My question: Why does such a relatively trivial topic (we are talking about what preference in computers people have by the way...) has mustered such intense responses. I really don't understand it. I could see if we were arguing about religion, drugs, or politics, but we are talking about what type of computer people want to use.
Of course hardware guys aren't interested in blank boxes. Something on a mac breaks, you either have to do a serious job, or send it to apple, or take it to a "genius" bar. A+ don't mean a thing with macs. And increasingly, they're totally sealed and impossible to work on. So of course your hardware friends don't like em. I'm a hardware guy. I'm also a linux geek. Mac's are fucking great, I just personally don't have the money to pay for fancy UNIX, when there's lots of free UNIX/linux and many more kernels to choose from. And if I wanted, I could run OSX on my PC. I just don't care that much. But for most people, it's UNIX that just goes, while the free distributions are NOT polished enough for most casual users, in my opinion, at least without first being custom set up by a geek. If I had money to burn I'd love a brand new mac for school.
Computers are a large monetary investment, and where many people spend a very good amount of their time. How well one works and how comfortable you can be with it means a lot. Also, for many (such as me) they're a hobby, love, and habit.... In a rather similar way to cars for some others.
Maybe it's because I live in a relatively poor area of Canada, if I spent 5 large on a mac pro I'd be the laughingstock of my peers. Truth is I despise status symbol zombies. The kind of person who drops 5 grand on a desktop is typically the kind of person who has no idea what to do with it. the same type of person who buys a Hummer SUV for suburban commuting. Mac products are status like cars and clothing for asshole consumer whores. Their "I'm the shit" attitude is as despicable as it is laughable.
I agree. But some of the responses (especially directed at you for some reason, which is odd since your responses seem most knowledgeable, but I digress...) seem incredibly hostile. I can understand wanting to discuss the issue to come to a consensus but the tone that some of the people are using in this thread makes it seem like they are debating Capital Punishment or Abortion. I guess if someone spends so much time/money on an investment and in this thread, their CHOICE is ridiculed, then it is a direct attack on their ego, which would provoke a form of Narcissistic Rage.
For creative things, I just love how it works, I been a PC user for 17 years, and when i bought my mac last year it was very hard to get used to, but I just felled in love with it. It's very different but good at the same time. NO viruses which is a bonus
You make three mistakes with this argument. Your first is that you would be ridiculed for being a status symbol zombie. Doesn't it seem a tad ironic that your only reason for not buying one is that people would laugh, but you're also ridiculing people who factor in the opinions of others when spending money? The second is that there's plenty more options than a 5k mac pro, lots of very capable and economic macs. How about a mac mini? The third is that macs are in no way comparable to hummers..... If you spend more money on a hummer you get a penis enlargement with plastic junk all over it, and tiny windows, that has no REAL offroad capabilities, with fake armor plate. If you buy a mac, you get made fun of, it's like a penis reduction, if anything.... There's this attack that's existed as long as mac vs. windows, that people buy macs to brag and feel special. The opposite is true, you buy a mac because you know what you want in a computer, knowing that you'll have to constantly defend your choice to buy a more capable computer for it's beautifully designed operating system.
My ONLY reason for not buying one? Ridicule would be on the bottom of a long list of reasons! Mac Mini? How about I install OSX86 on this computer I built for under $100, oh wait, did that for a gag already. Macaroons don't buy macs and consider ridicule from real tech heads who've been building their own PC's for the past 30 years or more. They buy Macs for acceptance of other macaroon consumer whores, elitist, wannabes and such. Sure, not everyone wants to build their own computer and that's fine but don't act like a hardware guru when a phillips wasn't even involved in your setup.
You did not build a computer with anywhere near the capabilities of a mac mini for 100 dollars. Not even with used parts. You sound like the exact reverse of your "macaroons". You ridicule macs while having very little understanding of what a mac even is or what it does, or why anyone would want one, for the acceptance of your windoze "gurus". There's plenty of pretty serious hardcore guys who've been using macs for just as long..... I don't know if it's really done or doable since the osx86 switch, but on PPC there was a long tradition of fucking soldering resisters (or, for bonus hardcore points, a block of switches to allow rapid switching between resistors and paths) onto your logic board to overclock, of hacking all sorts of unsupported hardware in, etc. Stop projecting the reasons you'd buy a mac onto real mac owners. I guess anyone who buys anything but a shitty GM car is just looking for kudos from other people who own nice cars, too. Can probly also find a chevy chevet down the block for a hundred bucks, or not much more, and brag that you drag it with the big boys, nevermind how fast you do (or don't) go. (or how much falls off the thing every time you touch it) And if you buy anything but fruit of the loom, you're just looking for kudos for other rich losers who buy nice comfortable clothes. Real shirt gurus just duct tape up some used grease rags, anyway.... shirt for under ten cents.
LOL, panties bunch much? Seriously I can hardly make any sense of your post! I get most of my hardware free, no I don't buy new crap. I go to the computer shops I do work for and have a look through their stack of mobos and cards. Many just need a few caps replaced. Back when we were overclocking boards it was for gaming, what the hell did people even do with PPC Mac's back then?? I honestly have no idea whatsoever. What the hell were Mac fans doing in 95 when we were installing DOS soundblaster drivers and playing Duke 3D beta? We had a bunch of mac's in our service tech course and I remember being surprised how absolutely unpopulated their mobo's were, G4 or G5 Motorola boards, I can't remember now. Absolutely nothing to those things back then. We had some older G3's or something inside CRT monitors we couldn't even give those things away. Oh yeah we got a new P4 20" imac while I was there with a fucking dead pixel smack in the middle of the screen from factory and Apple wouldn't replace it. First project i had to do with it, the damn thing crashed on me within 10 minutes. Anyway, go have love for Mac "guru's" who cluelessly inherited pentium X86 architecture after us old PC guys who have been investing in it for 20+ years... yay, you paid premium dollars for high polish Linux, pat yourselves on the back.
Oooooh, you played with a BIOS tool/jumper block. So do I. You need a history lesson. There's always been a lot of dedicated studios producing mac games. One of these studios was Bungie, which microsoft acquired out of spite. Bungie was pissed off enough to release all the code prior to that as open source, and it's now known as marathon. This is why halo 1 released for mac-it was in the works, and m$ bought the company out from under it. This is, of course, what made the xbox a success at all.... but also related to PC gaming (halo 1 for mac and/or PC is one of the better games out there, still) Exactly what hardware do you think mac people just jumped on? A CPU? PCI was on macs, PCIE was on macs, VGA was on macs, all the other accessories and hardware was on macs, etc..... Apple has been heavily involved in the development of all sorts of things, including firewire (and possibly other SCSI type busses. and maybe USB.... not sure about that one) other than the CPU/chipset I can't see what you think macs now have that they didn't. And yeah, the PPC chips had different looking boards-they're different chips..... I'm sorry you had shitty luck with a mac that might or might not have existed. How do you think buying used parts makes PC's cheaper? people of the type that you seem to think all mac users are often buy new PC's worth fractions of what they pay, simply because they can't build it with NEW parts. Most of them don't own soldering irons, and don't know what a cap is. I don't think the fact that you're comfortable with hardware and know people with crap laying around means anything about most mac or PC users, who have no interest in that stuff. People have long bought mac parts and jammed things together, too, but that has nothing to do with most computer users. As for PC hardware, my top of the line (in it's day) BFG 7950gt OC just took a shit and died. Artifacts like a bitch, and hangs the whole machine if it goes out of VGA compatability mode. I'm currently typing from my 2005 iMac G5, hauled out of retirement (yet again) so that I can get my work done/get online. Still running like a champ. By your logic, doesn't this mean I "built" a mac for the price of "free"? As I understand it, BFG's out of the graphics business, and my "lifetime" warranty don't mean shit. Awesome. (at least I bought the card after the 8 series came out, for about a third of it's original value) *edit* did you just say you had a P4 iMac? Please, tell me more....
SCSI interface originated from the Xerox company in the late 70's. I got my first CD burner in 95, it was a Sony SCSI drive and I was running a 486 VLB system at that time, 16MB of ram I believe. USB was a joint venture developed by PC company's such as IBM, Intel and Microsoft. Apple and Sony developed firewire mainly for video camera interfacing. Intel Core 2 or whatever, their all Pentium architecture, double, quadrupled, sextupled... X-FUCKING-86 architecture that we PC people have been supporting and investing in for over 20 years. So you're welcome!
Umm yeah.... Apple's been working closely with intel for around 12+ years now. That's since the start of P4. Not to mention kicking off microsoft and microsoft's windows, which pushed the x86 CPU. OSX has been parallel from the start, because apple forsaw the demise of PPC for desktop computing. I didn't say SCSI originated with apple, I said they've been involved in it's development. Including firewire, which is related to SCSI and was originally intended as a SCSI replacement, it was intended for internal use only/mostly, in fact. I hope it was a 486 DX? Or else you'd just be a bitch..... I expect you've had a mouse plugged into your PC while you've typed this..... so us mac people would just like you to know that you're welcome.
Taking more credit for and invention Xerox created.... Thank you Xerox for the original THREE button mouse, and optical mouse! Also thanks MS for the scroll wheel, a real improvement.
Yep. And don't forget to thank apple for bringing M$ into existence. Regardless, you wouldn't know what a mouse is if it wasen't for apple. You very well may have never used a computer in your life if it wasen't for apple. Normal people didn't want computers, couldn't use computers, etc. Apple went so far as to name themselves (the macintosh, by apple) after things found in every kitchen, to try to make computers friendly. And they did this, and a good job of it.
LOL, Apple didn't popularize home computers around here, not by a long shot. I had 2 computers by the time the first Macintosh came out. About 9 years before you even existed the Commodore Vic 20 and C64 were the hottest things around here since indoor plumbing. That machine blew my 12 year old mind, over and over and over... graphics, games, sound, music, SPEECH! Oh the day we wrote a random cursing story generator, pissed myself laughing!