New competitor for SBM - why not a mac

[mediv42]

There are lots of mac articles now, and inevitably they invite fanboys from both sides ranting about how shiny or overpriced macs are.

My question is why not benchmark the things and give us some evidence to consider? this is toms right? the place to go for unbiased performance comparisons and reviews? The only mac "data" we seem to see here is anecdotal "i used to have a pc but i like macs cause they're good!"

The system builder marathon mid range pc is often compared to an equal priced dell, ibuypower, and gateway - why not toss an imac in there? Run it through the same paces every other computer is put through.

It comes with a screen? give it an additional $250 for 20" $350 for 24" in the budget.
cant run the games? bootcamp it. I mean, we have to test the things on the apps the consumer wants to run.

Am I missing something? is there some reason this can't happen? it just seems to me like an insanely obvious benchmark to run given the heated pc vs mac debate on just about any mac article that ever shows up.

 

[jsrudd]

Well, it would be like comparing apples to oranges because buying parts is much cheaper at the high end than buying a prebuilt computer. Just look at the boutique i7 builds Tom reviewed last week. With macs you have a profit margin for the company to factor in to the price, while a custom built system has much lower margins and so more parts for the money.

 

[mediv42]

well sure the SBM machine would have the advantage because it doesnt require a built in profit margin. It's really only there to show how much pure performance $1250 can buy.

However the dells and ibuypowers would also be included in the comparison and they do require a profit margin so there, really, is the fair comparison. Maybe they're satisfied with far lower margins... but thats the whole point of the comparison: As consumers we want to buy whichever system gives us the most computer for the money.