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About two months ago, I looked at the cost of the Macintosh relative to Dell PCs and discovered that not only are Macs cheaper than PCs once you upgrade the PCs to rough comparability, but the PC line is narrower than Apple's, with Dell offering nothing to compare to the 17-inch Apple powerbook, the X-serve/RAID combination, or Apple's cinema displays. What seems to happen on pricing is that Apple's inclusion of multimedia capabilities generally missing from the PC skews its price advantage toward the high end.
Re: But There's No Software for the Mac, Right?
Posted by: dogmo1001 2004-11-29 17:38:13 In reply to: Paul Murphy
Paul Murphy's contention that a Dell Dimension 2400 is "a Windows/98 class machine that lacks the processor power and memory needed to run Windows/XP effectively" reveals either a stunning lack of computer savvy or a desire to stack the deck in favor of his argument by simply dissembling. (I'm assuming Murphy was talking about the Dimension 2400. He didn't bother to list a line name -- or even identify it as a desktop machine, despite the fact that immediately above he was comparing Dell and Apple notebooks -- but the facts that he was talking about the bottom of the Dell line and the Dimension 2400 costs about $350 at this writing would suggest it's the target of his misguided derision.)
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For Mr. Murphy's much-needed edification, XP will run quite gracefully in 256 MB of RAM (as the 2400 is equpped out the gate). The Dimension 2400's 2.4 gHz Celeron may not be the first choice of power users and gamers -- but it's entirely adequate to run Windows XP and any mainstream applications.
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In fact, my 500 mHz Pentium III desktop not only runs XP like a champ, but I've used it for years to record multitrack audio. (I switched a small 16 track project studio over from ADATs to computer based recording back in 1996 and I never looked back. In fact, though many Mac evangelists will try to talk around it, prior to OS X Panther, the Mac OS was woefully behind in OS level support for multimedia and MIDI, forcing application designers into a miasma of conflicting third party protocols.) I build the PIII myself but I'm now also running a Dell Centrino laptop with an outboard 10+ channel MOTU Firewire audio interface. Both machines work quite well for audio. Obviously, the Centrino allows more plug-ins and virtual synthesizers.
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There may -- or may not -- be merit in Murphy's main argument -- I haven't investigated it or weighed it. But that comment about the Dimension 2400 was so abusrdly out of line I had to stop and post this message.
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For Mr. Murphy's much-needed edification, XP will run quite gracefully in 256 MB of RAM (as the 2400 is equpped out the gate). The Dimension 2400's 2.4 gHz Celeron may not be the first choice of power users and gamers -- but it's entirely adequate to run Windows XP and any mainstream applications.
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In fact, my 500 mHz Pentium III desktop not only runs XP like a champ, but I've used it for years to record multitrack audio. (I switched a small 16 track project studio over from ADATs to computer based recording back in 1996 and I never looked back. In fact, though many Mac evangelists will try to talk around it, prior to OS X Panther, the Mac OS was woefully behind in OS level support for multimedia and MIDI, forcing application designers into a miasma of conflicting third party protocols.) I build the PIII myself but I'm now also running a Dell Centrino laptop with an outboard 10+ channel MOTU Firewire audio interface. Both machines work quite well for audio. Obviously, the Centrino allows more plug-ins and virtual synthesizers.
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There may -- or may not -- be merit in Murphy's main argument -- I haven't investigated it or weighed it. But that comment about the Dimension 2400 was so abusrdly out of line I had to stop and post this message.
Re: But There's No Software for the Mac, Right?
Posted by: Computer Realist 2004-11-09 21:13:31 In reply to: Paul Murphy
When I initially read the article some immediate questions began to arise since I manage a network of 300+ Macs and 300+ PCs. I have already installed some 17" PC Laptops and that was the first area of concern that the article had no resemblance of truth to it. I then did a quick search online at Dell and HP to compare the cost of 17" notebook computers and found more gapping holes in this article. The list below is strictly based on retail cost and does not even include the much higher education discounts I would get from HP or Dell compared to Apple for these machines. Here is the costs based on a quick scan, the author may want to check to make sure his browser is working properly!
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Apple PowerBook G4
$2,799.00
17-inch TFT Display
1440x900 resolution
1.5GHz PowerPC G4
512K L2 cache
512MB DDR333 SDRAM
80GB Ultra ATA/100
SuperDrive
ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 (64MB DDR)
Gigabit Ethernet
FireWire 400 & 800
AirPort Extreme built-in
DVI & S-Video out
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Compaq nx9500
$1,799
17” TFT Display
1440x900 resolution
3.20GHz Intel Pentium 4 with HT
512K L2 cache
512MB DDR333 SDRAM
80GB Ultra ATA/100
DVD/CD-RW
NVIDIA GeForce FX
Integrated 10/100 Ethernet
IEEE 1394
Integrated 802.11g Wireless
S-Video out
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Dell Inspiron 9200
$2,024
17” TFT Display
1440x900 resolution
1.60GHz Intel Pentium M 725
2MB cache
512MB DDR333 SDRAM
80GB Ultra ATA/100
8X DVD+/-RW
ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 (128MB DDR)
Integrated 10/100 Ethernet
IEEE 1394
Dell Wireless 1350 (802.11g/b)
DVI & S-Video out
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As you can see the prices are much cheaper for the PCs and we can take another 20%-30% of those prices for education discount.
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Apple PowerBook G4
$2,799.00
17-inch TFT Display
1440x900 resolution
1.5GHz PowerPC G4
512K L2 cache
512MB DDR333 SDRAM
80GB Ultra ATA/100
SuperDrive
ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 (64MB DDR)
Gigabit Ethernet
FireWire 400 & 800
AirPort Extreme built-in
DVI & S-Video out
------------------
Compaq nx9500
$1,799
17” TFT Display
1440x900 resolution
3.20GHz Intel Pentium 4 with HT
512K L2 cache
512MB DDR333 SDRAM
80GB Ultra ATA/100
DVD/CD-RW
NVIDIA GeForce FX
Integrated 10/100 Ethernet
IEEE 1394
Integrated 802.11g Wireless
S-Video out
------------------
Dell Inspiron 9200
$2,024
17” TFT Display
1440x900 resolution
1.60GHz Intel Pentium M 725
2MB cache
512MB DDR333 SDRAM
80GB Ultra ATA/100
8X DVD+/-RW
ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 (128MB DDR)
Integrated 10/100 Ethernet
IEEE 1394
Dell Wireless 1350 (802.11g/b)
DVI & S-Video out
------------------
As you can see the prices are much cheaper for the PCs and we can take another 20%-30% of those prices for education discount.
Re: But There's No Software for the Mac, Right?
Posted by: Paul_Murphy 2004-11-11 13:43:07 In reply to: Computer Realist
You're right, my browser (Mozilla on Solaris) is unwelcome on HP's site so I never check their prices - but you're dead wrong on the Dell Inspiron.
<P>
First, that's been introduced since the article was published so your comments about me don't apply. Your comments about price don't either. If you check the PCMac release review (http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1683232,00.asp ) dated 10.25.04; you'll see that they give the list price as $2,825 - more than the highest list you could find on Apple's site.
<P>
More to the point, try to configure it for rough comparability to the Apple product and you get a higher number. A very quick first pass gives $3,546 - check my site: http://www.winface.com/inspiron.pdf for the detailed dell pricing. That's probably plus or minus a hundred bucks, but makes my point because it's about $600-800 more than Apple - and for a slower, more limited, machine.
<P>
First, that's been introduced since the article was published so your comments about me don't apply. Your comments about price don't either. If you check the PCMac release review (http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1683232,00.asp ) dated 10.25.04; you'll see that they give the list price as $2,825 - more than the highest list you could find on Apple's site.
<P>
More to the point, try to configure it for rough comparability to the Apple product and you get a higher number. A very quick first pass gives $3,546 - check my site: http://www.winface.com/inspiron.pdf for the detailed dell pricing. That's probably plus or minus a hundred bucks, but makes my point because it's about $600-800 more than Apple - and for a slower, more limited, machine.
Re: But There's No Software for the Mac, Right?
Posted by: Suspicious 2004-11-05 11:06:32 In reply to: Paul Murphy
As a Mac person who works intimately with MS products at work (hint, hint), this is a good article about issues alot of Wintel PC folks rarely think about.
However, there are some key SW issues that are sort of glossed over in this article:
- Some of the holes in Mac SW availability are very large and significant. Many functional areas (albeit often niche) have no Mac eqivalent. Not all SW is usable via emulation.
- The Mac development environment isn't nearly as well supported, funded and documented as MS. The amount of dev support tools and documentation in the MS world his impressive, even if it makes for mediocre SW. I don't think Apple has anything comparable to MSDN (the free version).
- Remote Desktop Connection aka Terminal Services in the MS world is easy to use, ubiquitous and very powerful. The Mac equivalent is much more difficult to install and use. Apple has something similar, but not nearly as seamless. Of course I believe MS mostly stole this from Citrix, but it's still really good.
- Unix freeware is not that much of an advantage when measured against the mountain of Win-based freeware and much Unix freeware can also be used on Wintel or been ported.
However, there are some key SW issues that are sort of glossed over in this article:
- Some of the holes in Mac SW availability are very large and significant. Many functional areas (albeit often niche) have no Mac eqivalent. Not all SW is usable via emulation.
- The Mac development environment isn't nearly as well supported, funded and documented as MS. The amount of dev support tools and documentation in the MS world his impressive, even if it makes for mediocre SW. I don't think Apple has anything comparable to MSDN (the free version).
- Remote Desktop Connection aka Terminal Services in the MS world is easy to use, ubiquitous and very powerful. The Mac equivalent is much more difficult to install and use. Apple has something similar, but not nearly as seamless. Of course I believe MS mostly stole this from Citrix, but it's still really good.
- Unix freeware is not that much of an advantage when measured against the mountain of Win-based freeware and much Unix freeware can also be used on Wintel or been ported.
Re: But There's No Software for the Mac, Right?
Posted by: masonmcd 2004-11-08 13:58:15 In reply to: Suspicious
Note that apple's developer website equivalent to MSDN http://developer.apple.com/referencelibrary/ has a google driven search that's absolutely kick a**. It's also well organized, and has the spit and polish apple is known for.
Kick around a bit on the site, and sign up. It's free!
Kick around a bit on the site, and sign up. It's free!
Re: But There's No Software for the Mac, Right?
Posted by: dewasa 2004-11-06 12:35:55 In reply to: Suspicious
"The amount of dev support tools and documentation in the MS world his impressive, even if it makes for mediocre SW. I don't think Apple has anything comparable to MSDN (the free version)"
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Every Mac sold today comes with Xcode, Apple's industrial-strength multi-language IDE. Try it--you'll like it. And, online membership in the Apple Developer Connectio (ADC) is free.
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"Remote Desktop Connection aka Terminal Services in the MS world is easy to use, ubiquitous and very powerful"
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Guess what? MS has exactly the same available for Mac OS X. It's freeware! It provides the full functionality that the PC version does. Imagine that...
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"Unix freeware is not that much of an advantage when measured against the mountain of Win-based freeware"
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Except that the UNIX software is mostly open source, unlike the products available for Windows. I urge you to become better informed about the world outside of Windows.
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Every Mac sold today comes with Xcode, Apple's industrial-strength multi-language IDE. Try it--you'll like it. And, online membership in the Apple Developer Connectio (ADC) is free.
--
"Remote Desktop Connection aka Terminal Services in the MS world is easy to use, ubiquitous and very powerful"
--
Guess what? MS has exactly the same available for Mac OS X. It's freeware! It provides the full functionality that the PC version does. Imagine that...
--
"Unix freeware is not that much of an advantage when measured against the mountain of Win-based freeware"
--
Except that the UNIX software is mostly open source, unlike the products available for Windows. I urge you to become better informed about the world outside of Windows.
Re: But There's No Software for the Mac, Right?
Posted by: garywade 2004-11-06 09:39:26 In reply to: Suspicious
As a software developer who has used Apple's documentation and Microsoft's documentation, I can attest to the fact that MSDN is hardly any better than reading undocumentated headers. The search features work so poorly that it's much easier to spend the hour or so to browse through the material than to enter a query and find you're looking at material that has nothing to do with what you want, or, worse, you're only presented with Visual Basic or C# articles when you want to find articles on C (there's no way to filter this...I've spent more than enough time trying).
As for software development tools, MS Visual Studio is practically impossible when trying to do debugging when you get used to doing it with great products like Metrowerks CodeWarrior, which is mult-platform in all senses of that word.
Although some big-named software products may still do cross-compilation, a number of the big-named cross-platform products have given up on using such tools in favor of native tools like CodeWarrior.
For Apple software development documentation, one just has to go to developer.apple.com to find online documentation that makes buying a book superfluous. Any funding or impressiveness of Microsoft's documentation and tools is akin to how many products there are for the Windows platform...lots of stuff but mostly garbage.
As for software development tools, MS Visual Studio is practically impossible when trying to do debugging when you get used to doing it with great products like Metrowerks CodeWarrior, which is mult-platform in all senses of that word.
Although some big-named software products may still do cross-compilation, a number of the big-named cross-platform products have given up on using such tools in favor of native tools like CodeWarrior.
For Apple software development documentation, one just has to go to developer.apple.com to find online documentation that makes buying a book superfluous. Any funding or impressiveness of Microsoft's documentation and tools is akin to how many products there are for the Windows platform...lots of stuff but mostly garbage.
Re: But There's No Software for the Mac, Right?
Posted by: craigpugsley 2004-11-05 01:26:19 In reply to: Paul Murphy
I think it needs to be said that Paul Murphy's series of articles exposing the true Mac / Wintel divide are insighful in the extreme. This is journalism in its purest form: an author who knows his subject, has experience in both sides of the argument, and can articulate the differentiators effectively.
A wonderful series of articles. However, with the States proving recently that people really don't seem to see a good alternative when they see it, could all this pro-Mac talk be a moot point?
A wonderful series of articles. However, with the States proving recently that people really don't seem to see a good alternative when they see it, could all this pro-Mac talk be a moot point?
