Why do Macs cost so much?

I never understood macs either. I'm typing on a 7 year old Dell running XP (which is supposed to be the anti-christ of computers) and it's never let me down. I also have a 6 year old Dell laptop that still works perfect, even after a major fall/accident on board ship in the military. Sure I've rebuilt the Dell tower twice (more RAM, second hard drive, new video card, USB 2.0, wireless setup) but that was to upgrade, I've never had to replace an original component for failure (still on the OEM power supply, motherboard, processor, and even CRT monitor!). The lappy only needed a RAM boost.

Then again John's 1-year old PC laptop is a giant steaming pile of doggy poo that randomly turns itself off and on and freezes and all sorts of stupid stuff. He must look at dirtier pron or something...

Osterkraut wrote: I can't wait till 2010 when Google's Chrome OS comes out and OS nirvana is finally obtained.

No way am I going to get a Google OS. I'm sure it will perform admirably, but there us something about the "don't be evil" crowd I just don't trust. I use their search engine, but that's as far as I'm willing to go.

As for Macs, if I were getting a desktop, I'd probably get a handbuilt and run both Windows and OSX (whichever big cat they're up to at that point). On the other hand I'm more impressed with Apple laptops than pretty much any other brand I've seen. Now that they are doing monocoque aluminum cases, I'm pretty much sold. Should easily outlast the HP notebook I've had for the past several years with plenty of trouble.

BAMF wrote: On the other hand I'm more impressed with Apple laptops than pretty much any other brand I've seen. Now that they are doing monocoque aluminum cases, I'm pretty much sold.

I bought one of those Macbooks earlier this year and I like it very much. When I'm sitting at my desk I have it plugged into a 21" Samsung monitor and use a Bluetooth mouse and keyboard, but now that it's summer I can unplug it and carry it out to the back porch if I want to. :) The aluminum case is pretty cool, but the blazing speed I get from not having to run antivirus or malware software is even cooler.

Funny thing is last term at school my teacher for digital photography was dogging me on the fact I used a PC to do my photo editing. Then he saw the quality of the work I presented to him and he never said another word about it. I was at one point working on a single image file that was over 800 meg in size, my pc handled it with ease. The schools new power Macs choked on the file

System is a AMD 2.8 Ghz quad core, 8 gig memory, vid card with 1 gig memory dedicated supporting a 32" and 22" screen, and now pushing 3 TB of storage space.

I have an iTouch, and i love it. I refuse to use macs for adobe programs, and i own 2 PCs. I cant use mac OS. It sucks.

Tim Baxter wrote: Spec out equal machines. You'll find the Mac is usually pretty competitively. Problem is, most people compare a Mac to whatever commodity junk is on sale at Best Buy that week. Apple isn't particularly interested in the low end of the market. They build their machines with a lot of beels and whistles, and they generally build them to last. Actual price difference between similar machines is usually pretty small. Price is the biggest difference? Hardly. Do they do everything better? No. But they do a lot of things better. Work better? Usually. No Windows machine can do what my Mac does. It comes with a full Apache server out of the box, and easily runs OS X, Windows and Linux, all at the same time.

Spec for spec macs SUCK for value. Bells and wistles? My buddies mac book has no bluetooth, or an Ethernet port, and less USB ports then almost any other laptop I have used.

Allegedly the quality of their components are very high though, mix that with marketing and an "Easy to use" OS that "requires" their hardware and I think you pretty much have it...

Macs confuse me. I <3 my PC.

S13, I've never seen a macbook without bluetooth or ethernet. Are you sure about that? My macbook certainly has both, plus firewire, a built-in camera, and pretty much anything else you could ask for. Cost under a grand.

I will say I REALLY don't like that Apple took away firewire on the new Macbooks. Only the Pros get FW now.

sigh

Everyone being told by Apple what is important and not important.

I built from scratch every machine I have used since 1990. I use some refurbished stuff, some new stuff, some E36 M3 I find in the trash.

I have, and currently run, about every major and minor operating system (Including Yellow dog Linux on my old risc equipment) and I can tell you this:

NO ONE OPORATING SYSTEM IS BETTER OR WORSE THAN ANY OTHER.

They all brake sometime, they all crash sometime they all have good points and bad points.

If you don't "get why macs cost soo much", well then cool, don't get one.

the Mac VS. PC VS linux VS whatever is the new Holy war and it will be the end of all of us.....

*for the record, I have Mac OS 7.6 running on a MAc Color Classic.

Tim Baxter wrote: No Windows machine can do what my Mac does. It comes with a full Apache server out of the box, and easily runs OS X, Windows and Linux, all at the same time.

The only thing a Windows machine can't do that a Mac can is run OS X without fancy hacks and hardware dongles. In terms of capability there's very little that any OS has to itself.

Exactly. It can't run OS X without fancy hacks and hardware dongles. Even then, it can't run all 3 OSs at once. It doesn't come with an apache server out of the box, either. I don't use my computer for games, I use it for work, and for my work, a Mac wins hands down. For other people, it may not.

Now that they use the same hardware, what is preventing you from installing the latest MacOS on a PC? Do Apple's MoBos include some special proprietary BIOS that is the only thing compatible with their OS?

I can understand preferring Mac OS over Windows... but the cost of an OS is much less than the difference in hardware costs.

It CAN be done, and has been done many times. Could be a good setup if you're the sort of person who likes to muck about with computers. I'm not. I like to turn it on and get work done. For a tweaker-type, it's definitely a viable (if legally ambiguous) option.

Salanis wrote: Now that they use the same hardware, what is preventing you from installing the latest MacOS on a PC? Do Apple's MoBos include some special proprietary BIOS that is the only thing compatible with their OS?

That's basically how it works, so you need all sorts of dirty hacks to get OSX to run. So running OSX isn't exactly a 'feature.'

And of course Apple won't just sell you one of their MoBo's.

Actually, a quick search reveals it's not that tough. You don't even need to reflash the BIOS with something special, you just need to adjust the BIOS settings so that they'll work with the OS.

I worked 4 years at a medical school doing IT work up to a year ago. We had an install base of

~69.8% Windows 30% Mac 0.2% Linux/Unix.

Of my support calls,

95% were Windows

4.99% were Macs

0.01% were Linux/Unix; of course, most of the Linux jockeys absolutely knew what they were doing.

I'm fairly familiar with all three... I've dual-booted, triple-booted, etc. In my experience, you get what you pay for when you buy a Mac, even if it's just the hardware. After doing hundreds of upgrades, new computers, etc., Macs just wasted less of my time.

At this point in my life, if I want a gaming system, I just go with a console. I can use a Mac to do absolutely everything I need to do at home. I can VPN into my work, check my work email, remote into my PC at work, run an SSH/VNC server, run a fileserver, I can even record (standard def) TV and play it. I can run windows or Linux in a virtual machine if I want. Oh, and it automatically backs up all my data every hour, and copying data and applications from my old computer to the new was a snap.

windows has mine sweeper, windows wins

Ford vs Chevy

Harley vs. Every other motorcycle made

Cats vs Dogs

Democrats vs. Republicans

I'm starting a thread with each of those as the subject.

The stuff in a Mac is the same as a stuff in a PC, except for the little chip that tells the Mac OS that you paid more for it so it's OK for the Mac OS to work with it.

Tim Baxter wrote: It CAN be done, and has been done many times. Could be a good setup if you're the sort of person who likes to muck about with computers. I'm not. I like to turn it on and get work done. For a tweaker-type, it's definitely a viable (if legally ambiguous) option.

And one software update might bork the whole thing, because Apple is decidedly NOT in the business of making sure its OS can run on whatever cobbled together collection of hardware you want. Nor do I want them to be, frankly, the OS would never be as secure and stable if they did. I do like my hackintosh netbook, but I consider its existence nothing more than a happy accident, and I basically only use it for goofing around and not anything I actually need.

slefain said: This subject has been beaten to death here many times before.

Jesus, you're absolutely right. No new posts for me for a month. I'm just gonna buy the cheapest computer I can get that works, anyway.

Salanis wrote: The #1 cause of unreliability in a PC is a poor quality power-supply. Budget PCs come packaged with crap PSUs, that can damage every piece of hardware. To be dependable, a PC needs a stable and powerful PSU.

I bought that load of crap, twice. both custom built PC's lasted an average of 26 moths. My next purchase, a lowly e-mac lasted almost 6 years. And I didn't even have to pay extra for the "high quality" power supply, they include it in the computer, oh and I never had to upgrade anything, almost never shut it down and it didn't hiccup untill the capacitors on the MoBo went bad. And yes you can buy a MoBo from Apple.

DrBoost wrote: And I didn't even have to pay extra for the "high quality" power supply...

Isn't that kind of like saying that you didn't have to "pay extra" for power windows, locks, and steering on a Lexus?

Salanis wrote:

DrBoost wrote: And I didn't even have to pay extra for the "high quality" power supply...

Isn't that kind of like saying that you didn't have to "pay extra" for power windows, locks, and steering on a Lexus?

No, it's saying I shouldn't HAVE to pay extra for quality stuff. My PC's were NOT low-budget. My first custom machine cost $1200, that was back in 1998 or so, so that's not a small chunk of change. About 2 years later it's dead in the water. So, I have another one built, again, all top-notch stuff I was told. About another 2 years later it needs major reconstruction. I was so pissed off I got a mac. about 6 years later I was told that the capacitors are bad, somewhat common on these machines as they get close to the decade old mark. I can buy a new MoBo for about $400 or have the capacitors replaced at any electronics repair place (or on my diningroom table) for about $20. After those experiences, nobody can convice me that a PC is even near as good at a mac. Like others have said here. the bottom line for me is I want to sit down at the computer and get to work. I don't want to have to figure out why this program isn't responding, why the USB ports are not working right now or why the screen keeps going blue. I like knowing that I can be burning a DVD, playing music, downloading music and surfing the net and it just doesn't slow down. I look at my computer like my DD car. I don't mind working on it once in a while, but I HATE to HAVE to work on it often just to keep it on the road. With a mac, there's no issues to fix or ignore. But for all those PC folks,I did use the 2-button mouse from my PC. Does that help?

DrBoost wrote: No, it's saying I shouldn't HAVE to pay extra for quality stuff.

But... that is what you are doing, by your argument, when buying a Mac. You believe the Mac has better quality; a Mac will be more expensive than a comparably equipped PC; but you are willing to pay the cost difference to buy one. You are paying extra for quality stuff.

I just think "I shouldn't have to pay extra" is a silly argument when it's the difference between a $100 option on a $1000 machine, versus standard equipment on a $2000 machine.

I can accept "the Mac is more affordable, long term" as a valid argument (I could make a counter claim). But trying to argue that initial cost of a Mac is less, is just goofy.