
Mac Versus PC Debate Has Never Been Clearer  - ExJournalist
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/23/the-mac-versus-pc-debate-has-never-been-clearer/
======
unknownmat
"...that’s why Microsoft’s recent Laptop Hunter commercials really never made
a lot of sense. ... people who are shopping for computers where price is the
key factor, were never going to buy Macs anyway..."

It perplexes me that Apple products sell as well as they do. I find Apple's
value proposition to be questionable. For example, compare an iPod to just
about any comparable media player, or a Mac to a comparable PC (in terms of HW
power).

I think Microsoft is very smart to point this out, as I do not think this
perception has reached the general public. Also, there's a line in the
commercial like, "I guess I'm not cool enough to be a Mac person." A clever
way for Microsoft to imply that Mac owners are paying extra for the Apple
image. This is also an idea that I do not think has really reached the general
public.

~~~
roc
The difference: when my iphone's mic inexplicably died, the apple store just
replaced the unit. I swung by a store, they confirmed the broken hardware,
grabbed a new device, swapped the sim card and i went home and restored from
my backup. it took 10 minutes in the store and 10 more at home.

when my 360 died, microsoft left it up to their partner (best buy). who
hassled me about their absurd return policy despite my having purchased their
extended service plan that clearly covered the situation. after a frustrating
experience that required forty-five minutes of my time and escalation past the
first tier of management, i did get new hardware.

I then got home and found out that the XBox Live content i'd purchased was
tied to my old (now-dead) hardware. If i didn't have an active internet
connection, it couldn't be used on the new hardware. Most times I'm connected,
so it wasn't a -huge- deal -- but it still bit me in the ass a few times until
Microsoft released their fix for the DRM situation (18 months later).

To sum-up: the value Apple offers isn't in the hardware specs. It's in the
single point of responsibility, excellent customer service and lack of
bullshit.

I don't know a single person who fits the straw man of 'buying apple to be
cool'. Everyone I actually know who owns apple products switched out of sheer
frustration with the Microsoft model of eighteen levels of indirection and
blame game nonsense whenever anything goes wrong.

------
Tichy
Last time I looked almost all non-Mac high-end PCs suffered from
"Klavierlack"-Syndrome. I don't know how it translates into english, but it is
that cheesy shiny coating.

There are competitors who can create good high end PCs, but at the moment they
suffer from a severe case of bad taste. Maybe most producers being Asian
doesn't help either - nothing against them, just the tastes seem to be
different.

~~~
papersmith
Being Asian myself, I concur that we tend to have questionable tastes. It
probably has something to do with the cultures going through an identity
crisis.

This is most pronounced in car designs. Japanese and Korean cars designs
generally look like they are "trying too hard", especially in the recent years
in their high-end models. Maybe they are going for the funky-factor of the
ricers, I don't know. British, Italian, and French cars usually look the least
desperate. German and American cars are somewhere in the middle. Just my
opinion.

~~~
plinkplonk
"Being Asian myself, I concur that we tend to have questionable tastes. "

Being Asian myself, I concur we have _different_ tastes. ;-)

Most Asian cultures(Japanese, Indian etc)have their own aesthetic
sensibilities. I concur that they are different from the "default" western
sense of style. I just don't think it is true Asians have "questionable"
taste!

NB: I am not getting into culture wars etc or claiming victimization etc, I
just think that sentence is not true.

~~~
papersmith
I probably should've written a disclaimer as to indicate my opinion. :)

To be more specific, perhaps I should've emphasized that "modern" Asian
cultures have questionable tastes, which is in direct contrast to traditional
Asian sensibilities. I feel that modern Asian cultures are too busy imitating
what's trendy in the west. It doesn't help the fact that instability of the
past century made people lose faith in their indigineous cultures, while the
western culture has evolved quite a bit since to adapt to changes of the
world, thus leaving a big gap to catch up.

I'd venture that the vast portion of the old Asian cultures are appreciated
now-a-days merely for their exotic aspects, even by Asian people themselves.
Whatever is preserved for practical reasons don't always fit in a coherent
manner, there are plenty of rough edges to work out.

I guess a bad analogy would be that Asian culture is like Unix, Apple is
Europe, Windows is USA, China is BSD, and Japan is Ubuntu. The kernel is the
philosophy, command line is the traditional culture, GUI is the pop culture,
and the internet is globalization. Windows eventually took over and became
more accessible over time with its killer GUI apps. For the time being, Unix
lacks the ecosystem to build killer GUI apps, so they created Wine to run
Windows apps. There are also plenty of native Unix GUI apps that sprang up,
but most are created in response to their existing commercial counterparts,
and many of their GUIs are imitations. FreeBSD has been around for a while,
went through several regime changes, and is still kinda authoritarian with its
userland programs. Ubuntu is later to the game, has the most success in
adapting to modern GUI needs, but there's still some distance to go to catch
up to Apple and perhaps Windows. Even though Unix is weak in GUI stuff, it's
strong as servers, especially since the internet became popular.

Sorry about the silly analogy, perhaps I need to take a nap. :)

------
rythie
I think it's pretty clear if you want something without the viruses/spyware
and is less annoying you get a Mac, as long as you can afford it. If you are
short for money you end up on a Windows PC. Or at least that is perception
amongst the general public.

I don't think Apple have any interest in selling something at lower price
points, because like Sony, Porsche etc. their brand is of a better quality
product which of course should cost more.

SGI, Sun, HP all used to sell high end workstations at the top the market
(~2-20x more than what Apple charged at the time) - that market got eaten by
PCs when they couldn't differentiate anymore. Unlike those high end machines,
Apple has no performance advantage over PCs. Apple's only real difference is
the OS.

Apple's emerging threat is Linux/Open Source, which has many of the same
advantages OS X over Windows does and of course was good enough for Apple to
take a kernel, browser and printing system from. Linux/Open Source doesn't
have to be better than OS X - it just has to be better than Windows and good
enough that people don't want to spend extra on a Mac.

Edit: this is classic "The Innovator's Dilemma":
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disruptive_technology>

~~~
smokinn
That's probably never going to happen though.

Another big reason why Apple fans pay a premium is for the seamless
integration experience that doesn't make you think. Since Apple controls 100%
of the hardware it can ensure that there are never any problems like x drivers
that crash randomly and take your system down.

Linux will always be oriented towards the hobbyist type that, when things
break down, opens up the box and tinkers inside. Linux can't control the
hardware it's deployed on so it'll always be at a massive disadvantage.

~~~
rythie
I used a Windows XP laptop for the first time in ages yesterday, it struck me
just how cumbersome that is compared to Linux. This is the process I saw:

I inserted a USB thumb drive, it asked me if I want to install something or
other, giving some warning that Microsoft hadn't approved it or something.
Then I plugged in a mouse - it did the same thing. Then I started Office and
again with something about installing and then asked my name. Even that
process is simplified since someone had already installed/bought Office which
doesn't normally come with as full version on most machines nowadays.

To do the same on a fresh install of Ubuntu I just plug in the USB stick and
double click - I never get asked anything.

I would say Ubuntu is already better than Windows XP.

~~~
zimbabwe
There's a chance Ubuntu is better than the years-old operating system. I've
had Ubuntu driver issues with all three of my attempted installs, but if I
hadn't had those issues I might prefer it to Windows XP for some things.

That said, Windows 7 (and even most of Windows Vista) is more polished than
Ubuntu in its current state, and its plug-and-play is much better.

~~~
rythie
If Windows 7 is as good as people say that it's self would take a cut into
Apple's products.

~~~
zimbabwe
*its, not it's. :-)

Windows 7 isn't mindblowing. I actually dislike a lot about it. Microsoft
doesn't have a clue regarding their design.

That said, when you plug in a mouse it works without complaining. My point was
that the specific gripe ("Windows XP has a lot of noise") was taken care of in
Vista and is now fairly polished for Windows 7.

------
lutorm
The Porsche/Camry analogy is slightly flawed, because it doesn't take into
account the effect of OS adoption and app availability.

It's more like the choice between a hydrogen Porsche and a gas Camry. In that
case, even if Porsche are content to sell a few, high-margin vehicles, they
will have to worry about whether the model is sustainable given that if
customers can't find a place to fill it up, they're not going to buy one no
matter how nice they are.

~~~
potatolicious
But there _are_ places to fill it up. A common sentiment I run into when I
tell people that I use a Mac is that people seem to think they can't do the
same things on a Mac that they already do on a PC.

Hell, most people don't even know MS Office exists on the Mac.

In fact, after using a Mac for 3 years now I have to say that for a lot of
day-to-day tasks, Mac apps beat Windows apps hands down. FTP? Use Cyberduck,
it's infinitely superior to any free FTP client on Windows. IM? Adium is
classier than any of the all-in-one clients on Windows (including Pidgin). I
can go on...

The point is, whatever you used to do on Windows can all be done on a Mac
(save for a few domain-specific things like drafting or gaming). And the
difference is, Mac developers actually give a damn about UI, which is a lot
more than can be said for most Windows apps.

P.S. Whoever decided that unlabeled, nondescript, 16x16 icons lined up in
multiple rows at the top of the screen is good for usability needs a serious
reality check.

~~~
jerf
"Adium is classier than any of the all-in-one clients on Windows (including
Pidgin)."

Adium and Pidgin both use libpurple, the same IM backend. If you want to talk
about design aesthetic differences between open source and the Mac ecosystem,
it's probably the definitive example.

~~~
potatolicious
That's my point precisely - Adium doesn't _do_ anything that Pidgin cannot,
but the UI between the two apps is worlds apart. IMHO it's the classic example
of the failing of open source - too much functionality, no way for the layman
to get to them.

~~~
lamnk
Except the shiny icons and Aqua, i don't see much difference in UI between
Pidgin and Adium. Correct me if i'm wrong but from what i see, Adium is just
Pidgin "localized" for Mac.

------
robotron
Wow, if you actually look at the hardware is it really that high-end?

~~~
thomaspaine
It wasn't the hardware the convinced me to buy a mac, it was OS X. A company I
interned at lent me a powerbook, and after about a week of using it I had
basically stopped using my thinkpad altogether. The user experience of windows
XP always felt super clunky and glued together after that.

Also, OS X was my first real exposure to working in a unix based environment.
Some people may disagree, but I discovered a definite preference for working
in unix/linux. I eventually replaced the OS on my old desktop with Ubuntu,
which is nice, but it's still hard for me to imagine a non-technical person
like my girlfriend using Ubuntu. However, my girlfriend has switched over to
OS X as well, and is much happier than when she was on windows xp. I guess I
see OS X as basically being a linux distro with an excellent user experience.

Of course, your mileage may differ.

~~~
pavel_lishin
I didn't mind the user experience of XP; in fact, there are a lot of things I
still prefer in Windows over OS X.

However, the BSD back-end of OS X has completely sold me on mac laptops as a
work machine forever. (I know I can install Cygwin, or switch to an actual
linux desktop, but those are the things that feel clunky and glued together to
me.)

------
kaiserama
I think the author spun his article with the concept that a Mac is 'better'.
In my opinion the real point of the article should have been that Apple is
branding their products as 'premium'. Just like anything in life just because
someone has branded themselves as 'premium' certainly does not preclude the
possibility there is something better out there. In fact I think Lenovo
markets their laptops in a similar way by catering to the business user. It
isn't to say Dell/HP don't make a products that can easily compete with a
ThinkPad, it's just that when you think of a 'business' laptop Lenovo wants
you to think of a ThinkPad.

Having said that I own a ThinkPad W500 and a Macbook and think both have
strong/weak points, but given a choice of only having one I would probably
stick with the Macbook, simply because I can do anything I need to with it (a
la bootcamp).

------
anigbrowl
"Things are more like they are today than they have ever been before."

There are only two considerations, really: do you (or the end user you are
helping) prefer OS X or Windows, and are your skills/available time
competitive with the Apple hardware premium?

The 'debate' consists of large numbers of people insisting that their answers
to the foregoing questions are somehow 'objective'. They're not. If I won the
lotto tomorrow I'd buy the most expensive G5 and install Windows 7 on it.

~~~
philwelch
That'd be quite the trick, since the G5 was a PowerPC box that hasn't been
sold for years, and Windows 7 only runs on x86.

~~~
anigbrowl
I are l33t hax0r.

Seriously, silly me - I meant the top-end Mac Pro with the dual quads etc. I
was thinking of the beautifully engineered case and internals, which I still
associate with the g5.

------
etherael
I'm a little shocked by the continued focus on aesthetics and form rather than
purpose, especially from this particular audience. You guys are typically not
the ignorant masses, who gives a damn what lacquer is used on your notebook,
do you use it so you can sit back and stare longingly at it or so you can
_use_ the thing? Who cares what it looks like!

I recently was given the opportunity as a reward from my employer to name my
next notebook, it could be anything at all, I didn't have any set price limit,
I specifically got asked to just pick whatever would be the "ultimate" in
computing power for me. I had a look at the mbp lines, did a few enquiries on
notebookforums, and ended up with
<http://www.p4laptops.com.au/main/D900F_P4laptops.pdf>

It looks like a big, black laptop, the vast majority of reviews I could find
on it spent about 50% of the article pointing out how it was not very pretty
and size and other form factor related nonsense I didn't care about, then
another 25% raving on about how heavy and loud it is, and then the last 25% of
the article actually examining how the tool performs for it's intended
purpose! Man I hate the world at times, you people are all f*cking crazy. It's
like I bought a fork and spent all my time pointing out how it wasn't very
well chromed and I didn't like the way it sat in my hand, and then just toward
the end there mentioned "but hell, it's really good for picking up food"

Eugh.

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mrkurt
Just so everyone knows, I sold 100% of the PCs in the >$25,001 market.

