why are macs so goddam expensive???

[Kemper_Boyd]

Apple has gone back to making itself a brand and a premium brand at that. This means their units *must* be expensive compared to their competitor in order for them to keep the premium brand.

I agree that some brands use cost to make themselves seem more
'premium' but you also lose customers who think they are poor
value.

That is, in my opinion, the number one problem with Apple, their B&O
tendencies (crap hifi with over-the-top design that costs a packet).
God I wish Apple would avoid doing the same.

I think Apple needs to avoid being seen as a 'premium' brand and
try to shift opinion so that they are seen as a trusted, safe and good
value (not low cost) brand. FWIW I think the PowerMacs, displays
and Xserves fit this model. I think the iBooks, PowerBooks and
eMacs are close. The current iMac is a conspicuously 'premium'
product, nice kit, but probably the worst price/performance of
all Apple products.

I'd hope that no Mac user picks the platform because it is
'reassuringly expensive' or elitist, but you only need to wander
round some of the Mac forums to see that some Mac users
clearly do use a Mac for those reasons.

It's hard to believe but the Mac slogan was once:
"The computer for the rest of us." It was meant to
signify a computer that put ease of use and affordability
first, the Volkswagon of Personal Computers. Now though
it drips with irony.

Then again maybe the new $699 G5 xMac (iMac 3) will return
the Mac to its roots. But to be honest I expect to see more
crayzee design and underwhelming performance with a price
tag that makes you draw a sharp breath.

[Bog]

I'd hope that no Mac user picks the platform because it is
'reassuringly expensive' or elitist, but you only need to wander
round some of the Mac forums to see that some Mac users
clearly do use a Mac for those reasons.

I keep telling myself that not all Mac owners are smug. Though I've pretty much stopped publicly asking for tech assistance and/or moaning about $PROBLEM with PCs beause of the instant tsunami of "Get a Mac!" and "Use Linux!" comments. They're irritating (because they'er not answering my questiong) and irrelevant (because my toolschain doesn't work under Linux, and isn't commercially viable under Mac).

I have more propblems with my PCs than most PC users. This is because they're usually operating at full welly for protracted periods - Memory full, big swapfile, lots of disk access - everything being worked hard, generating lots of heat, and doing that "Mean Time to Failure" thing across the board. I very much doubt that Mac RAM, hard disks, video cards and CPUs have some Magic Ingredient that would stop them wearing out.

[Kemper_Boyd]

I have more propblems with my PCs than most PC users. This is because they're usually operating at full welly for protracted periods - Memory full, big swapfile, lots of disk access - everything being worked hard, generating lots of heat, and doing that "Mean Time to Failure" thing across the board. I very much doubt that Mac RAM, hard disks, video cards and CPUs have some Magic Ingredient that would stop them wearing out.

FWIW Bog you should seriously consider buying a Precision workstation
from the Dell Outlet next time you buy a PC. That way you can get
onsite support and someone to fix it next time you kill a computer.
Simply being able to bitch on the phone a get a part sent out ASAP
is rather handy too.

Are Macs more reliable than PCs?
Better than a cheap PC? Yes, but no better than a decent PC like
a Dell Precision, HP Workstation, IBM IntelliStation. A well designed
PC/Mac should be able to run close to flat out most of the time.

If a PC dies and costs a days work then that needs to be added
to the real cost of ownership. Pretty soon such costs add up and
it becomes clear why buying an IBM IntelliStation makes sense.

[Bog]

FWIW Bog you should seriously consider buying a Precision workstation
from the Dell Outlet next time you buy a PC. That way you can get
onsite support and someone to fix it next time you kill a computer.

Uhm... that £600 PC World price actually includes 3 years next-day on-site with all parts guaranteed free-replacement for 12 months. Which is pretty crazy.

Of course, the burning question of "How good are their engineers?" is still un-answered, and hopefully will remain so for a long time. But all the same, it's not a bad offer.

[Kemper_Boyd]

Uhm... that £600 PC World price actually includes 3 years next-day on-site with all parts guaranteed free-replacement for 12 months. Which is pretty crazy.

Of course, the burning question of "How good are their engineers?" is still un-answered, and hopefully will remain so for a long time. But all the same, it's not a bad offer.

Fair enough. NEC? I see they have 3 years onsite.

That said my argument still applies if you buy cheaper machines
and have more failures you still lose the hours/days even if
you get it fixed for free. The cost at the store is not the true cost
of ownership.

For example I read a similar discussion to this a few weeks back
where the iBook was dismissed as a consumer product not for
use by 'pros'. A person shot back that he'd billed $150,000+
in a year for work done on the iBook. Interestingly his hourly
rate is sufficiently high that he'd be better off with a Powerbook
even if it only made him 1-2% more efficient. If it could make him
10% more efficient he'd almost be mad not to spend more on
the Powerbook. It depends upon what he did.

Anyhow what I'm saying is that the price and performance of
PCs does not always mean that the cheapest or fastest is the
best for a particular user. If you earn your living using a computer
you need to look at the cost of purchasing, ownership and opportunity
cost. Sometimes the Mac wins, though I'd agree that Lightwave
is clearly better off on the PC. Still I would look at buying PCs
of a higher spec, if you see my boring post on the QuadroFX 700 you'll
see that good kit isn't necessarily that expensive anymore.

[skab]

Hey Bog, if you simply need the most processing power for the buck, then a bunch of well built PCs are the best you can get.

If I need some Unix server for, say, an office intranet, I won't be mad and buy an Xserve, I'd simply put FreeBSD on some generic PC hardware.

If I want to have a great desktop system, though, I chose a Mac. And for my kind of work there's no contest. I have a proper Unix system for testing my DB and web stuff underneath, still I got all the GUI based software I need, like a good browser, Photoshop, Word, whatever. And I really like the software you get for Macs, like BBEdit for coding etc.

[Bog]

Hey Bog, if you simply need the most processing power for the buck, then a bunch of well built PCs are the best you can get.

Heeheehee... I left a radiosity solution rendering on Friday afternoon, and came back on Sunday evening having left it for, what, 50-odd hours.

19% done. For one frame.

Yeeeeaaaaahhhh, I guess you can say I kinda could use a lot of processing power

[xav]

I've been toying with the idea of buying a Mac to replace my old 700MHz laptop for some time now. Playing with my gf's PowerBook has convinced me that it would be a viable platform for what I do. However there are two things that really bug me about it:-

1) That bloody trackpad button. Give me a second one, fer crying out loud! By all means map it to do the same as the first one by default if you want to, but given the number of places that context menus are useful in OSX I can't see a really good reason for not having one.

Not to mention the amount of X11 stuff I do, for which a second button would also be useful. And don't mention a replacement mouse - I want a second button on the trackpad; it's a laptop, so I want to be able to use it on my lap

2) I'd like to have a more PC-like keyboard layout. I have to move between my laptop and a PC far more than I have to move between my laptop and a Mac, so playing hunt-and-peck for some of the keys gets painful. And as for hiding the # key like that....


So, Steve, fix item (1) and I'll buy a Mac laptop tomorrow. Fix (1) and (2), and I'll buy one today.

[skab]

19% done. For one frame.

Hey I told you Macs were better!




Just kidding...

[Bog]

*snigger*

Nah, s'fine, I don't need to get anything else done before the heat-death of the Universe

[skab]

1) That bloody trackpad button. Give me a second one, fer crying out loud! By all means map it to do the same as the first one by default if you want to, but given the number of places that context menus are useful in OSX I can't see a really good reason for not having one.

Never understood that one-button-fetish myself. I never used the one-button Pro Mouse. And a 2nd button on a trackpad wouldn't hurt either. Maybe they could introduce 2 or 3 button mice and trackpads in the pro-line PowerBooks and keep the "idiot user" one-button thing on the consumer level machines. Another reason to get a PB instead of an iBook, with the PB being a far more expensive machine, would be quite good for Apple...

2) I'd like to have a more PC-like keyboard layout. I have to move between my laptop and a PC far more than I have to move between my laptop and a Mac, so playing hunt-and-peck for some of the keys gets painful. And as for hiding the # key like that....

Hm. I've got a German keyboard layout here, and I can't see what's so different to a normal MF2-layout-KB.

That old ADB Extented Keyboard I I'm using right now has a totally different layout in parts, indeed, but the later KBs have a pretty standard layout.

[Snakey]

this seems like the old megahertz myth still works...

Ah, the "megahertz myth" myth Typical Apple spouting shite at people that don't know better. Their chart doesn't even match up to what they say. They claim one G4 is 80% faster than the P4, yet their chart shows 58%. They don't mention dual cpus till the end of the movie.

1. You can't send the "exact same instruction stream" down both pipes, because the G4 needs a lot more instructions to do the same work. The stream sent down the G4 pipe should be 3 times longer than the P4 one, and thats being generous.

2. Branches do not always clear the pipeline. It is true that when they do it is a big overhead - but, branch prediction takes care of that, and actually works extremely well on the P4. 90% of the time the pipeline would NOT be cleared, which kills their argument dead.

3. After the first little demo, they actually mention (duh) that the P4 is running twice as fast. So why do they fail to show that on the second little demo ?

4. So, the G4 is far more efficient cos it has a small pipeline. This obviously doesn't apply to the G5, then, which has a bigger pipeline...

Besides the fact that its totally oversimplified to prove a non-existant point (throw figures around all you like, but god help you if you want to show the proof), back in the real world, the simple fact is that PPC CPUs need more instructions to do the same work, and given that things like branch prediction are there to prevent the stalls in the pipeline that apple conveniently dont mention, they will almost, always, take longer to do it at the same clock speed.

[teamonkey]

My Mac's so old and slow it's not really worht using unless I need to. Still, using it feels like a breath of fresh air compared to Windows. It's a feeling, that's all. Everything's so intuitive.

Like, what would you do if you wanted to install an application? Do you:

a) Run the install wizard programme, follow a number of steps that you invariably leave at their default values, then click Finish. Or,
b) Drag the application icon to the Applications folder.

Other things too, like when an application is trying to get your attention, it, um, literally jumps up and down trying to get your attention. Then, when you want to do something really complex, you just open the console and dump raw data to /dev/cu.infrared or something.

You know when you play a game and you just like the way it feels? The tiny little gameplay tweaks that matter are there and combine to make something better than the whole? Compare Tempest played on a Cab to the crap port to the ST played with an unresponsive Atari joystick. That's a Mac to a PC. Same game, absent feeling.

That is all.

[dtj]

why are macs so goddam expensive???

Because happiness isn't free. Some of us simply drive expensive cars (though that isn't a totally accurate analogy, but it is close). Why bother asking why? As someone said before, it is all about the experience.

[skab]

1. You can't send the "exact same instruction stream" down both pipes, because the G4 needs a lot more instructions to do the same work. The stream sent down the G4 pipe should be 3 times longer than the P4 one, and thats being generous.

Ah, the CISC vs. RISC myth. Sorry to burst your bubble, but there is no CISC anymore. Even your x86 CPUs are now RISC inside. They interpret the CISC instructions and translate them into microcode, and that's the code that's put into those pipelines. And this is one reason why those CPUs are so huge and energy-consuming, it's actually a fast core running a virtual machine. And if that code for the virtual machine is good enough, this concept is surprisingly fast.

That was the idea behind the Transmeta CPUs, to actually just build that RISC core and write that CISC-to-RISC interpreter in "real" software, that's updateable, can optimize on the fly and a lot more.

4. So, the G4 is far more efficient cos it has a small pipeline. This obviously doesn't apply to the G5, then, which has a bigger pipeline...

This already didn't apply to the later G4 revisions (600MHz and more) which had a far longer pipeline to reach those higher MHz numbers that marketing needed