[PCWorld]

Post your comments for Apple to Microsoft: It's On here

[Evildave]

Aww, they're great!
Love the 'customer care' one.

[sfoalex]

More Mac lameness.
Macs crash.... We have them in the office and often come in early mornings only to find the Mac's fans on full blast because the P.O.S. MAC kernel paniced and the FAN goes full-on as a result. We have quite a few DELLs and I have seen only one crash in 4 years, right after we installed Service Pack 3 on it and not since. I have seen the P.O.S. Mac crash more times than I can count in the same time frame. Twice hard enough to cause a re-install.
But I know the Mac fans will chime in with the typical bull; Oh you don't know what you're doing.... They feel this way because they have not seen their own Mac crash. I say bullsh!t. You show me a Mac fan that isn't going to support Apple no matter what and I'll show you a liar.
I've consulted for 3 different large advertising companies in San Francisco. I and the other Mac techs see this sort of thing all the time. Problems with network shared drives, running files off the network can easily cause issues, etc. All the things PCs do without thinking twice.
Please, these ads are such bull. Absolutely zero truth to them. But then Apple has to claim they do something well to justify the stupid-high price they charge for the same components. How else would their customers not turn beet-red for their stupidity in paying such a lay-down price.

[peterpulmonary]

my wife is one of those people that says macs work better, never have problems etc.

however, i can never seem to get her off my (the household-) PC.

[sfoalex]

Because when you advocate the Mac, you tend to look past the problems. I find PC users are pretty much willing to state exactly how they feel about the problems PCs have. I find PC owners are pretty darn honest about it because they are not advocates. They are simply customers, users, etc. Where as Mac users tend to be advocates.

[WinTard]

All these ads can do are not to convince, more to disgust intelligent people, who will see that as a lame attempt to sway public opinion through propaganda, brainwash, ridicule and BS. Apple is famous for that.

Funny parallel: You see GM and Ford comparing themselves to Toyota, Honda, and even Hyundai. But not the other way around. Wonder why?

~~~~~~~~~~
Virtue travels uphill, vice travels downhill.
{Chinese Proverb}

Goodness speaks in a whisper, evil shouts.
{Tibetan proverb}

[VSDude]

I've been on both sides of the fence and understand the nature of brand loyalty completely. You want to believe the purchase you made is the best one. With Apple, doing so means you also have a small army of like-minded soldiers who feel they made the best choice in this "war."

I bought my first (and last) iMac G5 in 2004. It locked up a few times - which really shocked me because of the advertisements which say this shouldn't happen. Just before my 3 year maintenance ran out (purchased extra), it died. Apple repaired it and gave me an itemized bill of what it would have cost me - $1000.00! I knew if those had been PC parts (main board, power supply) I could have done it myself at a third of the cost. To add insult to injury, I was promptly told my extended warranty was now done. I still had 3 months to go but I had somehow tapped it out by actually using it (gasp!).

It's a year later now and the iMac is starting to act up again - just like it did a few months before it died. I purchased a Dell desktop for about the price of a new iMac cost today. It came with more horsepower, more Ram, a bigger screen, better speakers and Dell threw in a GPS unit for my car for free! It runs Vista very nicely and I'm looking forward to Windows 7.

There are times when my family finds the Mac won't work for certain web sites. I invite them onto the Dell (which they know as "Dad's computer") so they can complete the task. Naturally, everyone has a "user-only" account on the PC (much the same as the Mac runs). Vista isn't crash-proof either but it's better than my XP experiences and more usable than the Mac.

[sfoalex]

I also use Macs for a long long time. Wrote a book on DVD Studio Pro and published it in 2005 for CMP. I consulted professionally for many years on the Mac since System 7 through to OSX, including OSX Server.

Your experience with the PC mirrors my own. Throughout my entire Mac ownerships I have always had Virtual PC or a PC stand-alone. I have always felt that the Mac has failed to provide 100% of what I need or want. Where as the PC always provides 100% of what I need. It's a lot like web browsers. I love FireFox, but the reality is some times I need Internet Explorer. And I hate to have 2 and 3 browsers. IE works for everything. PCs work for everything.

I have a rather expensive Stock charting application. The data feed alone is $135 a month on subscription and the app is $1,350. It's PC only. Why buy a Mac, then run virtual PC, to run this app? Forget it. And the reality is, it's not just this app. I seem to always run into situations where PCs make a lot more sense. I do art about half of the time with Adobe CS3. The rest of my day is spent in Excel or in very specific applications for working with DLTs. SCSI cards for PCs are dirt cheap. And PCs with expansion slots from Dell are under $400. And that means I can create low cost PCs with DLT drives for use in DVD mastering. Not only is the Mac limited in this area, the costs are substancially more. Apple has but one model of Mac with expansion slots, and the only recommended SCSI card is the ATTO which is a $500 card. The PC itself doesn't even cost that much.

As I have been doing art and editing with PCs for years, but started on a Mac in 1994 doing those same things, I have a lot of experience on both. I find I can buy or build much faster, better, and even cheaper PCs that do more and yet cost less. And yeah, Vista is not perfect. I actually don't like Vista at all. I like XP fine, and I have used the beta of Windows 7. I think Microsoft nailed version 7, and I think my next PC will be a 12 GB Quad-Core i7. Which I expect will cost me about the same or less as a basic iMac 20". And for that money I will get 6 times the memory, easily 2 to 3 times the hard drive space and a bigger monitor.

I was autoring Blu-ray well over 2 years ago on the PC. Apple still doesn't offer Blu-ray drives, and though you can buy them 3rd party, Adobve Encore CS3 doesn't even support mastering in Blu-ray. Just BD-ROM burning is all. For over 2 years, anyone with a PC can edit, burn, and MASTER BD. So much for Apple being the trend-setter.

[emperordarius]

Funny how many PC fanboys are here, but what to expect, it's PC world after all.

The fact is that Macs do offer a trouble free, malware free experience. And anyone saying that it's not true, is just lying.


Reading the comments before I just can't resist from laughing. Please. Macs crash? The only case when Macs crash is because of faulty hardware OR some buggy software. While with Windows? Just about everything can cause problems. And it does that.

And everyone that says: "I haven't had any problem with Windows in the last xx", xx NOT being DAYS, is just a liar. Those are pretty bad fanboys. Stop trying to convince others and yourself that something that you can't afford is not good.

Edited by smax013 - No Personal Attacks Please

[Chris32]

Macs are not Flawless at all. I am a School admin and also find that Macs Crash... We had over 200 Mac clients that Kernal Panic'd apon upgrading to 10.5.6. Also they are not invisible to attacks because they have 12% of the Market share no hacker is going to make big money off of that...DUH

[sfoalex]

I got my first Apple II in 79. I serioulsy doubt you have more experience on these than I do. All computers lock up. All of them. My commodore 64 did. My Amiga did, and system 4 through 9.2.2 on the Mac did, a lot, and yes, OSX does as well. I feel exactly the way you feel. I feel you are the liar here. And you no doubt feel the rest of us are. But given the reality that I have 9 years behind me as a full-time network and desktop consultant managing litterally thousands of PCs and Macs, I can easily cut through all the bull. Macs are far from perfect. If yours never crashes, you probably barely push it or get professional use out of it. Anyone who does what I do pushes both PCs and Macs hard enough to break them.
In the last 2 days, on a G5, I have pre-mastered 42 DDP images totalling over 630 GBs of data. This involved burning over 84 DVDs, and pushing 1.5 Terrabytes of data in and out of the Mac over a 48 hour period of time. I did twice that through put on a $399 PC. The G5 was Just under $1,800 I believe. The PC over the same two day long job never had a single problem. The Mac Kernal Paniced twice. And that's just the last 48 hours.

When you load and unload a program over and over and over again, and push date in and out of server shares in high volume, you will find you can get easily get a lock up. So I say again, my belief is simply that you kids that get all luv-e-dovie over the Mac, are likely staring at it on your desks and simply admiring it to death. Where as the real professionals who have them setup for use all day in a professional environment have a totally different view of them based on professional experience.

You think I care one bit about the Mac? I don't. It's a screw driver as far as I am concerned. And if it worked anywhere near as well as my PC, I'd like it a lot more. But from my point of view it is simply expensive, crash-prone, and has a cult-like following that is extremely annoying to me. Not to mention the ads all over the place that are such complete bullsh!t. The reality that you can be so adiment that they work well knocks me over. I have just about a full decade I think on OSX, and it's never been great. I believe I got it first at the break out party for the OSX beta in 1999 I think. Might be wrong on the date. It's come a long way from the then pin-stripe look, but it's still got stupidly large button icons and a kid-like interface. The only thing even remotely great is DVD Studio Pro in my opinion. Everything else is garbage as far as I am concerned. And they didn't even create DVD Studio Pro. It's a PC app with a Mac interface. It was DVD Maestro which was a good app until Apple bought it and ruined it. As they tend to ruin everything they touch except perhaps the iPod itself. Only good thing they have made.

[NormM]

These ads reflect exactly the reason I switched to a Mac. I was having terrible problems with my PC and I'm a technically literate person. Mac fans don't appear out of some Apple brainwashing program -- they are former PC users who found a Mac was a big improvement for their needs. This obviously isn't everyone but it's certainly the reason switchers become advocates. My biggest hesitation in swtching was the many years of PC tricks I'd accumulated which would be lost, and the fear of the unknown. After the switch I couldn't be happier.

[sfoalex]

How long ago did you switch? I ask because I have used Macs and PCs and tend to somewhat switch, not fully switch, off and on. In other words, from 1996 to 1997, I mostly used Macs. Then from 1997 through 1999 I used 100% PCs. From 1999 to till about 2003 I used 50% Macs 50% PCs. from 2003 till about the beginning of 2008 I used 100% PCs. At the start of this year I use 75% Macs and 25% PCs. And now I am back to about 90% PC and 10% Mac.

The reason is typically some application that I end up using most of the time and thus end up using that platform most of the time. At work, I have 4 PCs and one Mac for my use. At home I use a Laptop, which is a PC laptop. And I have a small 2.6 pound HP I travel with. At the start of the year I bought an MacBook in case clients wanted to give me Quark or InDesign collections based on the Mac. After about 6 months of using that MacBook, all the while the "O" and "P" keys would often not sense I was pressing them drove me seriously mad. So bull, I just gave the laptop away in frustration and bought a Toshiba. And my Toshiba "Just Works". So when I hear Mac users say this, it makes me laugh. I've got tons of experience on Macs going way way back. I have an SE, and SE/30, a Classic, a VX with an 030, a G4 867, and a dual G5, and I just got rid of my Intel Mac. I even own a NeXTStation Turbo Slab, which still works by the way. I owned the first G4 TiBook, and all the major Macs offered by Apple. So when someone tells me I likely had bad luck, I have to laugh. What is truly going on is exactly what I said is going on. When a Mac user has a problem, they just settle for it.

You know doubt know how many great utils are out there for the PC. How many cool middleware things work with the PC. I use SalesForce CRM for example. And they integrate their SalesForce web software with Microsoft office for Mail Merge and for pushing data between Outlook and SFA. It's truly a thing of beauty. Nothing like on the Mac.

My 2.6 pound HP was $699. It has more features than the MacBook, including an Express Card slot, and a small but sharp 8.9" 1280x768 display. 91% full size keyboard. Runs Windows 7 even with Areo. $699 vs what, the Air for over a $1,100 more? Come on. You seriously believe the Mac is so much better than Windows 7 or Vista to merit the whole computer costing $1,799 vs my HP's $699 price tag? You can't be serious if you find value in that. And please, don't tell me the value is in the up time. Because I have better up time than I do with Macs. And any PC user who uses a good virus app like AVG or EST doesn't have to anything once they've installed it. Malware can be managed pretty easily. The ones who do get infected are typically those that download and execute a trojan, use illegal versions of Windows, or don't seem to grasp the concept of using good anti-virus software. You're not going to tell me with all your PC experience that you actually got virused are you? Cause if you are, perhaps you are not the good use you think you are. I have yet to get a single virus on my PC. Aside from my keeping up the definitions file, I barely do anything to manage that. It's so easy and yet you Mac fans make it a big deal. You guys forget that the Mac was first laptop hacked in that recent contest. Took all of 10 seconds for the guy to hack it.

The Macs world wide marketshare is under 4%. It's simply not worth writing viruses for. There are social and economic reasons for viruses and malware. And those reasons don't apply to the Mac. Sorry, but the world at large considers the Mac user base to be insignificant. It's not that the platform is more secure. It's just too small to worry about. These hack contests prove as much. The Mac is easily hacked virtually the same way PCs are hacked. Some security hole that Apple is aware of and yet fails to plug in a timely fashion. Same as the PC with Windows. Same reasons. In many ways, I think you are worse off. The day someone actually does write a real virus, all of you users who never scan or buy anti-virus are going to spread it around like wild fire. All this hubris is not a good thing.

[emperordarius]

Oh PLEASE. The "Macs don't get viruses because of obscurity" is a DEAD myth. You can find HUNDREDS of websites proving it wrong.

[emperordarius]

Here's an example, a good article:
http://www.roughlydr...c-malware-myth/

[sfoalex]

First of all, your example is merely a writen opinion on this subject. It's not a fact proved or disproved. The hackers winning these security contests themselves opine on the side of lack of market volume for the reasons they do not bother with the Mac. Your argument of "Hundreds" of sites disprove this, as sited by your "one" link shows nothing more than a person writing an opinion stating he doesn't buy it. Well, as you can read right now, I am on the other side of that. So far, you have one for and one against. Hardly conclusive of anything.

Edited by smax013 - No Personal Attacks Please

[WinTard]

emperordarius said:

Funny how many PC fanboys are here, but what to expect, it's PC world after all.

The fact is that Macs do offer a trouble free, malware free experience. And anyone saying that it's not true, is just lying.


Reading the comments before I just can't resist from laughing. Please. Macs crash? The only case when Macs crash is because of faulty hardware OR some buggy software. While with Windows? Just about everything can cause problems. And it does that.

And everyone that says: "I haven't had any problem with Windows in the last xx", xx NOT being DAYS, is just a liar. Those are pretty bad fanboys. Stop trying to convince others and yourself that something that you can't afford is not good, open your eyes, idiots.

If you've got nothing constructive to add to the discussion, at least refrain from offending others.

Your bias makes you an obvious Apple fanboy interested only in raising trouble. Please take that trouble elsewehere.

~~~~~~~~~~
Who you are speaks so loudly I can't hear what you're saying.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Edited by smax013 - No Personal Attacks Please

[NormM]

I would agree that small worldwide market share is an important reason for the lack of Mac viruses in the wild but I think that history is probably a bigger factor. MS didn't pay much attention to security early on and this encouraged the growth of a thriving PC hacker community. It's probably the size of the PC hacker community rather than market share that matters the most. Also Macs are much more common in the US than in places where a lot of the hackers reside.

I sometimes wonder why MS and the antivirus companies don't surreptitiously fund some Mac viruses. Wouldn't that help MS deflate a common argument for switching, and help the virus companies make more money? I guess the downside of getting caught doing this is pretty significant.

[sfoalex]

I seriously doubt Microsoft sees switchers as any kind of a threat. Virtual PC software is one of the hottest selling applications on the Mac. And that means Microsoft gets yet another license which is what they truly care about. MS Office for the Mac makes money for MS as well. So again, no real problems there. You don't see HP, Dell, Acer, Levano, and or any other PC manufacturer even raise an eyebrow to the Mac.

What Microsoft does care about is having their name lied about in ads all the time. Like,when Apple says things like Macs are better for fun stuff, when the fact is, there isn't even 2% of the games available on the PC ported to the Mac. There are whole web sites, magazines, and gaming PC companies devoted to the concept of gaming and fun and Apple is 100% not in that at all.

iLife? Come on, which is seriously better, iPhoto or the free Google app, Picasa? I think we both know the answer. What is better, paying a dollar per song and if you lose your copy you have to buy it again, or paying $15 a month and being to download all the songs you can stand, and keep ten of them as part of the deal. Or you can buy higher quality DRM free music for less from Amazon. What do you need iTunes for? It's a gateway to being ripped off. You can watch TV shows for free on Hulu. FREE. You can Tivo them for the subscription price for the feed of just $12.95 a month. I LOVE my TiVo.

I simply can't find anything Apple does that isn't a rip off.

What's better, iWork, or the FREE OpenOffice 3? Safari, or Google's Chrome or Mozilla's FireFox? Final Crap Pro, or the industry and film standard Avid. DVD Studio Pro, or the industry leading Scenarist? Motion, or Combustion?

Sorry, I have a very difficult time trying to understand why Apple charges a premium when in reality, the fact that they are sub-par alone means they ought to be cheaper. They don't offer the wealth of software and hardware options that the PC industry offers, and yet they want you to pay more for less. Interesting how 4% of the users of computers find that logical. The other 96% see it for it is. Not hard to imagine why either.

[Cask4221]

I have to admit that even though i have been using a PC for a number of years, I still consider myself to be a novice.
My present PC with Windows XP. I have tried a couple of the Vista models, and didn't like them at all. I am presently leaning towards a Mac book, although i am still waiting for the price to come down a bit.