I've been asked this many times over the years and the best explanation I've had is Apple generally make everything in the computer (apart from the intel chip of course) so there is no need for 3rd party drivers to be installed to get the components to work. The the operating system is unix based so it's more reliable and they are not prone to viruses or spyware like Windows PCs are. I think in all the years I've been working in IT I have only come across one mac virus and that was back in the days when we were running OS 9. The best one is 'THEY JUST WORK' which is completely true. The only time I have to install a new OS on my macs at home is when a new one comes out and I want the latest version. Obviously they do get hardware failure like hard drives going or DVDs drives not working but as a rule I find them a pleasure to work with.

And how does that differ to Windows? My Windows laptop is 6 years old and still used by my girlfriend. At work, I don't think most of the machines have been replaced in the last half decade! Most are 2003/2004 spec. Heck, most of the laptops are Pentium 3 vintage 2000/2001 and ugraded to XP at some point!

We even have a couple of 8088 based machines kicking around, still running 24/7! Although the Turbo buttons are switched off.

That said, my company laptop is a new Toshiba Tecra, it has a superior specification to the 15" MBP, but it cost about the same! The case is plasticy, but rigid, which is the only real let down.

To repeat myself, I bought a 13" MBP this week and had it on my desk. It was fast and quiet. It cost nearly as much as the Toshiba, but doesn't have a docking station or fingerprint reader, but the aluminium case is fantastic. If the 15" MBP had proper docking stations, fingerprint readers and a 1680x1050 resolution option, I'd give my Toshiba back tomorrow and use a personal MBP at work.

Today, I am installing the new HP 4710s laptop for one of the managers. It is a 17" model, which cost about half the price of the 13" MBP... And you can tell! It might have a processor that is nearly as fast, the same amount of memory and same size HD and a bigger display, but it flexes, the keyboard doesn't sit properly in the case - made worse by having to remove half of the case and the keyboard to fit the additional 2GB of memory!

The machine looks great, now that I've scraped all the b****y stickers off of it! But actually hold it in your hand or try and type on it and then hold a Mac Book Pro in the other hand, you'll immediately see where that money has gone! The smooth, glossy black finish looks impressive, until you run your hand over the rough edges of the plastic... The poor design for access to the upgradeable parts is also unforgivable! As for the power block, it comes right out of the 70s! After only having used a MacBook Pro for a day, the one thing I really miss is the trackpad! I generally hate trackpads, but the Apple one is THE way a trackpad should work. If I couldn't use a mouse, that's the trackpad I want.

High end Windows notebooks can compete pretty fairly with Apple's kit, although they still tend to use plastic a lot of the time - although the new Dells Latitudes and Adamo are good. The cheaper, consumer and entry level business tat Windows notebooks are much cheaper than Apple (and the prosumer Windows laptops, come to that), but you really do pay for the quality.

At home, I generally use what I am in the mood for, at the moment generally the iMac, but between February and July, I hardly switched it on, using the quad core Vista machine most of the time - I was also using a Windows Mobile phone, so I wanted to sync it, now I use the iPhone and that syncs with the Mac.

I have MobileMe, so my email, contacts, calendars etc. are synced between my iPhone, iMac, Windows desktop and my Windows Mobile phone (through syncing with the Windows desktop).

My files are regularly synced between the iMac and the desktop, plus backed up on 2 external disk drives, one with Time Machine, one with just a copy of my home directory on the Windows machine...

I'd claim that my three year old MacBook is now better than my mates three year old Dell. They cost about the same, have both had three operating system upgrades, and though under XP the Dell felt a more powerful machine, under Windows 7 it just doen't have the same umph, making my MacBook feel more responsive running Snow Leopard.

Benchmarks may say otherwise, I don't know, but who cares about benchmarks if you can't see or feel the differences?

Depends if you want an unbiased objective scoring system or a totaly biased subjective scoring system.
Which is a sport darts or gymnastics?

Well which would you prefer? Something that actually was faster, but felt sluggish, or something that was slower but felt more responsive?
Perhaps it depends on the application.

I think you just answered your own question... At 3 years old, neither the power adapter nor the wi-fi should be flakey!

If you had bought a high quality notebook in the first place (whether it was Windows or Mac is irrelevant), you would probably still be using it without any problems.

My 6 year old Acer and 9 year old Advent laptops are still working fine - well, the Advent's battery gave up the ghost last year...

What about the Atheros wi-fi chips, and the ATi, Intel or nVidia video chips and the Intel or nVidia motherboard chips and the Marvell Gigabit chipsets and the audio chipsets and the hard drives and the controllers and the RAM and...

They don't actually make anything in their machines! What they do do is select the components and use a very small range of devices, so it is much easier for them to control the drivers and they don't have to waste resources checking and debugging for the myriad of hardware that Microsoft have to...


Given Apple's track record for patching vulnerabilities of late, I wouldn't wave that banner around too much.

The default security is much better than XP, although Vista and 7 in default state are slightly better, especially with the address block randomisation of core libraries, which Apple still haven't done...

As to re-installing OSes, that covers my experience with Windows as well. Most of the machines here are over 6 years old and have never been re-installed.

I guess the point I was trying to make was Apple have more control over the hardware that's in the machine rather than say a PC that's built at home or one bought in PC World.

If you look inside a MacPro it looks great rather than a jumbled mass of components and cables. They've made it very easy to replace hard drives and RAM. They put a lot of thought and effort in to the design inside the machine as well as the outside.

Are you sure?

I've read a lot on this recently as I'm close you buying my first Mac and some of it appears to be myth. Has Apple OS got the market share Windows enjoys they'd be a lot more Mac viruses around. As it stands its not worth the effort for the nasty little coders.

I dont see Macs as better - or worse. Certainly you could never build a gaming Mac that would match my PC which is its main use. But the premium Mac product (build quality, looks, feel, etc) is something I want and certainly the OS has many plus points.

See my post above.

All the mac people I know prefer macs. The company I work for is now at the stage where we are switching a lot of the admin staff to PC laptops. I'm getting horrified looks from people at the thought of going from Mac to PC. They are scuttling off to try and find a 'valid business reason' why they should have a mac and not PC.

If anyone can give me a reason why PCs are better then please post and I can tell the people I work with

Again, compare like with like and professional workstations from most of the big manufacturers are built in the same way - just they chose the components they use, not Microsoft.

I did and the question still stands. What hardware do Apple actually make. They dont make the CPU or RAM. They dont make the graphics cards. They dont make the hard drives.

It would have been more accurate to say Apple hand-pick the hardware not make it.

UNIX and UNIX-like OSes FTMFW.

They are inherently more secure than Windows by design.

Oh dear. We've hit the "blinded-by-my-favourtism" stage. This is an HP workstation:



and another: