>> ^jonny:

You're gonna look real funny trying to use that computer without a power supply, keyboard, mouse, cables, fans, heat sink(s), software, etc. It is a fact that Macs used to be quite a bit more expensive (and not just because of the name, but because of parts choices), but it's just not true anymore, at least to the extent you are claiming. No doubt you could spec out a roughly equivalent computer and install Linux and whatever other free software you want for probably about 20% less. Part of the premium is the convenience of not having to shop for all the difference parts and put it together yourself (and hope you don't short out your motherboard in the process). I'm fairly sure most PC sellers charge a "premium" for delivering it in one piece with software installed.
Also, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you picked the low end of the Mac Pro line for ease of comparison, but it also happens to be the worst choice by far in terms price/performance.
>> ^jmzero:
Or you could buy good PCs and see the price is pretty much the same.
Lol @budzos. Mac people have always said this, and it has always been funny. They used to have some magic wiggle room because so many parts were different (different processor, especially) - but that's mostly gone now. OK, so here you can get a quad core Mac Pro for $2499. Let's see what those parts it lists are worth:
Processor: $316 (here's the specific model)
Graphics Card: $109 (here's actually a slightly better model)
6GB of RAM: $100 (good RAM for that premium)
1TB hard disk: $100 (decent hard disk for that)
Motherboard: $250 (let's get a nice one)
Case: $250 (let's get a nice one)
Optical drive: $100
So far we're at $1225. Maybe they've got some Apple magic (whoo! Superdrive!) to make up a couple hundred more dollars - but it's going to take a lot to spend another $1275 (ie. more than double). If you prefer a Mac, go ahead and get one - but pretending they're the same price is silly.
To be clear, I don't hate Apple and some of their products are reasonably priced now. A Macbook Air, for example, has been a good deal for a while and is still much nicer than its competitors. But their hardware has historically been way more expensive, and lots of it still has a significant premium attached.



omg - seriously guys?

Lol @ me? I'm a PC user, but not a fanboy either way. I have never used Apple because (in the past few years) I find their marketing obnoxious and I like to tinker with my PC. I do have an iPad and an iPhone.

I was gonna list my PC specs and their costs and then realized what a waste of time that is. Just for one example my case cost $400+, not $250. It's a big giant black hunk of brushed aluminum. It's bad-ass. Never have I looked at an Apple product and thought "bad-ass."


>> ^jmzero:

Or you could buy good PCs and see the price is pretty much the same.

Lol @budzos. Mac people have always said this, and it has always been funny. They used to have some magic wiggle room because so many parts were different (different processor, especially) - but that's mostly gone now. OK, so here you can get a quad core Mac Pro for $2499. Let's see what those parts it lists are worth:
Processor: $316 (here's the specific model)
Graphics Card: $109 (here's actually a slightly better model)
6GB of RAM: $100 (good RAM for that premium)
1TB hard disk: $100 (decent hard disk for that)
Motherboard: $250 (let's get a nice one)
Case: $250 (let's get a nice one)
Optical drive: $100
So far we're at $1225. Maybe they've got some Apple magic (whoo! Superdrive!) to make up a couple hundred more dollars - but it's going to take a lot to spend another $1275 (ie. more than double). If you prefer a Mac, go ahead and get one - but pretending they're the same price is silly.
To be clear, I don't hate Apple and some of their products are reasonably priced now. A Macbook Air, for example, has been a good deal for a while and is still much nicer than its competitors. But their hardware has historically been way more expensive, and lots of it still has a significant premium attached.

>> ^jmzero:

Oh please - stop it with the DIY PC vs. Mac Pro comparisons, they are just ridiculous.
A HP Z8x0 or a Dell Precision for example

Well... I can't really compare it to, say, the Dell machines we get at work - and for just the kind of reasons you mention. My company pays a premium to Dell (though not as much as we'd pay for Apple) because Dell will drop-ship us a replacement at our whim and gives us reasonable corporate support.
With an Apple you're pretty much just getting the box at that price as far as I've ever figured (we do have some Macs here at work). And if you just want a box, I think it's fair to compare out the price of pats. That's why I compared it like I did.

Did you even read the rest of my post? No onsite support with replacement options is a HUGE drawback of the Mac Pro, but you won't get a Dell or HP workstation much cheaper even without those support options.

>> ^jmzero:

Or you could buy good PCs and see the price is pretty much the same.

Lol @budzos. Mac people have always said this, and it has always been funny. They used to have some magic wiggle room because so many parts were different (different processor, especially) - but that's mostly gone now. OK, so here you can get a quad core Mac Pro for $2499. Let's see what those parts it lists are worth:
Processor: $316 (here's the specific model)
Graphics Card: $109 (here's actually a slightly better model)
6GB of RAM: $100 (good RAM for that premium)
1TB hard disk: $100 (decent hard disk for that)
Motherboard: $250 (let's get a nice one)
Case: $250 (let's get a nice one)
Optical drive: $100
So far we're at $1225. Maybe they've got some Apple magic (whoo! Superdrive!) to make up a couple hundred more dollars - but it's going to take a lot to spend another $1275 (ie. more than double). If you prefer a Mac, go ahead and get one - but pretending they're the same price is silly.
To be clear, I don't hate Apple and some of their products are reasonably priced now. A Macbook Air, for example, has been a good deal for a while and is still much nicer than its competitors. But their hardware has historically been way more expensive, and lots of it still has a significant premium attached.


Oh please - stop it with the DIY PC vs. Mac Pro comparisons, they are just ridiculous.
A HP Z8x0 or a Dell Precision for example - those are the machines you should compare to.
You'll find that they are in the same ballpark.

Price is definitely not something I'd hold against the Mac Pro, that would be stuff like:
- weak expandability (1 PCIe16+2 PCIe4, 4 drive bays, max 64GB RAM),
- lacking features (eg. no SAS or SATA 6G, no USB3.0, weak selection of graphics/GPGPU cards)
- weak support options (no onsite support available at all?! I'm running a business here - do you really expect me to haul my workstation to the Genius Bar when a deadline is imminent?)

You're gonna look real funny trying to use that computer without a power supply, keyboard, mouse, cables, fans, heat sink(s), software, etc. It is a fact that Macs used to be quite a bit more expensive (and not just because of the name, but because of parts choices), but it's just not true anymore, at least to the extent you are claiming. No doubt you could spec out a roughly equivalent computer and install Linux and whatever other free software you want for probably about 20% less. Part of the premium is the convenience of not having to shop for all the difference parts and put it together yourself (and hope you don't short out your motherboard in the process). I'm fairly sure most PC sellers charge a "premium" for delivering it in one piece with software installed.

Also, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you picked the low end of the Mac Pro line for ease of comparison, but it also happens to be the worst choice by far in terms price/performance.
>> ^jmzero:

Or you could buy good PCs and see the price is pretty much the same.

Lol @budzos. Mac people have always said this, and it has always been funny. They used to have some magic wiggle room because so many parts were different (different processor, especially) - but that's mostly gone now. OK, so here you can get a quad core Mac Pro for $2499. Let's see what those parts it lists are worth:
Processor: $316 (here's the specific model)
Graphics Card: $109 (here's actually a slightly better model)
6GB of RAM: $100 (good RAM for that premium)
1TB hard disk: $100 (decent hard disk for that)
Motherboard: $250 (let's get a nice one)
Case: $250 (let's get a nice one)
Optical drive: $100
So far we're at $1225. Maybe they've got some Apple magic (whoo! Superdrive!) to make up a couple hundred more dollars - but it's going to take a lot to spend another $1275 (ie. more than double). If you prefer a Mac, go ahead and get one - but pretending they're the same price is silly.
To be clear, I don't hate Apple and some of their products are reasonably priced now. A Macbook Air, for example, has been a good deal for a while and is still much nicer than its competitors. But their hardware has historically been way more expensive, and lots of it still has a significant premium attached.

>> ^budzos:

>> ^Unsung_Hero:
PC - Quarter of the price, quarter of the laughs.

Or you could buy good PCs and see the price is pretty much the same.


Umm no. I'm sure Apples marketing dept would like you to believe that but no. No matter how you look at it. Your paying for the apple name. Not the specs.

Your video, OMG! I just dropped my brand new iMac!!, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

This achievement has earned you your "Pop Star" Level 91 Badge!

>> ^budzos:

>> ^Unsung_Hero:
PC - Quarter of the price, quarter of the laughs.

Or you could buy good PCs and see the price is pretty much the same.


Fastest comment reply I've ever had on one of my comments.

Congrats Good Sir!

>> ^Unsung_Hero:

PC - Quarter of the price, quarter of the laughs.


Or you could buy good PCs and see the price is pretty much the same.

Introducing the new Apple iPerson complete with multi touch and volume control, doesn’t it feel good to touch, doesn’t it feel good to touch, doesn’t it feel good to touch.

My world is so digital, I have forgotten what that feels like.
It used to be hard to connect when friends formed cliques, but now it’s even more difficult to connect now that clicks form friends.

But who am I to judge…

I face Facebook more than books face me hoping to book face to faces, I update my status 420 space to prove Im still breathing; failure.
To do this daily means my whole web wide world would forget that I exist. But with 3000 friends online only 5 I can count in real life, why wouldn’t I spend more time in the world where there are more people that LIKE me. Wouldn’t you?

Here it doesn’t matter if I am an amateur person, as long as I have a pro-file, my smile is 50% genuine and 50% genuine-HD, you will need blu-rays to read the whites of my teeth, but im not that focused.

Ten tabs open, hoping, my problems can be resolved with a 1600 x 1700 revolution, this is a problem with this evolution, doubled over, we used to sit in tree tops, till we swung down and stand up right, then someone slipped a disc, now we’re doubled over at desktops.

From the Garden of Eden, to the branches of Macintosh, Apple picking has always come at a great cost.
iPod, iMac, iPhone, iChat, I can do all of these things without making iContact.

We used to sprint to pick and store Blackberries, now we run to the Sprint store to pick Blackberrys, it’s scary.
I can’t hear the sound of mother nature speaking, over all that Tweeting, and along with it is our ability to feel as it’s fleeting.

You would think these headphone jacks inject in the flesh the way we connect, the disconnect, power ON. So we are powerless, they got us love drugged. Like e-pills, so we e-trade, e-mail, e-motion like e-commerce because now money can buy love, for 9.95 a month – click!

To proceed to checkout – click! To X out where our hearts once were – click!
I’ve uploaded this hug, I hope she gets it – click!
I’m making love to wife, I hope she’s logged in – click!
I’m holding my daughter over a Skype conference call while shes crying in the crib in the next room – click!

So when my phone goes off in my hip, I touch and I touch and I touch, because in a world where there are voices that are only read and laughter is never heard or I’m so desperate to feel that I hope the technologic in reverse the universes so the screen can touch me back, and maybe it will, when our technology is advance enough to make us human again.

I feel ya, my wife and strangely all of my girlfriends of the past were Mac people and it's been the source of some bitter arguments. I recently built a new pc at the beginning of this summer for roughly $1000 and it SCREAMS compared to what you can get out of a Mac for that price point.

My system:

--Gigabyte 890FX (overclocks very well) $179.99
--AMD 1090T 3.2ghz 6 cores w/ Turbo clocks to 3.6 $290 on newegg but i got a deal at the time for $100 off combo
I've got it running @ 3.6 stable on air and 4ghz when other cores are inactive and turbo kicks in
Newegg has it listed
--4 gigs of kingston 1600 DDR3 ~$100~
--ATI Radeon 5850 w/ 1 gig of memory $290
--New powersupply ~$100-$120
and $50 for a new 250gig WD hard drive

And although those are estimates w/ the $100 off the chip @ the time it did come out to about $1000 w/ the tax and all. I recycled the case and the optical drive I had and used stock cooling that came with the chip. I dont have any performance numbers available right now but if you know a thing or two about hardware you know they have all kinds of tricks to help you part with your cash for less.

To be fair, I'll throw in the cost of my monitor which was ~200 my operating system is Windows 7 ultimate which I got from college for $15 and my keyboard and mouse ~50 total
so that's my ~$1300 system

http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_mac/family/imac?mco=MTAyNTQzNjA
the cheapest comparable mac here is using an i3 Intel processor (see chart for performance) http://www.guru3d.com/article/core-i3-530-processor-review/12

the video card on the system
http://www.guru3d.com/article/ati-radeon-hd-4670-review/9 compare those scores to the card i got
http://www.anandtech.com/show/2848/4
look @ the crysis scores and bear in mind that the second reviewer was using FSAA and AF at very high

you get the idea

In reply to this comment by blankfist:
I've given up on the iPhone, but thanks for the tip about frash. I really wanted to install Flash apps, but they've said no to that, so I'm saying no to them. When my Macs expire, I may just give up on them altogether. I hear Windows 7 is good, and for the money I paid for my Mac Pro I could have a super sweet PC.


I'm all Droid from this point on.

Signed,
The Anti-Apple blankfist

Hah, the female reporters last name is "Macintosh".

But anyway, I'm glad that Apple has opened the door for a lot of other companies to develop new technologies. And just the same as when every computer or tech manufacturer started making all their products the ugly colors of the first-gen iMac's, there will be a flood of these things soon enough.

But as long as they're running windows, it'll probably suffer the same fate as the Zune.

The iPad. Still sucks. I can see Jobs having another purpose for it besides it just being a large iPod Touch, and I'm thinking that would (or should!) involve tv and movies. I would hope he's thinking of something more than what it currently will be. Otherwise it will fall into the land of misfit toys like the Apple TV, the powermac g4 cube, Apple's weird iMac "hockey puck" mouse and the Newton.

Either way, if it fails it won't hurt the company. Apple has created a fantastic array of tech toys and computers. My Mac Pro Tower is awesomely fast! The MacBook Air is great for typing while I shit, which I'm doing at the moment. And you're welcome for the image.

I own a Droid and my gf owns an iPhone. I still like aspects of the iPhone's usability and interface better. I wouldn't want an iPhone, though. I like my Droid, and it has things that I like that Apple's Iphone doesn't have. I can literally press a button, say "map to tacos" and have the first Google searched result come back as a map that I can then send right into their built in GPS! That's brilliant! Also it makes phone calls. Okay, time to wipe.

I may not have gone to university for engineering, but I do know retail electronics need an EMI shield.
You could get away with selling it to the DIY market, but it's not a big enough market to really make a difference that this guy is talking about in the video. He could add simple tinfoil like in an iMac though.

However the real problem is that an electrical fire could ignite the case. That's not even that rare in computers either. Once you factor in houses burning down I think the metal cases will turn out to be much "greener".