Anand.. GREAT ARTICLE. I am a recent "switcher" though I still have my trusty Dull lapdog with XP Pro (1.7 P-M) for on the road business apps...
I got the new Dual 2.5 G5 (liquid cooled!).. with the Nvidia 6800 Ultra, a 30" Apple Screen and a 23".. along with 8GB RAM and 2 10000RPM Raptors in a software raid.. and I'm in freaking heaven. Maya Unlimited just smokes on this thing!
Oh yes... it's damn expensive and I don't care. I love it. It's a BMW and my PC is a Chevy!
I'm sorry I just can't. I just can't understand why after all this time of ripping off the mouse from Xerox that Apple can't put another damn button on their mouse.
I don't see what the problem is with the issue of the number of buttons on a mouse.
OS X recognizes a three button mouse (or trackball) with scroll wheel, out of the box. No drivers needed.
While I too disagree with Apple giving only a one button mouse, look at the aftermarket out there.
You can't say that most of those mice and trackballs are being sold to one button Mac users. If a major excuse for not liking the Mac is that mouse, buy another one for $10.
I use a Microsoft Trackball Optical with four buttons and a wheel. So what's the problem?
I'll bet that a number of guys who mention the one button mouse are themselves using aftermarket units.
There's a reason why there are so many manufactures, both large and small, out there.
Even Microsoft realizes that people aren't happy with the standard mouse.
So if I'm a PC user and unhappy, or a Mac user and unhappy, I have a place to go. What's the difference?
Surely you can't think that a $10 mouse should decide which platform you use?
I know that some of you have other issues, but get this one out of the way. It's really not important.
Me too. I can get more for my buck building a gaming rig than buying an out of the box Mac for the same purpose. Also, I can get the games faster on the PC.
I'm hoping that the next Xbox is pretty killer because spending $$$ on a PC to use as a gaming rig is a pretty expensive toy. I've fallen WAY behind. I'm still using an old Radeon 8500 and it is really showing it's age.
the day most computer games come out on mac before they do on pc, I'll switch to mac as my main rig.
While just about anything else I do with a computer, I'd rather do with a mac than a pc, I only spend about 5% of my time doing those things, while the other 95% of it is gaming.
Ultimately, for my uses, mac and pc are apples and oranges. I need an orange far more than an apple...
>>>>>For a computer that costs 1500 dollars more than another computer, but crashes less than 1/15th as often, the choice is VERY clear: Go with the more expensive computer. From my (limited) experience with compiling in both a Mac and PC environment (Win2k, not WinXP), the Mac seems to be more stable.
Cost does not dictate the security or stability of a computer or a paritcular platform. If that stability comes from a hardware perspective than perhaps that argument is valid. However, to say that a Mac is more money because it "crashes" less doesn't compute.
You mention your "limited" experience in compiling in both Mac and PC environments. I program using the dreaded .NET framework and never have any problems with my computer choking or crashing during a compile. Perhaps you've got some real funky source code there. Let alone is an hour wasted for a reboot or network authentication, etc.
>>>>>>I am able to run more applications on the Mac than on the PC without the risk of crashing out something critical. That initial cost isn't necessarily "more expensive".
I think you're speaking more from personal experience and comfort with a particular platform. There are many factors involved with a crash not just the OS. What if you're playing a game on the Mac and a bug in the driver causes a reboot at a specific point in the game. Is that a problem with the OS? In fact, I give a lot of props to XP for their crash analysis which can very often lead you to a great description of the problem and a resolution.
Your argument about the increased costs of running a Windows network as opposed to a Mac network don't stack up. Firstly, that would require everyone in the organization be acclimated with the Mac which wouldn't be likely in most situations.
Secondly any admin tests updates/patches on a few computers before a rollout. That's just commen sense. I'd do that on a Mac or PC because you're dealing with the potential of effecting multiple users running different machines and configurations.
Price issue: Depends on what you need. For a software developer, running compilations on a machine, that stability is absolutely critical. If, in the process of compiling something, my machine crashes, it takes me about an hour to figure out where I was in the compile, reboot the machine, re-log back in, blah blah blah, re-synch back up with other servers etc. If every hour of my time costs the company 100 dollars (includes overhead rates for letting me stay in this building, paying for my managers all the way up to CEO etc), then every time my computer crashes, the company wastes 100 dollars. For a computer that costs 1500 dollars more than another computer, but crashes less than 1/15th as often, the choice is VERY clear: Go with the more expensive computer. From my (limited) experience with compiling in both a Mac and PC environment (Win2k, not WinXP), the Mac seems to be more stable. I am able to run more applications on the Mac than on the PC without the risk of crashing out something critical. That initial cost isn't necessarily "more expensive".
Couple that with the administration costs for a PC centric work environment with a Mac centric work environment, and the lines favor more closely the Mac (experience has taught me this - We've usually need around 1 Mac Admin for every 150 users, vs. about 3 PC admins for the same number). Viruses and Malware just complicate matters atrociously (granted, most of those arguments can be made because PC's have such a disproportionate number of users - more attractive to exploits). The constant Windows Updates (and more importantly, testing the Windows Updates with custom software running on the computers to verify it won't adversely affect anything before you do a massive deployment) can also be an irritation.
So the cost issue boils down to (as always) What do you want to do with the computer? For me at home, I'd rather spend the extra time tinkering with my 1500 dollar Dell than with my 3000 dollar Mac... But I also play games :)
What I don't understand is why everyone makes it sound like like viruses/spyware/hack attacks are a Windows problem because of some integral flaw in the Windows operating system. While Windows obviously has security issues, the biggest reason for its vulnerability is that due to the 95% market share a similar proportion of virus writers/spammers/hackers target Windows. The malcreants who create security issues by writing viruses and spyware are out for a reason: either to make as much money as possible or to make as big a mess as possible, and the best way to do that is to target the 95% of the computers that use Windows.
I'm sure a lot of the Mac fans out there would love to have a ton of people switch to their "superior" operating system/hardware but if Apple were to gain every 20-30% of the market share it would start getting hit just as hard with viruses and spyware and what have you.
hi,
i love the applications and look of macs, however, i can't afford to buy one right now. i was wondering if there's any software out there that i can purchase and run on my pc that has a similar attractive look and features of mac apps, like the iCalendar. i don't want to use the emulator thing. i'd be willing to buy software. anyone know? THANKS!!
First: A very balanced and one of the best discussions on the topic I've seen in a decade. Kudos!
Second: Re the comment by #5 (and NOT "Johnny Five," who was far more discerning) than this jerk):
Another true believer in the theory that less is more. Wrong about Bush too (not that W is perfect, mind you, but what does he have to do with PC's vs. Macs?). And invokes Jesus Christ on HIS side. How many mistakes can someone make in that few sentences?
I suppose the independent R&D to compete against a vast industry that supports 98% of the market means there has to be a price premium for Macs, and a second source must be to hire the trendiest industrial designers to create their prestige level technological "objets d'art" that make people hunger to own something that in its way is undeniably cooler than an XP PC with its ugly semi-utilitarian interface.
But if I'm going to pay a premium, I not only want cool and cool features, and given that I also have to give up breadth (if not depth) of application choice, I want at least equal performance -- and given the memory speed, video cards, and other areas in which the Mac continues to lag behind, where it DOESN'T HAVE TO, everytime I think I'm finally going to put Wintel behind me, I just can't ever quite see the value equation.
So for me Apple could get my business by either closing the price gap (cutting prices) OR the performance gap (achieving true component parity or better throughout the machine), but unlike Mr. #5, I'll not pay more for less, i.e., I won't pay a premium price for a machine with the panache and status of a BMW Z3 and the performance of a Civic.
Especially considering that for 18 year MS vets like me, the "reverse learning curve" will be fairly high and lengthy as well before we even achieve the benefits of OS-Xdom.
Another factor is that companies like Adobe will NOT let me upgrade from the PC to Mac versions of their products during an upgrade cycle, even FURTHER (and dramatically in the case of products like Photoshop and Office)increasing the already high premium for switching. Now HERE's a place where Apple could maybe twist some arms and help potential migrators like me (eternally interested, but too tight-fisted to pay ANOTHER $700 for the PShop program we've already licensed).
Maybe (and now I'm going to get it from the Mac freaks, of whom my pro photographer nephew is one, with his unc's blessings given his field) if I really needed a status symbol to assuage my ego, I'd do it. Otherwise, I'll clunk along and run my anti-virus, firewall, spyware and spam programs and send the occasional curse in Redmond's direction.
I'm an x86 Linux user (approaching 2 year switching anniversary). I have recently been exposed to OS X in the computer labs at college (very recent Dells with iMacs interspersed). This is my opinion, after adding in my other WinXP experiences:
XP has some major task preemption regressions---heavy I/O in Explorer freezes the whole system, consistently. OS X---at least from these 800MHz G4 iMacs---blocks only the process taking up all the resources (Finder displaying a file's properties is shockingly costly).
As far as mice go, I can use a one-button mouse on a Mac or a two-button mouse on a PC. I personally prefer keyboard accelerators + three-button mouse + X-Windows paradigm of select to copy and middle-click to paste. So you're both losers there in my book. :P
tcsh > cmd. No contest.
I only wish I had my own Mac box to fool around with. Then I could give a full opinion.
* The content of this post assumes equally competent administration in both environments.
Doc and SD: I have to confess that the thought of a flourishing resale market for used Macs is a concept that hadn't occurred to me. Personal computers have been driven down to price levels so low that they're mostly considered disposable appliances here in the U.S.
The above is the link to the Compaq computer for sale at Walmart for $498.00 U.S. (275 GBP). There's no wait, you walk into Walmart and load a box into your shopping cart, just like you were buying a toaster or an electric toothbrush.
Dell, on the other hand, had a banner ad I saw just yesterday offering a P4 2.8Ghz PC with 256Mb DDR RAM, 40Gb hard drive, CD-RW drive, Windows XP, and a 17" monitor for $350 (194 GBP) after rebate.
When you can buy a brand-new P4 2.8Ghz system very nicely equipped from a major manufacturer for $350, nobody the states messes with used computer equipment
#37:
That's got to be at least a factor, I agree, but I'm not sure it's all of it. Some older Macs did have pretty bad screens.
#36/Doc:
Sorry for the point-by-point thing, but I figure it's the easiest way to do things.
>>>
I have bought & sold many Macs over seven years here in London & I just don't see this low end price nose dive you mention. It may happen elsewhere.
>>>
Low-end price dive? You mean the last-generation thing, right? I think I said that low-end parts actually have much better depreciation than midrange and high-end parts do; if I didn't, forgive me, I should have. The generation nosedive DOES exist, as you can see looking at the prices of PowerMac G4s before and after the G5's introduction. (Some of them do a better job of holding their values for the reason #37 touched on: they're often sold with really good monitors. Take a look at prices for just the box itself, then, or failing that with crappy monitors.) However, it's not as significant for the cheaper stuff, because there's really only so low that hardware can go. (It's smaller percentage-wise after a point, so it's way smaller cost-wise.)
>>>
You seem to be using the logic of 'XP won't run on a three year old PC therefore a Mac price must nosedive too'. If that isn't it then I don't see where you are coming from.
>>>
Err, no, I'm not. To restate, Mac depreciation is slow until the hardware is replaced by a MAJOR new generation (I'm not talking about revisions, although those will affect the accepted average sale price to some extent). It then jumps off a medium-sized cliff, then continues going down slowly. Look at PowerMac G4 prices..
And XP will run on a three-year-old PC so long as the PC was decent three years ago. Three years ago, an Athlon Thunderbird with 256MB of DDR would have been considered a solid midrange machine, and that machine would run XP pretty well (a memory upgrade would be nice for multitasking or gaming, but 256MB definitely isn't rock bottom). Irrelevant, I know, but I felt like bringing it up.
>>>
The oldest processor you can reasonably run OS X Panther on for Internet & Office apps is a 400MHz G3 - I have done it (I am typing now on a 600MHz G3). That makes the oldest Mac that can run the latest OS a Blue & White PowerMac G3 400MHz 'Yosemite' - released in January 1999 - just short of 6 years ago!
I've just installed Panther on a Pismo PowerBook G3 400 - released February 2000 - well over four years ago. Performance with a new 7200rpm Toshiba drive is perfectly useable for Office & Internet.
A friend just bought a Lombard PowerBook for £300 via eBay & loaded Panther - it was first released in May 1999.
>>>
Yep, never said anything about G3s not running OS X. I've heard that they're not very snappy with OS X, but that they're not as horrendously slow as, say, a PC with 128MB of RAM is running Windows XP (unstreamlined install).
On the oldest processor you can reasonably run XP on... XP doesn't really eat processors alive, it just takes up a ridiculous amount of memory. You can run XP reasonably well for office apps and web browsing on a Celeron-A, Pentium II, or early P3 so long as it has 256MB of RAM. IIRC, the Celeron-A era was late '98 to late '99, so XP will run just fine on a good six-year-old computer so long as it's given a $20~40US memory upgrade. (Assuming the machine didn't already have 256+MB of RAM, anyway, and I'm pretty sure that 256MB was a lot of RAM six years ago.) So that's not really a plus for PCs OR Macs there-- the earliest PC that'll run XP acceptably is a little older than the earliest Mac that'll run OS X acceptably, but older PCs will require (relatively inexpensive) memory upgrades.
>>>
As for the top end - "high-end PCs just have suicidal depreciation". Well, that isn't the case with PowerMacs here in London either. The Graphic Designers all buy them & you see a steady stream of them advertised when a new model comes out. They know that they can buy them for the business without sales tax (at 17.5%) and then sell them eight months later privately for pretty much what they paid for them to the public who see a 17.5% discount off the new prices as reasonable.
>>>
Indeed, it isn't-- that's why I said "PCs" (I'm not using "PC" to refer to computers in general, heh, don't worry). Like I said, depreciation for high-end Macs is quite low until you hit a generation gap.
>>>
If you want to check some Mac prices in London check:
http://www.loot.com
You'll find three G3 iMacs 500 & 600 MHz (3.5 to 4 years old) selling for £350 to £425.
>>>
Hmm, that seems a little high to me. Probably about right for me if you use a dollar sign instead of a pound sign. I'm guessing that's because people in the U.K. generally have to pay more for electronics than people in the U.S., but I wouldn't be surprised if there's a better reason.
>>>
Finally, depreciation is of particular concern to anyone buying an all-in-one computer. The cheapest way to upgrade it is usually to sell it and buy another newer one. With iMacs that is much cheaper than upgrading an equivalent PC - you get EVERYTHING new (including software) for about £100 to £250 (depending on model).
>>>
Not necessarily. If you sell your iMac after it's last-gen, you lose a significant amount of money. That said, all-in-one super-duper-proprietary PCs tend to be cheap pieces of excrement, so what little market value they have probably drops very quickly. Lesson learned: all-in-one PCs are to be avoided.
On the price thing... this has been discussed to death, but I'll take another stab at it. You are entirely correct that the Mac you bought cost $3000, and that you can get a very nice PC for $1500. That doesn't mean the two are directly comparable. The Mac is a *dual* 2GHz G5, for one thing. G5s are fairly comparable to Opterons/A64s, right down to the 64-bitness, so I submit that the correct hardware to compare in price to your Mac would be a dually Opteron 246 (2GHz), some motherboard with comparable features, and the other parts (memory, video card, HDD, etc.) you can probably get entirely equivalent versions of for each.
p.s. - wtf is up with 512MB memory in a dual 2GHz rig? o_O
The only reason iMacs hold their value is because when you sell it you are selling a perfectly good monitor with it. I bet I could sell a 486 with a 20 inch lcd for over a thousand bucks. My parents run windows XP on an Athlon 500 that i got almost 8 years ago, it does everything most Mac/PC users do, surf the web, and run office 2003, does that mean it's the best computer ever made, hell no. I use dual G5 macs at school all the time with Maya, photoshop, director, and a bunch of other multimedia apps. They work just fine, but any mac user saying their computers never crash need to try running/rendering maya scenes, I've seen them crash plenty. The only reason I buy all the new hottness for my pc is because I like playing games, and I like playing with computers. I could care less what type of computer people use, but I think it's funny how most mac fans talk about how the dual G5 can do everything blah blah blah, writing all this from eMacs because thats all they can afford.
I have bought & sold many Macs over seven years here in London & I just don't see this low end price nose dive you mention. It may happen elsewhere.
You seem to be using the logic of 'XP won't run on a three year old PC therefore a Mac price must nosedive too'. If that isn't it then I don't see where you are coming from.
The oldest processor you can reasonably run OS X Panther on for Internet & Office apps is a 400MHz G3 - I have done it (I am typing now on a 600MHz G3). That makes the oldest Mac that can run the latest OS a Blue & White PowerMac G3 400MHz 'Yosemite' - released in January 1999 - just short of 6 years ago!
I've just installed Panther on a Pismo PowerBook G3 400 - released February 2000 - well over four years ago. Performance with a new 7200rpm Toshiba drive is perfectly useable for Office & Internet.
A friend just bought a Lombard PowerBook for £300 via eBay & loaded Panther - it was first released in May 1999.
As for the top end - "high-end PCs just have suicidal depreciation". Well, that isn't the case with PowerMacs here in London either. The Graphic Designers all buy them & you see a steady stream of them advertised when a new model comes out. They know that they can buy them for the business without sales tax (at 17.5%) and then sell them eight months later privately for pretty much what they paid for them to the public who see a 17.5% discount off the new prices as reasonable.
You'll find three G3 iMacs 500 & 600 MHz (3.5 to 4 years old) selling for £350 to £425.
Finally, depreciation is of particular concern to anyone buying an all-in-one computer. The cheapest way to upgrade it is usually to sell it and buy another newer one. With iMacs that is much cheaper than upgrading an equivalent PC - you get EVERYTHING new (including software) for about £100 to £250 (depending on model).
I've just tried to configure a basic Compaq on their site:
Operating System - XP Pro SP2 vs. Mac OS X on eMac
Processor - Celeron D 325 (2.53 GHz) vs. 1.25GHz G4 PPC
Memory - 256MB PC2700 vs. 256MB DDR333
Hard Drive - 40 GB vs. 40GB
Optical Drive - CD-RW/DVD-ROM vs. CD-RW/DVD-ROM
Ports - USB + legacy vs. USB, Firewire
Network card - no mention vs. on board
Graphics Card - Integrated Graphics vs. ATi radeon 9200 32MB
Sound Card - Integrated 5.1 Capable vs. Integrated not 5.1 Capable
Monitors - 17" flat CRT monitor vs. 17" flat CRT monitor
Speakers - JBL Platinum Speakers vs. Internal Harmon Kardons
Software - Works Suite 2004+Word 2002 vs. Mail, iChat AV, Address Book, QuickTime, iLife (includes iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, GarageBand), iCal, AppleWorks, Quicken 2004 for Mac, World Book 2004 Edition, Sound Studio, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 4, Deimos Rising, Zinio Reader
Form - Standard Tower - Small Form Factor
I think those two are roughly comparable - I rate the G4 over a Celeron & the Radeon 9200 over an on-board chipset sharing system RAM. I rate the Mac software over Works but the PC sound card over the Mac. I suspect the eMac CRT will be better & the design - well the PC just wasn't. The Compaq appears to have no firewire or network card.
PRICE: Compaq $761.98 and then play around trying to get a $100 mail-in rebate to take it to 661.98. Network & a decent firewire card will take that to around $720. If you need a Garageband equivalent you're going to pass the eMac price.
eMac - $799
I am not familiar with second hand PC prices but you say a three year old PC is worthless - I have heard similar from other PC users but I imagine it is still worth a couple of hundred bucks. A three year old Mac is most certainly not worthless. A three year old iMac here in London sells without difficulty for between £300 & £380 (depending on RAM & condition). Trying to take out the UK sales tax element for you (17.5% - it isn't payable 2nd hand but it inflates UK prices initially) and convert into $ those figures are very approximately $446 to $566.
That gives the PC an approximate three year cost of $520
The eMac is much cheaper at between $353 and $233.
So, I hope you see why I suggested that careless "Macs are expensive comments" are only of service to insecure PC users who are comforted by incompetent maths... and, before I get flamed, I don't suggest for a minute that description fits any of the discerning readers of Anandtech.
By the way this was written on a three year old Dalmatian iMac running the latest version of OS X 10.3.5 without a hitch.
#30 - er, like I said, most of the "A" list PC games are out for Mac. They are just faster on cheaper PCs. I'm not bored, just frustrated at getting low FPS.
I agree with #31. I once bought and sold an iMac 9 months apart. Because it was still the newest variety when I sold it - nothing new came out - I litterally paid $10 a month to essentially rent the machine. I thought that was neat. One thing that needs to always be remembered is that there is a place for Macintosh in this world. There are people that just 'get it', and always think that it's the definition of a computer. I work with someone like this, and he's got the iPod, and uses all the extra software brick-a-brack that comes with the Mac. It's his thing, he loves it. You do 'pay' for that stuff in a way, but it does increase the value of the system to people that use it. To apple (and their customers) Mac's are systems, not parts. Solutions, not computers.
#23/26 (maybe it'd be easier if I just said Doc?), but resale value doesn't matter to some people. I'll put that aside, though. Most of us don't collect computers like geeky pack rats. Don't look at me like that.
Anyway, one can still raise the price argument quite easily based on their own habits (how long they plan to keep it, for example, and whether or not they buy high end); if X costs $500 new and Y costs $800 new, and after A years (yeah, so I'm being vague) X has depreciated to $250 and Y has depreciated to $450, X was still the better value overall, with an overall cost of $250 instead of $350. These numbers aren't being generous to the cheaper computer, either; it just happens that depreciation is weaker at the low end.
There is an interesting phenomenon with Mac depreciation I'd like to mention while I'm rambling like an idiot: depreciation is very low until your hardware is suddenly last-generation (I mean last-generation in a major sense; ex. G3 vs. G4). It then takes a very large dive. PC depreciation is relatively steady, though... probably because generation gaps are smaller and more frequent with PCs. At any rate, this means that depreciation for Macs will usual cause them to be a worse buy at first, but over time draw even and possibly (depending on comparison) become better buys-- until you reach the generation gap. Then the process repeats.
What about versus high-end PCs instead of just low-end or midrange ones, though? Well, high-end PCs just have suicidal depreciation. Anyone trying to defend the long-term price:performance of a high-end machine is being defensive or stupid. The same would apply to Macs if it weren't for that wonderful generation gap thing: depreciation is very slow until you hit that. (after that, yes, it still applies.)
Last thing to note: the PC will fare much better if it's a home-built model, because home-built models cost much less to build but depreciate to about the same prices as more expensive equivalent OEM models. It's very hard to defend buying an OEM PC for personal usage (assuming at least semi-normal circumstances) if you're reading AnandTech. This is irrelevant to the "what's better for the average person" thing, but then I doubt that debate can be very difficult to resolve. (Note on note: OEM PCs at the low end fare about as well as home-builts. This is because low-end OEM PCs cost about as much. They're generally built with crappier parts, but plenty of people who buy used PCs don't know that.)
Executive summary: Maybe, maybe not. It depends. (God, don't you hate hearing that?)
$498 for Compaq Celeron 325 D system
$799 for Apple eMac
Value of both computers after 36 months = $0.00
Depreciation is not a big concern...
#27 - I'm not sure that Mac owners are all that entertainment deprived. A quick look at Amazon.com's Mac video game section reveals a lot of great titles at reasonable prices:
$33.99 - Warcraft III Battle Chest
$29.99 - Diablo II Battle Chest
$39.99 - Railroad Tycoon 3
Halo, Call of Duty: United Front, Unreal Tournament 2k4, Neverwinter Nights, EverQuest, Shadowbane, Medal of Honor Deluxe Edition, XIII, Return to Wolfenstein, No One Lives Forever and NOLF 2, Dungeon Siege, Homerworld 2, Age of Mythology, Fallout 1 & 2, Freedom Force, Dues Ex, The Sims, Tony Hawk Skating 2,3, and 4, Tiger Woods Golf, Links Golf Championship Edition, F1 Championship Season, and Nascar Racing are all available for Mac gamers.
If you own a Mac and you're bored, you're just not trying very hard.
Apple has been successful in maintaining the Mac's superiority as a niche product. You have a group of rabid followers that "hoot and holler" everytime Steve Jobs farts.
Good article, though I would add that there is a bit more to the games aspect.
The selection of games for the Mac is actually pretty good, and getting better - most of the A list games are out for Mac due to a profitable licencing model for Mac porting houses. There are certainly more than I have time to play.
That being said, I am seriously considering buying a PC for games (which is why I am reading Anandtech these days). The reason is that the combination of slow CPUs, expensive GPUs and speed reductions due to ported software mean that PCs are much better value for playing games. For example, Battlefield 1942 minimum specs are a 500 Mhz P3 or an 867 Mhz G4; the former came out in 1999, the latter in 2001.
That being said, I intend to use the PC only for games; I will continue to use my Mac for everything else, which it will handle just fine for years to come.
For those who feel depreciation isn't an issue - which car is cheaper:
Ford Focus 1.4 LX 5d - £12302 - 3 year depreciation to £6625 - cost £5677
VW Golf 1.6 16V S 5d - £12815 - 3 year depreciation to £7420 - cost £5395
Clearly, what one wants in a new purchase is an item of quality which depreciates slowly. When buying second hand one wants an item of quality that depreciated quickly initially.
Rolex watches are cheaper to buy new than Ebel because though they cost more initially they hold their value better... in the UK. Nissan Micras are reliable small cars which suffer from high initial depreciation - perhaps due to styling. Thus, they are poor value new but great value nearly new.
It is facile to say Macs are more expensive than PCs as new purchases. Do the Maths.
The theory behind it isn't to have a two handed interface, it's to FORCE developers to put all options accessable from a single button. That's part of the idea behind the action button in the finder.
Interesting article. Generally well balanced. I have four comments:
The price issue is mentioned with the usual confident dismissal of Apple's pricing without any accompanying data. Do your research on pricing, including depreciaton, before coming to an opinion - and don't compare home built with warranteed major manufacturer prices. It's as reasonable as comparing Ferraris with kit cars. I've done the numbers over & over again & I can not find any way that PCs are not significantly more expensive than Apple's computers - like for like, when bought & sold over a period of a year... but don't take my word for it - do the research & publish it.
Buying a $3000 computer to play games when an XBox costs $200 seems surprising to me - then I don't play games... but not choosing a Mac on that basis is somewhat like not buying an Ariel Atom because it doesn't have a radio.
Performance: "The system is expensive; you can get much more PC for the same price". I am assuming you mean performance and not weight, noise, or number of components. Yet you then go on to say that the G5 is faster in some regards than any dual Xeon/Opteron system you have ever used. You say that the ordinary Seagate SATA 7200rpm gave you better email search than a 10000rpm Raptor (it's much quieter too). The last time I checked the price of Dells that the G5 out-gunned in PCMag tests the Dells were $1500 more than the Mac. I'd like to know where to buy significantly greater performance than the G5 for significantly less & benefit from the low depreciation of Macs too. I've been searching - so did Virginia Tech.
You did not mention Windows' Achilles Heel - file searching. You mentioned searching email subjects & contents but not simple trying to locate things on a large drive. I have an old iMac G3 with a laughably slow 600MHz processor that searches a full Seagate 200GB with well over 100,000 files on it virtually as fast as I can type. Anyone who has searched using Windows wishes they had set up hardware RAID SCSI 10000rpm drives.
Thanks for the article. Thanks for braving the criticism of people who don't want to consider anything new. Please continue with some benchmarking and some real world pricing - including depreciation. You're in for a surprise.
The issue of 1 button versus n-button mouse is not an issue that can be decided by a generic logical argument. Its an ergonomic issue intertwined with a GUI design issue. Its also an issue of personal preference but I think that the issue of GUI design is more important. OS X is very easy to use with a one button mouse. I occasionally use the option or command key but its relatively rare and doesn't warrant giving up the ergonomic simplicity of one button. You can design a GUI that is more difficult to use with only one button, e.g. GUI's built on X11, but that isn't an argument for multiple buttons any more than it is an argument against GUI's that require more than one button.
On the other hand, if you buy into the need to argue about the number of buttons on the mouse then you have to ask yourself how many buttons are optimal. Ultimately you might consider putting optical sensors underneath the four corners of your keyboard so that you can slide it around on your desk.
Then you could keep both hands on the keyboard all the time.
I'd be surprised to know that you couldn't buy something like this already. If you are going to persue the n-button mouse as a logical issue then consistency may require you to get one of these keyboard mice :-)
1. For work use, if you include the cost of support and your time, a Windows machine can be extremely expensive. For hobby-hackers, gamers and people who enjoy system maintenance and solving computer mysteries, Windows machines can be a real bargain.
2. If you take the most expensive computer that either Dell or Apple makes and assert without qualification that someone else makes a much less expensive computer then you will be correct but are you saying anything useful or very relavant.
3. Apple offers AppleCare for about 10% of the price of the machine. This is a lot of money but it is inexpensive when you consider the level and quality of support and the fact that it covers both hardware and software. You might have a hard time finding anything like this at this price for a Windows machine. If you are buying a machine to do work and you don't have a support person and you don't want to spend your own time fixing your machine then this is a huge deal.
4. Anand's evaluation of the Mac G5 is good but not objective and that is fine with me. He evaluated it in the categories and with priorities that were most important to him and he told everyone what those categories and priorities were and why they were important to him. Anyone can read it and decide how their own usage and preferences relate to what he said. The fact that the evaluation still came out pretty good is a very postive statement about the Mac. For my usage the Mac is clearly superior and an outstanding bargain. I gave up on Windows long ago and have seen absolutely nothing that makes me want to go back.
I use the two-button mouse at home and a one-button mouse at work. Surprisingly, this does not cause any discomfort at all when I go from work to home and vice versa. This is explained by the fact that I grew up using a Mac.
I can see, however, that most PC users will find it incredibly hard without the second button since they use the second button instead of keyboard shortcuts for most chores including cut and paste etc. Thus, many PC users refuse to use the Mac because of the one mouse button.
IMHO, a second button is useful but not really necessary on the Mac.
There are only a few things I fell you didn't quite cover (Some have already been mentioned by others). But the one thing that stands out in my mind is that you actually didn't mention the applications you can only run on the mac.
Fx. Logic Pro/Express 6 and above, Bias Peak, amongst other audio programs, plus various graphics apps that I don't use. :)
As I use my mac (PBTi 1GHz, 768MB, etc.) to produce music, I can only speak for that specific user group, but for that specific purpose the mac is beautiful.
I have a D2.5 G5 on order with 2GB, and a GF6800U DDL, and I am expecting it to kick some serous butt in Logic Pro 6 (Eventually Logic Pro 7).
I have never really thought of the mac as a platform to replace the pc, but rather as a platform to do completely different things with. I would never trust my PC (Athlon XP 1700+ clocked to about 1850 MHz running perfectly for days/months on end without restarts) to perform a live-act as there are way too many small things that won't, in my mind at least, work to the benefit of the performance (For instance bad caching and random small flaws related to multitasking).
This is very much my own opinion and I do not expect to change anyones opinions, but I would just like to suggest some coverage of the above subjects.
I consider this an excellent and balanced article from a PC user's perspective.
The only quibble I had was that the article seemed to indicate that one needed a minimum $3,000 dollar computer to get any decent performance on the Mac. I am currently using a 733Mhz running Jaguar at work and and a 1.33 Mhz Powerbook at home running Panther, both with 1.26 GB RAM. Os X runs fine on both machines.
I think of the 'tortoise and the hare' fable when I compare and PCs and Macs. The PC runs really fast but is stopped to recover from time to time (viruses, malware, not great multitasking- my colleague, for e.g. does not do anything on the PC while the computer is burning a disc). The Mac keeps chugging on tirelessly. Sure, some aspects of the interface can be zippier-that is not a problem with the hardware but the Os. Os 9 runs really fast on 200 Mhz G3!
I don't think the Mac aficionados are doing Apple a service by constantly trying to the PC public how great the Mac is.
This article will at least open the eyes of some PC users to consider the Mac. Once again congratulations on a great article.
Best wishes and regards
PS:
@#16: I am really tempted by that low price. I would like to buy a small form factor PC that is really cheap and can run Fritz, the chess program, decently. Somehow, I have this niggling feeling, that even Anand, would not recommend that system for most PC users. But the 799 eMac, with additional memory, will handle quite adequately movie and music editing for the ordinary home user without the worries about viruses, spyware etc.
Given the Mac's long history of being expensive compared to its PC counterparts, I have to admit that I was pretty impressed when I saw what the eMac had to offer at the $799 price point. On the surface, it looks like a good value, but a trip to Wal-Mart quickly dispells that illusion:
$799 eMac - 40Gb hard drive, 256Mb DDR memory, CD-RW/DVD-ROM combo drive, 17" monitor. Nice quality computer with major manufacturer warranty support.
$498 Compaq - 40Gb hard drive, 256Mb DDR memory, CD-RW drive, 17" monitor. Nice quality computer with major manufacturer warranty support.
Is a 1.25Ghz Power PC chip better than a 2.53Ghz Celeron 325D? Is OS X wildly better than XP Home? Is a 32Mb Radeon 9200SE video chipset significantly less useless than Intel integrated graphics?
Even at entry level, Apple is faced with being marginally superior at almost twice the price. I won't argue that the eMac isn't a better piece of hardware than a $498 Compaq. 19 people out of 20 shopping for a PC, however, would choose the Compaq and keep the $300 they saved.
The problem with the article, in its original form, could have used some better fact checking, particularly the bit about installing apps. Drag and Drop is one method. Other apps make use of an installer. Some use the OS X Installer app while others use different installers from 3rd parties. Even with the update, that sectin of the article is a bit misleading.
Plus his comments on Mac gaming would suggest he didn't even bother to dig too deep into Mac gaming. It is significantly better than it was several years ago. More and more games are being released for Macs every year. How is that not better?
Great article, Anand! As always, a clear, iluminating, and concise article.
From my limited exposure,(mostly at the local Apple store at the mall!) OS X is a great OS! I've been involved in supporting OSes ever since DOS 3.1, up to Win XP XP2, also NT 4.0 and up to a furtive look at Win 2003 Server, a work required support of UNIX System V/386,(ah, I remember the command line interface!) and others. Every OS had its quirks and their own little way of getting things that have to be done. I just think OS X is further along in some areas, equal is some other areas, and somewhat(?)
behind in the rest. Yes, this is an opinion, and the article was Anand's based on his experiences for 30 days.
In my case, if $ were no object. I would jump in with both feet!
I have to say I disagree with you, Mr. #5. While you can argue that Bush refuses to admit he was wrong about invading Iraq, and Anand also refuses to admit he's wrong about the price difference between Macs and PCs, I don't think you can take this evidence alone and reasonably conclude that Bush and Anand are alike. Lets look at a few points and see how the two stack up:
Bush: Cheated his way into his current occupation
Anand: Pioneered an industry (pc hardware analysis) that has resulted in more jobs, more money flowing out of the Intels of the world and into small businesses and their employees (via advertising), and increased consumer awareness. AKA, earned his money and created his occupation the old-fashioned American Dream way.
Bush: Sends 138,000 American troops to Iraq for no good reason, gets 1000 of them killed, and kills many innocent civilians in the process.
Anand: No, not even close.
Bush: Illiterate
Anand: Quite literate.
Bush: Looks like a monkey
Anand: Looks like a person.
Bush: Filthy rich.
Anand: Not quite sure - i suspect he's rich, but in more of a clean way. We'll count this as a similarity, out of pity for the monkeyish looking shrubery.
Bush (and co.): will have me sent to Guantanamo Bay indefinitely after the FBI reads this, and everything else that i write that's anti-Bush.
Anand: will either laugh after he reads this, or think "stupid tard hijacked my blog for political/comedic purposes."
Bush: refuses to admit he was wrong about Iraq, because he's trying to get re-elected
Anand: refuses to admit he was wrong about the comparison he made between mac pricing and PC pricing because he wasn't wrong. Or at least because he's taken a good look at the facts and truly believes he wasn't wrong - that's what really counts.
In closing, we have more differences than similarities. Anand, I dub you "not very much like Dubya." Mr. #5 and Mr. Bush, I dub you "the painfully ignorant duo."
I agree with #11: How many times does Anand have to tell you all that the article was his opinion, hence, no objective performance numbers or the like. The title of the article states, "a die-hard PC user's experience". It is his experience and it is his opinion.
I bet people like #5 have no idea what they are talking about. I bet if you were to meet face to face with Anand and start a debate with him about technical stuff, he will easily beat stupid fools like you.
Macs are highly overpriced. Apparently you Mac fans can't see that.
the crap anand has to put up with...
listen people, if you can't quantify it, it's probably an opinion... and if it comes from anand and is about computers it's a @#$%ing expert opinion... he said it was subjective enough times to break the 11,000 word limit on the article
honestly, do you guys go up to everyone who isn't dressed like you and scream "hey, you paid too much for your clothes and they don't perform as well as mine!!"?
I mean thinking it all the time is petty enough (sometimes is ok), but to keep harping on it is just annoying
First, #5 needs to shut up. Both the George W analogy and the final (jc) comment ticked me off immensely.
I have used Macs a good bit and like them a good bit. Like Linux, it's a nice change from Windows. But I am a firm [b]dis[/b]believer in the single-button mouse. Bad decision as i see it.
Excellent article Anand & best wishes with your marriange.
Thanks for a great article Anand! It was completely unbiased, and is possibly the single most useful article I have ever read comparing the two Operating Systems.
Although I am not going to be an idiot like #5... I would agree that the $1300 new iMac (2 inches thick) and the $800 eMac would compete directly with those $1500 dollar machines you are talking about. I currently own a $2000 (last generation) iMac and I love it! It won't be as fast as the G5, but it would definately be comparable to any $2000 Dell. Since I have had it (about 1 year now) it has only crashed once, never had a virus. I am truly pleased it came with iLife applications (something that is hard to put a price on, and I believe the most important thing left out of your article) iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, and iTunes work so seamlessly together it is hard to describe... it just works.
The price arguement is still wrong. I can't beleive that you don't realize that you can easily get a new imac for sub $1500 price and will compete with the systems you talk about getting for $1500. You are like Bush and can't admit you are wrong. Jesus Christ.
Hahah. That is a very good article. I'm pleased that you produced the pros and cons of the product. I, myself work in an Apple Center but have a PC prefference. For Apple, the price is merely a profit plan (not for Apple but the third party people who handle, ships, distribute... etc). The OS is simply "Idiot Proof". If only the prices were better......if...
(This is a personal view, it has nothing to do with apple or it's associate companies).
Anand,
I agree with you that price matters a lot. For example, based on what my hourly time is set at, if I spend 5-8 hrs over the course of 6 months detoxing my XP box from malware (including everything about that process from evaluation of virus and spyware apps to management of same, etc.), then the price-performance advantage vs a Mac with OSX changes quickly.
If you get the opportunity, please share with your PC-centric readers some of the very cool freeware and shareware apps that greatly expand the customizing choices for Panther. You won't find these at BestBuy, but the web is a tremendous resource for this good stuff. Please keep investigating and writing...your articles make great reading!
I liked the article. Keep up the good work, and put pressure on apple as being the first hardcore-credible enthusiast website to put the brakes on the Reality Distortion Field, while enjoying the end product for what it is... usually very nice - but not as nice as marketing says. Thats my biggest peeve with apple.
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53 Comments
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Anonymous - Monday, November 29, 2004 - link
Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy.Heck, you could have bought a BMW for what you paid for that damn thing. HA HA.
Sam - Friday, November 19, 2004 - link
Anand.. GREAT ARTICLE. I am a recent "switcher" though I still have my trusty Dull lapdog with XP Pro (1.7 P-M) for on the road business apps...I got the new Dual 2.5 G5 (liquid cooled!).. with the Nvidia 6800 Ultra, a 30" Apple Screen and a 23".. along with 8GB RAM and 2 10000RPM Raptors in a software raid.. and I'm in freaking heaven. Maya Unlimited just smokes on this thing!
Oh yes... it's damn expensive and I don't care. I love it. It's a BMW and my PC is a Chevy!
Anonymous - Tuesday, October 26, 2004 - link
I'm sorry I just can't. I just can't understand why after all this time of ripping off the mouse from Xerox that Apple can't put another damn button on their mouse.Call it context menu envy.
melgross - Tuesday, October 26, 2004 - link
I don't see what the problem is with the issue of the number of buttons on a mouse.OS X recognizes a three button mouse (or trackball) with scroll wheel, out of the box. No drivers needed.
While I too disagree with Apple giving only a one button mouse, look at the aftermarket out there.
You can't say that most of those mice and trackballs are being sold to one button Mac users. If a major excuse for not liking the Mac is that mouse, buy another one for $10.
I use a Microsoft Trackball Optical with four buttons and a wheel. So what's the problem?
I'll bet that a number of guys who mention the one button mouse are themselves using aftermarket units.
There's a reason why there are so many manufactures, both large and small, out there.
Even Microsoft realizes that people aren't happy with the standard mouse.
So if I'm a PC user and unhappy, or a Mac user and unhappy, I have a place to go. What's the difference?
Surely you can't think that a $10 mouse should decide which platform you use?
I know that some of you have other issues, but get this one out of the way. It's really not important.
Anonymous - Monday, October 25, 2004 - link
Me too. I can get more for my buck building a gaming rig than buying an out of the box Mac for the same purpose. Also, I can get the games faster on the PC.I'm hoping that the next Xbox is pretty killer because spending $$$ on a PC to use as a gaming rig is a pretty expensive toy. I've fallen WAY behind. I'm still using an old Radeon 8500 and it is really showing it's age.
eastvillager - Saturday, October 23, 2004 - link
the day most computer games come out on mac before they do on pc, I'll switch to mac as my main rig.While just about anything else I do with a computer, I'd rather do with a mac than a pc, I only spend about 5% of my time doing those things, while the other 95% of it is gaming.
Ultimately, for my uses, mac and pc are apples and oranges. I need an orange far more than an apple...
Anonymous - Thursday, October 21, 2004 - link
>>>>>For a computer that costs 1500 dollars more than another computer, but crashes less than 1/15th as often, the choice is VERY clear: Go with the more expensive computer. From my (limited) experience with compiling in both a Mac and PC environment (Win2k, not WinXP), the Mac seems to be more stable.Cost does not dictate the security or stability of a computer or a paritcular platform. If that stability comes from a hardware perspective than perhaps that argument is valid. However, to say that a Mac is more money because it "crashes" less doesn't compute.
You mention your "limited" experience in compiling in both Mac and PC environments. I program using the dreaded .NET framework and never have any problems with my computer choking or crashing during a compile. Perhaps you've got some real funky source code there. Let alone is an hour wasted for a reboot or network authentication, etc.
>>>>>>I am able to run more applications on the Mac than on the PC without the risk of crashing out something critical. That initial cost isn't necessarily "more expensive".
I think you're speaking more from personal experience and comfort with a particular platform. There are many factors involved with a crash not just the OS. What if you're playing a game on the Mac and a bug in the driver causes a reboot at a specific point in the game. Is that a problem with the OS? In fact, I give a lot of props to XP for their crash analysis which can very often lead you to a great description of the problem and a resolution.
Your argument about the increased costs of running a Windows network as opposed to a Mac network don't stack up. Firstly, that would require everyone in the organization be acclimated with the Mac which wouldn't be likely in most situations.
Secondly any admin tests updates/patches on a few computers before a rollout. That's just commen sense. I'd do that on a Mac or PC because you're dealing with the potential of effecting multiple users running different machines and configurations.
BLAH!
urk - Wednesday, October 20, 2004 - link
Price issue: Depends on what you need. For a software developer, running compilations on a machine, that stability is absolutely critical. If, in the process of compiling something, my machine crashes, it takes me about an hour to figure out where I was in the compile, reboot the machine, re-log back in, blah blah blah, re-synch back up with other servers etc. If every hour of my time costs the company 100 dollars (includes overhead rates for letting me stay in this building, paying for my managers all the way up to CEO etc), then every time my computer crashes, the company wastes 100 dollars. For a computer that costs 1500 dollars more than another computer, but crashes less than 1/15th as often, the choice is VERY clear: Go with the more expensive computer. From my (limited) experience with compiling in both a Mac and PC environment (Win2k, not WinXP), the Mac seems to be more stable. I am able to run more applications on the Mac than on the PC without the risk of crashing out something critical. That initial cost isn't necessarily "more expensive".Couple that with the administration costs for a PC centric work environment with a Mac centric work environment, and the lines favor more closely the Mac (experience has taught me this - We've usually need around 1 Mac Admin for every 150 users, vs. about 3 PC admins for the same number). Viruses and Malware just complicate matters atrociously (granted, most of those arguments can be made because PC's have such a disproportionate number of users - more attractive to exploits). The constant Windows Updates (and more importantly, testing the Windows Updates with custom software running on the computers to verify it won't adversely affect anything before you do a massive deployment) can also be an irritation.
So the cost issue boils down to (as always) What do you want to do with the computer? For me at home, I'd rather spend the extra time tinkering with my 1500 dollar Dell than with my 3000 dollar Mac... But I also play games :)
Good article, Anand, by the way.
Anonymous - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link
What I don't understand is why everyone makes it sound like like viruses/spyware/hack attacks are a Windows problem because of some integral flaw in the Windows operating system. While Windows obviously has security issues, the biggest reason for its vulnerability is that due to the 95% market share a similar proportion of virus writers/spammers/hackers target Windows. The malcreants who create security issues by writing viruses and spyware are out for a reason: either to make as much money as possible or to make as big a mess as possible, and the best way to do that is to target the 95% of the computers that use Windows.I'm sure a lot of the Mac fans out there would love to have a ton of people switch to their "superior" operating system/hardware but if Apple were to gain every 20-30% of the market share it would start getting hit just as hard with viruses and spyware and what have you.
ang - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link
hi,i love the applications and look of macs, however, i can't afford to buy one right now. i was wondering if there's any software out there that i can purchase and run on my pc that has a similar attractive look and features of mac apps, like the iCalendar. i don't want to use the emulator thing. i'd be willing to buy software. anyone know? THANKS!!
Jimmy Z - Sunday, October 17, 2004 - link
First: A very balanced and one of the best discussions on the topic I've seen in a decade. Kudos!Second: Re the comment by #5 (and NOT "Johnny Five," who was far more discerning) than this jerk):
Another true believer in the theory that less is more. Wrong about Bush too (not that W is perfect, mind you, but what does he have to do with PC's vs. Macs?). And invokes Jesus Christ on HIS side. How many mistakes can someone make in that few sentences?
I suppose the independent R&D to compete against a vast industry that supports 98% of the market means there has to be a price premium for Macs, and a second source must be to hire the trendiest industrial designers to create their prestige level technological "objets d'art" that make people hunger to own something that in its way is undeniably cooler than an XP PC with its ugly semi-utilitarian interface.
But if I'm going to pay a premium, I not only want cool and cool features, and given that I also have to give up breadth (if not depth) of application choice, I want at least equal performance -- and given the memory speed, video cards, and other areas in which the Mac continues to lag behind, where it DOESN'T HAVE TO, everytime I think I'm finally going to put Wintel behind me, I just can't ever quite see the value equation.
So for me Apple could get my business by either closing the price gap (cutting prices) OR the performance gap (achieving true component parity or better throughout the machine), but unlike Mr. #5, I'll not pay more for less, i.e., I won't pay a premium price for a machine with the panache and status of a BMW Z3 and the performance of a Civic.
Especially considering that for 18 year MS vets like me, the "reverse learning curve" will be fairly high and lengthy as well before we even achieve the benefits of OS-Xdom.
Another factor is that companies like Adobe will NOT let me upgrade from the PC to Mac versions of their products during an upgrade cycle, even FURTHER (and dramatically in the case of products like Photoshop and Office)increasing the already high premium for switching. Now HERE's a place where Apple could maybe twist some arms and help potential migrators like me (eternally interested, but too tight-fisted to pay ANOTHER $700 for the PShop program we've already licensed).
Maybe (and now I'm going to get it from the Mac freaks, of whom my pro photographer nephew is one, with his unc's blessings given his field) if I really needed a status symbol to assuage my ego, I'd do it. Otherwise, I'll clunk along and run my anti-virus, firewall, spyware and spam programs and send the occasional curse in Redmond's direction.
Anonymous - Saturday, October 16, 2004 - link
I'm an x86 Linux user (approaching 2 year switching anniversary). I have recently been exposed to OS X in the computer labs at college (very recent Dells with iMacs interspersed). This is my opinion, after adding in my other WinXP experiences:XP has some major task preemption regressions---heavy I/O in Explorer freezes the whole system, consistently. OS X---at least from these 800MHz G4 iMacs---blocks only the process taking up all the resources (Finder displaying a file's properties is shockingly costly).
As far as mice go, I can use a one-button mouse on a Mac or a two-button mouse on a PC. I personally prefer keyboard accelerators + three-button mouse + X-Windows paradigm of select to copy and middle-click to paste. So you're both losers there in my book. :P
tcsh > cmd. No contest.
I only wish I had my own Mac box to fool around with. Then I could give a full opinion.
* The content of this post assumes equally competent administration in both environments.
Big_Ed_Mustafa - Friday, October 15, 2004 - link
Doc and SD: I have to confess that the thought of a flourishing resale market for used Macs is a concept that hadn't occurred to me. Personal computers have been driven down to price levels so low that they're mostly considered disposable appliances here in the U.S.http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.gsp?product...
The above is the link to the Compaq computer for sale at Walmart for $498.00 U.S. (275 GBP). There's no wait, you walk into Walmart and load a box into your shopping cart, just like you were buying a toaster or an electric toothbrush.
Dell, on the other hand, had a banner ad I saw just yesterday offering a P4 2.8Ghz PC with 256Mb DDR RAM, 40Gb hard drive, CD-RW drive, Windows XP, and a 17" monitor for $350 (194 GBP) after rebate.
When you can buy a brand-new P4 2.8Ghz system very nicely equipped from a major manufacturer for $350, nobody the states messes with used computer equipment
Doc - Wednesday, October 13, 2004 - link
Interesting points SD - nice chatting with you.SD - Wednesday, October 13, 2004 - link
#37:That's got to be at least a factor, I agree, but I'm not sure it's all of it. Some older Macs did have pretty bad screens.
#36/Doc:
Sorry for the point-by-point thing, but I figure it's the easiest way to do things.
>>>
I have bought & sold many Macs over seven years here in London & I just don't see this low end price nose dive you mention. It may happen elsewhere.
>>>
Low-end price dive? You mean the last-generation thing, right? I think I said that low-end parts actually have much better depreciation than midrange and high-end parts do; if I didn't, forgive me, I should have. The generation nosedive DOES exist, as you can see looking at the prices of PowerMac G4s before and after the G5's introduction. (Some of them do a better job of holding their values for the reason #37 touched on: they're often sold with really good monitors. Take a look at prices for just the box itself, then, or failing that with crappy monitors.) However, it's not as significant for the cheaper stuff, because there's really only so low that hardware can go. (It's smaller percentage-wise after a point, so it's way smaller cost-wise.)
>>>
You seem to be using the logic of 'XP won't run on a three year old PC therefore a Mac price must nosedive too'. If that isn't it then I don't see where you are coming from.
>>>
Err, no, I'm not. To restate, Mac depreciation is slow until the hardware is replaced by a MAJOR new generation (I'm not talking about revisions, although those will affect the accepted average sale price to some extent). It then jumps off a medium-sized cliff, then continues going down slowly. Look at PowerMac G4 prices..
And XP will run on a three-year-old PC so long as the PC was decent three years ago. Three years ago, an Athlon Thunderbird with 256MB of DDR would have been considered a solid midrange machine, and that machine would run XP pretty well (a memory upgrade would be nice for multitasking or gaming, but 256MB definitely isn't rock bottom). Irrelevant, I know, but I felt like bringing it up.
>>>
The oldest processor you can reasonably run OS X Panther on for Internet & Office apps is a 400MHz G3 - I have done it (I am typing now on a 600MHz G3). That makes the oldest Mac that can run the latest OS a Blue & White PowerMac G3 400MHz 'Yosemite' - released in January 1999 - just short of 6 years ago!
I've just installed Panther on a Pismo PowerBook G3 400 - released February 2000 - well over four years ago. Performance with a new 7200rpm Toshiba drive is perfectly useable for Office & Internet.
A friend just bought a Lombard PowerBook for £300 via eBay & loaded Panther - it was first released in May 1999.
>>>
Yep, never said anything about G3s not running OS X. I've heard that they're not very snappy with OS X, but that they're not as horrendously slow as, say, a PC with 128MB of RAM is running Windows XP (unstreamlined install).
On the oldest processor you can reasonably run XP on... XP doesn't really eat processors alive, it just takes up a ridiculous amount of memory. You can run XP reasonably well for office apps and web browsing on a Celeron-A, Pentium II, or early P3 so long as it has 256MB of RAM. IIRC, the Celeron-A era was late '98 to late '99, so XP will run just fine on a good six-year-old computer so long as it's given a $20~40US memory upgrade. (Assuming the machine didn't already have 256+MB of RAM, anyway, and I'm pretty sure that 256MB was a lot of RAM six years ago.) So that's not really a plus for PCs OR Macs there-- the earliest PC that'll run XP acceptably is a little older than the earliest Mac that'll run OS X acceptably, but older PCs will require (relatively inexpensive) memory upgrades.
>>>
As for the top end - "high-end PCs just have suicidal depreciation". Well, that isn't the case with PowerMacs here in London either. The Graphic Designers all buy them & you see a steady stream of them advertised when a new model comes out. They know that they can buy them for the business without sales tax (at 17.5%) and then sell them eight months later privately for pretty much what they paid for them to the public who see a 17.5% discount off the new prices as reasonable.
>>>
Indeed, it isn't-- that's why I said "PCs" (I'm not using "PC" to refer to computers in general, heh, don't worry). Like I said, depreciation for high-end Macs is quite low until you hit a generation gap.
>>>
If you want to check some Mac prices in London check:
http://www.loot.com
You'll find three G3 iMacs 500 & 600 MHz (3.5 to 4 years old) selling for £350 to £425.
>>>
Hmm, that seems a little high to me. Probably about right for me if you use a dollar sign instead of a pound sign. I'm guessing that's because people in the U.K. generally have to pay more for electronics than people in the U.S., but I wouldn't be surprised if there's a better reason.
>>>
Finally, depreciation is of particular concern to anyone buying an all-in-one computer. The cheapest way to upgrade it is usually to sell it and buy another newer one. With iMacs that is much cheaper than upgrading an equivalent PC - you get EVERYTHING new (including software) for about £100 to £250 (depending on model).
>>>
Not necessarily. If you sell your iMac after it's last-gen, you lose a significant amount of money. That said, all-in-one super-duper-proprietary PCs tend to be cheap pieces of excrement, so what little market value they have probably drops very quickly. Lesson learned: all-in-one PCs are to be avoided.
Illissius - Wednesday, October 13, 2004 - link
On the price thing... this has been discussed to death, but I'll take another stab at it. You are entirely correct that the Mac you bought cost $3000, and that you can get a very nice PC for $1500. That doesn't mean the two are directly comparable. The Mac is a *dual* 2GHz G5, for one thing. G5s are fairly comparable to Opterons/A64s, right down to the 64-bitness, so I submit that the correct hardware to compare in price to your Mac would be a dually Opteron 246 (2GHz), some motherboard with comparable features, and the other parts (memory, video card, HDD, etc.) you can probably get entirely equivalent versions of for each.p.s. - wtf is up with 512MB memory in a dual 2GHz rig? o_O
Alex - Wednesday, October 13, 2004 - link
The only reason iMacs hold their value is because when you sell it you are selling a perfectly good monitor with it. I bet I could sell a 486 with a 20 inch lcd for over a thousand bucks. My parents run windows XP on an Athlon 500 that i got almost 8 years ago, it does everything most Mac/PC users do, surf the web, and run office 2003, does that mean it's the best computer ever made, hell no. I use dual G5 macs at school all the time with Maya, photoshop, director, and a bunch of other multimedia apps. They work just fine, but any mac user saying their computers never crash need to try running/rendering maya scenes, I've seen them crash plenty. The only reason I buy all the new hottness for my pc is because I like playing games, and I like playing with computers. I could care less what type of computer people use, but I think it's funny how most mac fans talk about how the dual G5 can do everything blah blah blah, writing all this from eMacs because thats all they can afford.Doc - Tuesday, October 12, 2004 - link
#31 SDI have bought & sold many Macs over seven years here in London & I just don't see this low end price nose dive you mention. It may happen elsewhere.
You seem to be using the logic of 'XP won't run on a three year old PC therefore a Mac price must nosedive too'. If that isn't it then I don't see where you are coming from.
The oldest processor you can reasonably run OS X Panther on for Internet & Office apps is a 400MHz G3 - I have done it (I am typing now on a 600MHz G3). That makes the oldest Mac that can run the latest OS a Blue & White PowerMac G3 400MHz 'Yosemite' - released in January 1999 - just short of 6 years ago!
I've just installed Panther on a Pismo PowerBook G3 400 - released February 2000 - well over four years ago. Performance with a new 7200rpm Toshiba drive is perfectly useable for Office & Internet.
A friend just bought a Lombard PowerBook for £300 via eBay & loaded Panther - it was first released in May 1999.
As for the top end - "high-end PCs just have suicidal depreciation". Well, that isn't the case with PowerMacs here in London either. The Graphic Designers all buy them & you see a steady stream of them advertised when a new model comes out. They know that they can buy them for the business without sales tax (at 17.5%) and then sell them eight months later privately for pretty much what they paid for them to the public who see a 17.5% discount off the new prices as reasonable.
If you want to check some Mac prices in London check:
http://www.loot.com
You'll find three G3 iMacs 500 & 600 MHz (3.5 to 4 years old) selling for £350 to £425.
Finally, depreciation is of particular concern to anyone buying an all-in-one computer. The cheapest way to upgrade it is usually to sell it and buy another newer one. With iMacs that is much cheaper than upgrading an equivalent PC - you get EVERYTHING new (including software) for about £100 to £250 (depending on model).
Doc - Tuesday, October 12, 2004 - link
#30 Big Ed MustafaI've just tried to configure a basic Compaq on their site:
Operating System - XP Pro SP2 vs. Mac OS X on eMac
Processor - Celeron D 325 (2.53 GHz) vs. 1.25GHz G4 PPC
Memory - 256MB PC2700 vs. 256MB DDR333
Hard Drive - 40 GB vs. 40GB
Optical Drive - CD-RW/DVD-ROM vs. CD-RW/DVD-ROM
Ports - USB + legacy vs. USB, Firewire
Network card - no mention vs. on board
Graphics Card - Integrated Graphics vs. ATi radeon 9200 32MB
Sound Card - Integrated 5.1 Capable vs. Integrated not 5.1 Capable
Monitors - 17" flat CRT monitor vs. 17" flat CRT monitor
Speakers - JBL Platinum Speakers vs. Internal Harmon Kardons
Software - Works Suite 2004+Word 2002 vs. Mail, iChat AV, Address Book, QuickTime, iLife (includes iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, GarageBand), iCal, AppleWorks, Quicken 2004 for Mac, World Book 2004 Edition, Sound Studio, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 4, Deimos Rising, Zinio Reader
Form - Standard Tower - Small Form Factor
I think those two are roughly comparable - I rate the G4 over a Celeron & the Radeon 9200 over an on-board chipset sharing system RAM. I rate the Mac software over Works but the PC sound card over the Mac. I suspect the eMac CRT will be better & the design - well the PC just wasn't. The Compaq appears to have no firewire or network card.
PRICE: Compaq $761.98 and then play around trying to get a $100 mail-in rebate to take it to 661.98. Network & a decent firewire card will take that to around $720. If you need a Garageband equivalent you're going to pass the eMac price.
eMac - $799
I am not familiar with second hand PC prices but you say a three year old PC is worthless - I have heard similar from other PC users but I imagine it is still worth a couple of hundred bucks. A three year old Mac is most certainly not worthless. A three year old iMac here in London sells without difficulty for between £300 & £380 (depending on RAM & condition). Trying to take out the UK sales tax element for you (17.5% - it isn't payable 2nd hand but it inflates UK prices initially) and convert into $ those figures are very approximately $446 to $566.
That gives the PC an approximate three year cost of $520
The eMac is much cheaper at between $353 and $233.
So, I hope you see why I suggested that careless "Macs are expensive comments" are only of service to insecure PC users who are comforted by incompetent maths... and, before I get flamed, I don't suggest for a minute that description fits any of the discerning readers of Anandtech.
By the way this was written on a three year old Dalmatian iMac running the latest version of OS X 10.3.5 without a hitch.
Mac Gamer - Tuesday, October 12, 2004 - link
#30 - er, like I said, most of the "A" list PC games are out for Mac. They are just faster on cheaper PCs. I'm not bored, just frustrated at getting low FPS.pompo - Tuesday, October 12, 2004 - link
So you still have the Mac.. HUH! :)))RS - Tuesday, October 12, 2004 - link
I agree with #31. I once bought and sold an iMac 9 months apart. Because it was still the newest variety when I sold it - nothing new came out - I litterally paid $10 a month to essentially rent the machine. I thought that was neat. One thing that needs to always be remembered is that there is a place for Macintosh in this world. There are people that just 'get it', and always think that it's the definition of a computer. I work with someone like this, and he's got the iPod, and uses all the extra software brick-a-brack that comes with the Mac. It's his thing, he loves it. You do 'pay' for that stuff in a way, but it does increase the value of the system to people that use it. To apple (and their customers) Mac's are systems, not parts. Solutions, not computers.SD - Tuesday, October 12, 2004 - link
#23/26 (maybe it'd be easier if I just said Doc?), but resale value doesn't matter to some people. I'll put that aside, though. Most of us don't collect computers like geeky pack rats. Don't look at me like that.Anyway, one can still raise the price argument quite easily based on their own habits (how long they plan to keep it, for example, and whether or not they buy high end); if X costs $500 new and Y costs $800 new, and after A years (yeah, so I'm being vague) X has depreciated to $250 and Y has depreciated to $450, X was still the better value overall, with an overall cost of $250 instead of $350. These numbers aren't being generous to the cheaper computer, either; it just happens that depreciation is weaker at the low end.
There is an interesting phenomenon with Mac depreciation I'd like to mention while I'm rambling like an idiot: depreciation is very low until your hardware is suddenly last-generation (I mean last-generation in a major sense; ex. G3 vs. G4). It then takes a very large dive. PC depreciation is relatively steady, though... probably because generation gaps are smaller and more frequent with PCs. At any rate, this means that depreciation for Macs will usual cause them to be a worse buy at first, but over time draw even and possibly (depending on comparison) become better buys-- until you reach the generation gap. Then the process repeats.
What about versus high-end PCs instead of just low-end or midrange ones, though? Well, high-end PCs just have suicidal depreciation. Anyone trying to defend the long-term price:performance of a high-end machine is being defensive or stupid. The same would apply to Macs if it weren't for that wonderful generation gap thing: depreciation is very slow until you hit that. (after that, yes, it still applies.)
Last thing to note: the PC will fare much better if it's a home-built model, because home-built models cost much less to build but depreciate to about the same prices as more expensive equivalent OEM models. It's very hard to defend buying an OEM PC for personal usage (assuming at least semi-normal circumstances) if you're reading AnandTech. This is irrelevant to the "what's better for the average person" thing, but then I doubt that debate can be very difficult to resolve. (Note on note: OEM PCs at the low end fare about as well as home-builts. This is because low-end OEM PCs cost about as much. They're generally built with crappier parts, but plenty of people who buy used PCs don't know that.)
Executive summary: Maybe, maybe not. It depends. (God, don't you hate hearing that?)
Big_Ed_Mustafa - Tuesday, October 12, 2004 - link
#26 (Doc) - on depreciation:Consider the following:
$498 for Compaq Celeron 325 D system
$799 for Apple eMac
Value of both computers after 36 months = $0.00
Depreciation is not a big concern...
#27 - I'm not sure that Mac owners are all that entertainment deprived. A quick look at Amazon.com's Mac video game section reveals a lot of great titles at reasonable prices:
$33.99 - Warcraft III Battle Chest
$29.99 - Diablo II Battle Chest
$39.99 - Railroad Tycoon 3
Halo, Call of Duty: United Front, Unreal Tournament 2k4, Neverwinter Nights, EverQuest, Shadowbane, Medal of Honor Deluxe Edition, XIII, Return to Wolfenstein, No One Lives Forever and NOLF 2, Dungeon Siege, Homerworld 2, Age of Mythology, Fallout 1 & 2, Freedom Force, Dues Ex, The Sims, Tony Hawk Skating 2,3, and 4, Tiger Woods Golf, Links Golf Championship Edition, F1 Championship Season, and Nascar Racing are all available for Mac gamers.
If you own a Mac and you're bored, you're just not trying very hard.
Anonymous - Tuesday, October 12, 2004 - link
Apple has been successful in maintaining the Mac's superiority as a niche product. You have a group of rabid followers that "hoot and holler" everytime Steve Jobs farts.A Poor Person - Tuesday, October 12, 2004 - link
Anand, your Mac costs more than my car.Mac Gamer - Monday, October 11, 2004 - link
Good article, though I would add that there is a bit more to the games aspect.The selection of games for the Mac is actually pretty good, and getting better - most of the A list games are out for Mac due to a profitable licencing model for Mac porting houses. There are certainly more than I have time to play.
That being said, I am seriously considering buying a PC for games (which is why I am reading Anandtech these days). The reason is that the combination of slow CPUs, expensive GPUs and speed reductions due to ported software mean that PCs are much better value for playing games. For example, Battlefield 1942 minimum specs are a 500 Mhz P3 or an 867 Mhz G4; the former came out in 1999, the latter in 2001.
That being said, I intend to use the PC only for games; I will continue to use my Mac for everything else, which it will handle just fine for years to come.
Doc - Monday, October 11, 2004 - link
For those who feel depreciation isn't an issue - which car is cheaper:Ford Focus 1.4 LX 5d - £12302 - 3 year depreciation to £6625 - cost £5677
VW Golf 1.6 16V S 5d - £12815 - 3 year depreciation to £7420 - cost £5395
Clearly, what one wants in a new purchase is an item of quality which depreciates slowly. When buying second hand one wants an item of quality that depreciated quickly initially.
Rolex watches are cheaper to buy new than Ebel because though they cost more initially they hold their value better... in the UK. Nissan Micras are reliable small cars which suffer from high initial depreciation - perhaps due to styling. Thus, they are poor value new but great value nearly new.
It is facile to say Macs are more expensive than PCs as new purchases. Do the Maths.
Anonymous - Monday, October 11, 2004 - link
good point #6.T Money - Monday, October 11, 2004 - link
RE: #22 post about miceThe theory behind it isn't to have a two handed interface, it's to FORCE developers to put all options accessable from a single button. That's part of the idea behind the action button in the finder.
Doc - Monday, October 11, 2004 - link
Interesting article. Generally well balanced. I have four comments:The price issue is mentioned with the usual confident dismissal of Apple's pricing without any accompanying data. Do your research on pricing, including depreciaton, before coming to an opinion - and don't compare home built with warranteed major manufacturer prices. It's as reasonable as comparing Ferraris with kit cars. I've done the numbers over & over again & I can not find any way that PCs are not significantly more expensive than Apple's computers - like for like, when bought & sold over a period of a year... but don't take my word for it - do the research & publish it.
Buying a $3000 computer to play games when an XBox costs $200 seems surprising to me - then I don't play games... but not choosing a Mac on that basis is somewhat like not buying an Ariel Atom because it doesn't have a radio.
Performance: "The system is expensive; you can get much more PC for the same price". I am assuming you mean performance and not weight, noise, or number of components. Yet you then go on to say that the G5 is faster in some regards than any dual Xeon/Opteron system you have ever used. You say that the ordinary Seagate SATA 7200rpm gave you better email search than a 10000rpm Raptor (it's much quieter too). The last time I checked the price of Dells that the G5 out-gunned in PCMag tests the Dells were $1500 more than the Mac. I'd like to know where to buy significantly greater performance than the G5 for significantly less & benefit from the low depreciation of Macs too. I've been searching - so did Virginia Tech.
You did not mention Windows' Achilles Heel - file searching. You mentioned searching email subjects & contents but not simple trying to locate things on a large drive. I have an old iMac G3 with a laughably slow 600MHz processor that searches a full Seagate 200GB with well over 100,000 files on it virtually as fast as I can type. Anyone who has searched using Windows wishes they had set up hardware RAID SCSI 10000rpm drives.
Thanks for the article. Thanks for braving the criticism of people who don't want to consider anything new. Please continue with some benchmarking and some real world pricing - including depreciation. You're in for a surprise.
nastyemu - Monday, October 11, 2004 - link
To me it just makes more sense to be able to access options via a 2nd mouse button rather then have to reach up and hold a key while I click.I'm not really sure that someone could argue in definitive favor of a 1-button mouse. Why would 2 handed usage be better than 1?
Richard Pitre - Monday, October 11, 2004 - link
Re: 1 button mouseThe issue of 1 button versus n-button mouse is not an issue that can be decided by a generic logical argument. Its an ergonomic issue intertwined with a GUI design issue. Its also an issue of personal preference but I think that the issue of GUI design is more important. OS X is very easy to use with a one button mouse. I occasionally use the option or command key but its relatively rare and doesn't warrant giving up the ergonomic simplicity of one button. You can design a GUI that is more difficult to use with only one button, e.g. GUI's built on X11, but that isn't an argument for multiple buttons any more than it is an argument against GUI's that require more than one button.
On the other hand, if you buy into the need to argue about the number of buttons on the mouse then you have to ask yourself how many buttons are optimal. Ultimately you might consider putting optical sensors underneath the four corners of your keyboard so that you can slide it around on your desk.
Then you could keep both hands on the keyboard all the time.
I'd be surprised to know that you couldn't buy something like this already. If you are going to persue the n-button mouse as a logical issue then consistency may require you to get one of these keyboard mice :-)
Richard Pitre - Monday, October 11, 2004 - link
1. For work use, if you include the cost of support and your time, a Windows machine can be extremely expensive. For hobby-hackers, gamers and people who enjoy system maintenance and solving computer mysteries, Windows machines can be a real bargain.2. If you take the most expensive computer that either Dell or Apple makes and assert without qualification that someone else makes a much less expensive computer then you will be correct but are you saying anything useful or very relavant.
3. Apple offers AppleCare for about 10% of the price of the machine. This is a lot of money but it is inexpensive when you consider the level and quality of support and the fact that it covers both hardware and software. You might have a hard time finding anything like this at this price for a Windows machine. If you are buying a machine to do work and you don't have a support person and you don't want to spend your own time fixing your machine then this is a huge deal.
4. Anand's evaluation of the Mac G5 is good but not objective and that is fine with me. He evaluated it in the categories and with priorities that were most important to him and he told everyone what those categories and priorities were and why they were important to him. Anyone can read it and decide how their own usage and preferences relate to what he said. The fact that the evaluation still came out pretty good is a very postive statement about the Mac. For my usage the Mac is clearly superior and an outstanding bargain. I gave up on Windows long ago and have seen absolutely nothing that makes me want to go back.
Coombs - Monday, October 11, 2004 - link
Re: I button mouse.I use the two-button mouse at home and a one-button mouse at work. Surprisingly, this does not cause any discomfort at all when I go from work to home and vice versa. This is explained by the fact that I grew up using a Mac.
I can see, however, that most PC users will find it incredibly hard without the second button since they use the second button instead of keyboard shortcuts for most chores including cut and paste etc. Thus, many PC users refuse to use the Mac because of the one mouse button.
IMHO, a second button is useful but not really necessary on the Mac.
Cheers
Simon Westenholz - Monday, October 11, 2004 - link
Thanks for a great article, Anand!There are only a few things I fell you didn't quite cover (Some have already been mentioned by others). But the one thing that stands out in my mind is that you actually didn't mention the applications you can only run on the mac.
Fx. Logic Pro/Express 6 and above, Bias Peak, amongst other audio programs, plus various graphics apps that I don't use. :)
As I use my mac (PBTi 1GHz, 768MB, etc.) to produce music, I can only speak for that specific user group, but for that specific purpose the mac is beautiful.
I have a D2.5 G5 on order with 2GB, and a GF6800U DDL, and I am expecting it to kick some serous butt in Logic Pro 6 (Eventually Logic Pro 7).
I have never really thought of the mac as a platform to replace the pc, but rather as a platform to do completely different things with. I would never trust my PC (Athlon XP 1700+ clocked to about 1850 MHz running perfectly for days/months on end without restarts) to perform a live-act as there are way too many small things that won't, in my mind at least, work to the benefit of the performance (For instance bad caching and random small flaws related to multitasking).
This is very much my own opinion and I do not expect to change anyones opinions, but I would just like to suggest some coverage of the above subjects.
Thanks again for a great article.
Kind regards
Simon Westenholz
Producer
Coombs - Monday, October 11, 2004 - link
I consider this an excellent and balanced article from a PC user's perspective.The only quibble I had was that the article seemed to indicate that one needed a minimum $3,000 dollar computer to get any decent performance on the Mac. I am currently using a 733Mhz running Jaguar at work and and a 1.33 Mhz Powerbook at home running Panther, both with 1.26 GB RAM. Os X runs fine on both machines.
I think of the 'tortoise and the hare' fable when I compare and PCs and Macs. The PC runs really fast but is stopped to recover from time to time (viruses, malware, not great multitasking- my colleague, for e.g. does not do anything on the PC while the computer is burning a disc). The Mac keeps chugging on tirelessly. Sure, some aspects of the interface can be zippier-that is not a problem with the hardware but the Os. Os 9 runs really fast on 200 Mhz G3!
I don't think the Mac aficionados are doing Apple a service by constantly trying to the PC public how great the Mac is.
This article will at least open the eyes of some PC users to consider the Mac. Once again congratulations on a great article.
Best wishes and regards
PS:
@#16: I am really tempted by that low price. I would like to buy a small form factor PC that is really cheap and can run Fritz, the chess program, decently. Somehow, I have this niggling feeling, that even Anand, would not recommend that system for most PC users. But the 799 eMac, with additional memory, will handle quite adequately movie and music editing for the ordinary home user without the worries about viruses, spyware etc.
Big_Ed_Mustafa - Monday, October 11, 2004 - link
Given the Mac's long history of being expensive compared to its PC counterparts, I have to admit that I was pretty impressed when I saw what the eMac had to offer at the $799 price point. On the surface, it looks like a good value, but a trip to Wal-Mart quickly dispells that illusion:$799 eMac - 40Gb hard drive, 256Mb DDR memory, CD-RW/DVD-ROM combo drive, 17" monitor. Nice quality computer with major manufacturer warranty support.
$498 Compaq - 40Gb hard drive, 256Mb DDR memory, CD-RW drive, 17" monitor. Nice quality computer with major manufacturer warranty support.
Is a 1.25Ghz Power PC chip better than a 2.53Ghz Celeron 325D? Is OS X wildly better than XP Home? Is a 32Mb Radeon 9200SE video chipset significantly less useless than Intel integrated graphics?
Even at entry level, Apple is faced with being marginally superior at almost twice the price. I won't argue that the eMac isn't a better piece of hardware than a $498 Compaq. 19 people out of 20 shopping for a PC, however, would choose the Compaq and keep the $300 they saved.
a2daj - Monday, October 11, 2004 - link
The problem with the article, in its original form, could have used some better fact checking, particularly the bit about installing apps. Drag and Drop is one method. Other apps make use of an installer. Some use the OS X Installer app while others use different installers from 3rd parties. Even with the update, that sectin of the article is a bit misleading.Plus his comments on Mac gaming would suggest he didn't even bother to dig too deep into Mac gaming. It is significantly better than it was several years ago. More and more games are being released for Macs every year. How is that not better?
The Home Support Guy - Monday, October 11, 2004 - link
Great article, Anand! As always, a clear, iluminating, and concise article.From my limited exposure,(mostly at the local Apple store at the mall!) OS X is a great OS! I've been involved in supporting OSes ever since DOS 3.1, up to Win XP XP2, also NT 4.0 and up to a furtive look at Win 2003 Server, a work required support of UNIX System V/386,(ah, I remember the command line interface!) and others. Every OS had its quirks and their own little way of getting things that have to be done. I just think OS X is further along in some areas, equal is some other areas, and somewhat(?)
behind in the rest. Yes, this is an opinion, and the article was Anand's based on his experiences for 30 days.
In my case, if $ were no object. I would jump in with both feet!
Joe K - Monday, October 11, 2004 - link
I have to say I disagree with you, Mr. #5. While you can argue that Bush refuses to admit he was wrong about invading Iraq, and Anand also refuses to admit he's wrong about the price difference between Macs and PCs, I don't think you can take this evidence alone and reasonably conclude that Bush and Anand are alike. Lets look at a few points and see how the two stack up:Bush: Cheated his way into his current occupation
Anand: Pioneered an industry (pc hardware analysis) that has resulted in more jobs, more money flowing out of the Intels of the world and into small businesses and their employees (via advertising), and increased consumer awareness. AKA, earned his money and created his occupation the old-fashioned American Dream way.
Bush: Sends 138,000 American troops to Iraq for no good reason, gets 1000 of them killed, and kills many innocent civilians in the process.
Anand: No, not even close.
Bush: Illiterate
Anand: Quite literate.
Bush: Looks like a monkey
Anand: Looks like a person.
Bush: Filthy rich.
Anand: Not quite sure - i suspect he's rich, but in more of a clean way. We'll count this as a similarity, out of pity for the monkeyish looking shrubery.
Bush (and co.): will have me sent to Guantanamo Bay indefinitely after the FBI reads this, and everything else that i write that's anti-Bush.
Anand: will either laugh after he reads this, or think "stupid tard hijacked my blog for political/comedic purposes."
Bush: refuses to admit he was wrong about Iraq, because he's trying to get re-elected
Anand: refuses to admit he was wrong about the comparison he made between mac pricing and PC pricing because he wasn't wrong. Or at least because he's taken a good look at the facts and truly believes he wasn't wrong - that's what really counts.
In closing, we have more differences than similarities. Anand, I dub you "not very much like Dubya." Mr. #5 and Mr. Bush, I dub you "the painfully ignorant duo."
Anonymous - Monday, October 11, 2004 - link
I agree with #11: How many times does Anand have to tell you all that the article was his opinion, hence, no objective performance numbers or the like. The title of the article states, "a die-hard PC user's experience". It is his experience and it is his opinion.I bet people like #5 have no idea what they are talking about. I bet if you were to meet face to face with Anand and start a debate with him about technical stuff, he will easily beat stupid fools like you.
Macs are highly overpriced. Apparently you Mac fans can't see that.
gary - Sunday, October 10, 2004 - link
the crap anand has to put up with...listen people, if you can't quantify it, it's probably an opinion... and if it comes from anand and is about computers it's a @#$%ing expert opinion... he said it was subjective enough times to break the 11,000 word limit on the article
honestly, do you guys go up to everyone who isn't dressed like you and scream "hey, you paid too much for your clothes and they don't perform as well as mine!!"?
I mean thinking it all the time is petty enough (sometimes is ok), but to keep harping on it is just annoying
james - Sunday, October 10, 2004 - link
on last page you have a "to" instead of a "too."[ It's nice to know that I'm not to totally lost ]
icarus4586 - Sunday, October 10, 2004 - link
First, #5 needs to shut up. Both the George W analogy and the final (jc) comment ticked me off immensely.I have used Macs a good bit and like them a good bit. Like Linux, it's a nice change from Windows. But I am a firm [b]dis[/b]believer in the single-button mouse. Bad decision as i see it.
Excellent article Anand & best wishes with your marriange.
Anonymous - Sunday, October 10, 2004 - link
#5You are just like Kerry; distorting the truth.
Mac prices are indeed too high.
Anonymous - Sunday, October 10, 2004 - link
#5: Shut Up!Anonymous - Sunday, October 10, 2004 - link
Thanks for a great article Anand! It was completely unbiased, and is possibly the single most useful article I have ever read comparing the two Operating Systems.Although I am not going to be an idiot like #5... I would agree that the $1300 new iMac (2 inches thick) and the $800 eMac would compete directly with those $1500 dollar machines you are talking about. I currently own a $2000 (last generation) iMac and I love it! It won't be as fast as the G5, but it would definately be comparable to any $2000 Dell. Since I have had it (about 1 year now) it has only crashed once, never had a virus. I am truly pleased it came with iLife applications (something that is hard to put a price on, and I believe the most important thing left out of your article) iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, and iTunes work so seamlessly together it is hard to describe... it just works.
anyway, thanks again Anand for a great article!
James Bond - Sunday, October 10, 2004 - link
The price arguement is still wrong. I can't beleive that you don't realize that you can easily get a new imac for sub $1500 price and will compete with the systems you talk about getting for $1500. You are like Bush and can't admit you are wrong. Jesus Christ.Jam - Sunday, October 10, 2004 - link
Hahah. That is a very good article. I'm pleased that you produced the pros and cons of the product. I, myself work in an Apple Center but have a PC prefference. For Apple, the price is merely a profit plan (not for Apple but the third party people who handle, ships, distribute... etc). The OS is simply "Idiot Proof". If only the prices were better......if...(This is a personal view, it has nothing to do with apple or it's associate companies).
brichpmr - Sunday, October 10, 2004 - link
Anand,I agree with you that price matters a lot. For example, based on what my hourly time is set at, if I spend 5-8 hrs over the course of 6 months detoxing my XP box from malware (including everything about that process from evaluation of virus and spyware apps to management of same, etc.), then the price-performance advantage vs a Mac with OSX changes quickly.
If you get the opportunity, please share with your PC-centric readers some of the very cool freeware and shareware apps that greatly expand the customizing choices for Panther. You won't find these at BestBuy, but the web is a tremendous resource for this good stuff. Please keep investigating and writing...your articles make great reading!
methodical - Sunday, October 10, 2004 - link
I liked the article. Keep up the good work, and put pressure on apple as being the first hardcore-credible enthusiast website to put the brakes on the Reality Distortion Field, while enjoying the end product for what it is... usually very nice - but not as nice as marketing says. Thats my biggest peeve with apple.Stephen - Sunday, October 10, 2004 - link
I'm betting cash you'll never see a 6800 Ultra DDL this year! :)