It’s like having someone wander around a Toyota dealership, fruitlessly searching for a sub-$15,000 sedan with a four-letter name before finding out that the only car which satisfies such a pressing need is the Chevy Aveo.

Actually it’s more like having someone wander around a Honda dealership, searching for a sub-$15,000 car with five letters or less, liking but rejecting the Civic as outside that price range, and finding the Chevy Aveo - and hey! One letter less!. Never mind that the Fit was small car of the year, goddamnit!

But to someone looking for an inexpensive computer Macs are pretty overpriced. Apple just doesn’t sell anything to go in the bottom tier. The cheapest Mac you can get is a $600 Mini, to which you need to add keyboard, mouse and monitor. The bottom-of-the-line HP is $150 less than that and comes with all these items.

Want a bit more memory and disk in your Mini? That’s $200 more. Now, I like Apple (I’m still lugging around a G4 Powerbook I bought five years ago). To a major extent you do get what you pay for with them (though I’ll do my own upgrades thankyouverymuch). But it’s been over a decade since they were “The computer for the rest of us.”

But to someone looking for an inexpensive computer Macs are pretty overpriced. ...To a major extent you do get what you pay for with them…

You see what you did there?

It is problematic that the cost is lumped into one big chunk of sticker shock upfront. Worse, in my experience (which others have had the opposite) Apple doesn’t include really nice customer service for their loyal buyers in said price—I’ve always found their policies rather nerve-wracking, considering how they do control their hardware so tightly.

Nevertheless—the quality you pay for is real. And since I’ve never cared to own a Windows piece, I can’t say I have any experience with getting service on one, so perhaps that is even worse. God help us.

(though I’ll do my own upgrades thankyouverymuch).

Not that I want to start monkeying with my new MacBook, but it seems they’ve made doing that very kind of thing much easier lately. At any rate, I could swap in a new hard drive really simply! (The hard drive lives in the battery compartment. Of course, God help me if I wanted to replace the DVD drive…) And I have put in RAM and AirPort modules into several makes of older Mac laptops myself.

But it’s been over a decade since they were “The computer for the rest of us.”
weirdnoise on 05/20 at 11:57 PM

Actually, going by your upfront sticker price criterion—they never ever were. Macs have always been more expensive than their PC competitors.

The “for the rest of us” slogan refers to using the things once you have them. On that front, they have always been and still are superior.

In my job, getting a Mac on the line is a bit of a nightmare, because their unique operating systems won’t interface with our standard diagnostic software and we therefore can’t “pass” them, nor do data security on them in the piece. We have to fail them and remove the hard drive (plus any other permanent storage media they may have). And until this past year or so’s laptop models, finding and extracting the hard drive is problematic since they were designed to be physically very hard to open; most techs where I work pretty much destroy them doing that (and not being Mac lovers like me, take pride and joy in doing so…)

But I’d much rather deal with an old Mac laptop than a comparably old IBM or Compaq, or even one half the age of some Macs I’ve handled.

There are reasons I always pronounce Compaq “Com-crap!” (And Celeron “Celery”).

On the line—give me a Dell. They’re easy to take apart and put back together neatly.

But at home, I love my Macs. And tend to be behind the times with them, because darn it, they do last.

Macs might be overpriced, but they work right out of the box, you don’t have to futz around and install a bunch of shit because it’s already on there, and when you call for help, you get help from someone who speaks your native language and actually listens to you rather than reading responses off a preprinted card.

I have a Dell that I used to use before Mac made the boot camp software.  Unfortunately, in my line of work, the software I need to work with does not come in a Mac-compatible form.  Anyway, calling for help with the Dell was a fucking nightmare.  I was talking to someone overseas who did not speak English as a native language.  I don’t want to come across as xenophobic,  but when you are dealing with trying to explain a computer problem that you don’t fully understand, it becomes exponentially harder to do so when the person you are explaining it to doesn’t understand your language.  I would call and spend two hours minimum on the phone with some guy who was giving me directions on what to do on the computer, then I would have to get off the phone because of a class or appointment.  So I would call back with the number they gave me and have to start the process all over again from the damn start because the new call-center person I’m talking to either doesn’t or won’t understand that I’ve been through all those steps before and they aren’t working and is there something else we can try or somewhere I can go to get service.  This went on for five or six days until my retired dad got on the phone with a number from my mom’s work and was able to speak to someone in Canada and get the problem fixed.  But I emphasize that the number he called was NOT a publicly available number.

When I have a rare problem on my Mac, I go online, click a few buttons about my problem, then click the speak to a support representative now and my phone rings within SECONDS and the person I speak to is knowledgeable and patient and actually listens.  It’s like night and day.  I’m willing to pay extra for a machine that actually works and that if it stops working, it takes minimal effort to get it back to working.

You expect companies to make advertisements to appeal to adults?  Manipulation of the inner child is much more successful.

The Republicans figured this out long ago in politics. Fear mongering works on children. Adults can understand lying, hypocrisy, and manipulation while children can’t.

I don’t really understand the premise of the ads.  Is it that Microsoft is now so fucking rich and powerful that they’ll just buy you a computer rather than have you buy from the competitor?  Hell, I’ll go into a crappy store like Best Buy and act perky on camera as long as I get hundreds of dollars worth of free stuff.  Is that what this is about?

There’s something odd about an ad where the competition is shown to be more expensive, but the customer who acknowledges the “correct” product gets it but doesn’t have to pay for it.  Is this what our economy has come to?  You can’t afford the five-bedroom house on an acre?  Well after comparison shopping, maybe there’s a homebuilder that will give you a three-bedroom home in a cookie cutter community and let you pocket the difference!  That’s capitalism!

Macs are good, but expensive.  Duh.
PCs come in all shapes and sizes and many are cheap.  Double duh.
Some doofuses will hand out hundred dollar bills if you buy the right product.  WTF?

Macs and PCs are made from the same off the self parts.  The only difference is that that Apple contracts with the manufacture to assure their OS runs flawlessly.  Microsoft doesn’t have this luxury and has to deal with all sorts of weird crap that cripples their OS.  Plus, they have a weird fascination with being able to run software developed thirty years ago.

Macs are pretty decent, but I haven’t found them to be all that more impressive from a really good HP laptop.  The ultimate laptop I’ve used is Panasonic Toughbook.  Pretty handy in bar fight. You definitely get your money’s worth with one of those.

In any case, I wipe the drive of the shitty closed source OS and install Linux so I can control the damn thing.

Yeah, I never got why they wouldn’t go right up to the limit that microsoft was giving them. That reduces their credibility a lot, because clearly this is not real people given this offer, or else they would get the most expensive computer under the max. Which is a shame, because it’s a good idea for an ad.

Of course if you know what you’re doing and really want to get you’re monies worth, you buy computer parts and build it yourself. You can make a really nice computer for $2000, and put windows, mac, linux and whatever other operating system you want on there.

Dell has been better for my than Compaq or—god save us—Gateway (Month 14?  Motherboard dies!  On two machines!  Convinces boss that we’re better off with typewriters!)

But I haven’t been able to use my computer at home for over a year.  An “automatic update” from Windows fried it.  I could not find the original CD, since both job and home have moved twice—and no amount of otherwise downloading shit worked.  Finally, my brother said his finance had one.  10 minutes later, all better…for a month.

I think it was just the wireless card…but then Excel vanished.  And now it doesn’t want to recognize the disk drives—so I could install my new wireless card if I could use the disk drive or I could download it over the internet if it were already installed, but since I can’t get online without the drive…I have a big black box with irreplaceable pictures on it.

When I was in college, we all had Macs.  I stayed Mac as long as I could.  If I could afford a new computer…that’s what I’d get.

Fuck it all.  I hate breaking computers open and yanking stuff in and out.  I hate having to get my cousin who does this type of stuff all day to come over and do it, and still have things not work.

As for Vista…my MIL got a new computer for Christmas.  She barely uses it…and it is as slow as molasses now. 

I want to be in those commercials.  They hand me the money for my crap purchase, and I take it home and leave it in the box.  I bring it back the next day, get a refund and get a Mac.  Wooo.

Well, Mac has those endless fucking commercials with those two insufferable prats.

In the IT world, Mac people have been renowned for years for their Borg-like devotion to the child of Steve Jobs.  At the same time, the world of business had been obsessed with having compatibility with Microsoft’s OSs and application suites like MS Office, whether they really need those things or not.

What I have noticed over the last 10-15 years is more cultish behavior around Microsoft on the server side of things, which further reinforces the strict use of Windows on the client side.  This is the end game Microsoft has been aiming for for decades, and for those of us who don’t belong to the Cult of Gates, is very off-putting.

The Linux-oids are their own cult (although there are many nice things about Linux), the Mac people are still utterly devoted to Apple (although network compatibility and file compatibility are good and still getting better), and added is the worship of Microsoft The All Powerful.

So a guy like me — who works in IT, sees good and bad aspects to all computers and OSs, who has a hard time with all religion, but especially those religions surrounding a piece of hardware and some specific software — where do I go?  I’m surrounded by loonies on all sides for the Great Computer Debate…

Any ad claiming to have real people in it: fail. Even in the amazingly unlikely case that it’s just cherry-picked rather than fully scripted, it’s like basing your understanding of human behavior on Real World: Milpitas.

Also fail: anything shot in cinema V-Rite. It costs way too much money to make thing look that bad.

This is like arguing over automatic vs manual transmissions. People are going to have different needs and different perspectives.

I’m a designer who spends a decent amount of time doing 3d and video content. I’m running a Windows based high-end Alienware and couldn’t be happier. When people ask me what to buy, I generally recommend a Mac due to their usability. If they’re computer literate and cost conscious, I point them at a cheap PC. The point is: There is no ‘best’ computer for everyone, despite what both Apple and Microsoft are trying to say otherwise.

And what? No love for linux?

I think the Mac ads are much, much worse than this.  I can’t even stand to watch them.  There’s no substance to them at all.  Basically they just say “Macs are like this cool young guy, and PCs are like this old guy that nobody likes.  If you buy a Mac you’ll be cool but if you buy a PC you’ll be a dork like this guy.”  If all you need is a word processor and an internet browser, either type of computer will work for you.  If you want a computer that actually does stuff besides graphics, then you need a PC.  It drove me nuts in college when I had to use Visio and only Macs were left in the computer lab, because there is no Mac version of Visio.  Also, Macs do not handle AutoCad very well.  I remember Macs freezing up all the time for people during timed AutoCad tests.  Everyone showed up early for that class to try to get a PC.

I’ve used Windows machines all my life, dabbled in Linux, and had to learn up on Macs for school and work. While I still prefer Windows for my day-to-day crap, I consider myself a bit of a UU when it comes to the religious holy wars.

When people find out that I work in computers (nevermind that I’m not in help desk, client support, or even hardware), they tend to ask me what sort of computer they should buy. I have one question I ask:

1) Are you planning to game on it?

If yes, buy a PC. Otherwise, buy a Mac. Because these people who would actually ask some stranger at the mention of that nebulous term “computers” what sort they should buy are obviously not going to be savvy users who will understand how to navigate a file tree, how to keep viruses off their system and are pretty much only interested in surfing the web, checking their email, and maybe doing a little bit of personal life-management stuff like Quicken and maybe some light wordprocessing. So I tell them to get a Mac, because it’s got a slightly less intimidating learning curve and will generally take their abuse a little better. I recommend the Mini for price reasons, and basically leave it at that.

It would be interesting to see what would happen with computer viruses if every clueless person who wanted a computer-box for the living room so they could email photos of the grandkids went Mac instead of PC: I have long maintained that the reason that Macs are “virus proof” and generally less buggy is because their market share has allowed them to maintain a tighter control over their proprietary softwares and also that developing viruses for macs is not as attractive to crackers because they’re such a small population.

So a guy like me — who works in IT, sees good and bad aspects to all computers and OSs, who has a hard time with all religion, but especially those religions surrounding a piece of hardware and some specific software — where do I go?  I’m surrounded by loonies on all sides for the Great Computer Debate…

MikeEss:
1.  Start your own religion.
2.  Change your preferences between Linux, Mac and Windows as objectively needed.
3.  Condemn all others who disagree with you as heretics.
4.  Burn heretics at the stake.
5.  Retroactively and generously forgive those you burned incorrectly.
6.  Burn twice as many new heretics.

Repeat as needed.

It’s just a goddam computer, y’all. It’s not who you bought it from, it’s what you do with it—something I’ve noticed that Mac users tend a little more often to forget than we hoi polloi whose laptops don’t waste money and battery power on a pointlessly showy backlit logo.

And I’ll agree that Dell’s customer support is a sick joke, but it’s totally unfair to extend that same perception to Microsoft and write off their support as being just the same. This is the company whose representatives not only spent two weeks solid on the phone with me helping to solve a problem, but were so concerned to make sure everything was fixed that they were still calling to follow up two weeks after that. This is the support department who’ve never not been able to fix something which I had to call them about; it might take them a bit of time, sure, but when I call Microsoft support, it’s because I’ve run out of ideas about what else to do. I don’t know that I’d recommend using them as other than a last resort, because they’re not cheap and they do sometimes take their time about discovering and fixing the issue, but I’ve always found them to be extremely good in that role.

The problem with Windows is morons use it, and morons demand “features” that are thoroughly unsafe on the internet and Microsoft accedes to their demands (to keep their OS dominance). Thus not only is Windows unsafe, it will never be safe. I see this all the time because I have dealt with more than a few morons who have PCs at home and gotten them so balled up I couldn’t figure out how one computer could get so much malware on it. Not everyone who has a PC is a moron, but they dominate,  Apple users may be just as moronic,  but Apple doesn’t let them do as many stupid things as in the PC world, and by consequence they’re much safer - they’re buttoned down pretty well from what I’ve seen.  I leave off on Linux/BSD simply because they’re attractive only to those who know what they’re doing, so those people don’t tend to leave big holes to drive malware through.

One other thing is that at one time virus writers were into the game for prestige, so breaking Mac, Linux or BSD would have been a coup around ten years ago. It wasn’t ever done, though. Nowadays, virus writing is all about the Benjamins, so there isn’t any point in targeting anything but Windows boxes.

where do I go?  I’m surrounded by loonies on all sides for the Great Computer Debate…

I’m with you on that.  I love my Macbook Pro (and its Unix OS), but Apple has to be the worst when it comes to vendor lock-in.  (See iTunes and iWork.)  Then again, Linux is free - and I don’t like paying for software.  At any rate, I’ve got a Macbook Pro loaded with open source software (OpenOffice, NeoOffice, VLC, etc.).  What I’m supposed to pay for buggy, crashey office software when I can get slightly less buggy, crashey software for free?

At the same time, the world of business had been obsessed with having compatibility with Microsoft’s OSs and application suites like MS Office, whether they really need those things or not.

I run into this occasionally.  There is absolutely no good reason that MS Office cannot and should not be compatible with open doc format documents.  There is, however one really bad reason that MS won’t adopt an open standard - vendor lock-in.  If everyone can read everyone else’s documents, then MS can’t sell buggy, crashey office suites for $600 per license.

Hmmm, I guess I belong to the cult of “no vendor lock-in.”  But I’m not in the cult of free software; I’m just cheap.

For those of us that use our computers for surfing the net, wriing papers and occasionaly watcing a movie, either a mac or a PC works pretty good.

ONe thing I really miss whenever I use a mac is the right click function.

You can right-click on a mac.  Just hold control and click.  Voila!

...we hoi polloi whose laptops don’t waste money and battery power on a pointlessly showy backlit logo.

The logo is illuminated by the LCD’s backlight. A component somewhat required for, you know, seeing things on the screen. Put your screen to sleep and the logo goes dark. It doesn’t waste power and is no more expensive than any one else’s logo, just better designed… which is Apple’s thing.

It’s also a technical troubleshooting point. No image on the LCD? Shine a flashlight through the Apple logo. If you can then see something on the screen you know the backlight is dead. More of that well considered design stuff.

That said, my OS X portable is a $400 MSI Wind.

ONe thing I really miss whenever I use a mac is the right click function.

FWIW: While I haven’t used PCs enough to know the extent of the right click function—a PC mouse with right and left clicks plugged into my Macs makes all the right click functions I know about work on a Mac just fine.

Uh guys, Macs have had right-click functionality for a decade and a half now and have shipped with multi-button mice for the past 4 years. Well, to be fair, the mouse has no buttons but can tell where you are clicking on it. And it has the world’s shittiest scroll wheel/nub/thing. Sometimes the design thing goes too far. I actually prefer Microsoft Intellimouse… es.

What I like are the people who complain about the Macbooks having just one button. It’s a LAPTOP fer krisake, the thing has like 60 buttons within handspan of the trackpad!

Fair enough, Sarcastro; I didn’t know it was possible to make transparent CCFL backlights. Still pointlessly showy, though.

(And I’d note that it’s just as easy to diagnose a backlight failure by shining a flashlight at the front of the screen; I’ve done it often enough myself.)

ONe thing I really miss whenever I use a mac is the right click function.

You can right-click on a mac.  Just hold control and click.  Voila!

Or take your two button mouse off your PC, and right click as normal!

I met Jobs and Wozniak back in the days when “The Homebrew Computer Club” used to meet on Wednesday evenings in the auditorium at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. I saw the first Apple, which was pretty much a keyboard in a plywood box. They handed out free schematics to anyone who wanted to build one for themselves. I’ve used computers since they were programmed through front panel switches, punch cards and paper tapes. The Apple vs Microsoft war is very old. I’m agnostic, and use whatever is at hand to get the job done. My choice has always been a PC for purely personal reasons. I don’t like Jobs one bit. Successful yes, but an arrogant human of the first magnitude. I used to live just around the corner from him near his house at the corner of Waverly and Hamilton in Palo Alto. I used to walk my dog down Waverly, and she always delighted me by performing some act of elimination on said property.

Something that bugs me, as a mother of two young adults, is how the commercial introduces “Lauren and Mom.”

No, it’s not Lauren and “Mom.”  It’s “Lauren and her mother, Sandy” or “Lauren and Sandy.”

“Mom” is not a grown woman’s name.  It’s a nickname that only her children are entitled to use with her.  My children can call me mom and it’s the sweetest sound—but it’s patronizing for anyone else to refer to me that way.  I have a name, too.  As does Sandy or whoever the heck Lauren’s mother is. 

/rant

After years of observation, it seems to me that the big difference between Mac People and PC People is that PC People like to tinker with their computer.  They kind of dig it when they can’t get their new digital camera to talk to the computer and they can spend several hours messing around with everything to figure out why.

Me, I like to plug in the computer and have it do things.  I don’t know why it is that I can plug in my camera and have the computer automatically open iPhoto and start downloading my pictures, but I don’t care about the “why.”  I just want it to happen and I don’t want to have to spend hours futzing around with it to get it to work.  (Of course, iPhoto sucks and is an insane memory hog, but that’s a different post ...)

No one has mentioned the other big advantage of Macs:  if you live near an Apple store, you can walk in with your computer and get service on the spot from the Genius Bar.  One night, one of our cats slipped while jumping down from on top of the bookcase behind the couch and managed to land right on the keyboard of G’s Powerbook, breaking one of the keys off.  We brought it to the Apple store and the nice lady at the Genius bar went to the back to get a new little plastic thingy that keeps the key in place and popped it on.  Problem solved, in 10 minutes, for free.

They kind of dig it when they can’t get their new digital camera to talk to the computer and they can spend several hours messing around with everything to figure out why.

No. We kind of dig it when we can’t get our new digital camera to work and the problem is fixable. One of the most frustrating things about Macs has always been that, when they refuse to Just Work, fixing them is a huge pain in the ass, because you can’t get under the hood, so to speak, and see what’s going on, and do something about it. I don’t know whether this is no longer true of OS X Macs, but I do know that Apple’s “no user-serviceable parts inside” attitude is one of the things that has always turned me off their products to the point that I have no interest in finding out firsthand whether OS X makes anything easier to fix than Classic did; I’m not about to spend better than a grand on a computer unless I know I’ll be mostly able to fix most or all of the things that will inevitably go wrong with it. (And my experiences with Apple’s customer support, in the pursuit of solutions for customers’ problems, have been pretty poor, on the whole; my worst experience with Microsoft support was much more positive than my best experience with Apple.)

Admittedly, I do like to tinker with my computers; I’m a geek, it’s one of the things we generally do. But tinkering isn’t the same thing as fixing a problem that’s preventing me from doing something I want to do with my computer, and I do require that my computers at least make that kind of repair possible.

(But, again, I’m a Technical Person, whatever the hell that means, and I’d rather trust my own capabilities than call an unknown quantity at tech support, or ship a machine off for warranty service by some company I’ll never have the chance to evaluate. This is not an attitude that Apple has ever seemed to encourage, as far as I can tell.)

I like the Mac commercials.  The guy that plays “PC” should get some kind of award.

This is easy.  If it ain’t Mac, it ain’t shit.  They don’t crash.  They don’t get viruses.  And if you have a zillion files they have the best search functions.  Then there’s iTunes and….

When I want to tinker on my machine, set up servers for utility, etc… I install Linux. I’m sure BSD and some other alternatives would do just as well, but I know Linux inside and out because i work on it 40+ hours a week.
When I want a machine that just works and does what I need it to do, and have a shitload of money, I get a Mac.
When I’m broke and need a machine that just works (sorta) and I’m willing to do some tinkering because I just can’t afford something decent, I go Windows. Also, games.

And I’m often broke. And while I’d like to be able to afford one gaming rig and one awesome, just plug it in and don’t worry about it rig, I can’t. So it’s Windows and grumbling about having to settle for less for me.

It’s been decades. Couldn’t Apple get around to getting game devs to go onboard with their platform, yet? Come on!

To add to the not-fixable aspect of Macs I have personally had issues with the non-upgradeable aspect. I don’t always have the ready cash on hand to go for the biggest and best of the PC world (oh, if only I did!), so I have always paid close attention to things like number of extra bays on the PC, number of extra memory slots not in use on the motherboard, number of USB ports, etc. so that when I did have the cash for that $200 graphics card i wanted to add I could pop it in and hey lookit, pretty!

In my current PC, which had a top of the line motherboard when I got it and bottom of the line everything else (and didn’t that confuse the tech guys who were selling it to me!) I’ve upgraded the RAM, the HD, the graphics, the sound, the DVD and the cooling system. But because I had a chip and a motherboard that could handle it, I was able to spend that extra $750+ over the course of three years instead of needing to buy only what I could affod three years ago. And the added bonus is that when I eventually upgrade this motherboard (assuming I get a new box, which is likely) I can move all of those components to the new system until I can afford their replacements.

If I had been buying a Mac I would currently be using a computer three years out of date instead of one that has evolved to suit my needs as I could afford the upgrades.

Jeez, Jesse they’re just a couple of girls. It’s a commonly known fact that chicks know NOTHING about technology and need to be led by the nose lest they make the wrong choice. See? The commercials (and the companies behind them) are graciously HELPING clueless women make affordable, user-friendly laptop purchases that will suit their every need. I am not sure why you don’t get this.

’m not about to spend better than a grand on a computer unless I know I’ll be mostly able to fix most or all of the things that will inevitably go wrong with it.

This used to be (somewhat) true, but clearly you haven’t gotten up to your elbows in OSX. It’s just as transparent as any other OS. The Terminal app scares me a little bit, and I stay away from it because I don’t know what I’m doing, but a guy at the Genius Bar showed me amazing things with it and Console and Activity Monitor.

On the hardware side, I’ve cracked open my son’s Mini hard drive and replaced it in about a half-hour; my daughter’s MacBook keyboard took about an hour (she’s got a temper, that one, and punched it), and my dual G4’s AirPort card in less than 5 minutes. For stuff I can’t fix myself, the Genius Bar is nothing short of excellent service.

As a UI designer, I just loathe Windows. Just loathe it.

Linux love here.  I bought a laptop (my first!) last fall by finding a reasonably spec’d, reasonably cheap laptop that was reported to run Ubuntu Linux. (Lenovo Ideapad Y510)  The first thing I did was install Ubuntu to make a dual boot system.

Once a month I boot Vista and install software updates.  After doing so, and rebooting as many times as required to complete the installation, I scurry back to Linux with a sign of relief.

I’ve been quite happy with my laptop.

The guy that plays “PC” should get some kind of award.

That’s John Hodgman, one of the funniest people alive today. His books are marvelously weird.

The “Hi I’m a Mac” ads make me seethe.  Granted, I’ve had a long-standing grudge against Apple since I owned an LC, Civilization finally came out with a Mac port, and I found that my machine didn’t have enough memory.  Not only did I have to buy more memory, I had to pay someone who had the special goddamn tool (hint: not a screwdriver!) fifty bucks to pop the box open and stick two SIMMs in their slots.  These days I’m running 64-bit Vista on a $700 desktop and it runs the games I play on it just fine.  Age of Conan was nice and smooth on medium video settings.

The sexism and racism in those ads is just confirmation that I’m still justified in my loathing.  And I’m not about to run all my music through iTunes.

Although I’ve wanted to for years, I finally bought a MacBook in December. It is well beyond anything I expected.
Quite simply, it works. The touchpad is remarkably intuitive; I love the simplicity of the operating system and the software that came with it.
All the little touches thrill me no end.
My wife used it a couple of times and we bought one for her two weeks ago, retiring her two year old PC, which was on its third hard drive and ran like an asthmatic 80 year old anyway.

And just for the record, anyone who would buy anything based on the commercial has some serious issues. I, for one though, have always felt a lot of sympathy for the PC guy in the Apple commercials. He seems seriously less douchy than the Mac guy.

But I don’t care how I have to scrounge in the future; I am not going back to a PC.

Oh the discrepancies abound:

She’s like, “Ew, Apple Store” and then walks into Best Buy, which sells Apple.

The biggest one is that the price rings up at $699.99 (no tax, she must be buying it for The Church of PCs), completely ignoring the fact that PCs need antivirus out the wazoo ($39.99 there), full versions of software since they only come with trials (Microsoft Office, at least $149.99) and, let’s not forget, since she’s in Best Buy, the Geek Squad is going to bend her over and ram her with their package deals ($39.99 for a basic optimization package), laptop case ($19.99 for a basic slip).

The point?

She’s not getting out of Best Buy without paying $930 before tax, with a basic tax of 8.25%, she leaves having spend $1006.72 and let’s not even factor in the stupid warranties.

Hey, if I got a free computer for one of those ads, all I’d need to know was this: Linux is free, and I can turn any PC into a Mac for about $170 (OS X/iLife/iWork triple pack). (In fact, I found this out the hard way—could have gotten a free Dell box and passed it up because I forgot the Hackintosh factor.)

There’s something odd about an ad where the competition is shown to be more expensive, but the customer who acknowledges the “correct” product gets it but doesn’t have to pay for it.

Not at all - it combines the thrill of running wild with free money (good for the target demographic of college students) along with the concern for value for money on a tight budget (good for the target demographic of the parents actually paying for it).  It’s a well targeted piece of advertising - you may be missing it because it’s not targeted at you.

BTW people - most people are morons when it comes to computers.  Being a moron should be considered the default condition.

My desktops have always been PCs and my laptops have always been Macs. My husband and I like to do cascading upgrades on our computers, which is why our desktops and MythTV box are PCs. But Mac laptops are just really, really nice. The fan on my MacBook was making a noise, so we took it into the Apple Store and they replaced it at no cost, that very same day.

Oh - I use my MacBook Pro now as my main gaming rig, and it works perfectly.

I like how really the only critique of Macs that they can offer in those commercials is - “It’s all style and no POWAH 4 MY MUNNIES!” Which is really bullshit- a bit like the belief that the higher the SPF of sunscreen the better it is for you.

These days I’m running 64-bit Vista on a $700 desktop and it runs the games I play on it just fine.

I was told that some programs don’t work well on 64-bit. (My friend got a new computer and swears that Windows Movie Maker doesn’t work on it ‘cause she has 64-bit Vista instead of 32-bit.) Is that true? I’m shopping around for a new PC now but if I have to switch from XP to Vista I want to get the least troublesome/most compatible Vista I can… :p (Actually *any* advice would be appreciated re. new PC laptops, y’all! I want this thing to last me 4-5 years without getting all f’ed up, if possible…)

It would be interesting to see what would happen with computer viruses if every clueless person who wanted a computer-box for the living room so they could email photos of the grandkids went Mac instead of PC: I have long maintained that the reason that Macs are “virus proof” and generally less buggy is because their market share has allowed them to maintain a tighter control over their proprietary softwares and also that developing viruses for macs is not as attractive to crackers because they’re such a small population.

In addition to Windows’ popularity, another critical reason why it has had so many issue with viruses was that for most of its history, it has emphasized supposed “ease of use” with security considerations added on as an afterthought…if at all. 

In fact, MS-Dos, Windows 3.1/3.11, and the consumer-oriented Win 9.x/ME series allow users to run as unlimited superusers because the operating systems don’t have security measures like file permissions and compartmentalized classes of non-superuser privileged user accounts to limit changes said users can make to critical parts of the system. 

Even on “Professional” oriented versions of windows such as the various versions of Windows NT and its descendants, security was a serious issue because security considerations were seemingly added on as an afterthought and thus, provided much employment to the IT staff from the early 1990’s to the present.  Even with serious security improvements on Windows 2000 and Windows XP with all service packs…...security still isn’t as strong as it could be as we all may have experienced. 

This is coupled with the tendency among most Windows consumer-level users IME to prefer running their windows as they did with the Win 9.x series….as effective superusers so they won’t be inconvenienced if they want to install something or make some changes to the system….a bad thing securitywise….especially when most of them are not only pretty clueless about the security implications. Worse, most in this group don’t seem to realize the importance of keeping their operating systems and anti-virus software updated on a weekly bases as they don’t want to bother and then they wonder how/why their machines are saddled with 30-1500+ viruses…...

As for Mac OSX, while it is not invulnerable as some Mac ads and their fans would have you believe, the fact their current operating system is running on a variant of freebsd unix where security measures such as file permissions and restrictions on what non-superuser accounts can do to the system has been an integral part of its design for around the last 2-3 decades means that virus writers would have to work much harder to design something which will take over critical parts of Mac OSX or even the entire system. 

Of course, you also have the same benefits with using other unix variants such as the BSDs or linux….though the user interfaces may not necessarily be well suited to most computer users who just wants something to work with minimal technical fuss.

Hey, if I got a free computer for one of those ads, all I’d need to know was this: Linux is free, and I can turn any PC into a Mac for about $170 (OS X/iLife/iWork triple pack). (In fact, I found this out the hard way—could have gotten a free Dell box and passed it up because I forgot the Hackintosh factor.)

Thanks to the hackintosh phenomenon, I have been able to salvage 2 Pentium 4 based PCs that were dumped on me by clients and found abandoned in my area respectively. 

While running a hackintosh does require a willingness to tinker a bit, if it works out….you get a nice Mac OSX machine at a bargain price…or in my case…..free. 

I was told that some programs don’t work well on 64-bit. (My friend got a new computer and swears that Windows Movie Maker doesn’t work on it ‘cause she has 64-bit Vista instead of 32-bit.) Is that true? I’m shopping around for a new PC now but if I have to switch from XP to Vista I want to get the least troublesome/most compatible Vista I can… raspberry (Actually *any* advice would be appreciated re. new PC laptops, y’all! I want this thing to last me 4-5 years without getting all f’ed up, if possible…)

I’d hold off on buying any PCs until September/October at least as Microsoft will be releasing Windows 7 by then.  Been playing around with Windows 7 beta and Release Candidate on a low spec Pentium 4* and so far…seems to run much better than Windows Vista…though the interface is similar.  However, this is not saying much considering how problematic Vista has been on current PCs IME.

If possible, wait until after the Christmas shopping season/New Years as merchants will be saddled by old stock and Jan/Feb is around the time processor manufacturers like intel start introducing newer processors onto the market. 

If you’re not adverse to getting a Mac, you can use bootcamp to dual-boot Windows and Mac OSX allowing the best of both worlds….or even having Windows running as an application within Windows through 3rd party virtualization software like Parallels. 

* Pentium 4 1.8 Ghz with 1 GB of PC133 RAM abandoned by a relative.

Also, here’s one parody of the “I’m a PC ads”. 

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/2135280/im_a_pc/

The biggest one is that the price rings up at $699.99 (no tax, she must be buying it for The Church of PCs), completely ignoring the fact that PCs need antivirus out the wazoo ($39.99 there), full versions of software since they only come with trials (Microsoft Office, at least $149.99) and, let’s not forget, since she’s in Best Buy, the Geek Squad is going to bend her over and ram her with their package deals ($39.99 for a basic optimization package), laptop case ($19.99 for a basic slip).

The point?

She’s not getting out of Best Buy without paying $930 before tax, with a basic tax of 8.25%, she leaves having spend $1006.72 and let’s not even factor in the stupid warranties.

Just, no. First of all, rape analogies when talking about computer advertisements? Second of all, do macs come with free laptop bags? Are we assuming that she’s an idiot and will buy any bullshit Best Buy hawks her? Are macs not available at Best Buy? Has she never heard of OpenOffice? Are macs tax-free? Is there anything in your comment which actually ads to the critique of these admittedly awful ads, or are you engaging in the typical mac-boy behavior of pretending that the worst-case scenario applies to PCs and the best-case to Macs?

I’ve been a PC user for about 17 years.  Never had much choice, as I spent most of that time developing software for Windows.  Then, about a year ago, I started developing for the iPhone, which requires a Mac.

OMFG, where F = Holy Freaking Shit.

My iMac never freezes up.  It starts up in about 30 seconds.  It shuts down in 5 seconds.  Almost never does a software update require a reboot, and the average update time is about 15 seconds.

The desktop search feature is built-in and so fast I often use it to open files even when I have a shortcut to the folder they are stored in.

Oh, and it cost about what I’m accustomed to spending for a PC—about $1700.

The only down-side, seriously, is that the IDE (Integrated Development Environment) for the iPhone (known as XCode) isn’t as good as the equivalent IDE for Windows deveopment (known as Visual Studio).

I have no intention of buying another PC, ever again, if I have a choice in the matter.

Also, I get that the point of these commercials is that PCs are a lot more affordable, but really, if a giant soulless corporation offers you X. . .

Why is it Mac users think of Microsoft as a giant soulless corporation, but think of Apple as something else? Apple is just as evil and soulless as Microsoft. If you have any doubts, look to the iTunes DRM policies, the iPhone app policies, and the the other intellectual property assertions has made over the years.

So where do I, a bloke who builds his own PCs from scratch, fit into this debate?

Apple is just as evil and soulless as Microsoft.

Hrumpf.
Mordor is not as evil and soulless as Microsoft.  How many times has Microsoft been sued and lost on “restraint of trade” issues?

So where do I, a bloke who builds his own PCs from scratch, fit into this debate?
Gozer on 05/21 at 04:02 PM

Five years ago I used to do the same. Now I use a Mac.

So where do I, a bloke who builds his own PCs from scratch, fit into this debate?

I don’t think either of us fit in this debate.  You because you build your own machines rather than buying from OEMs like Dell and Apple…..I because I never paid for any desktops I have had in my possession and it has been years since i bought my last notebook. 

These “I’m a PC” ads are mainly targeted towards average computer consumers with little or no technical knowledge about the PCs, operating systems, and/or software who often make their purchasing decisions based mainly on price (Not necessarily value) and somewhat on brandname.  It is similar to the Best Buy ad I’ve seen not too long ago where they said computer consumers don’t need to bother with “mega-this and giga-that”.....implying that they needn’t bother with knowing the basic technical info on their potential computer purchase…....which is precisely what big-box stores and OEMs want so they can take optimal advantage of the non-technical users’ ignorance when they sell low-end overpriced junk.

Now Mac users are finally having to suffer with what PC users have put up with for years—a competitor who puts out commercials running down their stuff. For decades now, Apple (and Mac users) have been putting out rants about problems from years ago. Much as I love John Hodgman, I have to hit mute or change the channel whenever those “Mac vs. PC” ads come on, because they say nothing but “your computer sucks, your computer sucks, your computer SUUUUUUCKS! (Buy a Mac, which I’ve told you nothing about.)”

Yes, they’re stupid, but at least you haven’t had to put up with a constant stream of them since the mid-eighties.

Auguste:

But see, the point of the ad was that if she spent less than $1,000 she could keep the change and the ad implies she got to keep c. $300.00.  Not.

I don’t see how these ads are any more infuriating than the “I’m a Mac” commercials.  The utter FAIL of those ads is that the guy you are supposed to like is the annoying kid from Jeepers Creepers, who acts like every self-important Mac owner you’ve ever met; whereas the guy you are supposed to dislike is the very funny John Hodgman. 

Also, any ad that claims that Windows is hard to use or confusing is either lying or assuming that you are stupid.  I’m no computer genius and I’ve never had a problem using a Windows OS, nor have I found Macs to be any more user friendly.  The only real advantage I’ve ever seen with Macs is that you don’t really have to worry about viruses.

I used to work at an Apple Store. This was what I used as my pitch:

“Computers are like cars. You might need one, even if you don’t want one, but either way you want to enjoy the experience. If you really like to tinker around with it and learn every aspect of it, you might want to go PC because that is the equivalent of wanting to buy something you can tweak and change. If you are an architect, or use certain programs that are really only meant for the PC, please buy a PC. You will be much happier. However, if you want to have a reliable machine that you can get in every morning and know its going to get you to work, buy a Mac. If you want to have one number to call when you have a problem, buy a Mac.  And if you don’t want to have to do a million updates, buy a Mac. It will ask you once a week if you want to do the software update. Say yes, and let it be. The upkeep is also easier, they age very well.”

I also refused to upsell anyone and would try to talk people out of big pretty machines that they didn’t need.

In terms of PCs being hard to use, its not that they are difficult, so much as there isn’t a straight line to some things in little ways that someone who has to use one for work, but doesn’t want to dork out might not enjoy. For example: PC downloads and saved files try to default to weird folders and then I can’t find where they are. I am pretty tech savvy, and my brother definitely is, but we have both talked about this before. It seems small if you’re really comfortable with a computer, but if you’re my mom, its like “Where the hell is folder OK184? Huh?!” On my Mac it defaults to one download folder, so even if you forget to change the destination, you know where it is. And the search functions are wonderful.

As difficult as cars and computers can be, they both need to be clear and accessible to people who don’t work IT or are mechanics because people need them for so much more.

Also, as soon as you use the word Linux, you are an outlier, so neither PC nor Mac ads are really being aimed at you.

AND FOR GODS SAKE THERE IS RIGHT CLICK ON THE MAC. Just click control, or buy a 2 button mouse (and all new desktops Macs come with the mighty mouse which has right click even though physically you can’t see it. ) Sorry to Caps out, but I know so many people that have said “Mac’s drive me crazy since they don’t have right click so I hate them.” And then proceed to ask me questions about or be frustrated by the 4th virus they got.

One last thing, my diagnosed dyslexic family members have found Macs much easier to work with. I think they are more intuitive if you are walking up to one for the first time. If you have been using a PC for 15 years, you might not notice it, but I saw it with my family and I saw with with the older people who were coming into the store to buy Macs to keep in touch with their families that lived far away (which happens a lot and is the sweetest thing you’ll ever see).

I swear the O in my username does not stand for “One.” I swear!

Also, I’ve just skimmed these 60+ comments, so maybe someone mentioned it and I missed it, but along with the sexism of not naming the mom, can we talk about the moment during which the perky blond girl says she likes the color of the pink computer? I would find these commercials less annoying if one of them had a guy, and women weren’t being condescended to so much (c.f. HooksInMyHead).

One last thing, my diagnosed dyslexic family members have found Macs much easier to work with. I think they are more intuitive if you are walking up to one for the first time.

I’ve found the same with older members of my extended family….including some who remembered growing up in rural areas and not seeing electricity usage until they moved into more urban areas of China during the 1940s. 

Also, any ad that claims that Windows is hard to use or confusing is either lying or assuming that you are stupid.  I’m no computer genius and I’ve never had a problem using a Windows OS, nor have I found Macs to be any more user friendly.  The only real advantage I’ve ever seen with Macs is that you don’t really have to worry about viruses.

Windows isn’t hard to use, but does have a slightly higher learning curve not only because of the diffuse vendors of PC hardware parts and software….but also because of many infuriatingly frustrating problems Windows users experience which are often caused by operating system bugs, widely variability in quality of PC hardware(read crappy PC parts used by OEMs to cut corners/increase profits), or both. 

The fact one has to worry about viruses by not only having to keep one’s operating system and anti-virus software conscientiously updated on at least a weekly basis greatly adds to this from my observation of most Windows PC users. 

While buying a PC with Windows does offer more flexibility for the tinkerer, this same flexibility also means greater complexity in troubleshooting issues and greater problems that comes from using consumer/low-end OEM lines with bottom of the barrel parts…..*cough* Packard Bell, eMachines, Dell, etc *cough*

Also, I’ve just skimmed these 60+ comments, so maybe someone mentioned it and I missed it, but along with the sexism of not naming the mom, can we talk about the moment during which the perky blond girl says she likes the color of the pink computer? I would find these commercials less annoying if one of them had a guy, and women weren’t being condescended to so much (c.f. HooksInMyHead).

If the admeisters replaced her with a business major fratboy & parents with far more money than sense….they’d only need to alter one or two lines to create a viable ad that would be just as…if not truer to life…..

For decades now, Apple (and Mac users) have been putting out rants about problems from years ago.

And yet right here in this very thread we have people claiming that you can’t right-click on a Mac, even though that hasn’t been the case for at least a decade.  So, yeah, it’s not like the problem is all on one side.

And yet right here in this very thread we have people claiming that you can’t right-click on a Mac, even though that hasn’t been the case for at least a decade.  So, yeah, it’s not like the problem is all on one side.

I still hear people say Macs crash a lot and cannot multi-task even though this information has been out of date since the mid-late 1990s.

I also still hear that Windows bluescreens a lot even though that has not been as much of an issue with Windows 2000 and XP…..and is a problem that has been caused by crappy/failing low-end PC hardware and/or poorly written third-party drivers. 

OS wars have been ongoing since the 1980s…..and I doubt they will be going anytime soon…..

but along with the sexism of not naming the mom, can we talk about the moment during which the perky blond girl says she likes the color of the pink computer?

That’s true, the women were kind of giggly. It’ve I thought their message, that PCs have more variety and are cheaper, was an effective one.
____________

so if I run OSX on my Gateway laptop, is it suddenly worth $600 more? Or is an Intel Mac still a mac? I like the apple keyboards. They’re really fast and easy to type on, and it’s a full layout.

But see, the point of the ad was that if she spent less than $1,000 she could keep the change and the ad implies she got to keep c. $300.00.  Not.

I’ve never seen this as “keeping the change.” I’ve seen it as “I planned to buy my own computer, but now M$ is paying for it because I chose a PC!” Lauren One video is down right now, but they’re certainly handing Lauren Two about $1700, not whatever change she might have gotten (there’s at least a dozen but I’m betting 17 $100 bills in that fistful.) Yet another example, btw, of how this clusterfuck of ideas could have been directed more competently by a wallaby smoking a cigarette.

And the point I’m still making is that, unless someone’s dumb (which obviously does happen), accessories for PCs don’t cost any less than for a Mac. If a $700 PC costs $1000 (I know it’s not what you’re saying, but for the sake of argument), then a $1000 Mac costs $1300 (MAYBE $1270, to allow for anti-virus software.)

Meh.  The “Linux is haaaaaard” thing is getting old.

Agreed. It IS getting pretty old.

Unfortunatly neither KDE nor Gnome nor any other project has resulted in a decent desktop environment for the Linux platform. And anyway the attitude of most Linux users is that Linux should remain untouched by the vile hands of the lusers that don’t speak machine code. So the community only has itself to blame.

“One of the most frustrating things about Macs has always been that, when they refuse to Just Work, fixing them is a huge pain in the ass, because you can’t get under the hood, so to speak, and see what’s going on, and do something about it.”

OSX is pretty troubleshoot friendly and I’ve come home to enough gutted iMacs, iBooks, and MacBooks to know that it isn’t too difficult to get “under the hood”, it just takes a little more finesse than ripping off a panel.  Compatible parts can be a little more difficult to find but if you have some good relationships with good computer stores (aka mom and pops not Best Buy or other big boxes) you should have no problem ordering them.

My home is pretty equal opportunity, two computers running OSX, and three user built computers, one with linux, one with XP and one with Windows 7 Beta.  And yes that’s probably an insane amount.