Macintosh laptop vs others, why mac?

[JonJ678]

First off I will say that I have never owned a Macintosh, though I have occasionally 'used' one. I'm yet another uni student who likes the idea of a laptop, and am trying to determine if a mac is more suitable than the alternatives. Say, a vaio, as this seems a reasonable windows alternative.

On that note, in the interests of keeping this about hardware, please leave the os x vs vista fight out of it. From my perspective I'm forced to pay for at least one of them and I'll run debian anyway.

So, the hardware seems similar. The same intel processors, same speed ram, same hard drives. Does anyone know how the motherboards or power supply systems compare?

The casing is different on each, but it is hard to tell without stripping a mac apart whether the build quality and cooling systems are different. Since such effort goes into the aesthetics, is it fair to say that the internals are pretty much the same?

I know little about screens but would be interested if mac do anything nonstandard here. Battery life seems very good with the mac, I'm sure I'd adapt to the keyboard.

Warranty looks similar. Same attitude of 'void if you do anything to the hardware' that other people follow.

However this is as far as I've got. I can't work out what the fascination is, and here seems a good place to ask. Enthusiasts using Macintosh suggests there's good reason why, and I'd like to know what it is.

In a few days I will visit a 'genius' in one of their stores to ask their opinion and to judge for myself just how arrogant the title is. I will be annoyed if it becomes evident that they know less than me, but pleased if their technical support is competent.

So, what can the fans of Macintosh laptops tell me?

Cheers

 

[JonJ678]

Oh. So much for that then, I was hoping I'd missed something. You three have spared one of their store workers a difficult conversation, and probably saved me some money. Probably counts as a good deed for the day, cheers

 

[JonJ678]

The OP was vague I agree. I am curious as to why mac has attracted such a strong following when the hardware looks to be rather similar to windows, and thought it would be something beyond the software. Beyond that I fear some of you may have taken my post the wrong way, starting roughly from k1llswitch.

It's how the OS uses the resources, not how fast the hardware is that counts.

Thanks for the sentiment, but I was hoping to keep OS out of this.

He'll know more than you about fixing Macs, and that's his job.

He may well know much less about Windows than you, but I'm sure you can forgive him that.

I didn't realise one booked time for this. I know bugger all about windows, osx or linux. I'm far more interested in the electronics than in the software. The idea behind speaking to one of their technicians was to learn what makes a mac different from a pc in terms of hardware. As an example, the dc socket on the backs of laptops becomes loose and/or breaks off frequently, does this happen with macbooks? Is the cooling system different, are the screen/inverter assemblies different? I repair laptops part time, so have a pretty good idea what goes wrong there. However I rarely see macs (aside from ancient G4s which seem to be dropping like flies), so I know little about them.

Very hard to work out what you're asking here.

Too true, I apologise for this. The question was vague. I can rephrase as "how does the hardware of a Macintosh laptop vary from its competitors?" but thought this would be too specific a question.

Sorry, had to add this... you're accusing the genius team of arrogance while you talk like that?

Leonardo da Vinci was a genius. Nikola Tesla was another. However spectacularly trained these guys are, they are surely misnamed. I am not accusing the team of it, I am accusing whoever thought this a fitting description.

I do not have any interest in picking a fight with these guys. The point was that if the hardware is fundementally the same, despite my hoping for a significant improvement over the alternative, I would be disappointed and persist in trying to find out how the hardware differed. This would clearly end with both myself and the unfortunate I was speaking to frustrated, and generally be a waste of time for us both.

Oh I missed the bit about booking time with a store worker so you can make yourself feel smug. Enjoy your Linux I guess, keep that stereotype alive!

Similarly to the above, but cheers for joining in the abuse. OSX is a customised version of unix designed to be of the most use to the most people. I'd rather start from a less customised version in order to gradually learn how to set it up as I wish, that is my choice. Again, I am not interested in osx vs windows vs linux, there's quite enough written on that topic already.

edit: special credit to everyone who read

just how arrogant the title is

and didn't bother to finish the sentence. I will be pleased if they know the inside of a mac inside and out, but this falls rather short of genius. If instead they are capable of diagnosis but send hardware elsewhere for repair, I would be disappointed.

 

[JonJ678]

Thank you to those above who offered some detail. K1LLSWITCH, you are yet to make a useful contribution to this thread or show evidence of reading my posts. Genius is far from synonymous with technician.

I'm saddened to hear that they do no repair work on site, but I suppose I'm not surprised.

A sensor that changes screen brightness with ambient is an excellent idea, and certainly along the lines of what I was hoping to be told. Power cable coming apart when kicked also sounds good. LED backlighting is certainly good in terms of reliability, and I believe has the side effect of more uniform illumination.

Thank you Mike, I can think of a few

I've noticed that some of them are aluminium, is the chassis thermally linked to the cpu/gpu cooler? This would mean fewer vents/slower fans and so less dust inside.

Do they disassemble in similar fashion to other laptops? The 'unibody' phrase in particular leads me to suspect the chassis to be unusual.

Is there any suspension between board and chassis? The thinkpads seem to have various parts softmounted to cope better with being dropped.

How much of the hardware is designed in house? I believe I read somewhere that the motherboards are manufactured by Asus, and they all appear to be using intel processors. Does it follow that Apple is responsible for component selection and chassis design, but otherwise they have little involvement?

That's all that comes to mind. I'll be grateful if any of the above can be answered. I don't personally care what the outside of the mac looks like, but if the design is more intelligent than the alternatives than I would also consider it beautiful.

Cheers

edit: @PardonTheWait, that's very good to hear. Thank you. I assume you can't say whether soldering irons are involved or not?

 

[JonJ678]

Thank you. Sounds like quite a lucrative career.

Easier, quicker and more reliable but not always cheaper. If anything I think it's a good thing that they take this approach. Will they refuse to work on a laptop running ram and a hard drive it didn't come with, and how does warranty work with a laptop which has been opened by a non-apple person?

Cheers

 

[JonJ678]

That sounds completely reasonable, though I would be well advised to carefully read the terms of the warranty as well as not sell on the original hard drive. I suppose I meant changing ram/hard drive by 'opened', if the desire to strip it apart to look at the pieces is too great I'll accept the loss of warranty

This sounds like the ideal aftersales system, especially since there's a store just about everywhere.

I confess my ignorance on this one, what does a 'logic board' do? Chassis as a heatsink and suspending the board would be a challenge, that's a good point. Of course its a bit of a moot point if the user doesn't drop the laptop, but I'd be likely to be cycling with it and I crash remarkably often.

Thank you both,

p.s. Would taking a hard drive into the store and asking them to fit it void the warranty, were it otherwise precluded? I agree that good aftersales support is certainly worth a premium.

 

[JonJ678]

Reply is in the last edit Pardon, silly formatting on my part. Basically I agree that this is worth the charge, probably worth it by itself really.

I fear there may be some hate coming your way Scott. Is your objection with the operating system or with the hardware? If the latter, I'd be interested to hear what the problems were

 

[JonJ678]

Just went through and read your replies k1llswitch. You've been a mix of uninformative and offensive, and I have no wish to argue with you on this. Contribute or leave.

I'm sorry to hear that scott. The answer does look to be zeroing the drive then installing osx, or just installing windows and using it like any other laptop. Not really a hardware issue, unless the freezing is hardware related.


Foxconn seem to make a lot of things, interesting to hear that they fabricate for apple as well. I think the point was that Apple don't only care about making things as cheaply as possible, not that they ignore cost during manufacture. They make a greater profit by manufacturing higher quality products, I might give Apple a grand but I won't give Acer £300.


To be honest I don't know what to make of that meghatronic. The ghost in the machine perhaps; whenever I visit my parents their wireless goes down. Every time, regardless of whether I have a laptop with me or not. Perhaps it'll make more sense in the morning though

Cheers all

edit: As I just can't let things go. FAO K1llswitch,
You may reword the question as that if you wish, and indeed if you cannot conceive of a mac without osx then I suppose you would be confused. As it happens I remain interested in the hardware Apple chose to use and how it differs from other options, but I am going to run linux on whatever I end up with. You are welcome to consider me arrogant, and throw whatever insults the board filtered. I've condemned you as either illiterate or thick, and added you to my ignore list. I am depressed to see that you are studying computer science.

 

[JonJ678]

"Teardown" is a good phrase to google, thank you lots for that.

No comment on the installation. I'm fond of aptitude but I've seen it slated for doing terrible things to permissions while installing, and generally subtly breaking things. It seems to work well enough that I don't want to go down the more hardcore routes yet.

I have indeed not researched the driver support under linux. It doesn't surprise me that much that debian (stable) does it badly, but if I end up on ubuntu or elsewhere it's not the end of the world. Failing that it's probably possible to compile the appropriate drivers and build them into the kernel myself, again I'd have to learn how to but I've been meaning to play with recompiling the kernel for ages. It looks foolish even to me, but I'm not worried about that part, and am sort of looking forward to it.

As long as either grub or syslinux can be used to boot osx, Id leave osx on the laptop. For the sake of a few gb it's worth the convenience of having it available for firmware updates and when linux refuses to work for whatever reason.

I don't have an iphone, and completely fail to see the attraction of them. Thanks for the warning on that note though.

A bit inconclusive I'm afraid, keep on changing my mind.

 

[JonJ678]

I fear the inevitable OS wars have begun

Cheers Mike, syslinux will do just fine.