Mac users' elitism

Al Vallario said:
Just threw together a Dell system (I assume there is nothing wrong with mentioning this?).

1.83GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 1GB PC6400 DDR2 SDRAM, integrated WiFi and Bluetooth, 1 year basic support, all the same as the MacBook specification I mentioned earlier in the thread. No Vista update was included. The screen is a 15.4" glossy widescreen, but only has the same resolution (1280x800) as the 13" on the MacBook – a resolution bump will cost you £50 more. There is an 80GB HDD instead of the 60GB in the MacBook, but this is largely insignificant in the larger scheme of things. It also has a 128MB ATi Mobility Radeon X1300, but I doubt that is going to be much use for gaming over the integrated graphics in the MacBook.

There is no webcam, no gigabit ethernet port (10/100 instead), no optical audio input/output, the bare minimum software pre-installed, it's 50% thicker than the MacBook and looks 200% uglier... and somewhere along the line it will probably explode :p

It came to £822.37 (~£22 more expensive than the MacBook) with VAT and shipping (as did the MacBook). There are no Higher Education discounts.

Edit: Bare in mind this is a system coming from a massive company, too, who shift far more hardware than Apple and are therefore able to offer stuff much cheaper if they want to
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Burned a DVD with your Mac yet? :D

Also please stop comparing discount prices to non-discount ones - do I need to point out the unfairness of this :)
 
dirtydog said:
Also please stop comparing discount prices to non-discount ones - do I need to point out the unfairness of this :)
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It's not an unfair thing to do at all. Most of the users of this forum are in education and it therefore applies :)
 
I am not Mac user i have used macs and find them nice. I have had my PC with XP Pro installed for over a year without a problem, never had a virus or spyware worse than a tracking cookie, i am sure Macs get these too. The stability of Windows install comes down the knowledge of the person who uses it tbh and this must be true for MacOS, if you installed crap demos and stuff it would mess them up as well.

The biggest problem i would have becoming a full time mac user, is the horrible attitude they all develop, there ignorance to the real world and general smugness that isn't very well founded. At student loan time three of my mates bought MacBooks and two of them has had them exchanged with faults and another bought a mac pro and is currently waiting for apple to deliver a new HDD, it was meant to be with him Friday and he hasnt had anything or heard from them. Sounds like great service to me.
 
dirtydog said:
What about Dells? And how can you say a bigger screen is pointless just because the res is the same? What about being able to read it easier? :confused:
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I'm not blind - I use it as a laptop which means I'm never more than arms length away from it. The extra size, weight and battery life required by a physically larger screen makes the MacBooks screen better in my opinion.

I think it's fair for me to compare the price that I can buy all the options for. Fact is I can get the HE discount on Apple stuff where I can't get something similar with Dell, HP etc...
 
dirtydog said:
Burned a DVD with your Mac yet? :D
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My MacBook doesn't have a DVD rewriter drive, and I have always known that – it was an informed decision I made when I purchased it, based on the fact that I have no need for a DVD rewriter drive. The specification I threw together earler in the thread was just an example I pulled up from the Apple website at the time, and I assumed "combo drive" implied a DVD rewriter drive. My MacBook was purchased before the processors were upgraded and RAM prices were shifted around, so it would be unfair to make a direct comparison :)

dirtydog said:
Also please stop comparing discount prices to non-discount ones - do I need to point out the unfairness of this :)
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I'm just pointing out that if you are in Higher Education, as I'm sure a large portion of the people who browse these forums are, you can save another ~£100 on top of the saving over the Dell if you go for the Apple. If Dell offered such a discount I'd be all over mentioning that, as well.
 
dirtydog said:
How nice of Apple to get employed adults to subsidise the prices for students :)
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They are developing a market... just like any company that give student discounts. Think about the interest free overdrafts banks give student!
 
Al Vallario said:
Stereotypically, it's true.

Owning a mac automatically makes you hip, trendy and attractive to the opposite sex :)

Edit: FACT.
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But you also get the pony tail and severe acne as a compulsory accessory :)
 
NathanE said:
This is what I'm talking about. A subtle and pathetic little dig at Windows. OK so the operating systems are different in the way you uninstall a program. Get over it.
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It's a difference between the operating systems that is indicative of OSX's ease of use.

Remember they are both computers so both are going to be able to print, type, display stuff. It's obviously going to be little things that make the difference.

OSX is different in a better way. Just drag an icon to the trash and that's it. Contrast to Windows where you need to fire up the uninstaller and wait for that to finish. If all is well then it's not to bad. If it goes wrong then it's a bit of a nightmare. Then you'll have to defrag later on and eventually have to do a re-install after everything slows down. That's my experience and the same for many other normal users.
 
Al Vallario said:
But surely 15% is just a small portion of the markup on their hardware you keep telling us about? ;)
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Agreed - as Phil says, Apple are ripping everyone off, just students slightly less so :)
 
Ironically i think mac would have more users if it wasnt for the fanboyism. Really anyone who goes arround saying they are enlightened because they are mac users and proclaiming it themselves, ultimately looks like a fool. Something windows users very rarely do beuase we don't need to
 
dirtydog said:
Agreed - as Phil says, Apple are ripping everyone off, just students slightly less so :)
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Didn't we just show that HE MacBooks are no more expensive than windows equivalents?
 
clv101 said:
Didn't we just show that HE MacBooks are no more expensive than windows equivalents?
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Scratch that, I thought we proved that full-price MacBooks were very competitively priced compared to Windows rivals.

So, by that logic... all laptops are a rip-off? :confused:
 
There's a lot of bias on both sides in this thread. Personally, I love PCs but my housemate has a mac mini and I'm seriously thinking of moving across to a Mac in the summer. Basically, they seem far easier to use for me seen as I mostly browse the web and use word, as well as watching movies and listening to music. The whole setup on Macs seems that little bit smoother, little bit easier and everything seems more integrated so it's less hassle.
 
clv101 said:
Didn't we just show that HE MacBooks are no more expensive than windows equivalents?
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IIRC Dells are still a few hundred cheaper in fact, although you might have to slum it with a 1.66 Core Duo instead of a 1.83 or whatever.
 
Mr_White said:
why would you want any virtual pc of any way shape or form when Macs will run XP natively?

Did you read my post? :p
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I did, and as I said - there are several ways I could do it.

Did you read my post?

;)
 
dirtydog said:
How nice of Apple to get employed adults to subsidise the prices for students :)
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Extremely fair and very good business sense.

Micrsoft does it with software. I suppose that doesn't matter though. It would be nice if pc manufacturers did but they don't.
 
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