever get to a critical mass, we will see the reality about their security. And don’t tell me that they are Unix-based and therefore perfect. The security of any *nix system is as good or bad as you make it. You can even get systemwide access from bugs in third-party softwares. as well as bugs in Safari.
I have been using Mac’s for 21 years and got only ONE yes ONE virus 16 years ago on a game disk. It was quickly removed and since then never had a problem with any sort of the problems Windows suffers from daily.
I get spam, corrupted pictures and win viruses because of Windows. So I avoid those losers as much as possible.
(spam from infected Win PC’s bots naturally)
When you go buy a brand new car and realize the next morning something is wrong, do you simply accept it and live with the problem?
Of course not! But every time you boot that POS called Windows and hand your cash over to M$ you compound the problem.
You start making apologies and excuses for their incompetence, you start devoting your entire life fixing your computer and come to accept that as normal.
Don’t you all realize your frigging SICK? Your in a abusive relationship.
It’s called the Stockholm Syndrome.
You Windows users think your so superior, but M$ owns you.
Well FYI, instead of becoming a Windows Geek and repairing machines for a lousy paycheck, I got into real estate.
And do you know what? Instead of burying my head in a worthless OS relationship and a frigging piece of plastic computer for 21 years, I became a multi-millionaire.
Now I have the most expensive Mac Apple can provide, complete with all the trimmings. Why? because I can do what I want with it.
The machine serves me, not me it.
So a piece of advice, use your brains to maximize your income and gain experience in many different fields, this way when you see a opportunity you can maximize on it.
Being a slave to M$ or a computer is a waste of TIME and your Life.
Excuse me, time to party on my Tiara,
(and yes I get laid quite often
)
http://www.tiarayachts.com/Brix?pageID=1
Being a slave to M$ or a computer is a waste of TIME and your Life.
And now you’re a slave to your money/status quo.
(and yes I get laid quite often
)
You don’t have to be a millionaire for that.
Not only is the hardware more expensive, but, please stop denying it, the OS is several times more expensive than XP. Because you buy upgrades every 18 months at $100 a pop.
Its just a fact guys. You may want to do it, but you pay more for the hardware, and you pay more for the OS.
Its much more expensive. Is it value for money? A different question. Just stop denying its more expensive.
Oh boy, the author of this “insightful” piece tells us that a Porsche 911 is going to be expensive to some of us, but its pocket change to Bill Gates. Anything else Captain Obvious?
But more to the point, once people start admitting that you’re paying a premium for OSX and the hardware is basically a crapshoot just like PC stuff on whether it’s going to fail or not, then the fanboys will finally make progress. Until then, they continue to look like a bunch of idiots.
I think PC wanks are just frustrated because their machines are now considered commodity items, while the Mac retains its aura of super high-tech coolness. Besides that, any PC to Mac convert can tell you firsthand that the Mac has a significantly lower TOC than a comparable PC (is there a such thing as a comparable PC?!!!).
My PowerMac 9500 is still happily running. In all it has cost me about $400. About $200 of that when I bought it used about 4 or 5 years ago and then small drips and drabs for more memory, larger/additional hard disks etc. It runs MacOS (8.6/9.1), it runs Linux (yellowDog), it runs BeOS (R5.03)… I get things done. The whole big debate makes me chuckle 😉
Let me see… 9500, produced circa 1994/1995, still going… that makes it a minimum of 10 years old. Anyone else still using 10 year old PC’s as their main machine? I think the point is that Mac users are _happy_ with their hardware, PC users are never pleased entirely… maybe for a year, but then they get penis envy and want bigger shlongs.
Lots of people are using old PCs. But you are extrapolating on your experience onto all Macs and Mac owners. And much worse onto all PC owners. Not very scientific but didn’t expect that the comments here. Needless to say most Mac folks I see are discarding their (slightly) old computers and buying new ones all the time but that does not fit with your world view so it must be wrong. A majority of Windows machines worldwide run pre-XP software while a majority of Macs run OSX+. So don’t you think your viewpoint might be ever so slightly flawed. Of course, your thesis might be that Mac folks are satisfied with their hardware but not with their software.
Hmmmm… I think you miss the point. Plenty of Mac owners see the Mac as a dishwasher or a TV. Because we now live in a society driven by materialism, the market force is to buy newer and bigger things.
Plenty more owners are still using them (shock horror) with MacOS 9 or earlier.
The problem with upgrading is caused by the following factor: if my 9500 could run MacOSX without tedious hacks, I’m sure I would have upgraded the OS. Not being a sheep, I have not jumped on the “must run OSX or I will die” bandwaggon.
I see litterally hundreds of pre 1998 PC being given away on my local Freecycle list – or worse, *not* being given away and tossed in the trash because no one needs or want them. I’ve seen precisely zero Macs. What does this tell you? Macs generally get passed on to willing new owners? Maybe. I like to think so.
Very good and rational really 🙂
But what does that say about the prize of todays mac’s?
I think i know where you are getting at,a mac keeps it’s value longer than the average PC.You know what they both keep their perceived value for the same target area.Let me explain,let’s think we have two users who only browse the web,write a poem now and then and e-mail with their oversees relatives.Such a user hardly has any need for more powerfull hardware the coming 10 years or so regardless of the fact that he or she has a mac or a PC.
It all depends on ones expectations and what he/she wants the PC/mac/whatever to do for them and the timeframe in which it has to perform within the boundaries of a persons expectation.
The hardware and software industry is a selffullfilling prophecy,were the fastest and most beautifull still isn’t enough.The prime in my personal opinion is be carefull which OS/hardware-platform you choose next.so you will not be caught in the supposedly everlasting rat-race.
Isn’t about time more new radical things are being invented without the need to allways upgrade your hardware with faster performing specs.Nothing is perfect and OSS isn’t the only solution,but they traditionally have a grunge against wasting resources and take care of peoples old hardware too.
We know that Macs are more expensive. We know that the hardware costs more than comparably performant hardware from name brand Windows suppliers. The percentage varies, but between 1.5 and 2 times. We also know that the OS is more expensive because you have to buy every service pack at the rate of $100 a throw.
So, if we just consider the costs of acquisition and keeping the system up to date with the manufacturer’s recommendations, the costs of Apple systems is going to be at least double that of a Windows system, and often more.
We know that Apple uses the same basic hardware all other suppliers use, graphics cards, disks, opticals, memory, psus. They have not historically been any more or any less reliable than machines from other suppliers, though they have retained their resale value better.
As the debate goes on, we’ve found something out about the Mac user base and their motivations and general level from their postings. Here is a typical example: “I think PC wanks are just frustrated because their machines are now considered commodity items, while the Mac retains its aura of super high-tech coolness”. Yes, for you it does. For the rest of us, it is rapidly acquiring an aura of utter weirdness, largely due to postings like this. Other postings have asserted, in defiance of the evidence, that the hardware is different and better, or that Macs in fact are priced the same as comparably performant PCs. Others are simply abusive. Others explain their passion in terms of consumer image and lifestyle considerations.
Now, are the Macs worth their premium? The only rational argument one finds (lifestyle and image not falling in this category) is that the cost of virus and spyware protection and the aggravation it involves justifies the premium. You have to sympathize with this argument. Some premium over Windows is certainly justified. Those of us who use Linux cannot deny that it too demands a premium, maybe justified in the same way, but of time rather than money.
However, the disturbing thing about the Mac user base is that they are not content, here and elsewhere, with the quite rational argument that although Macs cost more, security considerations make them worth the price. Rather, we find a kind of hysterical denial of the facts of the case. The problem is, this obscures the real merits and deficiencies of the platform. The level of abuse and misrepresentation makes just reading this stuff terribly tedious.
I used to be a Mac user. It was once a perfectly rational decision based on paying a premium for ease of use and, in the days of Win 3.x, for stability. But I find myself reading these postings and saying, like many others must, never again. I don’t want to be in this company, nor do I want to be in the company of a corporation that panders to and profits from this sort of thing. It is really dangerous for a corporation to allow itself to be turned into a cult. It really limits who it can appeal to. If you like, its the opposite side of the quote above, and its a reaction of, these guys are really really weird. If your customer base starts to get perceived by the mass market as weird, and if at the same time, they get ever more fanatical about the idiocy of the mass choice and the merits of theirs, you are in deep trouble. If you like, they are getting too expensive, Macs, but not only financially.
Well, my own conclusion is to stop reading all this stuff. Probably OSNews would do better not to post any more of it. It cannot be good for the site to turn into a forum which is regularly drowned out by a chorus of cultists. And, whether this is what the Apple enthusiasts have in mind or not, I am now further away from buying a Macac than I have ever been, and moving further with every post like this I read… Figure it out, is this good for Apple? I can’t see how.
This is a great article. For most people (I hope) its bloody obvious but these forums get filled with people who don’t seem understand the concept of utility value.
After All, a diamond is just a bit of carbon arranged in a particular way ( which is not in short supply!).
Tuz
Finally, he could have gone for a system that will run circles around a $2000 Mac for $1300. Alas, he isn’t rich, so instead he chose an awesome system for $650.
That system will be ready for the recycler in a year. Macs hold their values much longer.
The $1,300 system will sell for $400 in under a year and a half. The $2,000 Mac will sell for $1,500 within the same time frame. Macs has longevity where cobbled from scraps PCs do not.