The Apple Mac Cost Misconception

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The Mini is a cheap computer, but again, its about the software. OSX and its OpenGL driver are so optimized that even the Mini's crappy GMA graphics chip (it doesn't even qualify for a card) still can perform snappy translucent graphics and morphing in real time with the desktop.

Again, its the optimized, time-tested and fine tuned software programming/engineering that went into the design. If you want an OpenGL certified card for the PC you'll also be paying alot more then the DirectX 'gaming' equivilent for the toy-like, bloatware we call Windows. This is because DirectX with Windows appeals to a larger gamer market. (look at www.unity3d.com, development environment is Mac, target is PC/Wii/etc.)

Windows Vista has this same special effects you can see on the Mac Mini (aka Window's Areo). But requires alot more hardware to accomplish the same task. Just look up

"Judge OKs class action lawsuit over 'Windows Vista Capable' labeling"

When users upgraded or bought what they thought were new snazzy Vista PCs, what they got was less then impressive. Typical Microsoft. You need alot more hardware, power sucking watts, a few more fans, and RAM to accomplish the same thing smooth looking interface with Vista. Microsoft is not in the business of making great software, they're in the business of making money and 'just barely OK' software.

 
If you look at the resale price of Macs, you'll see even the G5 Mac Minis hold there value longer. This is because you won't have to be upgrading the graphics card as often as a PC. The software for Macs are typically more optimized and perfected in comparison to their Windows equivilents. With a PC, you will want to be able to replace the graphics card in 18 months guaranteed if you want to stay up to date. However, for that price, you could just buy a whole new Mac Mini and get more then just a newly optimized graphics but whole new Mac OS version number, probably another core and more Mhz. Whats more is that you could turn around and sell your old Mac for a few hundred (if that) less then what you bought it for!
 
This article was appalling on many levels it's hard to know where to start. When I saw the Dell Mac book comparison I was thinking, "how disingenuous can this guy get"? Then I continued reading and that answered the question. The author is an Apple pod person, i.e, one that doesn't deal in reality, has a "siege mentality" trying to prove his product is "as good as" another, and is always proselytizing. I'm still wondering why would a site like this publish such nonsense.

I've used Macs on and off for over 20 years now (because I had to in all circumstances). They are absolutely NO better than PCs. Period. Each has a small advantage in one or two particular areas, but in no case has the mac proved superior in an area important to me. I don't like the interface, I don't like the thought of apple controlling everything I do, the machines crash just as much (and people that tell you macs don't crash are lying thought their teeth), they're grossly over priced (every idiot except the author knows this) and the main reasons why I would never buy a Mac...

1) The number one reason is Mac users, aka, iSheep. The author is a prime example of the indoctrinated sheep and I just can't stand the thought of joining that clueless group of people. I honestly don't think the author knows anymore when he's lying and when he's telling the truth. Hint - you're not cool, you're not smart, you're just another sheep.

2) Steve Jobs. Nothing more needs to be said but just for Apple Koolaid Klub, I'll admit Balmer is a bridge Troll. But Jobs? That guys is such a delusional megalomaniac it's scary. Why he hasn't been institutionalized yet I don't know, but I'd rather go without a computer than buy from that guy..
 
Tuan,
I know this is your job, to write descent articles about "techie stuff". But no matter what you say in this debate you are going to get flamed! I thought you did a nice job here, if it makes you feel better.
Just keep in mind that most of these people are idiots who feel the need to slam other people for their computer purchases. Why is that so important?
I have used both computer platforms (and others) and they both have their positives and negatives. You are right, price is really not the issue. I have 9 year old macs that still run nearly as fast as brand new PCs. (They just started to show their age last year) The PCs I had even 5 years ago either don't exist any more or run so poorly I just don't use them. I had a Sony, what a POC from day one. Dell, I like the man, hate the computer. Micron, junk. Gateway, sent it back. Compaq, never worked right. HP, it did one job and did it right for a very long time, then died. The IBM think pad was my favorite, it ran well for a very long time up to the day the company swapped it out...for another think pad, but apparently the hard drives on them were dying.
They all cost nearly what the Macs did. So if you are going to throw away the hardware many times as fast, how is even a few hundred dollars going to matter?
Anyhow, after all the years of trading insults and getting hot over who has the better system, I no longer see the point. I like them both to some extent, but favor my Apple products. They are workhorses and do everything I want plus a little more.
Sorry, I just fell back into old habits of slamming PCs. Oh well, "Take that you silly PC knigits!" (tongue-in-cheek)
BTW, I would like to second your call to Apple to get real on upgrade prices!

 

What a joke. Three reasons you would need to update graphics card:
1) Gaming (which you really can't do on a Mac)
2) New features (i.e. video decoding support)
3) You're a professional doing work in Maya, AutoDesk 3D, etc and want the top of the line pro card

A Mac Mini costs what, $600? Do you know how few people pay $600 for a GPU?

So let's recap....a nVidia GTX280, Crossfire 4870s or an underpowered Mac Mini with GMA 950 which is 'optimized' in your uneducated opinion. FAIL!
 
If you use a 'professional' video editing application like Final Cut Pro which is 64bit vs. (whatever) 32bit application in Windows you're not very 'professional' are you? 32bit XP can only adddress 4 gigs of memory and last I check DVDs are 8 gigs.

3D Applications like Maya are less likely to be using $600 Mac Mini, and you have contradicted yourself already by even asking how few people would pay $600 for graphic card in the same breath as Maya. My answer to you are people that can afford Maya, thats who!

If you followed the link (to Unity3D) you would see that development environments for (ironically some XBox games), Wii games and many other PC games are developed on Mac and deployed on PC. What games and applications have you developed, oh 'educated one'? I'm not knocking PCs I love my DELL XPS but your obviously uneducated opinion has left you confused.
 
Why would the average PC user 'need' to upgrade his/her graphics card?

Vista to run areo...new games...new applications.

A component never gets slower, so the only reason to replace one is failure or a change in computational demand. So where is your logic that PCs require more upgrades (graphically) then their Mac counterparts?
 

Damn, I better tell my brother to stop using that TNT2(nearly as old as they get) video card and upgrade to something new. Do you actually think user HAVE to upgrade there cards? If they work you think we just say "Hey this card works great but is getting a little out of style" "Time to upgrade it"?



Final Cut Pro is just a Adobe Premier clone(in many ways). Dont get me wrong, but uncompressed video that was common in the past is the fast is WAY bigger then 8gigs.

How does addressable memory limit your size to write a file again? I wrote 20+gig video files on XP many times. How much memory the app uses is different.

Or how about when i am working through over 100gigs of video to cut and edit it on a 32 bit os? do i need 100GB of ram? no the program uses 1 gig tops.
 
The ultimate in biased reporting. A more valid comparison would be with the XPS M1530.

I get $1,419 for an equivalent notebook at DELL. Same screen size, memory, adding on n and bluetooth with a larger hard drive.

Unbelievable that this rubbished passed editing.
 
I hear alot of people here talking about different companies' laptops. Honestly, find someone who's had both. I personally own a macbook, and work daily on a Dell Inspiron at work. Using them is pretty close to the same, except when I dropped the dell, work bought a new screen for it, but when my 4 year old jumped on my Mac, nothing happened.
 
He compared a baseline Mac with a PC consisting of equivalent parts, and found out that the _baseline_ Mac is not expensive.

He proceeds to say that UPGRADE options for the Mac are expensive, which they really are.

What exactly is your problem, people?

You're all proudly wearing blindfolds and working up a frenzy over this article - and for what? To make yourselves look like idiots?

Things are exactly how Tuan said:

- A _baseline_ Mac is not especially expensive, but its upgrades are. What part of that is difficult to understand?

jeb1517: As you may or may not understand, Windows & OS X are both "proprietary", that's one thing Tuan was unclear about.

The main point of it all is that you people should wake the hell up, and start smelling the OS X coffee.

 
This is getting hilarious. 36 pages of posts and some still cannot understand why people complain about this article. What's even funnier is that those are the same individuals who call other people idiots.
 
[citation][nom]KyleSTL[/nom] So where is your logic that PCs require more upgrades (graphically) then their Mac counterparts?[/citation]

Its called FATware or Bloatware. Usually that means getting to market faster at the expense of running inefficiently. But in Microsoft’s case Vista with ‘Aero’ was not only delivered late, it was also poorly written. Look at the lawsuites againest Microsoft for misleading people with 'Vista Capable PCs'. To really take advantage of Vista you need the newer hardware.

The next version of OSX on the other hand, will work on the existing hardware and will actually run faster then its predecessor. With Windows, you need to buy more. Microsoft is basically the ‘Hummers’ of operating system world WITHOUT the durability. OSX is more like your Hybrid or Tesla Roadster, faster and yet more efficient. Again, its not about the hardware, it’s the software.


[citation][nom]nukemaster[/nom] How much memory the app uses is different.Or how about when i am working through over 100gigs of video to cut and edit it on a 32 bit os? do i need 100GB of ram? no the program uses 1 gig tops.[/citation]

You’re right, and its slow. Its using Virtual Memory (the harddisk) when it breaches the measly 1 gigabytes you have. Accessing the disk is pitiful. Where as in the 64bit OS you can use well beyond the (Windows XP 32bit) limitation of 4 gigabytes to get things done faster. OSX has been 64bit since 2002. In 2003 Windows 64bit was still in beta, and even today Vista, 5 years later is marginally better –actually slower because you can only run your 32bit Premier.

But that’s OK. Microsoft caters to the masses of average Joes who want to run really ‘OK’ performance and ‘good enough’ software. Professionals on the other hand, are glad that their hard earned money can be exchanged for the hard earned work that’s been put into OSX. Its not for everyone, just those that want and need better. Stick to you toys and games and just run Windows. We all need a break sometime and its nice to know that with Mac’s Bootcamp you always downgrade to crappy XP/Vista and play games.
 


Where do i start?
Even an X850(before vista came out) runs aero without a problem. Hell onboard Geforce 6200 runs it fine too. It is not video intense at all

I have 8gigs(I have not had 1 gig since 2000) of ram and you clearly have no clue how video encoding work. once you analyze a frame and decide the bit rate and perform the compression your done with that frame and move on to the next one. NO program holds the full video in memory. Do you think they hold 200+ gigs of video before compressing it and editing for blueray media? Before you decide to say something, do a little research. Video encoding relies on 2 things. Fast hard drives to get the frames in quick and lots of cpu power to compress and compare for multipass encoding. SSE4 is another instruction set from intel that increases video encoding speed by a lot even in a 32bit OS. Application CAN be large memory aware and use over 4 gigs even if they are 32-bit. So do not rule out an app unless you have used it.

AWE is a set of application programming interfaces (APIs) to the memory manager functions that enables programs to address more memory than the 4 GB that is available through standard 32-bit addressing. AWE enables programs to reserve physical memory as non-paged memory and then to dynamically map portions of the non-paged memory to the program's working set of memory. This process enables memory-intensive programs, such as large database systems, to reserve large amounts of physical memory for data without having to be paged in and out of a paging file for usage. Instead, the data is swapped in and out of the working set and reserved memory is in excess of the 4 GB range. Additionally, the range of memory in excess of 4 GB is exposed to the memory manager and the AWE functions by PAE. Without PAE, AWE cannot reserve memory in excess of 4 GB.
Click to expand...

Next time, try to do some research.
 
hey everybody... after spending up to 13 hours a day in front of my G5 and my PC... I day who gives a poopy.. at the end of the day I get so much more done on my Mac that it's almost embarrassing. I am, for one, happy to pay the premium.
 
There's also another clever trick Mac fans love to pull being used here.

You'll notice he's framed the debate from the Mac side - which means he only considers features in the Mac as relevent. Let's try this the other way around.

HP tx2500 series Tablet PC.

Components
• Genuine Windows Vista Home Premium with Service Pack 1 (32-bit)
• AMD Turion(TM) X2 Ultra Dual-Core Mobile Processor ZM-82 (2.2 GHz)
• 12.1" diagonal WXGA High-Definition HP BrightView Widescreen (1280 x 800) w/Integrated Touch-screen
• 2GB DDR2 System Memory
• ATI Radeon(TM) HD 3200 Graphics
• 250GB 5400RPM SATA Hard Drive
• Webcam + Fingerprint Reader
• 802.11a/b/g/n WLAN and Bluetooth
• LightScribe SuperMulti 8X DVD+/-RW with Double Layer Support
• 8 Cell Lithium Ion Battery

Price:
$1432

I've left out rebates and free upgrades, which HP is always giving (that would have knocked $150 from the price and upped the memory to 3GB). I've seen this as low as $700.

Now, find me a Mac that can do that. There isn't one. Axotron takes the low end MacBooks, guts them, removes the keyboard and trackpad, sticks in a Wacom penenabled LCD and sends it out at $2250 - but it's still not as good at this.

Then there's the 'parts quality myth'. Does the author really think nVidia makes a special 'Just for Apple' version of their video cards that are just a wee bit more special than the ones they make for PC manufacturers? I suspect HP and Dell spend a lot of money at nVidia too and wouldn't be happy to find out that they're getting second tier hardware.

Finally, the OS. Here's the thing - different OSes for different people. I'm really tired of Macheads *assuming* that because MacOS works better for them - it MUST be better for everyone. I was a Mac developer for 17 years, and now I'm using Windows - why? Because to my surprise, Windows actually does things the way *I* like them rather than the way Apple thinks I should.

Really, there's lots of positive to things to say about Macs. It's time to stop drinking the koolaid and be objective.
 
"Does the author really think nVidia makes a special 'Just for Apple' version of their video cards that are just a wee bit more special than the ones they make for PC manufacturers? I suspect HP and Dell spend a lot of money at nVidia too and wouldn't be happy to find out that they're getting second tier hardware."

I agree with your argument in general but I'd be careful there. Not so long ago there was an article on THG about how Intel makes most advanced chips available to Apple sooner than to HP and Dell, even though obviously those two companies do a lot more business with Intel than Apple.
I would not be surprised if nVidia has similar cozy deal with Apple. I guess since Apple charges for Macs more it can pay more to suppliers to get preferential treatment.
 
hey everybody... after spending up to 13 hours a day in front of my G5 and my PC... I day who gives a poopy.. at the end of the day I get so much more done on my Mac that it's almost embarrassing. I am, for one, happy to pay the premium.
Click to expand...
It does what you need it to. Perfect reason to own it. no bs, no attempting to convert people, just straight to the truth. Thumbs up.
 

Good point
Apple is a huge OEM. Intel gives new items about a month early is some cases. The slim form factor needs it where as normal towers do not.

Video cards have a minor difference in some cases(such as a bar to hold it better in the Mac Pro case) and have a different bios flashed to them. Other then that its the same cards.
 
Nuke, that's what I was thinking about the video card. If you somehow can't run Aero, go out and buy a $30 HD 2400 Pro, it's more than enough. I don't get where he was coming from that you need constant upgrades and for hundreds of dollars (with the exception of gaming - which I do fine with a $70 7600 AGP and 4 year old rig @1024).
 
Why would you chose to compare anything to Voodoo PC? Voodoo is the most expensive PC maker. Ask anyone in the know which company charges a greater premium, and I bet 10/10 people would say Voodoo.
 
@Rodney_ws damn they dropped the price of the HDX... just repriced it before calling you out.
I'm with Rodney and many other in complaints about the article. The point isn't that MAC over prices their bottom line. They just use ridiculous components. I could pick at 2-3 places on the desktop you could drop the price half a grand easy. I like MACs fine, but I don't like that they don't support us. Maybe they're afraid of us ruining their name with our custom computers, but I think that's what makes PC users so great, many of us own our equipment. Ground up.
MACs have incredible software, iLife is astounding and I'd give my right arm to have it on my Laptop.
I think the real reason we get up in arms about MACs (the reasonable lot of us) is their proprietary nature, their death-grip on their own equipment, software integration, and their user base.
It's funny to me windows gets the anti-trust gripe.. at least they've used their broad platform to allow us an infinite software base.
 
[citation][nom]Nameless1[/nom]...I do have one thing in common with Mac fans though: I also dislike windows. Not because of any technical issues, but because I don't think that one company should have 90% market share. ...But I appreciate Apple in the sense that it forces ms to compete again. [/citation]
Wow! Where do I begin? What's an acceptable market share for you? 70%, 80%, 89.9%? What's the "formula" for an "acceptable" level of market share? Do you also think we should disband Google? They have 90% and in some areas even higher market share. Rigoddamndiculous!
And then "Apple forces ms to compete"? Yeah, ok. Perhaps you mean ms forces Apple to compete because ms isn't in competition with Apple (as Apple firstly a hardware vendor). What's a Mac's primary objective: to be compatible with Windows. If it fails at that then: kiss your ass and GOODBYE!
 
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