What you're talking about is being a Computer Enthusiast. In that case, you would want to learn everything there is to know about computers, and then assemble your own from spare parts you found in dumpsters.
However, if you are an artist, or a musician, or a lawyer, or a doctor, you have already put in your time learning and perfecting your own field of endeavor. Now, can you be a better lawyer if you also use a computer? Yes, if the computer doesn't demand that you take Computer Science part-time at night. You just want to have a device that you can apply to your common lawyerly tasks and in doing so get them done faster, cheaper, easier, better, or all of the above.
I use a computer to make music and art. I know about music and art. I know a lot of technical stuff, but it is technical stuff about music and art. I know how a graphics tablet works and how to use it; I know how to record 24 tracks of 24 bit audio on a computer and how to mix it and master it. I don't want to know about kilobytes and shared libraries and other trivia. It's really important if you are a computer scientist or programmer, but it's more important to me not to know, so that while I'm doing my work (art and music), I'm not having to admin my computer, or program it, or think in technical terms.
What you're saying is like saying "nobody should be able to listen to music until they've learned an instrument". This used to be the attitude in music, but I think it is better to leave the learning to the people who want to do it, and respect the fact that just listening is exactly the right amount of music for most people. Just using the computer as an additonal tool in their work is enough computer science for most people, too. Really, it's a drag to suggest that someone who sits down in Photoshop thinking about airbrushes and alpha masks would be better off if they were thinking about what the CPU happens to be doing at exactly that time.
The "5 down 95 to go" manifesto also states that if they can convince the 95 to try a Mac, then they feel they will gain 5 of them as new users, and double their marketshare. So, the 95 to go is just to TRY a Mac. They feel they have a better product that will make sense to at least 5/95 of non-Mac users (note that I am inventing new kinds of fractions to get my point across).
If you want a wireless keyboard and mouse, Logitech makes them and they work on the Mac just fine.
Anyway, the mouse plugs into the keyboard, and then there is a single cable going from the keyboard to the base of the display. The cables are translucent. Hardly an eyesore.
Movie and TV people don't just use Macs in sets because they look better (which they do). In the movie and TV industries, as well as in music and audio and graphics, the Mac is just a plain, ho-hum computer that everybody uses. You expect a TV person to have a PowerBook and Final Cut Pro. You expect a musician to have a PowerMac with Pro Tools or similar in it. "PowerBook" is synonymous with "notebook" in these industries. Often, the PowerBook you see in a shot is the director's, or someone else on set.
Maybe you work in IT, or you're a programmer, or you develop Windows software or whatever, so you think of Windows as the standard and everything else as weird. In many industries, the opposite is true.
> Now I agree that it would be nice if a
> computer were as uncomplicated and
> reliable as a toaster, but it's simply not
> going to happen in the near future and
> its unfair to take Apple to task for not
> solving the problem with Microsoft has
> far more resources.
MS has more resources, but they are also fighting a war on many fronts. They're taking on Sun, they're taking on Oracle, etc. while Apple has been quietly taking on Windows. Apple is also much, much smarter. MS coders work assembly line fashion and then in the end they have to bolt on 20 features that suck or are designed to screw the user over in some fashion or extract more cash. At Apple, it's plain that they are aimed at technical excellence that can be accessed by anyone because it is that good, it's that complete.
For many users, the new iMac really will be as reliable as a toaster. I have a non-technical friend who uses a Mac OS X PowerBook (without Classic installed, so it is Mac OS X native only), and MS Office X and the "iApps" that come with every Mac. She literally opens her PowerBook every day, it wakes up instantly, she does her email, Web, works in Word, Excel, or PowerPoint, runs iTunes to listen to music, and she plugs in her digital camera regularly and Image Capture (and now iPhoto) just pulls the pictures off for her. She also scans stuff using an Agfa scanner and Mac OS X native ScanWise, and puts songs on her MP3 player, and syncs her Palm machine to back it up. When she's done for the day, she closes the PowerBook. The next work day, she is back again, opens the PowerBook up, and gets to work. She's been doing this for months now, (although before Office X came out, she used Office 2001 running in Classic). The only time the computer reboots is when Software Update asks her to (because it has updated some core system component). I stay hands-off because she doesn't have any problems at all and is really, really happy with her computer. For her, it is totally as reliable as a toaster. It's never crashed, and she's never had to reboot unexpectedly or because there was some mysterious problem.
The double-buffered windows even make Mac OS X feel solid, especially on a flat panel. It's really a joy for a non-technical user to use something so reliable and friendly. People have said that the only real flaw in the classic Mac UI was that the system could potentially crash at any time. Once you use Mac OS X for a while, you realize why UNIX users are so gung-ho on stability. Once you've experience that robustness, you don't want to go back to trapese without a net.
> When you sit down in front of a Mac for the
> first time after using PCs your whole life,
> it's not like sliding in behind the wheel of
> a new BWM
Yes, it is like that, and it gets better all the time as you discover the number of things that are just plain better. Apple uses smaller, low-power CPU's (7-14 watts) so that they can make smaller, low-power computers and run them on batteries for 5-6 hours, or cool them very quietly in the case of the iMac. Intel and AMD sell based solely on MHz, so they make big honking power-hungry CPU's (50-70 watts) that run at ridiculous clock speeds. Although the P4 has its big clock speed, it has 20 pipelines compared to the G4's 7-10, and the G4 also has its Altivec component, which does supercomputer-style vector processing that is great for the kinds of heavy stuff many people are doing with encoding and encryption and such. So, when you balance out the total system's performance, taking into account also how much better performance Mac OS X offers over Windows, you end up with machines that are fast enough to do today's computing tasks. Go figure, since that's what they were designed for.
There are plenty of people with big beige box P4's with multiple noisy fans who are going to go into the Apple Store over the next year or so and see Mac OS X running tirelessly and almost silently on the new iMac and they're going to run some apps and be blown away by the performance and realize how fucking ripped off they've been by Wintel for so long.
> The last time I used a Mac (OS 9, I think)
> it wasn't any easier to use or more reliable
> than Windows.
Whether they were or not back then, Macs are certainly easier and more reliable now than anything that's come before. Mac OS X Macs basically don't crash, and the machines are designed to be left on all the time, just going into deep sleep and instantly waking up when you want to use them. People reboot only after low-level OS updates. The interface is very approachable, and with a plain user account, you can tell a newbie to go ahead and explore because they can't wreck anything. The UI doesn't pop things up and bug you, and there is a good help system and consitency between the apps in menu placement and key shortcuts, so you only have to learn things once. The single menubar also really, really helps newbies, and power users learn how fast it can be pretty quickly too.
Just realized that many people are readily comparing the new iMac to high-end 1.6GHz Athlons and 2GHz P4's. The iMac is the low-end desktop in Apple's line. It's not the fastest Mac by a stretch, and there are new PowerMac's due pretty soon.
What the hell are you talking about with the floppy drives? Nobody misses floppy drives. These days on a Mac, you can drag and drop stuff onto a CD-R or CD-RW or DVD-R as easily as you can drop them onto a floppy, only the CD's have 650MB capacity and the DVD's have 4.5GB. Macs also come with a free iTools account that includes a 20MB network disk that you can add storage to for a low cost. Also, you can mount plain disk image files as if they were drives on the Mac, so if you really want to use incredibly small disks, you can easily make and use floppy disk images that you can send by email or drop on VirtualPC's floppy button and they are opened by the virtual PC. You can also plug in any FireWire hard disk and it just works, without any drivers to install, and you can even boot from it.
Apple's iPod MP3 player is also a portable FireWire hard disk that is powered by the single connection to the computer. It holds as much data as over 3500 floppies, and it's not as wide as a floppy disk. There are also USB keychains that hold 32MB or more. My wife's digital camera has a 128MB CompactFlash in it. You can boot a Mac from any attached storage, including a CD or iPod, or start a Mac in Target Disk Mode, so that it appears to other FireWire devices as a FireWire hard disk.
Where in all of this is the demand for a 1.44MB disk? Floppies are such a distant memory on the Mac platform that I even forgot about all the Wintel users who whined about the iMac not having one. I know it's necessary to Wintel OS installation sometimes, but it's just not necessary on the Mac platform, because other things have taken its place. They came in in 1984 and they went out in 1998 and that's a pretty good run.
> Although they still have more value then
> in '98,
> I don't think that Apple has "increased
> tremendously over the last five year
The stock split once in the last five years. Anyone who had one share received two shares that were worth half as much each. So, Apple stock trading at $25/share today is equivalent to trading at $50/share five years ago. Since the stock was at $13/share when Steve Jobs arrived, that means it has increased in value quite a bit over the past five years ($50 is greater than $13).
Talk about a nit-pick. When Apple talks about the product that is officially named "Mac OS X version 10.1", they say "Mac OS 10.1". The X alerts the user that there's been a complete rewrite, and hints at UNIX, but it's still Mac OS.
Anyway, the thread was about the complete system. Is the Mac traditionally more reliable than Windows? Is it today? I would say that traditionally it has been a little more reliable. In the last few years, it has been much, much more reliable. With Mac OS X it is in a whole new ballpark. It doesn't crash. End of story.
> I'm reminded of the evils of failed inits,
> users having to set memory on a per
> application basis, and the sheer lack of
> ability to do anything except force quit
> when there's a problem. Yes, Windows
> has similar difficulties, but Apple put them
> into the market first:).
Apple also solved them first. Mac OS X has none of these problems, while Windows is still an unreliable piece of shit with an inscrutable architecture. Mac OS X is a true rewrite; a complete break with the past.
I used Windows 98 in 1998 and then I used Mac OS 8.6 and 9.0 in 1999. My Mac was much, much, much more reliable. Mac OS 9.1 and 9.2 are more reliable still, and Mac OS X is a fucking tank. To run the kinds of apps that Mac OS X is running, with the broad base of diverse users, and be so reliable... it's really something.
Your comment that Steve Jobs is trying to make one system for both techies and newbies reminds me that he said Pixar's mission is to make one movie that is good for both kids and adults, like many of the classic Bugs Bunny cartoons, or old Disney stuff. Steve Jobs specifically said it was much harder than just making an adult movie or a kids movie. You have to have everything working to make it work for everyone.
In the case of Mac OS X, I remember one of Apple's execs saying that if a newbie knew they were using UNIX, then that was bad; and if a power user couldn't access the UNIX system, that was also bad. In other words, it has to be there when you go looking for it, but it is not allowed to get in your face otherwise.
Considering that personal computers are general purpose devices and also personal devices, I think the flexibility that good, simple design gets you is really an asset. A businessperson friend of mine uses a PowerBook with Mac OS X, MS Office X, and maybe one or two other little apps. She has no idea that her file storage and networking are UNIX compatible, but she loves the fact that her Mac OS X PowerBook has never, ever crashed, and she attributes that to UNIX-ness. Non-technical users also benefit from good technology if it's really done right, if it is designed to also serve them without demanding things of them.
> The swiveling LCD for example greatly
> succeeds in its implimentation of a zero
> footprint monitor that can be placed in
> almost any position you like, however,
> it fails it the need for easy replacement
> and maintenance.
When the tube fails in a 21" CRT display, how do you go about the easy replacement and maintenance of it? You take the whole dislay somewhere and they open it up and put in a new CRT. Same with an iMac if its display fails. It's a part of the whole system, which happens to have the computer in the same box (just like the original iMac).
You're arguing for a separate display, in order to make for easy replacement, but a separate display has a host of its own problems. You may not notice them because you're used to them, but since I've been using Macs, I've noticed those problems because I no longer suffer from them. All of Apple's systems have integrated displays, even PowerMacs. One cable runs between tower and display, and the thing sets itself up. You don't have to set timing frequencies or resolutions, and you don't have to worry that what you see on the screen is not accurate, because of ColorSync. You don't have to power the system and then the display to avoid frying a DVI display because of grounding issues, because the whole computer has just one power switch (why have more?). A mouse doesn't have a power switch, so why should a display? By integrating their displays, Apple got rid of so many problems. I recall someone saying to me that they liked the fact that the Monitors Control Panel in Mac OS 9 would show a picture of your display, letting you know that it knows what kind of display you have. I realized that I had never opened the Monitors Control Panel at all, even on my PowerMac. Just plugged in the display, booted up and started working at the display's native resolution and the graphics adapters best color depth. That is good design.
As for service, with an iMac, you buy AppleCare for $249 and Apple fixes anything that fails for three years. I just sent a PowerBook in because the graphics adapter failed, and it was only gone for two days. It would take me two days to order a graphics adapter, have it shipped, and install it myself into a beige box PC, so I didn't lose a thing by having a 1" thick notebook instead of a classic big beige box. I'm sure that Apple's techs have no problem replacing iMac displays. The iMac Take-Apart Guide at Apple.com shows that it is pretty cleverly designed from top to bottom, for both the user and the tech. The original iBook had a small plastic toolkit inside it, so that techs could open it and have the right little screwdriver for the tiny components that are in notebooks these days. They consider everything in a Mac, because it's their job to do that and take complexity away from the users.
> When what you really want is 100%,
> 4.5% is absolutely diddly-squat.
Apple has publicly declared that they want "10%". It's on the Apple Store "manifesto", and it's quoted on this Slashdot page by another poster. You can see it at Apple.com of course.
When what you want is 10%, then having 4.5% and better technology is a pretty good place to be.
Also, keep in mind that the 4.5% is "new computer sales in the United States". Macs have longer working lives and are almost always desktop machines, while other PC's are shorter-lived (not just components dying, but software updates not being available, etc.) and some purchases are for render farms or servers. If there are numbers on "desktop PC's", Apple probably does better than 5%.
The cheapest desktop Mac is $799, and the cheapest notebook is $1100. Both come with Mac OS X and lots of software. I don't see how that can be said to be expensive. These are the same (SAME) price points that other PC manufacturers use. It's no conincidence that a flat-panel machine with a DVD-RW/CD-RW in it costs $1799 from Apple, Gateway, or Dell. $1799 is a price point that they build machines to.
In addition, Macs have longer working lives, because you get all your software updates from Apple (in fact, they can happen automatically if you like). The machines just keep on working, so people just keep on using them. You don't have to hunt for drivers or work really hard to keep a machine running well, so people just keep using them. Much cheaper in the end.
> I know of 6 people who sat down
> in front of OS X for 5 minutes at the
> Apple Store or at a friends place and
> have decided to sell their Windows
> machines (many of which are under
> a year old) for new Macs and OS X.
I know a lot of people like that, too. Apple has been selling Mac OS X to Windows users for the past year, without even seeing the benefits that will come when their core markets migrate. Some of that is happening now with Final Cut Pro 3, and much, much more will happen this year with Photoshop for Mac OS X, and all the music and audio stuff (Pro Tools, Cubase, Logic, etc.). Almost none of the music stuff will run in Mac OS X's Classic mode, so we really are waiting on the revised app software in order to pull the trigger on new machines.
> But what I meant really were higher level
> protocols, such as mail protocols,
> filesharing protocols (I'm thinking SMB)
Both MS Outlook Express and MS Outlook run on the Mac, and Mac OS X includes support for SMB. There are also two commercial solutions that extend the SMB and Windows Networking support further, as well as a couple of free ones.
The Mac version of MS Office includes an email client called "Entourage", and this often leads Windows users to think that there is no Outlook or Outlook Express for Mac. But there is. Yes, Microsoft makes three email clients for the Mac. Go figure.
Word is a bad example of "why people shouldn't switch to the Mac". Aside from the fact that even Microsoft has said that the current Mac version of Word is better, Word is originally a Mac app! It has been running on the Mac since 1985 or so, and is currently in its tenth straight version. There are Mac users out there who have been running Word for 15 years. Sure, there was a Word for DOS, but it is a WordPerfect clone, not the same thing. That's why Word for Windows went 1, 2, 6 in its versions... the jump to 6 was to sync with the Mac version.
In short, your "Word Bird" probably would have been better off using a consistent interface on the same maturing Mac app for the last 15 years rather than working in DOS/Windows at all.
Apple caters to the "it's good enough" crowd? I am rolling on the floor laughing at your comment. They have already said how they had a flat-panel iMac ready to go a year ago, but went back to the drawing board in order to make it better. The arm on the display moves like butter but stays where you leave it, and has been thoroughly tested so that it can do that thousands of times. How is that aimed at "good enough"? The CPU is optimized for graphics and multimedia (that's what people do today) so that it doesn't have to run at 2000MHz to let you edit video without an accelerator card... as a result, the loudest thing in an iMac is the hard disk. When those go solid state, Apple's machines will be completely silent. How is that just "good enough"?
If you just look at the speed of the CPU in order to measure a machine's performance, then 2GHz P4's are all you're going to buy. Too bad for you. Head to head, crunching some kind of numerical benchmark, the P4 will beat the iMac's G4. However, back in the real world, where there's more to a system than the CPU, when you factor in the much, much better software design of Mac OS X (lower latencies, better throughput, better multitasking) as compared to Windows, the iMac gets faster. When you factor in that the G4 and it's Altivec component are optimized for the kinds of "big computing" jobs that most PC users are doing these days, such as encoding MP3 or MPEG-2 (DVD), then the iMac gets faster again. When you factor in that the user is the slowest component of any PC, the ease of use, thoughtful touches, UNIX stability and security ("go ahead and explore, you won't break it"), and "friendly approachability" of the iMac makes it faster again.
The other day I made a DVD video disc with about five minutes work and it encoded and burned in the background and looked great when I was done. How many MHz do you think a PC should have so that I can do that? No wonder Intel's announcements of a 2.2GHz P4 were met with "blah". Same slow Windows running on top. Same broken aspects of the computing platform. Same outlaw mega-corporation with no ethics at the helm.
In short, I'm saying that many, many users will do faster, better work on an iMac than on a Windows machine, even if the Windows machine has a 10GHz processor. If the Mac elevates you where Windows trips you up, even one time per day, you are going to see real productivity benefits.
You're wrong about the Mac being only appropriate for "niche" applications. The Mac is a fine general purpose computer. Most mainstream software comes in both Mac and Windows versions (even MS Office, MS Internet Explorer, MS Media Player, and MS Outlook). Things the Mac used to be missing compared to Windows have been added with Mac OS X's UNIX compatibility, so database and server things are not only possible, but often superior to the Windows solution. Certainly, I'll take Apache over anything running on Windows. What's great is that you get all this plus the areas like graphics, music and audio, video, publishing, etc. where the Mac is by far the better choice. Home users and hobbyists are increasingly doing creative work like this, making movies, burning DVD's or audio CD's, editing graphics.
Notebooks are all proprietary, no matter what your definition of proprietary is. A standard VGA connector won't fit into certain places, so Apple uses a breakout cable that also has a TV out on it. In other words, the port on the iBook is a "video mirroring" port, that accepts a cable with a VGA and TV out on it. Should they make the notebook thicker or deeper just so it has the plain plugs? Maybe you think so, but I don't.
> The power supply ended up being
> $347 plus another $150 for labor and
> shipping. An 300 watt ATX supply is
> about $40 and is available anywhere.
Buy AppleCare for $300 when you get a system, and it will be taken care of for three full years, no matter what fails, with very quick turnaround time (much less time than you spend digging around in there). If you're still using it after three years, consider yourself enjoying the bonus long life that Macs usually offer.
> the only company that has the right to
> produce Mac hardware is Apple. That
> sounds pretty exclusive to me.
The only company that has the right to produce Presario hardware is Compaq. The only company that has the right to produce Windows operating systems is Microsoft. Your point is meaningless. You think of a "Wintel PC" as an open cake (x86 hardware) with closed icing (Windows). On the Mac, the open cake goes up past the hardware well into the OS, where all of the core is open source and exposed to any user who wants in. Then the closed icing is the Aqua GUI. However, Aqua pays you back for its closed nature with really defined GUI standards and a ton of great, mature Mac software, and it doesn't ask you to leave the file system and networking in a closed layer where one company can add "content protection" or sanction apps that ignore network security.
Mac hardware has evolved over the past five years, and standards are always favored. High speed peripherals are 1394, low speed ones are USB. Wired networking is Ethernet in the consumer machines, and Gigabit Ethernet in the pro machines. Wireless networking is 802.11, with every machine having built-in antennaes and an internal spot for the networking hardware. Displays are DVI. VGA, S-Video, and composite-video (TV) outs are there for convenience also. RAM, HD, etc. are all standard components. Graphics are either NVIDIA or ATI. Everything you see on the screen is a PDF. There is also a PostScript interpreter built-in. The Mac's "BIOS" is an international standard that's also used by Sun (Open Firmware). The file system and app platform is fully Unicode... apps are easy to localize completely transparently to the user. All the languages are included with every copy of Mac OS X, so a machine can be shared by users who prefer English or Japanese or whatever. The Web Sharing feature is Apache. The kernel is a modified Mach. File and networking is BSD UNIX. Lots of UNIX utilties are included, like emacs and vi. When you use Apple's excellent graphical Disk Utility, it is running fsck for you. Preferred font format is OpenType, but it supports all the others, too, even Windows-format TrueType. The email app in Mac OS X is all standards based. The Mac version of IE is the most standard-compliant browser available, and is nothing like the Windows version.
Get over your out-of-date Microsoft FUD. "Proprietary" is about as meaningful an adjective as "terrorist" or "drug lord". The terms mean NOTHING. They are used as argument enders because there's no reason in them. They destroy debate and discussion rather than advancing them. You don't want to be locked into one vendor, so make standard documents on a standards-based system. If, in the future, you switch away from Apple, all of your documents and peripherals will go with you.
It's worth noting that Apple's losses all happened in the first quarter of their fiscal year, which is the end of 2000, where everybody was taking a bath.
$25 million in losses this past year is a pretty good year, considering. Apple also opened up a chain of retail stores and expanded their product line. Even in a good financial environment, there are lots of companies who would like to expand the way Apple has expanded and only come out minus $25 million.
> Price for the Dell: $1,741 versus
> $1,799 for the iMac.
> iMac advantage: FireWire
Well, a $40 FireWire card for the Dell brings the price points within $20.
> Dell advantages:
> DDR SDRAM vs SDR SDRAM
I'm wondering if anybody notices this kind of thing once Windows is running (or should I say walking?). Windows has so many latencies and bottlenecks... it's just hard to imagine that the user could tell the difference at all.
> 80 GB HD vs 60 GB HD
Most people will never notice, and the iMac is always, always ready to receive an external FireWire hard disk just by plugging it in, without any drivers to install. You just plug in and you instantly have more storage. You can boot from that external storage, too. No problem.
> 64MB GeForce 2MX vs 32 MB
> GeForce 2MX
The 64MB GeForce 2MX in the Dell is heavily, heavily compromised by the analog connection to the display. What the user actually sees will be faster on the iMac, with no ghosting or blur. I have both a digital and an analog flat panel here, and I can really, really see the difference when I go to the older machine with the analog connection. Why connect a digital graphics adapter to a digital display with an analog connection? Doesn't make sense today. Apple stopped doing this years ago.
> Scrollwheel mouse with 3 buttons vs 1-
> button mouse
$20 value. You could look at this from a consumer perspective and say "OS only requires one mouse button, not three". In other words, the iMac user can use one or more buttons, while the Dell user can use only two or more buttons. Mouse choice is a personal thing, though, so go ahead and get a third-party mouse and plug it into the iMac. No driver install will be neccessary, either.
> 1 yr phone support vs 90 day phone
> support
The included phone support on the iMac is paltry, but for $300, you can get an AppleCare plan that gives you free phone support for 3 years, as well as a full warranty for 3 years. They basically take care of you like they were your IT department. And if you call up and you don't know square one about computers, they don't treat you like an idiot. They don't ask you to get inside the thing and test stuff.
iMac advantages you didn't mention are:
easier to set up
UNIX compatibility
much, much smaller size
higher-quality display
digital connection between graphics adapter and display
built-in 802.11 antennae for the best range
56k modem is a real modem, not WinModem, so you can install Linux and still use your modem
iMac can mirror its display on an external VGA display, or a TV
easy to use, high-quality software included for making DVD Video discs (iDVD 2)
OS level support for writing data DVD's and CD's as easy as floppy disks used to be (just drag and drop stuff onto the disc in Finder)
no need for anti-virus software and update subscriptions
easy to use digital photo management software with advanced photo printing features for best results with your own printer, and easy ordering of Kodak prints and photo books
iMacs music management software is fully MP3 (no WMA), and is fully featured and not crippled at all
no need to get a Microsoft Passport, or even interact with Microsoft at all
included UNIX software like Apache, emacs, vi, etc.
included office suite (AppleWorks) with MS Office compatibility, and very, very, very easy to use
can boot from any attached storage, including CD's, FireWire disks, iPod, SCSI disks, whatever
boot in Target Disk Mode, and the iMac acts as a FireWire disk you can plug into another computer in order to access the internal drive at high speeds (excellent for service and support people)
iMovie is the best consumer video-editing software, and it's included in the iMac's price.
low-latency audio is possible with even the internal audio on the iMac, and a $35 USB audio adapter can give you low-latency 24-bit stereo audio just by plugging it in and using it (again, no drivers or software to install)... by contrast, you have to use ASIO (lots of software to configure) and PCI (internal card to add, have to open the box) to get even medium-latency audio in Windows
overall, the Mac and UNIX software platforms offer much higher quality than Windows software... Apache and Final Cut Pro are best of breed and don't run on Windows
better design, better "fit and finish"
easy open RAM door, so the end user can install RAM without even risking losing a screw
higher RAM capacity
more standards support (even the Mac's "BIOS", called Open Firmware, is an IEEE standard... it's also used by Sun)
graphical boot loader built into the Firmware, so you don't have to play boot loader tricks to run multiple operating systems (in fact, it identifies attached Linux volumes with a cool Penguin icon by default)
the hard drive in the iMac is the loudest component
iMac wakes from sleep almost instantly and doesn't need to be rebooted or switched off thanks to Mac OS X and Apple's deep sleep modes
Mac OS X is a full multi-user UNIX compatible OS; the Dell's Windows XP Home runs everything as root
I could go on about this for a long time, because I've put in a lot of time on both Mac and Windows systems. Mac OS X itself is outrageously better than Windows. I mean, forget the hardware, forget the RAM and the HD and whatever else... you're just treated much, much better in Mac OS X... things don't pop up and market to you, simple stuff is simple, not so complex that you need a "wizard" to get it done... there is no hardware tree to constantly troubleshoot, no drivers to mess with, no forced registration, and the core is OPEN, which means that there won't be any "content protection" coming to Mac OS X anytime soon. You can boot it into single-user mode, you can login to a plain console, you can run 50 translucent terminal windows over your mainstream software. You have a clean, well-organized file system with application bundles, that turn an application's folder with 800 files in it into one icon that you can move or rename and the app doesn't break.
Honestly, to someone who has used both, your Dell vs iMac argument looks WEAK. Very, very weak. You're treated better at every turn with the Mac. While the rest of the industry has increased the numbers in their specs over the past few years, Apple has been very busy actually improving the personal computer. It's been adding up for years now and the new iMac plus a mature Mac OS X is the breakout for all this stuff that they've been pretty quiet about until now. Try one out at an Apple Store... talk to users. You'll be surprised at what you're missing.
It's worth it if you have a need for it, like many of Apple's customers do. The Cinema Display has always been a great value. It has replaced two big CRT's in many studios.
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What you're talking about is being a Computer Enthusiast. In that case, you would want to learn everything there is to know about computers, and then assemble your own from spare parts you found in dumpsters.
However, if you are an artist, or a musician, or a lawyer, or a doctor, you have already put in your time learning and perfecting your own field of endeavor. Now, can you be a better lawyer if you also use a computer? Yes, if the computer doesn't demand that you take Computer Science part-time at night. You just want to have a device that you can apply to your common lawyerly tasks and in doing so get them done faster, cheaper, easier, better, or all of the above.
I use a computer to make music and art. I know about music and art. I know a lot of technical stuff, but it is technical stuff about music and art. I know how a graphics tablet works and how to use it; I know how to record 24 tracks of 24 bit audio on a computer and how to mix it and master it. I don't want to know about kilobytes and shared libraries and other trivia. It's really important if you are a computer scientist or programmer, but it's more important to me not to know, so that while I'm doing my work (art and music), I'm not having to admin my computer, or program it, or think in technical terms.
What you're saying is like saying "nobody should be able to listen to music until they've learned an instrument". This used to be the attitude in music, but I think it is better to leave the learning to the people who want to do it, and respect the fact that just listening is exactly the right amount of music for most people. Just using the computer as an additonal tool in their work is enough computer science for most people, too. Really, it's a drag to suggest that someone who sits down in Photoshop thinking about airbrushes and alpha masks would be better off if they were thinking about what the CPU happens to be doing at exactly that time.
The "5 down 95 to go" manifesto also states that if they can convince the 95 to try a Mac, then they feel they will gain 5 of them as new users, and double their marketshare. So, the 95 to go is just to TRY a Mac. They feel they have a better product that will make sense to at least 5/95 of non-Mac users (note that I am inventing new kinds of fractions to get my point across).
If you want a wireless keyboard and mouse, Logitech makes them and they work on the Mac just fine.
Anyway, the mouse plugs into the keyboard, and then there is a single cable going from the keyboard to the base of the display. The cables are translucent. Hardly an eyesore.
Movie and TV people don't just use Macs in sets because they look better (which they do). In the movie and TV industries, as well as in music and audio and graphics, the Mac is just a plain, ho-hum computer that everybody uses. You expect a TV person to have a PowerBook and Final Cut Pro. You expect a musician to have a PowerMac with Pro Tools or similar in it. "PowerBook" is synonymous with "notebook" in these industries. Often, the PowerBook you see in a shot is the director's, or someone else on set.
Maybe you work in IT, or you're a programmer, or you develop Windows software or whatever, so you think of Windows as the standard and everything else as weird. In many industries, the opposite is true.
> Now I agree that it would be nice if a
> computer were as uncomplicated and
> reliable as a toaster, but it's simply not
> going to happen in the near future and
> its unfair to take Apple to task for not
> solving the problem with Microsoft has
> far more resources.
MS has more resources, but they are also fighting a war on many fronts. They're taking on Sun, they're taking on Oracle, etc. while Apple has been quietly taking on Windows. Apple is also much, much smarter. MS coders work assembly line fashion and then in the end they have to bolt on 20 features that suck or are designed to screw the user over in some fashion or extract more cash. At Apple, it's plain that they are aimed at technical excellence that can be accessed by anyone because it is that good, it's that complete.
For many users, the new iMac really will be as reliable as a toaster. I have a non-technical friend who uses a Mac OS X PowerBook (without Classic installed, so it is Mac OS X native only), and MS Office X and the "iApps" that come with every Mac. She literally opens her PowerBook every day, it wakes up instantly, she does her email, Web, works in Word, Excel, or PowerPoint, runs iTunes to listen to music, and she plugs in her digital camera regularly and Image Capture (and now iPhoto) just pulls the pictures off for her. She also scans stuff using an Agfa scanner and Mac OS X native ScanWise, and puts songs on her MP3 player, and syncs her Palm machine to back it up. When she's done for the day, she closes the PowerBook. The next work day, she is back again, opens the PowerBook up, and gets to work. She's been doing this for months now, (although before Office X came out, she used Office 2001 running in Classic). The only time the computer reboots is when Software Update asks her to (because it has updated some core system component). I stay hands-off because she doesn't have any problems at all and is really, really happy with her computer. For her, it is totally as reliable as a toaster. It's never crashed, and she's never had to reboot unexpectedly or because there was some mysterious problem.
The double-buffered windows even make Mac OS X feel solid, especially on a flat panel. It's really a joy for a non-technical user to use something so reliable and friendly. People have said that the only real flaw in the classic Mac UI was that the system could potentially crash at any time. Once you use Mac OS X for a while, you realize why UNIX users are so gung-ho on stability. Once you've experience that robustness, you don't want to go back to trapese without a net.
> When you sit down in front of a Mac for the
> first time after using PCs your whole life,
> it's not like sliding in behind the wheel of
> a new BWM
Yes, it is like that, and it gets better all the time as you discover the number of things that are just plain better. Apple uses smaller, low-power CPU's (7-14 watts) so that they can make smaller, low-power computers and run them on batteries for 5-6 hours, or cool them very quietly in the case of the iMac. Intel and AMD sell based solely on MHz, so they make big honking power-hungry CPU's (50-70 watts) that run at ridiculous clock speeds. Although the P4 has its big clock speed, it has 20 pipelines compared to the G4's 7-10, and the G4 also has its Altivec component, which does supercomputer-style vector processing that is great for the kinds of heavy stuff many people are doing with encoding and encryption and such. So, when you balance out the total system's performance, taking into account also how much better performance Mac OS X offers over Windows, you end up with machines that are fast enough to do today's computing tasks. Go figure, since that's what they were designed for.
There are plenty of people with big beige box P4's with multiple noisy fans who are going to go into the Apple Store over the next year or so and see Mac OS X running tirelessly and almost silently on the new iMac and they're going to run some apps and be blown away by the performance and realize how fucking ripped off they've been by Wintel for so long.
> The last time I used a Mac (OS 9, I think)
> it wasn't any easier to use or more reliable
> than Windows.
Whether they were or not back then, Macs are certainly easier and more reliable now than anything that's come before. Mac OS X Macs basically don't crash, and the machines are designed to be left on all the time, just going into deep sleep and instantly waking up when you want to use them. People reboot only after low-level OS updates. The interface is very approachable, and with a plain user account, you can tell a newbie to go ahead and explore because they can't wreck anything. The UI doesn't pop things up and bug you, and there is a good help system and consitency between the apps in menu placement and key shortcuts, so you only have to learn things once. The single menubar also really, really helps newbies, and power users learn how fast it can be pretty quickly too.
Just realized that many people are readily comparing the new iMac to high-end 1.6GHz Athlons and 2GHz P4's. The iMac is the low-end desktop in Apple's line. It's not the fastest Mac by a stretch, and there are new PowerMac's due pretty soon.
What the hell are you talking about with the floppy drives? Nobody misses floppy drives. These days on a Mac, you can drag and drop stuff onto a CD-R or CD-RW or DVD-R as easily as you can drop them onto a floppy, only the CD's have 650MB capacity and the DVD's have 4.5GB. Macs also come with a free iTools account that includes a 20MB network disk that you can add storage to for a low cost. Also, you can mount plain disk image files as if they were drives on the Mac, so if you really want to use incredibly small disks, you can easily make and use floppy disk images that you can send by email or drop on VirtualPC's floppy button and they are opened by the virtual PC. You can also plug in any FireWire hard disk and it just works, without any drivers to install, and you can even boot from it.
Apple's iPod MP3 player is also a portable FireWire hard disk that is powered by the single connection to the computer. It holds as much data as over 3500 floppies, and it's not as wide as a floppy disk. There are also USB keychains that hold 32MB or more. My wife's digital camera has a 128MB CompactFlash in it. You can boot a Mac from any attached storage, including a CD or iPod, or start a Mac in Target Disk Mode, so that it appears to other FireWire devices as a FireWire hard disk.
Where in all of this is the demand for a 1.44MB disk? Floppies are such a distant memory on the Mac platform that I even forgot about all the Wintel users who whined about the iMac not having one. I know it's necessary to Wintel OS installation sometimes, but it's just not necessary on the Mac platform, because other things have taken its place. They came in in 1984 and they went out in 1998 and that's a pretty good run.
> Although they still have more value then
> in '98,
> I don't think that Apple has "increased
> tremendously over the last five year
The stock split once in the last five years. Anyone who had one share received two shares that were worth half as much each. So, Apple stock trading at $25/share today is equivalent to trading at $50/share five years ago. Since the stock was at $13/share when Steve Jobs arrived, that means it has increased in value quite a bit over the past five years ($50 is greater than $13).
> He said "MacOS," not "OS X."
Talk about a nit-pick. When Apple talks about the product that is officially named "Mac OS X version 10.1", they say "Mac OS 10.1". The X alerts the user that there's been a complete rewrite, and hints at UNIX, but it's still Mac OS.
Anyway, the thread was about the complete system. Is the Mac traditionally more reliable than Windows? Is it today? I would say that traditionally it has been a little more reliable. In the last few years, it has been much, much more reliable. With Mac OS X it is in a whole new ballpark. It doesn't crash. End of story.
> I'm reminded of the evils of failed inits, :).
... it's really something.
> users having to set memory on a per
> application basis, and the sheer lack of
> ability to do anything except force quit
> when there's a problem. Yes, Windows
> has similar difficulties, but Apple put them
> into the market first
Apple also solved them first. Mac OS X has none of these problems, while Windows is still an unreliable piece of shit with an inscrutable architecture. Mac OS X is a true rewrite; a complete break with the past.
I used Windows 98 in 1998 and then I used Mac OS 8.6 and 9.0 in 1999. My Mac was much, much, much more reliable. Mac OS 9.1 and 9.2 are more reliable still, and Mac OS X is a fucking tank. To run the kinds of apps that Mac OS X is running, with the broad base of diverse users, and be so reliable
Your comment that Steve Jobs is trying to make one system for both techies and newbies reminds me that he said Pixar's mission is to make one movie that is good for both kids and adults, like many of the classic Bugs Bunny cartoons, or old Disney stuff. Steve Jobs specifically said it was much harder than just making an adult movie or a kids movie. You have to have everything working to make it work for everyone.
In the case of Mac OS X, I remember one of Apple's execs saying that if a newbie knew they were using UNIX, then that was bad; and if a power user couldn't access the UNIX system, that was also bad. In other words, it has to be there when you go looking for it, but it is not allowed to get in your face otherwise.
Considering that personal computers are general purpose devices and also personal devices, I think the flexibility that good, simple design gets you is really an asset. A businessperson friend of mine uses a PowerBook with Mac OS X, MS Office X, and maybe one or two other little apps. She has no idea that her file storage and networking are UNIX compatible, but she loves the fact that her Mac OS X PowerBook has never, ever crashed, and she attributes that to UNIX-ness. Non-technical users also benefit from good technology if it's really done right, if it is designed to also serve them without demanding things of them.
> The swiveling LCD for example greatly
> succeeds in its implimentation of a zero
> footprint monitor that can be placed in
> almost any position you like, however,
> it fails it the need for easy replacement
> and maintenance.
When the tube fails in a 21" CRT display, how do you go about the easy replacement and maintenance of it? You take the whole dislay somewhere and they open it up and put in a new CRT. Same with an iMac if its display fails. It's a part of the whole system, which happens to have the computer in the same box (just like the original iMac).
You're arguing for a separate display, in order to make for easy replacement, but a separate display has a host of its own problems. You may not notice them because you're used to them, but since I've been using Macs, I've noticed those problems because I no longer suffer from them. All of Apple's systems have integrated displays, even PowerMacs. One cable runs between tower and display, and the thing sets itself up. You don't have to set timing frequencies or resolutions, and you don't have to worry that what you see on the screen is not accurate, because of ColorSync. You don't have to power the system and then the display to avoid frying a DVI display because of grounding issues, because the whole computer has just one power switch (why have more?). A mouse doesn't have a power switch, so why should a display? By integrating their displays, Apple got rid of so many problems. I recall someone saying to me that they liked the fact that the Monitors Control Panel in Mac OS 9 would show a picture of your display, letting you know that it knows what kind of display you have. I realized that I had never opened the Monitors Control Panel at all, even on my PowerMac. Just plugged in the display, booted up and started working at the display's native resolution and the graphics adapters best color depth. That is good design.
As for service, with an iMac, you buy AppleCare for $249 and Apple fixes anything that fails for three years. I just sent a PowerBook in because the graphics adapter failed, and it was only gone for two days. It would take me two days to order a graphics adapter, have it shipped, and install it myself into a beige box PC, so I didn't lose a thing by having a 1" thick notebook instead of a classic big beige box. I'm sure that Apple's techs have no problem replacing iMac displays. The iMac Take-Apart Guide at Apple.com shows that it is pretty cleverly designed from top to bottom, for both the user and the tech. The original iBook had a small plastic toolkit inside it, so that techs could open it and have the right little screwdriver for the tiny components that are in notebooks these days. They consider everything in a Mac, because it's their job to do that and take complexity away from the users.
> When what you really want is 100%,
> 4.5% is absolutely diddly-squat.
Apple has publicly declared that they want "10%". It's on the Apple Store "manifesto", and it's quoted on this Slashdot page by another poster. You can see it at Apple.com of course.
When what you want is 10%, then having 4.5% and better technology is a pretty good place to be.
Also, keep in mind that the 4.5% is "new computer sales in the United States". Macs have longer working lives and are almost always desktop machines, while other PC's are shorter-lived (not just components dying, but software updates not being available, etc.) and some purchases are for render farms or servers. If there are numbers on "desktop PC's", Apple probably does better than 5%.
The cheapest desktop Mac is $799, and the cheapest notebook is $1100. Both come with Mac OS X and lots of software. I don't see how that can be said to be expensive. These are the same (SAME) price points that other PC manufacturers use. It's no conincidence that a flat-panel machine with a DVD-RW/CD-RW in it costs $1799 from Apple, Gateway, or Dell. $1799 is a price point that they build machines to.
In addition, Macs have longer working lives, because you get all your software updates from Apple (in fact, they can happen automatically if you like). The machines just keep on working, so people just keep on using them. You don't have to hunt for drivers or work really hard to keep a machine running well, so people just keep using them. Much cheaper in the end.
> I know of 6 people who sat down
> in front of OS X for 5 minutes at the
> Apple Store or at a friends place and
> have decided to sell their Windows
> machines (many of which are under
> a year old) for new Macs and OS X.
I know a lot of people like that, too. Apple has been selling Mac OS X to Windows users for the past year, without even seeing the benefits that will come when their core markets migrate. Some of that is happening now with Final Cut Pro 3, and much, much more will happen this year with Photoshop for Mac OS X, and all the music and audio stuff (Pro Tools, Cubase, Logic, etc.). Almost none of the music stuff will run in Mac OS X's Classic mode, so we really are waiting on the revised app software in order to pull the trigger on new machines.
> But what I meant really were higher level
> protocols, such as mail protocols,
> filesharing protocols (I'm thinking SMB)
Both MS Outlook Express and MS Outlook run on the Mac, and Mac OS X includes support for SMB. There are also two commercial solutions that extend the SMB and Windows Networking support further, as well as a couple of free ones.
The Mac version of MS Office includes an email client called "Entourage", and this often leads Windows users to think that there is no Outlook or Outlook Express for Mac. But there is. Yes, Microsoft makes three email clients for the Mac. Go figure.
Word is a bad example of "why people shouldn't switch to the Mac". Aside from the fact that even Microsoft has said that the current Mac version of Word is better, Word is originally a Mac app! It has been running on the Mac since 1985 or so, and is currently in its tenth straight version. There are Mac users out there who have been running Word for 15 years. Sure, there was a Word for DOS, but it is a WordPerfect clone, not the same thing. That's why Word for Windows went 1, 2, 6 in its versions ... the jump to 6 was to sync with the Mac version.
In short, your "Word Bird" probably would have been better off using a consistent interface on the same maturing Mac app for the last 15 years rather than working in DOS/Windows at all.
Apple caters to the "it's good enough" crowd? I am rolling on the floor laughing at your comment. They have already said how they had a flat-panel iMac ready to go a year ago, but went back to the drawing board in order to make it better. The arm on the display moves like butter but stays where you leave it, and has been thoroughly tested so that it can do that thousands of times. How is that aimed at "good enough"? The CPU is optimized for graphics and multimedia (that's what people do today) so that it doesn't have to run at 2000MHz to let you edit video without an accelerator card ... as a result, the loudest thing in an iMac is the hard disk. When those go solid state, Apple's machines will be completely silent. How is that just "good enough"?
If you just look at the speed of the CPU in order to measure a machine's performance, then 2GHz P4's are all you're going to buy. Too bad for you. Head to head, crunching some kind of numerical benchmark, the P4 will beat the iMac's G4. However, back in the real world, where there's more to a system than the CPU, when you factor in the much, much better software design of Mac OS X (lower latencies, better throughput, better multitasking) as compared to Windows, the iMac gets faster. When you factor in that the G4 and it's Altivec component are optimized for the kinds of "big computing" jobs that most PC users are doing these days, such as encoding MP3 or MPEG-2 (DVD), then the iMac gets faster again. When you factor in that the user is the slowest component of any PC, the ease of use, thoughtful touches, UNIX stability and security ("go ahead and explore, you won't break it"), and "friendly approachability" of the iMac makes it faster again.
The other day I made a DVD video disc with about five minutes work and it encoded and burned in the background and looked great when I was done. How many MHz do you think a PC should have so that I can do that? No wonder Intel's announcements of a 2.2GHz P4 were met with "blah". Same slow Windows running on top. Same broken aspects of the computing platform. Same outlaw mega-corporation with no ethics at the helm.
In short, I'm saying that many, many users will do faster, better work on an iMac than on a Windows machine, even if the Windows machine has a 10GHz processor. If the Mac elevates you where Windows trips you up, even one time per day, you are going to see real productivity benefits.
You're wrong about the Mac being only appropriate for "niche" applications. The Mac is a fine general purpose computer. Most mainstream software comes in both Mac and Windows versions (even MS Office, MS Internet Explorer, MS Media Player, and MS Outlook). Things the Mac used to be missing compared to Windows have been added with Mac OS X's UNIX compatibility, so database and server things are not only possible, but often superior to the Windows solution. Certainly, I'll take Apache over anything running on Windows. What's great is that you get all this plus the areas like graphics, music and audio, video, publishing, etc. where the Mac is by far the better choice. Home users and hobbyists are increasingly doing creative work like this, making movies, burning DVD's or audio CD's, editing graphics.
Notebooks are all proprietary, no matter what your definition of proprietary is. A standard VGA connector won't fit into certain places, so Apple uses a breakout cable that also has a TV out on it. In other words, the port on the iBook is a "video mirroring" port, that accepts a cable with a VGA and TV out on it. Should they make the notebook thicker or deeper just so it has the plain plugs? Maybe you think so, but I don't.
> The power supply ended up being
> $347 plus another $150 for labor and
> shipping. An 300 watt ATX supply is
> about $40 and is available anywhere.
Buy AppleCare for $300 when you get a system, and it will be taken care of for three full years, no matter what fails, with very quick turnaround time (much less time than you spend digging around in there). If you're still using it after three years, consider yourself enjoying the bonus long life that Macs usually offer.
> the only company that has the right to
... apps are easy to localize completely transparently to the user. All the languages are included with every copy of Mac OS X, so a machine can be shared by users who prefer English or Japanese or whatever. The Web Sharing feature is Apache. The kernel is a modified Mach. File and networking is BSD UNIX. Lots of UNIX utilties are included, like emacs and vi. When you use Apple's excellent graphical Disk Utility, it is running fsck for you. Preferred font format is OpenType, but it supports all the others, too, even Windows-format TrueType. The email app in Mac OS X is all standards based. The Mac version of IE is the most standard-compliant browser available, and is nothing like the Windows version.
> produce Mac hardware is Apple. That
> sounds pretty exclusive to me.
The only company that has the right to produce Presario hardware is Compaq. The only company that has the right to produce Windows operating systems is Microsoft. Your point is meaningless. You think of a "Wintel PC" as an open cake (x86 hardware) with closed icing (Windows). On the Mac, the open cake goes up past the hardware well into the OS, where all of the core is open source and exposed to any user who wants in. Then the closed icing is the Aqua GUI. However, Aqua pays you back for its closed nature with really defined GUI standards and a ton of great, mature Mac software, and it doesn't ask you to leave the file system and networking in a closed layer where one company can add "content protection" or sanction apps that ignore network security.
Mac hardware has evolved over the past five years, and standards are always favored. High speed peripherals are 1394, low speed ones are USB. Wired networking is Ethernet in the consumer machines, and Gigabit Ethernet in the pro machines. Wireless networking is 802.11, with every machine having built-in antennaes and an internal spot for the networking hardware. Displays are DVI. VGA, S-Video, and composite-video (TV) outs are there for convenience also. RAM, HD, etc. are all standard components. Graphics are either NVIDIA or ATI. Everything you see on the screen is a PDF. There is also a PostScript interpreter built-in. The Mac's "BIOS" is an international standard that's also used by Sun (Open Firmware). The file system and app platform is fully Unicode
Get over your out-of-date Microsoft FUD. "Proprietary" is about as meaningful an adjective as "terrorist" or "drug lord". The terms mean NOTHING. They are used as argument enders because there's no reason in them. They destroy debate and discussion rather than advancing them. You don't want to be locked into one vendor, so make standard documents on a standards-based system. If, in the future, you switch away from Apple, all of your documents and peripherals will go with you.
It's worth noting that Apple's losses all happened in the first quarter of their fiscal year, which is the end of 2000, where everybody was taking a bath.
$25 million in losses this past year is a pretty good year, considering. Apple also opened up a chain of retail stores and expanded their product line. Even in a good financial environment, there are lots of companies who would like to expand the way Apple has expanded and only come out minus $25 million.
> Price for the Dell: $1,741 versus
... it's just hard to imagine that the user could tell the difference at all.
... by contrast, you have to use ASIO (lots of software to configure) and PCI (internal card to add, have to open the box) to get even medium-latency audio in Windows
... Apache and Final Cut Pro are best of breed and don't run on Windows
... it's also used by Sun)
... you're just treated much, much better in Mac OS X ... things don't pop up and market to you, simple stuff is simple, not so complex that you need a "wizard" to get it done ... there is no hardware tree to constantly troubleshoot, no drivers to mess with, no forced registration, and the core is OPEN, which means that there won't be any "content protection" coming to Mac OS X anytime soon. You can boot it into single-user mode, you can login to a plain console, you can run 50 translucent terminal windows over your mainstream software. You have a clean, well-organized file system with application bundles, that turn an application's folder with 800 files in it into one icon that you can move or rename and the app doesn't break.
... talk to users. You'll be surprised at what you're missing.
> $1,799 for the iMac.
> iMac advantage: FireWire
Well, a $40 FireWire card for the Dell brings the price points within $20.
> Dell advantages:
> DDR SDRAM vs SDR SDRAM
I'm wondering if anybody notices this kind of thing once Windows is running (or should I say walking?). Windows has so many latencies and bottlenecks
> 80 GB HD vs 60 GB HD
Most people will never notice, and the iMac is always, always ready to receive an external FireWire hard disk just by plugging it in, without any drivers to install. You just plug in and you instantly have more storage. You can boot from that external storage, too. No problem.
> 64MB GeForce 2MX vs 32 MB
> GeForce 2MX
The 64MB GeForce 2MX in the Dell is heavily, heavily compromised by the analog connection to the display. What the user actually sees will be faster on the iMac, with no ghosting or blur. I have both a digital and an analog flat panel here, and I can really, really see the difference when I go to the older machine with the analog connection. Why connect a digital graphics adapter to a digital display with an analog connection? Doesn't make sense today. Apple stopped doing this years ago.
> Scrollwheel mouse with 3 buttons vs 1-
> button mouse
$20 value. You could look at this from a consumer perspective and say "OS only requires one mouse button, not three". In other words, the iMac user can use one or more buttons, while the Dell user can use only two or more buttons. Mouse choice is a personal thing, though, so go ahead and get a third-party mouse and plug it into the iMac. No driver install will be neccessary, either.
> 1 yr phone support vs 90 day phone
> support
The included phone support on the iMac is paltry, but for $300, you can get an AppleCare plan that gives you free phone support for 3 years, as well as a full warranty for 3 years. They basically take care of you like they were your IT department. And if you call up and you don't know square one about computers, they don't treat you like an idiot. They don't ask you to get inside the thing and test stuff.
iMac advantages you didn't mention are:
easier to set up
UNIX compatibility
much, much smaller size
higher-quality display
digital connection between graphics adapter and display
built-in 802.11 antennae for the best range
56k modem is a real modem, not WinModem, so you can install Linux and still use your modem
iMac can mirror its display on an external VGA display, or a TV
easy to use, high-quality software included for making DVD Video discs (iDVD 2)
OS level support for writing data DVD's and CD's as easy as floppy disks used to be (just drag and drop stuff onto the disc in Finder)
no need for anti-virus software and update subscriptions
easy to use digital photo management software with advanced photo printing features for best results with your own printer, and easy ordering of Kodak prints and photo books
iMacs music management software is fully MP3 (no WMA), and is fully featured and not crippled at all
no need to get a Microsoft Passport, or even interact with Microsoft at all
included UNIX software like Apache, emacs, vi, etc.
included office suite (AppleWorks) with MS Office compatibility, and very, very, very easy to use
can boot from any attached storage, including CD's, FireWire disks, iPod, SCSI disks, whatever
boot in Target Disk Mode, and the iMac acts as a FireWire disk you can plug into another computer in order to access the internal drive at high speeds (excellent for service and support people)
iMovie is the best consumer video-editing software, and it's included in the iMac's price.
low-latency audio is possible with even the internal audio on the iMac, and a $35 USB audio adapter can give you low-latency 24-bit stereo audio just by plugging it in and using it (again, no drivers or software to install)
overall, the Mac and UNIX software platforms offer much higher quality than Windows software
better design, better "fit and finish"
easy open RAM door, so the end user can install RAM without even risking losing a screw
higher RAM capacity
more standards support (even the Mac's "BIOS", called Open Firmware, is an IEEE standard
graphical boot loader built into the Firmware, so you don't have to play boot loader tricks to run multiple operating systems (in fact, it identifies attached Linux volumes with a cool Penguin icon by default)
the hard drive in the iMac is the loudest component
iMac wakes from sleep almost instantly and doesn't need to be rebooted or switched off thanks to Mac OS X and Apple's deep sleep modes
Mac OS X is a full multi-user UNIX compatible OS; the Dell's Windows XP Home runs everything as root
I could go on about this for a long time, because I've put in a lot of time on both Mac and Windows systems. Mac OS X itself is outrageously better than Windows. I mean, forget the hardware, forget the RAM and the HD and whatever else
Honestly, to someone who has used both, your Dell vs iMac argument looks WEAK. Very, very weak. You're treated better at every turn with the Mac. While the rest of the industry has increased the numbers in their specs over the past few years, Apple has been very busy actually improving the personal computer. It's been adding up for years now and the new iMac plus a mature Mac OS X is the breakout for all this stuff that they've been pretty quiet about until now. Try one out at an Apple Store
It's worth it if you have a need for it, like many of Apple's customers do. The Cinema Display has always been a great value. It has replaced two big CRT's in many studios.