Apple Mac

16 Dec 2008

Quote by Deviants

Both are capable of doing a job but the fact that a top spec quad core Mac will set you back £2000 or more and the equivalent spec PC can be picked up for nearer £400 and can do anything the Mac can do, and in some instances more, pretty much sums it all up really, and that’s how can apple justify the price.

Just to point out that a mac pro in default config, but with only 1 processor is £1339, and these are Xeon quad cores and the motherboard supports dual processors regardless of how many are fitted at the factory.
does that include a monitor/display though? i wouldnt think so
Does your equivalant spec £400 jobbie include a monitor too?
(No is the answer lol

)
yes a 20" monitor actualy
Even going super spec and getting the intel i7 cpu and 23" panel would give you change from £800
whether you own a Mac or not its easy to see there well overpriced.
Ahh, but going core 2 duo is not equivalent though is it? Mac pro features dual Xeon quad core processors, it'll cost you well over £400 just to buy the same processor that resides in the Mac pro. A motherboard to house that processor (remember mac pro shipped with one processor can still accept a second processor) is going to cost you between £300-£450.
An equivalent motherboard+processor setup is well over £850, now you start adding ram, graphics, PSU, case, optical storage, hard drives etc. and you'll end up not a million miles away from apples price for the Mac pro.

16 Dec 2008

Quote by Sixfootsix

Both are capable of doing a job but the fact that a top spec quad core Mac will set you back £2000 or more and the equivalent spec PC can be picked up for nearer £400 and can do anything the Mac can do, and in some instances more, pretty much sums it all up really, and that’s how can apple justify the price.

Just to point out that a mac pro in default config, but with only 1 processor is £1339, and these are Xeon quad cores and the motherboard supports dual processors regardless of how many are fitted at the factory.
does that include a monitor/display though? i wouldnt think so
Does your equivalant spec £400 jobbie include a monitor too?
(No is the answer lol

)
yes a 20" monitor actualy
Even going super spec and getting the intel i7 cpu and 23" panel would give you change from £800
whether you own a Mac or not its easy to see there well overpriced.
Ahh, but going core 2 duo is not equivalent though is it? Mac pro features dual Xeon quad core processors, it'll cost you well over £400 just to buy the same processor that resides in the Mac pro. A motherboard to house that processor (remember mac pro shipped with one processor can still accept a second processor) is going to cost you between £300-£450.
An equivalent motherboard+processor setup is well over £850, now you start adding ram, graphics, PSU, case, optical storage, hard drives etc. and you'll end up not a million miles away from apples price for the Mac pro.
Sorry your correct, they are not the equivalant, their better.
The intel i7 965 is an extreme edition quad core cpu, its certainly not a core2duo and if you look around the net you’ll find its more than capable of matching dual xeons and blowing away singles.
And incase you weren't aware the new Mac pros available in spring will have these processors so what does that tell you?

16 Dec 2008

Quote by Deviants

Both are capable of doing a job but the fact that a top spec quad core Mac will set you back £2000 or more and the equivalent spec PC can be picked up for nearer £400 and can do anything the Mac can do, and in some instances more, pretty much sums it all up really, and that’s how can apple justify the price.

Just to point out that a mac pro in default config, but with only 1 processor is £1339, and these are Xeon quad cores and the motherboard supports dual processors regardless of how many are fitted at the factory.
does that include a monitor/display though? i wouldnt think so
Does your equivalant spec £400 jobbie include a monitor too?
(No is the answer lol

)
yes a 20" monitor actualy
Even going super spec and getting the intel i7 cpu and 23" panel would give you change from £800
whether you own a Mac or not its easy to see there well overpriced.
Ahh, but going core 2 duo is not equivalent though is it? Mac pro features dual Xeon quad core processors, it'll cost you well over £400 just to buy the same processor that resides in the Mac pro. A motherboard to house that processor (remember mac pro shipped with one processor can still accept a second processor) is going to cost you between £300-£450.
An equivalent motherboard+processor setup is well over £850, now you start adding ram, graphics, PSU, case, optical storage, hard drives etc. and you'll end up not a million miles away from apples price for the Mac pro.
Sorry your correct, they are not the equivalant, their better.
The intel i7 965 is an extreme edition quad core cpu, its certainly not a core2duo and if you look around the net you’ll find its more than capable of matching dual xeons and blowing away singles.
And incase you weren't aware the new Mac pros available in spring will have these processors so what does that tell you?
Then I stand corrected in single CPU configuration, but they're certainly not cheap and I'd imagine a dual CPU MB is going to be in the scary end of the price range.
It certainly tells me that in January (if the rumour mill is to be believed) the Mac Pro's will get even better. smile

I still don't understand the overpriced bit, yes they cost a bit more in certain circumstances, but they hardly depreciate. In a year the mac will have lost hardly any of it's original value, the "PC" will have lost almost all of it's value due to a million newer graphics cards/processors being released - you have to look at the purchase price of a mac over a longer term - you can recoup and awfully large amount of it back should you upgrade.
And for what it's worth, if somebody came to me and asked me for advice on getting a mac, I'd still send them down the Apple store to try for themselves, one size doesn't fit all.

16 Dec 2008

Quote by Sixfootsix
Then I stand corrected in single CPU configuration, but they're certainly not cheap and I'd imagine a dual CPU MB is going to be in the scary end of the price range.
It certainly tells me that in January (if the rumour mill is to be believed) the Mac Pro's will get even better.
I still don't understand the overpriced bit, yes they cost a bit more in certain circumstances, but they hardly depreciate. In a year the mac will have lost hardly any of it's original value, the "PC" will have lost almost all of it's value due to a million newer graphics cards/processors being released - you have to look at the purchase price of a mac over a longer term - you can recoup and awfully large amount of it back should you upgrade.
And for what it's worth, if somebody came to me and asked me for advice on getting a mac, I'd still send them down the Apple store to try for themselves, one size doesn't fit all.

The fact still remains though that under the hood they are just an overpriced PC, even more so since changing to Intel.
The CPU and motherboard are indeed the biggest chunk of the price, but everything else is just bog standard (and under specced in most cases). The memory is standard (albeit ECC), the hard drives are standard (and the default is a rather small, slow cheapie).
The other thing that puts me off is the one thing Mac users seem to think is a 'best feature', ie lack of choice in what hardware to put in it (I'm talking about buying from Apple, not aftermarket upgrades). For example there's next to no choice in graphics cards and what are available are pretty naff and once again grossly overpriced. What if you want a different shaped case that wasn't brushed aluminium? And iMacs are next to impossible to upgrade yourself. In any case they're just a laptop stuck on a stand anyway.
Don't get me wrong, if they brought the price down to a reasonable level and increased the available choice of components I'd buy one straight away (a mac Pro that is). I do think they are cracking machines and are wonderfully designed. And I love OS/X apart from the problem with getting your hands dirty under the bonnet as I can do with XP (mind you that's pretty naff compared to the tweaking you could do pre-XP). Damn I hate wizards, and I hate the computer telling you what it can do. I was under the impression that it was there to do as I wanted. rolleyes

16 Dec 2008

Quote by Peanut
Then I stand corrected in single CPU configuration, but they're certainly not cheap and I'd imagine a dual CPU MB is going to be in the scary end of the price range.
It certainly tells me that in January (if the rumour mill is to be believed) the Mac Pro's will get even better.
I still don't understand the overpriced bit, yes they cost a bit more in certain circumstances, but they hardly depreciate. In a year the mac will have lost hardly any of it's original value, the "PC" will have lost almost all of it's value due to a million newer graphics cards/processors being released - you have to look at the purchase price of a mac over a longer term - you can recoup and awfully large amount of it back should you upgrade.
And for what it's worth, if somebody came to me and asked me for advice on getting a mac, I'd still send them down the Apple store to try for themselves, one size doesn't fit all.

The fact still remains though that under the hood they are just an overpriced PC, even more so since changing to Intel.
The CPU and motherboard are indeed the biggest chunk of the price, but everything else is just bog standard (and under specced in most cases). The memory is standard (albeit ECC), the hard drives are standard (and the default is a rather small, slow cheapie).
The other thing that puts me off is the one thing Mac users seem to think is a 'best feature', ie lack of choice in what hardware to put in it (I'm talking about buying from Apple, not aftermarket upgrades). For example there's next to no choice in graphics cards and what are available are pretty naff and once again grossly overpriced. What if you want a different shaped case that wasn't brushed aluminium? And iMacs are next to impossible to upgrade yourself. In any case they're just a laptop stuck on a stand anyway.
Don't get me wrong, if they brought the price down to a reasonable level and increased the available choice of components I'd buy one straight away (a mac Pro that is). I do think they are cracking machines and are wonderfully designed. And I love OS/X apart from the problem with getting your hands dirty under the bonnet as I can do with XP (mind you that's pretty naff compared to the tweaking you could do pre-XP). Damn I hate wizards, and I hate the computer telling you what it can do. I was under the impression that it was there to do as I wanted. rolleyes

is where you want to be for getting your hands dirty, it's all there, after all, it's just POSIX at its heart.
sudo vi /etc/<whatever I want to play with>
and
defaults read
defaults write
are your friends :)

16 Dec 2008

Apple Macs are designed for function as as well as form these days and in my view stand up to scrutiny and outperform the PC on most criteria, including speed, mobility, lack of virus susceptibility (a real bonus) and most importantly user-friendliness. They are designed from the user's perspective, and as a result, I operate my entire small-medium enterprise business from the latest Apple Mac Leopard platform, which by the way you can also run XP (and possibly VISTA (someone confirm??)) through BootCamp, so if necessary you can switch between the OSX platform and a PC platform - two for the price of one! Therefore, the idea that Macs are only for the creative sector is simply a historical legacy of perception that Apple still has to overcome. The only thing we use a PC for nowadays is our business banking software which can only be used on XP (and we could use Bootcamp if we wished), but that says more about our bank than it does about Apple!

17 Dec 2008

I work in IT designing Windows based server systems, run several linux boxes and use PCs and Macs at home. If you want something that just works, it's a no brainer IMO - go for a Mac every time.
Yes they can be more expensive than a base level PC but the hardware build quality is much better (I have never bled in a Mac, every PC I've ever owned has cut me to pieces when I get the cover off), the software is more reliable and the OS is just plain easier to work with - there is a reason why most PC manufacturers supply machines with Vista installed and offer XP as an "upgrade".
Having said that, when I purchased my twin CPU G5 PowerMac I specced up a roughly equivalent PC from Dell and it was 700 quid more expensive so the price differential isn't true in every case.
I have never had an issue getting a Mac to do the tasks I need it to do. There isn't the range of software to be sure, but what is available tends to be of a better quality. If you want a better range of software, install Fink then the world of Linux software opens up for you. If you want office, download and install X from apple and install Openoffice - free and compatible with MS Office.
To me, it's a tool. All tools require a level of maintenance to keep them working, but Windows just needs too much TLC to keep working reliably

18 Dec 2008

I own up to being a "Mac Boi". I rarely use a PC so I don't know if what follows also applies to a PC.
My mac has NEVER crashed. Occasionally a programme freezes, but it does so without freezing the other programmes I am running. I am able to force the one programme to quit and carry on with the rest unharmed.
I don't know if this is the case with PCs, but I do hear a lot of complaints about PCs crashing and having to be rebooted.
I've never had a virus issue.
I was able to set it up straight out of the box without having to spend hours reading instructions and loading programmes. I automatically receive regular updates from Apple so it is always up to date, and they know exactly where they have to be on my mac and find theirown way there. It's all just so intuitive. It just works.
Yes I work in Design so for me there really is no other option, but I'm also able to run MS Office with no problems and work with PC colleagues seamlessly.
Oh, and Macs are just so damn sexshy <in a Sean Connery voice>