Man, there's some heated back and forth here... that's for sure.

Mac vs PC for Me?

PC:

Pros
* WAY cheaper hardware, seriously. My house was robbed recently, and my laptop stolen. This was a 3 years old Dell Inspiron that was about 2Grand (AUS) at the time of purchase. To replace that with a Dell Inspiron that's way better specced now...? $AU745 To replace with an Apple with a similar size screen (I don't want anything less than 14" it gets used as a DVD player for the kids in the car when we go on holidays)? $2,700! Seriously insane! The cheapest laptop they offer AT ALL? $1600, with a 13" screen... Holy crud. You can argue all you like about build quality and included features etc. etc. But if you don't offer some damn sort of entry level computers, then you've lost me I'm afraid.

* Games. I like to play PC Games, playing through Bioshock was blissful. I hardly ever get to these day (4 kids under 6 will do that to you), but I like to buy a game every six months or so and get some playing in now and again... and I'm afraid the PC has the Mac beat in every possible way here.

* I actually really like Windows Media Player. I didn't for ages. Up until, erm, I think it was version 10, I was a staunch Winamp user. But now, WMP is great. And I have no idea what you're talking about with ads in it, because I never see any, it opens in my library. But then I guess I never use online music stores as I'm old fashioned and actually like to get a physical CD for my music.

* It's what I'm used to... I've been using PCs since DOS, so I'm kinda comfortable with them, and I have no real issue with them or Windows. Is it a crap reason to stick with an operating system? Maybe... but it's a reason.

* Even moreso... It's what the Wife is used to: She really doesn't want to learn some other operating system. And she uses all the pcs in this house, so that's a serious consideration.

Cons
* Lack of a unix based terminal... yup, agree there. When you're doing web based development, and the things you're doing are deployed on Linux boxes, it would be really nice to be able to have a local setup that mirrors that. Can't really on a Windows box (and no, Cygwin doesn't count).

* Windows Movie Maker/ Windows DVD Maker: When I first got Vista I got really excited about Windows DVD Maker because the look and feel of the menus it can create and the way it all seems to fit together looks superb. After having it now for a year and a half or so, I think I have successfully burnt ONE DVD using it. ONE. And it's not like it tells you beforehand that it can't handle whatever video format you've given it or whatever, it quite happily previews and goes ahead and spends an hour preparing the video etc. only to die at 99% with a cryptic message. UTTER SHIT. And Movie Maker? Urgh, doesn't really output into any format I really want. I have used it, I have made some nice movies with it, but it's not fun to use at all. For my DVD creation needs I now use DVD Flick (Open source), and I have yet to hit any video format it can't handle... see MS, it's not that hard.


APPLE:
Pros
* Built on BSD: Having a real terminal, and real linux/unix operating system under the hood is great for anyone doing dev work... very nice.

* iLife: As much as I don't like iTunes (see below), from what I've played with in iMovie and iDVD, I really like them, very nice to use. Would love to be able to play with them, and it most of the reason I would like to give owning a Mac a go.


Cons
* Cost: Insane... mentioned above... unavoidable.

* The strip thing: Sorry, don't like that thing along the bottom... heaps of icons with only a tiny little triangle to let you know which ones are currently running, and which aren't. Not intuitive to me at all... but that might just be me.

* Lack of games... again, mentioned above.

* The incredibly annoying advertising: Seriously, this is enough to make me not want one. The arrogant, bullshit of 'Windows always crash' and 'Macs never fail' is SUCH SHIT. I can't remember the last time I had a windows box crash, and I use them ALL day most days. Whereas the last time I was using a Mac at work (OSX, but a fews years back) I had it crash with the delightful bomb thing...

* During that same time I was using the Mac I wanted to eject the DVD I had in it... I looked and looked for an eject button, and could not find it. Could find no logical way to do so... ended up dragging it onto the rubbish bin to eject it, which to me seemed like an insanely loopy way to get a disc out of a drive. I'm sure there are simpler ways, but I found it baffling that here I was, using the 'so simple' OS and could not for the life of me work out how to GET A DISC OUT OF THE MACHINE.

* I despise iTunes and Quicktime. The interface to iTunes, to my eye, is ugly as sin, and quicktime on the PC (can't speak for OSX obviously, but if you want to win people over, don't release shit software on other systems) is a horrendous piece of software that irks the absolute hell out of me... plus until recently had the gall to try and charge you money just to be able to watch movies full screen. I wouldn't have it installed on my pc at all if it wasn't for apple.com/trailers.

* Hardware upgrades: Sort of linked to the price thing, but different in that you can't throw any old video card or whatever else you want in the machine, because you're limited to what Apple offer you in their infinite wisdom.

Neither here nor there
* Physical design: People rant and rave about how beautiful Apples are... and to some degree they are very nice to look at, but you're kinda stuck with that and nothing else. PCs have some pretty sexy desktops and laptops now, in a form for pretty much everyone.


It is obviously personal, and for people like budzos to attack dag for dag finding Macs to be more productive for him is insane. If HE finds it more efficient, then that's friggen great! I really would love to give a Mac a chance, but that entry price is just insanely high, so I'm afraid, unless work switches to Mac (very much a Dell shop), it's not going to happen.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

Refusal of MS to include Java runtime in IE
Windows Media Player uber marketing suckage start page.
"Customized" Vista installs from Dell, HP et al that add layers of cruft to things like networking and photo management.
Outlook's (and the chopped down Vista Mail) continued refusal to play nice with HTML mail

I've never had a problem with my Macs...but all the time with PCs (Dell and the like). Maybe you should take better care of your hardware before you start ripping on companies.

Sounds like stupid user error to me.

I am so totally turned on right now.

I was going to "spend a few bucks" and upgrade an Acer I bought cheap from Newegg last year. It lead me to upgrade my old Gigabyte box, which lead me to buy a new case for the old P4 Dell intestines I saved for my Linux play toy.

$1500 later....

And if you want to really geek out, buy one or two of those cathode blue lights and stick it in or on your case somewhere.

Oh, I'm drooling!

>> ^RedSky:
Pretty sure most computer manufacturing goes in more developed Asian countries like Taiwan and South Korea. China generally sticks more to basic manufacturing.


Really? Let's start by looking at Foxconn, which according to their homepage, mainly manufactures in China, and is the largest exporter there.

"Foxconn is the largest manufacturer of electronics and computer components worldwide, and mainly manufactures on contract to other companies. Although sometimes referred to as an original equipment manufacturer, Foxconn would be more accurately described as an original design manufacturer. Among other things, Foxconn produces the Mac mini, the iPod and the iPhone for Apple Computer; Intel-branded motherboards for Intel Corp.; various orders for American computer retailers Dell, Inc. and Hewlett Packard; the PlayStation 2 and PlayStation 3 for Sony; the Wii for Nintendo; the Xbox 360 for Microsoft, cell phones for Motorola, and the Amazon Kindle." -Wikipedia

I'm sorry RedSky, but you don't know what your talking about. While companies like Foxconn and Asus have headquarters in Taiwan, the vast majority of computer manufacturing takes place in China.

Wow, what a wasteful prick. The guy could have at least donated it to someone who needed a computer if he couldn't live with a small crack in the fucking frame!

I've had laptops break like that, (Dells) and they are still quite usable.

No excuse for his behavior since he's obviously well off enough to afford to stab a working machine with a knife AND buy a new machine. Stop crying about not getting a refund from Apple. If he hadn't destroyed the machine and instead just given it away or overlooked a small blemish on the outer casing I'd have sided with the guy.

^I just checked there and it actually does have the nVidia accelerated graphics driver installed. I bought the computer from Dell with everything fully configured. I think Llama might be right about there being a bug with Ubuntu. Thanks for the suggestion though.

And Ornthoron, thanks for the suggestion too, but I have both Firefox and Opera installed, and the problem occurs on both of them.

Thank you

In reply to this comment by dotdude:
Sorry this is a dupe. The original works.

*dupeof=http://www.videosift.com/video/The-Dude-loves-his-Dell

Sorry this is a dupe. The original works.

*dupeof=http://www.videosift.com/video/The-Dude-loves-his-Dell

This video has been declared a duplicate; transferring votes to the original video and killing this dupe - dupeof declared by dotdude.

Why did she want a 17" display if she can only run it at 1440x900? That's the standard resolution for 15" displays. DDR3 RAM is also a better choice for laptops, due it's reduced power consumption (1.5V vs 1.8V for DDR2), resulting in longer battery use.

Obviously, I'm a Mac fan, but I have to admit, I've always thought Apple's unwillingness to offer a larger lineup of computers, or more configurability, was a marketing failure. It's hard to argue with their success, but they would probably benefit from offering a 15" MacBook on the low end. The only 15" model is the MacBook Pro. That's pretty silly considering how many users will want the extra screen space, but not really need the extra cpu power. A wider range of drive capacities, especially on the higher end models, would be good as well.

[edit] Interesting article at Gizmodo, Krupo. Some of the comments there are even more interesting. A number of people pointed out that certain features were completely ignored, like the new unibody construction, bigger glass touchpad, Leopard vs. Vista <snicker>, better configurations for Dells, etc.

^ I couldn't get SLAX to work with my wireless, either.

I've been using Edimax adapters on two computers with Mint, and both of them worked just fine. SLAX can see the network signal, but it's very weak and it also doesn't seem to like the encryption.

I couldn't get VirtualBox to work on my Vista machine, but it seems to be working okay on my XP workstation.

I just tried Granular, a PCLinuxOS derivative with a KDE desktop, and I must admit that it's not bad. Small footprint. Sluggish install, but once it was done, it was responsive enough. I'm going to try to install it on my old Dell and see how it works.

I think they were calling from Dell.

When I was in college both fedex and UPS would common put packages under your door mat to make them, I guess, less conspicuous. Except, they'd also do it for enormous packages. I had a dell computer shipped to me, which was like 3 a 3 foot square box. They left this $2000 package sitting there, with my tiny door mat perched on top. Nice.

This year, around xmas I had a lot of stuff shipped to me. Usually they leave stuff on my porch but they've gotten further and further away and have left several packages in my driveway, 10 feet or more from my door. Sometimes, in the rain.

Love the Mac guy who is married to his Macs, using triplehead Dell 30+24 inch displays when he ought to have triple Apple Cinema Displays to go with his Apple computers. Made me LOL for real when I saw that. Maybe even he doesn't want to pay 25-40% premium for a white plastic veneer on several thousand dollars worth of monitor.