Bunk? You have in fact, just proved my point - cheaper is cheaper, whether it's £10 or £100. I could also cite examples that are orders of magnitude cheaper, and I expect you're intentionally presenting a distorted picture by giving two examples where there's not much in it.

You ignore the consumer segment, why? Once again most likely because the PC is so much cheaper for the average home user.

And I also said "most, if not all", Garageband I'll give you, but like you say, all the lark such as iPhoto there are plenty of free, quality alternatives.

That's what you're arguing? That someone should really consider a £10 saving on software when deciding which platform to go for? Yet you site the example where the saving was 5% one way, while dismissing the saving when it was 75% the other way?


Not really. I picked the single most ubiquitous piece of business software on planet earth - Microsoft office - and two of the more common 'professional' uses for computers; picture editing and video production. I could have picked photoshop for the former I suppose which is, amazingly, the same price on both platforms. Same for all of Adobe's multi-platform products. There are business segments where there are no Apple equivalents - if you'd argued that as point I'd have agreed with you - but the bare fact is where both platforms have a presence, the costs are roughly equivalent. You haven't yet produced a single item of evidence to prove otherwise.


Yep. completely ignored it. Apart from the whole first paragraph of my post, I didn't mention it at all.


Some actual examples would make your case a whole lot stronger.

Jon

If you note, i stated 'when I preordered Windows 7'. Yes, it was an offer price but if you're looking at the soon to be released OS then you can get good deals. True, I guess I would be in a minority of the whole market but if we're talking about specifically buying a retail OS people do look out for those offers.


I could argue that the Apple OS is also a 'minority interest' as well. The majority of buyers want a PC that works, don't really know what goes on inside, and I would imagine most of all, want something that is familiar to them.

I think the real question we should be asking is if Windows will be hurt by Apple pricing in the Business market. I could then foresee it migrating down into the major home PC market as more people will be familiar with the Apple OS and would be looking for that on their personal PC. Are they that competitive there? I've not worked for a company, ever, that has used anything but Microsoft.


I don't think it's a 'loophole' per se. You buy an OEM as a sytem builder and it is linked to the hardware in that system only.

Apple are becoming less and less attractive to the dtp Market at the moment. I was discussing it with a supplier this morning. I'm looking at having to fork out four grand for new machines just to run cs5 and he's looking at fifteen grand. Coupled with the iphone 4 tiger issue and I don't have much goodwill towards apple anymore.

Tom, I'm pretty sure a 27" iMac with a 1TB drive would be more than man enough for your needs.

I have thought about it, but I don't like the iMac screen, nor do I want an all in one machine. I also like the expandability of towers.

That said I'm probably being a bit precious about it.

At the web agency I worked fot, the graphic department all worked on standard PCs. The photo studio was using Macs of various ages, from old G4s through to second generation xeon models.

They switched to pcs 18 months ago. They were more cost effective, faster, cheaper and more reliable. As the users were using Adobe software, which was just starting to the the grapics card for processing effects and supported 64 bits, it meant a big speed improvement.

When I was looking for a new laptop, I wanted a 17" MBP, but I went with the Sony Vaio, because it cost less than half the price, had twice as many processor cores, twice as much memory and a better graphics card, with blu ray writer for another 100€... It was no contest. The mbp had a better build quality and the alu case was better designed, but it wasn't twice as good, to compensate for the lower specification.

1800€ price difference is a lot of Windows upgrades.

I'm in the same boat. I want to be able to pick my own screen, add expansion cards if I so wish so I don't think you're being precious about it.
The problem is that, if you want to use OS X then you're (we're) stuck with what Apple offers (unless you have a hankering for a Hackintosh, which I certainly don't). Apple increasingly doesn't seem to give a rats bottom about pro users (desktop users generally) and is rapidly disappearing into a reality distortion field anus of epic proportions. Unfortunately until Mr. Jobs has an epic fail that actually damages the company or starts a major decline in sales in something that actually matters to it then it's unlikely to change its position, it's making far too much money for that.

What do 'pro' users want that Apple don't do then?
I was talking about this with the head of the 3D design course today. You can pretty much pick up a machine from the high street that'll pretty much do whatever you ask of it, unless you're getting into the more rarified immersive 3D experience stuff.
Whether it's photo, page layout, HD video editing, 3D imaging and modelling less than £2k will see you home with a machine quite capable of fulfilling your demands.

After my 22" CRT 1600x1200, I didn't want a smaller display. So I didn't get one - I got a 27" 2560x1440 display with arguably more reliable colour than the ageing CRT.
I have 1TB of storage onboard, and with a FW 800 and 4 USB 2 ports on the back, I can add pretty much however much external storage I like.

Apple are making money because by and large, they've realised that for most people the need to have a tower computer is vastly diminishing.
You can even treat the 27" iMac as a mobile computer - I've a friend who carries his about between offices, and I know someone else who's son did a photo assignment in the Canaries with a 21" iMac in preference to taking a laptop with them.
So I tend to laugh at the idea that a 17" laptop is 'too big' to be portable.

In a word - choice.

I don't dispute that an iMac is very capable computer and will indeed be all the machine that a large number of people will need. However, it's not for everyone. Particularly anyone who wants to be able to add PCIe expansion cards that can't afford or doesn't need the multi-core goodness of the MacPro, or people who want to pick their own screen, particularly for colour critical work. Yes, the iMac screen is very good but it's very reflective (and you can't change that without voiding your warranty, if at all) and I'm not convinced it'll be as good with hardware calibration as a proper stand-alone display.

I realise that Apple has never offered a massive choice, but it used to offer more than it does now. Bung a Core i7 chip in a Mac Pro case for about the same as the bottom end PowerMac G5 cost and I'm there. It doesn't look like it's going to happen though.

Fair points, I suppose, and perhaps I'm the exception, but I know more people that have gone onto to Apple than people that have left Apple - people that I meet on a daily basis, certainly.



Can I ask why not? It's the same panel you'll find in some very expensive 'proper' stand alone displays.

I'm sure it is indeed the same panel that can be found in other displays but, as far as I can tell, its using 12-bit look-up tables (instead of the 14 or 16 bit ones you'll find in other high end displays) and that glossy screen coating I mentioned earlier.

Can I ask what it is you'd be doing that requires that much colour accuracy?
As for the glossy screen, I've not found it to be an issue so far, and I have a large window behind me, but it's north facing, so...

I stand to be corrected, but I think the 12-bit thing was an issue with the smaller 2007 or '08 models. I never noticed any issues with the 24in 2009 model I had a daily acquaintance with for a year.

Me personally? Nothing. I was just pointing out that, compared to a proper colour critical display, it's a compromise.
If you do do serious colour critical work you have a choice of buying an iMac with a compromised screen or a Mac Pro, which will significantly eat into the budget for the monitor you'll be looking to acquire.

I agree that isn't an issue for a huge swath of the people buying a mac. From my point of view, that iMac hardware would do everything I needed it to do with knobs on for some time. However, I don't like the glossy screen, I want to be able to open it up to add a second (or third or fourth) hard disc and possibly upgrade the graphics card at some point (which I have done in previous Macs). The iMac doesn't do that and the Mac Pro is massive overkill (and beyond my price range). Anybody landing between the iMac and the Mac Pro, for whatever reason, is effectively being told to naff off and buy a PC by Apple. They're not interested and given their success they're unlikely to be in future.