Well I work with my Pc and have fun with my Mac. My work Pc is a grey, ugly Dell, my Macs are aluminum and shiny white. So when I say I agree that I'm happy/more happy with my Mac.
When I relate to PC (Dell, HP an others) I relate to something I have to do, everyday boring stuff, work.
When I relate to Mac I relate to recording music in logic and PT and having fun.
What I'm trying to say is that my opinion is clearly coloured by other things then facts about hardware even if I'm a bit of a tech geek that loves clean design and form.
(What I'm not trying to say is that Pc's are automatically boring and macs are fun)
It would be nice to see a customer survey only for say OS X server and Windows Server users/customers. and see the result.
I am aware that Forrester did the study, but who proposed it? Who paid for the study?
Apple had nothing to do with the study? How do you know this for a fact? Link?
Any company that would publish a study like this and not credit the sponsor has zero credibility! Assuming they do have some credibility, Apple was not mentioned in this article as A sponsor.
This appears to be one of several in a series on the "Customer Experience Index for 2008". While this does not rule out a sponsor, I would suspect that the $700+ price tag on the report indicates where they get their money!
I always bought high quality hardware (IBM/Lenovo Thinkpads and Sony VAIOs) but the machines were just too frustrating to use - all the great hardware went to waste due to an incapable operating system called Vista which crippled my machines within a few months. Everyone who is a heavy user of Vista machines faces the same problems. Hence, these ratings come as no surprise but are not really fair towards the PC manufacturers - they have no control over Vista.
This can be easily resolved by selecting the downgrade XP recovery DVD option when purchasing a Thinkpad on Lenovo website, even as of today. It is no news that Microsoft has privately extended the XP license with PC builders despite the official expired date, Jan 31 2009, which is still enlisted on Microsoft's website.
Speaking of high quality hardware, the only thing I can complain about the X200s is the TN screen display quality that comes with a high price tag, other than that it's perfect.
This study only goes to show that Macs provide a better user experience than PCs that has the notorious Vista built in. It will be really lame if Apple takes this as a triumph. Only those stock analysts who barely understand or even barely use Macs will make a big deal out of it.
I also would like to know who sponsored the study. What kind of study was it? My recent statistics course taught me to question many of the so-called "studies" that are presented to the public. This applies to Apple and MS.
Yeah Apple has been sponsoring all the studies putting them in front for customer satisfaction from their OS, to their computers, to iphones, to ipods.
Personally I find it funny that Microsoft is really worried about Apple. They have twelve times the market. I can't think of any dominant company that names a competitor with that much less market share. Why give the free advertising to the competition.
Well said, I'm tired of all the articles I've seen lately that seems to just be amplifying the Mac VS PC debate. Look it Apple scored an 80 so obviously there are people who didnt like it as much and I know people who dont like Macs at all for very legitimate reasons, they dont like change and they are use to Windows and you cant say thats a wrong way to reason because its their personal choice.
I personally will never recommend Mac to anyone because of their cocky nature.
Ill end with this, Apple HAS to make their software good with their hardware, they have no choice because if the software wasnt flawless with the hardware they have NO excuse! Windows has an excuse, they are developing an OS for virtually unlimited configurations of hardware!
As a comp sci major I would never hope to work for Apple because it would be no challenge to make a OS that has limited hardware.
Announcing your degree is comp sci isn't exactly validating your statement (sounds kind of cocky to me). BTW, it's not cocky nature to not want the BS that a lot of people have had to deal with regarding Windows. However, it is pretty cocky to assume that people are cocky for wanting to use something other than Windows. Also, Microsoft choose to go the route they went and it is no excuse for it being the wreck that it is sometimes (i.e ME and Vista. XP was ok but it took many years just to become livable for most people). Of course, that's just my opinion, so try to take it with a grain of salt instead acting "cocky".
Then why exactly are you posting on an Apple fan site?? Have we all become so bored in life that we need to post something about nothing??!! What gives??
Let me tell you that I think Apple is doing an amazing job pushing hardware and software to the bleeding edge. What has Microsoft done on computers that Apple hasn't done better? Name one thing... besides practically being a monopoly. I can't really believe you're a comp sci major, and you say you won't recommend Macs to friends... Have you USED a mac?
It really bugs me when people who wouldn't recommend a Mac are accused of having never used one. I have used a friends 24" iMac plenty of times, and whilst it's a very nice piece of kit, there's no way I'd recommend anyone spend about £500 more than a similarly specced Dell desktop as the Mac doesn't do £500 more worth of stuff. If someone came to me and asked me to recommend a computer that did something the Mac excelled at (which is what exactly?) then I'd recommend a Mac, but for just about everything else, a Windows PC achieves the same thing, for much less, and I don't like to see people wasting money pointlessly.
And Macs are vulnerable too in terms of usability and customer experience. Within 30 minutes of getting my friends iMac out of the box, Firefox had crashed and wouldn't force quite. We had to switch the thing off by the power button as it had completely locked up. It's also taken my friend over 6 months to get the Mac to successfully share its printer and files over the network with a Windows PC (partly because she hasn't had a lot of time to deal with it, and partly because it didn't 'just work' as we were expecting it to - took a lot more configuration than that in the end). The Windows PC was able to share its files with the Mac without any problems, however. (probably helped by the fact we already knew how to do this, and 2 or 3 clicks later everything was shared).
Needless to say, I wouldn't really say the Mac has shown itself to be worth over £1000. It hasn't really done anything spectacular yet, and certainly nothing that has made use think 'wow, that's great'. It browses the web, writes emails, does office documents and chats on IM just as easily and efficiently as a Windows PC, and if that's all you're interested in, the price isn't justified.
It really bugs me when people who wouldn't recommend a Mac are accused of having never used one. I have used a friends 24" iMac plenty of times, and whilst it's a very nice piece of kit, there's no way I'd recommend anyone spend about £500 more than a similarly specced Dell desktop as the Mac doesn't do £500 more worth of stuff. If someone came to me and asked me to recommend a computer that did something the Mac excelled at (which is what exactly?) then I'd recommend a Mac, but for just about everything else, a Windows PC achieves the same thing, for much less, and I don't like to see people wasting money pointlessly.
And Macs are vulnerable too in terms of usability and customer experience. Within 30 minutes of getting my friends iMac out of the box, Firefox had crashed and wouldn't force quite. We had to switch the thing off by the power button as it had completely locked up. It's also taken my friend over 6 months to get the Mac to successfully share its printer and files over the network with a Windows PC (partly because she hasn't had a lot of time to deal with it, and partly because it didn't 'just work' as we were expecting it to - took a lot more configuration than that in the end). The Windows PC was able to share its files with the Mac without any problems, however. (probably helped by the fact we already knew how to do this, and 2 or 3 clicks later everything was shared).
Needless to say, I wouldn't really say the Mac has shown itself to be worth over £1000. It hasn't really done anything spectacular yet, and certainly nothing that has made use think 'wow, that's great'. It browses the web, writes emails, does office documents and chats on IM just as easily and efficiently as a Windows PC, and if that's all you're interested in, the price isn't justified.
One thing you missed, in my opinion, is that if you suggest to purchase a Dell now, then the person will have to shell out several hundred bucks when Windows 7 comes out... This will, probably, reduce the price gap quite greatly. And then the person will have to buy the new version of Office or something...
With a Mac, the same person, next year, will be able to buy the "Apple software box" with the new OS, iWork and iLife at a fraction of the cost.
Unless, of course, the person wants to keep the same configuration and SW for the whole life span of the PC, which is legit but not that smart in my opinion.
I work in an architect office and we have some Mac Pro G5 which run Leopard and the latest ArchiCAD version flawlessly. Now, THAT was an investment. We also had some PCs (in the meantime we phased them out) and we couldn't even get Vista to work properly on them...
OSs advance (yep, even Microsoft!) and take better advantage of the HW you have (64 bit for instance) but if you have to spend about 400 USD (figure I made up, not seen anywhere, but I guess it will come close to that) for a new OS then paying 500 USD less for a PC isn't going to make it exactly "a lot cheaper".
To be precise:
500 USD less upfront + 400 USD (very approx) for Win7 is a 100 USD difference. If you add the cost of Apple's new OS (150 USD) then you get a total difference, in a year, of about 250 USD, which about half of what you mention...
Comments
I have work to do. Why should I care about this? Apple users are happy? I have an Apple too, but so what?
Then shut up, stop surfing the internet while you're at work, and don't read articles like this ever again.
What does Apple do for me? It (my Mac) enables me to be self-employed.
Could a PC do it just as well? Yeah, probably. But I don't care.
When I relate to PC (Dell, HP an others) I relate to something I have to do, everyday boring stuff, work.
When I relate to Mac I relate to recording music in logic and PT and having fun.
What I'm trying to say is that my opinion is clearly coloured by other things then facts about hardware even if I'm a bit of a tech geek that loves clean design and form.
(What I'm not trying to say is that Pc's are automatically boring and macs are fun)
It would be nice to see a customer survey only for say OS X server and Windows Server users/customers. and see the result.
Cheers
I do not like any Pc and any Mac...
Ahhh, Linux! I like that, too.
Unless you meant hardware . . . which pretty much leaves blenders and vacuums.
I am aware that Forrester did the study, but who proposed it? Who paid for the study?
Apple had nothing to do with the study? How do you know this for a fact? Link?
Any company that would publish a study like this and not credit the sponsor has zero credibility! Assuming they do have some credibility, Apple was not mentioned in this article as A sponsor.
This appears to be one of several in a series on the "Customer Experience Index for 2008". While this does not rule out a sponsor, I would suspect that the $700+ price tag on the report indicates where they get their money!
KRR
cocky nature.
Yeahh!!
carbon fiber, 3.5 lbs, 13.1" 1366 x 768 XBright --- $1,171.91
Sony VAIO VGN-Z540PAB: P8400 2.26 GHz, GeForce 9300M switchable GMA 4500MHD (6 hrs bat.), 160 GB, HDMI, card reader
Can it run OSX?
Sorry Quadra, I didn't see your post..
I always bought high quality hardware (IBM/Lenovo Thinkpads and Sony VAIOs) but the machines were just too frustrating to use - all the great hardware went to waste due to an incapable operating system called Vista which crippled my machines within a few months. Everyone who is a heavy user of Vista machines faces the same problems. Hence, these ratings come as no surprise but are not really fair towards the PC manufacturers - they have no control over Vista.
This can be easily resolved by selecting the downgrade XP recovery DVD option when purchasing a Thinkpad on Lenovo website, even as of today. It is no news that Microsoft has privately extended the XP license with PC builders despite the official expired date, Jan 31 2009, which is still enlisted on Microsoft's website.
Speaking of high quality hardware, the only thing I can complain about the X200s is the TN screen display quality that comes with a high price tag, other than that it's perfect.
Except that none of that really matters since it doesn't run OS X.
I'm sure there'd be a way to install OS X on it.
I also would like to know who sponsored the study. What kind of study was it? My recent statistics course taught me to question many of the so-called "studies" that are presented to the public. This applies to Apple and MS.
Yeah Apple has been sponsoring all the studies putting them in front for customer satisfaction from their OS, to their computers, to iphones, to ipods.
Well said, I'm tired of all the articles I've seen lately that seems to just be amplifying the Mac VS PC debate. Look it Apple scored an 80 so obviously there are people who didnt like it as much and I know people who dont like Macs at all for very legitimate reasons, they dont like change and they are use to Windows and you cant say thats a wrong way to reason because its their personal choice.
I personally will never recommend Mac to anyone because of their cocky nature.
Ill end with this, Apple HAS to make their software good with their hardware, they have no choice because if the software wasnt flawless with the hardware they have NO excuse! Windows has an excuse, they are developing an OS for virtually unlimited configurations of hardware!
As a comp sci major I would never hope to work for Apple because it would be no challenge to make a OS that has limited hardware.
Announcing your degree is comp sci isn't exactly validating your statement (sounds kind of cocky to me). BTW, it's not cocky nature to not want the BS that a lot of people have had to deal with regarding Windows. However, it is pretty cocky to assume that people are cocky for wanting to use something other than Windows. Also, Microsoft choose to go the route they went and it is no excuse for it being the wreck that it is sometimes (i.e ME and Vista. XP was ok but it took many years just to become livable for most people). Of course, that's just my opinion, so try to take it with a grain of salt instead acting "cocky".
I personally will never recommend Mac to anyone because of their cocky nature.
It's always a good idea to get advice from an expert.
I would never get an iPod because of its upbeat, insouciant manner. I prefer my MP3 players to have a slightly brooding quality.
shut up!!
I'm so sick of these brooding fanboiz coming onto a non brooding forum and talking up their mp3 players, go to your own brooding forum.
leave us upbeat-ers to our iPodzzz!!11!!! etc.
[/sarcasm]
I do not like any Pc and any Mac...
Then why exactly are you posting on an Apple fan site?? Have we all become so bored in life that we need to post something about nothing??!! What gives??
carbon fiber, 3.5 lbs, 13.1" 1366 x 768 XBright --- $1,171.91
Sony VAIO VGN-Z540PAB: P8400 2.26 GHz, GeForce 9300M switchable GMA 4500MHD (6 hrs bat.), 160 GB, HDMI, card reader
Starting at $1,739.99 according to Sony.
Let me tell you that I think Apple is doing an amazing job pushing hardware and software to the bleeding edge. What has Microsoft done on computers that Apple hasn't done better? Name one thing... besides practically being a monopoly. I can't really believe you're a comp sci major, and you say you won't recommend Macs to friends... Have you USED a mac?
It really bugs me when people who wouldn't recommend a Mac are accused of having never used one. I have used a friends 24" iMac plenty of times, and whilst it's a very nice piece of kit, there's no way I'd recommend anyone spend about £500 more than a similarly specced Dell desktop as the Mac doesn't do £500 more worth of stuff. If someone came to me and asked me to recommend a computer that did something the Mac excelled at (which is what exactly?) then I'd recommend a Mac, but for just about everything else, a Windows PC achieves the same thing, for much less, and I don't like to see people wasting money pointlessly.
And Macs are vulnerable too in terms of usability and customer experience. Within 30 minutes of getting my friends iMac out of the box, Firefox had crashed and wouldn't force quite. We had to switch the thing off by the power button as it had completely locked up. It's also taken my friend over 6 months to get the Mac to successfully share its printer and files over the network with a Windows PC (partly because she hasn't had a lot of time to deal with it, and partly because it didn't 'just work' as we were expecting it to - took a lot more configuration than that in the end). The Windows PC was able to share its files with the Mac without any problems, however. (probably helped by the fact we already knew how to do this, and 2 or 3 clicks later everything was shared).
Needless to say, I wouldn't really say the Mac has shown itself to be worth over £1000. It hasn't really done anything spectacular yet, and certainly nothing that has made use think 'wow, that's great'. It browses the web, writes emails, does office documents and chats on IM just as easily and efficiently as a Windows PC, and if that's all you're interested in, the price isn't justified.
It really bugs me when people who wouldn't recommend a Mac are accused of having never used one. I have used a friends 24" iMac plenty of times, and whilst it's a very nice piece of kit, there's no way I'd recommend anyone spend about £500 more than a similarly specced Dell desktop as the Mac doesn't do £500 more worth of stuff. If someone came to me and asked me to recommend a computer that did something the Mac excelled at (which is what exactly?) then I'd recommend a Mac, but for just about everything else, a Windows PC achieves the same thing, for much less, and I don't like to see people wasting money pointlessly.
And Macs are vulnerable too in terms of usability and customer experience. Within 30 minutes of getting my friends iMac out of the box, Firefox had crashed and wouldn't force quite. We had to switch the thing off by the power button as it had completely locked up. It's also taken my friend over 6 months to get the Mac to successfully share its printer and files over the network with a Windows PC (partly because she hasn't had a lot of time to deal with it, and partly because it didn't 'just work' as we were expecting it to - took a lot more configuration than that in the end). The Windows PC was able to share its files with the Mac without any problems, however. (probably helped by the fact we already knew how to do this, and 2 or 3 clicks later everything was shared).
Needless to say, I wouldn't really say the Mac has shown itself to be worth over £1000. It hasn't really done anything spectacular yet, and certainly nothing that has made use think 'wow, that's great'. It browses the web, writes emails, does office documents and chats on IM just as easily and efficiently as a Windows PC, and if that's all you're interested in, the price isn't justified.
One thing you missed, in my opinion, is that if you suggest to purchase a Dell now, then the person will have to shell out several hundred bucks when Windows 7 comes out... This will, probably, reduce the price gap quite greatly. And then the person will have to buy the new version of Office or something...
With a Mac, the same person, next year, will be able to buy the "Apple software box" with the new OS, iWork and iLife at a fraction of the cost.
Unless, of course, the person wants to keep the same configuration and SW for the whole life span of the PC, which is legit but not that smart in my opinion.
I work in an architect office and we have some Mac Pro G5 which run Leopard and the latest ArchiCAD version flawlessly. Now, THAT was an investment. We also had some PCs (in the meantime we phased them out) and we couldn't even get Vista to work properly on them...
OSs advance (yep, even Microsoft!) and take better advantage of the HW you have (64 bit for instance) but if you have to spend about 400 USD (figure I made up, not seen anywhere, but I guess it will come close to that) for a new OS then paying 500 USD less for a PC isn't going to make it exactly "a lot cheaper".
To be precise:
500 USD less upfront + 400 USD (very approx) for Win7 is a 100 USD difference. If you add the cost of Apple's new OS (150 USD) then you get a total difference, in a year, of about 250 USD, which about half of what you mention...