Here's my 2 cents:
Economy of scale is a fact of life. Sell more of something and add a pinch of competition and prices will drop. I have plenty of experience with cheap PC's and good PC's. You want cheap? You get cheap. Limited support for hardware when new operating systems appear, power supply failures within a year that sometimes take out the motherboard and processor. Noisy hard drives and wind tunnel effect fans. Video cards that refuse to play the game you bought or play it with poor performance. USB chipsets that do not support common accessories. Computers that reboot because its Tuesday. CDROM drives that fail within a year. I can go on and on, but I have noted a consistancy: price = performance.
Buy a quality PC and you pay for it. There are bound to be exceptions, but its the exception not the norm. You might buy a cheap PC and have no problems with it at all, but if you buy 10 of them how many give this result? I have seen some vendors with a failure rate of 50% in the first year.
It does not mean that Apple or anybody else that sells upscale products does not have failures. They all do, it's in the percentages that it matters. More happy customers, better long term support and more money seem to go hand in hand.
As far as just going out and buying hardware, this is part myth and part truth. I switched, Ok I admit it, but I still use PC's both at home and at work. When I switched I took one of the 80GB hard drives out of my PC and put it in my SL iMac Blueberry 350 to replace its pathetic 6GB unit. When I got my 1Ghz fp iMac I gave my homebuilt P4 2.4Ghz PC to my wife (note the Ghz difference I gave away), but I kept my PC based keyboard, mouse, Quickcam, flatbed scanner, USB hub, Palm Zire71, SD card reader and digitizing tablet for my new Mac.
I bought memory to upgrade both my Apples from my local Circuit City. It was cheaper then buying it form Apple and was the same memory used by some PC notebooks. When my iMac is out of warranty I will go back to the same store or one offering a good deal and buy a larger hard drive.
Yes, if you need a motherboard for your mac you have to go to Apple, but try to get a motherboard to replace the one in your HP, Dell or Gateway. Not all of them are proprietary, but many are.
There is a ton of software out there for the PC, no question about it. Now how many word processors do you need/want? Don't most people use MS Word? Same with spreadsheets. There is a lot of competition, but only a few leaders. Games? Yup go where the volume is to make back the huge investment it takes to make a modern game, then port it to the Mac when you get the design bugs out on the PC. I play an occasional game, but it's not even 1% of what I do on either my PC's or Mac. Bottom line is that the best applications are ported to the Mac and there is usually more then one of each type to choose from. The market for software will always tailor to the volume user.
Business is business. It's not about style. It's about the bottom line. It would be hard to justify buying a state of the art PC to replace a Pentium Pro running at 200mhz when the only function it performs is word processing or data entry. Buying state of the art equipment carries a premium that cannot be justified just because it can be had. If you had an Apple to you company and your IT dept does not know Apples from oranges how can you justify the cash outlay and training required to support it? Business is business.
Everything has its place and so long as Apple makes a unique product line it will stay in business. PC's provide function much the same way as a Ford Taurus does. It gets you where you need to go and parts are cheap, but it lacks style. Apple provides style and an experience like no PC. In my mind it's like comparing a Ford to a Lexus.
Eddie I do Windows when I have to. iMac because I want to
On Oct 25, 2003, at 11:10 AM, Donald Hinkle wrote:
at risk of stirring up yellowjackets, I forward this. This woman claims to "love" Macs, but gives all the arguments from years of exposure to MicroSerfs. I don't know if there are good and sufficient responses to this, so put it out for the Committee At Large, hoping you can provide some for this poor soul.
Begin forwarded message:
... And given all the evidence that Windows sucks, Macs are still has a significantly small share of the computer users around the world.
Why is that?
1) They're significantly more expensive. Tell me the last time you were
able to buy a brand new Mac for $400.
2) You can't just go out, buy new parts and easily replace them. It is a
very expensive thing if it is possible.
3) There's not a lot of software available for the Mac.
4) Windows may suck but a huge percentage of the users are businesses
who can't afford to throw it all away to buy more expensive computers
that won't work with their systems.
Like I have said, I love Macs and have since I first started using computers about 20 years ago. The first computer I ever touched was an Apple. I would love to have one sitting on my desk next to my PC. ...
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