I dunno, most people I know with macs, or like macs, are because they are so shiny and good looking. And honestly, when did Apple start getting so popular? I think it was with the iPod personally, I hadn't heard much about them until I one day heard something about the iPod in the news (2nd or 3rd gen by this time) and wondered what the hell "iPod" was and why there were so many things with a lower-case "i" in front of the name. Since then people seem to think macs are so much cleaner looking, smaller, and think they're so much better because of the price premium. Since then, every company has been copying them because Apple making so much money off of it.
And yes, I find it a complete non-issue to switch. I have used MacOS, and photoshop and such on it (my neighbor had a PowerMac G5 because he heard how awesome Macs were for digital art, video editing, etc). He kept it for a month or two on for a couple art pieces, then he sold it off for 1/3rd of the price he bought it (bought it aorund $3k, sold at around $1k). Again, I have no reason to switch to MacOS or any sort of Linux. Not only is my WinXP perfectly customized for my uses, it supports everything i use and runs quick enough for me. Plus... I can't stand mac mice (I know I can switch it with a normal USB mouse). The old transparent keyboards were awesome. Monitors are awesome but also pretty overpriced IMO.
But again, what is a practical reason to pick up a Mac over a well-equipped PC (or should i say Windows rig seeing as how they're kinda the same thing now...)?
For me, the reason is two main points. One: now that they are using the same component architecture as other computer manufacturers, I can now explore a multitude of native running options in OS's and software previously only available on a separate PC unit. And Two: for my money it seems far more logical to get a machine that can run anything I throw at it, than something that limits me to PC only OS's and software.
Now I don't have to give up the experience, applications, functionality, or compatibility I already have with my Mac and OS X, and yet I can now run any other PC OS (Vista, XP, or any flavor of Linux) all on the same machine. (Either by rebooting, or using programs like "Parallels" that let you run both at the same time natively.)
Now I don't need to get a separate PC, monitor, mice keyboards (or set up KVM systems to switch between them). I can use my existing hardware (DVD burners, Printers, scanners, etc). Anyone who has used or has to currently use a mix of Mac and PC software or equipment has found a great advantage in a single machine that can do the job. Anyone developing software or even games for both platforms no longer has to get (or can greatly reduce the need for) multiple different PC systems. I can also now play any previously 'PC Only' games with ease.
Sorry your friend unloaded his machine for such a rock bottom price. I would have been interested. He could have unloaded it to a Mac person who would have appreciated it more ($$$). You can see here ( http://www.everymac.com/ ) that Macs tend to stay around longer and because they are more rare, they retain their value longer as well. You can pay the same or close to original list price far longer with a Mac than with other PC hardware and becomes discounted quicker. For example, I'm guessing if it was a 3 Grand G5 tower, it would be close to this 2.7GHz one here?
Even today it's valued at $1,700 to $1,900.00. Granted you'll only get what someone is willing to pay for it, but this does give you an idea what I mean; even on a 3 year old PPC machine.
As for favorite mice, I'm not a fan of Apple's current mice design either, though I do love the new keyboards. Myself I'm using Logitech's S510 wireless mouse/keyboard. (And despite even Logitech's own website listings of "PC only", it works perfectly fine in Mac OS X and Windows.
No. Two of the companies that come to mind are Power Computing and Motorola. I don't remember all of 'em, but they didn't exactly add appreciably to the Mac's marketshare.
Umax, Radius, and Daystar were the others. The clones pretty much took the upper end of Apple's market instead of the low-end that Apple had intended the clones to fill. One of Jobs' first decisions when he became interim CEO was to buy out the clone contracts, and support contracts (from PowerComputing anyways).
If you want a Mac, you're going to buy one, or at least do some googling about things we can't talk about.
If you really want a PC that runs Windows, you're going to buy one of those.
If you want a PC that runs Linux, and couldn't care less about Windows, any box with Windows on it is going to seem "overpriced" since you're going to have to pay for Windows.
Granted the Mac can run Linux and Windows as well, and vice versa, but I think everyone here can see my point. If it's not the right tool for the job... it's a waste of money. If you want a Mac, buy it for crying out loud. If you want a PC, then get that. Arguing about which is better is completely and utterly foolish, because in the end, it really doesn't matter. Mind you this is coming from someone who uses a Mac as his primary computer, and always has. Each OS does something better than the other.
The best thing for anyone to do is try each of the major platforms out, see what works best for them, and then go for it. When you start politicizing computer platforms, it becomes a war of stupidity. Apple puts together a very nice, well integrated software package along with the OS. Thats a big reason people switch. The tools you're given are intuitive and powerful. That however is meaningless if you don't like the feel and functionality of the programs. Some people do in fact like Windows better and the software available for it. Why bother trying to "switch" them to a "better" OS. I'm not about to shove the Mac OS down the throat of someone who is perfectly happy with what they have. The same goes for people who use Mac OS, Linux, etc.
Microsoft isn't really Evil. Apple isn't really perfect. *nix is... well *nix and it varies by flavor and the thing that keeps it alive within it's community but really hurts it overall is that there are so many options.
Macs have a TPM, along with some other stuff. (Dont steal mac os x.kext — it's a nasty little thing...)
Cloning is bad history, as muddocktor has lined out. The problem was, Apple did ALL the R&D, and the cloners stepped in and took their research and sold it at subpar.
Actually the TPM isn't really used for anything. I believe it's just there for developers to use. Apple hasn't even bothered to use it for something like File Vault. Don't Steal Mac OS X.kext is actually a AES decryption library that prevents non Apple machines from running things like the Finder and Rosetta. Obviously they figured out how to get around that....
The clone issue was really two pronged.
The first as that Apple itself was sick. They had too many models that competed with one another, and their management was about as sub par as it gets these days. Gil Amelio's last keynote was done in a cold sweat. When buying a Mac, you had to look at Performas and Power Macs of various styles and targets in the Market. Sometimes they were basically the same machine, but with Power Mac instead of Performa as the name, a "higher end" software bundle, a slightly higher clock speed or with more memory, but a much higher price tag (mostly in the 5xxx and 6xxx series).
Granted, Gil was really trying to fix these things, and might have pulled Apple out of the gutter himself, but Steve definitely did it quicker than anyone else could. The only other person besides him that could have possibly done it is Woz IMO.
Clone makers actually did a lot of engineering themselves, and some cool engineering at that. On the contrary to simply leaching off Apple developments, they often times surpassed them. Clone makers were the first to have a dual slot, dual processor Mac with a simply & inexpensive (relatively speaking) upgrade path to dual CPUs (Umax's Supermac line). They also were the first to make a Quad CPU Mac (the Daystar Genesis line). Power Computing was selling computers that surpassed Apple's computers in pretty much every respect (faster FSB, CPUs, G3s as a supported upgrade path, etc). PReP and CHRP, which would eventually become the groundwork for the Power Mac G3, iMac, and subsequent models, was half developed by IBM.
When a clone was good, it was usually better than Apple's own hardware. When it was bad, it was junk. Of course, when you're competing against the Power Mac 5260, with it's PPC chip sitting on a crippled 32bit bus (desktop PPC Chips are all designed around a 64bit or wider data bus) that had to funky logic to do things like transfer data or it's slow IDE bus and play sound at the same time (which made things that were supposed to take one cycle take four).... even a crappy cone looked like a good option. At least they performed better than a 68K Mac would since most of your OS and program code was 68K/68K CFM code at that time (System 7.5.x era) anyways.
Steve Jobs fixed Apple by fixing their main issue (their engineering and marketing) and deleting the related issue (other people's superior engineering). Of course, what he did most to help Apple, was give them a CEO people trusted and more or less believed in.
Not really. Too many 'hoops' and legal issues. And the OS is only a small part of the equation. Other reasons for me not to go PC only:
Specificity of required hardware.
Lack of support.
Future update questions.
Application compatibility issues.
Possible important data loss.
Cost/benefit ratio too low.
Critical Reliability questions.
All make it not worth it for me.
But you just answered your own question. Why go through the hassle of hacking software and hardware when I can get a fully supported/warrantied machine that can run everything I want? Or spend the same (or close to the same as some would argue) on a machine that can only run 2/3rds of what I want, and not any of what I want most?
Also keep in mind, I've owned PC's. From old Amiga 500's to a used AMD Barton 2600+ machine with a 17 inch LCD I got for free. I modded it, OC'ed it, upgraded it, stocked it, painted it, lighted it, cooled it and studied how it worked from soup to nuts. And all I ended up doing with it... was playing Halo on it. Oh, I played with all kinds of applications (and games) and did almost everything I do with my Macs, but eventually I sold it to get a Xbox360 since the majority of what I did was play games on it anyway.
And while making a 'hackintosh' sounds intriguing, I'd never use it for anything critical or important. Too many potential issues. And as Moto so succinctly put it, ultimately what works best, really only matters to me.
Umax, Radius, and Daystar were the others. The clones pretty much took the upper end of Apple's market instead of the low-end that Apple had intended the clones to fill. One of Jobs' first decisions when he became interim CEO was to buy out the clone contracts, and support contracts (from PowerComputing anyways).
Actually it was more creative/backhanded than that. The contracts were all good for all versions of System 7, but the minute the OS became Mac OS 8, the contracts were up.
So Steve said, "Let's call 7.7 Mac OS 8 instead of, well, 7.7, and we'll starve the ******** out of business."
When a clone was good, it was usually better than Apple's own hardware. When it was bad, it was junk. Of course, when you're competing against the Power Mac 5260, with it's PPC chip sitting on a crippled 32bit bus (desktop PPC Chips are all designed around a 64bit or wider data bus) that had to funky logic to do things like transfer data or it's slow IDE bus and play sound at the same time (which made things that were supposed to take one cycle take four).... even a crappy cone looked like a good option. At least they performed better than a 68K Mac would since most of your OS and program code was 68K/68K CFM code at that time (System 7.5.x era) anyways.
That emulator had to be one of Apple's greatest software engineering efforts of all time (besides QuickDraw), and like QD, it was written almost exclusively by one man.
Funky engineering is a longstanding Apple tradition since the Macintosh II. (Well, even since the Very Beginning, in the Before-Time...) Remember 32-bit clean?
(For PC users: Originally the Mac OS used the upper parts of a memory address for flags, limiting the total address space to 24 bits. They fixed that, slowly, but it was a LONG and COMPLICATED and PAINFUL process.)
With all due respect, shut up and buy a Macintosh. Don't gripe (or praise) them until you've OWNED one. (I would not presume to do the same about a Windows box...and I also happen to own one of those, TYVM)
Not really. Too many 'hoops' and legal issues. And the OS is only a small part of the equation. Other reasons for me not to go PC only:
Specificity of required hardware.
Lack of support.
Future update questions.
Application compatibility issues.
Possible important data loss.
Cost/benefit ratio too low.
Critical Reliability questions.
All make it not worth it for me.
But you just answered your own question. Why go through the hassle of hacking software and hardware when I can get a fully supported/warrantied machine that can run everything I want? Or spend the same (or close to the same as some would argue) on a machine that can only run 2/3rds of what I want, and not any of what I want most?
Also keep in mind, I've owned PC's. From old Amiga 500's to a used AMD Barton 2600+ machine with a 17 inch LCD I got for free. I modded it, OC'ed it, upgraded it, stocked it, painted it, lighted it, cooled it and studied how it worked from soup to nuts. And all I ended up doing with it... was playing Halo on it. Oh, I played with all kinds of applications (and games) and did almost everything I do with my Macs, but eventually I sold it to get a Xbox360 since the majority of what I did was play games on it anyway.
And while making a 'hackintosh' sounds intriguing, I'd never use it for anything critical or important. Too many potential issues. And as Moto so succinctly put it, ultimately what works best, really only matters to me.
And this is the biggest reason that I haven't tried out the "other" way to run OSX. It's just not worth it to mess with, except as possibly a playtoy. You don't want to use something like that for any mission-critical things because you don't know what the next vulnerability update will break.
And my biggest problem with Apple's offerings (leaving out my feelings about their policies on OSX being tied to their equipment only) is the fact that their entry level computer is still priced at it's original pricing structure (x86 Mini) since it's inception and has only had the processor offering upgraded and maybe the hard drive size. Both are drop-in parts and not a real upgrade. The platform is still based on 2+ year old technology and is slow compared to newer tech that companies such as Dell are offering for their entry level offerings. And like Fudge stated either here or that other Mac thread, he updated his Mini with a Merom but the thing runs with temps running in the 80's, which tells me that cooling is marginal at best on this offering. I just can't see paying what they are asking for this entry level machine for the tech that you get with it. The Dell offering I linked has newer tech with a better integrated video subsystem, faster hard drive subsystem and user upgradability built into it. All things that the Mini doesn't offer. IMO, the pricing on the Mini should be at least $100-200 less than what it is, due to the fact Apple hasn't done any upgrades that amount to anything for this machine since it was first offered for sale. They have minimal R&D costs to account for since it's first availably yet the pricing hasn't changed and it's 2 year old mobile tech substituting for desktop use.
BTW, I saw you posted that you can get deals on Mac stuff from other sources besides Apple and looked at that website you mentioned and the only Mini I see there for sale is for $749.00, which is too expensive to compete with the cheap Dell I compared to. Do you have other stores that have Mac stuff for sale at decent pricing?
And like Fudge stated either here or that other Mac thread, he updated his Mini with a Merom but the thing runs with temps running in the 80's, which tells me that cooling is marginal at best on this offering.
Actually that was me, Fudge never answered my question of what his temps are, but I suspect they are similar. IIRC Macaholic has a few minis running Meroms with SMP Folding and his load temps are similar. The cooling on the mini consists of a single case fan blowing sideways over and through a CPU heatsink smaller then a common southbridge heatsink. There are 3rd party apps for OS X that will allow you to throttle the mini's fan up to the max (5500rpm I believe) and will drop the CPU load temps down to the 60s, but then at that point it sounds louder then a Dell.
Captain Newbie said:
Actually it was more creative/backhanded than that. The contracts were all good for all versions of System 7, but the minute the OS became Mac OS 8, the contracts were up.
So Steve said, "Let's call 7.7 Mac OS 8 instead of, well, 7.7, and we'll starve the ******** out of business."
Ah, I just now read the wiki link quoted above. My work used to have a Umax J700 clone a few years ago until I dumped it at recycler. It was a good solid machine, an ugly case, but the system worked well during the time we were still on OS9 (I had 9.1 installed on it).
And this is the biggest reason that I haven't tried out the "other" way to run OSX. It's just not worth it to mess with, except as possibly a playtoy. You don't want to use something like that for any mission-critical things because you don't know what the next vulnerability update will break.
And my biggest problem with Apple's offerings (leaving out my feelings about their policies on OSX being tied to their equipment only) is the fact that their entry level computer is still priced at it's original pricing structure (x86 Mini) since it's inception and has only had the processor offering upgraded and maybe the hard drive size. Both are drop-in parts and not a real upgrade. The platform is still based on 2+ year old technology and is slow compared to newer tech that companies such as Dell are offering for their entry level offerings. And like Fudge stated either here or that other Mac thread, he updated his Mini with a Merom but the thing runs with temps running in the 80's, which tells me that cooling is marginal at best on this offering.
Well it's a two year old machine. And it is set to be either retired or upgraded (to an entire new case design) possibly this/next month. I tent to get machines just before their retirement cause they cost less and have all the bugs worked out of them compared to newer more expensive machines that come out as Rev A's and can be risky, depending on how much has changed from prior models. (example, early G5's. Some with firmware, power supply, liquid cooling issues).
Not sure what would fit your criteria for a 'real' upgrade. To me, any parts replaced for better ones than what originally was there is an upgrade. As for what Dell offers, I haven't seen any ultra-small, very portable, nearly silent, and very versatile triple booting OS machines in their line up. Maybe I missed one. I'll have to check.
As for the cooling, it in fact works beautifully. Let me explain:
The problem here is not the hardware at all, it's the default fan settings that Apple has chosen for it. The chip specs show it's operation can actually go to 100C.
But Apple's engineers have chosen to set the default fan rotation speed at only 1500 rmp. This allows for silent operation, longer fan life (and from their point of view) a chip while idle temps running between 50C-80C and under load 70C-100C is well within specs of the chip. The fan will in fact not increase speed to compensate for the heat until well in the 90's.
The very simple (and easy) solution to getting much better temps with the mini is a program called "smcfan control".
Originally written for to control fans in MacBooks, it also works with the fan controllers of several Intel Mac models, including the Mac Mini. Here is an example of my mini using it now. As you can see there is no load and the minimum rps is set only slightly higher than the 1500 rpm original speed with extremely little increase in fan noise. At this moment, the hard drive clicking in my Verizon DVR is louder.
Under max load for over 2 hours my chip temps maxed out at between 59C-62C and the fan rpms set to 4000. Far below the 80C some people get, with far less operational chip stress. If I had to state an average for my temps under normal use with occasional stressful loads, my chip runs at 39C-45C and my Hard Drive and other internal parts stay at about 37C with this program keeping the rmps at 2300rmp-2800rmp. At those speeds, I can hear the electrical light ballasts over my computer, which sits at less than 3 feet from my head.
You can even make pre set rpm levels so when you know you'll be working the machine harder, (such as rendering, compressing, gaming, editing, etc) the fan can keep the machine very cool and thus increasing the life of the machine and the other parts inside. At 4000 to the max 5500 you can hear it going, but even at it's max 5500 ( sounds like a little hair dryer ) it is still quieter than some PC's I've used. If Fudge is having Mini cooling issues, I would definitely suggest he try this.
I just can't see paying what they are asking for this entry level machine for the tech that you get with it. The Dell offering I linked has newer tech with a better integrated video subsystem, faster hard drive subsystem and user upgradability built into it. All things that the Mini doesn't offer. IMO, the pricing on the Mini should be at least $100-200 less than what it is, due to the fact Apple hasn't done any upgrades that amount to anything for this machine since it was first offered for sale. They have minimal R&D costs to account for since it's first availably yet the pricing hasn't changed and it's 2 year old mobile tech substituting for desktop use.
BTW, I saw you posted that you can get deals on Mac stuff from other sources besides Apple and looked at that website you mentioned and the only Mini I see there for sale is for $749.00, which is too expensive to compete with the cheap Dell I compared to. Do you have other stores that have Mac stuff for sale at decent pricing?
See, the problem there is you (and others, I don't want you to feel singled out or anything ) are comparing a micro computer to half and full sized desktops and towers. That's the same as saying laptops are inferior because you can't upgrade the video card. Well, that's obvious because what you pay for with a laptop is the built in screen and the portability. You pay the price you do for the mini for silent (or near silent) operation, portability, tiny profile, robust external I/O, and compatibility with existing external equipment. The Mini is basically a laptop with no screen, and that's what you get. So the performance, cost, comparison and upgrade expectations should be based on that. Not that the latest entry level from Dell (or anyone else for that matter) with a completely different market product with different internals, does not compare. Your computer interest do not lie within that market the Mini is in, therefore it's unreasonable to apply the standards of that entirely different market to it.
My only real wish would be for this model to either have a dedicated 3D video chip or a larger case design to accommodate some video card options. That's it. In using this new one (and my older 1.5 PPC mini) I have never felt it wanting in anything I use a computer for. The new one plays 720p HD video like a dream (something my old one could not touch) so I'm very happy with it. Especially since I paid $599 for that one almost 3 years ago.
As for the Mini deal, yeah they were running out of stock since it is rumored to be retired soon. Apple has been unloading stocks of them new and refurbished ones for weeks. That's the problem with deals, they never last long. I generally check out google's shopping, dealmac.com, dealnews.com, pricegrabber.com, nextag.com, smalldog.com and others for Mac specials. Apple's margins are not huge, so retailers do not have a lot of room for price changes. I had a choice of getting a refurb from Apple for $499 or a new one from eco.com for $549. Turns out my check did not clear the bank until after the refurbs were all gone. But hey, I saved 50 bucks and free shipping instead of paying for it or driving to the Apple Store, I can't complain.
Why do extra work that's not needed? They don't want the OS to go away from their hardware... Since they keep it under control like that, they can better address problems in software and hardware.
I can't believe nobody has brought up replacement parts yet.
The cost difference between replacement Apple model parts and any given PC manufacturer's parts is absurdly disparate. Apple and other OEMS like Dell are guilty of using proprietary connectors, but Apple does it to such an extreme degree as to limit your replacement part options to a set number of compatible model numbers for many parts.
Most memorably for me is their decision to flip the 50-pin ATAPI connector on their slim optical drives. While other laptops will support pretty much any slim drive that's the same size as the factory installed model.
This makes servicing most PCs later in their usable life span MUCH cheaper than it is to do the same for n Apple machine. This in turn makes them more likely to end up in land fills.
To me atleast this is just BAD DESIGN. If they didn't do so many things to sabotage the end user, I wouldn't be so disinclined to consider purchasing their products.
I can't believe nobody has brought up replacement parts yet.
The cost difference between replacement Apple model parts and any given PC manufacturer's parts is absurdly disparate. Apple and other OEMS like Dell are guilty of using proprietary connectors, but Apple does it to such an extreme degree as to limit your replacement part options to a set number of compatible model numbers for many parts.
Most memorably for me is their decision to flip the 50-pin ATAPI connector on their slim optical drives. While other laptops will support pretty much any slim drive that's the same size as the factory installed model.
This makes servicing most PCs later in their usable life span MUCH cheaper than it is to do the same for n Apple machine. This in turn makes them more likely to end up in land fills.
To me atleast this is just BAD DESIGN. If they didn't do so many things to sabotage the end user, I wouldn't be so disinclined to consider purchasing their products.
Reading this reminded me of the red vs blue "switch" ad parody. Went something like this: "When its time to upgrade, with a PC you have to open your case, swap out video cards, change jumpers. But with a mac, you just pick it up, throw it away and go buy a new one."
Blackstar, thank you for such a stimulating discussion on this subject. I am enjoying the interactions between our POV's on this and I hope that you are too.
And you did bring up a valid point about me not being the market that the Mini is designed for. But, (and this is a big one, IMO) that is the only offering that Apple has for an entry level machine, so from my POV it has to be compared against the entry level offerings from the other major OEM's such as Dell or HP. And that brings up another point that I have brought up earlier. That Apple has targeted their offerings at niche markets and not for more general usage, which limits Apple's market growth potential. If I'm Joe Sixpack and I'm looking for a new computer for my wifey to get on teh intarweb to play her little Yahoo games and send email to her friends, the first criteria I will base my buy on will be price. Take last Christmas for example; at the big evil Walmart chain you could get several desktop systems, including keyboard, mouse and 17-19" flat panel LCD monitor for $500 or less. That is what the Mini is competing with, which is the point I am making with my comparisons. It would be nice to be able to have the choice of being able to boot into any of 3 major operating systems for the more computer literate but not at the expense of extra costs incurred in procuring and maintaining the computer.
IMO (which I know that Apple couldn't give 2 beans about), Apple needs to fill the huge hole in their computer lineup with a socket 775 offering in a small desktop chassis, which can still be manufactured to be stylish (check out the Dell offering as it isn't ugly by any means). Their reliance on either mobile parts or server class parts for their computer offerings makes for a huge hole and quite a bit of price disparity between their desktop offerings. Like you said, the Mini is more like a laptop without a screen or keyboard than the Dell, but then if I wanted a laptop based system I might just as well buy my a real laptop so that I don't have to buy a separate screen and keyboard. With a slightly larger chassis offering using mornal desktop parts, they could control thermals quietly with a bigger cooling fan and still keep noise to a minimum and run much lower temps inside the case. And you wouldn't need a program like smcfan control to throttle up the fans at a more reasonable level of temperature than what Apple chose. Sure, I know that mobile processors are designed to a 100 C spec, but just because they are rated to run that high doesn't mean that you have to run them close to the edge either. After all, heat is a big enemy of electronic components and especially hard drives and I don't want to be changing dead components out after the warrantee is up just because of deficient thermal design (I say that because it is Apple themselves that have programed their fan speedup points too high). That sounds too much like they are setting their systems up to fail shortly after the warrantee runs out, much like American car manufacturers did back in the 60's and 70's and even into the 80's.
Captain Slug said:
I can't believe nobody has brought up replacement parts yet.
The cost difference between replacement Apple model parts and any given PC manufacturer's parts is absurdly disparate. Apple and other OEMS like Dell are guilty of using proprietary connectors, but Apple does it to such an extreme degree as to limit your replacement part options to a set number of compatible model numbers for many parts.
Most memorably for me is their decision to flip the 50-pin ATAPI connector on their slim optical drives. While other laptops will support pretty much any slim drive that's the same size as the factory installed model.
This makes servicing most PCs later in their usable life span MUCH cheaper than it is to do the same for n Apple machine. This in turn makes them more likely to end up in land fills.
To me atleast this is just BAD DESIGN. If they didn't do so many things to sabotage the end user, I wouldn't be so disinclined to consider purchasing their products.
This is something I did not know before you posted this message about their optical drives. That is just inexcusable IMO to do such horse-poo. While you brought up Dell and other major OEM's doing such practices in the past, if you check into it you will see that Dell at least has gone to using standard parts instead of proprietary stuff in things such as the psu on most of their offerings nowadays. And their drives are standard drives, not something with a proprietary pinout on the connector so you can't replace a bad drive with a standard part. That is BS because the drives are otherwise the same electrically and physically.
Anyways, this has been a good discussion IMO and let's see if we can keep being civil and making productive posts.
Yeah, most other OEMs have only done it to one component at a time. Dell for example uses a proprietary pinout for their power supply connector that does not meet the ATX specification standards. This makes replacing the motherboard or power supply with alternatives impossible. The layout of most of their motherboards is nonstandard as well in order to fit them into their peculiar case designs.
That too is bad design in my opinion. BUT if you do shop for proprietary Dell specific replacement parts they are still priced much lower than proprietary Apple specific replacement parts. Even if they're doing the same thing to certain parts, Apple replacement parts cost far more.
For the above parts you may be able to attribute the price difference to the fact that Dell replacement parts are made in far more significant quantities than Apple replacement parts, despite Intel being the source manufacturer for both. But Apple exacerbates the problem by using proprietary parts for more individual components in their machines.
Apple is the only manufacturer that doesn't use some form of attachable caddy with an interface adapter for most of their laptops. IBM, Toshiba, Dell, Acer, and so on and so forth do. You may not be able to get a matching faceplate for your alternative drive all of the time, but they will still work because the manufacturer followed the form factor specifications. Although getting the manufacturer approved replacement part for laptops from manufacturers other than Apple with the correct faceplate generally doesn't cost very much more than a generic model.
To my knowledge Apple has never done this to hard drives. But for optical drives, power supplies, motherboards, and fans, most of their machines have nonstandard pinouts or nonstandard connectors.
Prior to their switch to x86 this proprietary nature covered pretty much every kind of expansion card as well, all of which needed specific firmware in order to be compatible.
The more proprietary something is, the less likely I am to buy it. Warranties, service plans, and guarantees don't last forever. And once the machine goes beyond that point you're left with the reality that you have to service the machine yourself.
I have recycled MANY computers over the past few years (through friends, craigslist, eBay, and intechra outlet) and have seen all manner of weird proprietary setups. But Apple is the only company that does it to such a degree that it makes their older machines almost impossible to resurrect or service at a price that's worth doing so.
So I'm still stumped as to what stops me from installing OSX on my desktop. Is it that custom BIOS/EFI? Does OSX look for that when it's being installed? If so, why doesn't Windows run into problems?
for one, OSX need an EFi bios, not your old one, most desktops dont have EFi bioses yet, i recall apple has a chip on the mobo specifically making it all work, checks the OS and such, why you need bootcamp to install windows - so it can read the FI bios, for XP, as vista supports EFI bioses, BUT you cant install vista direct on a Apple computer....
you can install OSX on off the shelf hardware but cant go into details here.
No, i can install almost any hardware i want and it will work..... do that with an MAC, if apple allows it and doesnt block it, even though said chipset should support X item... often it doesnt.... Microsoft doesnt make computers, they sell an OS, perhaps you meant dell?
Yeah, most other OEMs have only done it to one component at a time. Dell for example uses a proprietary pinout for their power supply connector that does not meet the ATX specification standards. This makes replacing the motherboard or power supply with alternatives impossible. The layout of most of their motherboards is nonstandard as well in order to fit them into their peculiar case designs.
not all dell models, we had some, cant recall the model, but lower end models, all were standard ATX layout for PSU and mounting holes , i moved 2 of them to new cases to add more harddrives.
The more proprietary something is, the less likely I am to buy it. Warranties, service plans, and guarantees don't last forever. And once the machine goes beyond that point you're left with the reality that you have to service the machine yourself.
There are more "all-in-one" desktops then the XPS One. There is also the Gateway One and the Sony Vaio LT19U. For $1,800 on an iMac you get:
24-inch display
2.4GHz Core 2 Duo, 800MHz FSB, 4MB L2 Cache
1GB DDR2 667
320GB HDD
ATi 2600pro
No additional software or protection plan
For $1,800 on the XPS One you get:
20-inch Display
2.33MHz Core 2 Duo, 1333MHz FSB, 4MB L2 Cache
2GB DDR2 667
320GB HDD
ATi 2400
2 Year Warrenty, 15 months Norton, Office 2007, TV Tuner, Adobe Elements
IMO, the Dell XPS is a better value dispite the smaller display and inferior video card because you get a superior cpu, more ram, a TV card, 2 yr warranty, and some good software. But it depends on what your want I suppose. I've never cared much about my displays, but if you really need the extra 4 inches I suppose the Mac would be the better buy.
Blackstar, thank you for such a stimulating discussion on this subject. I am enjoying the interactions between our POV's on this and I hope that you are too.
Absolutely. I have several OCer's that are friends who introduced me to this place and got me into PC designs and mods. I've learned a lot and enjoyed many aspects the community has to offer. And I get to raz Dugans, Pinky and Nebulous all the time. Hehehehehe.
And you did bring up a valid point about me not being the market that the Mini is designed for. But, (and this is a big one, IMO) that is the only offering that Apple has for an entry level machine, so from my POV it has to be compared against the entry level offerings from the other major OEM's such as Dell or HP. And that brings up another point that I have brought up earlier. That Apple has targeted their offerings at niche markets and not for more general usage, which limits Apple's market growth potential. If I'm Joe Sixpack and I'm looking for a new computer for my wifey to get on teh intarweb to play her little Yahoo games and send email to her friends, the first criteria I will base my buy on will be price. Take last Christmas for example; at the big evil Walmart chain you could get several desktop systems, including keyboard, mouse and 17-19" flat panel LCD monitor for $500 or less. That is what the Mini is competing with, which is the point I am making with my comparisons. It would be nice to be able to have the choice of being able to boot into any of 3 major operating systems for the more computer literate but not at the expense of extra costs incurred in procuring and maintaining the computer.
I absolutely agree there is a big gap in the Apple product line between the entry level and the more expensive desktops such as the iMac and Tower lines. Keep in mind though, Apple has never really been a company for 'entry level' anything before. One could argue that the Apple Cube was the first attempt but failed miserably at the price-point level and the mini is the success at both. ( considering the mini I have now benchmarks faster than a dual 2GHz G5 tower from just a few years ago. That amazes me. - http://browse.geekbench.ca/geekbench2/view/47781 ) The mini really is the only one to compare at that price point because it is the lowest priced Mac ever made but from an entry level bargain hunting point of view, there are far wider options that bundle more because they assume you a getting a whole system and need everything. The market for the mini assumes you have everything and just need the cpu. But Fudge does have a point in his initial post subject about cost and perception even though the examples on both sides are constantly changing so it's hard to get an accurate picture. I remember when one of the first Mac Intel cpu Towers came out. It was the Mac Pro 2.66 QuadCores that had two Xeon 5150 "Woodcrests". I remember looking up the standard configuration and comparing it to the (at the time) current Dell offering with the exact same specs. Not close, not near, not-sorta the same, exact. (Same Chips, Ram, Hard Drives, DVD's, Motherboard.) And you know what? The Dell was almost 1,000 dollars more expensive. (similar to this, but here the video cards are different) I could not believe it!
IMO (which I know that Apple couldn't give 2 beans about), Apple needs to fill the huge hole in their computer lineup with a socket 775 offering in a small desktop chassis, which can still be manufactured to be stylish (check out the Dell offering as it isn't ugly by any means). Their reliance on either mobile parts or server class parts for their computer offerings makes for a huge hole and quite a bit of price disparity between their desktop offerings.
I would agree as well as I desire the very same machine you describe. So would many other mac fans who have called for one many times, especially when the mini did come out. They all raved about it's successful points, but desired just a few more options. A full sized drive bay (or 2 laptops bays) and a standard video card slot, maybe one more for an expansion card is all I'd need. Make the case 10 inches wide instead of 6.5 and 3 inches tall instead of 2 and that would be perfect.
People have been modding the mini's themselves since it's introduction. First with just standard 3.5 Hard Drives and later with overclocking cpu's, then replacement processors and even getting them running with 3GB of ram beyond the list max of 2GB. Here are a few simple ones. (http://www.123macmini.com/gallery/thumbnails.php?album=5 )
Like you said, the Mini is more like a laptop without a screen or keyboard than the Dell, but then if I wanted a laptop based system I might just as well buy my a real laptop so that I don't have to buy a separate screen and keyboard.
Ah, but there are many who need one without it because a built in screen becomes a hindrance. Such as part of entertainment centers, a headless rack unit, closet file server or web host, etc. Or like me, often bring it to places with screens and monitors (or need different screens and keyboards for presentation purposes). I've used lappies and found the mini works much better. Again, this is all very user specific; which is really the point since one-size-never-fits-all.
With a slightly larger chassis offering using mornal desktop parts, they could control thermals quietly with a bigger cooling fan and still keep noise to a minimum and run much lower temps inside the case. And you wouldn't need a program like smcfan control to throttle up the fans at a more reasonable level of temperature than what Apple chose. Sure, I know that mobile processors are designed to a 100 C spec, but just because they are rated to run that high doesn't mean that you have to run them close to the edge either. After all, heat is a big enemy of electronic components and especially hard drives and I don't want to be changing dead components out after the warrantee is up just because of deficient thermal design (I say that because it is Apple themselves that have programed their fan speedup points too high). That sounds too much like they are setting their systems up to fail shortly after the warrantee runs out, much like American car manufacturers did back in the 60's and 70's and even into the 80's.
I believe that very much as well. I would love to have the machine you described and think it would fulfill a group of Mac users that have desired such a machine for a long time. Apple philosophy of simple and elegant designs though do not often level with optimum technical specification. They would not hesitate to let a chip or drive run a little hot to allow silent operation in their system designs. Also Apple's concerns and financial obligations with existing product line may make that impossible though, I'm not sure. The risk in making something 'too good' means you eliminate or exclude potential customers for the other, more expensive and feature rich products. I'd still want control of the fans though.
This is something I did not know before you posted this message about their optical drives. That is just inexcusable IMO to do such horse-poo. While you brought up Dell and other major OEM's doing such practices in the past, if you check into it you will see that Dell at least has gone to using standard parts instead of proprietary stuff in things such as the psu on most of their offerings nowadays. And their drives are standard drives, not something with a proprietary pinout on the connector so you can't replace a bad drive with a standard part. That is BS because the drives are otherwise the same electrically and physically.
Anyways, this has been a good discussion IMO and let's see if we can keep being civil and making productive posts.
I'd be curious to see which one/model Slug is referring too. I have never run into replacement part issues really. It's true there have been many 'priority' parts and components Apple has incorporated into past designs, but I personally (who has had his share of machines over the last decade and a half) has not run into many that were insurmountable. Many have been identical PC parts such as DVD drives, hard drives, ram chips, etc. The most annoying problem I had in later years was an ADC 17 monitor I had. (Loved that thing) but when ADC ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Display_Connector ) did not take off, getting the monitor to work with other machines was daunting to say the least, and the adapter was less than 'subtle' ( http://www.drbott.com/prod/db.lasso?code=0111-DVAD ) The power supply's weight alone was daunting. It was a great concept though and worked wonderfully with the tower's that supported it. Power, video and USB all in one cable. Saved a ton of wires and space. Until it was no longer supported. Ah, progress.
In my experience though I do have to say with the changes Apple has made including the advent of the Intel adoption, the compatibility issues are far from what they once were in the late 90's with 16 pin video plugs, AAUI-15 ethernet and NuBus slots. One of the last big hurtles I think will be video cards and their firmware. Right now processors, ram, dvd burners, hard drives, keyboards, mice, monitors, printers, scanners and networking all are using the same standards (if not the same software and drivers) and therefore are very easy to replace.
There are more "all-in-one" desktops then the XPS One. There is also the Gateway One and the Sony Vaio LT19U. For $1,800 on an iMac you get:
24-inch display
2.4GHz Core 2 Duo, 800MHz FSB, 4MB L2 Cache
1GB DDR2 667
320GB HDD
ATi 2600pro
No additional software or protection plan
For $1,800 on the XPS One you get:
20-inch Display
2.33MHz Core 2 Duo, 1333MHz FSB, 4MB L2 Cache
2GB DDR2 667
320GB HDD
ATi 2400
2 Year Warrenty, 15 months Norton, Office 2007, TV Tuner, Adobe Elements
IMO, the Dell XPS is a better value dispite the smaller display and inferior video card because you get a superior cpu, more ram, a TV card, 2 yr warranty, and some good software. But it depends on what your want I suppose. I've never cared much about my displays, but if you really need the extra 4 inches I suppose the Mac would be the better buy.
iMac with:
20-Inch glossy LCD display
2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo 800MHz FSB 4MB L2 Cache
2GB memory
320GB hard drive
8x double-layer SuperDrive
ATI Radeon HD 2600 PRO with 256MB memory
AirPort Extreme
Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR
Apple Mighty Mouse
Apple Keyboard (English) + Mac OS X
Accessory kit
The gaming specs on the iMacs I have seen show the HD 2600 PRO works rather well (and is far superior than the Dell's 2400), so if you think about it, is the slightly faster 1333 FSB but lower video card performance on the Dell worth the extra $200? Especially when you think of the much better video performance over the life of the unit. You could even put in your own RAM and save a few bucks off of that as well.
No, i can install almost any hardware i want and it will work..... do that with an MAC, if apple allows it and doesnt block it, even though said chipset should support X item... often it doesnt.... Microsoft doesnt make computers, they sell an OS, perhaps you meant dell?
You *can* write your own drivers (to be fair you can for BOTH platforms, but Apple's Xcode is free)...that's the issue. There aren't drivers (really) for non-official Apple hardware, a side-effect of controlling the OS and the hardware.
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