Moving to Apple?

fensterbme wrote in post #10621778
(two Xeon CPU's and a dual socket mobo will run more than the price of a Mac Pro).

Ummm...no. A Mac Pro with dual Xeon CPUs (8 cores) is $3300. I can buy the CPUs and MB for much less than that.

yeah, seems like there are lots of apple fanboys here. i love apple and use one myself (my whole family does) but i know that they cost a lot more than comparable pcs. have you guys heard of the HP envy 14 and 17 inch models? totaly destroy macbook pros for cheaper. i can get an envy 17 with a quadcore i7 (MBPros only have dual cores) 8 gigs of ran and an SSD for around 1600$ it also comes with a much better graphics card than the MBP. the 14 inch is even better because it has batterylife jsut like MBPs (even more if you add the slim extended battery.

as for desktops, the imacs are almost equal to PC equivilents bcecause of the cost of the display itself. Mac Pros are also more than PC equivilents.

the reasons for getting a mac are the customer service. other brands are good too but hte onsite repair of apple is great. there are some very rude apple employees though. they seem to think theyre better than you. this is a rarity though. also mentioned is the software it comes with. i never really used any of the sotware though. iphoto for a short while and imove from time to time. the biggest reason to get a mac is the OS itself. some prefer it over windows because its jsut more comfortable and east for them

i hope this post helped. i tried to be unbiased (actually, i tried to lean towards pcs a bit even though i use a mac to give this whole thread a more balanced veiw).

Blackwood wrote in post #10647197
Yah, likely true of any system, but more apparent in the case of Apple since they don't refresh them nearly as often.

Indeed, it's kinda silly of Apple... as with the Mac Pro where it's been well over a year since a product release, they should have dropped the price a couple of times. I used to think the Mac faithful were crazy all buying the new whatever when it was released, but once you jump on the Mac bandwagon you realize it's when you get the best bang for your buck...

... there are some fantastic things about Apple, however this isn't one of them.

Blackwood wrote in post #10647197
On newegg, I can buy two X5550 processors, a supermicro dual xeon board, and 12 gigs of ECC DDR3 for under $2,800.

The rest of it is in the noise (apple doesn't charge too much extra for video cards and hard drives.

Your right, the prices have dropped a bit... It used to be when the Xeon's had a higher price tag on them that the price of CPU's/mobo would almost equal or exceed the price of the Mac Pro. But even with the more current prices the Mac Pro isn't at that much of a premium when you add up all the parts...

I used to enjoy all the geekery involved in building out my own systems, but after almost 20 years engineering server/storage systems for companies I have zero desire to build anything anymore unless I really have too (and I might, looking at rebuilding my old Coolermaster CM Stacker cases into big storage servers running FreeNAS, and doing iSCSI so that the drives appear local, thus making Lightroom happy). These days I have too much editing/photog stuff to do when I get home from my day job..

dlpasco wrote in post #10647267
I have an iMac 27". I recently added a dual-bay external drive enclosure from OWC, FW 800. I added 2 1TB WD drives. The enclosure is aluminum, not unattractive and the drives work very well.

But they're still external drives.

Just speaking personally here, but multiple (at least 3, preferably 4-6) internal drives are a requirement for a desktop.

fensterbme wrote in post #10647852
I used to enjoy all the geekery involved in building out my own systems

Me too. Only been doing that since the Pentium 2 (not 20 years :P) and I am pretty much over it (unless it makes financial sense, or cents, as the case may be).

It's sad. After building about 10 of my own systems, I can now go to Anandtech's chipset reviews and have no idea what is being discussed.

I'd be keeping my full tower case and cooling solution, probably upgrading to at least a 1000W power supply, keeping the same optical drives and hard drives, and potentially upgrading my video cards (in addition obviously to CPU, MOBO and memory). Really to me seems that I'm paying a price premium for Apple software, much of which I'm not sure I'd use.

fensterbme wrote in post #10647852
and doing iSCSI so that the drives appear local, thus making Lightroom happy)

Interesting. I wonder if I can trick Carbonite into thinking an external array is actually internal. I used to run Lightroom off a dlink NAS 323 which I'd mounted as a drive in Windows. It didn't have any problems (though it lagged even over direct gigabit), but Carbonite seems smarter.

These threads are always interesting. To me its never been about "equal systems" costing the same, its about the base price of entry. I have a very capable PC that cost $500. Its a quad core (Q8200), has 6 GB or RAM, plenty of storage and drives that are fast enough. The cheapest Mac Mini is $700, has 1/3 the RAM and a dual core processor. How is that NOT more expensive?

imahawki wrote in post #10648171
The cheapest Mac Mini is $700, has 1/3 the RAM and a dual core processor. How is that NOT more expensive?

Any time you shrink something down the cost increases.

Wow, drink Apple flavored kool aide for lunch? There are many advantages to Macs, but saying they don't cost more is a transparent fallacy that manages to irk people who are actually open minded about Macs and not just PC fanbois. I've actually looked at transitioning to Mac several times in the last 5 years. It always costs more. That may be something I'm willing to accept at some point and make the jump but the constant claims that Macs don't cost more is just silly in my experience.

imahawki wrote in post #10648228
Wow, drink Apple flavored kool aide for lunch? There are many advantages to Macs, but saying they don't cost more is a transparent fallacy that manages to irk people who are actually open minded about Macs and not just PC fanbois. I've actually looked at transitioning to Mac several times in the last 5 years. It always costs more. That may be something I'm willing to accept at some point and make the jump but the constant claims that Macs don't cost more is just silly in my experience.

You're right.

Apple has always cost more, although in recent years not as much as they used to.

However, I don't really hear many people touting Apple's stuff being cheapest... including Apple themselves.

When pressed, many fan boys will defend Apple by saying it doesn't cost as much or that it's actually competitive (which it is, in certain cases, totally maxed out, with all the options, etc..).

Apple costs more, but to those that own it's stuff, it's usually worth the extra money.

For me, other than loving the MBP hardware, it's really all about OS X for me.
What it comes down to, is: I don't want to use Windows - period. I've never enjoyed it, in fact I hate it. If I have to pay a premium in order to get/use OS X, so be it. I'll gladly pay the tax.

Others don't feel the same way, and that's great. Use Windows, Linux, Atari, whatever you want.

That's a post I can generally agree with. I don't agree that people don't argue that Macs cost the same. I see that argument all the time. The rest is all stuff I agree with.

It seems any discussion of Apple products always spirals into a cost debate. It will go on for several pages without any "resolution." This should be quite obvious, Mac vs. PC is a matter of opinion and trying to argue an opinion is pointless. Sure you can look at just the component costs but inevitably customer service, design, OS, and whatever else gets thrown in there to justify the higher cost of Apple products.

By all appearances I would be considered an Apple "fanboy." All four iPhones, an iMac, a MacBook Pro, two iPods, Airport, Airport Express, etc. However, I purchased them because I liked them for one reason or another and nothing but one iPod was influenced by anyone else's recommendation. I liked their products and the experience I have had with them so I will continue to buy Apple. With each computer related purchase I knew full-well that I could get something faster for less money somewhere else, but that wasn't my only consideration. For some people it is and that's great. No amount of back and forth about pricing/value is going to help anyone on this forum unless that is what they specifically asked. In this case the OP never asked anything in relation to cost, they asked if what they were considering purchasing would fill the need they had.

In that case, yes. But so would a PC and it would cost less These threads are also often about validating a decision that has already been made.

Todd Lambert wrote in post #10648479
For me, other than loving the MBP hardware, it's really all about OS X for me.
What it comes down to, is: I don't want to use Windows - period. I've never enjoyed it, in fact I hate it. If I have to pay a premium in order to get/use OS X, so be it. I'll gladly pay the tax.

Others don't feel the same way, and that's great. Use Windows, Linux, Atari, whatever you want.

I think that Todd hit the nail on the head. For me, it is all about OS X. I am a software developer and I use what works best for me.

dip wrote in post #10647804
yeah, seems like there are lots of apple fanboys here. i love apple and use one myself (my whole family does) but i know that they cost a lot more than comparable pcs. have you guys heard of the HP envy 14 and 17 inch models? totaly destroy macbook pros for cheaper. i can get an envy 17 with a quadcore i7 (MBPros only have dual cores) 8 gigs of ran and an SSD for around 1600$ it also comes with a much better graphics card than the MBP. the 14 inch is even better because it has batterylife jsut like MBPs (even more if you add the slim extended battery.

The MBPs have i5s and i7s--not sure if you've looked at their website recently. Yes, they will cost more. However, Apple in general aims for quality...and the simple things like the MBP's trackpad sell the laptop for me.

Yep. I'd agree with you here regarding the iMacs.

About Mac Pros, though--you have to realize that the Mac Pros are not consumer desktop computers. Could I build a computer that outperforms the entry level Mac Pro for cheaper? Yea...and for half the price. But: case in point--go to Dell's workstation website, find the cheapest Dell Workstation that has a Xeon processor in it. ~$2200. Are they cheap? No. Are they charging way too much? I'd argue that they are in the ballpark...not so low that they compromise quality and their profit margins, but not too high to be prohibitively expensive.


Then, for the iMac vs. Mac Pro debate--not sure if you've seen this:

http://eshop.macsales.​com/shop/turnkey/iMac_​2010_27

Not the cheapest, but for an eSata port it might be worth it.

Personally, I'm content with my 13" Macbook Pro from June '09. Currently with my 50D raw files it's borderline, but I can deal with it. If I ever get anything higher, though, I'm going to need to upgrade, and it'll probably be to a custom built Hackintosh.

imahawki wrote in post #10648712
In that case, yes. But so would a PC and it would cost less These threads are also often about validating a decision that has already been made.

.....and the 28-135 costs much less than my 24-105.....but I still gladly paid for it! I will agree that in this case the decision had already been made since there were no alternatives that were asked about.