So it went live and it got read a few times. About a million times in two days to be exact, the Mac article has already gone down as one of the most popular articles in AT history. I got a lot of people telling me I was Mac-biased, a lot of people telling me I was PC-biased, but I got far more people telling me they liked the article, so I came away pleased.
The top three arguments I got against what I wrote were:
1) My price arguments were wrong.
2) You don't need more than two buttons on a mouse.
3) You didn't mention ________ (fill in the blank with Unix, security, iLife, etc...)
To which I respond:
1) No they're not.
2) Yes you do.
3) I know.
:)
Ok, now to be a little more serious. The price thing I still believe firmly on; while you can spec out a Dell system to easily hit $3000, take a look at our Buyer's Guides and see what type of a system you can get for just $1500. Granted you don't get warranty, an extremely quiet case, etc... but let's be honest, price matters, it matters a lot - that's why there are tons of sub-$1000 PCs out there. Lots of die-hard PC users already think Dell's prices are too high, they aren't going to embrace Apple's. But honestly this doesn't matter as much, as the article wasn't very cost-centric to begin with, I just reiterated an age-old argument which some agree with, some disagree with and others could care less about.
The mouse issue may just be a personal one and I'll leave it at that; most of the article was personal opinion so there's not much more to be said there.
Now the final point is an interesting one, because after all of the emails I got asking why I didn't touch on any number of aspects of OS X I found myself wanting to write a follow-up to the 11,000 word article. I honestly don't have the time to tackle that right now but it's something I may contemplate doing in the future, or maybe I'll just save it for a review of the next iteration of OS X due out next year.
I'm keeping my fingers crossed but it looks like NVIDIA may just come through with a 6800 Ultra DDL for my upcoming Mac GPU roundup. They're saying about a week, we'll see what happens there. I'm still planning a trip to visit ATI's Mac team, but I've yet to hammer out a date as to when, so I'll keep you posted on that as well.
Right now most that's on my plate is PC related, but I'll definitely post anything Mac related as soon as I get word.
I'm still using the G5 by the way, this was posted from it and that article was written on it.
The top three arguments I got against what I wrote were:
1) My price arguments were wrong.
2) You don't need more than two buttons on a mouse.
3) You didn't mention ________ (fill in the blank with Unix, security, iLife, etc...)
To which I respond:
1) No they're not.
2) Yes you do.
3) I know.
:)
Ok, now to be a little more serious. The price thing I still believe firmly on; while you can spec out a Dell system to easily hit $3000, take a look at our Buyer's Guides and see what type of a system you can get for just $1500. Granted you don't get warranty, an extremely quiet case, etc... but let's be honest, price matters, it matters a lot - that's why there are tons of sub-$1000 PCs out there. Lots of die-hard PC users already think Dell's prices are too high, they aren't going to embrace Apple's. But honestly this doesn't matter as much, as the article wasn't very cost-centric to begin with, I just reiterated an age-old argument which some agree with, some disagree with and others could care less about.
The mouse issue may just be a personal one and I'll leave it at that; most of the article was personal opinion so there's not much more to be said there.
Now the final point is an interesting one, because after all of the emails I got asking why I didn't touch on any number of aspects of OS X I found myself wanting to write a follow-up to the 11,000 word article. I honestly don't have the time to tackle that right now but it's something I may contemplate doing in the future, or maybe I'll just save it for a review of the next iteration of OS X due out next year.
I'm keeping my fingers crossed but it looks like NVIDIA may just come through with a 6800 Ultra DDL for my upcoming Mac GPU roundup. They're saying about a week, we'll see what happens there. I'm still planning a trip to visit ATI's Mac team, but I've yet to hammer out a date as to when, so I'll keep you posted on that as well.
Right now most that's on my plate is PC related, but I'll definitely post anything Mac related as soon as I get word.
I'm still using the G5 by the way, this was posted from it and that article was written on it.
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Doc - Monday, October 11, 2004 - link
Interesting article. Generally well balanced. I have four comments:The price issue is mentioned with the usual confident dismissal of Apple's pricing without any accompanying data. Do your research on pricing, including depreciaton, before coming to an opinion - and don't compare home built with warranteed major manufacturer prices. It's as reasonable as comparing Ferraris with kit cars. I've done the numbers over & over again & I can not find any way that PCs are not significantly more expensive than Apple's computers - like for like, when bought & sold over a period of a year... but don't take my word for it - do the research & publish it.
Buying a $3000 computer to play games when an XBox costs $200 seems surprising to me - then I don't play games... but not choosing a Mac on that basis is somewhat like not buying an Ariel Atom because it doesn't have a radio.
Performance: "The system is expensive; you can get much more PC for the same price". I am assuming you mean performance and not weight, noise, or number of components. Yet you then go on to say that the G5 is faster in some regards than any dual Xeon/Opteron system you have ever used. You say that the ordinary Seagate SATA 7200rpm gave you better email search than a 10000rpm Raptor (it's much quieter too). The last time I checked the price of Dells that the G5 out-gunned in PCMag tests the Dells were $1500 more than the Mac. I'd like to know where to buy significantly greater performance than the G5 for significantly less & benefit from the low depreciation of Macs too. I've been searching - so did Virginia Tech.
You did not mention Windows' Achilles Heel - file searching. You mentioned searching email subjects & contents but not simple trying to locate things on a large drive. I have an old iMac G3 with a laughably slow 600MHz processor that searches a full Seagate 200GB with well over 100,000 files on it virtually as fast as I can type. Anyone who has searched using Windows wishes they had set up hardware RAID SCSI 10000rpm drives.
Thanks for the article. Thanks for braving the criticism of people who don't want to consider anything new. Please continue with some benchmarking and some real world pricing - including depreciation. You're in for a surprise.
nastyemu - Monday, October 11, 2004 - link
To me it just makes more sense to be able to access options via a 2nd mouse button rather then have to reach up and hold a key while I click.I'm not really sure that someone could argue in definitive favor of a 1-button mouse. Why would 2 handed usage be better than 1?
Richard Pitre - Monday, October 11, 2004 - link
Re: 1 button mouseThe issue of 1 button versus n-button mouse is not an issue that can be decided by a generic logical argument. Its an ergonomic issue intertwined with a GUI design issue. Its also an issue of personal preference but I think that the issue of GUI design is more important. OS X is very easy to use with a one button mouse. I occasionally use the option or command key but its relatively rare and doesn't warrant giving up the ergonomic simplicity of one button. You can design a GUI that is more difficult to use with only one button, e.g. GUI's built on X11, but that isn't an argument for multiple buttons any more than it is an argument against GUI's that require more than one button.
On the other hand, if you buy into the need to argue about the number of buttons on the mouse then you have to ask yourself how many buttons are optimal. Ultimately you might consider putting optical sensors underneath the four corners of your keyboard so that you can slide it around on your desk.
Then you could keep both hands on the keyboard all the time.
I'd be surprised to know that you couldn't buy something like this already. If you are going to persue the n-button mouse as a logical issue then consistency may require you to get one of these keyboard mice :-)
Richard Pitre - Monday, October 11, 2004 - link
1. For work use, if you include the cost of support and your time, a Windows machine can be extremely expensive. For hobby-hackers, gamers and people who enjoy system maintenance and solving computer mysteries, Windows machines can be a real bargain.2. If you take the most expensive computer that either Dell or Apple makes and assert without qualification that someone else makes a much less expensive computer then you will be correct but are you saying anything useful or very relavant.
3. Apple offers AppleCare for about 10% of the price of the machine. This is a lot of money but it is inexpensive when you consider the level and quality of support and the fact that it covers both hardware and software. You might have a hard time finding anything like this at this price for a Windows machine. If you are buying a machine to do work and you don't have a support person and you don't want to spend your own time fixing your machine then this is a huge deal.
4. Anand's evaluation of the Mac G5 is good but not objective and that is fine with me. He evaluated it in the categories and with priorities that were most important to him and he told everyone what those categories and priorities were and why they were important to him. Anyone can read it and decide how their own usage and preferences relate to what he said. The fact that the evaluation still came out pretty good is a very postive statement about the Mac. For my usage the Mac is clearly superior and an outstanding bargain. I gave up on Windows long ago and have seen absolutely nothing that makes me want to go back.
Coombs - Monday, October 11, 2004 - link
Re: I button mouse.I use the two-button mouse at home and a one-button mouse at work. Surprisingly, this does not cause any discomfort at all when I go from work to home and vice versa. This is explained by the fact that I grew up using a Mac.
I can see, however, that most PC users will find it incredibly hard without the second button since they use the second button instead of keyboard shortcuts for most chores including cut and paste etc. Thus, many PC users refuse to use the Mac because of the one mouse button.
IMHO, a second button is useful but not really necessary on the Mac.
Cheers
Simon Westenholz - Monday, October 11, 2004 - link
Thanks for a great article, Anand!There are only a few things I fell you didn't quite cover (Some have already been mentioned by others). But the one thing that stands out in my mind is that you actually didn't mention the applications you can only run on the mac.
Fx. Logic Pro/Express 6 and above, Bias Peak, amongst other audio programs, plus various graphics apps that I don't use. :)
As I use my mac (PBTi 1GHz, 768MB, etc.) to produce music, I can only speak for that specific user group, but for that specific purpose the mac is beautiful.
I have a D2.5 G5 on order with 2GB, and a GF6800U DDL, and I am expecting it to kick some serous butt in Logic Pro 6 (Eventually Logic Pro 7).
I have never really thought of the mac as a platform to replace the pc, but rather as a platform to do completely different things with. I would never trust my PC (Athlon XP 1700+ clocked to about 1850 MHz running perfectly for days/months on end without restarts) to perform a live-act as there are way too many small things that won't, in my mind at least, work to the benefit of the performance (For instance bad caching and random small flaws related to multitasking).
This is very much my own opinion and I do not expect to change anyones opinions, but I would just like to suggest some coverage of the above subjects.
Thanks again for a great article.
Kind regards
Simon Westenholz
Producer
Coombs - Monday, October 11, 2004 - link
I consider this an excellent and balanced article from a PC user's perspective.The only quibble I had was that the article seemed to indicate that one needed a minimum $3,000 dollar computer to get any decent performance on the Mac. I am currently using a 733Mhz running Jaguar at work and and a 1.33 Mhz Powerbook at home running Panther, both with 1.26 GB RAM. Os X runs fine on both machines.
I think of the 'tortoise and the hare' fable when I compare and PCs and Macs. The PC runs really fast but is stopped to recover from time to time (viruses, malware, not great multitasking- my colleague, for e.g. does not do anything on the PC while the computer is burning a disc). The Mac keeps chugging on tirelessly. Sure, some aspects of the interface can be zippier-that is not a problem with the hardware but the Os. Os 9 runs really fast on 200 Mhz G3!
I don't think the Mac aficionados are doing Apple a service by constantly trying to the PC public how great the Mac is.
This article will at least open the eyes of some PC users to consider the Mac. Once again congratulations on a great article.
Best wishes and regards
PS:
@#16: I am really tempted by that low price. I would like to buy a small form factor PC that is really cheap and can run Fritz, the chess program, decently. Somehow, I have this niggling feeling, that even Anand, would not recommend that system for most PC users. But the 799 eMac, with additional memory, will handle quite adequately movie and music editing for the ordinary home user without the worries about viruses, spyware etc.
Big_Ed_Mustafa - Monday, October 11, 2004 - link
Given the Mac's long history of being expensive compared to its PC counterparts, I have to admit that I was pretty impressed when I saw what the eMac had to offer at the $799 price point. On the surface, it looks like a good value, but a trip to Wal-Mart quickly dispells that illusion:$799 eMac - 40Gb hard drive, 256Mb DDR memory, CD-RW/DVD-ROM combo drive, 17" monitor. Nice quality computer with major manufacturer warranty support.
$498 Compaq - 40Gb hard drive, 256Mb DDR memory, CD-RW drive, 17" monitor. Nice quality computer with major manufacturer warranty support.
Is a 1.25Ghz Power PC chip better than a 2.53Ghz Celeron 325D? Is OS X wildly better than XP Home? Is a 32Mb Radeon 9200SE video chipset significantly less useless than Intel integrated graphics?
Even at entry level, Apple is faced with being marginally superior at almost twice the price. I won't argue that the eMac isn't a better piece of hardware than a $498 Compaq. 19 people out of 20 shopping for a PC, however, would choose the Compaq and keep the $300 they saved.
a2daj - Monday, October 11, 2004 - link
The problem with the article, in its original form, could have used some better fact checking, particularly the bit about installing apps. Drag and Drop is one method. Other apps make use of an installer. Some use the OS X Installer app while others use different installers from 3rd parties. Even with the update, that sectin of the article is a bit misleading.Plus his comments on Mac gaming would suggest he didn't even bother to dig too deep into Mac gaming. It is significantly better than it was several years ago. More and more games are being released for Macs every year. How is that not better?
The Home Support Guy - Monday, October 11, 2004 - link
Great article, Anand! As always, a clear, iluminating, and concise article.From my limited exposure,(mostly at the local Apple store at the mall!) OS X is a great OS! I've been involved in supporting OSes ever since DOS 3.1, up to Win XP XP2, also NT 4.0 and up to a furtive look at Win 2003 Server, a work required support of UNIX System V/386,(ah, I remember the command line interface!) and others. Every OS had its quirks and their own little way of getting things that have to be done. I just think OS X is further along in some areas, equal is some other areas, and somewhat(?)
behind in the rest. Yes, this is an opinion, and the article was Anand's based on his experiences for 30 days.
In my case, if $ were no object. I would jump in with both feet!