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This topic comprises 6 pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6
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Author
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Topic: Has anyone upgraded to Snow Leopard?
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Scott Norwood
Film God
Posts: 8146
From: Boston, MA. USA (1774.21 miles northeast of Dallas)
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 09-01-2009 11:54 AM
Everyone is debating hardware components. That's not what Apple is selling. They're selling a package deal that includes the hardware and the operating system and the idea that everything will "just work" out of the box without some sort of weird incompatibility or driver issues. They are also selling the ability to run Mac-specific software. In general, Apple hardware tends to be of higher quality than generic PC hardware, although this is not always the case.
There is a definite advantage to having the hardware and operating system come from the same vendor. It means not having to worry about picking and choosing hardware that will work in a given configuration and not having to worry about buggy drivers. For some people and applications, this is worth a significant price premium. The PC people have been steadily improving in this regard, but there is only so much that can be done given the huge variety of hardware that exists and the fact that the OS vendors do not manufacture or design any of it.
My objection to Apple's hardware is that they don't make anything that I would want to buy. I have a Mac Mini, which is a cute toy, but too underpowered to be a primary machine. Their laptops have glossy LCDs (with one exception) and non-removable batteries, which are both automatic deal-breakers for me. Their reasonably priced desktops only come in the "imac" model, with a built-in LCD monitor that I don't want/need. Their minitower desktops are the high-end models that are excellent, but not in my price range.
At this point, I've settled on Windows on x86 for laptop use and Solaris (Sun's Unix variant) on SPARC for everything else. Given the recent purchase of Sun by Oracle, as well as the demise of SPARC workstations, I'll probably end up with Linux or Solaris x86 on x86 for my next desktop, though I hope to stick with SPARC servers at home for the medium-term future, at least. I can live with Windows XP on a laptop, since most of my use of it is to run a terminal client and a web browser, and Windows seems to be the easiest OS to interface with "weird" network hardware, cinema equipment, and other equipment that requires a laptop to set up and configure.
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Galen Murphy-Fahlgren
Master Film Handler
Posts: 405
From: Canton, MI, USA
Registered: Oct 2007
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posted 09-01-2009 11:57 AM
Mike, I don't actually mean that a license for OSX costs $700. I mean that an almost functionally identical Dell with an XP license cost $700 less than my Macbook. If, for example, I had been buying a piece of hardware to replace the OS on, and I purchased both computers and formatted the hard drives and installed Debian Linux, I would have two almost identical computers with wildly varying prices. The one with the glowing apple would be $700 more, and I would have to go find a patch that made the industry non-standard mouse work.
Even if you'll actually be running the OS, the license is effectively overpriced. You mention the bundled software. Well, my computer came with iLife and a free trial of iWork. I'd used many of the components of iLife prior to owning a Mac, and they're not that good, frankly. Nobody would ever use iPhoto for serious photography, so you still have to buy Photoshop. IMovie used to be adequate for home movies or whatnot, and the only time I've used the new version I found it dumbed down and features removed. I don't even know what else is in iLife, because I found it staggeringly useless.
As for iWork, I tried my 30-day trial and decided thanks, but no thanks. It used highly proprietary file extensions, and I couldn't find a single one that saved my formatting that was common with MS Office. Try running around university with special magical files that only people with expensive computers can open. Try taking a big paper to the computer lab on a USB drive to print it, but the computers in the lab don't have anything to open it on. The moral of the story is that you can't get away with proprietary data systems when you have a tiny market share. Remember Beta?
So, to really compare my Macintosh with the Dell I bought for my mother, I have to take into account the bundled software and the minute hardware differences. My Mac had absolutely no useful (to me) software functionality over a Windows machine, and I would've had to buy all the exact same software to be happy with it, plus CygWin which is free. My computer does have a couple of other hardware features that the Dell doesn't: a built in webcam (like $20 upgrade on most Dell models; my mother has a USB one), Bluetooth (what is the purpose of Bluetooh on a laptop?), and this damn LED on the outside of the case that glows when I put the computer to sleep while I'm trying to sleep (that is irritating as hell). Also my machine has a firewire, but Apple has seen fit to remove that from current Macbooks.
In the end, one must draw comparisons between Macintosh computers and Windows computers, because they're all personal computers. Since Microsoft doesn't prohibit the installation of their software onto all hardware but that sold by them, competition and the market have made sure that Windows machines run the gamut of price points and corresponding power. Apple has chosen to market only a narrow range of goods and convince people to conform to their idea of what people should want in a computer and pay extra to do so. And then, they make you drive far out of your way to a snotty, expensive mall should you need warranty service. So, definitely the total package.
Scott: you correctly point out that Apple is pushing a whole "platform," specific hardware running specific software, with a resultant small set of drivers and optimized for a single family of processors. The problem is that things don't "just work" any better than any other competent vendor. I've never had a compatibility issue with custom or vendor hardware configurations with Windows, and have been running various versions of Windows since I was pretty much in diapers. Apple makes fun of Windows' "blue screen of death," so to make sure that doesn't happen to Mac users, they just didn't make the screen blue. As I've said numerous times, I've had my Mac crash, or lock up, or reboot itself for no reason when I was trying to put it in sleep mode a number of times.
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David Stambaugh
Film God
Posts: 4021
From: Eugene, Oregon
Registered: Jan 2002
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posted 09-01-2009 12:40 PM
A couple years ago we stopped buying Dell Dimensions here at work because we couldn't get them configured exactly the way we wanted, at least not at a reasonable price. I was reluctant to switch because the Dells were always solid for us, no weird problems, no DOAs. Anyway we started building our own PCs from parts. I've been meticulous about selecting quality components, no cheap crap. In spite of that we've had *far* more issues with the homemade systems than we ever did with any Dell. Example: The most recent PC we built was spec'd out with an Intel DX58SO motherboard and Intel i7 920 processor, 3 x 2GB sticks of Corsair high-performance DDR3 RAM supposedly certified for that motherboard. Everything worked fine except when the system had been running for a while, it wouldn't warm-boot, just hangs while POSTing. We spent a *lot* of time troubleshooting that, ended up buying some Kingston RAM for it, and the problem went away. Now we're RMA'ing the Corsair RAM, don't know if it's actually bad or if it's incompatible. These are the kinds of headaches you run into building your own PC. When you buy a Dell, whether it costs you $399 or $2399, all the parts are certified to play together nicely and you should not have these kinds of issues, and if something doesn't work, it's Dell's problem and doesn't become a finger-pointing contest between say, Intel and Corsair, over why the memory doesn't work.
That Intel DX58SO motherboard cost $244, the i7 920 CPU $280. Just those 2 components together cost way more than many cheap complete systems that even include a monitor.
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