Comment of the Day - November 29, 2005 - Maybe Mac Isn't Such a Good Alternative

My housemate has a new (as of September) Mac, which he bought for video editing and 3D graphic/animation development (supposedly, the primary purpose for Macs these days). While it has some nice features, and the case is aesthetically pleasing, he has found it to be an exercise in frustration.

Apple support has been absolutely terrible, providing "fixes" that either cripple the already questionable performance, or telling people to live with the problem. Also, they have been well-known to remove threads from their official support message board if the issue is one they do not wish to recognize.

In terms of performance, a computer with dual processors and 4GB of DDR memory SHOULD have stellar performance, but in a side-to-side comparison with his old computer (a 1st-generation P4 with 768 MB of RDRAM), most functions were no better, and some were in fact slower!

Apple has long tried to sell itself as a sort of counter-culture phenomenon, but in truth it is more monopolistic and controlling that Microsoft ever could be. I would venture to say that Microsoft wishes it could BE Apple - Microsoft's repeated attempts to gain some domination of the PC hardware market, while damaging, have not been entirely successful.

Microsoft's O/S and applications may be buggy, but at least they usually admit to errors, even if it's quietly. Apple won't even admit they made an error when they chose a poorly-performing battery for several early generations of iPods, or that there is a real issue with their new iPod Nano's screen.

Finally, while the general populace may not be interested in assembling their own components in to a computer, what about those who DO have such an interest? Apple not only limits your customization options, but your upgrade path is narrow and short.



PCs, by their very nature, are closer to Open Source than Macs. IBM developed the original specs, and then opened things up to the market. While this obviously was a mistake for them, it's been a boon for the general populace. Without this, there would BE no "clone" machines, only the kind of monopoly that Apple now maintains.

Oh, and a Dell XPS system is a gaming-centric PC, so there's not much point in comparing it to a Mac G5, considering that there are few equivalent benchmarks to run the two against each other.