MacBook
——-
2.00GHz Core2Duo
2GB DDR3 RAM
160GB HDD @ 5400 RPM

Windows 7 Desktop
—————-
2.00GHz Core2Duo
3GB DDR2 RAM
1x 160GB HDD @ 7200 RPM
1x 60GB HDD @ 7200 RPM
1x 80GB HDD @ 7200 RPM

I can tell you now as well that not only am I much more productive on my Mac, but I also feel that all my data is much safer. I shall later on be putting Ubuntu back on my desktop. Than it will be much faster again, but I still feel that this is just not as productive to work on as on my MacBook.

I guess it is all down to preference, but you will not find me buying anything but a Mac for anything but a server.

I have two cars for sale. They are built with the same out-sourced mechanical components. Leather upholstery is available that can be installed in either vehicle.
I’m selling one for $25,000. I’m selling the other one for $50,000. “Why the price difference?”. Well, the $50,000 car has an Apple logo on the door.

His point with this post was clear! Are most of you hoked on fonics?

6. Buy the core machine from Apple, but upgrade the video card, hard drive and memory yourself. As long as the video card is supported, this should save you a bit of money on the Apple side. I agree that their pricing for upgrading some of the components are much higher than necessary.

1. You are building it yourself, but not including the cost of your time, nor the cost of time troubleshooting hardware failures or configuration problems. I’ve rarely had no problems with hardware or integration of components when starting from scratch. That time costs money.

2. Compatibility. Maybe because you are a hardware guy, you already know what works together and what doesn’t. But that knowledge took time, and you don’t calculate that into your pricing.

3. Support. You are doing 100% of the support on your hardware. With a Mac, you get 1 year of email support and 90 days of phone support.

4. Software. While Windows 7 I’m sure will come with some nice software, there are some core technologies and valuable software that is included in the price of a Mac. How much to get photo management software with facial recognition in Windows? Or decent DVD authoring or HD Video creation? Granted, I know there are software packages available on Windows that does this, but I don’t know of any that are free and as elegant as some of the Mac versions, so you need to add in that cost.

5. Elegance and integration — that Coolermaster case is uuuuuugly. Subjective, but legit IMO.

For me, the hardware is interesting, but the whole package is where the value comes in. The fact that I can bring a non-working machine into an Apple store, usually same-day, and have someone diagnose and possibly fix it, so I don’t have to scour forums, memtest86 my memory, etc, is so very much worth the “Apple Tax” when comparing home-built hardware to Apple hardware.

If you don’t care about OSX and the included software, and you don’t mind supporting hardware/software problems yourself, you are 100% correct.

Most people do NOT have the time to learn how to put all this stuff together (think of “Claire” who got a new PC from Best Buy who got a PC because it was “cute.”), much less support it when it doesn’t work, and thus your numbers fail to include this cost.

FYI, this article was originally on my Facebook profile, as a response to all my musician friends telling me a need to get a Mac. I’m simply answering the question.

I had no idea people on Digg could be such ignorant a-holes.

Ok, Vista. This is for the PC and MAC people alike.

First off, Vista is not crap. I believe Microsoft programmers genuinely wanted to make up for Windows’ past shortcomings. They re-wrote the thing almost from the ground-up, and after using it for almost 2 years, I can definitely say it’s much better. Sure, XP is smaller and use to run games better (later benchmarks are now showing Vista at similar performance), but at the stuff I do, Vista is vastly superior.

Here’s an example: I multitask like crazy. At any given moment, I might have Photoshop, 6 browsers, Dreamweaver, Premiere, Flash, an FTP app, 4-5 Word windows, OpenOffice.org, Winamp, Windows Media, Email, and God-knows what else. On XP, my system would really bog down with too many apps open, even when I wasn’t close to my RAM limit.

When I first got my Vista laptop, I literally opened everything I had, which included the entire Adobe CS3 Master Collection, and then went back to Photoshop to do some graphics. On XP, Photoshop would be chugging at that moment. In Vista, it barely seemed to notice. This points to vastly improved memory management a’la SuperFetch. Vista is a memory hog, sure, but RAM is super cheap! It only cost a few hundred to throw 8 gigs of RAM on my 64bit desktop… What do I care if Vista is using up more RAM? I have lots more. OSX is also a much larger memory-hog than previous versions. It’s just thinking to the future.

I’ll probably upgrade to Win7, but I’m nothing but happy with Vista. It’s been rock-solid.

The statement: “Apple make most of their own hardware”, is incorrect. They make very little of it, as my post points out:

CPU: non-apple (Intel)
RAM: non-apple (Hynix, Hitachi, Micron)
Motherboard: non-apple (Intel)
Videocard: Non-apple (ATI or NVidia)
HD: non-apple

The only things I’m not sure of are the power supply and superdrive, but I’d be 99% sure these are contracted out.

So, the only real Apple hardware is the case. The fact that people think the thing is actually made by Apple is evidence of more good marketing. There’s a reason why they don’t list the manufacturers on the configure page.

You mention about your pleasant experience on your Mac as if this doesn’t happen on a PC. I run Vista64, and I also have left it on without a reboot for well over a month. It also did not slow down one bit. I only reboot it when I need to, unlike XP.

The negative hype about Vista is just that: hype. It was admittedly a turd because they released it too early, but the problems have been fixed, and it’s rock solid now. Win7 will only be better.

Also, as far as user-friendliness.. It’s a preference thing, but I don’t find OSX user-friendly at all. I have a Mac. I also have OSX in virtualization. I hate it. Period. The Dock and expose are cool, but a taskbar with your running programs (as opposed to having both like the Dock), just plain make sense. There have been lengthy usability studies on just that. The conclusion? Having both makes the most sense: The Dock for opening apps, and the Taskbar for running apps.

Only a PC with Windows or Linux can do both (unless there’s a taskbar for MAC I’m not aware of…) I use a Dock on my PC, as well as Expose (although I like Flip 3D better). My Linux installs also have both a Dock and a Taskbar. It makes the most sense. The one beef I have about Win7 is the changed taskbar. I think it was an attempt at winning make people over. I really hope the final release allows for a regular taskbar.

Whenever I use OSX, I get the feeling that the OS thinks I’m stupid and tries to prevent me from getting at things I want to. Also, the running apps that jump up to grab my attention on the Dock make me want to punch the screen (Yes, I know you can turn that off).

You also mention processing architecture, but I would like to point out again that it’s all Intel Nehalem. Same in Macs and PC’s with Core i7.

@Mitch: I DO have my facts straight:

Please, note, I directly compared a SINGLE CPU Mac pro, not a dual.

The XEON 5500 and the Core i7 9xx have exactly the same architecture (Nehalem). Only 2 things are different: 1. The fact that a XEON 5500 is capable of running dual (2 CPU’s), and 2. It supports ECC RAM. That’s it. Performance-wise, there’s no difference, other than the fact that you can overclock a Core i7 to a much higher speed, but you can’t overclock the XEON because of the way it’s binned.

Notice also that I compared 2 single CPU systems. Since the main point of a XEON 5500 is going dual, what’s the point of only having one in a system? Besides ECC, it’s pretty much the same processor. There’s really no performance advantage. Look it up. Now, if you’re going for 8 cores, then the 5500 makes sense, but I wasn’t comparing the 8 core system was I?
As for the price, are you sure you aren’t looking at US Prices? I config’d that machine twice, with the same price. It’s correct.

Regarding the RAID card, are you kidding me? You really think software RAID is the same as hardware RAID? It’s not. Also, my Motherboard (ASUS Maximus) comes with HARDWARE RAID, so no, it’s not “like my motherboard”. That’s why, in order to run dual 10,000 RPM drives with good performance, I DO need a hardware RAID controller.

Please know what you’re talking about if you’re going to tell me that I don’t….

I use windows and desktop PC since it is muhc cheaper then any mac and works alot better.

The only time i get a bluescreen is when i go in and start making changes to my hardware by overclocking.

Hell desktop wise im using PhII 955 and two 4870′s. before these shiny new PhII 965 and 4890′s (and soon 5870′s) were out.

Siting any of my PCs to my friends macs or mac book pro there is nothing that a PC cant do better.

Really; I can care less about apple or any major company support. So long as the companys selling me the hardware to build it have good support.

yes; you can build a laptop

The virus issue is this: the reason why there aren’t any very harmful viruses (because there actually are some) out there is because of the popularity factor of the Mac, or lack there of. If Macs owned 50% of the marketshare in small and large businesses, we’d be experiencing the same thing. It’s that, and, PC’s aren’t owned by Microsoft. The operating system is. There’s tonnes of 3rd party hardware and software out there, easily created with properly licensing. Apple make most of their own hardware and OS, as well as most of their own core software. Everything’s always compatible. Oh – and there are antivirus programs available for the Mac OS. but… as it stands now, all they do is hunt down PC viruses so that others who might be using a PC on your network don’t get infected.

A few things Apple is good at: Advertising. They’ve always had clever, ballsy advertisements, created by professionals and they’re never afraid to take risks. They have a tonne of failed products, including what people thought as lemon machines. They’ve always had the user in mind, when creating their products though. Mac OSX is surprisingly user-friendly, and thus, efficient with multi-tasking.

I can vouch for the iMac being a great machine. I think it’s the most cost-effective Mac solution if someone were wanting to dive into gaming on the Mac OS, rendering and processing 2d & 3d animation, as well as editing 1080p HD video on the fly. Friends of mine always say “but what if it breaks down? then while it’s being repaired, because it’s an all-in-one design, you have nothing until it’s done?” but… if your pc laptop or tower was broken and you hadn’t the know-how to fix it yourself… once you send it in, all you have is a monitor, keyboard and mouse… is that any better…

I’m excited to try Windows 7. It looks great. I’ve seen it at work (a few ppl are using the beta). Vista was terrible and confusing.

Personally, I’d love to work on both machines. I do a lot of creative work, like 3d, video production, and web design and development. In order to test these websites, I need IE6, 7, and 8 on a PC. For ridiculously fast rendering in Cinema 4d or Maya, a $3,000 PC tower is a killer cost-effective machine that blows through the work no problem. Everything aside from hardcore processing power (all video related work) I use my Mac for. I can fly through answering emails, coding for the web, rendering hd video, testing mobile application development in the iphone sdk, budgeting, invoicing, and designing all at the same time – no problems ever. I haven’t shut off my iMac in about 40+ days now and it has never slowed down once. Never had a single issue, it’s never crashed, never shut off randomly, every new external device i plug in works right away – even when the computer is offline. It’s just great.

I’ve used a brand new dell laptop last year and the battery life on only a 15″ is terrible! I only got 2 1/2 hours of it max, that’s when it’s not processing at all and the screen is set to minimal power. That’s also with a brand new battery, where as the newer Macbooks run for up to 8 hours in use.

Apple is innovative. Always pushing the boundaries of technology and design (form and function) in the American market. As nice as the Dell Adamo looks, it’s not the same quality build as a Macbook Pro. The case may be metal, but the keyboard isn’t as flush, it doesn’t press with ease and the trackpad still has two buttons to click. There’s no multi-touch (although they can’t get it since Apple has patented it). Most PCs don’t have firewire as even an option, when it’s standard on a Mac. You need at least firewire 400, if not 800 to do any amateur or professional HD video editing – or real-time use with external HDDs.

Anyways, I love how every post gets longer and longer. Great job with the post.