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So, everyone complains why Mac's are generally VERY expensive, and there's been no real justifiable reason for the prices being so high.

 

I'm 16 and quite frankly, I've spent two years saving for the brilliantly designed and built Aluminum 13" Macbook, i'm in Australia, and they're $2099 dollars, and I've seen them cheaper, but only by about $20, sure you may say, "So What!", but honestly, its not really a justifiable price when you can get a brilliant gaming PC for less than that, then it kicks into you're head.

 

What I'm really paying for is quality, take a laptop brand such as ASUS, brilliant construction, brilliant price, but the amount of pre-installed garbage on it is astronomical! If I wanted 90% of the stuff they put on there I'll put it on myself. Then you take off the operating system that is Windows Vista and install Leopard and every driver you need and you think to yourself, why didn't I spend the extra money on buying a Mac?

 

Its because its not cluttered and always causing problems, honestly, just Google, "Problems with Leopard", and then "Problems with Vista", you'll find an enormous difference in the problems, and most of the Leopard ones are about new-to-mac people who just don't quite know what their doing!

 

Its designed to be used by idiots, its a basic operating system with a kick! Windows is complicated when a 60 year old picks it up to use a PC for the first time! They pick up a Mac and go, "Wow! This is surprisingly easy, it basically does it all for me!", and this is true, most older people (40^) would probably buy a Mac if they were told just why its so good!

 

Then we come to the iMac, now when you think about it in Australia the most basic iMac is about $1600'ish, this is a brilliant price for a desktop computer that can practically do everything a desktop computer should do, and sure, you can build a decent desktop PC for under $800, but think about the quality of the product.

 

With the Intel processors now installed in all Mac's, you can see that Apple is showing that with PC hardware they can do better than if it was installed in a normal PC, yes for the approx. price of having the Intel processor in your Mac you could build a PC with a quad-core and graphics card to rival NASA, but you miss the essence that is a personal computer, Apple software, and the like doesn't try to completely change your operating system, Leopard is neat and tidy in its execution, install a program on a PC and it'll probably install about 10 other 'tiny' programs along with it, Leopard installs what it needs, thats it, and the size of the installations are small, take this for example, iWork and iLife, both brilliant applications, now, iWork is around 400MB or something now, fits on a CD.. iLife is about 3.5GB or something, now put this in comparison with other Windows applications, they just keep getting BIGGER and BIGGER! Ranging from 4GB to an enormous 17'ish GB, now Mac's are designed to use less space on your HDD for App's and more for your personal data.

 

This is why a Mac's price can be justified, its just better that anything else, so in the end:

  • Its basic and can be used by anyone
  • Applications are smaller and run better
  • Built specifically to work with whats 'in the box'
  • Price justifies quality
  • Captures the essence of the term "Personal Computer"
  • Better Applications!

This is the opinion of just one person, me, I can't say this on behalf of everyone, not even Mac owners, I personally have never owned a Mac myself, I was born with a Windows-based system, and still use one to this day, but I dual boot Vista and Leopard and see a total difference in how they operate, Windows is cluttered and always doing something you don't want it to do, Leopard loads what it needs to, closes it and does, well... nothing!

 

I personally hope that some day I will get a Mac, I think its better than any Laptop or Desktop PC on the market.

 

Continue the brilliant work Apple, and also OSx86 for showing the world how brilliant Leopard really is!

Thats a very developed opinion of yours but comparing Vista and Leopard isn't fair at all since Vista was a HUGE flop. I agree with you that Windows does have some organization issues especially in the settings area, you have to dig through multiple screens to get to a certain option e.g. to turn UAC off you have to click User Accounts like 2 - 3 times before you see the option.

 

I've been testing the latest build (7000) for Windows 7 and they have improved its simplicity even better than Mac in some areas (IMO). For example Window management, as a big time multitasker I must have to ability to flip to a window instantly when I need it without many clicks or keyboard shortcuts. Now in Mac you can do a lot of window stuff with the F# keys but it takes a while to learn which ones do what window management. In Windows 7 they have grouped together all the windows you have open for a certain application into 1 icon on the taskbar, yes people say its very Mac like because its 1 step away from being the Dock, but you hover your mouse over the icon and it shows a small display of each window, you can then hover your mouse over one of those displays and it will turn all the other windows transparent and you can see a real-time preview of the window without even clickin on it! I LOVE this feature!! Because there are time when someone will IM me and I will have to click to see it and then click back to what I was doing if they were simply just saying something I didnt need to respond to.

 

You talk about how its cluttered when you buy a laptop or desktop with Vista installed on it and it comes with all these useless apps that I personally uninstall all of them because they are usually all trials of something, but that depends entirely on the laptop company and not really Windows its self. Also, Mac's usually come with the latest iLife and who says everyone likes those apps being preinstalled? Its file structure isnt any more confusing than Mac's is. There is Applications on Mac and Program Files on Windows, Users on Mac and Users on Windows, etc., so there really isnt that big of a difference as far as file structure goes. But as far as having the ability to back up programs is a huge plus over Windows. Mac's put all there application files into a single folder which is the e.g. iMovie.app, while with Windows, applications usually have to install DLL's in the system32 folder that have the randomest names and so if you have to reinstall Windows you have to reinstall ALL your programs over again, while if you have to reinstall Mac you can easily just grab the app folder and your done!

 

I would not say that Mac's are worth their price. The OS its self is starting to become more and more unstable as their market is getting bigger, as the latest upset was the release of 10.5.6 update that caused some peoples Mac's to freeze and they can no longer say they are virus resistant as new virus's/trojans/etc are being released to do more damage than could ever be done on a Windows machine (http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/38088/108/). If you really think about it as Mac's may be simple to any user, well having all the same hardware and same software, any exploit that is created will work, for ALL of them, while Windows machines vary in hardware so a hardcore virus such as the one I referenced wouldnt work for very many people.

 

So to sum up my somewhat scatterbrained opinion, Mac's are really not worth their price as most of that price is more paying for how it looks more than how it operates because its really not that robust of an OS, making it more of a trophy item and something that says "You have a lot of money and you arent afraid to spend it". I personally use Linux (Ubuntu) as my main OS and I can do everything in my everyday life on it and its fast and secure and I dont have to worry about preinstalled sponsor apps because its free in the first place. I am an operating systems LOVER, all of them have their pros and cons and being able to switch around in different environments is like traveling the technology world to me!

 

I dont mean this to be an attack on your opinion, just a counter-opinion, if you will, to just get my opinion out there because I know others will disagree with me as well.

I think your issue is with the included apps + crapware in most PC's and not Vista itself. In my experience a clean install of Vista SP1 on modern hardware is fast, stable and secure. It's great! Of course I prefer OS X.

 

I've been testing the latest build (7000) for Windows 7 and they have improved its simplicity even better than Mac in some areas (IMO). For example Window management, as a big time multitasker I must have to ability to flip to a window instantly when I need it without many clicks or keyboard shortcuts. Now in Mac you can do a lot of window stuff with the F# keys but it takes a while to learn which ones do what window management. In Windows 7 they have grouped together all the windows you have open for a certain application into 1 icon on the taskbar, yes people say its very Mac like because its 1 step away from being the Dock, but you hover your mouse over the icon and it shows a small display of each window, you can then hover your mouse over one of those displays and it will turn all the other windows transparent and you can see a real-time preview of the window without even clickin on it! I LOVE this feature!! Because there are time when someone will IM me and I will have to click to see it and then click back to what I was doing if they were simply just saying something I didnt need to respond to.
Expose + Hot Corners and CMD-Tab are your friends. Windows 7 is an improvement but still nowhere near OS X.
I would not say that Mac's are worth their price. The OS its self is starting to become more and more unstable as their market is getting bigger, as the latest upset was the release of 10.5.6 update that caused some peoples Mac's to freeze and they can no longer say they are virus resistant as new virus's/trojans/etc are being released to do more damage than could ever be done on a Windows machine (http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/38088/108/). If you really think about it as Mac's may be simple to any user, well having all the same hardware and same software, any exploit that is created will work, for ALL of them, while Windows machines vary in hardware so a hardcore virus such as the one I referenced wouldnt work for very many people.
It's a Trojan Horse - meaning you have to actually install it for it to work. There are no viruses for OS X. While Vista is secure, compare the situation for XP = FAIL (malware, viruses everything!)

 

Not trying to put you down, man. Just saying what I think. I wanna check out Linux again now! I'm thinking Opensuse...

dude, gestures on a laptop and expose linked to mouse buttons is so much better than the window management in windows, that just stinks! when i work on windows now i become angry because the interaction with the gui is so slow and when you have to minimize like 10 windows just to find the right one, you lose valuable time!

dude, gestures on a laptop and expose linked to mouse buttons is so much better than the window management in windows, that just stinks! when i work on windows now i become angry because the interaction with the gui is so slow and when you have to minimize like 10 windows just to find the right one, you lose valuable time!

 

I'm referring to Windows 7's window management when I talk about it being much better, Vista and every Windows OS before has AWFUL window management I agree.

I agree that the Windows 7 Window management is improved, but it's still nowhere near that of OS X in my opinion.

 

CMD-Tab doesn't take long for me, my left hand is always right by it, ready to press, and my right hand is on the mouse, then I can just swish to the corner for Expose.

 

*swish*

 

*swish*

 

It's so sweet. But I use an Expose clone in windows + linux, works nicely...

Part of the price that I am very willing to pay for, which is most often overlooked especially in this circle is the innovation that Apple has created in their hardware, but mostly in there software. Many of the of new features in Windows are taken directly from Apple, and while many of you will claim that Apple took them from other sources, many of the times the implementation is not user friendly. Apple has a way of making thing extremely user friendly.

Apple hardware is designed to be used by complete idiots, look how iLife and iWork are made? its like a forever running tutorial program when you use them, its what makes Apple things great, they're simple to use and nothing can effect them like Windows hardware.

 

Sure, Windows 7 does have a few improvements, but its still just a better looking version of Vista, and look how that turned out!

comparing a $2000 mac to a $2000 hacked together gaming rig is like comparing a $100,000 BMW to a $100,000 NASCAR. The NASCAR might win a pure race of numbers, but the driving experience is what I paid for!

 

Oh, this is good.

 

 

 

 

And the BMW doesn't require a flame-resistant suit. 

comparing a $2000 mac to a $2000 hacked together gaming rig is like comparing a $100,000 BMW to a $100,000 NASCAR. The NASCAR might win a pure race of numbers, but the driving experience is what I paid for!

 

Ahhh $2000 for Mac OS X, good deal.

 

Apple hardware is designed to be used by complete idiots

 

Well I would have agreed with you, but lately I've been running into a surprisingly increasing amount of users who end up switching back to their Windows machine because they could not figure Mac out and they said the way the OS was organized was confusing... go figure. :P

 

Many of the of new features in Windows are taken directly from Apple

 

This is a wayyy old debate. "Windows is stealing from Apple" "No Apple is stealing from Windows" "Wait no they are both stealing from Linux!" Its just a big circle. In reality we arent judges or jury in a court case over this. If Apple or Microsoft really cared about the other OS stealing we would see the court case ourselves (of course I left out Linux cuz they will share anything anyways ;) ). But until that happens, an OS can steal from another and add their own twist to it cuz its a good idea and sell it to be competative. But Apple is making steps to try and stop that. For example their recent patent on the Dock... stupid monopolistic Apple (but thats another thread)

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