If someone gave you 15 grand and told you to buy a car and you could keep whatever was left over, you'd probably buy a Kia and not a BMW. Small minds develop small ideas. D'oh.
Wow. The number of idiots and laughably stupid posts in this article is astounding. Almost makes me ashamed to be a Mac user. People calling the Xbox 360 a piece of shit? How is this even remotely related to the article? I have a MacBook aluminum and a 360 and it's a great console just like the MacBook is a great laptop; stop being a brainwashed idiot.
This marketing campaign seemed like a good idea but IMO is a huge backfire for MS. Why they chose to project a cheap, budget image with crappy HP laptops when they could've shown off Sony VAIOs and ThinkPads, I just can't understand.
Microsoft Office is the biggest piece of junk on the planet.... Let's look at the windoze OS. WIN 95 = junk, WIN 98 = junk, WIN Me = junk, WIN XP = almost useful, WIN VISTA = Junk, ...
Oh, the quality time I spent fixing WIN Me, I can't even describe.
Office v.X crashed occasionally (it was the only thing that crashed on my Powerbook, save for the rare Safari crash).
Quote:
Originally Posted by dcolley
Do what I did throw it in the trash and get a Mac or another Mac? Life is too short for this kind of aggravation.
Nod.
One thing however I'd like Apple to fix in Mac OS X is the inverse color scheme (I like setting my fonts white and background black). On Windows it works mostly but on Mac OS X even the graphics are negative-inversed.
Do what I did throw it in the trash and get a Mac or another Mac? Life is too short for this kind of aggravation.
I JUST SPENT THE ENTIRE DAY TODAY
RE-IMAGING MY WINDOWS XP LAPTOP
BECAUSE OF A SOFTWARE PROBLEM.
(9 hours later, I'm still not done)
For the love of God, WHY??? WHY????
[/CENTER]
[/QUOTE]
yea...windows xp, imagine that, an 8 year old windows release is unstable...in other news, my OSX 10.1 is flakey and cant run the new safari WAAAA WAAAA WAAAA...
Run Vista, post SP1, it is rock solid, and more secure than XP..
I am not a windows fanboy, but sheesh, you are using a 9 year old windows version.
People pay full retail for a copy of Windows to run on their Mac. But Microsoft is telling them not to buy a machine that runs Windows.
There are a lot of analogies here - and the behavior would look strange. Like Exxon telling me to buy a Mazda or Time Warner telling me to buy a Samsung television.
Microsoft makes Office for Mac and then tells people not to buy a Mac? The whole message is confused.
That said, MS has resorted to mud slinging. Will it work with a certain audience? Sure. Did Apple do it first? I guess. But it doesn't look so good when you have the giant market share. It looks kind of weird, desperate, paranoid and misguided.
It is all about the upgrade path. If you use a mac with bootcamp, it is in your best interest to find mac alternatives to windows tools so you can avoid upgrading to windows 7, 8, 9 or whatever comes next. If they lose the dependancy that millions of Mac users have on windows, they lose all those future OS sales...and if it really dwindles 5 years out, whats to stop apple from deprecating bootcamp...
if you buy a "pc" laptop, you are locked into windows, and thus, the upgrade treadmill, unless you are the 1% that runs Linux or Hack-n'-tosh
As to Office for the mac, if I were Mr Balmer, I would get out of that business the minute the DOJ blinks... Office:Mac 2008 is the single worst piece of computer software in the history of commercial software. It is an embarrassment even to MS, and that is saying something.
With Macs, you have to throw the computer away and get a brand new one at full price, unless the Mac is one of the extremely overpriced "Pro" models.
They cost more up front, and they don't last as long. It's unfortunate that OS X can't legally run on anything else.
Just because something costs a lot of money doesn't mean it's overpriced. I want you go to price dual Xeon systems and then tell me if the Mac Pro is actually overpriced, meaning it costs more than it's worth.
EULAs cannot be enforced, therefore circumventing them is not "illegal." I find it amazing that you are on the internet, and that you infinite information available to you, but you continue to hold these ignorant, factually wrong opinions.
"For the same price as an 8 oz. top sirloin, you can get a Big Mac and still have money left over to buy a fake chocolate milkshake, a "High School the Musical 3" DVD at WalMart and a 53 Snugglies for your family!!"
Microsoft = McDonalds
Apple = McDonalds with shiny wrappers and aluminum bags
Macs are PC's. I know you'd like to think you have something special when you buy mac but it's the same PC hardware that everyone else has a cheaper price.
I'm not arguing that they aren't built well with nice enclosures and materials, on the outside, but they aren't anything special.
Function > form
And when I can get as good PC hardware or better for less money I call that a win. I can still install OSX on it anyways. Though i'm now running Windows 7 and can't see any reason to boot into OSX any more.
If someone gave you 15 grand and told you to buy a car and you could keep whatever was left over, you'd probably buy a Kia and not a BMW. Small minds develop small ideas. D'oh.
Perhaps then you can look into some kind of mind-enlargement therapy. A car at it's most minimal gets you from point-A to point-B. It gets you to work and if it is reliable enough (not a Kia, a good Honda or Toyota would be better), it will help you keep your job to pay the bills. From that viewpoint, I would agree with you.
Computers though for many people GENERATE revenue. Before purchasing my first Mac, I spent countless hours every few months to recover my PC since it was quicker than determining what rogue virus, spyware, trojan, corruption, rainy day, whatever was causing the problem. Had I been able to do my actual job and bill by the hour (software design), I would have been able to purchase a new machine over, and over again. I lost so much billable time due to the instabilities that the Wintel model has.
My Mac on the other hand has had ZERO problems. No crashes, no freezing. I focus on doing my job and now, I earn more money because of it. We don't all fall into your narrow perspective of how to save money. For many people money well spent is far more preferable than saving money badly. Time invested by people carries a cost as well. If not stress, frustration, or some other personal reason, then loss productivity will definitely make the top of the list.
Now, don't get me wrong. My Mac runs XP using VMware. That setup has been so much more dependable for me than a dedicated machine. I can restore an entire WinXP image in minutes without ever leaving my MAC OSX system. I'm back in business and life is good. For some strange reason though, Windows running on my Mac has had far fewer problems than any of the other dedicated machines I've had in the past.
I realize money is tight for everyone. It certainly is for me. However, I would gladly spend the extra money knowing I'm getting more value for my dollar than to save a few bucks only to spend the savings on glass and hair-implants from throwing my Wintel machine out the window and pulling my hair out.
Whatever the case, had someone given me $15k to buy a car, I would probably buy a nice motorcycle (better gas mileage and time-saved in traffic) for half the price of a Kia and use the rest to buy a Mac Pro. The remaining half would then go for more AAPL.
The world is moving on and they have their head up on the top floor of some executive suite and never enter a Starbucks or any other business on the ground floor.
Running down your competitor means you have nothing good to say about your own product. That is absolutely deadly.
Glad I'm not on the top floor in Redmond when the results come in and the chairs start flying again.
Same parts, made in the same factories, only real differences are the OS and the price. And the Mac laptops are grossly overpriced for the components they contain. It's like OS X is a $1000 add-on.
Not the same at all. Cheap PC laptops don't have mag-safe cords or "drop sensors" to park their hard drives before impact. Nor do they have ambient light sensors to control the luminance of the screen. Nor do they have awesome light packaging. Nor OS X.
A pretty long list of differences that you either didn't know about or purposely omitted.
Macs are PC's. I know you'd like to think you have something special when you buy mac but it's the same PC hardware that everyone else has a cheaper price.
I'm not arguing that they aren't built well with nice enclosures and materials, on the outside, but they aren't anything special.
Once again, this topic continues to get beaten like a rented mule.
Putting the topic of similar components aside, Windows has so many issues because one deals with a machine with components built from many vendors (both good and bad), that many times do not behave well with Windows. I actually defend Microsoft (to a point) for being able to get Windows to work with the myriad of different chips, components, drivers, etc. All it takes is a bad driver from some vendor to really bug things up. The technically-savvy people will tolerate it and some may actually find it challenging to troubleshoot the problems.
Apple on the other hand has full control of the hardware that runs with their software. Every component in their machines comes with a fully-certified Apple-provided driver/firmware/software that has been tested. Of course, Apple has had issues with drivers but the were always up to the task of getting the issue fixed. That same hardware with Apple-certified software is what makes the entire product a winner. I could care less that HP, Dell, whoever, uses the same piece at a few hundred dollars less. If it has a lousy OS with more hiccups than a drunk, it's not value-added for me.
This is a major point all the critics miss. You folks just focus on one aspect of the debate. Same parts should not be the dominant part of the equation.
So sure, you can hack your way to get OSX running on your non-Apple machine. Good for you. But this may come to a surprise to you but not everyone has the desire to tinker with their machine. Some just want to turn it on and just work.. all day. Microsoft has been horrible to provide a positive user-experience and you very well know that.
Apple spending more on quality construction like the enclosures, glass displays, etc.. to me is more value-added than the flimsy plastic construction all the other folks provide. To each their own. I see value beyond the higher-price that saves me money and time in the long run. Time is money for me which is why gave up on the Wintel model.
Apple is buying their parts from every other vendor that PC users are.
Your Mac's are made in communist CHINA.
APPLE IS TAKING YOUR MONEY AND PUTTING IT ON THE BOTTOM LINE WHILE YOU PUSH YOUR NOSE IN THE AIR AND KEEP SAYING MICROSOFT SUCKS.
APPLE = MICROSOFT
BOTTOM LINE DRIVEN.
You can't even get HDMI on a Mac without 14 dongles. Add that in your bottom line cost.
Mac = Not compatible with 80% of the world.
PC = Affordable computing. And for the record a Chevy runs as long as a Lexus.
You have no idea what extra parts are in a Mac that you can't get in a cheap laptop, do you? Admit it: you are actually ignorant of the facts and are either just hoping you are correct or that nobody else is knowledgeable enough to notice how wrong you are.
Not the same at all. Cheap PC laptops don't have mag-safe cords or "drop sensors" to park their hard drives before impact. Nor do they have ambient light sensors to control the luminance of the screen. Nor do they have awesome light packaging. Nor OS X.
A pretty long list of differences that you either didn't know about or purposely omitted.
Thompson
You don't have HDMI, a stable video card in any current shipping model.
People don't care about mag-sage chords or drop sensors unless you're kissing Steve's Ass.
They care about performance and My Dell's and HP's (laptop and Desktop) blow every model Apple has and I paid 1/2 the price.
Give me a fricking break. Apple is asking $1,200 to upgrade to 8gb of ram for their 15" Pour Books.
Tell you what, I've got a Dell with and Apple logo on it I'll sell you for $4,000.
That way Both Steve and I make out like the rip off bandits.
Comments
This marketing campaign seemed like a good idea but IMO is a huge backfire for MS. Why they chose to project a cheap, budget image with crappy HP laptops when they could've shown off Sony VAIOs and ThinkPads, I just can't understand.
Yeah if you don't buy a mac you save enough to get a piece of shit computer, piece of shit mp3 player and piece of shit gaming console.
Looks like the Mac gave you a piece of shit brain then.
Microsoft Office is the biggest piece of junk on the planet.... Let's look at the windoze OS. WIN 95 = junk, WIN 98 = junk, WIN Me = junk, WIN XP = almost useful, WIN VISTA = Junk, ...
Oh, the quality time I spent fixing WIN Me, I can't even describe.
Office v.X crashed occasionally (it was the only thing that crashed on my Powerbook, save for the rare Safari crash).
Do what I did throw it in the trash and get a Mac or another Mac? Life is too short for this kind of aggravation.
Nod.
One thing however I'd like Apple to fix in Mac OS X is the inverse color scheme (I like setting my fonts white and background black). On Windows it works mostly but on Mac OS X even the graphics are negative-inversed.
Ha, Microsoft's ad is perfect for the New York Times crowd. Give them half the story and skew the rest of the facts...
Interesting perspective...so how you doing these days Mr Limbaugh?
Do what I did throw it in the trash and get a Mac or another Mac? Life is too short for this kind of aggravation.
I JUST SPENT THE ENTIRE DAY TODAY
RE-IMAGING MY WINDOWS XP LAPTOP
BECAUSE OF A SOFTWARE PROBLEM.
(9 hours later, I'm still not done)
For the love of God, WHY??? WHY????
[/QUOTE]
yea...windows xp, imagine that, an 8 year old windows release is unstable...in other news, my OSX 10.1 is flakey and cant run the new safari WAAAA WAAAA WAAAA...
Run Vista, post SP1, it is rock solid, and more secure than XP..
I am not a windows fanboy, but sheesh, you are using a 9 year old windows version.
People pay full retail for a copy of Windows to run on their Mac. But Microsoft is telling them not to buy a machine that runs Windows.
There are a lot of analogies here - and the behavior would look strange. Like Exxon telling me to buy a Mazda or Time Warner telling me to buy a Samsung television.
Microsoft makes Office for Mac and then tells people not to buy a Mac? The whole message is confused.
That said, MS has resorted to mud slinging. Will it work with a certain audience? Sure. Did Apple do it first? I guess. But it doesn't look so good when you have the giant market share. It looks kind of weird, desperate, paranoid and misguided.
It is all about the upgrade path. If you use a mac with bootcamp, it is in your best interest to find mac alternatives to windows tools so you can avoid upgrading to windows 7, 8, 9 or whatever comes next. If they lose the dependancy that millions of Mac users have on windows, they lose all those future OS sales...and if it really dwindles 5 years out, whats to stop apple from deprecating bootcamp...
if you buy a "pc" laptop, you are locked into windows, and thus, the upgrade treadmill, unless you are the 1% that runs Linux or Hack-n'-tosh
As to Office for the mac, if I were Mr Balmer, I would get out of that business the minute the DOJ blinks... Office:Mac 2008 is the single worst piece of computer software in the history of commercial software. It is an embarrassment even to MS, and that is saying something.
With Macs, you have to throw the computer away and get a brand new one at full price, unless the Mac is one of the extremely overpriced "Pro" models.
They cost more up front, and they don't last as long. It's unfortunate that OS X can't legally run on anything else.
Just because something costs a lot of money doesn't mean it's overpriced. I want you go to price dual Xeon systems and then tell me if the Mac Pro is actually overpriced, meaning it costs more than it's worth.
EULAs cannot be enforced, therefore circumventing them is not "illegal." I find it amazing that you are on the internet, and that you infinite information available to you, but you continue to hold these ignorant, factually wrong opinions.
Microsoft = McDonald's
Apple = Ruth's Chris Steak House
"For the same price as an 8 oz. top sirloin, you can get a Big Mac and still have money left over to buy a fake chocolate milkshake, a "High School the Musical 3" DVD at WalMart and a 53 Snugglies for your family!!"
Microsoft = McDonalds
Apple = McDonalds with shiny wrappers and aluminum bags
Macs are PC's. I know you'd like to think you have something special when you buy mac but it's the same PC hardware that everyone else has a cheaper price.
I'm not arguing that they aren't built well with nice enclosures and materials, on the outside, but they aren't anything special.
Function > form
And when I can get as good PC hardware or better for less money I call that a win. I can still install OSX on it anyways. Though i'm now running Windows 7 and can't see any reason to boot into OSX any more.
Here's the new campaign in a nutshell: "Microsoft, we sell cheap crap!"
Good luck with that.
Let's be objective for a moment.
Assuming using either are a subjective matter, personal preference.
Is it really true that PC is cheaper than Mac if we do side by side comparison.
I mean the amount of memory, CPU speed, quality of screen, overall performance of the software running on the that hardware.
I'd like to see the fact. And I bet everyone else too.
By doing so, there won't be any more misleading ad or silly discussion that going nowhere.
If someone gave you 15 grand and told you to buy a car and you could keep whatever was left over, you'd probably buy a Kia and not a BMW. Small minds develop small ideas. D'oh.
Perhaps then you can look into some kind of mind-enlargement therapy. A car at it's most minimal gets you from point-A to point-B. It gets you to work and if it is reliable enough (not a Kia, a good Honda or Toyota would be better), it will help you keep your job to pay the bills. From that viewpoint, I would agree with you.
Computers though for many people GENERATE revenue. Before purchasing my first Mac, I spent countless hours every few months to recover my PC since it was quicker than determining what rogue virus, spyware, trojan, corruption, rainy day, whatever was causing the problem. Had I been able to do my actual job and bill by the hour (software design), I would have been able to purchase a new machine over, and over again. I lost so much billable time due to the instabilities that the Wintel model has.
My Mac on the other hand has had ZERO problems. No crashes, no freezing. I focus on doing my job and now, I earn more money because of it. We don't all fall into your narrow perspective of how to save money. For many people money well spent is far more preferable than saving money badly. Time invested by people carries a cost as well. If not stress, frustration, or some other personal reason, then loss productivity will definitely make the top of the list.
Now, don't get me wrong. My Mac runs XP using VMware. That setup has been so much more dependable for me than a dedicated machine. I can restore an entire WinXP image in minutes without ever leaving my MAC OSX system. I'm back in business and life is good. For some strange reason though, Windows running on my Mac has had far fewer problems than any of the other dedicated machines I've had in the past.
I realize money is tight for everyone. It certainly is for me. However, I would gladly spend the extra money knowing I'm getting more value for my dollar than to save a few bucks only to spend the savings on glass and hair-implants from throwing my Wintel machine out the window and pulling my hair out.
Whatever the case, had someone given me $15k to buy a car, I would probably buy a nice motorcycle (better gas mileage and time-saved in traffic) for half the price of a Kia and use the rest to buy a Mac Pro. The remaining half would then go for more AAPL.
Running down your competitor means you have nothing good to say about your own product. That is absolutely deadly.
Glad I'm not on the top floor in Redmond when the results come in and the chairs start flying again.
Apple is buying their parts from every other vendor that PC users are.
Your Mac's are made in communist CHINA.
APPLE IS TAKING YOUR MONEY AND PUTTING IT ON THE BOTTOM LINE WHILE YOU PUSH YOUR NOSE IN THE AIR AND KEEP SAYING MICROSOFT SUCKS.
APPLE = MICROSOFT
BOTTOM LINE DRIVEN.
You can't even get HDMI on a Mac without 14 dongles. Add that in your bottom line cost.
Mac = Not compatible with 80% of the world.
PC = Affordable computing. And for the record a Chevy runs as long as a Lexus.
Running down your competitor means you have nothing good to say about your own product. That is absolutely deadly.
You mean like what apple has been doing for the last few years?
You mean like what apple has been doing for the last few years?
Tell me which Apple Laptop hasn't had Video Problems in the past 2 years.
Look at Apple's Forums.
Apple just doesn't acknowledge them until they become class action law suits.
You are paying twice as much for PC parts and the THRILL OF KISSING STEVE'S ASS WHILE HE TAKES YOUR MONEY TO THE BANK.
Why do you think they have so much liquid cash. It's because Apple users are blind SHEEP.
Same parts, made in the same factories, only real differences are the OS and the price. And the Mac laptops are grossly overpriced for the components they contain. It's like OS X is a $1000 add-on.
Not the same at all. Cheap PC laptops don't have mag-safe cords or "drop sensors" to park their hard drives before impact. Nor do they have ambient light sensors to control the luminance of the screen. Nor do they have awesome light packaging. Nor OS X.
A pretty long list of differences that you either didn't know about or purposely omitted.
Thompson
One completely unscientific, interesting factor to consider: An old dead Mac is worth more when reselling than a working similarly aged PC.
Microsoft = McDonalds
Macs are PC's. I know you'd like to think you have something special when you buy mac but it's the same PC hardware that everyone else has a cheaper price.
I'm not arguing that they aren't built well with nice enclosures and materials, on the outside, but they aren't anything special.
Once again, this topic continues to get beaten like a rented mule.
Putting the topic of similar components aside, Windows has so many issues because one deals with a machine with components built from many vendors (both good and bad), that many times do not behave well with Windows. I actually defend Microsoft (to a point) for being able to get Windows to work with the myriad of different chips, components, drivers, etc. All it takes is a bad driver from some vendor to really bug things up. The technically-savvy people will tolerate it and some may actually find it challenging to troubleshoot the problems.
Apple on the other hand has full control of the hardware that runs with their software. Every component in their machines comes with a fully-certified Apple-provided driver/firmware/software that has been tested. Of course, Apple has had issues with drivers but the were always up to the task of getting the issue fixed. That same hardware with Apple-certified software is what makes the entire product a winner. I could care less that HP, Dell, whoever, uses the same piece at a few hundred dollars less. If it has a lousy OS with more hiccups than a drunk, it's not value-added for me.
This is a major point all the critics miss. You folks just focus on one aspect of the debate. Same parts should not be the dominant part of the equation.
So sure, you can hack your way to get OSX running on your non-Apple machine. Good for you. But this may come to a surprise to you but not everyone has the desire to tinker with their machine. Some just want to turn it on and just work.. all day. Microsoft has been horrible to provide a positive user-experience and you very well know that.
Apple spending more on quality construction like the enclosures, glass displays, etc.. to me is more value-added than the flimsy plastic construction all the other folks provide. To each their own. I see value beyond the higher-price that saves me money and time in the long run. Time is money for me which is why gave up on the Wintel model.
The car anology is OLD. Just like Steve.
Apple is buying their parts from every other vendor that PC users are.
Your Mac's are made in communist CHINA.
APPLE IS TAKING YOUR MONEY AND PUTTING IT ON THE BOTTOM LINE WHILE YOU PUSH YOUR NOSE IN THE AIR AND KEEP SAYING MICROSOFT SUCKS.
APPLE = MICROSOFT
BOTTOM LINE DRIVEN.
You can't even get HDMI on a Mac without 14 dongles. Add that in your bottom line cost.
Mac = Not compatible with 80% of the world.
PC = Affordable computing. And for the record a Chevy runs as long as a Lexus.
You have no idea what extra parts are in a Mac that you can't get in a cheap laptop, do you? Admit it: you are actually ignorant of the facts and are either just hoping you are correct or that nobody else is knowledgeable enough to notice how wrong you are.
Not the same at all. Cheap PC laptops don't have mag-safe cords or "drop sensors" to park their hard drives before impact. Nor do they have ambient light sensors to control the luminance of the screen. Nor do they have awesome light packaging. Nor OS X.
A pretty long list of differences that you either didn't know about or purposely omitted.
Thompson
You don't have HDMI, a stable video card in any current shipping model.
People don't care about mag-sage chords or drop sensors unless you're kissing Steve's Ass.
They care about performance and My Dell's and HP's (laptop and Desktop) blow every model Apple has and I paid 1/2 the price.
Give me a fricking break. Apple is asking $1,200 to upgrade to 8gb of ram for their 15" Pour Books.
Tell you what, I've got a Dell with and Apple logo on it I'll sell you for $4,000.
That way Both Steve and I make out like the rip off bandits.