[citation][nom]MDillenbeck[/nom]Cost, while a factor, is a symptom of another underlying cause - lack of openness and transparency. It is okay if they have official 4x price hardware, but only if I have the option to go buy non-official parts without risking a legal violation. Go ahead and void my warranty, but if you make me a criminal because I don't use your hardware with your OS then I am going to stay away. [/citation]
Um, what? No-one said you couldn't go out and buy your own RAM and HDD or SSD- in fact, many Mac users who upgrade hardware refuse to pay Apple's price for "certified" RAM or hard drives. In the notebooks they are relatively easily replaceable
without voiding warranty. In the iMac, the RAM is easily replaceable (though you would still have trouble finding 8GB of DRR3 in 2x SO-DIMM form), and the hard drive is replaceable as well, though
less easily so (it's on page 2).
As for making you a criminal for not using Apple hardware, it's only against the EULA to install and use OSX and its software on a non-Apple branded computer.
Video cards are a different story as VGA card makers don't actively write the drivers that make the cards usable for a mac-nor do they, in many cases, write (decent, if at all) drivers for Linux. Plus, Apple now requires the MiniDisplay Port to garnish all of their products, but at least it doesn't require hardware makers to license the technology to adopt it, unlike DVI and HDMI. What I really want to know, however, is how a Mac Pro with a Radeon 4870 stacks up against a similarly equipped Windows workstation, first with a 4870 and then the professional equivalent FirePro V8700. Then again, the V8700 has 1GB of GDDR5, but the Mac card is only available as the 512MB version. But since a workstation card is essentially the same as the consumer variant, with the addition of a hardware key that allows the use of drivers that are better optimized for workstation tasks, I want to know whether Apple's use of consumer cards compensates for this with better-than-consumer drivers, or if it really is all smoke and mirrors. I wouldn't hold my breath, but you never really know until you try. Although it would also be interesting to see if you could get a non-Mac video card to work in a Mac Pro running Windows. But that would defeat the purpose, to an extent. Shame, really.
[citation]Don't silence your customers, but embrace complaints and speak of solutions. Am I a customer or a consumer to you - someone you wish to build a lifetime relation with or someone you view as an ATM machine to get a quick cash from?[/citation]
Niether. Customers are customers. They don't seek quick cash a la Sony, who provides hardware with no benefits over competing PC's without any other benefits (assuming OSX to be a benefit, which it is for many people), and provides sub-par customer service afterward. I was only ever able to get a hardware problem I had with a laptop (the WiFi switch broke in the "off" position- Macs don't use a physical switch, only software) fixed by taking it to Geek Squad, who sent it in to be repaired and took 3 weeks to get it back, at fair expense to me.
But Apple's not looking to marry you, either. They begin to censor complaints when they begin to grow disproportionate to the actual occurrence of the problem, because more people are going to go out of their way to express problems they're having than people who are not experiencing problems and are perfectly contented. Plus, there are several well-populated forums devoted to Apple products that are
(believe it or not) fairly neutral to the Mac-vs-PC thing and chose a Mac for purely objective purposes, and understands when Apple totally screws up. I've had a Dell physically fall apart on me in 6 months and the supposedly "inferior" MacBook that replaced it is still ticking 2.5 years on, faster in fact than the spec-wise superior Dell ever was. Same goes for my friend's Toshiba.
[citation]Apple is the villain of their 1984 commercial - we can be creative and unique as long as it is done in their officially branded and sanctioned way. With an iPod that gets stuff from iTunes on our iMacs, using official Apple parts like Apple earbuds, Apple mice, Apple keyboards, Apple RAM, and Apple network backup systems.[/citation]
You are perfectly capable of using your own headphones, mice, keyboards, RAM, and network backup systems (Time Machine allows the use of attached external storage, or storage attatched to the network. The issue was that AirPort Extreme didn't support backing up to storage attached to it until very recently). iPod does have to get stuff from iTunes, true, but it doesn't have to be on a Mac, and you know it. And you can use your own MP3PMP with a Mac if you really want to, if you don't mind dragging and dropping your own music directly to the device, as you probably would with a PC (that's what I did with my Archos before I switched to Mac. It was a pain, but WMP always screwed up somehow). You can even use a non-iTunes music player if you really are so inclined, so long as you can find one (there aren't many because most people seem to be perfectly happy with iTunes). Interestingly enough, though, is that Apple supplies iTunes and Safari for both Mac and Windows, but Microsoft refuses to supply a comparable version of Windows Media Player or Internet Explorer for Mac OS. Plus, last time I checked, Apple wasn't charging me an arm and a leg for an office suite to have a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation, and email suite (only $50 with a new Mac, $80 otherwise). Heck, Apple gives you an email program for free, no need to buy Outlook. Plus, a good, free, unrestricted DVD player program, unlike the free "try-before-you-buy" shovelware programs that come on many PCs (I don't see why you can't just use Windows Media Player, it honestly isn't that bad for playng DVD's).
My own issues with Macs are pricing (which isn't as bad as people make it out to be), expandability (they're fine to an extent, but they are still limited) and compatibility (Mac OSX only has a lack of games because it has too limited a user base, which is changing). But in terms of a laptop I can take anywhere and expect it to do anything I would need it to do quickly and efficiently, I'll take a Mac over a PC any day. The large and versatile touch pad and Expose just make working so much easier on the go. And, having been raised on a steady diet of Windows at home and Macs at school (I know both like the back of my hand) along with an intrinsic understanding of the human psyche (gained from coping with Aspergr's with great success), I can say objectively that it is not necessarily a point-and-click interface that makes a system user-friendly-- it's the layout and organization of the system functions, and the consistency in which it's presented. For both of those, Windows fails, in part because some crucial system functions are buried within more than 6 sub-levels, several of which are poorly labeled (ok, this is a bit of an exaggeration, but you get my point). If you don't understand how that's a problem for most people, read the beginning of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy for an indirectly comparable experience.
But there are two other things that bother me.
The first is that Tom's Hardware would even bother to try to reconcile the differences between Mac and PC to PC hardware enthusiasts, who by their very nature are
not Apple's target market.
The second is that the enthusiasts in question refuse to believe that anything Apple can have any true value at all beyond aesthetics.
Saying that Macs appeal to people who are too stupid to use a PC and thus a "computer" in general is like saying Toyota Corollas appeal to people who are too poor to afford a Porsche and thus by transitive property a "real car".
Technical knowledge of computers is a very scarce luxury among the general populous as much as money is. 5% of people control 95% of the world's wealth, and 5% of people are knowledgeable enough to know how to take apart a computer and put it back together again, or diagnose and fix any possible problem that may arise (which is a frustratingly frequent occurrence with most PCs I've dealt with). For most people, troubleshooting is a hassle, and the promise of fewer enigmatic problems justifies the price premium of a Mac for most people, even for people who are capable of building their own system. It's just nice to be able to use the computer to do something without the computer itself getting in the way. In fact, the whole
point of the Mac has always been to bring computing to the people, ever since it's inception, bringing the intuitive GUI concept from Xerox to the desktop computer where command prompts had previously dominated, democratizing the benefits of a personal computer for everyone to enjoy. They all said it was a gimmick, a toy, in no way useful for a computer's intended purpose. The problem is that they were stuck in a mindset of what a computer's purpose was
supposed to be as opposed to what it had the
potential to be. That same stigma unfortunately is still prevalent, as is evident with PC enthusiast elitists who blatantly shun Mac users' ignorance the way they perceive Mac users to shun them for not being hip and trendy the way that French royalty shunned the plebes inability to afford bread the same way that the president of Zimbabwe ignores the plight of his people while indulging himself with a birthday cake as big as a mid-size car in much the same way that Islamic extremists see fit to convert or exterminate heretics instead of agreeing to peacefully and respectfully disagree with dissenting religious views.
erformance and beat their service for my clients. 
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