How good is the Apple Mac?

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I wholeheartedly disagree. There have been several times where having it already there has saved my bacon. I realize not everyone needs to be able to turn up complete test environments off of their laptop, but I do - and knowing that all I have to do is turn them on, lets me consider doing things I couldn't ever do in a timely manner before. It's one thing to have the ability to do something, it's another thing entirely to have it already there waiting for you to find a use for it.



That also means you're completely free to buy your own hard drive and RAM upgrades and install it yourself (I can even get warranty repairs with my custom upgrades). The stock systems are fairly competitive in price, especially when you consider the cost of the software that comes bundled with the operating system (a competitor to garage band alone costs $300). I'd rather pay a little more for a system I can use 2-3 times as long.

I have friends who maintain linux distros on their PCs and workstations (and one of my workstations is running RHEL 6), and I can't tell you how many times something has broken on the system at the least opportune time and has taken them out-of-action while they had to tweak config files to get it back online. If a senior system engineer can't keep his own desktop functional 100% of the time, I don't expect anyone else to. I have issues with my mac, but nothing has gone wrong to the point that I can't ignore it for a few hours if something critical is going on. Keep in mind that I own a hosting company and make my living running linux servers, and have been doing this since 2002, I'm not just making stuff up.

Your 'facts' are based only on popular opinion. Everyone knows it's a fact that the earth used to be flat, right?

If you aren't a fanboy, then why are you so rabidly defending Apple? I don't care about popular opinion, I don't like Mac OS X, stop forcing it down my throat.

Quarterly profit results and marketshare are facts.

I'm not forcing anything down anyone's throat, I'm defending Steve Jobs against ignorant insults.

I was asking these particular questions a little over a year ago in regards to getting Mac. Finally after pondering and with some assistance from this forum I bought my Imac back in December of 2009. So far (knock on wood, not to jinx it) I haven't really had any major problems or issues. I'm still getting used to working with a Mac since I spent all of my computer years working with PC's but once you figure it out it's not too bad.

For the laptop or desktop, it's really up to you. For me I prefer a desktop, it's just the way I am. I might consider getting a laptop in the future but I don't know.

sure the software is great and having a standard to work out from is always nice, but a properly slipstreamed windows can have as many programs as you can cram onto whatever install media you are using, same goes for linux.
and for anyone with a decent internet connection not already having it there is a matter of minutes, do you really want to pay that much extra for a few minutes?

not to mention properly maintained company networks where everything can be done unsupervised


often when stuff breaks it is because it is being tinkered with constantly,
a couple of months ago i burned my dual GPU, after almost 3 years of service, thousands of hours of heavy load and tons of driver tweaks (most of which were made for performance reasons)and sometimes an OC,
many enthusiast dekstops are made not to be stable but to be powerfull, if you construct a pc to be stable hardware wise for a mac it will also be stable for a any other OS given there are drivers for it.

mind you i would happily own a mac but i think i will be making a hackintosh when i have the resources, i have nothing against it but i do have something against their prices and the fact that some people think any of the different operating systems are inherently better, they have their pro's and cons and everyhting is dependant on application.

i looked up the prices directly, you pay twice the amount for the hardware when buying a mac (counting same license price as win7 to be fair it should be more) even if double it wouldnt come close to competetive.
you are right you could do the upgrades yourself but what about warranty?

they do have some excellent software, i dont know much of ,usic software but in the graphics department GIMP and other open source projects are rapidly becoming just as or more powerfull than even the enterprise edition of photoshop, software is little excuse in the open source culture of the future, everything from the servers to the VPN solutions at the company i work for is opensource and it is all running as good as the windows alternatives used before.

I know, and profits and marketshares are based on popular opinion. It's like saying Metallica is the best metal band because they make the most money. Do you get that?