The final wordFeb 15 '05 (Updated Feb 17 '05) Write an essay on this topic.
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The Bottom Line Mac.
Please read this review with an open mind. Make sure you have enough time to read the whole thing, its well worth reading, but rather long. If you don't have time to read the lot then come back and read it when you have the time. Well its that or the option of wasting more time (and money) in the future, if you make the wrong decision as result of being badly informed. Also, this is a serious review, there is no petty arguments, nothing here is subjective, I make no assumptions and I'm pretty knowledgeable about the subject, so read on: This is a largely a long-winded response to the other essays I've read here, but after reading it, and the links I provide at the end, there should really be no doubt in your mind. Half the stuff I read written in these PC vs Mac arguments is true, and half is false. Essentially it is a non-argument. If you wish to waste your valuable time & money, and fund conciense-lacking companies, go ahead and buy into microsoft corp. No I'm not a Mac zealot, because for me it isn't an issue. My views aren't extreme, although they might seem this way to someone who is extremely ill-informed. So, onto the bulk of my argument, I take on the various 'myth's or misinformations about the subject, and offer you reality in return: "PCs are cheaper". If you think about it, but more importantly if you do your homework you can see that this is simply untrue. While there are many PCs available for low prices, this only reflects the INITIAL cost, rather than total cost of ownership. Heres how I break down the PC and Mac price ranges: LOWEST END PC: "the pile of ****" We are all familiar with this machine it is the sort you see offered up as a 'deal', whereas in fact it is merely a way of PC manufacturers offloading unwanted parts and making a buck or two. (making a whole lot more in repair costs I do not doubt). They generally come in at the $299-$399 range, and give you the benefit of all the sub-standard PC components noone else would poke with a 15 foot barge pole. They generally come equipped with XP 'home edition' (home edition being microsoft slang for the ugly sibling). Home edition is like XP professional, only it's not as good. Why would anyone want to buy a computer which has a second rate operating system, even though the computer they are buying is compatible with the better version? (notice that all macs ship with the same operating system). The answer, is that the hardware is not capable of running XP professional with any satisfactory level of performance, and so it is shipped with this version. If you were to realise this having bought a pc with home edition you would have to face further declining performance if you ugrade. Your other options include going back to windows 2000 (which, according to a leaked internal microsoft memo, comes complete with 63'000 bugs) or a previous windows version, which is unlikely to be compatible with what you currently use (and who in their right mind would want to install any version of windows on to a disk and waste hours dealing with all the setup problems this poses). Conversely, the many previous versions of Mac OS are all arguably as well designed as the current version, and if you were to buy say a second hand Mac, you would have no problem running Mac OS 9, which, in terms of system overheads is way less RAM and graphics intensive. Many of the things we do on up to date computers today can be performed just as well (or more often than not better, at least when compared with windows) on a second hand Mac at the fraction of the cost. For example, I'm writing this article on a rev C iMac (that means its about 4 years old) on a dial-up modem. PCs processors and specs are constantly pushed, we are constantly told that we need more and better tech even though people who buy low cost computers are probably doing so because they realise they do not need all this technology. In fact the biggest reason that windows is so buggy is that Microsoft do not care. After all, why would they? If your computer keeps breaking down, then you keep buying new ones right? $$$$$$$$$$$$ Unfortunately, people who don't know the truth about computers have no way of knowing this. LOWEST END MAC: "The second hand Mac" You can do a surprising amount on a second hand Mac. The fact is, when Apple build a computer, they usually do a better job of it than any other computer manufacturer. Go on to eBay and look at how much second hand Macs retail for an compare it to their PC counterparts. You will find that the concept of second hand PCs is almost non-existent, and that second hand Macs cost a lot more than the PC rivals. In short, they hold their value a lot better. This is because it universally recognised that old Macs work, and they work well. Why is it worthwhile to buy a second hand Mac? Firstly, it is a good tradition, to pass a once loved machine on to someone who will put it to good use. No extra resources have to be used to build this Mac, no energy has been spent building a whole new computer, so you are helping to protect the planet. Think now about what that Mac was originally used for, likely used by a creative design professional at some point who has needed an upgrade, but this in no way means it is no good. For example take photoshop, an all time great in the Mac software world and one of the few absolute industry standards. Now the latest version of photoshop, on the latest operating system may run pretty slow on a 3 year old Mac. However, 3 years ago, someone did great things with that Mac using an older version of photoshop and an older OS. If you don't need the latest features of photoshop you can run an old version pretty well on an old Mac. Then take word processing and web browsing (the most common activity of computers).. These will work almost as well on an old Mac for a fraction of the cost. In another way, when I get a new Mac I tend to pass on my old machine to someone else for free, who is in need of a computer. With a Mac this is like a gift - with a PC its like dumping your problem on someone else. PC LOW END: "the Mhz myth machine" vs LOW END MAC: "the Mac Mini & eMac range" Low end PCs generally have better looking specs than similarly priced Macs. For example, here in the UK I could spend ~£500 on a dell PC, with a 2.8 Ghz pentium 4 processor, 80gb hard disk, 256 MB of RAM etc etc. The similarly priced Mac is the eMac at £549. The eMac has only 1.25 Ghz G4, and 40Gb HD, which looks crappy compared to the dell... and.. it costs more!! So whats up? Apple is trying to bump us off? Look more closely and you see that the eMac comes equipped with the following software: -iLife 05 (iTunes, iMovie, iPhoto, Garageband and idvd) -Appleworks (stripped down Office suite, good enough for most people who want to word process, thus saving them a lot of money from buying MS Office. Plus this is completely compatible with MS Word) -Mac disk-aid software. -Plus a few games and cool apps. Then I looked at the Dell closly and noticed that all software (with exception of the OS) was basically something you had to pay for. You even had to pay extra if you wanted XP professional rather than home edition. The iLife '05 suite is widely acknowledged as an awe-inspiring suite of software, both in it's ease of use, and it's potential to produce brilliant work. I regularly hear about students producing films on imovie that are getting shown in big film festivals - simply due to being brilliant films... and this is the software that comes FREE on a £549 Mac.. in fact apple subsidises for students. My girlfriend just ordered this exact same computerwith the student discount for £479. Next year she plans to make movies on it using a borrowed DV camera. The £500 dell won't support DV input though, because it is a 'consumer' machine, and doesn't have the required input interface of firewire. Clearly Apple has a different vision of what consumers should be able to do on their computers and provides for this very generously. Back to this PC, which boasted software titles such as 'Dell Mediacenter Luxury Edition' (you have to pay extra for this). But back to the hardware. An 80GB harddisk is likely redundant on this computer.. what are the buyers of the £500 dell PC going to fill 80GB with? mp3s? that would be about 20'000 mp3s.. impressive collection.. I suspect that large areas of their hard disk would quickly be 'appropriated' by virus, malware and other crap anyway. The point is, Apple have decided that 40GB is likely to be enough for this buyer, they do not try and fool you with meaningless numbers (lies, damn lies, statistics..).. But it would be easy enough to pick up or upgrade this hard disk if needed. Same with the processor.. it is difficult to tell which is faster, but all I need to know is that the 1.25Ghz is good enough for me any day, unless I'm a professional... even professionals were using chips this fast as little as a year ago. So, to make it even, I customised the Dell PC, based on the built to order features on the dell website. I added all those crappy software titles (even though they are guarenteed nowhere near the league of iLife standards). I added the optional extra of XP professional, and changed the 'value' 17" CRT, for a 17" ultrascan CRT (eMac houses an apple brand 17" unltrascan CRT screen). Once I'd got the PC equipped with something that doesnt come close to the eMacs free software, but was the best available, and added the other minor upgrades/mods (I even downgraded the 80Gb HD to 40Gb just to make this a fair test): The price had gone over £750. And for that price, I'm getting a computer that has integrated graphics, which means graphics tasks are taken by the main processor, slowing everything down (eMac has a dedicated graphics card - which processes graphics data seperately from the main processor), a vastly inferior OS (eMac comes with Mac OS X panther, which even PC users agree is hands down the finest OS available), and I do not need to point out the finer points of the eMac's advantages in ease of use, security, lack of viruses&malware, and design aesthetics. The Mac Mini is a headless mac coming in at £339 (US $499), and has almost exactly the same tech specs as the eMac. It measures 6" by 6" square, and is about 1.5" high.. amazing... it doesnt come with a monitor or keyboard and mouse, but that is because it is aimed at a PC user who already has those components and wishes to switch to Mac. They can save £210 from the eMac by simply reusing their old PC monitor and keyboard with the mini (any PC VGA/DVI monitor, and any PC usb key/mouse will work). For that £750 (price of the dell after adding in features) I could almost buy a new iMac G5, which is a vastly more capable machine in terms of both performance, and functionality, with a beatiful 17" viewable widescreen LCD built in: http://www.apple.com/uk/imac/ http://ptech.wsj.com/archive/ptech-20040923.html Indeed, I myself have played around a bit on this machine, and knowing a fair bit about Macs, I can assure you that this is a truly beautiful machine to use that will gve you YEARs of good service if properly maintained (and Mac maintenance is a completely different concept to PC maintenence but more on that later). This machine is capable of handling ANY task (including playing demanding games), because it has the power in it's hardware and support in software. The high end MAC vs PC: this is generally a matter of opinion, but again, if you buy a built to order machine with similar ratings as a high end Power Mac g5 system, then add in those things the PC manufacturor has left out, you always end up paying more. And Power Mac G5s are stupidly fast. If you ask the creative professionals who need the features this machine was built for, the majority favour and recommend the Power Mac, whether for 3D graphics, video, photoshop, dtp or sound/music production. forget about benchmarks, use one of these machines for 3D or anything else they actually do in the real world, and notice the unbelievable speed. I would draw your attention to the supercomputer built out of a cluster of standard Mac G5s by an American university. Despite costing only $5million to build, this posted 3rd on the all time fastest supercomputer ranking with something like 12 Tflops. This is against competition of custom made supercomputers which cost 100s of millions of dollars to build. The other plus is that people are more creative and productive when using a Mac, simply due to the way the OS works (note I'm not speculating here, there have been several major independant studies into people using computers, and the relative productivity of those people on different platforms). The DIY PC: This is the last defence of the PC zealot. "I can easily build an uber-windows-computer for a fraction of the cost, whereas I have buy a prefabricated Mac at escalated prices"... this is a myth.. It is possible to build your own Macs as well, its just that few people have the know-how, and most people would rather fork out and let Apple do it for them. here is a link to an example: http://www.macopz.com/buildamac/ as usual, people make false claims, like that you can't build your own mac (but just like pretty much any other anti Mac claim made by these PC-heads) which are obviously just because they are misinformed.. or plain uninformed. The verdict is that PCs and Macs are fairly evenly priced, once you consider that to get the features of an 'expensive' Mac you need to heavily customise a 'cheap' PC. But in terms of value for money, and total cost ownership the PC is a deceptively expensive machine. Once you consider that PCs require upgrading more often due to malfunction, and have higher maintenance costs (they even almost always have higher power demands, and electricity isn't free). If I want a super cheap computer I will by a second hand Mac, this is less convenient than buying a new Mac, but its a whole lot more convenient (and problematic) than buying a piece of junk from Dell or Gateway and going against every bit of wisdom that says I shouldn't. If it has to be a new computer, it is interesting to notice that Apple are now providing more and more competitive prices, and the Mac mini and eMac range are the best value computers I've ever seen. I know I will be far more productive on a Mac anyway, and this value transcends any 'spec' a PC can possess/ For the doubters about my price comparisons, I assure you they are both realistic and well researched, take a look at this link (useful, although don't take it as the last word because some of it's analysis, particularly the processor analysis are plain wrong - the author admits this possibility): http://www.systemshootouts.org/ (you will notice that the PCs in these shootouts have a huge number of added options in order to meet the built-in functions of the Mac, and this is what levels the price/spec level field. Generally the PCs have marginally faster processors (ignore the authors processor analysis it is very flawed), but poorer graphics cards, and significantly worse software features) quote from the guy who wrote the above shootouts: "The information above is as accurate as I could make it based on a reasonable time studying the respective companies' Web sites. There is no guarantee that these configurations, prices, and features are the best that one could come up with; assorted bundles, free internet access, free extra memory, and so on can most likely be found for any of the above systems. The point of this chart is to demonstrate that Apple's lineup holds its own against any brand-name computer, even in areas in which it has traditionally had resistance. In short, do not base your purchasing decisions solely on this chart or information. Neither I, nor The Mac Observer will be held responsible or liable for any purchase decisions you make based on this presentation." Another Mac vs PC myth is that XP is as good as Mac OS X. here are some articles (note none of them from Mac-based sites=non biased) that give you an accurate indicator of the various problems with XP: http://www.internetweek.com/pages/xp4 http://reviews-zdnet.com.com/AnchorDesk/4630-7297_16-4208105.html?tag=print http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2001/1001/118_print.html http://aroundcny.com/technofile/texts/tec041600.html http://www.thefab.net/topics/computing_general/cg02_windows_XP.htm http://www.fortune.com/fortune/alsop/0,15704,367700,00.html The next myth is that Macs are basically the same as PCs, or that you can do the same things on either. There are 2 FUNDAMENTAL differences between the two: 1) When we buy a Macintosh, you and I, or any other consumer are Macintosh customers. Macintoshes are a complete product designed and purpose-built for a range of different consumers. When we buy a pre-built windows based PC we are effectively NOT microsoft customers. The real customers of Microsoft are Dell, HP, gateway etc. Windows is designed for PC manufacturers, who buy windows to put in their PCs. We are basically paying PC companies to put prefabricated components into a box for us, with XP preinstalled by their technicians. So why do PC companies choose to preinstall Microsoft Windows in their PCs? There are other alternatives, including many varieties of unix based systems like linux. We can come to conclude that PC companies choose windows because it is the worst operating system. Instead of genuinely improving the system, Microsoft have, over the course of their existence, offered long term system-patch and upgrade promises which generally arrive late, in the form of a 'new' operating systems. In this way, windows 95 became 98, which became Me/2000, and finally upto XP. With every update, Microsoft fix bugs, and introduce new features, but to keep us wanting more; they introduce new bugs and their features are always a generation behind that of Mac OS. Furthermore, every installment of Windows is progressively high on overheads: more and more bloated, performance draining mess. This means that when PCs break (and they inevitably do, thanks to the quailty craftmanship of dell et al, and viruses, and malware included), you need to buy a faster new-gen computer. Either that or you opt for a cheap option (like I outlined earlier), which is usually the older compenents but running the newer and more processor and RAM intensive system software. So Dell et al keep building new computers an keep making more money: its the perfect way to make money from computers. With Macs, the hardware comes first. You are essentially buying a PC system from Apple. However, since Apple design the software, and sell the system bundled, they are answerable to hardware AND software issues. The product is both combined, so when the hardware breaks, you go to Apple, when the system has a bug you go to Apple. This is as opposed to PC companies which can blame whoever they like for product glitches. Since you buy direct from Apple, Apple have to really SELL the Mac and they do so buy designing an operating system that a consumer would like to USE. Microsoft design an operating system that PC manufacturers would like to SELL. Money is the issue, and Microsoft's marketing works by unfair monopolies that often force people (consumers, corporations, public institutions and software companies alike) into standardising with MS. When Microsoft make a bad product, they don't ask: how can we improve this? they ask: how can we sell this? The PC industry is a direct result of that situation. 2. You do things on the Mac differently, and not just in a petty way - the way the OS is built and presented affects what you do and how you do it in quite subtle ways, the OS literally makes you 'think different' as you work, in fact windows is almost a mockery of the Mac OS. links: http://www.christiansciencemonitor.com/2003/0616/p01s03-usec.htm http://web.archive.org/web/20030501090826/http://www.insanely-great.com/editorial/081700.html Next myth: PCs have more hardware and software available so they must be more convenient, more industry standard: If your idea of convenience is for a technician to put together the same sort of compenents a Mac uses, then bundle it with a far inferior OS then fair enough. However for me, as for many others, convenience means buying one product from Apple, which has been designed from the bottom up for a specific purpose, using their technical knowledge and skill, and gaining from this the benefits of the digital age. Macs are built from the same kind of compenents as any PC. True, they have been made to look more beautiful with designed boxes as opposed to run-of-the-mill plastic case, but essentially, the same sort of hard disks, ram chips graphics cards and media readers are going into Macs as they are going into PC. The big difference is seamless integration: Macs have one standard for their products therefore they are built so that their compenents all integrate, and these compenents are chosen to integrate with the system. this leads to the plug-and-play nature of Macs, you plug in something and it works, you load software and it works.. the huge variety of hardware and software in the PC world only leads to poor coherence/integration between compenents, there is no one standard any of these compenents have to conform to, and so half the time they just refuse to co-operate with one another. Convenient? HERE is an excellent article on why macs are more convenient, offer easier maintenence and reward you with greater productivity: http://web.archive.org/web/20000919184035/http:/www.themacmind.com/~ymac/norriswong.html and: http://archive.bibalex.org/web/19991023073951/http://stlcc.cc.mo.us/fv/users/nadams/text/macvspc.html Finally, I'd like to direct you to some non-biased wider reading on the subject, all of which are well worth reading: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/2154172.stm http://www.securityfocus.com/printable/columnists/215 http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/16455.html http://macvspc.info/ http://www.macspeedzone.com/html/hubs/partisan/creative.html (You really must look at some of the links on here) http://www.macdonkey.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1723 http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,48964,00.htm When you actually get to know the Mac, you realise its real strengths are the superior operating system, much high level of security, and industry standard graphics platform which is still ahead of windows. Long time Mac users like myself take these things for granted, and the more obbvious strengths of the Mac platform to outsiders, like its beauty and elegance in design both inside and out (read iMac G5), are just nice extras. Windows is a joke. Even Microsoft know this. I don't need a "think different" slogan to tell me otherwise. The Mac is an elegant and rewarding creative tool. Linux and other Unix based systems are also very interesting, but that is a different chapter, heck its a different book. Some links for further interest: http://www.livingwithoutmicrosoft.org/ http://archive.bibalex.org/web/20011105095802/http://modbee.com/24hour/technology/story/160360p-1520949c.html http://grc.com/dos/xpconference.htm http://www.epic.org/privacy/consumer/microsoft/ftcletter10.23.01.html http://www.microsoft-watch.com/article2/0,4248,1332766,00.asp  |
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