On 4 Mar 2006 at 3:19, Darcy James Argue wrote: > If you match the hardware > feature-for-feature, Macs are actually competitive with similar > WinTel hardware.
I'd actually be interested in someone offering proof of that (i.e., making up quotes for a Mac and a corresponding Dell PC). My impression is that the price premium for the Mac in comparison to the PC is not as great as it used to be, but is still there. My hazy impression is that the quality of the components in the base Mac is better than the quality of your generic base PC, but not necessarily better than the base Dell or HP, etc., model. I have said before that everyone says you can get exactly a generic PC with precisely the same components and features cheaper than you can get a Dell, but I've found that to be incorrect in every case where I've been presented with an actual quote for a generic box that was supposedly the same as a more expensive Dell. It was always the case that things that came with the Dell were left off the generic quote and components were of lesser quality or of lesser specifications. Perhaps the Mac price premium (real or not) is a similar situation. Arguably, one could make the case that Macs *should* cost more because of the better OS (I would not argue with the proposition that OS X is a better OS than Windows -- it is certainly more secure in its default configuration and consequently much easier to set up in a secure configuration) and because of better features (built-in PDF support, better anti-aliasing, better mouse responsiveness, more consistent UI design, etc.). I am looking forward to the day when it's possible to dual boot Windows and OS X on a single machine. I've been wishing for that since the days of the first PowerPCs and the promise of IBM's common reference hardware platform (a PowerPC chip that could run Wintel), but that never happened, unfortunately. The move to Intel now makes that theoretically possible. -- David W. Fenton http://dfenton.com David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
