Fuck Apple

[Steviekick 0]

I've been rocking a Mac for almost twenty years now. For me its not about a fashion statement, I just like the product.

[ZGangsta 0]

Listen, I don't mind Apple products and all, and I think they're great for looking all. But Apple is just a fashion statement-

This is the truth right here.

[Steviekick 0]

For some people it is.

 

It's just like people who swear by their BMW or Mercedes. Some people will buy it because they feel that a higher cost means its better. But for some people, they just really prefer its engineering.

[Guest Vitamin X]

No, it's because a BMW or a Mercedes does have, for the most part, more well thought out engineering and are expensive because of the materials used. In the computer world, it is entirely different. Yes, the OS can largely be a matter of preference, but for a VERY long time the computing world looked down on Mac users as akin to AOL users- computing for people who don't know anything about computers and can't be bothered with learning how to get the most out of it. However, the hardware is often times much the same (especially now since Mac has switched to an x86 chipset architecture) as a Dell, and with usually half the power in terms of processing speed, memory, and storage space for the price. For comparison's sake:

A Macbook Pro, according to the apple website, has:

* 2.5GHz Intel Core 2 Duo

* 2GB memory

* 250GB hard drive1

* Double-layer SuperDrive

* NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT with 512MB

$2,799.00

 

This is their best laptop. Their best desktop?

* Two 2.8GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon “Harpertown” processors

* 2GB memory (800MHz DDR2 fully-buffered DIMM ECC)

* ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT graphics with 256MB memory

* 320GB Serial ATA 3Gb/s 7200-rpm hard drive1

* 16x double-layer SuperDrive

 

Ships: Within 24 hours

Free Shipping

$2,799.00

 

Now, 8 cores is ridiculous. But the processing speed is still slower than my dual-core AMD Phenom (which is at 3.0Ghz), I have 6GB of RAM, 500GB of Hard Drive space- and guess what! It all cost me ~$500. 25% of the price of the supposed "Tower of Power", and with a decent graphics card, would still not even be half as much as that.

 

The reason Mac users pay a premium for their product isn't because it's of a higher quality or anything- it's because the cost for the design and marketing team (some of the absolute best in the business, admittedly) is subsidized in the cost. You are literally paying more to make it prettier and to make sure you do buy it. That said, for a while I wanted a Macbook (not the Pro) because it was a decent laptop, but ever since I saw Alienware come out with their new Area 51s (made specifically for video editing and gaming) and the eeePC, I've lost interest in the Macbook, again, because of what I would be getting for the price, and since other people have recognized the driving force behind Apple is the design and marketing team.

 

And I still want an iPod, dammit. One of these days...

[LaParkaMarka 0]

And I still want an iPod, dammit. One of these days...

 

Why? If you just want an mp3 player in general, you can get a quality non-apple product for fairly cheap. I got a Creative Zen a couple of years ago for 30 bucks, and it's still working great (I'm listening to it right now).

[Steviekick 0]

Still, my Mac runs Illustrator, Photoshop and Final Cut Pro more than adequately and I most definitely prefer it's interphase/usability to Windows. I've never had a problem with Apple's customer support. It's just a matter of preference, and for what I want, the Mac is superior.

 

Don't get me wrong, I've seen and used some great PC's. I just don't want one.

[Guest Vitamin X]

And I still want an iPod, dammit. One of these days...

 

Why? If you just want an mp3 player in general, you can get a quality non-apple product for fairly cheap. I got a Creative Zen a couple of years ago for 30 bucks, and it's still working great (I'm listening to it right now).

The main appeal to an iPod for me is the amount of storage space (it can even be used as an external hard drive, pretty much) and I like to use iTunes as WMP11 hasn't been my cup of tea. They all sync so well, too! The only player comparable to this is the Zune, and I just have zero interest in that one. Plus, the iTunes store is pretty good, an excellent selection. I'm not going to go out of my way to NOT buy an Apple product, but iPods are worth the price IMO.

 

I have heard good things about the Zen, though. I just want an MP3 player with enough room to put my entire music collection on it.

 

Still, my Mac runs Illustrator, Photoshop and Final Cut Pro more than adequately and I most definitely prefer it's interphase/usability to Windows. I've never had a problem with Apple's customer support. It's just a matter of preference, and for what I want, the Mac is superior.

 

Don't get me wrong, I've seen and used some great PC's. I just don't want one.

 

Apple does have good customer support- they fuckin' better, for what they charge for shit-but I prefer how Adobe CS3 runs on my PC a lot more. Potayto, potahto though, right?

[Craig Th 0]

Yeah, iPods are nothing to run home about.

[Jaxxson Mayhem 0]

And I still want an iPod, dammit. One of these days...

 

Why? If you just want an mp3 player in general, you can get a quality non-apple product for fairly cheap. I got a Creative Zen a couple of years ago for 30 bucks, and it's still working great (I'm listening to it right now).

The main appeal to an iPod for me is the amount of storage space (it can even be used as an external hard drive, pretty much) and I like to use iTunes as WMP11 hasn't been my cup of tea. They all sync so well, too! The only player comparable to this is the Zune, and I just have zero interest in that one. Plus, the iTunes store is pretty good, an excellent selection. I'm not going to go out of my way to NOT buy an Apple product, but iPods are worth the price IMO.

 

I have heard good things about the Zen, though. I just want an MP3 player with enough room to put my entire music collection on it.

 

Still, my Mac runs Illustrator, Photoshop and Final Cut Pro more than adequately and I most definitely prefer it's interphase/usability to Windows. I've never had a problem with Apple's customer support. It's just a matter of preference, and for what I want, the Mac is superior.

 

Don't get me wrong, I've seen and used some great PC's. I just don't want one.

 

Apple does have good customer support- they fuckin' better, for what they charge for shit-but I prefer how Adobe CS3 runs on my PC a lot more. Potayto, potahto though, right?

 

 

You should check out Archos' MP3 players. They have some damn good ones. They have ones that can access the internet through WiFi.

 

[Craig Th 0]

See, I don't use a Mac as a fashion statement. Hell, no one ever sees it. I just think that Leopard is MUCH better than any Windows platform. Maybe it's just the little things, but I love it.

 

I do wish there was more software for it, but whatever.

[Mik 0]

I personally ended up using Macs like this:

 

iTunes for Windows came out in 2003. I found it to be better than Windows Media Player and WinAmp. In fact, I loved it as a music player. Because of that I bought an iPod. I really loved my iPod. Saw the G5 iMac - fell in love with it. Thought it looked so cool (like VX said) that I had to have it. I've been using Macs for almost 5 years now.

 

Despite my bitching, I probably will stay with Mac. I can afford the extra price and I do enjoy Leopard and the whole iLife bundle a whole lot.

[Craig Th 0]

I originally got mine for Final Cut, but ended up stop doing film in school. But I loved the OS anyway.

[AndrewTS 0]

The "Macs don't crash" myth is one of the biggest loads of bullshit around, though; no matter how you define it.

You said it.

Man, and when they crash, they crash hard too.

 

Kernel Panic and its slutty cousin, the Dirty Kernel Panic!

 

Honestly, they're a lot less common these days, but when they were common it was because you honestly had no idea what was causing it, and had to figure out if it was HW failure or not, and then grit your teeth for how much the repairs would cost if you didn't have APP or anything to cover it.

 

I'm honestly very happy for Mac gamers, because now they have something to play besides the f'n Sims. When they play nothing but the Sims they just ended up committing Geneva-convention violating atrocities against their Sims. That's probably why I find them so damn scary.

 

The main appeal to an iPod for me is the amount of storage space (it can even be used as an external hard drive, pretty much)

 

The problem is that the mechanical hard drive based ones can and will suffer hard drive failure. This'll be less of a problem when SSDs become way cheaper (and SSD is at least something the Air supports, although of course it's expensive), but for now it is a very notable concern.

[Guest Danny Dubya v 2.0]

Mmm, OS X. Tastes like happy. I will eat the fuck apple.

And who said that a Mac couldn't get worms!

 

See, I don't use a Mac as a fashion statement. Hell, no one ever sees it. I just think that Leopard is MUCH better than any Windows platform. Maybe it's just the little things, but I love it.

It's amazing, the things you can accomplish designing an OS for one smug prick with good taste instead of for the lowest common denominator and backwards compatibility with Windows 95 (I've even seen some 3.11 holdovers in XP, like the ODBC file selector... scary). Doesn't make me want to buy a Mac any more, but admirable nonetheless.

[At Home 0]

No one has really addressed this yet, but, correct me if I'm wrong, the main reasons that the buy into apple costs so much more is because a) they write their own OS while others simply use Windows, and b) they don't have competitors using the Mac OS.

[Guest Vitamin X]

Right, but the Windows license itself is pretty darn expensive, so passing that off as an excuse is fallible. I've heard numerous times that the reason why Macs cost much more is because a. higher profit margin and b. design and marketing. You literally are paying more for a prettier, more hip computer.

 

The file systems are totally different yes, but Linux runs off the UNIX platform and it manages to be open-source (read: free). Of course this didn't stop major PC manufacturers like Dell from saying OMG LOOK WE HAVE LINUX NOW TOO GUISE! and then make it $200 more expensive than their cheapest Vista/XP product by making it way overpowered.

 

This is possibly to recoup the costs incurred with all their licensing with Microsoft, though (in regards to selling more cheap Windows-based PCs, not with selling higher-priced Linux ones).

[Edwin MacPhisto 0]

Wait, why haven't you just bought an iPod? If your computer only cost you a few hundred dollars, you can probably afford one. They're optimized for Macs, but work completely fine on PCs.

[Guest Vitamin X]

It's usually something else precedes my wanting to buy one. Saving up for a computer and then a 360, and moving around as much as I have hasn't been particularly cheap, plus my girlfriend's been unemployed for a couple months so I've had to deal with covering her ass, too.

 

Either way, I'll probably have one by the end of this summer. I'm pretty frugal since I have a lot of costs to cover and I want to save money as best as I can, so I'm pretty hesitant on dropping hundreds of dollars on something I'm not entirely sure I'm going to get a ton of use out of. But yes, I'm aware they work on both systems- particularly if you format/sync it on a PC first, then on a Mac, as doing it the other way around apparently won't make it compatible on PCs.

[Craig Th 0]

Ugh.

 

Well my hard drive died last night. Right now I am running my Macbook off of an external hard drive. It sucks; it's slow as shit.

 

Atleast Time Machine allowed me to back stuff up. And now I'll get a 120-160 HD compared to the 80GB one I had before.

[Guest Vitamin X]

You know, I've NEVER had a hard drive die/crash out on me, ever. I count myself pretty lucky in that regard.

 

Sucks to have that happen to you, Molester.

[Kristianna 0]

I was at a local electronics super-store a few days ago, and I was playing around with one of the MacBook Air models they had on display. I thought it was pretty cool looking and the light weight was nice, but I realized that it just cost way too much in comparison to a PC laptop with comparable hardware. I guess if Macs are your thing, more power to ya.

 

As for hard drive failure, my only advice is NEVER buy Maxtor hard drives.... ever. I had two of them go out on me in the same year, and another one the following year. I switched to a Fujitsu drive, and never looked back.

[Edwin MacPhisto 0]

My Mac's HD died in April, and the power brick was pretty unreliable and had to be replaced as of last week. Which is pretty funny, because my old Dell laptop had the exact same problems have at almost the exact same points in the lifespan. Like clockwork, I say.

[Craig Th 0]

OHHHH, it is within the year I got it, so I won't have to pay a dime to fix it! I am pretty pumped about that.

[bobobrazil1984 0]

I see nothing particularly impressive about Macs. Macbooks in particular are not all that well built, every single one I've seen has been a bit creaky and has been discolored/messed-up where you rest your palms. Macbook Pros however are nice well built machines but they're also way overpriced for the specs.

 

on the subject of iPods, iPods have much better UIs than other players, particularly the iPhone/iPod Touch models. the UI on one of these devices is like an OS... it matters, and they do a great job of making it feel like "an extension of self", i never realized until I used some of the other players, and after 20 seconds i wanted to go back to the iPod. But I dont get that feeling with a Mac.

 

Maybe Mac's OS is like that too, but I haven't seen it in my considerable time using one. Everything always seems cluttered with the way the window layouts go, and it always seems to take an extra step to do something. And then there's the less software, less support for games, I've considered getting a Mac at some point... then I ask myself 'why?' and I can't come up with an answer, especially since I have no real problems with Windows, hell Vista on my laptop is working fine.

[georgia003 0]

Fuck Apple

[Guest Smues]

I just read that there will indeed be a contract free 2nd gen Iphone, so huzzah that. Boozah $599 and $699 price tags, but huzzah I'll have an Iphone at some point in the future now.