lally_singh

Finished my CS undergrad in 2001.

I think the boom was a great lesson for techies to remember the business model :-)

Summary: neither is ready yet. Wait for one to get good enough to make the other unnecessary.

My guess is Hg, as it's simpler. 90% of my SVN work is done with update, checkout, and commit. Really, why so many more commands for essentially the same work cycle?

Ok, that question wasn't rhetorical, I'm curious.

Frankly I buy macs b/c they're vendor-supported unix boxes.

Outside of my personal gripes with Mach-O, it's a pretty good unix.

Note that this follows a standard fallacy: comparing circuitry alone. You're not buying a motherboard, RAM, and disk, you're buying a whole machine.

For example, the Inspiron 518 that they mentioned was a cheap plastic tower, and they compare it to the integrated iMac. The integration is going to add cost, no matter who builds it.

Apples to apples folks, apples to apples.

When I do comparisons, here's what I usually find:

1. When you find the same build quality (e.g. a macbook pro versus upper-end thinkpads or dells (I don't remember their naems)), the prices get pretty close

2. At an update, the macs are slightly cheaper. But the PC vendors quickly adapt. Then the macs are more expensive (usually ~$100).

3. To do fair comparisons, you have to also match in the software/accessories included. Lots of stuff free on either platform has to either be given credit or be matched.

4. You usually don't want everything included. But, for the sake of intellectual honesty, you have to make the comparisons fair.

5. Complaining that Apple offers poor selection or customization options are perfectly fair.