Had a mc mini for nearly four years now, and I couldn't imagine using anything else, its superb! Once you go Mac, you never go back........
For me, the point is that Apple want to maintain a complete and exclusive monopoly over all the hardware, the operating system, the apps, the content, and even the cables. They insist on keeping control over everything. You the customer are prevented from doing what you choose with the device you have bought (at a high price, incidentally). That is Apple's business model - megalomaniac control-freakery. Apple is therefore totally unacceptable and I would not buy anything they sell. I really don't care in the slightest what their products look like, and I am not much concerned with debates about the detailed characteristics of various devices - that's not the issue. It's a no brainer.
I can understand this point of view. Apple is indeed now the corporate behemoth they railed against in their first iconic advert. They are, in fact, the tangible proof of what happens when governments don't reign in corporatism. Far too big, far too powerful. Remember when Gates saved Apple? (without him, they'd have disappeared). Now consider the massive fines Microsoft has paid for shipping Explorer as part of Windows when Apple blithely continues to ship its Safari as part of OS X. Spot the difference? No. Me neither. Just looks like Apple can now afford the best Washington lobbyists money can buy. But not prepared to cut off my nose to spite my face by buying inferior IT products. Hypocritical? Maybe. Except that probe just about any company and you'll find that ethics doesn't run much deeper than it absolutely has to. Amazon? Great company, superb product and marketing. And then we remember the wages and the hours worked by the poor sods who toil in their warehouses so that you can have free rapid day delivery. It's all a bit sickening.
So, here is a scenario. My teenager needs a new laptop for gcse study and has saved birthday and Xmas money (and bits of pocket money, etc) and has £500. He can get an i7 Lenovo 15" hd led screen, with 6G ram and 750G hdd. For an extra £250 (which I can loan him in lieu of future pocket money for chores) he can get the smallest MacBook air with i5, 11" led and 4G ram. The air does look nice, but is only 2" bigger than his iPad. So really struggle with the value argument here. Got the iPads with nt too much fuss, using mine now, and kids love theirs, so like them and ok with their limitations. How can a person get considerably less processing (and storage), with smaller lower def screen and still be ok with the whole value argument? Discuss... Pete
Budgt has to come into it. If that £500 gt he best windows laptop you can; if its a grand Mac imo providing the mac is suitable for he purpose needed
I'll say it again: Apart from the idea of app's, Apple has hardly added anything to what people do on Mac's... type a note, caluclate an excell, send an email, ..... especially porfessionally, there is even less diff as 90% of all corporate systems run on ERP suites that have little to do with the OS... Alls Jobs has done is to make it easier to get where you want to be... it isn't actually so much different, it just feels so..... he has turned this into some sort of religion, and get people first to pay ridiciulous amounts of money for gadgets the are nice to have's and now makes them pay up to multiples for something they did yesterday as well... Apple, I love it for the phone! for PC's ... i've been fine using Windows for at least 30 years now... the four bugs and the hassle i had in this period that i could have avoided buying apple, would have more than doubled my expenditure... And there are all the things i hadn't been able to do : my current K7 dual GR cards 12GB internal whatever else i could have found will eat any apple for breakfast a number of times over doing games and 60 meg RAW PS editing.... but i'll admit, it 's not so COOL by a long shot..... my kids keep telling me that every day!
Since I got a mac I would never go back yo a PC! By the way if its for your kids you can get the educational discount from apple, couple of £100 off
I wouldn't get the 11" Air. That is a seriously small screen - a complete pain unless you take a lot of planes. One of the price differences is down to the SSD disk in the Air. Low energy consumption and very fast but it's still an expensive technology. The starter Mac laptop is really the MacBook 13". If you can't rise to that, don't bother with a Mac.
Chalk another one up to Macs, always used PCs but bought an iMac last year. Wouldn't be without it now. Apple after care is exceptional too.
\ i too hate corporate scum..as are all of these computer companies..thing is though, you CAN upgrade your Mac as long as the parts meet the specification required..simple. i purchased additional RAM for my iMac when i bought it a few months ago. Did i buy it from Apple?? No way. They were charged outlandish money. If i remember correctly it was well over £200. Instead, i bought branded RAM (16gb) for a tiny fraction of that. plugged it in, it worked. 2 minute job.
Macs are primarily designed for graphic/digital image work (thats why adobe have collaborated with apple for years when developing their software and why the OSX interface was designed in conjunction with Adobe), and for making music. A quick search will confirm this. Some have internal architecture aimed specifically for music, others for digital imaging. All of the pro software for music is either Mac only or developed and released for the Mac. If all you want to do is a few spreadsheets and emails then by all means buy a £199 computer from PC World. As for your statement about your super PC could eat any Mac..well thats just misinformed. The iMac is considered 'consumer lever', mine boasts 27 screen, 16GB RAM, 1TB..If you want a 'professional' Mac then read the specs on the Mac Pro series. If theyre good enough for NASA, theyre good enough for you. Multiple 12 core processors and min boggling upgradability//All for a price. If you want to do photography, music, film etc then go down the Mac route. As ive said before, ive never seen a PC used in a professional recording studio and i dont know of any people who use them for this purpose. When i was at Uni studying music and music tech, everything, and i mean everything was done on Macs because theyve been the industry standard since theyre inception..as they are in publishing houses, film studios etc etc. They were derided by everyone, as they still are, but their performance, OS, and more importantly, their integration with external hardware is the best available in creative industries. Its this 'creative' pedigree thats now sadly made them cool and trendy..which i hate. Its a bit like ppl jumping on the Ducati bandwagon because they earned their reputation in racing and are now seen as a fashion label. It spoils it a bit for the Ducatista when the bankers and accountants buy into the image, but we ride them because we love them.
I have had my PC fixed now after the virus/trogan or worm wiped all my outlook files wrecked all my word and excel doc's and even corrupted picture files! So after paying for health check and scan, and having AVG protection added to the dam thing! I'm now getting constant reminders popping up for upgrades all the time for AVG! My friends have been running a mac for a couple of years now its not crashed once and they have NOT had to install any security! I think I'm talkng myself into getting one
Apples "underground" software department produce the worm of the PC world! But every dog has his day....lol The global Mac meltdown is only a matter of time.....lol Macs crash they just don't tell you when they did!
Perhaps. But it's a bit like waiting for a stock market crash. There will be one along soon but in the meantime, everyone's getting very rich as the market continues to rise.
Why? Without them you wouldn't have the standardisation that makes all of our lives easier. In fact you wouldn't even have a PC as the non-corporate inventor would have kept it to himself and a few mates. Er, same goes for cars, TVs and most of the luxury items we so enjoy. I genuinely don't get it.
So make everything last forever, have half the developed world unemployed and make everyone go back to the dark ages of self sufficiency? Ermm.... greed is the corporate disease; why does a company HAVE to increase its profits each year;how can a company believe it ACCEPTABLE to make 10blion in profit in one year and be laying staff off...social conscience is whats needed over-riding the need to feed shareholders and the banks aren't charging much interest so how can they give it? How do you think the 120k people who are employed by Lloyds Banking Group get paid?
Just let AVG update itself automatically. I have used AVG Free for years without any problems. I agree with Pete1950 about Apple and the way it maintains complete control. I recently bought my first smartphone and it was Android. I do take the point people are making about Macs being more suited to the creative arts though, the market can't be wrong.
No doubt all you say is true John except "the market can't be wrong". Wrong about what? The best products aren't necessarily the most sold - thanks to corporate muscle. I'm not thinking about Apple specifically here. Once you've sown up distribution you can do all sorts of things. Is Coke better than Pepsi? Does Gillette give you good value for money? The market isn't some perfectly formed consumer choice. It's a savage game played out by corporations with the sole aim of maximising profits. Sure consumers vote with their wallets to some extent, but it's wrong to think that they are always right. Right about what? Is the market right to want massive doses of fat and sugar to make it obese and reduce its lifespan? Is the market right to have to continually replace light bulbs which, as Funky points out, could last a lifetime? The herd instinct of markets is no more right than lemmings are when they head over a cliff. It's a belief in the unfettered wisdom of markets that has generated the current financial crisis with the knock on effects we are all living with.
