Think PCs are just as reliable, dispite their rock-bottom prices? What corners do you think were cut to achieve those prices? You're deluding yourself if you don't think quality was sacraficed. Just read this reliability survey. Huh, the more expensive machines were the most reliable. IBM and Apple lead the pack by far, with Dell far off in the distance.

As for "just working" I mean, when I boot the OS for the first time it does everything I want. That's not true of Windows, because you have to run around installing anti-spyware, anti-virus, and other security programs to make sure you don't get 0wn3d within seconds of connecting to the Internet, not to mention you'll want a decent MP3 player, decent e-mail program, different browser than IE so it isn't riddled with security holes, etc, etc. On Linux it's much worse, due to licensing terms of patented crap. You have to go out and download drivers for your integrated NIC, download firmware for your wireless radio, download MP3 codecs, download video codecs, etc, etc... What I mean by "just works" is that you can start using your system for what you want right away, not "it's mostly usable after spending 2 days downloading programs to do the stuff I want".

If you want to fight a religious crusade like RMS, by all means make life difficult for yourself to prove a point. Much like Gandhi you can suffer hardship in the hope that other people will admire you for it. Myself, I prefer to take the easy route and just have the minium hassle. It's not worth my time to tinker for days when I need to get work done.

I never needed to download network card drivers, not with suse 9 or suse 10, not with vector 5, not for any computer i've ran linux on. I didn't need to download mp3 codecs with suse 10, Mepis doesn't have anything against including mp3 codecs either, or video codecs. And even if you have to download extra stuff, you can automatically download them from official repositories, instead of digging for them through questionable sites. Wireless radio, WTF?

I'm curious, what are you doing here all this time, if you think we're all crazy, if you are such a mac fanboy, and if you're that misinformed and negative about linux? Are you some apple employee responsible for copying linux features or something?

That link concedes there may be holes in the methodology:

Really, this more expensive = better thinking has to stop. To make things even more silly you give us a link that still shows PCs > Mac. IBM wins by 42 points.

And what do you know? IBM is still cheaper than a mac, despite being the more expensive lineup.

http://shop.lenovo.com/us/desktops/thinkcentre/m-series?cid=US1A3030&s_kwcid=ibm%20desktop|705499141


I'm sorry but this is by no means difficult. Nowhere near a crusade.

I actually happen to like Mac OS X. I don't love it, like a fanatic. But its still light years ahead of Windows XP, with Vista only just starting to catch on. (meaning ofcourse they copied every thing they could from Aqua)

But again, the hardware restriction.

I would'nt even mind if they used some sort of dongle, or there was sort of internal pci device you could insert to make it run on normal pcs. But there is'nt even that.

One company in control of every aspect of your computer even the hardware , just does'nt work for me. In fact I don't think it really works for apple. Stretches them thin. Causes delayed releases. If they would just let hardware manufacturers do there thing, their life would be so much easier. There would'nt even be a need for a "switch".

I do not in fact work for Apple. I work for a company that makes Windows and Linux software and network appliance. Our company doesn't buy anything from Apple, aside from the iPods we give away at trade-shows (always the most popular prize) and Apple not is a customer of ours. There's no affiliation.

What flexibility are you missing on a Mac that won't let you get some task done? Flexibility is fine, but that has to be a point to it. If you're free to do all kinds of things thare are pointless and possibly harmful, is that freedom you should really have in a product? If it works fine already, why mess with that? By controlling the hardware platform Apple has a lot less QA to do and drastically lowers the amount of reliance on outside vendors to update their drivers, etc. This shortens the release cycles, and increases the quality due to being able to concentrate on deep testing on a few configurations, rather than shallow testing on many configurations. Why do you think Apple is still running circles around MS on operating system releases after all these years? Microsoft has to make sure their OS is compatible with everything and that takes forever.

The same is true of Linux, accept that with Linux you don't have the same expectaction as with Windows that Microsoft and the device manufacturer will get together and provide support. A lot of the integated devices that come built-in to motherboards these days require firmware to drive them, and that firmware is only provided with the driver bundle from the manufacturer under a restrictive license. If they bothered to compile a Linux binary of the driver, you're lucky that all you have to do is jump through some extra hoops to install it and keep the same kernel version until the new driver is released. If they didn't create a Linux driver, you're stuck hoping someone will reverse-engineer the hardware.

Sure, you have the "choice" of what hardware you want to use, but it's actually dictated by what the kernel supports and then there's no guarantee of how reliably it will run. Windows users by sheer market force know that any problems will eventually be resolved, because the only way hardware vendors are going to make money is if they make their stuff work for the latest version of Windows. If you use some other OS, tough luck. So which would you rather have, the ability to choose something that may not ever work, or the knowledge that what you buy will just work without any fuss?

Like I said, it depends on what you plan to do with your OS. If you want to learn how stuff works and don't mind tinkering, then by all means PC + Linux is a good choice. If you're going to run some sort of hosted service, with a commercially supported Linux distro and quality, server-grade hardware, yes Linux can be a good choice. If you're going to build network appliances on a tightly controled hardware platform, Linux can be a good choice.

If you want to use it for work, web browsing, DVDs, music, etc then choose something that is just going to work--period. Right now that's not Linux on a PC (it can be made to work, but it requires effort and research to get the right hardware). It's all about picking the right tool for the job.

As a long time Linux user, I like Macs. And if I can't use Slackware at the moment i need a PC, my next choice is a Mac, followed by another attempt to find a Slack box, and finally a windows box.

Few months ago I purchased a second hand all in one mcputer. G3? Imac. Tested in store, all Okay. Got it home, plugged in. boom. Power supply dead on first power up.
Back to the shop, repair more cost than purchase. Bugger.
Still like to have one, try Yellow Dog, or some other PPC Linux. The answer, save up and keep hunting. nothing against Mac in my mind. Pricey? Try a high end Intel or similar. At least they are stable, apps work, and because programming for the mac involves both data and hardware forks, to hard for the script kiddies to hack. MS is their own wost enemy in that respect. Windows and VB Studio equals script kiddies, hackers, viruses, phishing scams.
Linux for me please, but if I had a Mac, I think I would like it too. So there. ( pokes tounge out, sticks thumb to nose and wiggles fingers.)

shorty943.

I'm a FreeBSD and GNU/Linux user, personally. I bought my first Mac (Macbook - gift for my wife) recently; it's very nice.

I don't really know what I'm doing in OS X, but I can drop to the Terminal program in a jam and figure things out.

is about hype and the "in" thing , and this thread have them all really ...

btw , i think gtkdialog can really be use to create a "mac" out of you own linux system ... i mean let those developers do the work and we just rip their fruits ... no more no less ...


.

i do not belive that macs are expensive at all...

compare the price with a mac and a PC at the same specs.

not much differance there.... the thing is that apple dont make low spec boxes like dell.

I am currenly a fedora user on a 2000 emachines box (with a load more ram added later)
and it struggles even with XFCE (it runs all wms just as slow as the problem is not the ram but the lack of avalable processor cycles)

my flatmate uses macs.
he recently got a brand new (core2duo) macbook
and a macmini (core duo)
both of them were workingf and fully usable within 5 minutes of getting them out of the box
wireless conection to teh router and tehy instalntly see each other. every thing is there and no massive download reqwuirement.

i love the interface though it takes a while getting used to it, with the menu bar at the top of the screen not the top of the window. and minimising to the dock.

the spotlight search just works.
infact everything just works!

the only thing missing is a decent file browser (i cant get on with finder)
but as you have X11 support avalable you can just install konqueror which works fine


for people like me who prefer to tinker around getting thigs exactly as i like it then i prefer linux.
though getting wifi to work is a pain.


If i turned up somwhere and just needed a computer that worked without any hassle then i would prefer a mac.

but for my home computer then i will be sticking with linux.

(hopefully my new amd X2 based box will arrive today!)

And some people want low-spec machines, as they just email and surf the internet. Why do you need to pay out the nose for something that's "worth it for the specs" if you don't need those specs?

Macs are expensive. Whether they're worth the price for what you get, that's another story. Expensive just means costs a lot of money. It has nothing to do with the value of what you're getting. Something could be expensive and a good value or expensive and a rip-off.

Macs are undeniably expensive, though.

I think that actually applies to everything - BMWs are expensive.

I love my Apple Powerbook - it is nice an small and light. Some laptops are huge, and are difficult to carry around. I think Apple has certainly got the build quality of their machines very good. The casing for both their laptops and desktop systems is a much higher quality than other systems.

Apple also designs casing nicely - the transformer for my laptop is a nice white smooth box, and is almost a thing of beauty. Compared to the black boxes on most other laptops, I know which one I prefer. Functionally, they are exactly the same though.

The Xcode IDE and the Cocoa API is simply brilliant. So far I ahven't been able to fault it. Mac OS X is Posix Complient as well, so all the posix C functions that most programmers are familiar with are there as well.

I also love that everything just works - plug it in and off you go. Wireless connection - switch it on, and if it gets a signal it automatically connects. All the applications are nicely polished and finished properly.

Someone above mentioned the Finder - once you get used to it (use 3-pane view), it is actually very good.

--Ian

i don't like them. to me they're just comps for elitists. i'd much rather just get a decent pc and run linux, and be able to have a stable, fast os without all the "look what i can do!" bloatware.

a friend of mine was recently talking about how much better macs are than pc's. i retorted with the whole price issue and how linux is free and just as stable and sometimes able to perform better. but he says "but does linux make any money?" no, i say, it's free, it's about the joy of computing etc. "since when is anything good free? and besides, who the hell uses linux? no one does so shut up!"

Price is not an issue. Just because something costs money does not mean it is bad or wrong. Just because something is free does not make it better or morally right. Does it cost money? Yes. Is it worth that money? That depends on the person buying it. If they feel they got a fair return on their dollar (or euro or whatever) then it was a worth the money. There is nothing wrong with willingly buying a product for the price it is being sold at.

The fact that Linux is free is not a salient point to the argument against Macs. It's pretty much comparing apples to oranges. Some people have paid far more for Unix and Unix-like systems than they've ever paid for a Mac... does that mean the Mac is a better deal for them? It doesn't make much sense.

Better performance depends on what you are doing with the hardware and also what your expectations are. Yeah, my stripped down NetBSD server can outperform OS X, running as a desktop, (on similar hardware) for routing packets... but that's not what I expect to do with OS X. And I certainly don't expect the server to have the graphical display or ease of use of the Mac.

As for the "they're for elitists" comment... that's just silly. At least in the nerdy circles I travel. In these parts Mac users are still fighting against the impression that they can't handle a real computer or mice with more than one button. If anything, the impression most geeks I know have is that Macs are for the "point-click-don't bother to understand" audience.

Frob, that was exactly what I'm trying to say. I now hope you understood the initial point I was trying to make.

Technically speaking, the Mac is just a computer, albeit a one that is like a Television - pick-up and play...

But it's the marketing that makes all the difference. Macs *are* marketed for the high-end audience who don't *mind* spending a bit more to get a Mac. It's a matter of pride to own a Mac for people and the exclusivity factor is what makes the rest of us feel that the users are `elite'. That's precisely the impression that a Mac is supposed to give us. We're supposed to aspire for the product as users of the PC.

Again, it's not all cut and dried and all the marketing theory doesn't necessarily reflect in reality, but what I'm saying is that it's kind of meant to be that way and if we say "Macs are expensive and exclusive" that's exactly how Apple would like us to respond. Also they're smart and won't create a common man's PC with the same branding anytime soon. Maybe they will have a different product for the mass market at some point of time, but even if they do, they will be careful not to associate it directly with their name, which has a reputation to live to. They would rather keep their core market intact and not risk losing it by venturing into other markets and diluting the "exclusivity" factor.

They are also aware that competing on the mass market will put them directly against Microsoft and they would not venture into that market unless they're absolutely sure that they can offer a product that will capture the imagination of that particular market.