Mac Versus PC Debate Has Never Been Clearer

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/23/the-mac-versus-pc-debate-has-never-been-clearer/

by ExJournalist • 17 years ago

28 63 17 years ago

Tichy4• 17 years ago

Last time I looked almost all non-Mac high-end PCs suffered from "Klavierlack"-Syndrome. I don't know how it translates into english, but it is that cheesy shiny coating.

There are competitors who can create good high end PCs, but at the moment they suffer from a severe case of bad taste. Maybe most producers being Asian doesn't help either - nothing against them, just the tastes seem to be different.

r7000• 17 years ago

Klavierlack is "piano lacquer". You see that in some high-end automotive advertising.. "black piano lacquer wood trim".

gamble2• 17 years ago

Sony makes decent high-end hardware... and then cripples it with loads of pre-installed crapware.

cstejerean2• 17 years ago

I generally buy Mac laptops and build my desktop machines, but at the right price-to-hardware ratio I wouldn't mind buying a machine with Vista and pre-installed crapware, I would wipe it as soon as I got it.

papersmith2• 17 years ago

Being Asian myself, I concur that we tend to have questionable tastes. It probably has something to do with the cultures going through an identity crisis.

This is most pronounced in car designs. Japanese and Korean cars designs generally look like they are "trying too hard", especially in the recent years in their high-end models. Maybe they are going for the funky-factor of the ricers, I don't know. British, Italian, and French cars usually look the least desperate. German and American cars are somewhere in the middle. Just my opinion.

Tichy4• 17 years ago

My favorite notebook maker used to be Samsung (Korean I think), but unfortunately their latest line also has the piano lacquer problem.

Also, all the makers have far too many options to choose from.

Both seem like solvable problems to me, but perhaps they are doing well enough as it is?

plinkplonk2• 17 years ago

"Being Asian myself, I concur that we tend to have questionable tastes. "

Being Asian myself, I concur we have different tastes. ;-)

Most Asian cultures(Japanese, Indian etc)have their own aesthetic sensibilities. I concur that they are different from the "default" western sense of style. I just don't think it is true Asians have "questionable" taste!

NB: I am not getting into culture wars etc or claiming victimization etc, I just think that sentence is not true.

rms• 17 years ago

What's the best thing to do to make a high end PC look good? Make it out of carbon fiber?

Tichy4• 17 years ago

A lot of them looked fine before the piano lacquer abomination. Aluminum is classic, but other variants where OK, too (why not carbon fiber?). I guess there is also experimentation.

Also go for simplicity, I suppose. No fake parts designed to look "high end" in a phony way (kind of like "spoilers" on cars).

To me the utmost example of bad taste is the leather coating ASUS is going for in their latest creations. But then I don't like leather in general.

Just try to remove as many superfluous parts and elements as possible I guess. Just as Apple does - battery covers are superfluous. Mouse buttons are superfluous. Multimedia buttons are superfluous. Shiny areas anywhere but on the display are superfluous. And so on...

Important: large borders around the screen are superfluous and look cheap.

I can't think of a situation where multiple colors would look good (ie notebook cover red, bottom black), but I am not a designer.

lutorm• 17 years ago

The Porsche/Camry analogy is slightly flawed, because it doesn't take into account the effect of OS adoption and app availability.

It's more like the choice between a hydrogen Porsche and a gas Camry. In that case, even if Porsche are content to sell a few, high-margin vehicles, they will have to worry about whether the model is sustainable given that if customers can't find a place to fill it up, they're not going to buy one no matter how nice they are.

potatolicious2• 17 years ago

But there are places to fill it up. A common sentiment I run into when I tell people that I use a Mac is that people seem to think they can't do the same things on a Mac that they already do on a PC.

Hell, most people don't even know MS Office exists on the Mac.

In fact, after using a Mac for 3 years now I have to say that for a lot of day-to-day tasks, Mac apps beat Windows apps hands down. FTP? Use Cyberduck, it's infinitely superior to any free FTP client on Windows. IM? Adium is classier than any of the all-in-one clients on Windows (including Pidgin). I can go on...

The point is, whatever you used to do on Windows can all be done on a Mac (save for a few domain-specific things like drafting or gaming). And the difference is, Mac developers actually give a damn about UI, which is a lot more than can be said for most Windows apps.

P.S. Whoever decided that unlabeled, nondescript, 16x16 icons lined up in multiple rows at the top of the screen is good for usability needs a serious reality check.

jerf• 17 years ago

"Adium is classier than any of the all-in-one clients on Windows (including Pidgin)."

Adium and Pidgin both use libpurple, the same IM backend. If you want to talk about design aesthetic differences between open source and the Mac ecosystem, it's probably the definitive example.

skolor• 17 years ago

The problem (with UI) is not that Windows developers don't care about it, its that the barrier to entry is very low, and the potential rewards are very high when working with Windows. Because of the market share Windows has, when someone decides "You know, I'm going to make an App that does X", they're usually going to write it for Windows, simply because that's where the market is.

Not only that, but the people using Macs are largely using Macs because of the UI, so there is a much higher standard set for developers. In general, it seems, people using Macs have a much higher expectation for their Software, which means that the general crap that Windows developers put out would never fly on a Mac.

mrkurt• 17 years ago

Just so everyone knows, I sold 100% of the PCs in the >$25,001 market.

robotron• 17 years ago

Wow, if you actually look at the hardware is it really that high-end?

jcromartie3• 17 years ago

From some standpoints, yes. The design and build quality of machines like the MacBook Pro certainly trumps anything available from commodity PC makers.

javanix• 17 years ago

It certainly trumps something that sells for $600, but is the build quality all that much better than a comparably priced ThinkPad or one of Dell's new high-end machines?

The only real hardware advantage that I can find which isn't available elsewhere is the nice, fully internal battery that the Pros come with now. You can get one that performs similarly from Lenovo, but it doesn't look as elegant.

zimbabwe3• 17 years ago

Hardware in terms of ram, graphics card, hard disk: Not in a distinguishable way.

Hardware in terms of firm design, usability, compactness, and aesthetic: I can't think of anything that comes close to Apple's design. I can barely think of computers that come close to looking as good, and those are ones that don't feel good when you're actually using them.

thomaspaine• 17 years ago

It wasn't the hardware the convinced me to buy a mac, it was OS X. A company I interned at lent me a powerbook, and after about a week of using it I had basically stopped using my thinkpad altogether. The user experience of windows XP always felt super clunky and glued together after that.

Also, OS X was my first real exposure to working in a unix based environment. Some people may disagree, but I discovered a definite preference for working in unix/linux. I eventually replaced the OS on my old desktop with Ubuntu, which is nice, but it's still hard for me to imagine a non-technical person like my girlfriend using Ubuntu. However, my girlfriend has switched over to OS X as well, and is much happier than when she was on windows xp. I guess I see OS X as basically being a linux distro with an excellent user experience.

Of course, your mileage may differ.

pavel_lishin2• 17 years ago

I didn't mind the user experience of XP; in fact, there are a lot of things I still prefer in Windows over OS X.

However, the BSD back-end of OS X has completely sold me on mac laptops as a work machine forever. (I know I can install Cygwin, or switch to an actual linux desktop, but those are the things that feel clunky and glued together to me.)

djahng• 17 years ago

Open up a Mac Pro, then open up a Dell. You don't need to be an electrical engineer to appreciate the difference.

mynameishere• 17 years ago

It's always fun to actually compare the specs of comparable products:

(An HP) http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-det...

http://store.apple.com/us_smb_78313/configure/MB871LL/A?mco=...

Very, very similar. The apple's CPU is about 200 dollars more, and its video card about 100 dollars more. But the difference in the computers' prices is about 1500 dollars. To me, it's a pretty big ripoff, but I guess that's the value of branding. BMW and Lexus are also ripoffs by any objective standard.

diskrete• 17 years ago

Hardware is not what defines “high-end” any more.

Go into Best Buy and you’ll see RAM, CPU speed and hard disk sizes listed on the features tags. Those specs are increasingly meaningless for most consumers as any computer in the store will do what they need.

The more they focus on these specs, the more PC makers allow their product to become a commodity.

Design, usability, buying experience and after-sales service are what really differentiate computers. If any computer is sufficient to do my daily tasks, I’m going to look for the cheapest one available. But I’ll pay more if you can sell me on those intangible benefits. That’s the high-end of the market.

rythie7• 17 years ago

I think it's pretty clear if you want something without the viruses/spyware and is less annoying you get a Mac, as long as you can afford it. If you are short for money you end up on a Windows PC. Or at least that is perception amongst the general public.

I don't think Apple have any interest in selling something at lower price points, because like Sony, Porsche etc. their brand is of a better quality product which of course should cost more.

SGI, Sun, HP all used to sell high end workstations at the top the market (~2-20x more than what Apple charged at the time) - that market got eaten by PCs when they couldn't differentiate anymore. Unlike those high end machines, Apple has no performance advantage over PCs. Apple's only real difference is the OS.

Apple's emerging threat is Linux/Open Source, which has many of the same advantages OS X over Windows does and of course was good enough for Apple to take a kernel, browser and printing system from. Linux/Open Source doesn't have to be better than OS X - it just has to be better than Windows and good enough that people don't want to spend extra on a Mac.

Edit: this is classic "The Innovator's Dilemma": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disruptive_technology

mikecuesta• 17 years ago

I don't think for a second that Linux/Open Source is an emerging threat to OS X, sorry.

whatusername2• 17 years ago

To be honest - as a relatively new Ubuntu user - and an occasional OSX user - trying to get stuff done on the mac is beginning to annoy me more and more.

Apple make some fantastic software - the iLife suite is pretty awesome. That might be reason enough to buy one - (and the hardware design is typically good as well). But just looking at the OS - and what I use the system for on a day to day basis - and Apple's advantage in the OS space is a lot less than it used to be. (And snow leopard doesn't look like changing that from an end user perspective)

plinkplonk2• 17 years ago

rythie said,

"Apple's emerging threat is Linux/Open Source, because " [reasons]

to which you (mikecuesta)replied

"I don't think for a second that Linux/Open Source is an emerging threat to OS X, " with no rationale or logic to support that viewpoint.

"I don't think X", without supporting reasons is an almost meaningless response in a discussion. I am surprised it got so many upvotes. Just imagine someone responded to you with "Oh yeah? I do think so" without providing any rationale.

Your response could validate rythie's "classical innovator's dilemma" argument, since in a classic innovator's dilemma the proponents of the disrupted product never "think for a second" that the disrupting product is "an emerging threat" till it is too late.

smokinn• 17 years ago

That's probably never going to happen though.

Another big reason why Apple fans pay a premium is for the seamless integration experience that doesn't make you think. Since Apple controls 100% of the hardware it can ensure that there are never any problems like x drivers that crash randomly and take your system down.

Linux will always be oriented towards the hobbyist type that, when things break down, opens up the box and tinkers inside. Linux can't control the hardware it's deployed on so it'll always be at a massive disadvantage.

rythie7• 17 years ago

I used a Windows XP laptop for the first time in ages yesterday, it struck me just how cumbersome that is compared to Linux. This is the process I saw:

I inserted a USB thumb drive, it asked me if I want to install something or other, giving some warning that Microsoft hadn't approved it or something. Then I plugged in a mouse - it did the same thing. Then I started Office and again with something about installing and then asked my name. Even that process is simplified since someone had already installed/bought Office which doesn't normally come with as full version on most machines nowadays.

To do the same on a fresh install of Ubuntu I just plug in the USB stick and double click - I never get asked anything.

I would say Ubuntu is already better than Windows XP.

RK• 17 years ago

Linux can't control the hardware it's deployed on so it'll always be at a massive disadvantage.

What do you mean?

Any vendor can take Linux and tailor it to their hardware (e.g. Tivo) and make it a seamless experience for the enduser. You might not recognize it as Linux at that point, but it still is Linux and that is one of its design potentials (if not goals).

jcromartie3• 17 years ago

That's not to say someone couldn't come along and do with Linux what Apple did with Mach/BSD/NeXT. A focused Linux-based OS with a seamless new UI and app suite (and good APIs) could be great. In fact, that's one of the things that I like about the Chrome OS idea, no matter how silly it might seem to just throw Chrome on a "bag of drivers."

The problem, of course, is the effort. Software is hard.

Dilpil• 17 years ago

It is also pretty clear that if you want to play high end games on your computer, you buy a PC. I'm not sure it will be this way forever- if Mac continues to gain popularity more games will probably be released for Mac- but as it stands Mac isn't even an option for gamers like me (or any other non windows OS).

rythie7• 17 years ago

It is also pretty clear that if you do play high end games you end up spending a lot on hardware upgrades.

I doubt that the Mac can really compete in the market for high end games since most of the machines it sells are not very upgradeable.

anigbrowl2• 17 years ago

"Things are more like they are today than they have ever been before."

There are only two considerations, really: do you (or the end user you are helping) prefer OS X or Windows, and are your skills/available time competitive with the Apple hardware premium?

The 'debate' consists of large numbers of people insisting that their answers to the foregoing questions are somehow 'objective'. They're not. If I won the lotto tomorrow I'd buy the most expensive G5 and install Windows 7 on it.

philwelch• 17 years ago

That'd be quite the trick, since the G5 was a PowerPC box that hasn't been sold for years, and Windows 7 only runs on x86.

anigbrowl2• 17 years ago

I are l33t hax0r.

Seriously, silly me - I meant the top-end Mac Pro with the dual quads etc. I was thinking of the beautifully engineered case and internals, which I still associate with the g5.

unknownmat• 17 years ago

"...that’s why Microsoft’s recent Laptop Hunter commercials really never made a lot of sense. ... people who are shopping for computers where price is the key factor, were never going to buy Macs anyway..."

It perplexes me that Apple products sell as well as they do. I find Apple's value proposition to be questionable. For example, compare an iPod to just about any comparable media player, or a Mac to a comparable PC (in terms of HW power).

I think Microsoft is very smart to point this out, as I do not think this perception has reached the general public. Also, there's a line in the commercial like, "I guess I'm not cool enough to be a Mac person." A clever way for Microsoft to imply that Mac owners are paying extra for the Apple image. This is also an idea that I do not think has really reached the general public.

roc• 17 years ago

The difference: when my iphone's mic inexplicably died, the apple store just replaced the unit. I swung by a store, they confirmed the broken hardware, grabbed a new device, swapped the sim card and i went home and restored from my backup. it took 10 minutes in the store and 10 more at home.

when my 360 died, microsoft left it up to their partner (best buy). who hassled me about their absurd return policy despite my having purchased their extended service plan that clearly covered the situation. after a frustrating experience that required forty-five minutes of my time and escalation past the first tier of management, i did get new hardware.

I then got home and found out that the XBox Live content i'd purchased was tied to my old (now-dead) hardware. If i didn't have an active internet connection, it couldn't be used on the new hardware. Most times I'm connected, so it wasn't a -huge- deal -- but it still bit me in the ass a few times until Microsoft released their fix for the DRM situation (18 months later).

To sum-up: the value Apple offers isn't in the hardware specs. It's in the single point of responsibility, excellent customer service and lack of bullshit.

I don't know a single person who fits the straw man of 'buying apple to be cool'. Everyone I actually know who owns apple products switched out of sheer frustration with the Microsoft model of eighteen levels of indirection and blame game nonsense whenever anything goes wrong.

ZeroGravitas2• 17 years ago

I've not been paying attention lately but for the first few generations of iPods, the manufacturing scale and some key prepayments for flash memory (they just recently prepaid another half-billion(!) to samsung) meant that iPods were very price competitive.

It appears to be very difficult for people to see this though. When the original iPod came out, some people were claiming it was over-priced while other people were removing the hard-drive and selling it on for more than the cost of the entire iPod.

Also if, when you compare Macs and PCs, you do so in terms of "HW power" then you are missing the biggest part of their value proposition: software.

kaiserama• 17 years ago

I think the author spun his article with the concept that a Mac is 'better'. In my opinion the real point of the article should have been that Apple is branding their products as 'premium'. Just like anything in life just because someone has branded themselves as 'premium' certainly does not preclude the possibility there is something better out there. In fact I think Lenovo markets their laptops in a similar way by catering to the business user. It isn't to say Dell/HP don't make a products that can easily compete with a ThinkPad, it's just that when you think of a 'business' laptop Lenovo wants you to think of a ThinkPad.

Having said that I own a ThinkPad W500 and a Macbook and think both have strong/weak points, but given a choice of only having one I would probably stick with the Macbook, simply because I can do anything I need to with it (a la bootcamp).

etherael• 17 years ago

I'm a little shocked by the continued focus on aesthetics and form rather than purpose, especially from this particular audience. You guys are typically not the ignorant masses, who gives a damn what lacquer is used on your notebook, do you use it so you can sit back and stare longingly at it or so you can use the thing? Who cares what it looks like!

I recently was given the opportunity as a reward from my employer to name my next notebook, it could be anything at all, I didn't have any set price limit, I specifically got asked to just pick whatever would be the "ultimate" in computing power for me. I had a look at the mbp lines, did a few enquiries on notebookforums, and ended up with http://www.p4laptops.com.au/main/D900F_P4laptops.pdf

It looks like a big, black laptop, the vast majority of reviews I could find on it spent about 50% of the article pointing out how it was not very pretty and size and other form factor related nonsense I didn't care about, then another 25% raving on about how heavy and loud it is, and then the last 25% of the article actually examining how the tool performs for it's intended purpose! Man I hate the world at times, you people are all f*cking crazy. It's like I bought a fork and spent all my time pointing out how it wasn't very well chromed and I didn't like the way it sat in my hand, and then just toward the end there mentioned "but hell, it's really good for picking up food"

Eugh.

Mac Versus PC Debate Has Never Been Clearer

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