Yes, there are cheaper Intel machines, but they vary in internal chip sets within a single model (making corporate support extremely difficult and expensive), and are made with cheaper components, and larger form factors.

2) Macs are uniformly cheaper to run. In GOD we trust – all others bring data. I would think that over 262,000 desktops and years worth of detailed cost data tracking, there would be little room to argue with overwhelming data reflecting Macs being a fraction of the cost of ownership of a PC. If you still want to argue it, I would love to meet you GOD.

3) Openness is in the data, not the hardware. Hardware is a miniscule fraction of the cost and value of the data, and if that data is in non-portable formats, you pay the price (ever had an Outlook proprietary database go corrupt – the loss is immense and most of the time, unrecoverable.)

Before you accuse me of being a mac Fanboy, please note that I was one of the original development team members for the IBM PC AND I co-founded the world’s first Mac user group, so I have a history in both camps, arguably the longest of any person with both.

My Mac friends require nearly zero support time; my Windows friends require lots. Maybe it is the friends, but I think not.

Eventually design and manufacturing improved enough that cars have instead largely become reliable enough that it’s not worth learning how to maintain them. Cost has come down. Not wholly a good thing, but once the family had a car. Now each member of the family has a car. Again, you can see that trend with computers, and the shift to the personal laptop.

As for upgrading – look at what machines sell these days. It’s laptops, not desktops. And it’s cheap low-spec laptops at that. Who upgrades their graphics card these days? If you think that’s important you don’t understand the mindset of most people. And I say that as someone who has spent years at the high end of the PC market, and upgraded every machine I’ve owned with new memory, GPU, and larger hard disks . . . and still give tech support to family and friends. And only ONE of them has ever asked me about upgrading their machine, rather than replacing it.

As for the comments you received – Seadragon is mindblowing, Surface less so – at first it appears to be a giant iPhone, capable of recognising anything placed on it – the more you read, the more it’s almost literally smoke and mirrors. It’s worked with articles saying that Microsoft ‘beat’ Apple in delivering multi-touch, even though the iPhone was at the same ‘demo’ point at the start of 2007. (And yes, of course neither company invented it).

And yes, it’s backward compatibility that holds Windows back. That, and the fact that the best developers at MS are working on things that excite them like language design, the CLR/DLR, etc. Yet with Fusion/Parallels third party developers have shown that you can transparently have ‘backward compatibility’ from OS X to XP.
MS should really have taken the same approach – a new OS designed for first-class support of .NET 3.0, security, stability, and 64-bit multi-core machines – and running legacy apps in sandboxes. That’s the kind of thing that would motivate the bright minds who can pick and choose their jobs. I wonder how much Apple will start to suffer this now that OS X is largely ‘done’? Which project would you rather have been working on – the iPhone or Leopard? What would the team who originated NextStep/Cocoa do if they were to start again from scratch, as MS did with .NET?

And yes . . . Macs ARE ideal for people who do web surfing, email, uploading photos, producing nice documents and presentations – that’s the mainstream consumer market. Why use something more complicated than you need?

wataru

Ah, the delicious irony… Claiming that you can’t add a new video card to a Mac while calling Mac users clueless :-)

@Ewen – Mate, you look like an idiot – don’t you know that Mac OS X *is* UNIX? As in, fully compliant, POSIX compatible, certified UNIX?

@Stevie – Apple is not a platform. Mac OS X is a platform. The iPhone is a different, albeit related, platform. Mac OS X is, as mentioned above, not only an open platform, it is an Open Source platform based on Darwin, Apple’s BSD UNIX layer. It complies with every international standard for operating systems. It includes as standard a huge number of free (non-Apple) open source software, like Apache, Konqueror, PHP, Ruby, Python… Have a look into it.
As for your other point, look, when Macs were running on G3 and early G4 processors, until around 1999, these processors were indeed provably faster than the Intel line at the time. This did not remain the case: Intel pushed clock speed at the expense of all else in their competition with AMD, and prevailed. The IBM/Motorola PowerPC got left in the dust. Apple recognised this, and made the right decision to switch camps. The Core 2 is a fantastic chip, far superior to earlier Pentiums. Get over it. Are you just pissed that Apple survived? You should have bought stock when they were at $40.

@Ted Brunner – The Mac does indeed have a completely different model of mouse movement than Windows. It is difficult to argue that one is superior to the other, they are suitable for different things. With screen sizes and resolutions growing Apple’s implementation may well turn out to be a better idea. If it causes you pain, try using the mose a bit more slowly. What you have is known as muscle memory, your eye acquires a target and your hand automatically tries to hit it. With the different tracking algorithm, you miss and experience frustration. This is perfectly understandable. It may take a few months before you learn to automatically compensate.

Macs are not for everyone, maybe not even for most people. What they are is the result of an independent path of evolution from Windows, and that is a good thing to have from anyone’s point of view. What if Microsoft disappeared tomorrow? (Don’t say it couldn’t happen, look at Enron). The fact is, for many people, Macs are a superior choice. Maybe not for you, if you have an investment in Windows. Don’t take it personally. And get your facts straight.

Seriously, applications is one area where Windows can compete with the number, but not with the quality available on Macs.

Check out sites like macupdate.com to see what’s available.

But that’s the thing. Windows has *lots* of applications, but we Mac developers *really care* about our apps, so in actual fact, they tend to be better than their Windows equivalents *particularly* in terms of usability.

Also, because Mac software shops are typically quite small (and many of the best bits of software are developed by “indie” developers, who are either on their own or run very small companies), you’ll find that we tend to have a much more open attitude about end user suggestions, not to mention better technical support (since you often end up talking to the developers, not some moron in a call centre who only wants to follow his or her script regardless of what you say).

Of course, there are some good Windows apps. There’s no denying that. But I think the average quality is higher on Mac OS X right now.

Don’t let the idiots bother you and continue to use what you want to use.

I run Windows natively using BootCamp. Works like a dream.

–

Not true, the dev tools are free with OS X. Free.

The word is ‘their’, not ‘there’. Not much hope for a font maker that can’t spell.

A MAC is a hardware address. The word I think you’re looking for is ‘Mac’. As in ‘Macintosh’. If you can’t get that right you just come off as an idiot.

–

OS X is based on UNIX; Apple finally gave it up to an established system.
–

You mean, Apple chose to use open standards instead of forcing their own crappy formats on people like MS does.
–

IF you want to see how OS are really doing where it counts look at the server market. Which OS is fading away and which is coming on stronger every day?
Why do so many servers use the Microsoft OS if it is so bad?
–

They don’t, Apache is the most common web server – by far.

It sounds like you’re sorely misinformed. Please don’t show your idiocy on public web sites, it reflects badly on the intelligent Windows users out there.