... for my son. I've told him I will pay for a mid-range Dell and if he wants something else, he has to make up the difference. For $900, you can get a very nice Dell laptop. 17" screen, good processor and hard drive and all the bells and whistles. When the upgrade to Windows 7 is released, you'll have a good OS as well.
He wants a Mac.
The key feature he's looking for is Garage Band which comes free with the Mac laptop. He looked at the prices and doesn't want to pay a big premium. He is going to pitch in $100 and get the low end MacBook. I took a look at the specs and the thing is just dreadful. First, it's got a 13" screen. That alone dooms it for me. I've taken to using big, dual monitors on my desktop machines and I really dislike using just a single screen on my laptops. Moving to a tank slit view of the world with a 13" screen is unthinkable. I can't imagine trying to do video or image editing on the thing.
Garage Band, at least as far as I've researched it, is like Pokemon. You can buy the starter kit, but the good things are in the expansion packs. $99 later you have new background vocals, $99 more and you have more drum loops, $99 more and you have ...
The Mac is a total rip-off from what I can see. Garage Band is not unique in any way - there are several PC programs that do the same thing and can even share files with it. The best of them costs under $50.
As soon as Win7 is out, all of my PCs are going to leave XP and Vista and move to Win7. Networking and sharing files will be simpler. I'm not sure what his Macbook is going to do with the network. Dittos for the printer we have on the network.
I've decided to let him go with what he wants and have him deal with the consequences. I'm going to make him shop for laptops at Best Buy before we go to the Mac store and blow his cash. At least he'll be making an educated decision.
I was never a Mac fanboy and I've always thought the things were way overrated. I've watched the professional video editor at work crash his Mac repeatedly editing movies, so I don't get this "Mac is more stable" argument. Now that I'm doing a side-by-side comparison, I really don't get it at all. It just looks like a money pit for hipsters.
14 comments:
I had the same argument at work when our designers wanted a massive machine for crunching videos.
The PC they ended up with was about 4x more powerful than the Mac they wanted and cost slightly less.
Far as I can tell the MAC thing is all about image within the design community.
Mac does have better stability, sorta-- because, unlike PCs, they simply won't run a lot of stuff. Meanwhile, I can run stuff that's 10 years old on my Vista machine, without an emulator.
It's not 100% stability, and probably if you compare two dedicated machines running programs designed for the OS on them, they're about the same, but there is *some* basis for the "more stable" thing....
I love my HP laptop-- one of the last gaming rigs they made that I know of-- it's a nice, big luggable, five years old and still runs decent.
Dell with a full service contract is a great investment if you live near a decent city.
I do think a lot of what you pay for with an Apple is the name and the image.
Other than that program, has he said *why* he wants an Apple?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ocwuiV4QJs
Might try showing this.
Go check out www.ibuypower.com. They have some pretty neat systems at reasonable prices.
Install LINUX. Better than Mac or Windoze.
Used Windows since 2.0 and before that DOS. I develop professionally for Windows using Visual Studio. I am already running the official release of Window 7.
That being said at home I bought an iMac 2 years ago to play around with. Since they my household has gone total Mac. I also thought they were totally overrated before. I was totally wrong. I have come to love so much about OSX and the Mac software community. So many programs I now use have no real comparison in the Windows community. Though there is a lot of equal capability, but Windows usually does it ugly. The interfaces are usually really bad. Mac programs are both visually attractive and easier to use. There is a particular emphasis on this in the Mac development community. I run Windows 7 in a Virtual Machine on my Mac to do Windows development and it is a better experience than doing it on my PC at work, My Mac Pro blows away any other machine I ever had. Plus I can actually use the 10 gig I have on it, unlike 32 bit Windows which can only access 32G - though 64 bit Windows can handle all the ram you have. But on Macs there is not multiple OS, but one that works. Every version is the ultimate version.
After so many years in the Windows world I had lots of programs I used all the time. I don't use any of them anymore since I found equal or better software on the Mac.
Garageband does not have any cheap windows knockoffs. I've used them - no comparison. Though open source Audacity while not being very polished is quite functional. But the Mac includes tons of stuff that I needed third party programs before. There is so much built in. IPhoto is a great program. The Spotlight search functionality built in is so much better than Windows 7 search. And guess what Windows 7 now has a dock just like OSX, just not implemented as well.
As far as pricing goes - yeah Macs are more expensive. But last year PC Mag rated a Mac Laptop as the best laptop for running Vista. It beat out all other laptops running Vista. You pay for better quality and design. Plus Macs last a lot longer, there are plenty of people using older Macs. They don't fall a part like so much PC crap. Windows laptops are good for about 2 years before they start to physically deteriorate, something I am quite familiar with. But other aspects of Mac is much cheaper. No virus software needed. The next version of OSX costs $29 bucks and a family pack for 5 licenses costs $49 bucks. Windows pricing is horrible and they just finally started copying Apple with a family pack. Applecare is also excellent with customer service that has no comparison with PC manufacturers.
I just got a new Dell M4400 laptop at work. Top of the line machine, and compared to my MacBook Pro it is junk. The build quality is rather iffy. It has a good solid keyboard, but the trackpad on the Mac is generations better. For laptops I always used external mice. On my MBP the trackpad is actually useful - no mouse needed. Putting the 2 machines side by side really shows the contrast.
Now the thing is if you find Windows does what you need it to do and you have no problems with it - great. But don't be bashing on the Mac when you have no real knowledge of it. In the last 2 years my problems with crashes and other garbage i totally gone. It has been a great experience.
Plus what is really annoying about WIndows is the registry. When you upgraded to a new OS you can't just install the OS and have everything work - to upgrade you have to do a lot of work to get it back running. On the Mac you can always upgrade to a new OS and all of your programs still work (with minor caveats). Mac programs are a single bundle seen as one file. You can just move that file where you want and not worry about the program breaking. The registry is the root of the problem. Installing programs on the Mac is extremely fast. Updates are also fairly quick. Since I work with a lot of Virtual Machines at work I have installed WIndows OS and programs uncountable times and it is a major time suck. Not so with Macs. The backup program Time Machine that comes with the OS is also very useful. I have used it multiple times to retrieve files lost or deleted, or even in one case to fully restore my machine. It just works transparently in the background.
Another great thing about Macs is that new OS releases means the OS runs faster. Windows is total code bloat where each new version being slower than the last. Win 7 is about 5 percent faster than Vista, but still slower than XP. The current version of OSX runs on older Macs - try doing that with Vista or Win 7. The next version of OSX Snow Leopard comes out in a month and the install size will be almost half the size of the current install with total 64 bit code and tons of optimization. It will even use the Graphics GPU for normal processing power and take more advantage of multi-core CPUs.
Now if you like Windows and it does what you need it to do - great! But I think before you pass judgement on the Mac you need to know a lot more about it. Though I had exactly your same prejudices before.
Macs do get viruses; additionally, I know many expert-level PC users who don't use antivirus software or only use freeware antiviruses because they have safer computing habits than the average user.
Every gamer I know who invested in a gaming computer-- not a $500 dollar cheepie-- is still able to use the rig 5+ years later. (And still usable for games-- my husband runs Warhammer on his seven year old dell)
KT is unlikely to take his entire house Mac, so ease of use in a wholely-Mac network isn't relevant.
There is disagreement on the topic of a PC equiv of Garage Band.
Oooh, trying to flame the holy wars of the FanBoys....
My wife just got me a netbook (let me get a netbook). Had to do XP due to a few programs that don't run on Linux (ahh, Nokia, get with the program).
Comparing anything to Vista will leave Vista on the losing end. DOS 2.10 probably wins.
I have to admit that Mac stuff tends to consider the human factors better than windows. But I'm an engineer... what do I care about that stuff? I love vi(1)!
Time for another (sudski).
There's an update on the topic.
You know what everyone misses in this religious war is that the best computer is the one that makes you the most productive.
I want unix and I want advanced apps, so that rules out linux. The mac appears more expensive than it is because all their machines come only with high end components. An equivalent Lonovo ( 15" screen, intel core 2 due, etc) was only 10-15% less than what the Mac cost.
Where Mac really falls down is when you just want a low end machine.
Have your son check MacMall for specials on the previous generation machines and check the mac site under reconditioned machines for some pretty good deals.
Foxfier, formerly Sailorette,
There is not a single Mac virus out there in the wild. None. There is some proof of concept stuff out there, but no real threat with people actually getting infected.
There are a couple of trojan horse programs that are just real programs that are malicious. They use social engineering to get you to download them. No system will able be safe from a user downloading a malicious program.
Browsers are another story of course and malicious web programs can cause problems for all OSs.
Maybe one day there will be an actual Mac virus in the wild, but the day is not here. Part of it is of course that hackers go after Windows because most people have it. Macs aren't hacker proof, but they are built upon UNIX and inherently more secure as a result. Windows has come a long way security wise, but UAC on Vista/Win 7 is problematic since it is so easy to just say yes to alerts. On Macs when you install a program that actually puts files in the OS (most never do that), you have to enter your password to allow it. You rarely get this prompt for action. While on Windows UAC is still pretty intrusive, though Win 7 dialed it back again.
I hope you used your work discount while at the Apple Store. Just show your official ID (the card, not the badge) and you get discounts on Apple hardware and software (and even AppleCare if desired).
Yep, Macs cost more, but why not take advantage of any price breaks out there? Or did you use the educational "back to school" special of getting a free iPod with your purchase?
From what I learned in a recent Asher marketing class, we need to shift the argument away from costs and to value. ;)
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