People Happier Than Ever With New Computers

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[citation][nom]Parsian[/nom]Windows Vista's problems existed, but much of it was over hyped and over exaggerated... All it takes is bunch of people at intelligence level of a Mac user to hear a rumor and then he/she will react religiously without further inquiry to believe the rumor.[/citation]

Way to go. Insulting a HUGE set of people from all walks of life takes balls sitting behind your computer screen. Intelligence level of a mac user? What a douche bag. I have a co-worker that uses a Mac and scored a 1600 on his SATs. F'ing 1600 but he isn't smart enough to use a PC. There are more rampant insults on this sight flung at Apple users than on the converse Apple sites. Take this from a guy that uses only Linux and OSX. I do not like Microsoft products.
 
Wow so much Apple hate here yet again. Its obvious that Apple has much better customer support from both the hardware and software perspective than any of the other PC vendors. A lot of it is the fact that there are stores now pretty much everywhere staffed with people to help sell you on the product and to keep you a loyal customer. Dell, HP, Acer/Gateway, and Sony do not do this. For them you're looking at a nice 1 hour phone call from a tech in Bengalore reading off a checklist.
 
I can't understand why so many people on Tom's Hardware are so vehemently anti-Apple. I think it's mainly due to the price. Do you pay a premium for Apple hardware? I think the answer is definitely yes. Is it justified? Depends on what is important to you.

I don't think most users here really have enough experience using Macs to understand the nuances that make Macs great for certain people. I think that if you really love using Windows, that's great! Go ahead and use Windows. There are lots of things that make Windows great. It runs on lots of different hardware. Lots of games. Tons of software. You can build your own Windows machine.

But there are lots of things that make using a Mac great too. The ease of using FireWire Target disk mode to setup a new Mac, having EFI so I can boot over the network from another Mac’s DVD-drive, plain xml files for settings instead of the dreaded registry, etc. OS X give you as great out-of-box experience, e.g. native PDF support, UNIX shell, quick look, powerful screen capture, workspace manager (spaces), easy to use backup utility with file versioning (Time Machine), a great media suite in iLife, no licensing hassles with reinstalling OS (I hate Microsoft’s activation process).

Are Macs a great fit for everyone? Definitely not. I use a custom built Windows 7 PC for my HTPC and a custom built PC for my gaming PC. But I have a 13” MacBook Pro for my laptop. I use a Linux box for my file server. Different computers for different needs.

While I don’t like everything about Apple’s hardware, I think they make some of best hardware out there. Take the Mac Mini for instance. Most people see an underpowered, unexpandable box. I tried to see if I could spec out and build a similar Windows 7 mini-ITX box with same CPU power that idles at 10W and extremely small form factor and I couldn’t. And there are very few PC laptops with the same solid body construction and 10 hour rated battery life that my 13” Unibody MacBook Pro has.

There are pros and cons to each side but simply saying “Apple SUCKS” is not a cogent argument.
 
[citation][nom]Skypilot53[/nom]Have you guys actually checked the prices of various Mac computers? They are more expensive but not significantly higher. There are also intangibles that are work to justify the extra dollars. For example: My MacBook Pro is milled out of a single block of aluminum. It is extremely rigid and rugged. The screen is LED backlit. The keyboard is backlit in low light situations. These are elements not commonly found on budget laptops....especially all metal construction. My iMac (24 inch) has not given me a single problem in 2 years. The OS is elegant and stable. Some of my software is Mac specific and not available for Window based machines. Logic Pro os one of the most powerful software programs I have ever used. Mac only! Give this a rest. Apple is a very capable firm....that produces software and hardware to work together nearly flawlessly. They deserve their high rating...at least in my book.[/citation]
My 800 dollar computer has a LED backlit glossy screen, i5, 4gb of ram, and a 360M how much did you pay 2500?
 
[citation][nom]deadmeow[/nom]Don't rag on apple. The Apple II is still my favorite computer!!![/citation]

I love my apple II and it is running perfectly. I cannot find a game I want to play, maybe I will load up loadrunner on it tonight.

I liked Vista compared to Xp and thought it was much more superior. I also liked Me compared to 98. I think the majority of dissatisfied users of Vista are due to the way it gave "popup" warnings and the average Joe could not deal with them.
 
I'm not surprised. Windows 7 is by far one of the best versions of windows ever made, possibly only second to 2K. With the release of IE9 microsoft has blown me away. Everything just works as its supposed to, the UI is simple and sleek, drivers are no longer a problem, security has improved drastically, and the new features are pretty neat too. Its like they actually care about their customers again!

Also to apple users.
I don't believe OSX is a bad OS, however the constant bs steve jobs pulls on a daily basis, the annoying userbase that will praise their shiny new macs to the end of the earth but know nothing about computers, the locked down hardware and software, and simply the price leads me to believe the only people who buy macs are either fools, hipsters, or old people. OSX does what its supposed to do and I like it for that but I want to be able to run my OS on different hardware and have the ability to customize it. TL;DR OSX is good for people who need a simple, reliable, and streamlined, OS and nothing more.
 
[citation][nom]morphoyle[/nom]If Apple users are so happy with their OS, why do the 6 powerbook users I know spend pretty much ALL of their time using Win7 through bootcamp? Apple makes pretty products and that is a major reason many people buy them. I don't have a problem with it, but can we at least be honest? Apple stuff doesn't do anything you can't do with a less expensive product. The less expensive product is probably less shiney. Speaking from experience, when you buy Apple, you are paying for the design, not the capability.[/citation]

I think plenty of PC users do the same thing. Why would anyone spend an extra $150 for a Lian Li case when a generic case would do the same thing? Some people like the look. Lots of people pay for design and simplicity. It doesn't make them ignorant or a moron.

I would never call someone an idiot for buying a Drobo. It's a compact, nice looking storage product with an easy to use interface, that's easy to expand. Sure, they could have custom built an unRAID server for much cheaper and end up with a storage system that's faster and more expandable yet doesn't have as pretty an interface and requires some custom tweaking. But not everyone wants to do it the harder way.
 
After spending a ton of money on the mac image, a person has a vested interest in feeling satisfied. In other words, it's important to make sure they maintain that satisfied feeling no matter what, lest they feel like they made a big mistake.
 
[citation][nom]crom[/nom]Wow so much Apple hate here yet again. Its obvious that Apple has much better customer support from both the hardware and software perspective than any of the other PC vendors. A lot of it is the fact that there are stores now pretty much everywhere staffed with people to help sell you on the product and to keep you a loyal customer. Dell, HP, Acer/Gateway, and Sony do not do this. For them you're looking at a nice 1 hour phone call from a tech in Bengalore
reading off a checklist.[/citation]

Yea Apple has wonderful support until you email Steve jobs then you get bashed with some stupid comment from him. Or how about a while back Apple telling people that their warranties were void if the tech detected that you smoked in front of your Shiny Apple product. I can not be 100% on that one never heard anything about it after the one post here from Toms.
Sp yea great support next..lol

Myself I would love to have a iPod touch but refuse to buy anything Apple until Steve jobs either gets off of his high horse or steps down from Apple. That is just my hang up I can not personally stand the guy & as such makes me not want their products in general. He has to be the worst PR guy I have ever seen & the most unprofessional when it comes to dealing with customers. Because he is in such a high position at Apple he needs to refrain from acting out like a little kid when it comes to dealing with customers. Sure maybe people should not be emailing with their problems but when he gets those emails maybe he should toss them to the help department instead of his harsh come backs he is so known to do.
oh " your holding it wrong" nice one.

Just my 2 cents if you want to buy into that that is up to you but for most like me it is not worth it.
 
[citation][nom]rocky1234[/nom]Yea Apple has wonderful support until you email Steve jobs then you get bashed with some stupid comment from him. Or how about a while back Apple telling people that their warranties were void if the tech detected that you smoked in front of your Shiny Apple product. I can not be 100% on that one never heard anything about it after the one post here from Toms.Sp yea great support next..lol Myself I would love to have a iPod touch but refuse to buy anything Apple until Steve jobs either gets off of his high horse or steps down from Apple. That is just my hang up I can not personally stand the guy & as such makes me not want their products in general. He has to be the worst PR guy I have ever seen & the most unprofessional when it comes to dealing with customers. Because he is in such a high position at Apple he needs to refrain from acting out like a little kid when it comes to dealing with customers. Sure maybe people should not be emailing with their problems but when he gets those emails maybe he should toss them to the help department instead of his harsh come backs he is so known to do.oh " your holding it wrong" nice one.Just my 2 cents if you want to buy into that that is up to you but for most like me it is not worth it.[/citation]

I agree with you that Steve Jobs can be a total douchebag. There's no question. But so can Ballmer, Schmidt, Ellison, Lesjak, Dell, etc. Beyond any sort of personal gripes about those guys, Apple offers a far superior post product support package than any of the other major vendors. They also turn problems around very quickly, and if you're past your support period with them they still offer, for the most part, reasonable prices for tech support to the point of diagnosing the problem and if you're technically minded, you can fix it yourself. I've done this many times with my company's towers or laptops.

For me that alone qualifies Apple as a good product to run in a corporate environment. I don't have to contact a hardware vendor over the phone, who then tells me to contact the software vendor. In less than an hour's notice I can bring the product in and get it diagnosed and typically within 24-48 hours have it fixed.
 
Some people seem to think that anyone who uses an Apple product is a clueless loser who only buys the product for the image. Yet, I find that many people that don't buy Apple products are exactly the same way. They don't use a "lame Apple computer" because they're concerned about their geek cred.

I was at a data storage conference recently and did a quick survey of people sitting around while waiting around for the presentation to start. I'd say a good 40-50% of the people in the audience were using a MacBook or MacBook Pro. These are hardcore geeks, IT power users, UNIX sysadmins, not your average "Apple groupie".

Then when the presentation started I realized the presenter was also using a MacBook Pro. Not just for PowerPoint, but for actually demoing his visualization infrastructure.
 
Who gives a sh*t if someone uses a Mac or PC? If someone wants to shop because of the name or the logo, then by all means let them spend their money, that means they have it. It's their taste and their wallet not yours.
 
It's not that computers are better, it's that the things people can do with them has matured .. tv and movie streaming, live sports, a la carte music, great shopping experiences ... these things were still buggy when Vista came out and people were still unfamiliar with them. If Vista came out when Windows 7 did it would have gotten similar scores absent the bad media.

Also, the price of very good performing computers has dropped dramatically. With 1 tb hard drives at around 50 bux .... a few years ago we were pay more for 80 mb ... and few people need more than 80 bux worth of memory (4 GB) ... and 50 bux for 2.5 GHz dual core chips?

Even 30 GB ssds are down to 60 bux w/rebates ...
 
Its disappointing for someone who knows about computers (ie. Tom's Hardware Readers, and other computer enthusiasts who aren't paid off by Apple to hype their products) to see someone that doesn't know about computers throw their money away. Then when you try to help these people and cry out, your wasting your money! A Mac user says no, "I'm smarter and more superior." Sorry Mac users, you can buy a Mac, but it won't make you cooler or show that you have money. A true enthusiast knows by the action of even supporting a Mac product in a forum; shows how computer illiterate and insecure about your image, you truly are.
 
I'm pretty happy with my old Dell Inspiron 6000, although a 1.3GHz Celeron M (130nm) with GMA 915 does feel a bit slow compared to modern i5 or even C2D with low-end ATI graphics...
 
count me in as one of the happy clowns, mainly because hardware are getting better for lesser money. but prices of Windows 7 and Office 2010 are still unreasonably too high considering the market share they command. guess they still enjoy monopolistic pricing.
 
I can't understand why so many people on Tom's Hardware are so vehemently anti-Apple. I think it's mainly due to the price.
Click to expand...

It's because WE want to do with the hardware and software what WE want to do. We don't want Steve Jobs dictating what we are allowed to do and telling us what we can't do, all the while charging double or triple for it.

Read what I said several posts up above. I have an Apple Mac Mini- 2GHz dual core processor, 2GB ram, 320GB hard drive. It cost me THE SAME amount of money as my 3.8GHz quad core machine with 4GB of ram and 750GB hard drive. Same amount of money for about 1/3 the performance. And after all that NEITHER of my PC monitors would plug into it.
 
[citation][nom]Parsian[/nom]Windows Vista's problems existed, but much of it was over hyped and over exaggerated... All it takes is bunch of people at intelligence level of a Mac user to hear a rumor and then he/she will react religiously without further inquiry to believe the rumor.[/citation]

Vista sucking had nothing to do with Apple. If that was so, then this "apple marketing hype" would make Win7 sound bad.

Vista sucked, and still sucks today. It eats memory, it craps out the more you do with it (memory, again). A 2GB WIN7 box will run better than a 4GB Vista box, any time.
 
[citation][nom]randomizer[/nom]You could ask the same question of PC owners. Maybe they aren't really happy either. I don't know why some people can't get their head around the concept of personal preferences that are different to their own. It's hypocritical to call Mac users arrogant if you can't comprehend this. Some people buy luxury items because they like luxury items and they can afford them. Some people hardly use computers and a crappy OEM thing for $600 will suffice. Not everyone plays Crysis. Not everyone wants to overclock. Not everyone likes Windows (I know, shocking).I like the look and feel of Mac laptops, but I'd never buy one. I'm a cheapass and OSX is not the right tool for the things I use a computer for. Sadly, most people, even enthusiasts, don't know if they are using the right tool for the job. They just use what they've always used.[/citation]

I have spent the better part of a year trying to get my home built computer to function for everything I want it to. I had to learn everything from scratch because my mom decided it was a good idea and her sister's boyfriend said it was easy and I had absolutely no computer knowledge before that.

First it was the install of XP that didn't have internet, had to pay a guy to fix it. Then I upgraded to 7 and I had to fix the Black screen of death. Then I had to fix the file permissions of Windows, reinstall Windows several times, and fix compatibility issues with hardware.

And that's just the software stuff. First my CPU was getting way too hot and I had to learn how to properly apply thermal paste, the I heard about overclocking and wanted to try that on the CPU and GPU. My GPU had a bad factory overclock and I had to RMA that. I bought a replacement but had to return it because it brought a whole host of its own overheating problems. I had to replace my PSU because I bought a tier 5 psu out of ignorance, which was frying my components.

Once I RMA'd the first GPU I had to do it again because they kept sending me bad parts. Then I finally figured out how to overclock properly, which brought to light poor cooling solutions and I had to upgrade and the replacement/upgrade GPU from the manufacturer was causing high temps in the system.

And that isn't mentioning the two 200mm fans on my case that broke and I had to replace. Not only that, my replacement solution ultimately involved a juryrig and custom made cover/grill for the fan since it wouldn't fit on the inside of the case.

Yet, despite that huge list of problems and all the frustration, I still love my computer. I've spent way more that the initial $1000 USD in order to get it working, from a new CPU heatsink, GPU cooler, and case fan to a new hard drive for backups, but I now have a larger understanding of computers and how to troubleshoot.

And there is no way I would buy a Macbook over an Asus N61JQ-X1 or JV-X2. the performance to price ratio is too skewed. I can understand people being willing to pay a premium in order to avoid the hassles I have described above, but not me.
 
[citation][nom]coldmast[/nom]Vista is crap, it ran slow on most new latops; however, Windows 7 can run on netbooks.The UAC in Vista would come up if you did anything at all with the computer, though it is partially fixed now.[/citation]

UAC is not really better in Windows 7. It should prompt you to confirm any administrative action. Better yet, it should prompt you for a password, not a click on the yes button. Unfortunately MS has not considered even the most basic of security measures in all the years they've been building OSs: Least User Access, by default.

[citation][nom]cadder[/nom]It's because WE want to do with the hardware and software what WE want to do. We don't want Steve Jobs dictating what we are allowed to do and telling us what we can't do, all the while charging double or triple for it.[/citation]

When did Steve Jobs dictate what you are allowed to do? That's a completely irrelevant argument.
 
I like both, but I find Mac OS X more appealing simply for the fact that it's less annoying than it's last successful predecessor. A few things that come to mind are detailed here.

Now please don't consider me to be a fanboy, because personally I need both systems to do what I do. I just think that if Win7 kept so many simple features from Win XP that worked well, then it would be a sweeter system.
 
[citation][nom]guardianangel42[/nom]I have spent the better part of a year trying to get my home built computer to function for everything I want it to. [/citation]

I think this is exactly why many people choose a Mac.

[citation][nom]cadder[/nom]We don't want Steve Jobs dictating what we are allowed to do and telling us what we can't do, all the while charging double or triple for it.[/citation]

I think the main problem is that Apple doesn't have computers that fit certain feature segments and price points. They don't offer a really low end laptop. They also don't offer a basic headless desktop system. The only powerful headless computer they offer is a workstation class desktop system (Xenons and ECC memory) in the Mac Pro. But try going to Dell and price out a Dell Precision (a Vostro or Optiplex is NOT a workstation class system) and see if you can find one with similar specs for 50% cheaper. You can't. I doubt you could find one for 20% cheaper.

But I, like most people on this site, don't need or want a workstation class system. For that very reason I'll stick with my hand-built Win7 box in which I choose what graphics card I want. I want something with more options for different components (video cards, storage controller cards, other expansion cards).

The lowest end 27" (2560x1440) iMac comes with a IPS display and costs $1700. An equivalent 27" (2560x1440) IPS display from Dell from costs $1100. Throw in a few hundred dollars for Dell desktop to go with that display and you've got two systems that are pretty comparable in price. I fail to see how Apple is totally ripping you off for the hardware you get.

To hyperbolize and say that Macs are 2 and 3 times more expensive is patently false and misleading.


 
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