Dear God Why

Once upon a time, I was a Photo student. The class rooms had macs. I had the lowest dell laptop at the time. It had the same copy of CS2 installed. It did everything the macs did. I admit I never got into hardcore editing, but at no point could I see any advantage to the mac.

While macs don't get the blue screen of death, I dealt with this way too much.

And to be clear, I'm not an apple hater. I love my nano and iPhone. I just don't see any advantage of mac over PCs.

Other great moments in using Macs: at the school, our IT person managed to completely remove Safari from the network. That was special.

obvious work arounds when something bad inevitable happens

There's that phrasing.

There are no fixes, but there sure are a lot of "work arounds"

It's a simple answer, to a simple question. The question was not which is better (those of you taking part in that need something better to do). The question was, why would anyone spend the money on a Mac?

I had a lot of problems. I had spyware problems, tons of glitches (don't kid yourself), and in the end a virus killed my last machine (at least that was the theory). I was using the antivirus stuff that was supposed to be the best at the time, and it wasn't Norton. The big problem I had was the same as at work. Nobody could ever get the stupid things to work right. NOBODY.

So I tried something different, and it's been working. I find it easier to work with, and it works every time I want it to, with no glitches, no BS, and no excuses. It was expensive, but it wasn't any more than the last windows machine I bought.

Salanis wrote:

My classic example was when I inserted a CD into a Mac and it decided it wasn't there. Not that the CD was blank, but that it did not register any disk at all. Look at a Mac. Tell me how you will open/eject the cd tray if it is empty. Drag to garbage? Nope. No icon. "Eject Disk" under top menu? Nope. Not an option unless it knows there's a disk in there. Insert a paper clip into the emergency eject hole? Nope. Apple decided that emergency eject hole is unnecessary.

Top row of keys, above the delete button and beside the volume, the little arrow pointing upward will eject your CD.

Zomby woof wrote:

obvious work arounds when something bad inevitable happens

There's that phrasing. There are no fixes, but there sure are a lot of "work arounds" It's a simple answer, to a simple question. The question was not which is better (those of you taking part in that need something better to do). The question was, why would anyone spend the money on a Mac? I had a lot of problems. I had spyware problems, glitches, and in the end a virus killed my last machine (at least that was the theory). I was using the antivirus stuff that was supposed to be the best at the time, and it wasn't Norton. The big problem I had was the same as at work. Nobody could ever get the stupid things to work right. NOBODY. So I tried something different, and it's been working. I find it easier to work with, and it works every time I want it to, with no glitches, and no excuses. It was expensive, but it wasn't any more than the last windows machine I bought.

I have never had a problem with a PC (software wise) which can't be fixed in ten minutes. Even if it breaks twice as often, they are easy to fix and I would rather have the $600 bucks in my pocket to spend on cars. Also Macs can't run any of the programs I need. Basically there are a bunch of things Macs can't do but I have never seen anything a PC can't do which a Mac can.

I have never had a problem with a PC (software wise) which can't be fixed in ten minutes. Even if it breaks twice as often, they are easy to fix

Yup.

Zomby woof wrote:

I have never had a problem with a PC (software wise) which can't be fixed in ten minutes. Even if it breaks twice as often, they are easy to fix

Yup.

Yup what? I have had three software problems in four years of having PC laptops. One was a problem with the CD drive (update the CD drive done) and two was a virus (restore back a week and fixed). Two software problems in 4 years ain't worth $600 extra bucks even if the Mac only crashes once.

Let me also parrot the "not a Mac hater" sentiment.

Zomby woof wrote: There are no fixes, but there sure are a lot of "work arounds"

My experience is Macs have comparable numbers of problems, also have no fixes, and have no work arounds when there is an issue. Macs aren't perfect. There will be issues. When they occur, there is less that can be done.

I can see why people would spend the money on a Mac. On average, everything is built with an excellent level of fit and finish and probably works a bit better. My impression though is that you get something that's about 10% better for twice the price.

I just got a new laptop. If I had the money to spend, I would have gotten a Macbook Pro. Even refurbished, that was way out of my budget and I was not going to buy a used laptop. So instead, I got an HP Elitebook (their business class line) for $900.

Lesley wrote: Top row of keys, above the delete button and beside the volume, the little arrow pointing upward will eject your CD.

That button did not work. There ended up being an obscure 3-button combination that needed to be hit, but it took about 20 minutes of hunting, after spending 20 minutes trying obvious solutions, to find that answer.

Zomby woof wrote: I had a lot of problems. I had spyware problems, tons of glitches (don't kid yourself), and in the end a virus killed my last machine (at least that was the theory). I was using the antivirus stuff that was supposed to be the best at the time, and it wasn't Norton.

All things brought on yourself, nothing to do with you owning a PC. You actually shouldn't require anti-virus/malware software at all. Nobody is ever going to try and hack your singular computer. There are plenty of free, non-malware loaded porn sites to surf Mike

Oh, and that is something I feel is a universal truth; the only issues that ever arise with PC's are brought on by their user, namely clicking where they shouldn't, or 99.9999999999999% of the time surfing unsafe porn.

Ahem. I bought my Macbook 2.4 Core2 duo off Kijiji for $600. 3 months old.

Lesley wrote: Ahem. I bought my Macbook 2.4 Core2 duo off Kijiji for $600. 3 months old.

I had some very specific wants (dedicated graphics card, core i5, 4gigs+ RAM, and a solid chassis) and didn't feel like spending much time hunting. In a couple of days, I did not find anything that was of better value on CL or Kajiji.

HiTempguy wrote: Oh, and that is something I feel is a universal truth; the only issues that ever arise with PC's are brought on by their user, namely clicking where they shouldn't, or 99.9999999999999% of the time surfing unsafe porn.

You're right. If you leave it in the box, and never use it, it should be fine.

Not doing anything different now than I was. Do you have any other excuses?

Zomby woof wrote:

HiTempguy wrote: Oh, and that is something I feel is a universal truth; the only issues that ever arise with PC's are brought on by their user, namely clicking where they shouldn't, or 99.9999999999999% of the time surfing unsafe porn.

You're right. If you leave it in the box, and never use it, it should be fine. Not doing anything different now than I was. Do you have any other excuses?

So you are saying you have no problems looking at porn w/ your Apple?

Pretty much.

Lesley wrote: Ahem. I bought my Macbook 2.4 Core2 duo off Kijiji for $600. 3 months old.

sounds like the 3 year old mac holding 50% of it's value theory was just killed ;-)

my dad works at the oldest computer shop in columbus GA... he was talking about how recently more and more people are bringing in their mac to see if they'll repair mac machines.

I still find the marketing differences amazing... mac is all about saying how your kewl with an apple product and a geek with anything else... (the worst is that iphone "if you don't have an iphone, you don't have an iphone" commercial...

then you get to everyone else... for tablets they all talk about how much more you can do and how it is a great product for productivity... same kind of thing goes for phones

and for computes it's "we've come a long way with windows7.... now you don't need to consider moving over to the competition"

i'll stick with the PC world... my $400 2.3ghz dual core laptop is 1 year old and shows no sign of giving up the ghost (and it's beaten on daily)...

my $350 laptop I had before that (and is now owned by my bro-in-law) is 5 years old... while long in the tooth still works great for what 99% of interwebz users need and would easily pull %25 of it's original value on CL the only thing it needed was ridding it of vista and installing xp... as for virus issues... once I told my bro-in-law i wouldn't repair it again it magically stopped having issues

if someone gave me a mac i'd take it (macbook pro is freakin sexy and the macbook air is just awesome) but I can't justify the cost difference... then again I don't mind driving older "nickle and dimeing" cars either...

oh and talking about marketing genius...

just saw a commercial on TV for "students" if you buy a PC get a xbox360 free... checked it out and the pc minimum price is $700 or so... but still a great way to sway kids to buy a PC I thought lol...

I work on my mac everyday about 12 hours a day and it cost me close to $4500.00. It was expensive, but I like it so I could really care less and I doubt I would be as comfortable working on a 600.00 laptop. For reference I also own a falcon northwest desktop that I paid a lot more for. I use My virtual box on my mac when I need windows so really the desktop has not been touched since I bought the mac. So to answer your question as to why someone would pay more for a mac. This is my cheap computer and it does what I need it to do. I don't do tech crap and don't build computers. If I turn them on and they work great. If not I make a call and someone come and figures it out. Computers are like tools some people are more comfortable with mac or snap-on and some people like Husky. It's just a matter of choice.

To go to the original question, I can understand it. If you want to walk into any mall or major electronics store, grab something off the shelf, take it home, not do anything to it, and have something that you know will work as well as anything out there, you can't really go wrong with a Mac. You will spend a price premium. For some people that's worth it. If you want to invest a bit of time and effort (and not too much), you can generally find something just as good or better in a PC. But, aside from price, you won't go wrong with the Mac.

Rather than a car analogy, I have a better handgun analogy: Macs are like Glocks. If you want something that is simple, competent, and reliable out of the box, you can't go wrong with a Glock.

Majority of non-virus/malware problems with PCs seem to be 3rd party software/driver incompatibility issues. Apple's solution seems to be just vastly limiting your choices of what is supported. I do not find that a good solution.

Windows has gotten way better. I no longer consider it a festering cesspool, but that really has been a few years ago now. XP's all right. Vista was proof that Microsoft is still Microsoft. Haven't really used 7 yet.

OS X has most of the Unix/Linux command line tools I like. That's right, unlike the old Mac OS, there is an "under the hood" in OS X, and I find it more accessible/usable than Windows.

The Apple hardware lock-in became untenable for me after a bad should-have-been-quick-warranty-work but turned into ship-the-computer-back-five-times-during-final-term-of-computer-science-degree.

You don't need to go to the seedy portions of the web to get a virus while using Windows. Depends on whose site has a drive-by type hack installed on the server this week.

As Apple's market share increases, we will see viruses for it, too. There used to be none. Then there were essentially, effectively, don't-worry-about-it few. I don't think that's a permanent condition.

There is no perfect answer. I strongly dislike both of the major players. I run Linux mostly at home, and some Windows (Note that I'm not hollering that everybody should go install Linux, though some of you would probably do well). I wouldn't dream of setting my parents up with anything other than OS X at this point.

Pick your poison

xd wrote: I work on my mac everyday about 12 hours a day and it cost me close to $4500.00. ... For reference I also own a falcon northwest desktop that I paid a lot more for. I use My virtual box on my mac when I need windows so really the desktop has not been touched since I bought the mac. ... Computers are like tools some people are more comfortable with mac or snap-on and some people like Husky. It's just a matter of choice.

And purpose. Falcon NW is hardcore gaming hardware. That's like the difference between an M5 (nice Mac) and a Z06 (Falcon). Or maybe a nice Lexus and an Ariel Atom.

Two words: Old People.

My wife used to use my PC. I was forever having to fix it, or clean it, or do something with it. She got completely fed up and went out and bought a Mac because it would make everything better.

Well in the 3 years she's had that Mac I have not had to fix or clean my PC, it just works....hmmmmmm, so in a way she was right.

Now if only the Mac was that problem free. She still has problems, things still dont always work right, the difference is I dont have to fix them now :)

The middle answer is to run a PC based platform with a good Linux OS and get the best of both worlds. :)

I have never had a windows PC that lasted more than 24 months (ok, I do have one, but it's in the shop every 24 months). I've never owned a Mac that lasted less than 6 years ('cept this one, it's still new). I like Mac because they work, when I want them to and the way they are supposed to. I don't have find a workaround for everything. I don't have to get used to a new operating system every year because apple keeps them similar enough. I also don't have to search for 10 minutes trying to figure out how to print a document because in the latest iteration of Office they moved everything.
I'm not a computer guy like zomby, and i don't want to have to be one to work on my computer. The IT guy at any workplace I've been in can't seem to get a computer to work smoothly. It seems there's always the "well, there's not a fix for that, it's just how it works I guess" and the like.
Windows-based PC's are like front-drive GM cars. I look at one and think, why would you drive that on purpose, don't you know there are much better things out there for the same money. When I picked up this i-mac I knew that, for the next 6 years the only thing I'll have to do is turn it on and replace the batteries in this awesome track-pad.

I'm the defacto IT guy here and at times have had to maintain a few MACs and a lot of PCs. When someone asks me which they should buy, I use this analagy: If you buy a car and all you know is where the gas goes in - you want a MAC. If you are the kind of person that changes their own oil or is okay changing an alternator when it dies - save your money and buy PC.

I agree that Apple's build quality is superior, but frankly I use a computer as a tool, if the edges get a little frayed, I'm not that concerned.

I agree that the user is FAR, FAR more relevant to a computer's lifespan than the unit itself. I've used the same model laptop for several years with no issues that coworkers have killed in 12 months. I can't really say for sure what does it, but I know it happens.

I'll also be the first to say that Windows can be a glitchy mess, especially the older versions when forced to work with third party software. Our LED-based billboards run on it and I have nightmares with their upkeep sometimes.

However, I have a couple friends that have each replaced MacBooks less than 2 years old because of repeated, terminal system crashes that the Apple store in Atlanta couldn't fix. One of them still has a running, 11 year old PC laptop too.

It's like religion or bike chain lube - pick your flavor and defend it to death. Their pretty equivalent in the end.

Having said that, there's no way in hell I'd pay the AppleTax upcharge to own a Mac. Not worth it for me.