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66% Apple Market Share For Sales of High-End PCs
An anonymous reader lets us know about a recent analysis of retail computer sales numbers that shines a spotlight on Apple's sales growth as the PC market has flattened. In the lucrative >$1,000 PC segment, in the first quarter of 2008, Apple's retail market share was 66%. This includes a 64% market share for laptops and a market share for desktops of 70%. The article attributes the bulk of this success to Apple's stores. Fortune picked up this report and pointed out the somewhat obvious fact that the >$1,000 PC segment is Apple's by default, since Dell, HP, and Lenovo sell the bulk of their machines in the $500-$750 range, and Apple has only one model selling for less than $1,000. As the analyst said, "If you don't give people a choice [in the Apple stores], people will spend more."
fanboys GO
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
is exactly why I don't own an Apple. I'd love to have a Macbook Pro, but I just can't justify paying that much for yet another computer. I really think Apple would increase their market share of all systems if they lowered their prices or at least had models that started at lower prices.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
...will always find someone to tend the fire. Still, I'm sure they sleep better knowing that they're 'Trendy Mac', rather than 'Fat, Sad PC'.
* What they don't realize, of course, is that PC only got fat because Mac's mother gave him a cookie every time he fucked her.
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
"If you don't give people a choice [in the Apple stores], people will take their money somewhere else."
Honestly, Apples are overpriced for what hardware and software they contain. Sure they may use a stable UNIX based OS, but you can get just that with any respectable Linux OS (Debian, Ubuntu, etc., depending on the person's preference.)
If you were to count BTO computers sold over phone or internet in the U.S. Apple's market share would drop. Add the rest of the world and Apple's market share shrinks even more.
That said, Apple is gaining speed and is only going to be selling more computers for the foreseeable future.
66% of bugger-all is, well, bugger all.
It's funny to watch Windows Fanboys write about Mac. Somehow, they always loop the discussion around to their favorite software. Check out this exchange from the fine Apple Watch article:
Really? For about a year now, studies have shown that everyone knows about Vista but no one wants it. It's poor performance has convinced all but the most self loathing of people that Windows is not going anywhere. But finally, Apple is now using almost exactly the same hardware - How can anyone not see that the only remaining difference is software that does not suck?
You have to wonder if any of these people have ever used anything but Windows for more than a week in the last ten years.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
...what you pay for. Most of those computers mentioned in the article are made from the absolute cheapest parts that HP, Dell, Lenovo, etc. can get. Apple tends to use the best parts they can get, and the results speak for themselves. I have Macs that are still in running order after 20 years.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
way to try spin the fact mac's are a rip off into something positive. "zomg apple sells nothing under $1000, and since no one but mac fans are dumb enough to spend that much they rule!"
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
what does this amount to in real numbers, and what is the amount relative to the whole notebook market?
notebooks have been more or less a commodity for quite some time now, so i can't imagine super-expensive notebooks represent that huge a share of the market.
When people start returning their Macs next year after their OS has slowed to a painful crawl?
Apple makes computers that sell for less than a thousand?
I jest... I jest...
Very funny, you flipped a troll conversation about Apple fanboys into a Windows fanboy send up. It is as if the entire energy and malice of the GP was turned onto the GP by a subtle shift in balance.
For windows users using Mac programs is extremely painful and unintuitive and I'm sure the same is true the other way around. Why one side is willing to pay more has a lot more to do with the fact that there is competition in the PC market.
I couldn't find one with HDMI output, so I went PC laptop.
Maybe I'm ignorant.
See, guys? I TOLD you it'd be the year of OSX on the desktop!!
Yes, "threadjack". That's twitter-speak for karma whoring and shilling your own posts.
You've pretty much stopped pretending that Erris, gnutoo, inTheLoo, westbake, willeyhill, Odder and so on are not your sockpuppets, have you?
As the analyst said, "If you don't give people a choice [in the Apple stores], people will spend more."
well, duh.... and you know, people also don't need to go to an apple store. their choice was to walk into an actual physical store.
Though I've been using PCs for 20 years of my life I'm about to become a first-time Apple customer myself.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
Take a look at a brick and mortar store retail store that sells computers. You probably won't see anything over $1000, because that's not what the market that buys computers there wants.
People going to Staples or whatever to buy a PC want a cheap office machine, emphasis on cheap, and they want it immediately. People willing to spend more or wait a few days will either order from somewhere like Dell, have a whitebox store assemble one from parts, or just do it themselves.
They were also obsoleted by Apple within 3 years of manufacture. Apple has screwed their customer base over and over, and their customer base has such a short memory. I have seen 8 year old PCs still running and doing what was expected of them and still useful. PC users expect their 8 year old software to run on any Windows OS (horrible handicap for any OS). I have some customers who are still running their Lotus 123 for DOS on XP. I also hear more and more complaints from Apple users about quality control and buggy software so I think that Apple users wear rose colored glasses.
Laughably assuming there is truth in the summary, since the >$1000 PC is Apple's by default (according to Fortune) how in the hell can Apple only have 66% market share?
OK, I'll take some fanboy bait...
The bang-for-buck of Apple's hardware plus their software is a little difficult to justify by itself (though it is arguably a better deal than Windows and a lot less setup than linux). But the industrial design should not be overlooked as a value factor.
Compare a "cheap" consumer-grade MacBook to a similar consumer-grade Dell. The MacBook not only looks svelte and (to some) cool, it also is simply more convenient to deal with. If your computer is something that you use a lot, some of these little details can be very important.
I really appreciate the way a MacBook is almost completely silent. That it slips into the lid of a briefcase. That its speakers, microphone, and camera are all accessible but almost invisible. That I can click, right-click, scroll, pan, and more without moving my hand from one place. That it stays out of my way while I use it, instead of calling attention to itself: no blinking lights, no flashy logos in my face, no stupid buttons all over: it is just a screen with easy-to-use input devices.
People that buy Apple computers do so because they think they're getting their money's worth. People who buy higher-end PCs are the same. Dell has been mentioned already in this discussion - well they have laptops that cost several grand, and people buy them... even though Dell also has laptops for $500 or thereabouts.
#DeleteChrome
"If you don't give people a choice [in the Apple stores], people will spend more."
What kind of logic is this? This analyst is saying that people who purchase Apple computers are forced into paying higher prices. I think this statistic is a strong indication of "free choice" at work. Regular PC stores are a-dime-a-dozen yet Apple's sales are built on consumers who walk past 10 of these to choose an Apple computer.
You have one of two cases and I don't think you like the one you already chose:
Both of these are losers for Windows fanboys, but the first is closer to true and th worst. The fact is that people are paying twice as much for Macs and the only difference is software and marginally better hardware. There are "premium" Wintel laptops but they are sitting on the shelf because people are buying twice as many premium Apples. The real bummer for those other hardware makers is that they have produced far more laptops than Apple can and must be piling up big losses while Apple is having trouble metting demand.
You joke about it but you have nothing but insults.
No calls now, I'm
As the analyst said, "If you don't give people a choice [in the Apple stores], people will spend more."
Translation to reality:
"If you give people the choice between, as an example, a $2500 Wintel PC and a $500 Wintel PC, both of which offer the same crappy Windows Experience, most people will choose to invest less of their money in a losing proposition."
What truly amazes me is that, apparently, a full third of the people who can afford a superior product nonetheless invest in the inferior version.
Uh, this is nothing exciting. How many PC's have you bought in a store. Not many. This is retail outlets. Dell sells three times as many computers and tons more over $1000 direct from them to you without the overhead cost of a store filled with cool glass displays and backlighting. The apple stores are designed to be more like a nightclub. They want people to come in and fall in love with the piece of hardware and its smooth round corners. You spend the extra money so you can make love to it. Post the stats on all computer sales and see Apple still with a very small bite of the global sales. Don't get too excited Macaddicts.
jsut athnoer menagiensls ltitle psrhae for you to dcoede. Why do we wtsae our tmie dnoig tihs?
Though you should note that their definition of high-end is >$1,000 which includes all their laptops, and the iMac. What is the world coming to? I remember when the imac was the bargain-basement mac that everyone said would fail. Now it's high-end.
I recently purchased a MacBook from a large retail chain store here in Australia. While chatting with the salesman I asked him how the Apple machines (which they have only recently started stocking) were selling. His answer, which rather surprised me: "I reckon we're selling as many Mac's as all the other brands combined - easily".
But upon further consideration, standing there looking from the Mac's (iMacs, MacBooks, Pros) to the mostly bland clunky looking windows powered alternatives, I began to think well why not? They look a whole lot funkier are generally in the same price range as similarly spec'd non-apple machines and don't run Vista.
Maybe it's different in the US but here in AU I really don't see Apple hardware as expensive when comparable PC boxen are generally about the same price or more, especially for a well known brand.
I'm surprised at this statistic as I thought that it required a Machine > $1000 to run Windows Vista efficiently, which is what most PCs ship with currently. I can't believe people are buying cheap machines to run the system hog Vista on.
Second $US 1000 buys you an awful lot of computer(at least in the US) these days, nearly anyone who needs something more powerful than that is likely to either build it themselves or get it built by someone whose sales won't be included in this survey. I don't see anywhere where they're counting consumer grade CPU sales from AMD and Intel or the like, or anything else.
If you want to use this data to argue that Mac is the only large bulk premium grade computer retailer left in the united states, and that they have the largest percentage of that market, then go right ahead. This is of course patently obvious to anyone as the decrease in the cost of PC components coupled with the move away from pre-built PC's as well as the major PC retailers move towards low cost PC's should make thsi pretty obvious.
The fact that Mac can exist in a market that has pretty much died for PC's is an interesting idea and perhaps one which might be worthy of some discussion, but meaningless statistics like this are really rather pointless. A bit like claiming that if Intel or AMD chip sales were higher than the sales of SPARC processors that Sun was failing in the server market.
It's all about pinning your opponent and cutting off their air supply.
How long will all the other laptop makers be able to hide the losses their "premium" laptops must be suffering because no one wants Vista? While they "race to the bottom" Apple is selling exactly the same hardware for twice as much. The only difference is software. The blackout will come soon.
...being the only choice in PC sales, running on laptops and desktops that are woefully underpowered in an attempt to create a machine that sells under a certain price point.
Now, granted, there are exceptions, but most of the stuff out on retail shelves runs like shit because it is underpowered for vista, something compounded by the fact they are loaded with pre-installed crapware and norton antivirus 30 day trials. When your floor model takes 8 seconds to pop up the start menu, you've already lost the sale...
It doesn't help that PC "salespeople" act like scumbags and push high margin items with high pressure tactics. The general public, by this time, have probably already gotten screwed once by a previous purchase and they are wary of buying from someone who acts like the last douchebag who sold them a PC.
I'm not a mac fanboy, but I can clearly see the whole retail PC market is becoming a worse experience every year. I can also see the appeal for some to go to the apple store. I'm sure mall placement helps too - I think people tend to make stupid financial decisions in malls.
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Price does not equal high-end. Considering you can't even buy a Mac or Macbook with what is the current technology high-end, this is more than a bit misleading.
Show me a Macbook with a 7950GTX let alone a 8800M video Card, or god forbid, an SLI video notebook. We still have OLD 2005 notebooks with 1920x1200 17" displays that runs circles around Macbooks, and even most Mac Desktops. And this is really sad... (Our graphic designers run from Mac Hardware for these reasons alone)
Even the desktop models are medium range technology, and to get high-end performance, you have to replace Video at the minimum as well.
(And this doesn't even touch the horrid Apple LCDs in notebooks, especially the newly beloved OLED notbooks that tests show lose 20% of their color fidelity within six months of usage (1000 hours).)
For overpriced computers, Apple has more suckers... As for 'high-end' computing Apple doesn't even make a high end computer.
Just a friendly note to all other commenters posting in this and any other thread:
Don't be a jackass. Seriously, If you have an opinion, express it thoughtfully but avoid assigning labels to those with different opinions.
For example:
"Apple fanboys are so stupid--they'll pay too much money for a computer they can't upgrade or build for themselves."
This is how an immature person makes an argument. I know I'm asking a lot here on slashdot, but it would be great to see the above opinion expressed in the following way:
"I'm not sure it's wise to spend one's money on a computer that can't be upgraded or one that can't be assembled from parts you pick for yourself. For me, the convenience tax and premium prices for Apple hardware are way too high to be justified."
Macintosh users should note that taking the former flamebait only reinforces the baiting behavior. You paid a pretty penny for the computer you're using to respond so try to use more than just the "CFCKYUO" keys in your response. As much as you might try, it's futile to explain the subjective nature of the "Mac experience" to the kind of person who types flamebait anyways.
Just say no to flamebait.
I might know what I'm talkin' about, but then again, this is Slashdot...
.... everything (and more) that goes in my full-sized tower at work, which includes enough fans running to power a small aircraft at takeoff; to fit in the inch or so behind my monitor and be virtually silent. Thus, I can use the space that said tower would otherwise occupy for other things; and I can sleep in the same room as the Mac as well.
That's worth a little extra to me.
cya,
john
Imagine all the people...
You can get a pretty decked out computer these days for about $1,000. I mean, a good core 2 and 8gb of ram with nVidia 9600 GT. (sans monitor, but that's maybe $200 for a decent one). OK, I'll do the math:
Core 2 Duo E8400: $200
Intel mobo (your pick): $110
8 gb of ram: $160 (that's not a typo)
Case w/ power supply: $100
Hard drive: $80
Optical drive: $35
GeForce 9600 GT: $175
Mouse+Keyboard: $30
Shipping (newegg): $30
Total: $920
Swap the E8400 for a a Core 2 Quad Q9450 adds $150 so $1070 total. How the hell are people spending more than $1,000 on a computer? With some judicious corner cutting you can get way more computer than the average person needs for far less than $1,000. The only way you're paying significantly more than $1,000 is if you are buying Intel Extreme, multiple graphics cards, and stupid $300+ motherboards.
Even laptops hover around $1,000 for a good rig. I designed a Lenovo Thinkpad T61 15.4" widescreen with a good T9300 CPU, 2 gb of ram, and other fixings for just around $1,100 - $1,200. And most people don't need all those extras or even as good a computer as a Thinkpad.
So yeah, don't buy Apple. The fact they are selling you something for over $1,000 is suspicious unless it comes with at least 4 cores and 8 gb of ram.
Of course the Apples will have a larger market share in the >$1000 sector-- because the equivalent PC will cost less that $1000!
This is just a case of selectively interpreting data. I can take this exact same data set-- even using the ridiculous and arbitrary "$1000" cutoff point, and make the following conclusion:
High-end PC dominate marketplace in sub-$1000 range
Or how about "Apple market share of affordable high-end PCs negligible"
It isn't even a reasonable cut-off point for the mid-high barrier. A mid-range computer these days can easily be had for $600 or less. Even putting the point at $750 would be generous. The last high-end gaming rig I put together for someone ran ~$830-- and that was because he wanted a frag-normous teh awz0m monitor.
UTF-8: There and Back Again
I mean seriously. If you can't drop a grand on a computer and you are "professional" then I think you might need to think about another profession. All these people whining about computers that cost more that $1000. I don't get it. A photographer can easily spend $10K on a good digital camera set up and not blink an eye. Ask any carpenter how much they have spent on their tools, 10K is a drop in the bucket. But so many /.ers get their panties in a wad about spending anything more than $500. This is so stupid. Why not get something that works. As a long time windows user that made the switch, OSX simply works better. I still have to use windows at work and I have reboot 2 or 3 times a day. Although I do have to admit that Macs run windows better than any Dell, HP, or whatever I've had. So in short if you are a professional and you are still messing around with low end crap....all I have to say is you get what you pay for. And if you consider this flamebait or a fanboi masturbation exercise then so be it....I know what works.
Badges!?! We don't need no stinking badges!
If you need to mark them as foe, the other ones are westbake, willeyhill and Odder. He has one more that he seems to have stopped using after two posts.
I don't know if he's created more in the past two weeks, I haven't been paying much attention to the whole drama.
The twitter monologues. Click on my homepage and be amazed.
You have GNU/Linux. Windows users are buying Macs for twice as much as they are willing to pay for Vista machines because they don't know enough about free software. The party will be over for both Microsoft and Apple when more vendors join the free software movement. EEEPC and Dells with Linux preinstalled just work and that's a large measure of what Apple customers are spending premium dollars on.
A side note to all of this is that premium is not what it used to be. $1,000 is what people used to spend on middle of the road desktops ... fifteen years ago. The same equipment would sell for $2,500 if it's worth had kept up with inflation. Obviously, that has not happened even for Apple. Premium computers were selling for $5,000 back then and that's what they are going for today, despite tremendous strides it convenience and utility.
That's just it, even a machine that will run the resource hog that is vista well is still well under $1000.
Reminds me of my anatomy teacher's statement of the Rule of Nines for estimating skin surface area: 9% in the head, 9% in each arm, 18% for the front of the torso, 18% in the back of the torso, 18% in each leg, and the last 1% in the groin.... 4 or 5% for some of us.
Honestly, Apples are overpriced for what hardware and software they contain. Sure they may use a stable UNIX based OS,
They are selling simply because they come pre-configured, work, and are not Vista. They can directly thank Microsoft for this one. Vista failure and announced end of XP left little else ready to run.
The truth shall set you free!
Almost any laptop is silent these days and desktops are not far behind, software is the real difference. I bought an HP media machine mini. It's a little larger and uses more power than a mac mini but it is quiet and small enough. I got it cheap because it was worthless with Vista on it. Debian makes it worth owning again, but there are some minor problems. The wireless won't work and Intel's HD audio crap is little more than functional now. If HP and other vendors would jump on the free sotware bandwagon, they would have something people would buy.
you still get little terds asking you to prove it.
That said, this article is also a piece of sh*t.
Not only that, but a substantial amount of >$1000 computers are purchased as parts and assembled after purchase. Just look at the success of places like Newegg and ZipZoomFly. Granted, this could be considered a different market, but they do COMPETE against Apple and other PC sales, so it is only logical to include some kind of proxy for this in a real study of market share.
Sounds like this study suffers from a substantial amount of misspecification and omitted variable bias.
This threadjack was supposed to move this conversation AWAY from masturbation. Please quit telling us about your favorite Slashdot user's exploits. Your obsession is disturbing. I'd rather you just bought Vista and vanished in a cloud of DRM induced logic.
FYI, when Apple sell a product here in europe they almost put the same price in euro as in dollars.
... (compared to US).
Well, the problem is that the dollar has lost a lot since years/month and a 1.0 parity for exchange rate on euro/dollars is now a "souvenir".
Example of this strange price policy, say you buy $500 something, it is 321 EUR. But if you put it 500 EUR, then it is like $778 !!!
With dollar continuing to sink and now constantly over 1.5 exchange rate, this is becoming a "silly" price policy, IMHO. Or maybe that Apple don't care having low sales in Europe
Steve, have you ever been to Europe lately ?
PS : Slashdot page is in Latin-1, so I could not type the eurosign and put the money code instead.
"Race to the bottom" pricing leads to shoddy PC products. The HP laptop I'm using right now has had two hardware failures in the last year; this kind of experience isn't uncommon these days.
PC operating systems are awkward at best, user hostile at worst. Linux isn't ready to be accepted by the common man; Vista is - well, Vista isn't a very attractive option either.
While this is going on, Apple has introduced a huge number of people to its products via the Ipod and Itunes. They work well, look nice, and operate reliably. That's a good recommendation for Apple as a company - then the Iphone took the world by storm and cemented Apple's image as the "better than anyone else" company.
When this machine craps out for good, it's quite likely to be replaced by a Mac. They're not perfect, but they can't be any worse than this PC / Microsoft junk.
They are just another PC company going for the cheapest parts.
What is TRULY disturbing is how Apple got you to believe this. If that is not a crime, I do not know what is.
When I moved out on my own I started buying tools to help me keep my apartment and eventually my house repaired. I started out picking up the first tool I saw that was cheap and did the job. $10 hammer, $5 multi-screwdriver set, 200-piece no-name, all-in-one socket sets for $20.00, etc. They did the job. After all, you can turn a screw with a cheap screwdriver just like an expensive one.
Needless to say, I've had many versions of each over time. I can't count the times I've had my phillips-head screwdriver turn into a rounded-out, useless waste of money at the first recalcitrant screw. It always happens at the worst time too. After expressing my frustrations with my dad one time (in language that probably shocked him) He looked at me and simply said "Why don't you buy decent tools?" My response was "Have you seen how much they cost?!" He responded "How many times have you re-bought that screwdriver?". I had to admit that I'd probably spent twice the cost of a "pro" screwdriver over the years on cheap ones and cursed them every time.
Over time I started applying this lesson to other things in my life. I found that every time I took the cheap option "to make due" I was disappointed and invariably wound up replacing it much sooner than I should have. I found that I actually saved money and aggravation by buying quality the first time. I traded in my cheap POS for a used Mercedes. I threw out my Walmart tennis-shoes for a pair of quality walking shoes. I passed up the $3.00 T-shirts and invested in quality brands. The list goes on...
I've had the extreme pleasure of driving my Mercedes every day for the last 10 years. It's as good as the day I bought it and when I go to sell it I'll have paid less for it year-over-year, than I ever did on the myriad el-cheap-O's I used to drive. Where I used to replace my shoes every year, or so, I have had my current pair of shoes going on 4 years and have experienced more comfort than I had imagined possible in a shoe up till that point. And my T-shirts? They used to fade and grow thin after a few washes and I'd donate them or throw them out and have to re-buy them. Today, I still have T-shirts that look almost new that I've worn regularly for 7 years. I still have one I wore to my brother's wedding rehearsal 9 years ago.
All this is a very long way of saying that, amortized over time, buying quality is often cheaper (and almost always more pleasurable) than buying the first thing you can afford.
Now, I've built my share of PC's. I enjoy picking through catalogues and eBay auctions and getting the best bang for my buck. But, those are my hobby machines. My TrixBox. My MythTV. My fun stuff. My main system is (currently) a Dual G5 Power Mac that I bought refurb'ed shortly after they came out. Even then, it cost me more than $1,000, but I've had it almost 5 years now and It's still doing it's job well. My neighbor just gave me his 3rd Dell in 5 years (a trade for re-installing Windows so many times). He's spent way more on all those systems than I did on my one and has had no end to his aggravation. I sit down at my system (that I've never had to re-install) and get my work done. Would I like to get a cool new 8-way Intel system? Sure. No doubt. But I don't *need* it yet, and I haven't saved up for it yet. It's budgeted for this fall - yay! :-D
Some people can get by just fine with the cheapest piece of crap Dell or Walmart sells. It looks like crap, it's loaded with useless crap, it's made with the cheapest parts that can be had, it's "settling" for the lowest common denominator. Like the cheap screwdriver, it can get the job done, but you wind up fighting it every step of the way. Their entire experience with computers is based on that. They are used to it. They expect it. It's sad.
There is something special that you experience the first time you pick up a professional tool. The hammer feels more balanced. The screwdriver turns the screws with surprisingly little effo
"terrorism" and "pedophilia" are the root passwords to the Constitution
when you can have Konqueror, which is the real deal anyway?
Apple's big selling point is it's software but that will go away when vendors embrace free software. Vista is making a lot of crispy critters and that won't last much longer. People are willing to pay for software that works.
I am a name troll of Westlake. Visit my homepage to learn why.
Personally I think the claim is mis-leading anyway. The category is narrowly defined as not only over 1000, but also bought retail. So it's crafted to exclude all the expensive workstations and servers bought by corporations, since they don't usually just drive a truck to WalMart to buy them retail.
It's a bit like saying that Joe is the world leader in selling over-$1000 cats by Ebay and air mail. Sure, he only sold one on Ebay, but he's the only guy who sedated the cat and sent it by air mail. The rest of the people bought their cats face to face, or had them delivered by courier in a few cases. Narrow it down to Ebay and air mail, and, bam, Joe has 100% of that market.
Better invest in Joe. In fact, this year he found two stray kittens in his backyard, and plans to sell them both on Ebay by air mail. That's 100% year-on-year growth, baby. At this rate, in 20 year, Joe will ship over 1 million cats yearly. As a savvy investor, you don't want to miss _that_ boat.
In other words, it's just a PR masturbation exercise.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
lol. That's funny. What ever this guy's been inhaling, it's pretty darned good.
Next time buy a $40 card that works. You only defeat yourself when you give money to a card maker that is not playing nice. I'm glad people write software for nasty hardware but I'm not about to waste months waiting for it. There are too many good cards and too little time to fool with the bad ones.
I am a name troll of Westlake. Visit my homepage to learn why.
Between you're insanely patriotic message and you're obscene fanboyism, I'd almost imagine that you'd even buy a oil leaking, environmental hazzard Harley Davidson just because you think they're made in America.
I love people like you since you'll do anything to make yourself "special" because after all, if you're special, you're better.
The two platforms mirror each other almost perfectly. The only difference is UI. In fact, it might be better to say "If I run a Mac and Codeweavers Wine, I get the best of both worlds", but instead you're entirely dismissive of the competition and suggest that if you don't use it, it must be mass produced crap.
Mac has some good apps, Windows has some good apps, UNIX has some good apps. Using a Mac with Wine, you can run all 3 types, maybe with a little struggling. After all, porting Linux apps to Mac without depending on compatibility libraries for unicode is actually sometimes a hassle, but relatively painless. Running Wine will give a pretty good sucess rate as well. In reality, Mac can be viewed as a machine capable of bridging the gap for people with widespread needs.
I can assure after having been a major UNIX fanboy for years and having ported major commercial apps to Mac OS X there are in fact excellent applications available on Windows that should never be overlooked or brushed aside because you think they might make you less special if you were to submit and use a Windows app.
If you truly want to be special, learn to open your eyes. There are an infinite number of colors between black and white.
Indeed, what those business idiots call "high-end" is just "high-price-end". And we all know Apple's products are grossly, obscenely overpriced. That doesn't mean you're getting a better system though. And it includes the license for their Defective by Design operating system, which you wouldn't pay for if you were using a free OS that is free. Another very expensive thing included in Apple products is "style" (the popular intangible feature that serves no use other than making you feel better than others). Apple's metrosexual-appeal is as expensive as gold coating.
I suppose Mac people will never want to buy cheap, even if Apple decided to sell something at fair prices for once. They need to feel superior, stylish and trendy, and for that, they need to be paying for something more expensive than their neighbour's, regardless of the actual performance or quality.
I was about to say 13256278887989457651018865901401704640, but it appears this number is private property.
With sufficient RAM and disk (which are cheap enough these days) even the slower C2D processors will give very nice performance. Except for gamers and people who want the lastest Microsoft operating system, I'd expect such a laptop being more than fast enough 5 years from now.
By that time, you will probably be on your second battery (Li-Ion ages with or without usage), and if you can find a third one after that is a matter of luck as the model may be out of production. Let alone other parts that can go bust.
In short, for most people this machine will probably break hardware-side before the lack of performance becomes an issue.
C - the footgun of programming languages
I wonder if slashdot can make an area for these "multiple personality" types to be tracked.
Mind you, it does kind of show how many times you can split zero amongst zeros.
PS guys I'm pretty sure these figures don't account for online sales... AKA Dell, HP, Alienware, Falcon NW, Gateway, Sony, Toshiba, and basically every other company that makes a > $1000 computer are not included. These stats are basically comparing Apple computers to Best Buy branded computers... not that this should surprise anyone given the source of this article.
How long will a good screwdriver last? 20 years or longer.
When will a computer become obsolete? 5 years.
People buy Apple Computers for the same reason they buy BMWs, you can probably find a cheaper car with better specs, but you don't get all the stylish little extras.
Apple products look sexy, and they have enough little extras that people convince themselves it's worth it. There's a different feel when you are carrying around an aluminum Macbook Pro instead of a plastic Dell, it doesn't make the computer run any faster, but it helps people feel "cool." Same reason kids wear Nike shoes, or $200 jeans - selling an imaginary lifestyle makes more profit than actual specs.
D6 63 0D 70 89 81 BB 8E 7B 7C 5F 5D 54 EA AB 73
Newsflash: People spend more money to get a BMW than a Ford Escort.
If all you want is bargain basement, dollar-store cheap-crap, then that's what you'll get. If you want something a little better, more refined, better engineered, and built to a certain standard, then expect to pay a little more. What the heck is so weird about that?
TTYL
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Money is social status. It's the fact that it costs more and is out of reach of the mob that makes it stylish...
If you buy a pair of ripped jeans which cost you $5 you are cheap and have no style. If you buy the same pair for $200 you are a superstar.
Deleted
I agree with much you have to say -- buying a Mac for my parents, I have to say, was one of my best decisions. No more reinstalling an OS due to countless toolbars and other crap so imbedded into the system (delivered by the manufacturer on default install and installed by said parents over time). It's nice to come home for the holidays and not be asked to look at a computer that hasn't been working for the past 6 months.
OTOH, paying a high price does not guarantee quality. I consider Mercedes Benzes crap. I have had 3, used to be a big MB fanatic, even visited the museum in Stuttgart where they had some of the most beautiful cars ever made.
And they still make quality engines and transmissions. But their electronics and electrical systems have turned to crap. Look at Consumer Reports, they are the lowest brand in terms of reliability. (Coupled with the highest parts and repair costs spells bad news).
I had 3 of them used. Smaller, lower end (Baby Benz and 2 later C classes admittedly). The first was only okay (not a lot of high tech in the mid 80s model yet) but the two newer C classes nothing but electronic nightmares. And mechanical problems too - water pumps and gas pumps breaking down at a mere 70-80k miles, etc. And expensive monsters to fix.
Since the late nineties, I drove a new Honda Civic and got my second one last year (also new). Nice cars. Nice mileage. I don't demand a lot of features, but the new one especially has all the ones I'm really use anyway. 15k-20k cheaper than the cheapest benz. And just don't break down (hardly any repairs.)
"You get what you pay for" just isn't true anymore. Now, the best rule of thumb is "if it's from the dollar store, it's likely crap. Otherwise you have to use the internet to guage a product."
Not as catchy, but far closer to the truth.
Honestly, Apples are overpriced for what hardware and software they contain. Sure they may use a stable UNIX based OS, but you can get just that with any respectable Linux OS (Debian, Ubuntu, etc., depending on the person's preference.)
I use Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows Vista. (Yes, I still use Windows 98, though mostly for compatibility testing anymore) I also use Mac OSX 10.3, 10.4, 10.5, Fedora Core 8, and RHEL 4. My primary system is a FC8 Dell laptop setup for KDE 3.5. I'm comfortable in front of any of these, though I admit that I'm least familiar with OSX.
Implying that a Mac is the same as *nix is just silly. You haven't USED a Mac. It's an artistic interface. KDE 3.5 feels, to me, roughly comparable to Windows XP. Sure, there are plenty of differences, but the interface is just a tad clunky, with an interface that's very useful, often gorgeous, but just a bit "rough around the edges".
OSX, on the other hand, has a very "polished" feel. It's like the difference between the dress of an Army brat and a Marine in full dress. Both are military, both are useful, but the Marine has that bit of spit and polish to do it in style.
And even though I bet my SaaS software company's farm quite successfully every day on the stability, utility, and economy of Linux, the computer I'm typing this on right now is a Mac mini - somewhat ironically with a Microsoft keyboard and mouse. I originally purchased this computer simply to do compatibility testing for our cross-platform product, but I fell in love with it! It doesn't take all that long.
That you would dismiss OSX for Linux so quickly is merely an indication that you haven't USED OSX for any length of time. Worth the price? Well, I've already said: I bet my farm on Linux, and I've done quite well doing so. I wouldn't want to standardize on Macs in my company for the simple reason of cost - I have dozens of midrange servers that have a ZERO software cost, and reasonable administration tools - the cost of standardizing on OSX would be very, very high, and would likely come at a significant performance loss.
You might not buy it. But don't dismiss it.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
If you have a recent box, just download and install kalyway or leo4all. Free mac for your PC. Not compatible with all hardware yet, but after swapping my Geforce 8xxx for a 7xxx, and disabling my second cpu core, it runs great. Definitely a step up from windows on the same machine, even WITH the better gfx and another core. But give it some time, and drivers will be out for that hardware too.
Yes, but the intersection is still mis-leading. Percentage of retail _or_ percentage of over-1000 computers could say something. (If you do understand that you are talking about a particular niche, not about the company's overall profitability or market share.) But the intersection is just a narrowly crafted niche, for PR masturbation reasons.
It's like saying that Moraelin's Fairies won the most games played on a rainy Tuesday under artificial lighting. They have a whole two games won under those conditions, while everyone else has at best one win that's on a rainy day _and_ tuesday _and_ played at night. It's trivia, at best. It doesn't make it the best team in any actual category that matters, it just crafts an artificial niche to make my team look good.
And probably more importantly, a tell-tale sign of a PR masturbation exercise, is that even that niche doesn't really support the conclusion they try to feed you. ""If you don't give people a choice [in the Apple stores], people will spend more."" Really? Exactly which part of that percentage supports that conclusion? Did they compare before and after a price hike, or what? Did Apple try to have cheap computers too, and people were going for those instead?
But even that wouldn't be visible, if you only look at the over-1000 segment. You need an entirely different sample to make that point.
No, it's very likely just a PR exercise masquerading as news.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
100% of computers sold at Apple retail stores are Apples! Colour me impressed!
Leela: "Is all the work done by children?" Alien: "No, not the whipping."
If I had the amount (my pc is an old Intel Pentium 4 no hyper threading with lousy 512 mb ram) of money of the price of a Macbook, I'd build my own machine, with the equivalent or less power of an Alienware I get a gaming rig, email machine, media center, etc., etc., while with Macbook I get just an email machine. Don't missunderstand me, but money is the issue, if you have the money, you buy a macbook and probably at home you have several other pc's, if you don't have the money, you build your own rig (hoping it won't explode on first start).
willyhill, you are a worse blight on Slashdot than the plague of twitter posts which you go on about.
Are you a short perl script?
You certainly sound like one, as you repeat just about the entire post over and over, it seems in response to any post by twitter.
Same point, more succinct:
"There is scarcely anything in the world that some man cannot make a little worse, and sell a little more cheaply. The person who buys on price alone is this man's lawful prey."
John Ruskin (1819 - 1900), (attributed)
Damn true, and I concur with your post 100%.
add to this that the vast majority of >$1000 PCs sold at retail are laptops where Apple has been leading the curve for a while...and this makes all the sense in the world.
Thanks, I suspected that this happens and even thought of doing this myself to get rid of bad karma. I then thought of why I have bad K and shrugged my shoulders...Good karma just seems to come from sucking and, there is no universal symbol for 'cynical comment' like : ) is for funny. Odder does seem to like the word 'threadjack' though.
On the subject of macs...second hand they hold their value for longer and just about sell themselves. Conversely, if they are broken in any way, it costs alot to fix and is not worth it in most cases. Hey, that's not an opinion, that be numbers talkin.
"Persistance is Fertile" - Me. I can quote myself if I want to.
I had no idea that anybody sold computers as expensive as Apple!
Vista runs just fine on my $400 machine. 2 gigs of ram and a faster core2 than the mini.
This is all nice, but there is a good reason why people buy cheap things. There is even an economic paper on that:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons
Simply, you cannot guess the quality from the price. So you end up buying cheapest possible thing (maybe not the cheapest possible, as you did, because then bluffing comes into play). Economists like to prove (it's a sort of tautological proof) that in idealized markets, buyers can decide by price only. But this is under assumption of perfect information, which is never satisfied in the real world. Therefore, markets never work very well in the real world.
This doesn't seem to take in the large high end PC market of custom builds, either self built like my last 3 high end PCs or built by small independant retailers. A market that Mac doesn't really have.
Blazing Spiders
What's most interesting to me is that, as someone who has been buying computers (mostly Macs, it's true) for a long time, over $1,000 still doesn't really seem high end. PC prices have come down a huge amount in the past decade or two; I can still remember a time when it was impossible to get pretty much any system for under $1,000, even before adjusting for inflation. 10 years ago the iMac was a great deal for a complete system at a mere $1,300.
nothing. If I can make a machine for under a thousand $ that can play crysis on high with 35 fps (atleast) then why buy a mac? Most people do not need or even want the extras you get with a >1000$ machine. And guess what businesses want (the real money maker)? Thats right the 1000$ machine. So this leaves the cows that want the shiney mac and artists. I have never been impressed by a Mac or a PC. But if Mac really wants into the non fantasy computer world, then they need make there product work on a PC. What with the high gas prices I don't think the cows are willing to go to pasture for these worthless machines anyway. That leaves the artists. And a really serious artist probably needs more than a Mac can provide also. This whole thing seems like a train wreck waiting to happen. If Apple wants to survive then they need to change.
"Saying high end implies that they're actually fast, good, or comparable to machines running other OSes"
Not to the sort of people who write (and read) retail sales analysis reports and subscribe to Fortune magazine (which were both responsible for the information we're debating). Their definition of "high end" for any product is purely based on cost, i.e. the high end of the market, and they neither claim nor imply that what those high-end products are any better in a technical sense than the ones that aren't high-end.
I'm not going to change your sheets again, Mr. Hastings.
Apple hardware is a premium product at a premium price, a price which an increasing number of consumers are willing to pay. The design of their products is top-notch and the market is recognising it. Additionally, regular Windows PC users benefit from having truly innovative companies, such as Apple, in the market place, their competitiveness forces the incumbent monopolies to improve their products and compete for price and quality.
when you don't truncate the to 2 places? 66.6% ? Nahhhhh!
Unfortunately, quality is quality. It is probably true that for whatever minimum quality you desire, there is something cheaper and not as good. Unfortunately there are things more expensive that are not as good, often with better marketing. It would be nice if you could just purchase the most expensive thing available to get the best. But that is no guarantee that it's actually better.
There is no substitute for doing your research, especially internet research. Unfortunately these days you have to google a bit more to see beyond the astroturf, but it's still more than possible if you are sharp and have enough time.
Perhaps that's where the "good, fast, cheap, pick any two" engineering aphorism falls down. You can get "good", sometimes even great by simply going fast and expensive. But it's still somewhat of a crap shoot. If you want great, it will take time. And it will cost what quality costs. It could be insanely cheap. It might be really expensive. You just don't know until you do the research.
The satisfaction I get from having the best, or near the best but at an insane price, is unbeatable. It's even better when you have better gear than people who have paid way more and are desperately clinging onto whatever subjective BS the marketer has told them about their product. And you can tell when they know it - they regurgitate the same baloney the marketer or salesman told them, only more emphatically.
I know if you added up the hours to do the research and multiplied it by some wage you probably aren't getting paid anyway, it can look expensive. At the same time, research is fun. And almost always, you get something that at the minimum will do the job. Not spending the time trying to make something that won't work do the job, then finally having to return it, then doing the research you should have done in the first place - that's worth a lot. And very often you surprise yourself with how good your purchase actually was.
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
Whether this applies to Apple computers or not I won't bother debating since I haven't touched an Apple in over 10 years.
In my experience things have always been best quality when mid-priced though. I've bought cheap running shoes which didn't fall apart but were uncomfortable, Nike ones which fell apart because they were made of a material that decays over time, and finally Hi-Tec which have always been robustly built and not that expensive. And the clothes I buy are just clothes - I don't seek out the cheapest or the most expensive, but I go back to places where I've found ones that fit me well (they're often either a little too wide or short for me) and are made of material that feels comfortable.
When I started out building myself PCs I tried to get the cheapest parts, but then when I stopped being a student and got a job I realized I could pay more and get stuff that's comfortably faster or bigger. That said, my cheap K6-2 system still runs today, though it has been made obsolete by my old dell latitude laptop which makes as good a server at 1/6 of the power consumption.
I bought an Apple Keyboard recently because I like to try out interesting looking peripherals every once in a while. I can handle the keys being flat and the enter key being small - that's all fine with me, I bought it because it was different. But while the body is quite stiff and heavy, the key mechanisms themselves are pretty cheap feeling - the keys all rock from side to side, and some keys only have one spring under it when they really should have two or more. The rocking is made worse by the fact that they're flat - normal slightly concave keys will still cup your fingertip when they rock slightly, but with the flat ones you can feel the slope.
I know that a keyboard isn't necessarily representative of the whole shebang, but it gives the impression that nowadays the extra money is going more toward design than engineering.
In that Apple actually pays computer scientists, engineers, etc. a decent wage. And they are run by managers that actually give a damn about the job that their team does.
So we get things that actually work better out of the box, and mature well over time. Hell, each apple product I have bought has lasted me 4+ years. And then I only "upgrade" because I can afford to upgrade the storage of the laptops myself, increase the RAM significantly, and a fresh install, and give it to a member of my family. Who are shocked that the finest computer in their house was not the dell running vista, but the four-year-old mac... Gaining new Apple users, and when they will buy a new computer in a few years, they might decide to go with the brand that has lasting value.
Seriously, if you want to pay less, then you devalue their employees. Make 'em more like Microsoft minions, expendable and not working together at any point. Sure you get the product eventually... And its cheaper.... But customers will most spend the rest of that products life complaining about it.
And no, I am not bashing the "free" concept of Linux, because Linux is a passion. One might spend a few days working out a glitch they encountered and submitting the fix. Then they feel great about accomplishing something no one else has done, and might go on to mend other things, or add other features. By keeping it a hobby that all are free to contribute to, people contribute for free.... And if we added up all those man hours on our favorite distro in a given year, it would be a fortune to pay.
3 degrees of separation from Vladimir Putin
Didn't RTFA, but does that figure take into account the possibly large number of users who never bought a computer, but built one from parts?
>$1000 = high end? I'm rich, bitches!
Here's what has been pointed out so far:
* Apple has such a big market share for the $1000+ market because most PC are cheaper.
* True, but if you deck out a regular PC to match Apple's specs, it'll be around the same price.
You're all missing something rather significant. Apple makes very competitive machines, but they don't make all those low or no margin PCs that other manufactures make to boost sales and act as a loss leader for their more expensive models.
And, because of that Apple is doing quite well. Thank you very much. Apple could greatly increase their market share if they started selling low cost PCs. But, if Apple started doing that, they'd be lowering their profit margins. And, that would make the Apple stores unprofitable. Apple would be forced to close the Apple stores and cut back on customer service in general. That would make Apple just another Dell or HP.
Compare an Apple store to a typical PC retailer. There are dozens of Macs all running, and they're all connected to the Internet. iPhones and iPods are everywhere. Sales people don't chase you away if you're just browsing. Heck, browsing is highly encouraged. And, salespeople actually know something about the product. Apple service is highly rated by almost all consumer surveys.
In other words, Apple sells PCs that they can actually make a pretty profit on, and then use that profit to build an image that encourages people to spend the extra dough for an Apple PC. All this makes Apple (get ready for this...) more profitable than any other computer or electronics company - ever. Back in 1998, I bought $1000 of Apple when Steve Jobs took over. I thought I was clever when I sold it after a few months for about $5000. Well, if I was still holding on to that stock today, it would be worth over $1,500,000. Duh! Over the past decade Apple's stock has outperformed Google.
Whether or not you are a Drinker-of-the Koolade or an Apple Basher, you have to look at Apple as a way to be highly profitable in a commodity business. You don't need a MacBook to appreciate this aspect of the business. Anyone who is interested in running a company should pay attention to Apple's playbook. Apple caters to the higher end of the market, but unlike companies like Bose and Mercedes, which also have a similar strategy, Apple's products are not prime luxury goods that only a few can consider buying. A more significant number is that Apple has broken the 10% mark of market share and is the third largest manufacture of PCs. And, that's pretty hard to bash.
I really appreciate the way a MacBook is almost completely silent. That it slips into the lid of a briefcase. That its speakers, microphone, and camera are all accessible but almost invisible. That I can click, right-click, scroll, pan, and more without moving my hand from one place. That it stays out of my way while I use it, instead of calling attention to itself: no blinking lights, no flashy logos in my face, no stupid buttons all over: it is just a screen with easy-to-use input devices.
BONG! Laptop boots up, obnoxious pulsing light stops, obnoxious logo on back starts. Launches WoW, I mean, serious business application. Fan kicks in, louder than my desktop machine. Ambient music starts, hears tinny, amplified crackle due to metallic speaker grill. Big stupid unibutton is next to useless, and meta-clicking is too slow, and trackpad clicking is too accidental. Goes digging through bag, looking for wireless mouse. Wait, no, tosses aside horribly designed click-pushes-the-whole-thing-on-the-desk Apple mouse, grabs the Logitech instead.
Most of the expensive PCs available for sale are Macs, so it figures that most of the expensive PC market share would be held by Macs.
I would like to see a break down of the age ranges for those who are buying the Macs. I have multiple computers in my home of both the PC and Mac varieties. I purchased a $1500 iMac a couple years ago just to experiment with a Mac. My wife became more comfortable using that then the lap top she was using and we wound up buying her her own. Interestingly enough, my daughter still prefers her PC. My mother-in-law (age 75)was using a basic HP lap top but has since switched to an iMac due to being a self-contained unit. Once the other "older" family members played with it, they began purchasing them. It is now a very common scenerio to find all of the 50+ year olds in my family using Macs for email and iChat instead of PCs and phones. This is either due to comfort with the system, the general appearance, or just because they plug in 1 power cord and go with it. Each one of them could easily get by with a cheaper, yet still functional enough, Windows based PC.
If going by personal observations, I will wager a guess that the larger part of the 66% is made up of people who are at mid to upper age ranges.
I started out on a mac Plus and now have a PowerBook G4. I liked them. The CD/DVD drive is not working - to replace it is about $150. The cord on the power supply is frayed - to replace it is over $100 dollars. I cannot boot of an external CD, so cannot reinstall or upgrade. The battery has reached the end of it's life and a replacement costs a gazillion dollars.
There are alternative power supplies and batteries available - just not here.
For all apples vaunted design, the keyboard rubs against the screen when closed and has left a line across it. To replace all the proprietory broken bits would cost more than a new better Lenovo.
Will I buy another mac? I doubt it. I'm a switcher. I use Linux.
Who cares if people in a lower socioeconomic class suddenly start using it? I get things done with a computer, not try to be seen with it.
Most people who buy high end PCs are gamers and most of the hard-core gamers tend to build their own. Those that don't, haven't learn to do so yet.
You can get a hell of a lot more high end PC building it yourself vs buying from any computer maker. Thats why most of the PC makers make low end PCs rather than high end. Most people that want monster machines, build them for less.
The last PC I built just over a year ago for $1,500 would have cost in excess of $3,400 from someone like AlienWare.
Macs are overpriced underspec'd poncey toys for people with too much money. Macs are great value for money - you couldn't get the same spec for the same money elsewhere. OSX is great Windows is shit. Windows is great OSX is shit. 2GB is nowhere near enough memory these days. 2GB might not be enough for Vista but Macs run fine with it. OSX copied Vista. Vista copied OSX. Some boring shit about the finer points of Intel processor technology that's the equivalent of showing everyone how big your willy is except nobody is interested whatever. OSX is shit and Windows is shit; I run Ubuntu blah blah blah. I hate Steve Jobs he eats babies. Bill Gates eats the babies and their mothers. I run Cock-Rot Linux and it's the best in the world and I don't know why everyone uses Ubuntu when you can do everything using Vi and the terminal feature of my obscure mobile phone (which nobody ever rings 'cause I've got no friends). Some other boring comment about processors from someone who wants to show the world that his willy is bigger than the other processor posters (okay, one person read the whole post). Apple hardware is overpriced I hate anyone with an iPhone. Actually BSD is much better than Linux or Windows or OSX, that's why such a large percentage of people have it installed on their home machines. Doh, didn't you know that OSX is Unix and runs BSD. Actually it's not Unix 'cause Apple won't pay for the certification. Yes it is. No it's not. Fanboi something. Don't you know the whole fan-boy thing is old and so juvenille, just like your spelling. I still use a Lisa and it does everything I need it to. I use a Commodore 64 with a hard-drive and it's better than the Lisa. I don't know what I'm talking about and haven't read the article but I'm going to chip in with something irrelevant and wrong anyway. OSX sucks. OSX rocks. Bootcamp. DRM. iTunes. Steve Jobs is on first name terms with Satan. Bill Gates is Satan. I've got an iPhone and I love it. It really pisses me off that Apple has to put i in front of everything. Something about PPC versus Intel. Something completely without evidence comparing Apples and Oranges (pun intentional) proving PPC is and always will be better than x86. Something completely without evidence comparing Apples and Oranges proving x86 is and always will be better than PPC. GPL. Google. Linux. QNX. My Dad's harder than your Dad. My Nan's harder than your nan. Something anti-American. Angry riposte proving anti-American point. Thoughtful welll thought out riposte clearly disproving anti-American point that nobody will ever read because there's so much uninformed chaff above it.
Folks, this is the Samuel Vimes 'Boots' Theory Of Socio-Economic Injustice. From Wikipedia (easier to blockquote than the dead tree):
Early in his career, while he is still a nearly-impoverished Watchman, Vimes reflects that he can only afford ten-dollar boots with thin soles which don't keep out the damp and wear out in a season or two. A pair of good boots, which cost fifty dollars, would last for years and years - which means that over the long run, the man with cheap boots has spent much more money and still has wet feet.
This thought leads to the general realization that one of the reasons rich people remain rich is because they don't actually have to spend as much money as poor people; in many situations, they buy high-quality items (such as clothing, housing, and other necessities) which are made to last. In the long run, they actually use much less of their disposable income.
Chuck Norris: Socialism == a thousand years of darkness.
that is selling a mac.
This past mother's day, I overheard my cousins and my sister talk about laptops and they complained about having problems with a Dell and having to deal with Dell tech support. My cousin then got a Mac and when she had a problem she took it to the Apple store and the problem was solved.
Apple sells a good PC with a feeling of superiority. What is being sold by Dell are cheap, commodity Windows PCs that everyone has. I view it like the difference between wearing something that says the North Face and wearing Lands' End. Both are essentially the same thing, but one item has marketing connotations associated with it, that average Joe chooses not to see past or whats to be associated with.
Crap! I just kissed my karma good-bye.
Dell Vostro
... this is what happens to computers after 5 years http://geektechnique.org/blog/810/itanium-desk
Intel® Coreâ 2 Duo T9300 (2.5GHz/800Mhz FSB/6MB cache)
17.0 in Wide Screen WUXGA LCD Display with TrueLifeâ
4GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 667MHz, 2 DIMM
8X CD/DVD+RW Read and Burn CD and DVD
256MB NVIDIA® GeForceâ 8600M GT
250GB 5400RPM Hard Drive
$1,714
Macbook Pro
2.5GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
MacBook Pro 17-inch Hi-Resolution LED Widescreen Display
4GB 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM - 2x2GB
SuperDrive 8x (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
unknown videocard
250GB Serial ATA Drive @ 5400 rpm
$3,099.00
As you can see the apple is cheaper for the same specs.
Oh and for those of you planning to keep the Mac for a decade
blockquote> i>2nd - I would never pay the apple-premium price to be able to run a wanna-be-OS OSX when I can run OpenBSD or FreeBSD years ahead of OSX . /i> /blockquote>Is there any software on *BSD which, for the user, matches the system-wide integration/interoperability that OS X offers? And I don't just mean the default Apple software, I mean the services which are available to any software.
It's not about the OS, it's about what it enables the user to do with it.
Many computer enthusiasts like to build their own high-end PCs which obviously aren't reflected in the numbers. You can't build your own high-end Apple from scratch. However, you can build your own high-end PC running a Windows or Linux OS.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
I find it hilarious that you talk about twitter as if you were not the same person. Thanks for all the entertaining FUD you post here. I really find your antics amusing much in the same way I find the antics of most any small(minded, in this case) children amusing.
Keep up the fine work, Twitter!
If you start by considering a Dell as your first choice of purchase you are a perfect Apple customer, but it does make you poorly suited to compare PCs against Macs. Dell is neither cheap nor of particularly high quality.
This is what you should be comparing against, not fucking Dell :
http://www.avadirect.com/Notebooks/Core_2_Notebooks
The example of the screwdriver has a different lesson. The primary reason why people round out screws and especially their screwdrivers is because they are using the wrong sized screwdriver. You could use a carbon hardened steel super titanium bit, and if you use a smaller driver than what the screw needs... you're going to make a mess of things.
The lesson is using the right tool for the right job.
I build my own computers. I do so because I wish to select quality parts which I know are going to work well for my needs.
I agree with you that every time I have purchased something throw away cheap, that is exactly what I did with it. Throw it away. Sometimes though you want that, as you may only need it for a single purpose, or you may not have enough information to know what you really want.
And sometimes it's worth buying something cheaper to start with to learn with.
That's what you do with motorcycles. You start with a 250cc, then move to a 650cc when you feel more confident, and then maybe later get something bigger and better if you want it. If you start with a big Harley cruiser... you are not going to know how to handle it, and you're going to hate it. It's the reason why you see a lot of these big cruiser bikes on the used market with low mileage. People buy something expensive, not knowing what they're getting into, and then regret it because they never use it.
Most people buying a new PC for gaming are spending over $1000. The video card(s) can cost that much! ;)
Either most gamers don't buy retail, or Mac is doing better than I realized.
Whenever I've heard the term "high-end" used, its meaning is: expensive, or higher retail cost. It is not a term saying anything good or bad about quality.
FWIW, from wikipedia:
I completely agree with you. Better quality is cheaper over time in my experience as well, be it computers, cars, furniture, houses, tools, etc.
The upturn in Apple market share started long before Vista's loud and thunderous flop. Stock prices and marketing figures prove that. All Vista offers is a scape-goat for MS haters, and a mixed-blessing for Microsoft, in that now XP doesn't seem all that bad.
Linux and Mac OS X couldn't be farther apart in terms of usability. Windows is actually closer to OS X than Linux is in that regard. So why you think people are going to flock to Linux when they're already rejecting an operating system thats easier to use than Linux, Windows for Macs is beyond me. You are living in a pure fantasy land where time has no value and all people care about is that software is free. Free is worthless if you can't make it work for you.
Utterly worthless!
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
While overall I can agree with your results from the examples you have provided - I cannot agree with your premise as a rule. You can buy cheap things (the wal*mart-ization of everyday items) and still get the full value of what your purchase is. Paper? Generic Drugs (prescription and OTC)? Cleaning supplies? I mean I can go on.
.. sure .. but "I" don't think it brings anything to the table "I" don't already have. That is personal. That went into my Cost Benefit Analysis of determining "my" home network. Now you can have a lot of other factors in the picture - and you can love the MAC interface, and want the reliability - great. That goes into your CBA of the situation.
Now when you are talking about any major purchase, you should do your research, determine the ROI you want for the system item, how much time you wish work on the item, how much the cost of repairs are versus the average lifetime of break down (MTBF) on items, etc. If you want to be able to put in a larger hard drive down the road - it will be harder with a MAC than a Wintel. However if you want the thing to just work - and never change anything for the next 10 years, MAC might be the way to go (No patching, etc.)
I prefer to have power over my PCs - regardless of what OS I run on it. I want to switch video cards, memory, DVD Burners, etc. at my own whim once I am ready to upgrade. That is all part of my decisions to use what I have at home. I have multiple systems - but they are almost all windows based (one Ubuntu box). Why? I own the copies, and they work for what I need. I run a WSUS server on my domain controller at home and control everything. Can I add the MAC
Where I am going with this is all about the experience you want with your items. My father for 5 Christmas's in a row gave me tools. I have had a complete set of craftsman tools since I was 10 years old. I still have them to this day 20+ years later. I love them and if they break - I go to sears and get a replacement free of cost. The initial cost was greater (not at the time really - late 70's USA did not have Chinese imported steel tools) but they will last with a lifetime warranty. They just work. However I use them almost weekly. If I did not use them weekly, maybe every other month or so, I could use the "freebe" set I got when I signed up for something one time. Will they work? Yes! Will they last forever? Nope! But they will work for what they are intended for. Where is that freebe set now? In the car. It is there for emergencies in case I need to do something when I am not home or stranded along the side of the road.
You brought up shoes. No shoes have ever lasted for me longer than about 2 years (when constantly worn - like work shoes). I am 6'3" and 300+ with size 16 EEE shoes. I have to spend a pretty penny to find something that fits. However, the soles wear our of my shoes faster than the rest of the shoe. I have no traction left on the shoes long before the leather or anything else gives out. So - no matter how much the cost ($10 from wal*mart or $200 from the local "cobbler") they last about the same amount of time. My shoes $10 shoes that I got from wal*mart I use to cut the grass. They work - they protect my feet and I don't care what they look like. I just need something to wear. My $200 leather shoes I wear for work - I have to dress professionally - that is another decision and have to determine for my CBA.
I guess my point - while I am rambling is that it all comes down to the pros and cons of each situation - and that determines the quality vs. price you are willing to pay and what will give you the greatest return on your money.
Possibly one of 5 total posts on this article and I don't expect anything more. Building your own PC can be fun if you're into that but just try getting a power supply that doesn't have 3 foot long cables so it can reach every area of your computer. There's nothing like cramming the extra wires into an unused space between your hard drive and the bay or the optical drive on the Mac. Yes I know you can get custom built PCs too but you're not getting those with the same fit and finish for $500. Everything is nicely custom fit and you don't have to worry about anything like that. At least as it stands now there is not much reason to worry about malware on the Mac. Set a good password and you're very secure. Until there's actual wide spread exploits in the wild for OS X there's not much reason to ever think about it. Yes there are exploits pretty frequently but they never spread in the wild. Couple that with good common sense of not downloading strange programs from crakz sites I never have to worry about viruses or spyware. People always say just you wait, it's coming soon, but it never actually happens.
Unfortunately you can't always have a lot of faith in the expense/durability correlation!
On average, yeah, expensive stuff can last longer. But durability in the long run is very hard to get accurate information on, and everyone knows about the expensive gadget that breaks after a few weeks and some cheapie stuff that lasts forever.
SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
Sadly, if you're a US citizen (I can't tell), you're the exception, not the norm.
Wal*Mart is the richest corporation in the US, possibly in the world, because they sell lots of substandard goods... and yet, people continue to buy from them.
It's a sad fact, but... the majority of people care more about price than quality.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
You did NOT deserve the Troll flag for simply pointing out the truth.
That Mac users are idiots who will buy whatever Steve shoves down their throat.
The upturn in Apple market share started long before Vista's loud and thunderous flop.
With OSX, I fully agree that Apple was on the uptick before Vista's flop. However, Ubuntu and Apple got a great boost with Vista's flop. I now run 3 Ubuntu machines, 2 dual boot with Windown 2K and Windows 98 SE. The 3rd machine is a new build Digital Audio Workstation without Windows due to the flop. Vista is unreliable for audio multitrack recording and production. Most interfaces don't come with Vista support. Ubuntu Studio comes with the real time kernel for low latency multi-track recording.
My dad picked up an Apple Laptop when his XP laptop died, again because of problems with Vista. I think much of the Apple uptick is due to growth of the OSX platform and applications, and the rest is from Vista's flop.
Refrences, Of course;
http://www.steinberg.net/1045+M52087573ab0.html Support for MAC and Windows XP.
http://www.m-audio.com/news/en_us-1267.html Support for OS X
http://www.m-audio.com/news/en_us-1194.html Wow, some Vista support, but with a bug list. Best stated as improved and improving.. Unlike drivers for other OSes
The truth shall set you free!
Apple holds an astounding 100% of the Macintosh market.
I do like Apple's latest iMac and MacBook Pro designs. Unfortunately, they will not give up the single button touchpad. Why don't they just split their 4" wide button in half to make two buttons, already? I also hate using the Might Mouse.
My problem with Apple is that they exclude consumers by reducing their options. I get why they do it; they make more profit on each system, by not having to deal with too many different configurations and forcing the consumer to pay more for small upgrades.
For example: I want a laptop. I want a 14-15" screen. The MacBook display is not big enough. However, I don't need the video card in the MacBook Pro. I don't want to pay $650 more dollars for the 15.4" screen, and I shouldn't have to.
Why doesn't Apple offer a 15" MacBook with integrated intel graphics? Because they want to force the consumer to pay more for a MacBook Pro that the consumer doesn't need.
This is the problem with the MacBook Pro: whether it really is the best bang for your buck as some claim, the bang is far more than most consumers and business ever need.
Also, the Mac Pro is a joke. It's overpriced server hardware in a PC tower. Most high-end workstation needs can be fulfilled with non-server hardware that costs much less.
25 years in IT and you don't even bother to recommend a Mac to your neighbor? I recommend Macs to people all the time even though I don't own a single one. Why? Because most of the time those people are just doing some basic word processing, web surfing, and email. A Mac is perfect for them. When they ask why I don't have one, I simply say "I'm a gamer. It would cost me more money to get a Mac and then set it up with Windows to play games than it would for me to just build my machine and install Windows on it".
The problem isn't the cheap Dells or HPs of the world. The problem is that people expect their computers to think for them. They'll install 3 different toolbars in IE and then wonder why it gets so slow (disabling the toolbars makes it faster). They'll have their desktop filled with icons and then wonder why it takes so long to boot up (putting all the icons into a single folder makes it boot up faster).
I have 3 PCs at home (all custom built) and have never had a problem with any of them. I even have a Dell Laptop that's nearly 9 years old and it still runs fine. Hell, I'm sure the Toshiba laptop that's 12 years old probably works, I just haven't bothered to turn it on (runs Win95, so not exactly stable).
The difference between us and your neighbors isn't just that they're buying cheap Dells, it's that they don't really know how to treat their computers. Just like a car, computers require some maintenance. They have to be updated at the very least(drivers, security, etc). Most people have this idea that they can buy a computer and never have to think about it again once they start using it and that's simply not the case. When you or I find a driver problem, we upgrade the driver and the problem is usually fixed. When they find a driver problem suddenly their system is "crashing" or "doing all kinds of weird things". Nevermind that it could simply be dust in the fans that's making it get to hot (a common problem that affects all computers), it's simply "broken" to them.
You don't need to buy a Mercedes in order to get a quality car either. My first car was a 1977 Honda Accord. We had it for 15 years. That car still ran great. We only got rid of it because the roof was starting to rust through from where I installed a CB antenna (I didn't seal it properly). I'm driving a 1991 Honda right now and my wife drives a 2000 Honda. Both cars run fine. The AC is a little weak on the 1991, but I think it just needs to be charged up (can't remember what they fill it with).
Quality PC parts and tools are one thing. Luxury cars (Mercedes definitely falls into the luxury category) vs consumer level cars are entirely different. Both will last the buyer just as long as long as they take care of it.
I think your calculator malfunctioned! Do many Apple products come at a slight premium? Probably. Does it stop me from buying a damn MacBook Air? Nope.
I have never had a Mac, or any of its associated hardware, die on me, and my son gets the hand me downs pretty rapidly. He just got the year old MacBook. And, somebody else will get that when he gets this... And, on they go for five or six years, until they're in the hands of 5 year olds.
The difference is the software! But, the hardware is pretty damn nice at times!
You started out so well... summing up your thoughtful post this way:
All this is a very long way of saying that, amortized over time, buying quality is often cheaper (and almost always more pleasurable) than buying the first thing you can afford.Then you follow it up with this diatribe:
Some people can get by just fine with the cheapest piece of crap Dell or Walmart sells. It looks like crap, it's loaded with useless crap, it's made with the cheapest parts that can be had, it's "settling" for the lowest common denominator.Well, see, that's just so dismissive of everyone else's experience that it really undermines your statement. As has happened over and over again in this thread, and many others -- you went to the opposite extreme, and now "money spent" equals "quality". In my experience, this is far too simplistic a tenet to follow blindly.
I have worked with Dell systems for years, and in my experience they have been on the whole well-built and of very high quality. Yes, this is a generalization, but not overly so based upon the qualitative statistics I've collected.
Case in point on two systems I just worked with; a Dell Dimension 4550 (2.4GHz) and an Apple G4 Powermac (733MHz Digital Audio). They were really quite similar, although to be fair the Powermac was a couple of years older than the Dell. Both had cases that opened easily, were easy to service, and were built with quality parts. The Powermac had MacOS 9 on it and I bumped it up to Panther since I had a fresh legal copy of that; the Dimension was happily running an original copy of XP. I sold the Powermac to a very happy buyer, and put the Dell into service as a replacement for my Dad's aging PC (built by me years ago, but suffered from that bulging capacitor problem). Both perfectly good, usable machines.
Some would say the greater age of the Powermac proves something, but I don't think it does; it was just the Apple box I had worked on most recently. I could have substituted the Precision 220 workstation for the Dimension, and it would have been the same. It's a dual P3 933MHz, was running Win2K until I put XP on it, and it runs just fine, thank you very much. Also easy to open and service, built with similar quality parts as in the Powermac.
Moving up to the present, the Dell systems you can get for around $450 including a decent LCD monitor are not crap. They may not be the class of machine you'd choose to use, but they will run for years and years if you choose not to upgrade -- you or anyone else saying differently not withstanding. Intel chipsets, Intel processors, and similar name-brand hard drives, memory, etc. in both machines. The only difference here is that you get a lower spec machine in that inexpensive Dell, and Apple chooses not to offer that class of machine. That's more a reflection of Apple making a choice not to go for the volume market, but it has little to nothing to do with the build quality of the inexpensive Dell system.
So you're happy with your G5 system; I bet I would have been happy with it too. Personally, I really like my G4 Mini, and my Dell Inspiron E1505 laptop, and my home-built gaming rig. All fine machines that get the job done and are not in actual need of upgrade or replacement, just as yours isn't. But you're planning to replace it just the same, aren't you? I'm not going to claim your machine is crap because of that. If you can't see that's what you were doing in your post, well, I'm here to point out that in essence, you were.
You don't use science to show that you're right, you use science to become right.
While overall I can agree with your results from the examples you have provided - I cannot agree with your premise as a rule. You can buy cheap things (the wal*mart-ization of everyday items) and still get the full value of what your purchase is. Paper? Generic Drugs (prescription and OTC)? Cleaning supplies? I mean I can go on.
Of course, you are right. I never intended to imply that the most expensive things were always the best. It always depends, and it's always a trade-off. Sometimes cheap things have their place. Case-in-point, I recently picked up a Flip Ultra (TM) video camera. It's $130.00. It's a toy. But for it's size, simplicity, low-light capabilities and amazing-for-the-price video quality you can't beat the value. Plus, because it's so small and cheap I can afford to have it with me wherever I go. I can toss it into my day-pack for hiking and boating without worrying overmuch about it getting lost, wet or damaged. I can duct-tape it to the wing of my plane or the bumper of my car without a second thought. I'd never consider doing that with my XL1 or even my GL2. They are just too expensive.
Like you said, you have to do your research and make an informed decision about what will be best for you. Unfortunately, I think people put too much emphasis on price alone. And it hurts them in the long run. I once saw a TV show about the rich and famous that really struck a chord. They were walking though a mansion and stopped by a painting in the wall that cost, like $3 million. I thought "What an extreme waste of money for a painting!". Apparently the TV-guy did too and commented about it. The owner looked at him and said "If I were to sell it today, I'd get over $5 million. I just made $2 million dollars. I didn't *buy* the painting, I invested in it". I looked around at my paintings... Hmmm...
Since then I've always tried to keep resale value in the back of my mind as part of the overall cost of an item. When my wife needed a new car we talked about that. We currently target a vehicle for 10-15 years of driving. That means that, if we were to finance the whole thing (we don't) we could have it paid off in 5 or 6 years and still have that much time left over to save the remaining payments to an interest-earning account where it can build up for our next car without impacting our budget. My wife wanted a sporty car and chose a 2002, collector's edition (numbered) Mini Cooper. The idea is that, over time, with care, it will be a desirable classic that will increase in value with age (after a certain point). Now, it's hard to tell what's going to be a desirable classic, but I'm betting the Mini Cooper will be. I bought a 1970 Challenger a while back and have been slowly restoring it over the years. It's a blast to drive, but more importantly, it is rocketing up in value. It's more than doubled in the last 5 years, even if I hadn't done anything to it.
The same concept can be carried over to the PC world. I'd stack my Mac Tower at work up against any Dell (at any price) for ease of parts-replacement. No screws to mess with. One lever lifted and the whole side of the computer comes off and you can access any part with ease. There are no cables and crap to deal with. The RAM sits on daughter-cards that slide right out so you can work on it conveniently on your desk. To add or replace a drive, slide the old one out and the new one in. That's it. Now, I know that there are PC cases out there that have had just as much careful thought put into them - but they aren't the cheap ones.
When I got offered a promotion to my new position, it was in a PC-only department. I convinced them to buy me a high-end Mac instead of a Dell. They didn't want to. It wasn't until I provided quotes for a similarly-decked out Dell tower that they saw that the price was comparable. I pushed, they relented. I ran OS X and Windows XP (and a couple flavors of Linux in MVWare) on it. Recently we were told that we'd be providing support to custom
"terrorism" and "pedophilia" are the root passwords to the Constitution
Mac OS X is UNIX. Read and learn.
At first sight (looking at manpages), OS X may appear as a UNIX-like system. But
under the hood, things look somewhat different. For example, the fchdir call:
1/ Create an empty directory.
2/ Obtain a file descriptor with open(2) on that directory.
3/ Remove the directory with rmdir.
4/ Change to that directory with fchdir(2), using the file descriptor obtained in step 2. On a real UNIX system, this must work.
On NFS mounts it works as expected (according to the OS X fchdir manpage),
on HFS+ filesystems it fails to do so, probably due to lack of namespace/inode separation.
This somewhat abstract problem has implications on application reliability and security. This must
be taken into account by using different programming techniques. Hence, it is necessary to
make some extra steps on OS X compared to UNIX/*BSD/Linux.
If you have a problem with me, mark me as foe and ignore me. Of course if you wanted to do the same to twitter, you'd be screwed, since he just keeps creating new accounts.
you repeat just about the entire post over and over, it seems in response to any post by twitter.
That's funny, it seems that's exactly what he does to his own posts. At least I take responsibility for what I say without simply switching to another personality when things don't work out.
The twitter monologues. Click on my homepage and be amazed.
The computers aren't necessarily better if they cost more. If your definition of "high-end" is that the computer runs only your own personalized Linux OS then you get 100% market share.
I agree with you whole heartedly. I was not saying anything about the value of a MAC - just that it was something that has to be determine with each transaction. My parents for example. I would love to convince them to get a MAC. They have two identical PCs for each of their houses. They don't do much work outside of free cell (god do they play that a freaking lot) and ms office apps and internet browsing, maybe a few CD/DVD creations. Well, they have all the software as my father is a college professor - and gets cheap MS software (xp and office for $10 a CD) and he can get the PCs from fry's for $150. That is all he needs. I hate being his personal tech support - but - for what he needs - he does not want to swallow the pill for the MAC tax. Again - he does not need the horsepower - he just wants something the runs. If he did more work - I might be able to convince them - but since their major app is free cell - any old boat anchor will work (or new boat anchor as the deal maybe). All part of the analysis :)
As for the shoes. My place of work fires people for not dressing "appropriately" which is to mean business attire (shirts and slacks - no ties thank god). We have buy for $5 on fridays the opportunity to go "business casual" which is donated to make a wish. We have to wear penny loafers made of leather - and shined. Wish I could get away with sneakers or Birkenstocks .. but hey - gotta do what pays the bills :) Yes - since 16's are pretty big - have not walked on water unless was being pulled by a boat. Try the size 18 ring I have on my finger. I have broken my fingers several times from football ;) Most of my friends can put their wedding rings right through the center :)
Oh well having the world made big people - that is a different story ;)
A fool and his money...
Okay, we get it. Apple is a hardware company, and always has been. And Apple has never wanted to be in the low-end hardware business - why, if they're able to sell all the high-end stuff they can make.
They've also never wanted to license OS/X to clone makers, presumably because they fear that at least some of those clones would cut into Apple's high-margin hardware business.
Then along comes Microsoft, with their new XP for cheap hardware only program. Personally, I think that should be illegal. Either you sell XP or you don't, and the price (especially in the light of their past monopoly abuses) should be the same, regardless of who you sell it to. But, assuming they'll get away with it, what's to stop Apple from licensing OS/X to low-end clone makers only.
No competition for the high-margin stuff, except maybe some bargain hunters, who by definition would be buying it for Apple's software, which you say isn't their selling point. And surely, that could be more than made up for in software revenues. Plus the added OS/X user base should boost sales of their high-end stuff too.
A win-win-win situation, no?
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
Yes, we know that. Thanks to you, every single Slashdot user has heard at least fourteen times in the last day and a half that Twitter has more than one account and you don't like it. We know. We all know. Now would you please shut the fuck up about it?
Hey, I finally got my first freak! Took you long enough!
First, the functionality of a Thinkpad is significantly less because it doesn't run OS X and thus misses out on all the benefits thereof. Second, according to Consumer Reports, Lenovo laptops, including the Thinkpad score worse for reliability than Apple's offerings, by a fairly significant margin. I believe it was about half again as likely to suffer hardware failure within the first year.
Hmmm, the rest of your comment seems to be a troll. I suppose I'll respond to the first part anyway.
That's why companies like Consumer Reports exist. They do extensive testing of products and can tell you what quality you can expect from a given vendor. You'll note Apple has been #1 for reliability in their reports for many years now.
But this is under assumption of perfect information, which is never satisfied in the real world. Therefore, markets never work very well in the real world.I'd say truly free markets can work quite well based upon reasonable information provided false advertising laws are enforced and people actually bother to look into their major purchases. The former is only partly true these days and I cant speak to the latter... not that it matters since we don't have a free capitalist market because of certain monopoly abuses that have been ignored by the authorities.
Seriously, foe me and stop complaining. What exactly is the Slashdot regulation that allows you to bitch about what I do but punishes people for even mentioning that some fucktard is running around replying to himself with ten different accounts?
The twitter monologues. Click on my homepage and be amazed.
Consumer Reports is my primary source of reliability statistics on computers, but most of the other independent reviewing companies have agreed with them. Dell hardware has been well below average for many years with regard to reliability. The surprise is that in 2007, they've actually turned that around for the majority of their laptops. Those same Consumer Reports studies have placed Apple hardware as #1 for reliability for many years running and it still handily beats Dell, even for laptops.
Moving up to the present, the Dell systems you can get for around $450 including a decent LCD monitor are not crap.According to independently gathered statistics, well yeah they sort of are. A Dell desktop in general is about four times as likely to fail within the first year as an Apple desktop. As for personal experience with large numbers of Dell systems, was involved in the purchasing of hundreds of cheap Dell towers for use in a huge network testing facility. We had a nearly 10% failure rate in the first year, which was fine because we expected it based upon their numbers and the fact that we'd be running them 24/7 and had extra machines on standby to swap in. What we didn't expect was the driver hell we went through. You see, the test systems we bought had certain hardware in them, but when we received large orders of that same model we found huge variation as to what was actually inside them. Most troubling, they had three different video cards only one of which had drivers for all the OS's we were planning to run on them. When we complained, Dell told us on the lower end they just buy from whoever wins that bid (regardless of quality or consistency). That's a great way to get a low price, but it is hard to argue it is a path to quality.
In short, anecdotes are not really reflective of the market and even small scale studies can fail to reflect real trends. There are professional companies out there evaluating systems. That's all they do. They don't take advertising money. They don't take free systems for testing. They go in and buy systems anonymously, just like real people, the they test them and publish the results. Anyone looking to be accurately informed, especially anyone making large purchasing decisions would probably benefit greatly from buying a subscription.
The US Dollar in one year lost about 30% of its value respect to euro itself (but also with respect to other world currencies, like canadian dollar and UK pound.
http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=EURUSD=X#symbol=EURUSD=X;range=1y
So now the $1000+ machines group include less machines than before (because pcs are produced outside US and prices rised a little here in US).
So the comparison should also be tested in Europe and Asia to see if the growths match or is just that apple is dominating (as already known) the high-end market
Yes, lots of people are buying >$1,000 PCs, but they're not doing it in the traditional retail channel, which is all NPD measures.
You are like ugly people in a bar. Sure they have a right to be somewhere, but they scare away the hotties.
Given that there aren't that many Slashdots around to share and read intelligent posts, your constant prattling about sockpuppets is not just bothersome, but destructive to any hopes of maintaing any intelligent discussion.
If nothing else, you're just troll feeding. By throwing a monumental fit every time somebody posts a crack about Windows or "M$," you are actually creating sympathy for the opposite of your advocacy opinion. Maybe just let it slide and the fairly intelligent people who read them will figure that shit out for themselves.
Do you really think you need to sculpt public opinion for those who can't recognize obvious reality for themselves? Is that strategy also working for the extreme right?
http://www.anandtech.com/mac/showdoc.aspx?i=3201 Custome Intel CPUs.
Once you start despising the jerks, you become one.
This is quite funny, because you've been guilty of the exact same thing yourself, haven't you? The creation of multiple Digg accounts to game their system, and then when you got caught you tried to get Apple to create a new Digg that you could control to your heart's content? I believe someone also found some Slashdot accounts that you created, too? If that's not "sculpting public opinion" then I don't know what is. You're just a massive hypocrite.
I'm also interested in how you think one person replying to himself with the same idea 8 times over is 'intelligent conversation'. Twitter does far more to disrupt discussion than even you have, and that's saying something.
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
So no, I don't think people who have the temerity of pointing out that twitter is shilling his own posts with nine different accounts a particular drop in the signal to noise ratio. I mean, what could be worse that those tepid "I agree with you, impressive stranger" shill replies to his own posts?
Seems there are still lots and lots of people who can't recognize obvious reality by themselves. How else could we explain your popularity?
How's the whole Digg thing working out for you, by the way?
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
Actually no I didn't set up multiple Digg accounts. I just put Digg tags on my articles and asked readers to digg my articles, which resulted in lots of people new to Digg hitting my articles and driving them to the front page.
I was then censored by Digg because they got complaints from Windows Enthusiasts worried that the world would be exposed to some criticism of Microsoft. One person (you?) then posted up a shit storm of anonymous blog trolling about how I was "gaming Digg" with 50 different accounts because there were that many people who primarily just hit my articles, and were new to Digg.
I had over a thousand readers write Digg and CC: me to ask that they not censor my content (and delete Digg postings that had lots of comments on them), but Digg said they couldn't handle getting complaints from the Windows Enthusiasts, so they waited until the bullshit blew over and then said I could use my account again.
I have no respect for Digg.
I also have higher readership now than I had with articles getting lots of Diggs, and get less gibberish hate mail from morons who can't craft a sensible criticism.
I don't have the time or inclination to create multiple accounts (I can't handle remembering more than one password), so your over the top blustering about "massive hypocrisy" is a bit too much. You shouldn't be so simple as to equate the anonymous accusations of nobodies with "being guilty."
As for slashdot, I clearly wasn't saying that twitter "M$" posts are intelligent conversation. Nobody is confused by twitter self conversations, but when 2-3 comment cops start blowing out regular diatribes about sockpuppets then yes, it becomes a far larger problem and one of the reasons smart people don't comment on threads that start to sound more like Digg comments.
Oh, and fuck you for working so hard to seed false information. Expressing one's opinion is not the same as trying to restrict others from being heard out of fear they are right. You are core to what sucks about the world.
I'm sure you are very clever in your own mind.
Anyone with an IQ over 90 should recognize that you've only beaten up a strawman and delivered vacuous accusations that are absurd on their face.
My "pay per click blog"? You mean a website with ads? How unique is that dipshit?
I have no problem ignoring twitter blah blah fake conversations, but reading a constant conspiracy theory about how he's overturning society through his sock puppets is too fucking much to dig through.
Shoving your tongue up the asshole of Digg doesn't make you look any smarter either. FYI, while RDM has been effectively banned from getting more than 50 Diggs by a handful of Windows Enthusiasts (but not by Digg itself), I still write plenty of the articles that sit on the front page of Digg, just not under a name that Diggtards can start crying about.
Your efforts at censorship don't matter.
I agree with you that we shouldn't buy low quality stuff. Why should we? In 2008 the things we use everyday should be refined to the max. All thought out. Buying low quality stuff and throwing it away makes for a throwaway-culture that I don't like at all.
But the problem is that often times neither brands nor price guarentee you quality.
I never thought of Macs to be very good quality products. I thought the people paid the price for the design. All the Apple input devices I have ever had to work with (mice and keyboards) had horrible ergonomics just to look a little better. There were horrible round little things they called mice with just one button. And just this month I tried to troubleshoot an eMac and it turned out it must be a hardware problem (whiped drive, repartitioned, reformated, still crashes). But I couldn't get the thing open. So I gave up. I never thought of Macs as quality computers. More like expensive toys.
The title of this post is sensationalistic, but it should be obvious to even the biggest luddite that the biggest problem that Dell, Lenovo, HP, sony and even Asus have is Microsoft.
That sounds like the start of another classic Microsoft bashing session, but it's not. The problem that all these companies have is not poor quality hardware, or lack of features, or even ugly hardware (although anyone who has ever opened a Mac tower must realise the extreme amount of thought and work that went into designing the case and the insides). Rather the problem is that all of those companies are dependent on a company that has its own agenda and treats all of its partners as if to only tolerate them, not as if they were valuable in any real way to Microsoft.
If one of the big hardware makers had the wisdom and the courage to buy up a significant stake in a popular Linux distribution, be it Ubuntu or Suse/Novell, they would be, in the long term in a very favourable position.
Firstly, consumers don't really care about the OS. They like OSX because Apple pays such an enormous amount of attention right down to the single pixel corners of windows, but the basically just want to surf, chat, work, email, play games etc.
Apple has been able to leverage its control of both the hardware and the software to deliver a good user experience, and crucually, a stable one with all the tools (and more) that a average consumer needs to use their computer.
If, say Sony, which puts a lot of effort into the design of their machines, were to say, buy Suse, or simply start up their own Kubuntu based distribution (the KDE 4.1 desktop is nothing short of amazing), and most importantly build up a developer team to start making beautiful but simple to use applications, they would
a) have the control over what went into the distro nd what not, b) an enormous amount of developer talent worldwide to base their efforts on
c) crucially, control of their own destiny.
If Sony were then to preload enough, simple and good apps into the computers, and keep it open enough to encourage others to develop for it,they could very well take Apple on in their own space. And it would grow.
The sad thing is that none of these companies is able to find the courage or has the vision to build up a long term effort like that,that might very well mean losses over the short term, and possibly even a break with Microsoft.
None of them will do that. Hell, even Microsoft could do it, if they started their own computer brand. they would lose all their hardware partners within a year, but their hardware in the form of Keyboards, mice and Xbox has not been too bad.
Ok, back to my beer, now.
Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics. This is a perfect example. You're led to believe by the headline that Apple is doing so well. Next we have folks discussing the obvious problem with PCs and how could they be sinking so low. Then we have a riff on the dollar. But there's still that $1,000 caveat. The fact is that no one NEEDS to spend over $1000 for a perfectly capable PC, present un-representative of the population as a whole company excepted. The fact is that Apple's share has almost always been way less than 10%. The Mac's share was higher in 1983 than it is today. Take a look: http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/total-share.ars/10
"Mac maker Apple Inc. enjoyed strong retail sales during the first calendar quarter of 2008, boosting its share of the US personal computer market above 6 percent, according to a report released Wednesday by market research firm Gartner.....In total, the Cupertino-based company is said to have shipped over 1.01 million systems nationally, representing 32.5 percent growth and a 6.6 percent share of the US PC market, up from 762,000 systems and 5.2 percent share during the same three-month period last year." AppleInsider
Apple's position may have improved relative to a more recent quarter, but that's a narrow view. If you take an historical view, Apple's computer sales have slid from their high of just over 10% which happened in 1993-1995 or so. It's been significantly less ever since. Apple has always been high-priced, which is why they lost the market to PCs in the first place. They thought their target was IBM when it was actually the lower priced clones that blew them out of the water--permanently.
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
Everyone and their brother is putting out a "custom" Linux nowadays (I'm running gOS m'self), why doesn't Dell? Moreso, why doesn't Dell make a PROPRIETARY shell for Linux? It can come with Gnome, KDE, and Enlightenment pre-installed as well, but DellShell will be the default desktop. Get out from under Microsoft's thumb and spend that money on R&D! Give Apple a run for their money! (Of course, if they put out a Darwin/BSD operating system, they can thumb their nose at Microsoft, Linux, and the Mac all at once!)
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
This is really not about twitter's opinion of Microsoft, but since you brought it up, you actually have the credibility of a door nail as far as anything related to them goes. More specifically you have no credibility on anything that's not related to your bizarre fetish of Apple Corp. I forget if it's a fetish or a sponsored crusade, so you'll have to forgive me here.
So why don't you foe me, and get on with your life. I'd recommend foe'ing twitter as well, but who knows how many accounts he has by now, so you will read all those wonderful things whether you like it or not, I guess.
Have fun.
The twitter monologues. Click on my homepage and be amazed.
Clearly you care enough to prattle on about it.
The leadership of US President Bill Clinton sent a Tomahawk missile into the lands formerly known as Yugoslavia. Said Tomahawk missile cruised into and utterly destroyed the Yugo factory. Apart from the more relevant ethnic cleansing going on there, it was the single most globally-significant event to the Balkan wars, although the irony of using Olympic facilities for executions made for some eternal news photos (wall with Olympic rings, and below, bullet pock marks at the height of someone's head, when kneeling). I also think that the destruction of the Yugo factory was a defining legacy of the Clinton administration.
You twist facts, manipulate data, have made a mission out of destroying a company and promoting another for some purpose that nobody can grasp, and ooze self-righteous indignation when you yourself are the offender.
Stop censoring comments on roughly drafted - then you'll be shown up to be the uninformed prick you really are. I should let you go now. Steve Jobs is waiting for you to give him his daily blowjob.
Would you pay $2,792 for a macbook air (the cheaper model that costs $1,799 in the US). In Sweden Apple hardware is marked up incredibly.
You'll get no argument from me that there are many fewer part options that go into a mac than all possible PCs. I'm sure there's a lot more _options_ available for a Ford truck than for a racecar - because the market is huge and the diversity of tasks is broader.
But if you think you just can't change things under the hood of a mac you're, at best, really out of date. At worst you're taking some snippets of truth and trolling with them. I'm not saying YOU should buy a Mac, but I think intentionally or not you're spreading disinformation. (I'm assuming for this discussion your idea of hardware hacking isn't soldering new components onto your motherboard.)
Certainly, there are only a few motherboards (those from Apple) that OS X is guaranteed to work with, and therefore only the few CPUs that go in them. Of course, while Apple has made it infringement to install a legit copy of OS X on them, so you can't SELL clones, they have clearly not been squashing - and have sometimes been helping in very general ways - the people trying to get it to run on other motherboards. But they're selling a total package not just software and you aren't their target market.
This is somewhat semantic, but in my opinion you can't replace the motherboard in a computer, because that's the part that, more than anything else defines it as being THAT computer, and it's the part that defines the compatibility of most everything else.
But you can put your Apple MB in any case you want. It uses industry standard RAM, standard (currently SATA) HDs, optical drives, PCI, etc. If there's a peripheral you can't use, it's almost always because there's no driver provided by the hardware vendor for OS X, never because Apple wouldn't allow it. (The in between case is where the peripheral has incompatible firmware that would have to be updated.) While it wasn't true a long time ago, this compatibility has been true since Apple went PCI a decade ago. (It's easier to port arbitrary software now that it's an Intel chip, which is more recent, and more likely to have a driver - but the hardware went industry standard much earlier.)
I'm not trying to trivialize a lack of vendor-drivers. That's an issue that limits your flexibility, but it's not the same as Apple lockout.
So in other words, drivers aside, any Mac you buy is just as customizable as any normal motherboard you'd buy for a PC.
There are other limitations I'm certainly willing to freely admit:
- I'm mostly talking about the Mac Pro above. Apple laptops are just as configurable as other typical laptops, in my experience, but that isn't much. The iMac series is a laptop sans battery. The Mini is a little better... But if you really want to configure it, buy a Mac Pro! (And fill it with the supported 32 GB of RAM)
- Since Apple is only a subset of the PC market, you certainly can usually buy a PC motherboard that's more bleeding-edge than the most bleeding edge Apple one that exists - because at any point only a handful of Apple ones exist, and all of them target bigger marketshares than the absolute bleeding edge.
- For similar reasons, you can certainly buy SOME PC motherboard that has way more configuration than any particular Mac... One that supports multiple kinds of RAM in the same board, for instance. But that's not exactly your typical PC, either.
Looking for freelance Actionscript (Flash/Flex) or ColdFusion work and/or freelance developers. Email me, put Slashdot
Oh nothing, except that yours is driven primarily by half-truths, badly researched tripe and fabrications. I suppose that's no different than Slashdot, so it's not like you invented a new business model or anything.
My man, I don't even read Digg. I just got wind of your little drama with them through another channel a while ago. I love that you blame everything on "Windows Enthusiasts" though, as if people just being sick and tired of your crap and your attempts to game their system wasn't enough.
Are you sure you're not a twitter sockpuppet as well? You seem to have that sad "if you disagree with me you must hate me" attitude as well.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
read it- it's only counting LAPTOPS SOLD IN BRICK AND MORTAR STORES-- as in physical presence purchase.
If I'm spending a grand, (and I've spent 4,753 once recently) on a laptop, I'm not going into a store.
how many laptops even available in B&M stores are over 1k?
it's just crap statistics.....
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
this is what he does in his spare time, and just about every other comment on this article was posted by him under six or seven different accounts
President Chad says that so called "high end PCs" are either the expensive but suuper powerful ones that actually work, and don't break, and have more than one mouse button, and no pesky lower case "i" at the beginning.