[PCWorld]

Post your comments for Mac vs. Windows: What Does $1K Get You? here

[technicalhitman]

James A. Martin,

All of your points be come completely pointless and utterly moot if you simply cannot AFFORD IT!

Its a simple proposition. Food prices, gas prices, and other comodities continue to rise. Taxes are going up for cigarette smokers. Wages are flatline. Loans are just about impossible for anyone, even if you have great credit. Car loans? Hah. Thats a laugh. Health care expenses continue to rise.

For example, my father who has immaculate credit score in the high 700's, went to get a simple $20,000 loan. The bank which is part of his government benefits as an employee of a federal institution, could only get him $16,000.

Which brings me to my point. Those who can afford a Mac, will do so with cash or credit. Those who cannot afford to do so, can't even dream of it. Compared with a $499 system which includes monitor, keyboard, and mouse, the Mac's value is extremely limited. The keyboard is $49. The Mighty Mouse is $49. Thats $98 plus tax in added costs. On the PC side? Already included. Then you have to buy a monitor. Want one from Apple? $799 dollars. They no longer sell the $599 version. Add taxes in and you're looking at a beyond middle class budget expense. It makes no sense.

Thats why you don't see families or individuals making less than $50,000 dollars riding around in BMW's, Mercedes Benz, Lamborghini's, Ferrari's, or anything like that. As the Rock would probably say, "IT DOESN'T MATTER ABOUT THE VALUE!" If you can pony up the greenbacks for it, then its value is ZERO.

Its not going to change the fact that many folks cannot justify its cost or bring up enough savings to purchase it. Therefore, I don't care if its made from Gold. Nobody on a budget with middle class incomes can purchase such a device in the middle of a global recession. Windows sales in February 2009 were up 22%! Windows now accounts for 90% of all nettop sales. They took it away from Linux based OSes without even trying.

All that's left is for Windows 7 to finally be released, and you'll see Microsoft taking back marketshare from Apple. It won't matter how good the PC vs Mac commercials are, sometimes price speaks for itself. Value is sometimes determined based on how much you make. Thats the unfortunate truth. This is something Apple and ultimately Steve Jobs fails to understand. You can covet and lust the computers and devices all you want. The cashier at the store is going to ask one question.

Cash, Check, or Charge?

If you can't pony it up, no Mac for you. It is that simple.

[jason27131]

I totally agree with what you said. Mac is ridiculously overpriced. I don't care if its all high class with shiny chrome. I don't care about the fact that it has Leopard on it. All I care about is getting my money's worth of performance. Why would I spend 2000$ on a mac that can barely play Call of duty 4 when I can get a rig that can play Crysis on max settings for 500$ cheaper? Its all about performance vs costs, and in this case, windows wins by a long shot.

[bub9001]

Another article trying to compare Mac to PC. I think I will put my 2 cents in. First off I have use both Mac and PC over the years. They both have there place. Neither really beats the other hands down in all areas of life. The simple fact that PC fans can't wait for Windows 7 to come out, and Mac fans are screaming for a Netbook. Tells me neither has won over the majority. I prefer Mac because I work on a PC's all day, and lets just say I have all the tools to fix problems from A to Z. I have also just purchased a 2009 Mac Mini. This being the first Mac at home. It will replace my huge metal mass of a PC and it's duties of Video and Picture editing center. I have move this direction because of the failure of Micro$oft's last OS. Not to say Windows 7 won't be great. But some are forgetting that OSX 10.6 Snow Leopard is coming out in June. It is said to be a major upgrade, since most Mac models have been upgraded to the Nvidia 9400M chip. It seems that Mac may be ready to push out something special? I want to like the new PC's but the more I see what Mac has to offer I am drawn into their model of One OS with many possibilities, rather then Choose a Vista. No doubt that Windows 7 will be better then Vista, I say this because I have tested the Windows 7 Beta, and think it's a great step in the right direction. The hardest thing for Micro$oft is to prove that they can make a OS that works and will force all Windows users to go away from XP. But if you are looking past Mac and OSX 10.6 then you have a pretty big surprise coming.
The biggest problem I have with comparing the two is, it's hard to do so. Since Windows run's faster on a Mac then a PC with the exact same specs. And I can open Windows Word docs on my Mac, edit and save them. Then open them on a PC and they work, Kind of makes you wonder why you have to buy a more expensive Vista or XP to do the same thing. It seems that Mac designs around user friendly experience and PC just wants to make you pay for more options. It almost seems like it's a wash. That Mac's aren't more expensive then PC's because you get the bait and switch with Micro$oft? Just look at iLife, which comes with all new Mac's. It has everything you need to Make movies, store and edit Pictures, even run Windows on your Mac. But I can't do any of those things with a out of the box PC. I have to buy $150 of software to do anything close to iLife. And you still haven't even installed them and got them running yet. The Mac it comes ready to boot.
One last thing, I would like to add to this Mac vs PC. Without Mac, PC would be pretty bland. And without PC, Mac's would be way more expensive.

[bub9001]

What are you talking about, the 2009 Mac Mini with 1GB of Ram will run Call of Duty 4 40 fraps at medium settings. And the Mac Pro does just fine at any task you throw at it. If you want to game buy a PS3 or Xbox 360. I went away from PC gaming years ago, you are always having to buy new Video cards to keep up with the games. Also show me a PC that runs Crysis on max setting and only runs $500. Are you firguring everything or just MOBO and Video card. Most PC builders use older parts to go cheap, a good Gaming PC will run you $700 and that's not even counting the OS and screen. Plus in 3 years from now that $2,000 Mac will be well worth $1,200 or more. I like to see a few PC's that can do that over a 3 year period. Do you really get more for you money?

[AdamC]

Let put the joy of using a computer aside, put them both, I mean the PC and the Mac, on eBay after a few years of usage and see which one will have a higher resale value.
BTW the new Macbooks are better than some of the desktop PCs.

[OS11]

My angle is if you can't afford a Mac, then WAIT until you can. The famous Alan Kay quote:
Would you rather have something that is good? or WAIT to have something that IS GOOD?
PCs are generally for people not good with money, they are impulse buyers that fall into "hype", whereas Macs are for people that understand good value and want quality in their lives.
It's an utter myth that Macs are MUCH more expensive, most Macs are around 10% more than a PC with similar specs. Also too, PC advocates quote FULL retail when they price a Mac, but then quote a discount store when they price a PC. But if you learn how to shop, you'll see the prices are roughly the same.
A good, fast mac is $579 with not tax, free shipping add in a PC mouse and keyboard for $30 and PC monitor for $100 and you have a screaming system.
Learn to go to: www.macprices.net to shop around for the best pricing... NEVER pay sales tax or shipping. NEVER buy retail and you'll have a Mac in no time.
Also too, you don't have to have the newest Mac since they run great for 4 to 7 years or so, eBay has plenty of 1 year old Macs for 20% less. 2 year old Macs for 30% less, etc.
So quit the nonsense that Macs are so "expensive" it's just not true IF you know how to get the most for your money.

[lmwilliams]

If you want to play games on the cheap, fine, Windows machines are better.

I've used Macs for 20 years to make a living. Its been a good enough living that I can easily afford Mac computers for my personal use.

[MacHelp]

I do so enjoy this little talks from people who know the cost of everything and the value of nothing.
Is a Mont Blanc better than a Bic? Is a Rolex better than a Timex? Is a BMW better than a Kia? As with most things - it depends! If your sole consideration is price than the Bic, Timex, and Kia are for you.

[DTNick]

The way I see it, if you think a Mac is worth the price, then you'll buy one. If not, then you won't.

[batwing]

Unfortunately i have to totally disagree on the fact "PCs are generally for people not good with money, they are impulse buyers that fall into "hype", whereas Macs are for people that understand good value and want quality in their lives."
This is a very wrong statement. i strongly believe the opposite, or at least that MACs are for people who want s toshow what they got. I am totally agree that MACs are pieces of style when compared with average PCs, so I can be agree that a stylish MAC looks better as a piece of forniture in a high-end stylish living room. This is just the end of possible comparison between nowdays PCs and MACs.

A few years ago this was differnet. PCs were slower, hardware was crappy, graphic was low level and MAC had predominance mostly for Video and Audio editing. Today the story is very much different.

I will not get too much into the specific, otherwise this post will beneverending, but very quickly I can tell you something happened to me not later than 2 months ago.

A friend of mine was very happy for a brand new 22" I-MAC he got. Just chatting around, i got to understand what kind of hardware was on-board on that machine. I noticed the processor was a lower end dual core, marginal RAM, medium-small hard-drive, medium-low performance graphic card and thats it. it is very pretty anyway! Its price was somewhere above $1500.

I was curios to see what I can build up from Newegg as a decent-good PC. it came out I can build up a kick-ass PC with all of better and newr hardware, hugely better performances between 800 and 900 bucks, OS included.

This is more than enough for me to consider this discussion closed. There is nothing in my opinion can justify all of this difference. Let s stop this silly comparison between Windows and MAC OS. Windows costs about $200 and is able to have working together a zillion of different hardware devices and software.. and sometimes crashes and sometimes messes up.. true. it suffers Viruses attacks too, thats also true. So, Apple is telling me that to justify the ridicoulous price difference, their OS should cost about $600 or $700. Well if windows was that expensive, probably it was to be perfect as well, I guess :) however, this is just a joke. MAC OS doesn t cost all of that much. So it s still an open question understanding why that crappy hardware insidea MAC is so expensive. probably they get that money to cover the cost of their super expensive and stylish APPLE Stores :) .. someone has to pay for those, don t they?

Let s close also this Myth about the Virus infections. MAC OS is not more safe than Windows. Fact is that with less than 21% worldwide computer market share, hackers have no interest to waste their time on MAC Attacks. On the other hand, at the last year "underground Hackers meeting" in Chicago (but I could be wrong about the location), they showed how to Hack a MAC in less than 7 minutes. Also, the Hack for the I-Phone was out on the internet well 2 weeks before the I_phone was for sale yet! this is just to show that IF they want to do it, they crack the MAC as well as they daily crack Windows.

That said, i guess that PC users know much better about money value and they care for how much computer they get for their swet money.

[Morbidfarmer]

If you actually know anything about computers,(Which I know most of you don't) you would then realize that the Mac and PC differentiate solely on your intentions on using the computer. As a Mac user, I have found it easier to complete my work on my MacbookPRO then with Windows-based PC computers. I was once an owner of a Dell and I found that it was not that bad of a computer, you just have to maintain it in order for it to keep running. It's like brushing your teeth, if you don't, you'll eventually get cavities. Personally, I like Macs better but that is my personal opinion. Anyone who says a PC or a Mac is better is an ignorant fool, and these kinds of people are the reasons why other countries hate us.

[derek3A0]

batwing brings up some good points about why people choose PC despite the real and imagined problems of a Microsoft OS.

I don't know if this site allows linking so I just ask that people google this text line "Questions for Pwn2Own hacker Charlie Miller".

Scroll to the bottom of that article and read what a "security researcher" says about how easy it is to hack a browser in Mac OSX.

>"Why Safari? Why didn?t you go after IE or Safari?
>>It?s really simple. Safari on the Mac is easier to exploit. The things that Windows do to make it harder (for an exploit to work), Macs don?t do. Hacking into Macs is so much easier. You don?t have to jump through hoops and deal with all the anti-exploit mitigations you?d find in Windows.It?s more about the operating system than the (target) program. Firefox on Mac is pretty easy too. The underlying OS doesn?t have anti-exploit stuff built into it."

I've worked in enterprise healthcare database systems for a while and I've never seen any Mac-based enterprise systems. I thought it was because Apple never seriously went that way and it wasn't possible to support and scale up to large networks, and also the cost of Apple support, but I wonder if it was due to the lack of secure measures through a browser set up.

As for the Mac vs. MS-PC debate, I think its a right-brain / left-brain thing going on. Each to his/her own strengths.

[Mrcap]

Very simple, if you can't justify a couple of hundred dollars on a computer that will rapidly save you this amount and far more in productivity, you are penny wise but pound foolish and do not value your computing time.
As one who does IT on PCs for those who clearly could upgrade to a Mac with the money they pay me to fiddle with the almost constant inconsistencies of Windows and the various boxes filled with parts from every odd manufacturer on earth.
What's your time worth. If you are desperate and must have a computer right now and only have $600.00 then do what you have to, but if it is not an emergency then wait and save up a couple of hundred because you will save that and much much more in frustration and costs down the line.
There are always cheap tools out there. So called bargains. When times are tough, it is all the more reason to buy something that will be a good investment. Did you know that if you compared what the value of the above computers will be worth in 18 months you will probably find the Mac to have retained twice the value of the others.
And who will support your Dell? Someone practicing their english on you from India? Time is clearly equated to money. So if you spend at least 5 hours a week on your computer and could save a little time doing so, or get more out of the experience because of the improved computing environment you are working in.
Lets say you save or get greater value of one hour per week or 52 hours a year? For me this is worth (at my IT rate of) $65.00 per hour, ....but lets only say $10.00 per hour to be conservative, equals $520.00. Did you really win buy buying cheaper? Did you move forward or backwards? Were you wise or just thrifty? Who Knows?
Oh and the hacking stats above come quite clear when you answer the question, is there any mac viruses living in the wild or ever reported on the millions and millions of Macs sold since Apple Switched to a Unix underpinning?
What are you and your time worth?

[Chris32]

MrCap, are you serious, Like you I am an IT admin for a school and will tell you first hand that Macs are in no way perfect. Saying that "being on a MAC is more productive then a PC" shows how biased you are. First off, Apple updates are just as ridiculous as Microsoft are, except more confusing with there 10.5.6.1 .2 and so on. The reason you don't get called for a mac issue is becasue your customers are going to the overly lavished apple store, so in reality you should be happy that you can earn a living fixing PCs' and being able to find replacement parts at you local electronic store. If you truely believe in what you are saying then you would be out of business if everyone had a mac right?. You do realize that Imac parts are not really readily available, thats why Apple sells you the apple care. Ill tell you a big problem i had as of December 08.......... The Precious leopard 10.5.6 update screwed up all of our students logons. The kernel would crash when they logged out requiring students to reboot every time. Do you think they have a fix for this yet? NO NO and finally NO, Apple support on the phone sometimes really sucks, especially if a host of users and computers are being affected. Now imagine if this was say a bank or another type of institution requiring no downtime. It would really be horrible.......... I will say this, I actually like Macs, i like iphoto, idvd, imovie, remote desktop is a cool management tool. and others but you really shouldnt bite the hand that feeds you (PC's). ----Regards,

[DisComBoBuLaTeD]

This site says it all....

http://www.thebestpa...cgi?u=macs_cant

[Mrcap]

Simply being practical! My marketability does not in any way rely on the sensibilities or lack thereof by a PC user. Your comparison is what's ridiculous! You of course simply reverted to the previous version of the OS like you should have been prepared for before updating the masses.

If you look at the total cost over the life of the computer, the PC always ends up costing more. Cheap is often nothing more than that which it is! Buying the cheaper device is often a mistake in the long run. What you really need to compare is value, not just the sticker price. You as a IT professional should know the ramifications of buying cheap components.

[GetReal]

Here we go again!
MAC is Better....
PC's are better....
I begin to think PCWorld produces these articles just to instigate this kind of reader response. So everybody let's just go to the local boxing ring, put on the gloves then duke it out. In the end the last person standing indicates what >>> that his computer "knowledge" and preferences are correct for everyone, or, that he just might be the best boxer in the ring (having nothing to do with computers).
People buy things that suit them at the moment of purchass, and very often regret not having waited and/or bought something else >>> usually the determinants of the purchass are ruled by either budget, ignorance or advice from some "know-everything" friend or co-worker and this is the cause and circumstance that keeps the $$$ moving and boosts the economy!!!
If you can then go buy your BMW or a Kia, even a PC or Apple, as you want, then enjoy your decision, because what I see posted here are just personal opinions (and have we all heard the adage of what these compare too)....everybody has one!

[zainkazmi786]

Microsoft just has too many problems
Thats why the ideal thing is to have a PC and a Mac.
If you cant afford a mac just get a patched OSX image and install Leopard on ur PC

[batwing]

MrCap:

you are talking about cheap components. I have no idea where are you coming from, but I build PCs every day and I would like just catching your attention about this I-MAC configuration, you can actually buy right now from Mac-Mall at the interesting price of $1424.99. This is money my friend, money that people working for an average of 12 bucks per hour take in serious consideration. Let s take a look at what you get for your bucks:

20", Intel Core 2 Duo 2.66GHz, 2GB 800MHz DDR2 SDRAM, 320GB SATA, 8X SuperDrive, 10/100/1000, ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro, AirPort Extreme 802.11n, Bluetooth 2.0, iSight, OS X 10.5 Leopard

WOW !! and hey, I mean WOOW!!! We are not talking about Quad-cores.. we are not even talking about I7 new platform, nor about DDR3 new generation RAM... but we are talking about a "wow" ATI card that was decent 2 years ago !! or... "drum rollls" a "Superdrive" with 8x speed !! I was thinking minimum today was 16X.. but I was wrong.

You know what... Apple is smmart, because use fancy names for crappy technology and applyy fancy prices to the same crappy technology. Look on their website and you find stuff like "Superdrive", "AirPort Extreme Wi-Fi", "I-Sight cam" etc etc. All of this fancy stuff fill in the Mac people mouth and at the same time empty their pockets. But they are so happy thatt they do not notice the way they get raped :)

However, just get that I-Mac config above, go to Newegg and look for the same components, and look how "cheap' is your fantastic computer, before they apply an "appple" logo outside of it.

You may have your good resons to prefer MAC, and probably you deserve a MAC, but please, don t say things like PCs are cheap solutions, because Apple should have to go to jail about the way they steal money from people during an economic crisis.