Apple iMac vs. PC with Microsoft Vista

You're right, they dropped that sized model when they went to the intel chipset. I wonder if the change in hardware prevented a model of that size? I think the smallest they do now is a 13" model, which surprisingly makes quite a difference when compared side by side.

As I said before, the style factor is just a bonus. You haven't looked at a Mac tower unit have you? They are dead easy to upgrade. I have an old G3 tower unit kicking around, press a button the whole side drops down and you can easily and quickly change components around. It is infact far easier on that model than any PC I've opened up and upgraded.

Don't see where this argument comes from to be honest. The latest version of Mac OS X runs happily on 5 year old machines, as will the next version due out later this year. Most 5 year old PCs are landfill, and there's no way they'll run Vista acceptably.

Yip. One of my machines is 8 years old, it runs OS X. The one I'm typing on now is 7 years old and runs OS X and does so perfectly. Another is 4 years old and runs OS X and runs rings around any windows laptop I've used. Bet you an 8 year old windows machine couldn't even run XP...assuming of course that an 8 year old PC would even turn on.

I meant that because they are relatively difficult and expensive to upgrade or to replace individual components, they probably have a lower average lifespan. Or, at least, people are more likely to replace them sooner, even if they can be repaired. I'm still talking about the hardware here; I accept that the OS is probably better than Windows.

I've got OS X running on a Shuttle SB86i XPC. As a registered developer it is perfectly legal. It isn't easy however. It would be a mistake to make such a machine your primary PC (not to mention you've got to hack the mach kernel to get it to work right - a very non-trivial undertaking). It also won't update itself so I'm stuck with OS X 10.4.6 while my real Macs run 10.4.9. There are supposedly ways around it but each one I've tried has broken the machine.

The mac Towers are fully upgradable. You can easily swap out the drives with pretty much any brand for the HDD, the DVD or the CDRW. You can also upgrade the memory (which uses the same chips as PCs) change out the video card, and add things like the high end Sound Cards and such. Plus you could probably drive over the case with a Tank and not hurt it.

The smaller units are for people who wnat all the computing power they need without having to have an extra piece of furniture just for the tower.

Plus, upgrading a computer for most people is a total myth. By the time a computer (at least one running OS X) needs upgrading, it's usually 3-5 years old. At that point it's cheaper to just buy a new computer and reuse your externals than to start trying ot fit new parts into an old shell.

But, if you do like constantly upgrading your computer, the tower units are fine for that.

OSX will run on non-apple hardware. As already mentioned it requires a modified boot loader and kernel. Either you can do this yourself
or you can download the OSX .ISO image off the net already patched for you. The reason for this is that while apple now use standard
PC parts, Apple Mainboards contain a DRM/TPM Security chip as part of the BIOS and Apple's boot loader use EFI which most PC BIOS
don't understand.

The reason the smallest screen size is 13in, is because the LCD makers have made 13in the new "Small standard". For them it costs
more to make 12in LCD's than it does 13in. With most laptops going to 15-17 LCD's, the standard size may even increase to 14in in the
next 3-4 years.

I myself would love to get a Macbook or Macbook Pro, but the current models are seriously lacking in the hardware/specs...
Take for instance the 13in Macbook. While its a good size and fast, it's graphics chipset is an Intregrated Intel GMA 950 chip
which is not only week for anything more than common business apps. but also uses the main memory as it doesn't have it's
own memory. For my needs, I also find the lack of a PCMCIA or ExpressCard slot a big disadvantage. Max. memory of 2GB
is also a turnoff as most PC based laptops of the same Priceline Max. out at 4GB.

If you want a Macbook that has a better graphics card you have to get the more expensive MacbookPro. Then you get an ATI
card with 128 or 256MB of dedicated memory. While a big improvement over the Intel chipset, a laptop of apples quality should
be a min. of 512MB on "Pro" laptops and 128 or 256 on the non-Pros (Dedicated. Not Shared). But atleast the Pros have an
ExpressCard slot. The max. Memory of the Pro's are 3GB, seems to be an Odd number, it should be 4GB esp. since the things
cost 2k Eur and will prob. be running things like parallis or vmware fusion. In these cases more memory is better.

You know very little about Macs and even less about Mac users. My 8 year old iMac is still in use by my nephew, admittedly only for email and surfing. He's a gamer but after his parents had to replace the hard drive due to viruses in his PC, they disconnected the PC from the internet and only allow him to surf on the iMac.

Admittedly, the monitor is getting a little fuzzy but considering that it spent two years aboard a sailboat moored in Puget Sound, has been shipped across the country twice, had glue dripped into its innards by the above mentioned nephew, spent a winter in Minnesota in unheated storage, it's doing pretty good. Actually, it was even a demo model from Costco so had been banged around already before I bought it.

I did replace the tiny 13 gig hard drive and the cd ejector is also a bit sticky but, hey, for an 8 year old computer it's doing pretty well.

Have any PCs around that have endured so much and are still running strong?

Last year a friend of my parents disposed of a PC that we'd bought in 1995. I'd "upgraded" in the late '90s to feature nothing less than a CD-ROM drive. It was too old to use for surfing the internet, and in its final years it was basically being used as a rather large typewriter. But few manufacturers now make their computers to last that long - Apple or anyone else. But my point is more about adding new components or replacing faulty ones, which I still argue is relatively expensive and complicated, or simply impossible, on the trendy Macs.

You're comparing a brand new operating system to one perhaps 7+ years old (OS X). Clearly Vista is going to have more problems than the more mature OS - just as OS X once had more problems than it's predecessors. If you want to avoid problems, also avoid being the first on the block with the latest. Consider a more mature OS instead, such as XP. The recent editions are reliable, stable, secure, and widely supported by both hardware and software vendors. Keep your copy of Vista. It can be reinstalled later (6-12 months) when updates will fix most of the earlier bugs, and when all the proper drivers and updates are finally widely available.

Stewart

Perhaps you should ask the router company. In my own case, I didn't need to install anything with my D-Link DES-1005D router/switchbox (3 computers) and Speedport DSL modem for my broadband connection (t-online). I also didn't have to change any settings for the D-Link (default Windows settings).

Stewart

And you're saying Apple doesn't do exactly the same thing? In case your memory is short, search back through some of the discussion forum archives around the internet to see some of the early problems with OS X. As an example, many of Apple's own brand printers would not work properly (or at all) with OS X. Apple's explination was that it had stopped selling printers two years previously - enough of an ultimate justification for that company to not ever provide OS X compatible drivers for several of those printers. I can easily list other examples.

Stewart

There's a difference in stopping support for old hardware, and using the 20+million Vista buyers/users as Beta testers. Vista's 1st SP is due out in 6-8 months.
Vista was already years late and missing many features, but they had to get it out the door. Well they got it out, but what they got out was the biggest, most bloated,
big ridden, beta test OS, POS they could make.. No surprise it still doesn't work...

I agree. Tower Macs, especially the newer ones, are very easy to upgrade. My dual G5 (same box as the new Mac Pros) requires no screws at all, aside from four for the hard drive sleds, and those are deliberately large TinkerToy type ones so you don't lose them easily and can get them in the holes quickly. The rest is all built-in levers or grooves, and it's amazingly easy to open and close. And there is plenty of space inside, so you don't have to squeeze your hands in.

Older Macs (especially the professional-level ones) were also easy to deal with, but they have been continuously improving them. My old PowerMac 9500 is a b*tch to open, with 8 screws on the back; my G3 from 1998 (the successor to the 9500) has just a pushbutton on the top, and the whole thing flips open. The G4 from 2002 has a latch and lever; lift the latch and it's all open. And then there's the G5, which also has a latch and lever system; you just lift the latch, the side flips down, and you have access to the whole innards.

The more expensive PCs are close to the G5 box, but generally still aren't as easy to upgrade. The cheap ones, of course, tend to have a bazillion screws, clumsy drive sleds, lots of sharp metal corners, etc. etc. etc.

Meanwhile the "more expensive Mac components" thing is untrue and has been for years. Macs have essentially been PCs with Apple's logo on them for some years; the change to Intel was just a logical continuation of that process. It's all PCI, Serial ATA and so forth -- all standard interfaces and buses. Thus the bulk of PC components can be used in a Mac with no trouble; most common ones won't even require a special driver, because so many are already included.

It is true that the consumer-level Macs (Mac mini, iMac, etc.) are much harder to open and replace parts, but they are CONSUMER devices, meant to be consumer appliances. When's the last time you opened up your TV for an upgrade? Or your fridge? Some may do it, but the vast majority of people won't and don't want to. So if you want the greater flexibility, buy the Mac Pro. If you want something simple for your Grandma, get the Mac mini.

Cheers,

Fairfax71

Our IBMs are a similar price and spec to the big box G5s and are made very easy to plug cards and drives in and out. The've always been like that.

I have a question. On the intel Macs there is EFI instead of the PCs BIOS. Does that offer any benefits? Is it totally different?

It's totally different.. Think of it as a micro linux/unix based OS. Instead of the BIOS reporting hardware to the OS, EFI sets up the hardware before the OS
even loads. Boot times are much faster than with the old BIOS. EFI is like the next
ver. of Suns. OPENPROM BIOS system. an entire micro OS (Including its own shell) which is loaded before any OS, and doesn't actually require an OS.

Say, you thought you had a problem with one of your memory chips. With the normal BIOS setup you would load Windows or Linux, or whatever OS
you wanted, then you would run some form of memory checker. What if your BIOS (EFI) had all the hardware checking programs it needed to diag. the
PC, without having to load ANY OS.. During the POST screen you hit a key combo, and your at a unix prompt ready to diag./prob all the hardware in the
PC.

EFI is the future, Even Microsoft's getting into it, as Vista will support EFI booting in the next SP. Some Windows x64 OS'es already support EFI booting.

Have a look at the EFI Wiki to understand more.
The OSS/Freeware/Linux version of EFI is called OpenBIOS

While we're on the topic of OS X, anybody else experiencing a decrease in performance in Tiger 10.4.9, on their Powerbook with the last update, this one here, from 13th March? Were some other updates as well, for iTunes, iPhoto & iPod?

@Punchbear

actually yes now that you mention it I am. This happened once before and Mac followed a few weeks later with an additional update.

Also, there has been some crticism of the mac mini. No, it's not easy to upgrade, athough you can change out the memory and HDD, but that's not the point of the mini.

The point is that you can buy a fully functional, fairly well loaded computer that takes up about 6 square inches of space for less than €600. The only PC you can get for that price is a crappy one. As cheap as they are, you don't need to upgrade it, just buy a new one in 5 years. That gives you a cost of ownership of about €120 per year for your computer. That's about a month's worth of car fuel for many people. For the marketis is designed for, it's great!

I agree, the mac minis are great. We use them here for all the admin type work and the big grunter quad core g5 machines for the photowork

Just in case you believe a certain poster that professes "never to have had a problem with a mac". Here are some links for some light reading.

http://www.thexlab.com/book/troubleshootingmacosx.html

http://fixa.troubledmac.com/

http://safari.oreilly.com/0321442288/ch13

http://www.amazon.com/Macintosh-Troublesho...r/dp/0596004435

http://www.mugone.com/pages/Reviews/UpgradingMacOSX.html

Now, I am off hunting (of a different type, with my neighbour)

Old hardware? We're talking about $5-6000 laser printers sold off Apple dealer shelves just a few months earlier. My company's own printer was one of those without an OS X driver. Luckily, a programmer at Canon was able to convert an old driver to work with the new OS to our satisfaction. Otherwise, we would have been forced to stay with the older OS (OS 8), losing Apple's hardware and OS support under the terms of our existing support agreement.


Again, Microsoft is certainly not alone in that. When Apple introduced it's third computer in 1981 (the Apple III), the serious hardware and OS bugs quickly led to it's downfall. In 1987, Apple announced a pending operating system with true multi-tasking capabilities, which did not actually arrive for well over a decade. When Apple announced the Macintosh II, they also mentioned a new OS for it. OS 7 eventually arrived on store shelves over a year later, well after the Mac II was released. The core technologies of OS X were mentioned time and time again throughout the 90's during press conferences and development forums. Apple even started making hardware changes in the mid 90's to, as the company claimed, support that pending new OS. Of course, it was years before OS X ultimately saw the light of day, and I've already mentioned the problems early adopters experienced.

I'm certainly no great fan of Vista. The general absence of strategically located text-based menus is the deal breaker for me. As a result, I just finished building a new computer (two weeks ago), which is based on XP (and will remain so for some time). However, I do think some (not all) of the criticisms here towards Microsoft and Windows have been over-stated and lack balance. At the same time, some (not all) of the other comments grossly over-glorify both Apple and the Macintosh. Apple is not that great, and neither is the Macintosh.

I bought my first Apple computer in 1981 (II+), owning at least a dozen models over the following two decades. I still tend to keep an eye on developments in that platform. My own experience has led me to think the company itself (Apple) is filled with some of the craziest people I've even seen (starting at the very top), while OS X is no better than any recent Windows OS (XP, etc). Hardware differences are more difficult to judge because it is based on what people actually purchase. However, high-end PC components are just as good as anything built into recent Macs (indeed most new Macs use that same internal hardware).

Stewart

That is utter nonsense. When Apple released OS X, they threw out the entire operating system used on Macs since 1984. Not a single line of code from the earlier Mac operating systems (0-9) ended up in OS X. The only similarity at all (between those previous OS versions and OS X) is the graphics user interface. Indeed, OS X users wanting to run older pre-OS X software had to use an emulator (included with early versions of OS X).

Stewart

Amen to that. Exactly the reason I gave up on the Macintosh after twenty years using Apple computers (pre-Mac and Mac).

Stewart

A bit of exaggeration. I just built a new computer from the ground up (specs below copied from my signiture in the Intel hardware forum)...

Abit AB9 QuadGT MB, Intel C2D/E6600 CPU, ACP 3GB/PC5400 DDR2, WD 160GB SATA II HD, XFX GeForce 7900GS Extreme, Lite-On LH-18A1P CD/DVD-RW, CoolMax CP-500T Dual-Rail EPS PSU, Apevia X-Plorer Case, Air-Cooling (4 Fans - CPU temps: 35°C idle, 42°C load @23°C Ambient), XP Home, Logitech Wireless K&M, Logitech Z4 Speakers, Cyborg Evo JS, and Canon MP510 Printer.

...and installed XP SP2 from scratch. The entire install process took less than an hour (two reboots), most waiting for the CD to install the initial components with the CD drive in PIO mode. Special drivers (not included with XP) were next, followed by updates. I initually downloaded and installed exactly 67 updates. Those took roughly twenty minutes to download and roughly twenty-five minutes to install (no reboots). I ate dinner during that period. Afterwards, I rebooted and downloaded three more updates dependant on the previous updates. Those took less than five minutes to download and install. In other words, the entire process of installing the OS with updates took well less than two hours, which isn't unreasonable considering an OS which has to be compatible with a wide range of both internal and external hardware components. The Mac OS, on the other hand, is mainly concerned only with external hardware - most internal components (motherboard, CPU, etc) are relatively unchanging.

My new computer has performed flawlessly. Tonight (breaktime at the moment), I'm installing 13 games (a spending spree). I've already installed 10 (with no problems), with three more still to go. I expect the installation of those to be just as painless. Finally, I plan to spend the next few days playing more fully with all those games.

Stewart

yep, we are in the same boat. my 1st Mac purchase was 1yr 4months ago. work forces me to us PC. it's a Heaven / Hell experience. at home with Mac, the time is spent simply getting things done / at work the time is spent waiting, re-booting, and fighting with the damn thing. and i can feel the difference in my blood pressure. (can I sue microsoft for emotional pain and disstress???)

time for some Logic 101

if someone says "Black cats are evil", that does NOT mean that they are saying "White cats are good"; NOR are they saying "Dogs are good"; NOR are they saying "All black things are evil", NOR are they saying "All cats are evil" (well, that one is actually true... but that's a different story)

I will stay with my PC thanks. The Apple Mac snobs just keep harping on about how good Apple mac is . I have used Microsoft for years and have had little trouble. So give us a break and leave us alone.
Vista will sort itself out then I may go for it.

Wow. That has been debated for almost twenty years. It might surprise you to learn that Apple once did (mid 90's) sell the Mac OS (and the Mac ROM's, necessary since most of the Mac OS at the time was in ROM) to other computer manufacturers, and that several other manufacturers (Motorola, Power Computing, Radius, APS Tech, etc) did indeed build Mac compatibles (clones) during that period (less than a year). Some of those computers were very nice indeed, several offering features not found on Apple's models and a couple actually priced lower than Apple's lowest-cost model. Sadly, the practice ended shortly after Steven Jobs returned to the company.

In a nutshell, Jobs argued that hardware sales (a significant part of the company's profits) would be undercut by other manufacturers selling Mac computers, while software profits (from the OS) would not increase sufficiently to offset those hardware losses. Further, he argued that both Mac hardware and software were superior enough to allow Apple to eventually dominate the market without needing outside manufacturers. Of course, that was a long time ago and that Apple dominance still hasn't exactly materialized (don't know what he thinks today).

Stewart

Yes, perhaps you do need that class. When you added "send the Vista PC back and get a Mac" to your comments, you were indeed making a comparison between the two - saying Microsoft did something while neglecting to mention the company behind the product you recommended did the same thing. A response to that was fair play.

Stewart

I think this is bollocks. If you have a reference I'd like to see it. I'm sure they'd love to dominate the market but what they wanted to do in 1997 when Jobs came back on board was start making money again.

Oh and your sub-two hour Windows XP install means starting from a Windows XP CD which already has SP2 included. Include the SP2 download and install and it'll be over two hours.

Erm, Apple: Bootcamp. Best of both worlds...why get a Windows PC and limit yourself??

you made a response? you replied with something about OS X not supporting long discontinued printers. how is that a response to the statement that MS knowingly releases software with gaping security holes as a standard business practice?

"Black cats are evil."
"Oh yea? Well, lake water has fish pee in it."

It's in his unofficial biography, based on actual statements he made at the time (search the internet for a copy - I don't remember who wrote it). Anyway, he (Jobs) believed the then upcoming OS X would be the killer product that would ultimately do in Microsoft.

Stewart

Because I've been down the road of trying to make Windows run on a Macintosh several times before (VirtualPC and others). Because of hardware differences (interface ports), and software limits (copy-protection in games, for example), it rarely works beyond the most basic applications. It is not at all like using a real PC.

Stewart

You mean iCon. Haven't read it.

Irrelevant...that has nothing to do wth bootcamp

Maybe your doing something wrong. Experts such as those at computerworld think it's the bees knees, easy to setup and run and also make mention that apple running XP with bootcamp is how windows should actually run...fast and problem free.

It's kind of interesting that the mac guys are definitely pro mac, sometimes anti-pc, but mostly just pro mac. But, has anyone else noticed that the Windows guys on here seem to be vehemently anti-mac?

Multi-boot and virtualization are different things. Booting an intel Mac into another OS is not the same as running another OS in an OSX virtual machine*.

*Although this is the ultimate aim of virtualization, how well it is achieved varies depending implementation.

yea, sometimes it gets as bad as the Van Hallen arguement (VH + David Lee Roth v.s. VH + Sammy Hagar)

Your information is out of date and has been for about a year.

Boot Camp is just a bootloader. It is not an emulator or runtime environment. Windows XP runs entirely native on an Intel Mac; I believe Vista also runs. Thus it is indeed like "using a real PC", because new Macs are real PCs.

With Parallels it's also possible to run both OSes simultaneously -- once again, not "emulated", but fully native. (You'll need gobs of RAM to do it, but hey, RAM's cheap these days.)

The only significant hardware difference between a modern Mac and most PCs is that Macs use EFI rather than BIOS. That's it. And many PC makers are moving to EFI as well, so that difference will disappear over time as well.

Cheers,

Fairfax71

If anything Jobs has been proven right in spades. Apple is not dominating the market, no, but then again he never claimed they would (sorry, but your quote doesn't ring true to me for Jobs at all, and I've followed Apple since the late 1970s). What Jobs did do was turn the company around and start making a profit again, which is all that matters. Apple's market share is also growing for the first time in many years and Apple's products undeniably have all the buzz around them (iPod and iPhone in particular, but also iMac and the Mac mini).

Ten years ago people talked about how it was a matter of time before Apple collapsed or was bought. Nobody's saying that now.

Any glance at Apple's revenue structure in the mid-1990s will also show that Jobs was only stating the painfully obvious. Apple is and always was a hardware company. The OS is just gravy. Their revenues are and always were in hardware. Even if they licensed Mac OS, they would never make enough money to support the company in the short term as their hardware sales evaporated.

Did that hurt the clone manufacturers? Yes. Was it good for Mac OS users in the short term? Of course not, because they lost access to cheap clone Macs. But Jobs did what was best for Apple, which was to save the company and make sure it made a profit -- and in the long term Mac OS fans are best served by having Apple around at all.

Cheers,

Fairfax71

First of all, Boot Camp is an 80+ MB installation. Do you honestly believe all that is required to just to tell the computer to switch between Windows and the Mac OS - "just a bootloader," as you say? Of course not. Instead, that installation includes emulation of the PC BIOS, emulation of several core PC motherboard components (boot audio/video, I/O controllers, etc), emulation of the Super I/O controller (serial, parallel, floppy), emulation of PS2 chipset, emulation of PIO for drives (can't install Windows without it), various drivers for Mac I/O ports (to allow them to be used with Windows), and so on. Any one of these could lead to incompatibilities with PC software and/or hardware. In other words, a real potential for the the exact same problems earlier users (including myself) had with VirtualPC, SoftWindows, and similar products.

Regardless, I already have the very best solution for running Windows - a real PC. It is fully compatible. It is fast. Certainly faster than anything Apple has in the same price range. It is flexible; easily modified/repaired with off-the-shelf components not limited by Apple's proprietary rights. And it is fully supported by the widest selection of hardware devices and software of any computer platform. Of course, all this ultimately leaves me without a single reason to even consider running the Mac OS in the first place - and therefore equally no reason to ponder Windows solutions for that.

Stewart

Why? Do you own stock in the company? Sorry, since I don't, profit for them is not "all that matters" to me (or likely most users). And it has been some time since Apple has actually delivered on the things that do matter to me - hardware and software selection, flexibility and choices, truly competitive prices, and so on.

Stewart

Yep, that's it. I don't agree with a some of the book. I think some of the interpretations (read opinions) by the authors were overly harsh. However, it is a little difficult to argue with his (Jobs) own statements, too many of them not very complimentary to himself.

Stewart

You're intentionally taking the printer comment out of context. As you well know, in that very same message, I went on to describe a long history of bugs, product delays, and so on, by Apple. In other words, I answered the issues you raised. Since others, elsewhere in this discussion, have already mentioned the vulnerability ("security holes," as you put it) of the Mac OS to viruses and so on, I saw no reason to address that. Enough said.

Stewart

Boot Camp only emulates BIOS for systems older than Windows Vista, that is, for systems that require BIOS. Vista lives happily with EFI, so the emulation you mention doesn't even come into play. Newer versions of Linux also work fine with EFI. So yes, if you're running a more recent system, it is just a bootloader. Even with XP the parts that are emulated are irrelevant to the vast majority of current applications. Once XP is installed (which is a snap, no harder than on a plain vanilla PC) there is no real difference as far as the user is concerned.

PC World was impressed all over themselves so it seems you're being a bit pedantic to scream "but it's not 110% native" when, in fact, it's 99.9% native.


Your PC can't run Mac OS X natively, let alone OS X and Vista or XP natively. The point is that it's possible to have both, even simultaneously, while having virtually no loss in speed -- it's as fast as any comparable PC with no more or less compatibility problems than your average PC.


OK, so what parts on an Intel Mac are proprietary that you would reasonably consider replacing? All the parts that people normally replace -- video card, hard drive, RAM, PCI cards, and so on -- are standard components found in any PC. There is no difference relevant to the overwhelming majority of users, not even to the minority (!) of those who actually do open up their boxes themselves from time to time.

Secondly, if you want to fiddle with the innards, fine, buy a Mac Pro. I'd stack its accessibility up there with any PC on the market, bar none. (Have you ever opened up a G5 or Mac Pro? I doubt it, because if you had you wouldn't be saying such bollocks.) If you don't want a consumer device, fine, then don't buy the Mac mini or iMac. It's hardly as if there aren't consumer-level PCs that aren't similarly limited (intentionally), because they aren't targeted at you in the first place. It's like whining that an Audi has a computer-controlled motor you can't repair yourself when you really want a Morgan or an old Chevy. Fine, buy the Morgan or Chevy and quitcherbitchin. Meanwhile the rest of us are perfectly well-served by that Audi, or Mac in this case, because most consumers never will open their boxes anyway.


No, I don't own stock in the company. But as an Apple user I'm hardly served by having the company go bankrupt because it desperately tried to serve my short-term interests. On the contrary, it makes more sense for the company to survive so it can continue making new products and support the ones I already own.

"Truly competitive prices" is a laugh anyway. Macs these days are often the same price or even cheaper than similarly equipped name-brand PCs. Yeah, BIY PCs will likely be cheaper, but how many people actually build their own, let alone know how or want to? You might, I've actually done it, but you and I are in the tiny minority. Macs aren't meant for you personally. So what? Buy your PC components, build you own and quitcherbitchin. YMMV.

Cheers,

Fairfax71

I should perhaps also add a few things about myself to counter the inevitable charge that I'm an Apple partisan who doesn't know what he's talking about.

1. I own three PCs, one of which I largely built myself. One runs Linux and is my external server; one is dual-boot Linux and Windows XP; the third is Windows 98, though I don't use the third one much anymore. (I also own several Macs, though only three are actually in use right now -- my laptop, an iBook G4; a dual G5; and my wife uses my old dual G4. A Mac mini is still wrapped waiting to be installed as a cheap web server.)

2. I use Mac OS X on my desktop as my primary system, but also use Windows XP on a daily basis (largely for testing websites and software for clients to make sure they're OK) and Linux for server applications. I've also written published articles for Linux magazines.

3. I first started using DOS at v3.3 and Windows at v2.11 (I still have the disks somewhere); my first very own computer was a PC (a PS/2 Model 25 to be precise). I've also used at various times BeOS, LinuxPPC, MkLinux, FreeBSD, Solaris and of course Mac OS.

4. I really don't care what other people use. If you prefer Windows, be my guest. If you prefer BSD, go for it. If you like Linux, more power to you. Just don't spread distortions and falsehoods about other systems just because you feel the urge to justify your own choice and in particular don't criticize other people for the choices they make. If you don't want to buy a Mac, fine, then don't. YMMV. It's much more honest to say why it's not right for you than to insist that it's not right for anyone else.

Cheers,

Fairfax71

Well, enough of all this. I'm glad you finally have some means of running Windows on your Macintosh. As for not being able to run Mac OS X on my PC, there really is no reason to do so given the vast selection of software and hardware for the PC versus the sparse selection of same for the Mac. Indeed, for the average PC user, there really isn't any compelling reason to consider the Macintosh at all (in any regard). And that has been Apple's problem for some time now - store shelves with a dozen PCs and not a single Mac, rows of shelves filled with PC software/peripherals with little or nothing for the Mac, workplaces filled with PCs and not a single Mac, and so on. Apple's bottom line isn't really going to change significantly until all that changes (in other words, not anytime soon).

But, on a more positive note, there may indeed be some benefit from the ability to run Windows on a Macintosh - Mac users with little or no PC experience (novice computer users who fell for the ease-of-use hype - only true if one sticks to the basics, which is just as true for the PC) may now have a comfortable means of trying Windows to discover it is not nearly as scary as most Macintosh fanatics suggest.

Take care,

Stewart

Well, you're obviously an Apple partisan, though I don't think anyone here has accused you of being stupid. Opinionated certainly, but not stupid. Of course, there is absolutely nothing wrong with being opinionated in a forum full of opinion (including my own).


Oh, come on. Sure you do. You've absolutely raved about Apple and the Macintosh - how easy the Macs are to upgrade, how easy they are to deal with, how right Steve Jobs is/was, how Apple's market share is growing, how Apple products have a buzz around them, and so on. At the same time, you've said nothing positive about Microsoft, the PC, or Windows. Instead, you've spent your time here trying to nick away at the things I've said while accusing me of spreading "distortions and falsehoods" without providing any evidence whatsoever of me having done so.

Your repeated claims that Macs are "real PCs" and Boot Camp "is just a bootloader" (no emulation) are the "distortions and falsehoods." If you believe otherwise (or anyone else does), pull the hard drive out of your Macintosh, install a blank hard drive, and try to install any version of Windows on it. You will not be able to do so. The reason (just as I said) is that Apple has installed several proprietary chips (not just the BIOS chip) on that motherboard and Boot Camp is needed to emulate (as I said) the standard PC chips those proprietary chips replaced. In other words, a Mac is not a PC and Boot Camp is indeed an emulator potentially subject (as I said) to issues similar to other emulators.

By the way, I also haven't "criticize{d} other people for the choices they make," nor said anything is "not right for anyone else."

As said in my previous message, I've had enough and will therefore bid you farewell.

Stewart