The “Rise of the Machines” might be taking the cinemas by storm these days, but the Rise of the Apple lately also is taking the IT industry by storm with the introduction of the Power Mac G5 and Mac OS X Panther 10.3 last month. Let’s see what the OSNews readers are thinking of the Macs. Come in and vote in our two Mac polls.Note: The poll booth is now closed, thank you for voting.
Why should I switch? I am fine with what I have. Everything is working swimmingly for me. Why should I fork out another few grand for another computer?
ditto
I have nothing against Macs or Mac users. Mac OS is very nice. And Macs in general are very good looking computers. But I’d rather, and, if fact, will, have a dual G4 Pegasos. That way, I get the benefits of PPC, use hardware of my choice, and just feel more like it’s “My” computer. It’s a geek thing.
I just hope that I’ll be able to get a G5 upgrade for it. Those CPUs look *sweet*.
Hmm .. I can’t vote because I can’t identify with any of the options. What I would like to vote for is something like: “I would really like to get a MAC, but for the value, I think they are way too expensive”..
I hate the fact that macs are prebuilt … you can’t make one yourself with the parts that *you* want and not what apple offers you … also PC’s are much cheaper than macs and you can get a far more powerful pc for the same price of a mac.
My computer has been stable and running for months now. Why would I need a new computer? It’s incredible how much money I saved over tech support and repairs with this one. Oh, did I mention that I have a Mac?
Hey, Linux_baby, do you get the poll or not? The polls give you that option exactly. You vote first for the “I don’t need a Mac” (which is similar to the “I won’t get a Mac”) and then you simply vote for the first option for the second poll, which is THE poll where you exactly elaborate WHY you won’t get a Mac.
This is why I put two polls there. One poll to show how many our readers have/want/don’t want a Mac and from the ones who won’t get a Mac, WHY they won’t have one.
Phew… some times I am really wondering guys if you actually “get me”.
I want one badly, it just really sucks I wont be able to afford one. and yes, before i get snapped on by the mac fans saying that macs are really cheap for their value, even 2k is too much. I payed a few hundred for the hardware i have now. With school starting relatively soon i’m thinking the G8 will be out before i’m able to afford one. I just wish apple had a REALLY cheap low-end model for us openstep fanboys-to-be to learn on.
I see no advantage to switching to a mac. Wether I run a mac or not, I would still use my same OS. In hardware alone I see zero advantage. The hardware is much more expensive than a PC, especially if you build your own. Generally there isn’t as as great of a range of hardware selection on a mac either, because you’re locked into whatever Apple lets you use for all of your main components. The only reason I see to buy a mac is if you want to run OSX. And even if I prefered OSX, I wouldn’t be able to justify the price of the hardware required to run it.
I agree. I would lovfe to get a Mac…but the price vs. what comes with the machine just seems very high. I realize that Macs are very nice machines…but My Dell is just as nice as what I see with Macs, but less than 1/2 the price with a monitor against a Mac with NO monitor.
Further, I like the fact that I can very easily upgrade any part of a PC…I can’t say the same about Macs. I have built many machines over the years and would be more than happy to build a Mac…but alas that option does not exist. If Apple would start making components available for those would like to build their own computer, I am sure that a large number of PC users who look at Macs and think “wow…that’s a nice machine” would jump on the chance to build a Mac.
I voted that I personally don’t own a mac with no strong incentive to switch. (But I have worked a lot on OS X.)
Even if we assume that the Mac is a better machine, there’s this interesting principle I’ve observed, that the more experienced a user is, the easier it is to get away with a worse machine. It is like the Soviets in the cold war — America had an insurmountable lead in hardware, so the Soviets studied mathematics very hard to become better at software.
For some users, it is time to switch. That time is definitely not for me. Maybe if they had a better dev environment, who knows… but I already have a sufficiently powerful one on x86.
Cost and performance is not so much of a factor; I buy notebooks. Whenever I need performance, I use the magic of networking.
Ooops .. sorry .. I missed the second pool ..
>> some times I am really wondering
>> guys if you actually “get me”.
Hmm .. don’t put thoughts into our heads
You know eugenia, I think you really need your valium today. You dont need to snap on the dude. And, just in case you didnt get the small details of language, he said he would like to get a mac. “i dont need a mac” doesnt quite click with “i would like a mac but i cant”. so, just to recap for you:
he cant vote “i dont need a mac / wont get a mac” because he would like to get one and so that answer is a bit misleading. there is a difference between “i want a mac but cant afford it” and “i dont want a mac and also it is expensive”.
he cant vote “i am planning to get a mac” because while he would like to get the mac he has reasons for not being able to.
the options dont make intent clear. why saying so is enough to have you snap on him like that i have no idea.
Hello,
Technically speaking, the operating system I use has been proven to be superior, in most facets, to that of the Mac. From a performance, productivity and price stand point, there is absolutely no incentive, or reason, for me to switch to a Macintosh system, except for almighty eye-candy.
Regards,
Mystilleef
…the point in building a computer yourself when you can have a computer that has been build by experts and whose components have been tested to run flawlessly with each other. And it seems to me that a lot of people are comparing the price of a product from Apple with the price of a product build from components found on a scrapyard. Even if the prices for Apple Computers are higher you will save a lot of longterm money on the machine.
Sorry, but he said “I would like a Mac, but they are too expensive”. What that tells me is that “I won’t get a Mac because they are too expensive IMHO”. The fact that he “would like” to get a Mac doesn’t return any value to me or Apple.
I also would like to have Ferraris. But I won’t get one, even if I “would like to”. So, even if I would like to have one, Ferrari, Inc. won’t see a dime out of me. This is the exact same as “I Won’t get a Ferrari” for the company. It does go under the same option on the poll, because my poll was done with the frame of mind of “Me being Apple and would like to survey stuff to see what people think”. It was not a poll that we can put one thousand useless options that are too close to each other.
And no, I don’t work for Apple. But I do like to help companies and projects sometimes with my polls. And no, I didn’t snap to Linux_baby, you misunderstood. We email each other with Dominic quite a bit.
>You know eugenia, I think you really need your valium today. You dont need to snap on the dude.
I think you should be careful of how you talk about me because I have very little patience on the web anymore.
And it seems to me that a lot of people are comparing the price of a product from Apple with the price of a product build from components found on a scrapyard. Even if the prices for Apple Computers are higher you will save a lot of longterm money on the machine.
Sorry Mcfly, but if that is the best you mac zealots can come up with than Apple has absolutely 0% chance of even getting 8% of the market.
“I think you should be careful of how you talk about me because I have very little patience on the web anymore.”
Why do you still bother? for your helth’s sake, give it up for a while. take some distance from it, and think whether it’s worth a nervous breakdown …. you’ll discover that it isn’t.
It is my belief that Apple can get back to 5% of the market share (today they are between 2% and 3%), but it will take a lot of effort, time, and low prices… Also, I don’t believe that they can go more than 5% in a timeframe of 2-3 years (sorry, can’t predict for more years in the future in this instance as there are many variables here
. Apple has stated that their goal is to get back to 5% indeed, they said a few months back.
Yeah, it shows. Chill out. There’s more important things to life than the net.
> for your helth’s sake, give it up for a while
I will be going to Europe soon, for a whole month (as I did last December, I was away from OSNews for a month).
“…the point in building a computer yourself when you can have a computer that has been build by experts and whose components have been tested to run flawlessly with each other. And it seems to me that a lot of people are comparing the price of a product from Apple with the price of a product build from components found on a scrapyard. Even if the prices for Apple Computers are higher you will save a lot of longterm money on the machine.”
All components in a Mac G5 ,except the CPU, case and some motherboards are completely standard OEM wintel parts. A high quality homebuilt PC is as good or <better> than <any> commercial machine whether it is from Apple or Alienware. It is very easy to build a cheap very high quality PC – 30 mins to buy the components and 2-3 hours to build and install the software.
Macs are made in China with cheap labour in the same factories that make inexpensive PCs!
I was one of the many people hoping for a port of OSX to Intel, so when news of the G5 came I was suddenly really interested in Macs again. But when I later read about the DRM integrated into OSX I lost interest. I think I’ll wait for Zeta instead. Read http://www.toad.com/gnu/whatswrong.html if you need to understand why the current DRM push is wrong.
I voted for “because PC are cheaper” but it’s not true that it’s no 1.
all 3 first choices combined are number one for me.
if macs would be as cheap or even a little bit cheaper than PC i still wouldn’t buy it because it’s generally slower, and it doesn’t have software i want to use (namely operating system
.
Another reason for me to not to buy Mac is “I don’t like Apple” ;] So there is more chance i’ll buy PowerPC (i heard IBM’s are fast and good) based machine from some other company (maybe Genesi future comp?) than from Apple.
I vote on the first one, I vote on the second (the first one looks as though I haven’t voted). So I vote differently on the first one (now the second looks like I haven’t voted). So I vote the second one again, and again differently.
The cycle continues, I can vote as many times as I want.
They work fine for me here. Please report the bug to http://www.go2poll.com. Thank you.
I don’t like OSX. I don’t like Mac hardware (despite having owned four Macs in the past). I think Steve Jobs is a deranged hippy. I would not buy a Mac ever. I have also owned a Mercedes and I would probably never buy another. There other considerations in this world such as value for money, practicality and common sense.
I have looked at the best laptops out there in wintel land and not one compares to the powerbook.
One of the biggest problems with intel mobile chips is power. They consume loads of it which make intel laptops heavy and have low battery life. The centrino line will help but not by much, preliminary tests and reviews show that they still can’t compete with thier mac counterparts in terms of battery life.
The argument that wintel machines are cheaper and offer more power falls apart when it comes to laptops. The mobile pentiums ( p4-M and pentium-M) use speedstep which basically halves the cpu freq when the laptop is on battery. My friend returned his Dell 8500 with a 2.0ghz p4-M out of frustration because it would run at max 1.2 ghz or most of the time at 700 mhz. Calls to dell support couldn’t help in disabling speedstep. He go frustrated and returned it because it was too slow on battery power. He bought a celeron based one instead.
After researching for a few months and just recently getting bitten by win2k sp4 (which destroyed my win2k install on my 800mhz celeron toshiba satelite). I decided to switch to the mac. I had figured out it was best to run win2k only on the toshiba after numerous failed atempts to get linux to work decently as a laptop OS (support PowerManagement APM/ACPI, suspend/resume).
I have finally decided to get a powerbook that I have wanted for a while. The reason being no wintel laptop matches what an apple laptop provides at any price.
1. Decent Power Management. No the cpu halving in speed is not decent PM.
2. light weight and sleek design
wintel latops are heavy (require two batteries to provide decent battery life) and if are thin and light are not full featured (no CDROM drive) and slow (1 GHZ ulv pIII).
3. And a great OS that just works
I am a UNIX person and I am tired of trying to make things work with linux. I have tinkered with it for 4 years on various machines. After debugging drivers and unix kernel panics at work all day I don’t want to come home and further debug problems. With macos X I get the best of both worlds UNIX and a decent GUI with tonnes of cool apps. There is no UNIX or linux distro that even comes close on x86 to being a decent multimedia OS and laptop OS.
“All components in a Mac G5 ,except the CPU, case and some motherboards are completely standard OEM wintel parts.”
Hum, how many wintel parts come with 1GHz bus, custom chipset, open trasport, support for 8GB 400DDR Ram, 64bit X-PCI, Gigabit Ethernet, optical audio, firewire 800. All of them standard in the motherboard?
Oh. they are all made of PCB and traces, so yeah… maybe you are right. So in the same spirit the G5 and P4 both are made of silicon so the G5 must be standard Itel OEM parts.
” A high quality homebuilt PC is as good or <better> than <any> commercial machine whether it is from Apple or Alienware. It is very easy to build a cheap very high quality PC – 30 mins to buy the components and 2-3 hours to build and install the software.”
So do it, but you will not get a system like the G5 by a long shot. Independent thermally controlled fans, no. Superdrive, no, almost no wires running through the case, no. A low noise overall machine, no. Dual G5’s, no.
I am pretty sure that you must be superduper putting things together, but believe me you seem to overstimate your skill with the soldering iron on this one pal.
I voted for the “I’m too cheap” option too.
This was the closest to my mindset, but not exactly true either.
My problem is that I would love to run OSX, but the price to performance ratio is just too far off.
The G5 gets closer to the mark. But for a high end machine, they have a second rate video card, little ram and not much drive space.
For my budget, it just doesn’t make sense. I own a dual 2.4Ghz Xeon with 10,000 RPM scsi drives, $3000 NewTek video editing card and it is still out of my price range.
If I won’t pay the price, who does?
“It is my belief that Apple can get back to 5% of the market share (today they are between 2% and 3%), but it will take a lot of effort, time, and low prices…”
I think they can achieve this by increasing getting more software on their platform. This what would stop me from switching if I had €5000 to buy a new computer be it an Apple or Dell. I’m concerned about not just applictions that are now but those that will come and on which platform. For now chances are higher for it being an exclusive to Windows. So I voted software is important to me.
“Hum, how many wintel parts come with 1GHz bus, custom chipset, open trasport, support for 8GB 400DDR Ram, 64bit X-PCI, Gigabit Ethernet, optical audio, firewire 800. All of them standard in the motherboard? ”
How about AMD? AMD is an x86 company. But on the other side I have not interest in gigabit and firewire. And I think my three year old soundblaster has optical audio. The only thing Apple about the new computer is the CPU, the rest is x86 tech however all as standard companents.
Looks like the polls are expressing the most widely held misconception: “that PCs are generally cheaper.”
This is true:
1) only when you build your own machine
2) only when a PCs hardware and software are not matched to the Macs
3) only when you buy a system so low end its only slightly usable.
The main reason I am not switching to Apple is the pricing. We don’t have a choice. Apple prices are through the roof. I can get all that Apple is providing for a half price and probably even less! Now tell me why should I switch to Apple when I can get the same things for a half price? Do I have a choice? Nope. I voted for “I am not getting a Mac option” At the moment, I am running a P4 2.0GHz with 256MB RDRAM and WinXP on top, I have never been happier. WinXP never crashes and it runs flawlessly. However, I am playing with Linux and considering to swith to it as soon as I feel the same as I feel with XP. I am looking towards Ark Linux but we’ll see
“Apple prices are through the roof.”
No more so than the prices of the average PC manufacturer. When you match a Mac and PCs hardware and software, the Mac is either slightly more, the same price, slightly less or significantly less.
This is the type of poll that BEGS the forum trolls to come out of the wood work.
Its nice to see OS news is being consistent and giving them a home.
Interesting that there have been no comments regarding Total Cost of Ownership. Macs are cheaper than PCs: despite a _sometimes_ higher initial cost they
• last longer
• use less electicity
• are easier to install and maintain
• are (still) easier to use
• are easier to fix when they do break down
• are (virtually) free of viruses
My previous employer was a university with a large IS department. My new PC needed to be reimaged. It took a day. I have reimaged a Mac and had it back in operation in less than an hour and I am not a technician.
In my current position (a high school), the cost of maintaining the PCs is about 50% higher than the Macs.
some other references
http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/2003/03/27/xserve/
http://www.pcmag.com/article/0,2997,s=1564&a=7559,00.asp
http://www.consumerreports.org/main/detailv3.jsp?CONTENT%3C~*~@…
http://www.pcworld.com/resource/printable/article/0,aid,105854,00.a…
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,364590,00.asp
“Hum, how many wintel parts come with 1GHz bus, custom chipset, open trasport, support for 8GB 400DDR Ram, 64bit X-PCI, Gigabit Ethernet, optical audio, firewire 800. All of them standard in the motherboard? ”
How many Macs: come with one or two 3+Ghz CPU’s? This should not matter any more than the bus speed, but you brought up meaningless ratings.
Custom chipset: I was an Amiga user too. How does this help? Lack of options?
Open Transport: I have no idea what this is. Is it like Intel Netburst or some other super-duper marketing thing?
8GB DDR 400 ram: My Xeon does 12GB, Athlon 64’s can do plenty too if you use Linux. See above for Mhz ratings.
PCI-X, Gigabit ethernet: Again, right here in my system built into the motherboard
Optical audio: Most motherboards with onboard audio have this today. If not it is $50 away.
Firewire 800: Name one device to use it on. Please. Normal onboard firewire is quite common and cheap to add.
And all of these devices stop working the minute your motherboard goes out.
As you can see, there is not much to set Mac’s apart from the Intel pack. Until the price to performance ratio gets better, I’m stuck on Intel.
I’d be happy to pay a little more, but it seems like such a huge difference right now.
Why I bought an iBook
First of all, I wanted to buy a laptop. It was meant to be portable, not to be a desktop replacement. This means: compact (< 15″), lightweight and good battery life. But it still has to have some basic features like a dvd reader, if I want to watch a DVD while I’m on the train.
Second of all, I’m a student, so it shouldn’t be too expensive.
Third, I was a linux guy, so the hardware should be supported by Linux.
On all of these points, the iBook scored pretty good, and had the added advantage that it had a very interesting operating system I never used before. So, it has an extra learning advantage.
Why did I stay with Mac OS X, and didn’t install Linux on my iBook
Strangely enough, Mac OS X was more Unix-like than either KDE or Gnome. What I mean with Unix-like are three things: scriptable, KISS, different applications can work together.
KISS
You won’t see a filemanager that doubles as an internet browser on mac os x for example. Mail.app isn’t a calendar.
Safari does one thing, and does it well. iTunes does one thing, and it does it well, same goes for iChat, iPhoto,…
Scriptable
Applescript, although it has a weird syntax, is pretty useful to extend and automise the graphical applications. Add, “do shell script”, and you have something powerful.
Example: I have a simple MySQL database for my divx movies. If I drag and drop a movie to my “Movies” folder, it automatically adds it to my MySQL database. (thanks to folder actions, applescript and perl)
Applications integrate and work with each-other
I can actually just copy an image from my web-browser, and paste it in another application. Very shocking for a former Gnome user 🙂
iTunes, iPhoto and iMovie are separate applications, but they work well with each-other. Add a picture from iPhoto in iMovie. Play an mp3 from iTunes in iPhoto.
The services menu adds extra integration between applications. Select a text, and directly mail it to someone. Make a post-it note from it. Stuff like that.
Besides the above points there is a good software selection. Ranging from the Adobe/Macromedia/Microsoft selection, to stuff like OmniGraffle, Keynote and iLife.
Generally I’m just more productive. If I can save 1-2 mouse clicks or key strokes on each operation, I will save allot more time, than I would have running Linux on a fast processor. I wouldn’t use it on the server, but as an advanced Unix-like desktop, Mac OS X is king.
I’m using Macs from October 12th, 1985 and I very pleased, so I did not vote in the second poll, but I would like to see the results.
Is it possible to put a See the results page_
Thanks
Notebooks are an intirely different matter.
Apple notebooks are the best IHMO.
I guess I was too “intired” when I wrote that.
God I wish there was an edit button…
I have loads of Macs, but I’m not certain that I qualify as a Mac owner in the poll, since the strongest ones are 601 based.
“I have loads of Macs, but I’m not certain that I qualify as a Mac owner in the poll, since the strongest ones are 601 based.”
If I own a first generation Pentium, do I not own a PC?
Well, they are macs, aren’t they? Even a Macintosh 128k is a mac, I think. But our Performa 180/6400 is sitting upstairs for a year already, unused.
Come on are you trolling or what ! Why would a personally hand built computer be any different then what you would get in the store ? Pleeeease ! If you know what the hell you are doing ( which I and others do ! ) you can build yourself a pretty mean and lean powerful machine with less cash and with parts you we personally hand selected.
Oh yeah don’t give me crap about how parts in a computer that was built by someone has cheap parts in it. You know that’s a bunch troll baiting BS ! I can get very good quality PC parts from motherboard to a highend video card and put it all together and it will not cost me my freaking bank account like a high-end Mac would. If you don’t mind paying for over priced rigs then that’s your choice but don’t talk out of your arse-hole when it comes rolling your own pc. It’s obvious you have had very little if any experience with the subject and you sound like freaking Apple zealot when spouting off such non-sense.
Well, since Eugenia’s poll was very obviously business oriented, my owning a Mac would be of little consequence. I don’t plan to buy a Mac. I’m an Amiga user, and as much as I admire MacOS, I’m not fond of its latest incarnation, and all my computer funds go to maintaining the Amiga, which the Mac can’t replace. So I really should have voted in both polls, despite owning lots of Macs.
You could say, that I own Macs, but I’m not a Mac owner.
The whole paragraph had me laughing but when he actually had the nerve to say, “and you sound like freaking Apple zealot when spouting off such non-sense.”, the combination of the two had me falling out of my chair.
When will the pots ever learn about the kettles before opening their mouths?….
I voted “Not planning to buy” and “PC’s cheaper” even though those answers are only marginally true.
At home I use a Celeron 400 w/ Win 98 and it does most of the things I want to do. I dabble with Linux occasionally. The onboard video is not good enough to run even the bargain bin games that I might want to purchase if they require 3D, but that’s why my kids have Playstation and now PS2.
So, my requirements aren’t that steep.
Checking the prices for emacs and ibooks, they actually seem to be a good deal for all of the features (extra software) that you get. I’ve read a lot of the articles here about “What Apple Should Do(tm)”. While I think that Apple prices are pretty competetive with what I can otherwise afford (sub $1000 but better than WalMart $199) I just wish that they would include 256-512 MB RAM and at least a ComboDrive on their lowest end machines AT THE SAME PRICE POINT. That would probably make me buy at least an ibook and maybe an emac.
Until then, my limited funds will go towards building my own systems and/or recycling the parts out of my old PC’s.
Macs: too expensive in the country I live (.gr)
No evidence of support.
Binding with one platform, why can’t independent vendors construct apple compatibles like IBM comparibles a million years before.
The idia of binding my computing experience with one company is something I can’t tryst: Didn’t like M$, switched to linux, the one who sold me my PC stops business: I can have it repaired/upgraded elsewhere. etc etc
“Hum, how many wintel parts come with 1GHz bus, custom chipset, open trasport, support for 8GB 400DDR Ram, 64bit X-PCI, Gigabit Ethernet, optical audio, firewire 800. All of them standard in the motherboard?”
Except for Firewire 800 and IGHz all are readily available on Wintel. Hypertransport and PCI-X are industry standards not Apple proprietary items.
“Oh. they are all made of PCB and traces, so yeah… maybe you are right. So in the same spirit the G5 and P4 both are made of silicon so the G5 must be standard Itel OEM parts.”
Most of the motherboard technology is standard x86 except CPUs and some custom components. The CPUs are built by IBM – the other chipsets are mainly AMD.
” A high quality homebuilt PC is as good or <better> than <any> commercial machine whether it is from Apple or Alienware. It is very easy to build a cheap very high quality PC – 30 mins to buy the components and 2-3 hours to build and install the software.”
“So do it, but you will not get a system like the G5 by a long shot. Independent thermally controlled fans, no. Superdrive, no, almost no wires running through the case, no. A low noise overall machine, no. Dual G5’s, no.”
How about water cooling <20dB (below ambient noise) with no fans. How about a Sony DVD that supports <all> formats.
“I am pretty sure that you must be superduper putting things together, but believe me you seem to overstimate your skill with the soldering iron on this one pal.”
The only tool needed to build a computer is a Phillips head screwdriver – there is no soldering whatsover in building a personal computer.
Because I would tick the first 4 boxes.
PC’s are cheaper
Macs are underpowered (G3,G4 and G5) for the price
Macs have many fewer Games (which drive the PC market upgrades)
There is no incentive to switch at all for most people.
Macs are currently a nitch market and unless the price comes down, the power Stays competitive and Game makers start releasing Mac versions at the same time as PC versions I , and multitudes of others like me,will never switch.
I really wanted an ibook because, as a linux user, it makes more sense for me to buy something that will work rather than buy an XP laptop that I will trash to install Linux, that will likely struggle to get everything working.
But it’s too underpowered and too expensive. I will buy a laptop when a vendor will propose with mandrake or suse preinstalled, with everything (including soft keys) configured.
Well to all of you who disagree with me, that’s your opinion. I will not pull back. I am sticking with Intel/AMD
When people compare Macs with PC and say that they aren’t so expensive they are usually comparing brand names like Dell or Compaq. But what is often forgotten is the still very large component and white box market. Sure, that G5 doesn’t seem so expensive compared against that top of the line Dell, but many people would never buy said Dell either.
For exactly $1000 I can get a 2.4GHz P4C (these things are the new Celeron300s! They go easily > 3GHz with the _standard_ cooler), 512MB DDR400, a special quiet computer case, a serial ATA 120GB drive, and a Radeon 9700 (non-pro). This is why the Macs don’t compete in the enthusiast/white box market, which is around 30% of the whole market (just Google it).
I would like to own a Mac, I like OSX a lot. But when the entry level computer is $1,999 for the 1.6 GHz model, Macs are right out of the question. I have never put $2000 on a new machine, and I must have owned a dozen top of the line (at the time) systems over the years. The Mac laptops on the other hand are pretty sweet and much better bang for the buck, I might buy one second-hand some time in the future.
I’ve about to get a new laptop (which my parents are paying for
). I was considering buying a Mac, but in the end decided against it. Why?
– The only other experience I’ve had with proprietary operating systems has turned me off them. I have a—perhaps unfounded—fear that I’ll be stuck with something I don’t actually want.
– MacOS X costs money. I don’t have the funds to be able to constantly upgrade an OS.
– Fear of the unknown. As an example, I don’t know exactly how customisable a Mac is, but I understand it isn’t much. The screenshots I’ve seen of the Aqua interface look bad. I’m not going to support an OS that has close, minimise and maximise buttons on the some side, let alone distinguished only be color… Not to mention that I’m not too fond of the bubbly look.
Of course, I could deal with all of those simply enough by putting Gentoo on (which is what I’d be doing with an x86-based lappy, anyway). But given I would only be able to get an 800 MHz G3, I wasn’t sure whether the compile times would be bareable. But you compile once and run many times, so the extra time spent compiling wouldn’t’ve been too much of a problem.
The real thing that made my mind up was the mouse. I’m going to have a hard enough time adapting to a two-button mouse, a one-button mouse would be impossible… (No you cannot buy an n-button mouse for a laptop. Or, you can, but you want a laptop to be pretty much self-contained so you can use it without peripherals sticking out.) I imagine this would be more of an issue if I used Gentoo, but I didn’t want to run the risk.
APPLE, PUT MORE BUTTONS ON YOUR LAPTOPS!
If I ever get the money to, though, I’m going to buy a Mac desktop. Among others (a RiscOS desktop, an Amiga desktop etc.).
My previous employer was a university with a large IS department. My new PC needed to be reimaged. It took a day. I have reimaged a Mac and had it back in operation in less than an hour and I am not a technician.
Please elaborate on this. Using Norton Ghost on Windows, reimaging doesn’t take 1/24th the time you claim. Claims like this make it nearly impossible to take Mac TCO claims seriously.
I can buy a little army of 8 Dell PCs for the price of that Dual 2Ghz Mac. So yeah, they’ll drink more electricity and need more admin, leading to a higher TCO, but they’ll also provide 8 people with PCs. So TCO is a flawed argument.
The notebooks seem cool though.
I ordered my PB on 7-2-03 and should get it this comming week
The main reason I made the switch is because of OS X. I love the fact that it is UNIX based. I don’t like windows so I tried some different distros of Linux (using RH 9 now) but I’m not that crazy about it. I tried FreeBSD and love it but I don’t want my OS to be hard to set up. I had to recompile the kernel just to get sound. I want a UNIX OS that just works and from what I have read, OS X is it.
I really like Mac OS X and I would like a Mac, but really the advantages over a PC with Windows XP aren’t that great. The new G5s are quite well priced systems compared with very high end PCs, but I don’t need a very high end computer.
For me spending more than $1000 on a computer is a waste of money. A cheap PC meets my needs quite well and there’s no desktop Mac of an equivalent price, apart from the iMac/eMac which have too many limitations.
“Binding with one platform, why can’t independent vendors construct apple compatibles like IBM comparibles a million years before.”
Because when Apple tried licensing clones, customers bought the clones instead of Macs, not as well as Macs. The total sales did not increase, and Apple made less money.
That’s why Jobs stopped it. Maybe the experiment did not run for long enough, but so far as it ran it was not successful from Apple’s point of view.
“APPLE, PUT MORE BUTTONS ON YOUR LAPTOPS!”
Truer words have never been spoken — I BADLY want an iBook, but I cannot for the life of me see using a goddamned one button trackpad. Yes, I know about cmd-click, and that is horseshit. I love my mac, lust after a G5, but simply cannot fathom how anyone could use a 1 button mouse and [i]like it. I don’t need 8 buttons, but I need 2.
I’d want vote for all the options in the last poll, they are all good reasons to not have one. I ended up choosing “Don’t like Apple” though, the company is waaaaaay too evil for me to want to support. Even if they were nice and cuddly though, I still wouldn’t want a Mac. Decisions, decisions…..
The poll show price as the overwhelming reason why someone would not get a Mac.
Much has been said about that for a long time. I think – and I know Eugenia and others think – that Apple should come out with a true entry level Mac price-wise. Perhaps the eMac or a headless Mac like the Cube or something else.
The yet-to-be-released Macs are pretty high priced with only the dual 2 GHz being worth ists true value. There are grat deals on the current Power Macs – dual 1.25 GHz.
But, I do tyhink it’s true – a snappy entry model is needed. It should be attractive and stylish and Apple should simply bite the bullet if it doesn’t make a profit. It would be worth it in new users buying iPods, etc. With the iLife apps, an entry level couldn’t be beat.
…but not a G5, as 2000 U$D is a ludicrous price to me. I can get build a powerful computer like I want (from the high quality “scrapyard”) for about 1000 USD. I might get a second-hand PowerBook as they look great. I also like its high battery life. Perhaps they ain’t as powerful as a P4, but I don’t need that power for mobile computing.
Btw, people claiming that computers pre-built by “experts” (straight from China) are better than self-built computers are morons. Fact is that you can choose ANYTHING you want for self-built computers, even hardware of a much higher quality than the standard onboard crap, and usually for cheaper. There are good reasons to get a Mac, but this one is not. In fact, it’s a good reason to NOT get a Mac because you are stuck to use what they want at the price they want (for PC hardware that is not compatible with Macs).
I was a long Apple user, from the Apple II to the IIe to the IIc to the original Mac before I finally switched over to x86 in the late 80’s. I’ve been longing for a Mac ever since.
As others have said, I really wish there was an entry level headless Mac. Still, I may just go for that 17″ iMac or maybe a Powerbook or maybe one of those reduced PowerMac G4’s.
Now I just have to convince the wife…
The PC was running NT4 SP4 (from memory). I questioned their need to have it for 24 hours. They said they needed to let it run overnight to see if everything was OK. True story.
People really need to look past initial price.
And of course a lot of people on this forum could (and do) build their own PCs quite cheaply. But most people don’t know how to build a computer. Just as most people would like to build their own houses for a fraction of the price of hiring someone to do it. But they can’t so they spend a lot of money and buy one off the plan.
Apple have their faults but because they make the box and the OS they work better and more cheaply together, but not as fast.
If contributors to this forum think otherwise can they provide references??
I gave my iBook to my mother-in-law (really) and run Libranet 2.8
on an old P3 ThinkPad. I can update ad infinitum for free and have all the apps I need. I shelled out les than a grand and I’m a hero to boot..
I would like to have a G5 based personal computer but no a Mac. If would like to buy a cheap chinese G5 motherboard and assemble my computer by myself. Apple could receive money by licensing your hardware specifications to Asus, Abit, Soyo, etc and selling an OEM version of MacOS X. Apple would have 2 sources of money, while M$ has only one…
I’d hate to have to use a one button mouse with a desktop, but on a Powerbook a single button doesn’t seem like a big problem. The Ctrl key isn’t much further away from the trackpad than the button, you can easily Ctrl+click with one hand.
eh… you get used to the single button on the desktop… it isn’t so bad. in fact it’s sometimes real fun to see how fast and with what finger combinations you can do ctrl+click… it’s fine on the powerbook too.
All of the above.
1st POLL: I already have a Mac(iBook) but I plan on getting a G5.
Someone’s already asked if I wanted to sell my iBook!
2nd POLL: I’m waiting for the first revision of the G5 to get my hands on one.
I’m not sure if what I answered on the poll really applied to my feelings. Before the G5, I felt the Macs were too underpowered for their price. I think the G5 makes Macs competitive (although probably not the “fastest PC on earth” as the Jobs reality distortion field puts it). I’ve toyed with the idea of getting a Mac, but I’d hesitate to buy in at the low end (say an eMac or an iMac) because I’d worry I’d outgrow the system if I really took to it. Also, space is an issue… if I could KVM in a cheap Mac box, I’d not have to set aside another desk/table for the Mac.
One thing I’ve not heard anyone talk about is the cost of software in this whole equation. I’ve been over to Adobe’s site, for example, and I can’t seem to find any price breaks (i.e. a “crossgrade”) on their products for people switching platforms. Since I use some fairly pricey stuff (Photoshop, InDesign, and FrameMaker from Adobe alone) switching to a Mac for all of my work would probably mean I would have to buy all of my software again from scratch, spending more in software replacement than in the initial hardware cost. None of the software companies that do have cross-platform products seem to offer crossgrade pricing (at least, not that I have seen. If they do, then Apple really needs to tout this). Meanwhile, 99% of my old software stayed as is when I went from Windows 2000 to XP, or in the rare case where software wouldn’t work between the windows versions (there was only one in my case: Partition Magic) the upgrade price was in the neighborhood of $40.
Yeah, I know, I could use an emulator as a bridge between going from the PC and the Mac, slowly replacing software as I go. But that really defeats the purpose of switching platforms, in my book. I’d get significantly less performance, and I would still be using Windows.
Of course, this is the same in the other direction… if you have a hefty software investment, switching from a Mac to a PC makes less sense than staying with the Mac.
I voted that I would not purchase a Mac, but if MicroSoft manages to take control fo the PC platform (via Palladium) then I will switch to the PPC architecture. My OS of choice is GNU/Linux, so I may look for a way of avoiding an OSX tax (like people pay to MS when they purchase prebuilt PCs).
Even if underpowered, there hardware is excellent, and they readily provide drivers for GNU/Linux.
I would rather have a Sony Vaio than any Apple Mac 🙂
Sony always have a better design, better hardware, better software, better price, better performance, better compatability, better support than Apple 😉
Sony is the best.
A Mac is simplicity, grace and style. Its easy to use, easy to upgrade and has the best OS (Mac OS X) on the planet. I get my work done without the OS getting in the way. These things make a Mac well worth the price.
I read on another software forum that if you contact / email marcomedia / adobe. They will give you the mac version or sell it at upgrade costs, this depends on what version of the software you are at. If it new you get the mac version else for upgrade cost.
First , because I wanted to use OSX. That’s pretty obvious, that’s why MOST people switch ( I don’t like that term , it makes it seem as though you can’t use everything. I have a Linux fileserver , an openbsd firewall and an old windows machine running kazaa )
Second , because the ibook was the best choice for me. The combination of inexpensive , well built hardware with *very* good WiFi along with a very nice LCD and a 6 hour battery life ( realistically , if your screen is using much backlight and you’re using wireless you’ll never get 6 hours. But then , 5.5 hours isn’t bad at all either )
So for me my ibook was the best decision.
Would I buy a desktop mac ? Well , with what I’ve found with OSX and mac hardware I’d certainly be tempted. But I’m to the point where I doubt I’d buy *any* new desktop machine, PC / Mac / Sun / blah .
But I must admit , the 12″ powerbooks are in a very nice price range. And the 17″ powerbooks have all the funky bells and whistles ( breathe deeply , count to ten , think of the damage to the bank account )
“The argument that wintel machines are cheaper and offer more power falls apart when it comes to laptops. The mobile pentiums ( p4-M and pentium-M) use speedstep which basically halves the cpu freq when the laptop is on battery. My friend returned his Dell 8500 with a 2.0ghz p4-M out of frustration because it would run at max 1.2 ghz or most of the time at 700 mhz. Calls to dell support couldn’t help in disabling speedstep. He go frustrated and returned it because it was too slow on battery power. He bought a celeron based one instead.”
I have a speedstep laptop and it only lowers the speed by 100Mhz on my machine (I’m sure it differs depending on the speed of the processor). Saying that the speed is “halved” is a bit misleading. Secondly, disabling the speedstep is not hard at all, it’s in the BIOS.
“3. And a great OS that just works
I am a UNIX person and I am tired of trying to make things work with linux. I have tinkered with it for 4 years on various machines. After debugging drivers and unix kernel panics at work all day I don’t want to come home and further debug problems. With macos X I get the best of both worlds UNIX and a decent GUI with tonnes of cool apps. There is no UNIX or linux distro that even comes close on x86 to being a decent multimedia OS and laptop OS.”
More propoganda. How were you having kernel panics all day? Especially if you are a Unix person? I never used Unix and I had no problem setting up and maintaing a Linux machine. Maybe you just shouldn’t be using Linux but don’t discourage other people. I run Linux on a speedstep laptop and I never have a problem. My machines is also very multimedia capable. I can’t think of one thing I can’t do on my Linux laptop that I’ve ever wanted to do.
I have been a long-time fan of Mac OSes. I have a 68K Mac running OS 8.1 and 601 PowerMac running OS 9.
But I don’t generally use these anymore and can’t conceive buying another Mac unless the total cost of acquisition changes.
I would love to run Mac OSX. But I also want to use my perfectly good 21″ monitor and SCSI peripherals. OSX also needs lots of horsepower. For these reasons, I would want/need the $2500 G5 Mac, with an added SCSI card. Even then, I’d have to buy a new Postscript Laserprinter, since my current one only supports Appletalk and Parallel connections.
Bottom line, I’d be spending $3000+ to get what I want.
Instead I’m running Linux on a PC that cost less than $1000.
I should also mention that Apple quality isn’t there anymore. I stopped recommending Apple to friends after two of them got burned by iMac hardware defects that took *months* to get fixed. Problems that came back again after warranty, too. So add to that $3000 price, the cost of an AppleCare contract, too.
But if Apple comes out with a headless G5 with USB2 and a slot to support a SCSI card for $1000 — I’ll be there in a minute. I want my OSX!
Well, I didn’t see an option of “I own a PC because they were better value than Mac, however, today I am getting a mac because they deliver the price performance I want”.
Back when I bought my PC, macs were bloody expensive, however, today, they are very reasonably priced to the point that any one who is willing to save up for one can afford it.
When I bought my PC, it was back in the days of the PowerPC beige boxs and the price of them were around $7000, and worse still their all-in-one combo was terrible for the performance they delivered.
Again, today you can pick up a iMac with a sexy flat screen for a reasonable price and the workstations are comparably priced to the Dell Workstation line.
Anyone who says otherwise must be either anti-apple zealots or Percy Poverty cases who can’t be bothered getting off their ass, saving up some cash and buying something which the software and hardware work nicely together rather than having the bullcrap we have today in the PC world of a half-baked operating system riding ontop of el-cheapo hardware made by some dodgy third rate operation working out of a toilet cubical. But of course the PC-zealots will scream “competition” even though you would still have to pay a premium for quality components.
This place should be renamed from OSNews.com into iWhiners.com! There are so many of them here! Always, iWhining how expensive and bad Apple products are and Apple in general… It is like Smith from Reloaded! They are trying to copy their miserable selves over others like there is no tomorrow! Well, for those miserable iWhiners actually there is no tomorrow but this is a story for some other time… :p
Grow up and quit iWhining for a change! Starting NOW!
Well, I don’t think you know too many people who have bought Vaio laptops. All my friends who own them, curse them for Sony’s proprietary mumbo-jumbo. Drivers are a pain in the ass (ever want to install a new OS on a somewhat old sony laptop, to find that drivers are a pain in da shazam to find?). In my book, memory-stick is just a joke. Expensive proprietary solution to something already fixed with products where competition exists (CF, SD etc). How about all their DRM-stuff? The list goes on (don’t get me wrong, I like alot of other Sony stuff, just not their computers).
I actually like Apple for what they’ve been trying to do lately. They’re moving towards open standards, and using the open source community. That’s what it’s for. No need to re-invent the wheel. Take good code, improve, and give back changes to the community. I think that open-source is all about sharing knowledge and information, but I might be wrong
Anyway, a little bit back on track. Can you give examples? You name things that apple are known for (good support, design etc), but you say that Sony is better. I want examples! 
Speed, they’ve got the G5. Design? We’re talking Apple, they’re known for poor performance, but good design (not true anymore, one could hope). Software is top-notch for the end-user (I think iLife is perfect for the average user who organize photos, listen to music, edit the dv-movie from the last birthday party etc) . I give you price, but you get what you pay for. Compability and support, my vote for apple, but that’s totally subjective, so don’t flame me into oblivion.
By the way, I’m typing this on my new iBook with my old trusty Sony earphones.
More propoganda. How were you having kernel panics all day? Especially if you are a Unix person? I never used Unix and I had no problem setting up and maintaing a Linux machine. Maybe you just shouldn’t be using Linux but don’t discourage other people. I run Linux on a speedstep laptop and I never have a problem. My machines is also very multimedia capable. I can’t think of one thing I can’t do on my Linux laptop that I’ve ever wanted to do.
What do you think sunshine? crappy drivers privided with the kernel. Atleast when one runs FreeBSD, one can be assured that although the driver selection is limited, they are actually QUALITY drivers and are NOT riddled with bugs.
Also, why should I need to run Linux then turn around and find there are no bloody applications to run on it? I don’t give a shit about replacements, I want the exact applications I can get on Windows or Mac. Simple as that. They can be delivered if there is some leadership by distributions, however, none of them are willing to sit down, sign an NDA and port the applications over to Linux.
Until I can get Office, Corel Graphics Suite, my Wacom tablet working adequately, and various other applications, you can scream about Linux or what ever till the cows come home, however, the only alternatives there are out there to Windows is MacOS X. Screaming and shouting will not change that fact.
Closed architecture.
Getting a closer look at Mac OS X would be tempting, but I’m not going to buy a special computer for that.
Apples tend to cost 50% more for something which is 10% better. For the most part they are difficult to customize. Equipment capabilities change quickly in modern times.
As a company Apple has no competitive fire. They are content to have a paltry 4% market share as long as they can charge more for the few boxes. They enjoy too much the adulations of devoted fans. As a group they are declining into insignificance.
I voted “doesn’t have the software I need.” Max os x is pretty, but my development experience on it has been a nightmare. Apparently (/please/ correct me if I’m wrong) there is only one malloc debugger – MallocDebug – and it’s a GUI app, which is worthless to me (how do you debug remotely?) Besides, when your app crashes it (which mine did), you are more or less out of luck. There does not appear to be anything like Valgrind, Purify or Insure++ for this platform. So I’d say that memory access debuggers are the main thing keeping me off the platform.
“Also, why should I need to run Linux then turn around and find there are no bloody applications to run on it? I don’t give a shit about replacements, I want the exact applications I can get on Windows or Mac. Simple as that. They can be delivered if there is some leadership by distributions, however, none of them are willing to sit down, sign an NDA and port the applications over to Linux.
Until I can get Office, Corel Graphics Suite, my Wacom tablet working adequately, and various other applications, you can scream about Linux or what ever till the cows come home, however, the only alternatives there are out there to Windows is MacOS X. Screaming and shouting will not change that fact.”
First of all you seem to be the one screaming and yelling not me. There’s no need to be angry just because you can’t get Linux to work right. I’ve set up numerous machines with Linux and never had a problem. I don’t doubt that some hardware is not as supported as others but the same holds true for MS. I had more buggy drivers for Windows than I had for Linux. The applications are there and anyone who says otherwise has not used Linux. You are right that not all of the same applications are there but who needs them? The Linux replacements work better in most cases for me. You seem to be too tied up in the fact that you are not willing to learn something new and instead wish to call Linux inferior because you don’t have the 5 mins it takes to check out a new application.
an “underpowered” notebook is ok with me (longer battery life), and software isn’t an issue since I run linux.
I like that the airport adapter doesn’t stick out like my Aironet 350 PCMCIA card.
My last (current) i386 laptop didn’t have a serial port, and that proved to be a pain. I bought a USB to serial converter, so I have the functionality I need, but I think that when the time comes to replace this thing, I’ll get one with a serial port on board.
I use my right mouse button a lot to “open link in new tab” and other stuff — yeah, I know you can simply hold the one mouse button down longer in MacOS — so I’m partial to two mouse buttons.
Lastly, Slackware Linux isn’t available (officially) for the G? processors. I guess I could try the unofficial Slackintosh or try a new distro, but I’ve been keeping up with the biggies on i386, and I don’t like them as much as my beloved slackware.
I just find it amazing that there’s more Mac users or future Mac users than people who don’t want to buy or don’t need a Mac.
This might work, I had to vote (other).
http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=3971
You can malloc debug with GDB, gdb is included with X even if it’s highly modfied by Apple.
You have othe tools you mention but do have cool tools like : http://www.aaa-plus.com/joy/desc.html.
—
http://homepage.mac.com/softkid/
I don’t think that you can…
GDB won’t tell you if you overrun a buffer, or double-free. You get “oooh, segfault in gethostbyname” and can infer that you have some memory error, but gdb can’t help you there (unless you throw breakpoints in malloc/free and count yourself…)
In other words, gdb doesn’t check *every memory access period* , which is what you need for a useable memory debugger.
gdb is good for logic bugs though.
and the next machine will be one too. and the next, and the next.
the one i own now is my first, but OS X is what linux promised it would be for 6 years of my using it. thank you apple!
Bullcrap, if you were a regular osnews.com reader, you would know that for 8 years I have run Linux and *BSD. This year I’ve given up.
Every year I hear the same promises of things being fixed. Sorry, I’ve given 8 years for the *NIX community to get their shit together and it seems that the *NIX community are more interested in making something 200000x more complicated than it needs to be.
GIMP is a prime example of crappy usability. I spent a good 30minutes finding the bloody save function. Why should I need to spend all that time? had they designed and implemented it properly using commonly used layout of menus and so forth I would have simply gone to the menu at the top of the window, click on file then save.
Sorry, after 8 years I expect improvement. Sure, the desktop has been made more attractive, however, that doesn’t make up for its crappy usability. Heck, any moron can make a 24bit icon. Even I could do it!
MacOS X is the only REAL alternative out there and whether you like it or not, I am moving to it.
As for the lack of adoption by Joe and Jan average, they only have themselves to blame. You can point to the occasional change in the wind, however, if one were to be mature and look at the facts, Windows still has 95% of the market place.
As a server operating system, sure, no problems, but as a desktop, I wouldn’t touch it again with a 40foot pole. Heck, just read the interviews with Linus Torvalds in regards to Linux on the desktop. Maybe you should read up about his comments and whether or not he believes it is ready.
hey good poll. The results, pcs are generally cheaper, say a lot i think.
> hey good poll. The results, pcs are generally cheaper, say a lot i think.
yeah….. you get what you pay for…….. unless you buy MS software, then you get .010% of what you pay for. 😉
ouch! I guess you could read it that way as well. By the way i don’t think the G5s are overpriced. I intend to buy one in fact in the next year. OS X, G5, available audio software and fire wire audio interfaces have won me over.
Jaguar will run fine on a CRT iMac with 16MB VRAM(the minimum for Quartz Extreme), and Panther, from all reports, is noticeably smoother on even that outdated hardware. You could translate this to similar outdated Blue & White or Graphite PowerMac hardware if you want something headless. All of these are available at reasonable prices.
No, it’s not bleeding edge, but if your emphasis is just on being able to run OS X software, even the best blindingly fast Wintel machine isn’t going to do a better job.
And if your goal is software development, these machines won’t compile things as fast, but they’ll let you get a taste for the dev environment and go far beyond.
Just something to mull over for those complaining about prices.
I love it when the Mac users use that “you get what you pay for” argument. Macs are thought of as “built by professionals” or “of high quality” etc. etc. Are you forgetting the whole “dead pixels” issue with Apple LCD screens and Apple pretty much said “TS. just rub it alittle”? To be fair so did all LCD screen manufacturers. All I’m saying is Apple hardware is no different from other off the shelf PC hardware… just more prettier and more expensive.
How about my internal 56K modem in my iMac G4 flat panel? It could not hold a connection for more than 5 minutes, even after all the updates that promised to fix the issue. Negative.
Macs are more expensive *up front* than PCs, no one can deny that. Whether or not the quality of the hardware is worth the cost, that’s subjective and can vary by each person’s experience. And for those who question: “Why build your own computer when you can buy one made by experts?” my rebuttal is because we *are* experts 🙂 Seriously, the question is: Why not?
>Jaguar will run fine on a CRT iMac with 16MB VRAM(the minimum for Quartz Extreme),
Sorry, but this is not true. Quartz Extreme, yes requires 16 MB VRAM for 1024×768, but it also requires either a Radeon or a GeForce card, while the Classic iMacs CRT only had ATi Rage Pro cards in them.
My G4 Cube also came with ATi Rage Pro and I had to upgrade to a GeForce2MX in order to activate QExtreme. Too bad that the Classic CRT iMacs can’t upgrade though, as the graphics cards were soldiered in the motherboard AFAIK.
The cheapest machines, QE-enabled, that people can buy are older G4 Powermacs, or Radeon-based iBooks or eMacs.