
Are MacBooks Just Trendy? - buckpost
http://www.markevanstech.com/2008/03/17/are-macbooks-just-trendy/
======
tx
The author is insane. Why on earth would you want to settle on a old and rusty
Windows-based tool? Just because you're an "average" user you should not be
settling on junk, otherwise an argument can be made for buying a 5 year old
used PCs for $100 on ebay.

For starters, Windows is barely usable on high-DPI screens. Their UIs don't
scale, the graphics does not scale, the font rendering is still tuned for
72dpi.

Second, Windows users automatically get sacks of junkware pre-installed from
"friends from Dell". My Lenovo T60p came with a crippled wireless because of
trial versions of some "protective" software that I had to remove (online
forums were full of cries).

My friend has cut a finger once by touching an edge of a Dell laptop. It
happened 3 years ago and new Inspirons are better. Now he is getting "A
Message from Logitech!" bubble in the corner of his screen every couple of
weeks.

And finally, Windows with is antiquated window management is simply no match
for Mac as far as productivity is concerned.

~~~
noodle
if you need a macbook, or it makes you work better or more efficient, by all
means, buy one. but buying one just because it has more bells and whistles and
looks pretty while you surf the net and you write your school papers is
ridiculous.

the argument that you should always buy top quality of whatever your
purchasing, also, is a pretty insane argument to make.

~~~
tx
Noodle, no pun intended, but _did you read what I wrote_? What bells and
whistles are you referring to? Besides, MacBook is the opposite of "top of the
line" - it's a bare minimum of a computer one needs to care for these days.

Disclaimer: I work on ThinkPads with Linux on them. They're _more_ costly than
MacBooks, this is why I recommend Macbooks: they're well-built, inexpensive,
modern machines that will make you more productive.

Top of the line are MBPs and ThinkPads "P"-series, $1,700+.

~~~
noodle
macbooks might be a standard for web design/development, but its overkill for
grandma down the street who still uses the AOL dialup.

for a niche profession, they can be considered bare minimum, but for
population-at-large, they're pretty fancy.

------
allenbrunson
ARGH. this is SUCH a tiring thing to read, over and over again. as if all us
mac users were all buying computers with the same criteria that a clotheshorse
uses when buying a pair of jeans.

~~~
mixmax
But a lot of mac users ARE buying computers with the same criteria that a
clotheshorse uses when buying a pair of jeans.

I think that there are two groups of mac users, the above mentioned and the
crowd that use it because it is a nice gui on top of a unix based opereating
system, allowing for a lot of control.

The latter, of which you are probably a member, is a minority though. This is
why you have to read about it time and again. For the larger part of the mac
base it is true.

~~~
jcromartie
You're being downvoted, but it's true. Going to the Apple Store here in
Columbia MD makes me kind of ashamed to be a Mac user right now. There are
literally crowds of teenage girls flocking in to dote over how "cute" the
hardware is... and not a whole lot else; both in terms of clients or the
merits they see in Apple products.

It seems like 90% of the Mac user base right now is as clueless as trolls say
they are. This was not the case 5 years ago.

~~~
microcentury
I agree that most non-tech people are much more concerned about form factor. I
recently tried to explain to a colleague why a MacBook Pro is faster than a
MacBook with the same topline specs - his eyes glazed over after about four
seconds, and he said he just 'liked the look' of the black MacBook better. You
have to hand it to their marketing guys - the greatest illustration of their
success is that they've persuaded teenage girls to care at all.

~~~
mixmax
Very accurate comment - and for Apple this is not a bad thing. They have
managed to create brilliant products, and even more brilliant marketing. Their
greatest insight is that for a lot of users a computer is just another gadget,
and they realise that consmuer electronics are sold on looks and lifestyle -
not on technical spec. The real genius, of course, is to tie everything
together so that the teenage girls will have to own both the iphone, the ipod,
the macbook, and whatever else they come up with.

The market is huge - there are a lot more teenage girls out there than there
are hackers...

------
copenja
Are they trendy? Yes.

Are they _just_ trendy? No.

Next question please :)

------
ojbyrne
Attacking anything from Apple is a great way to generate traffic. The site
seems to have done that, since I can't get there to read the story.

I think there are a lot of people who bought macs because they are trendy, but
for me (and probably a lot of other people here) the appeal is that they run
unix with a nice gui.

------
hernan7
Allow me to give my opinion as somebody who always buys the minimum hardware
necessary to barely get by (that is: web browsing, MS Office, maybe running
Cygwin and/or compiling a Java program now and then).

I bought my Macbook last year when Vista was just coming out. Had it been 3
months before, I would have bought an XP machine, no doubt about it. You can
run XP fine on 1/2 GB RAM, which is what I have on my home desktop PC. And,
for me, it was a known quantity. What the heck, I ran Windows ME on my desktop
PC for like 6 years before I upgraded to an XP machine. And that was because I
got the idea of playing with MIDI and audio sequencing.

However, at the time of the Vista release, the consensus seemed to be that 1/2
GB RAM wasn't going to cut it. And at that time, the price difference between
a Mac and a PC with 1 GB RAM was more like $200-$300. And with a Vista machine
you would then have to buy an antivirus, firewall, etc, maybe even a program
for playing DVD's. And who knows if Vista wasn't going to need 2GB anyway. So
I went with the Mac.

Today's situation looks quite different. The $500 Dell has 1GB RAM, which
seems to be enough to run Vista tolerably. So, today I would probably have a
hard time justifying buying the Mac. I could try (Unix underneath, no viruses,
dev tools included) but I don't know if the wife would buy it :-)

Yes, I am ignoring details such as CPU and front bus speeds, web cam, etc. But
as I said, my position is to buy the minimum HW to get by.

(BTW I haven't used Vista yet, and to be honest I'm not looking forward to
it.)

------
rcoder
After several years of using ThinkPads running Linux and BSD for mobile work,
both my X24 and T30 died within a few weeks of each other. I thought about it
for a couple of weeks, then bought a mid-spec MacBook Pro (Core 2 Duo, LED
backlight, okay RAM/HD specs).

It cost about five times as much as I'd ever paid for a laptop, but I haven't
regretted the decision for moment, even though functionally, I don't use it
for much more than I did my old Linux systems. (The only exception for me is
Adobe Lightroom, which by itself had previously been reason enough for me to
keep one Windows desktop machine sitting around.)

Why, after gaining all my hard-earned knowledge and credibility shoving Linux
and BSD onto poorly-supported machines, would I shell out the extra money for
a "trendy" machine? Simple: I got sick and tired of wasting my time trying to
make my f'ing machines _work_.

Instead of fiddling with xorg.conf lines, or downloading proprietary wireless
card firmware, or manually twiddling the list of modules to be loaded and
unloaded on suspend, I have spent the time in which I've owned the MBP
actually _doing work_. That alone is more than worth the difference in price,
especially since that difference actually wasn't very substantial.

------
michaelbuckbee
In the middle of an adoption curve it is hard to tell "trendy" from "gaining
in popularity", but for the reasons that others have already mentioned: unix
roots, stability, ease of use, there are ample "non trendy" reasons for buying
a Mac.

But the MacBook Air is f'ing trendy.

------
alaskamiller
Ladies and gentlemen: you're arguing about buying a computer.

100 monks just died in protest of military crackdown in Tibet. The Feds just
okayed 30 billion dollars of printed money to ensure a big bank stays alive.
Women in Darfur are raped and killed.

Put all this in perspective. You're arguing about computers.

Buy what you need to use, pay the price if you think it's worth that price,
and shop around to get the best value for your dollar. But at the end of the
day: they're computers. Stop indulging in your mindless masturbation.

~~~
jsomers
I don't like this argument. For one you're on "Hacker News," a forum for
hackers who hack with (mostly) computers.

Keep in mind also that a lot of what we regard as essential today, say, the
foundations of computer science (bits, formal language theory, algorithms)
were once the trivial ejaculations of bearded professors in some ivory tower.

We need people dicking around in masturbatory enclaves solving puzzles, just
as we need agitators and activists. I think it's unfair to say one group works
at the expense of the other.

~~~
alaskamiller
Real hackers can use tools at their disposal, they have preferences for a
particular computer but really... does it really take all this effort, blog
posts and commentary for a $1000 dollar computer?

How is this not in any way but masturbatory? Is there any arguments about the
perceptions that exist in either market segment? Any explanation of user
interaction differences? Is there anything relevant for a computer software
developer to chew on and discuss? No. This is a blog post about whether or not
a Macbook it too trendy for web browsing.

I'm not quite sure where you're venturing off to in your last paragraph so
I'll just ignore it.

~~~
jsomers
I just think it's unfair to say something is "masturbatory" when you're using
human life as your measuring stick.

You can't expect everyone to devote themselves to your idea of worthwhile
work, and you shouldn't begrudge their momentary diversions.

I don't begrudge you for closely following an internet comment thread when
there are people suffering.

~~~
alaskamiller
There aren't that many synonyms to masturbatory. And I find it adequate in
using it.

And these posts aren't explaining my expectations, I've already expected
people to focus on dorky and trivial things, but rather pushing my political
agenda.

------
Zak
I like Macs and Thinkpads about equally. Both are expensive compared to the
average Dell, but the difference in quality is obvious the moment you touch
one. If you're replacing your computer yearly, it's probably not worth the
extra cost, but if you carry your laptop around regularly and want it to last
a few years, it's worth it.

~~~
akkartik
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=132056>

------
TrevorJ
Apple is just an example of a company agile enough reinvent or refresh a
product line before it gets to the point that it is no longer "trendy".
Apple's next answer to the laptop may not be called a Macbook, but I think it
will definitely still be a hot item.

------
ericb
Yes. Being virus and spyware free is de rigeur.

------
ideas101
well apple products are most of the time trendy .. for example ipods are just
trendy - there are mp3 players out there in the market which has lot more
features (such as radio, voice recording etc.) than ipod does... so there are
users who look for value (by getting maximum features) and there are others
who just go with the trend (i would call marketing trap). This is the reason
why apple is having hard time in increasing ipod business in value driven
markets like India.

~~~
allenbrunson
this is another oft-repeated misguided statement. yes, you can buy a music
player with more features than an ipod for less money. that's irrelevant. the
reason ipods are popular is because they're fun and easy to use. they give
their owners a warm fuzzy feeling you don't get from the junky pieces of
plastic sold by creative, et al.

the same is true for apple's computers. it's not nearly as easy to switch
computing platforms as it is to switch music players, or else macs would be
even more popular than they are.

~~~
yummyfajitas
> they give their owners a warm fuzzy feeling you don't get from the junky
> pieces of plastic sold by creative, et al.

Warm fuzzy feelings turn into rage and hatred relatively quickly.

My girlfriend: "OMG, a cute engraved ipod! It's so pretty!"

Later: "I can't copy music from your macbook onto my ipod without nuking my
music? But they are both apple! How come your cheap chinese knockoff ipod
works better than the real thing?"

~~~
allenbrunson
yet it's apple that owns something like 80 percent of the portable music
player market, rather than chinese knock-offs. go figure!

~~~
ideas101
macbook does have bells and whistles and stability worth buying ... but not
the ipods but it is so funny that macbooks doesn't have 80% market and ipod
does ....

------
joshwa
YHBT. YHL. HAND.

------
axod
Well I only bought one to be in the "in" crowd. It's actually the worst
computer I've ever used and takes me hours to get anything done. But I suffer
just so that I can be trendy :/

~~~
axod
Am I being downmodded because my sarcasm wasn't obvious enough?... Or just
that it wasn't funny? :/

~~~
kingnothing
I disagree with what you said. If it was sarcasm, it was far too dry for me to
pick up on it.

And, quite frankly, I usually downmod reddit and slashdot style jokes and puns
because I want to help maintain the quality of comments here. I believe that
if we "punish" people for behaving like that, they'll either leave or start
submitting relevant and useful comments; either of which I fully support.

~~~
axod
Point taken, although I think the original article with its title of "Are
macbooks just trendy", was already so idiotic as to not really merit any
serious response.

Shame there is no downmod for articles IMHO.

