What's so good about macs besides retina display?

Tom thank you for that I appreciate it. I forgot bh sells imacs. Thank you ill order it when I get home

sjones wrote in post #18049734
I am concerned about the company’s direction. It has always been centered on making computing simple for the average consumer, but it seems to have slacked off a little on the professional side. Then again, what was once primarily consumer oriented, such as the iMac, is now powerful enough for certain professional demands…

The thing is the "professional" and the average user are merging. Look at things like Snapseed. Editing power like that wasn't even used by pros until photoshop came out. Now you can do that from your phone in your pocket. Prosumer tech is quickly becoming used by the masses because it isn't hard to use and is not very taxing computationally. So what you are seeing is there is no more prosumer. Just consumer and professional.

really?
You do know that they basically have the same hardware.
while an iMac with the smilar specs as a windows pc cost twice as much

and does apple even make imacs with multiple GPUs? and how much do they cost?

again, the hardware are pretty much the same between Macs and pcs nowadays since Apple switched to Intel CPUS years back
if you like Mac OS that much then just buy a regular pc at half the price and run Mac OS on it...

I have a 2009 Mc Pro that I have never had an issue with. It has 16GBs of ram. 2009...

I had gone through 3 PCs during the same period of time before. Crash and burn type problems with the PC. So the Mac is now the bargain in terms of not only money but stress and all the problems that come with those crashes. I am a mac user for life. + any problems Mac customer service is second to none.

FuturamaJSP wrote in post #18067622
again, the hardware are pretty much the same between Macs and pcs nowadays since Apple switched to Intel CPUS years back
if you like Mac OS that much then just buy a regular pc at half the price and run Mac OS on it...

I've built several Hackintoshes. It's still not feasible in a "pro" environment where reliability is the key. It's a lot of fun to tinker with but every update and reboot comes with the possibility of a kernel panic that leads to downtime.

airfrogusmc wrote in post #18067648
I have a 2009 Mc Pro that I have never had an issue with. It has 16GBs of ram. 2009...

I had gone through 3 PCs during the same period of time before. Crash and burn type problems with the PC. So the Mac is now the bargain in terms of not only money but stress and all the problems that come with those crashes. I am a mac user for life. + any problems Mac customer service is second to none.

My 2010 HP Z600 still runs great and does not crash or screw up, with 12 cores it is still pretty fast compared to many new computers.

Certainly not my experience.

flowrider wrote in post #18067723
I've built several Hackintoshes. It's still not feasible in a "pro" environment where reliability is the key. It's a lot of fun to tinker with but every update and reboot comes with the possibility of a kernel panic that leads to downtime.

Exactly this.

The kind of people that others are trying to convince others that Macs and PCs are the same hardware need to realize they are not the ones that should be encouraged to build a hackintosh. If they have to be told that Macs and PCs are essentially the same metal mashed together in one form or another are probably the ones to be pushed into building their first Windows box for educational purposes.

Bleufire wrote in post #18067905
Exactly this.

The kind of people that others are trying to convince others that Macs and PCs are the same hardware need to realize they are not the ones that should be encouraged to build a hackintosh. If they have to be told that Macs and PCs are essentially the same metal mashed together in one form or another are probably the ones to be pushed into building their first Windows box for educational purposes.

I'm sorry, but I don't understand a single word of that!!!

.

john crossley wrote in post #18067922
I'm sorry, but I don't understand a single word of that!!!

I read it and read it and read it again, and couldn't understand it either. I thought it was just me. Glad to see that I am not alone in my inability to make sense out of it.

I think there are probably some good ideas in there, but the way it is worded and the sentence structure makes it nearly impossible to understand.

.

Apple uses hardware which conforms to the same intel focused standards as the majority of other personal computers on the market, and it is very easy to nuke the OSX install and replace it with Windows, Linux, or something else of your choosing.

(However, not actually ALL personal computers on the market are Intel x86 based. You can find some ARM based stuff preinstalled with Linux here and there, or random stuff like SPARC processors, which I've always been shocked to find out are apparently still being made. I've used SPARC based systems before, but was always left asking "Why did management buy these?" as my largest impression.)

The key issue in the matter is the idea of Apples software running on 'just any old Intel compliant hardware', which is not remotely the case. Apple makes use of a very narrow slice of "Intel compliant" hardware, parts from various hardware vendors for chips and such that are installed on their own boards, but their software then only supports that specific hardware. Getting OS X to install and run on hardware not purchased from Apple, despite it being the same class and general specification as they stuff apple itself is using, tends to be a headache due to drivers and such.

But the core of things is that an Intel processor with X cores and Y clock speed works the same under OSX as it does Windows 10, and it will crunch through the same chunks of data. Drives transfer data through the same interfaces and communication lines. Graphics cards call low level draw functions and output signal data the same, etc.

You'll get differences in software implementation for various things from time to time, such as a program might run a little faster on the same general hardware specs than other software on another platform, but they are effectively the 'same thing'. One of my friends has the same model of MacBook I do, but he dumped OSX off it awhile back for Windows due to work, but I can't tell the difference in how quickly Photoshop does a given task on either device.


So you can grab components and put them together to easily install and run windows: All the drivers should be easy to find, and the odds of bugs or glitches are extremely low if you're using modern mainstream parts. Installing OSX on a system you build yourself is a gamble and a pain. Things can run fine for months or years, and updates have no issues, but then an update from Apple will roll out and your sound will fail, or your graphics acceleration will stop working, etc, etc. While errors after an update in Windows can happen (just as they can happen in OSX on Apple hardware), the big difference is that under windows you likely have the companies making the hardware working to fix the software glitches for you, but not working to fix the glitches for your non-apple hardware you're trying to run OSX on.

If you have no desire to touch the insides of a computer or google how to fix errors, and you have an Apple store or service centre near your location, then pay the premium for Apple hardware and enjoy. The extra cost is for that service of having someone else doing stuff for you and system you should be able to rely on. (They aren't perfect, and don't blame me if you buy one and then happen to have a terrible time. Just because it has an apple on the logo doesn't mean it can't still be a lemon.)


If you don't mind dealing with hardware, and don't have a need for the apple software (Such as iOS development), then you're probably better served by building a windows box yourself. If something in my windows workstation breaks, then I can fix it with old spare parts from the closet so that it will work well enough that I can muddle by for a few days while I wait for orders to come in. When one of the iMacs in the office dies or has a fault, odds are the whole thing is going out for servicing and might be back in a week or two.

Tom Reichner wrote in post #18067979
.

I read it and read it and read it again, and couldn't understand it either. I thought it was just me. Glad to see that I am not alone in my inability to make sense out of it.

I think there are probably some good ideas in there, but the way it is worded and the sentence structure makes it nearly impossible to understand.

.

john crossley wrote in post #18067922
I'm sorry, but I don't understand a single word of that!!!

Sorry, trying to multitask when I should probably be doing only one or the other...
Let me explain...

Macs and PCs use the same hardware on a physical level. What you can touch can *basically* be applied to either a Mac or PC if you want. In example, as described just before this comment, you can buy a Macbook Pro, wipe it, and install Windows. Done. There is no special "Mac Hardware" or "PC Hardware" in either. If they don't know this, then they probably aren't suitable to taking on a Hackintosh build, yet.

If you need to explain what I said above to someone because they think that Macs have some kind of unique hardware to them, then....

They should probably have their first computer build be a WINDOWS machine instead of HACKINTOSH, for ease and simplicity. There are a lot more task that are needed to be taken before getting OSx onto non-Apple hardware than Windows.


EDIT: Just what Luckless said in a longer explanation of why I said what I said.

Thanks for re-writing that, Bleufire. I understand what you are saying now.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

I have said this before and I will say it again, in direct answer to the question posed by the OP in the thread title:

What is so good about Macs, besides the retina display, is their customer service. This is really the #1 priority for me when purchasing any technology. With Apple Care, any time I don't understand anything about my iMac or about anything computer-related in general, I can call Apple Care and speak with a person who is actually right here in the United States and speaks fluently and is easy to understand, with English as their first language. They will spend as much time on the phone with me as I want them to, and there is no limit at all to the number of questions I can have answered. They even help me figure out how to do things with third party programs like Photoshop, or help me reconfigure my Yahoo account. The last time I called Apple for help they were on the phone with me for an hour and forty minutes. AN HOUR AND FORTY MINUTES! Just because I didn't understand how to do something, not because of any problem with the hardware or the software. Will Microsoft or HP or Dell or Sony ever do that for you?

This phone support is invaluable to me. Does any PC manufacturer offer this level of support? Any of them at all?
It is what I am paying all that money for when I buy a Mac.........and I consider that money to be very well spent.

.

I am pretty sure you can find people out there who had problems with their Macs just like you had your problems with your pcs.
I have had an IBM desktop pc that i purchased used back in 2008 and it was already at least 4 yrs old then which i upgraded after the purchase and used for another 7 years until i moved.
Speaking of upgrading. is it even possible to upgrade Macs?