“If you’re an ‘average’ computer user, choosing to buy a Mac is the right decision,” Danny Gorog writes for APC Magazine.
“On the whole, the ordinary person needs a computer that lets them email, surf the web, write letters and documents, browse and edit digital photos, rip and listen to music and watch DVDs. They might dabble in P2P and Skype,” Gorog writes. “For those users, a Mac is absolutely ideal, and the only decision they need to make is whether to by an Apple notebook or desktop.”
Gorog writes, “Macs are first class computers when it comes to internet connectivity, with a great default web browser and networking configuration that is dramatically easier than Windows’ gordian knot.”
“If you’re still working on an assumption from a few years ago that Macs are too expensive and a PC is far better value, do yourself a favour and do a feature-by-feature analysis comparing a Macbook to the latest from HP, Toshiba or Dell (they’ll be the ones in the Harris Technology catalogue with memorable names like GXA-5456a). I guarantee that you’ll find in an even-featured match that the Mac stacks up well,” Gorog writes.
“Users who have done the above analysis and still buy a PC are plain stubborn. The truth is, as much as they don’t want to admit it, some people are simply slaves to their PCs and Windows. It’s a weird sado-masochistic bondage fetish: they take pride in routinely keeping their security suite up-to-date, installing all the latest Windows patches and religiously staying on the lookout for new vulnerabilities,” Gorog writes.
“Most Windows users who move over to a Mac quickly discover how much they don’t need Windows,” Gorog writes. “And, of course, [if you get] a Mac, [you’ll] also get OS X, clearly the most advanced desktop operating system (still miles ahead of Windows Vista in most areas) plus the iLife suite that will literally transform the way you consume and create your digital media. And you’ll buy in to a community of users who actually care about their platform and are enthusiastic about helping other Mac users,” Gorog writes.
Full article here.
It is sad, really, that people use PCs………
Rubbish. Apart from games (and who cares) there is nothing that a Mac isn’t better at.
The most advanced computer users already switched to Macs a long time ago..
Are you sure that is the typical computer user… or is it my Dad, who surfs, writes emails, budgets, and… oh, there isn’t an and… he has no idea what P2P or Skype are… he doesn’t own a single DVD or CD… his digital photos are all filed by the Kodak application that came with the camera… and he has been brain-washed into thinking that applications (as if he used more than six) aren’t available for the Mac. How does Apple get him to switch?
This guy can’t be related to Chris Gorog.
Gorog SMASH! SMASH Vista!!
Aaahh … grrerrrm, crunch, chmmmlckmmm … chew, chew, chew, CRUNCH … chew, mmrrrrmm grmmlllmmm … SMASH!!!!
GOROG SMASH!!!!!!!!
“It’s a weird sado-masochistic bondage fetish . . .”
To make matters worse all of the handcuff keys are under Ballmer’s enormous tongue.
Pssst. The safety word is “developers.”
i love macs and my ipod and all its apple acessories,witch is very cool having all things apple.
Dacracot:
Y’know, I’ve had this same problem with some of my relatives. I used to try to evangelize them, but all I got was blank stares and a bit of hostility.
I’m sort of the official family-get-together photographer, so that was my excuse to bring my PowerBook around and just work with it. I think eventually, they started to get the message. I had fun with it and so could everyone else. I could keep everyone up to speed on some cool projects… CAD, 3D, etc. and do photo slide shows, etc. I’ve even given iPods to the college grads!
Face it, Macs are a heckuva lotta fun… I ain’t just talkin’ games… AND serious WORK machines, too.
The PC users I know tend to fear their computers, or at least be very very careful what they do with them and how they do it.
We Mac users LOVE our Macs. When they see us using, working, playing on them it’s infectious AND the message gets across in a much more powerful way!
I’ve had 2 family people switch recently and gotten serious interest from 2 others. Pretty soon, we’ll be an 80% Mac family! Those few blasted holdouts… I’ll get them eventually!
test…
ECHO! (echo! echo!!! echo!!!!!)
Is it only me or somebody heavily moderates the discusssion? That’s the best way to turn people off. Bye.
I’m the only person in my entire family who uses Macs. Everyone else is, sad to say, a PC lemming type of user. They don’t know a single thing about the world of Macs, and the very few that have ever heard of Macs pretty much think those same tired clichés that PC nerds have been clinging to for years.
They use PC’s for no other reason than that they are ubiquitous, and for some people that means a lot. I have a brother-in-law who is pretty much the default family “IT guy” – a real PC head, who just loves to “build” computers for this or that person in the family, and whenever someone has a problem with their computer, he’s the go-to guy.
I honestly think he’d rather eat his own foot than ever consider the horrid notion of ever getting a Mac – although like all other Mac scoffers, he’s never used one and has no idea how far off his preconceptions are from reality. He tends to enjoy all of that ridiculous Windows maintenance crap.
And now Vista is the next big thing for all of them to get. Ooohhh, Aaahhh, Vista! The wow starts now!
I never cease to be astonished when I hear them discussing this or that computer woe – problems which are non-issues on Macs – and they talk about these things like it’s just a natural inevitable part of computer life. *rolls eyes*
Meanwhile, I’ve turned out by far the most creative home movies on DVD, photo collections, websites, and other stuff, than anyone in my family – and unlike some of them, my hard drive has never been hosed by a virus. They all know this, and they all know I use a Mac, but they still just don’t get it.
I remember one time a few years back when I was talking about how great it was for me and my girlfriend to use iChat to have face-to-face conversations when I am on the road, and one family member shot off, “Yeah, I’ve already been doing that kind of thing on my PC”. I said, “Uh, no, not like this”. They were indignant, so I showed them.
When they saw that it was a large beautiful picture moving at 30 frames per second and clear audio, while theirs was a small, darkish, grainy picture that moved at barely 10 frames per second with crappy audio, they didn’t know what to say. Yet the family “computer expert” recommends PC’s, and anyone will be damned before they recognize the fact that anyone recommending PC’s over Macs is a friggin idiot.
All this is to say what most of us here already know, which is that PC’s dominate for no other reason than absolute jaw dropping ignorance. Period. End of story.
Ok, I’m a Mac fan. Own 3 Macs, 2 iPods and a bunch of other Apple gear. But man, this is getting old. Is MDN the propaganda arm of Apple? Come on MDN, you can admit it to us…we’re your closest friends!
Lemmings don’t exist!
Ostriches do not bury their heads in sand!
Slothes are not sloth’s by nature!
Good story though, where is “and they all lived happily ever after?”
@Oops….
I had much the same experience until the invention of BootCamp. Since it’s release last year I’ve changed tactics by letting my windows lemming friends know that they can have windows (security blanket), AND all of the creative apps that Apple provides. They continue to use Windows for about 6 months after switching then they become more excited about Apple that I ever was.
37 friends/friends of friends/ and acquaintances switched and counting. All since bootcamp.
Hi C1! No echoes here!!
Oops: Sad story. Sounds like you’re the only one able to grab onto a float in that gene pool. Maybe you should just beat the living crap out of your brother-in-law since reason is out. Or feed him his foot. Either way is good. I can’t stand the people who might have poked at a Performa in a Sears store many years ago and base their solid opinion of the Mac on that.
I’ve got $500 to spend on a computer (without screen, keyboard, mouse) for my daughter. I don’t care about trying to spec an identical Dell – I just want to get the best I can for $500. Convince me that I can get a better spec’d Mac for that amount. She’ll be using the word processor, email, web and a few educational software titles. I’ve got free access to anti-virus/spyware through a work license. How is the Mac better value at this end of the market?
Reality Check – do the “word processor, email, web and a few educational software titles” applications also come “free” from your place of work?
Stealing your spyware and virus software from work doesn’t make it free. But hey, way to show your daughter you’re a thief.
@Reality Check:
OS X is the all-time better “spec”. I wonder why so many people don’t get that.
Anyway, don’t be such a cheap bastard. It’s for your daughter, after all.
“Convince me that I can get a better spec’d Mac for that amount.”
Anyone making that statement is already convinced. Your request is nothing but obvious troll bait.
Don’t feed the troll.
Oh, well if price is *the* issue, you’ll just have to grin and bear it — or your daughter will.
Pity, if you were only prepared to cough up another $99, even if she couldn’t have OS X, she could at least have a Unix-based machine from another vendor. Dell’s Ubuntu deals start at $599:
http://www.dell.com/content/topics/segtopic.aspx/linux_3x?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs
I’ve never seen such an abomination as the implemention of wireless networking in windoze. I’ve helped countless people fix their wireless networking because they can’t connect, the whole time telling them to get a Mac because it does this effortlessly and automatically. People spend hundreds of dollars on support to get their wireless networks to work. They actually don’t believe how simple it is on the Mac. Steve, Pu-leeze licence this code to Microsoft and Bill, don’t sniff at this because you didn’t invent it. I need to get these people off my back.
>Stealing your spyware and virus software from work doesn’t make it free. But hey, way to show your daughter you’re a thief.
I’m not stealing it. The Corporate License entitles me to home use. Twat.
>Pity, if you were only prepared to cough up another $99, even if she couldn’t have OS X, she could at least have a Unix-based machine from another vendor. Dell’s Ubuntu deals start at $599:
Or I could spend $400 on one with Windows and then install Ubuntu for free myself. Either way, I’m struggling to see what Apple has to offer for people with limited budgets. If you’re browsing the web and reading email it make fsck all difference what the OS is. In fact, IE is hell of a lot more stable than Safari if we’re all honest.
“If you’re browsing the web and reading email it make fsck all difference what the OS is.”
It makes all the difference when you (or even more likely, that hypothetical daughter of yours) hit that drive-by-download malware site or get a nefarious email attachment. Then it becomes a matter of either hosing your Windows machine totally (or worse, having your identity stolen or becoming unwitting pawn in a spambot network) vs. Mac OS X not batting an eye…
“IE is hell of a lot more stable than Safari if we’re all honest.” – Finest bit of FUDmeistering I’ve seen on the net today.
“I’m not stealing it. The Corporate License entitles me to home use.” – Nice turn of the phrase, but totally false.
@Reality Check
Buy a PC.
There now that’s settled. You are happy, we’re happy.
Back to my ‘over priced’ Mac.
(BTW where are you getting the writing program for the 400$ PC? or are you going OpenSource?)
[IE is hell of a lot more stable than Safari if we’re all honest.]
“I’m not stealing it. The Corporate License entitles me to home use”
Wink, wink. Nudge, nudge.
Um, how do PC software vendors make any money when Windroids don’t pay for any of it?
I’d wager that Adobe, et al., makes as much actual cash from MacFolks as they do from WinFolk — even though there are ‘more’ COPIES of their PC software ‘out there’.
Having trouble posting today. What’s up MDN?
@ Reality Check, You gets what you pays for!
Now on the other hand, for .99c I could provide you with a jug of camels milk!
It will make you and your daughter fart the national Anthem louder & better than Jimi Hendrix’s rendition!
Record it and download it onto itunes and YouTube, the money you make from them, buy yourselves a decent Mac with all the bells and whistles, then send me the change as a fee for this darn good idea!:-)
I am a mac fan but I must admit that some website are not displayed properly (due to its design are based on IE’s framework) and in fact Safari crashes more often than IE. Apple, give us a less buggy one! I love Safari’s speed and ease of use but some sites are just not working under it….
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I’m just a little pi$$ed that MDN deleted the whole fake chrissyone post and replies and didn’t tell anyone about it. If you’re going to cens…I mean, moderate peoples posts, why not edit out Reality Check and Zune Tang?
Keep it up guys, you’re about to lose my patronage. I can delete this widget just as easy as I installed it.
“Either way, I’m struggling to see what Apple has to offer for people with limited budgets.”
You are correct sir. Apple doesn’t offer anything to people with limited budgets. As things in the industry stand currently, for Apple to offer a $399 computer would be to compromise on the experience that Apple promises with every computer. And Apple does not compromise on its experience. Coincidentally, this is the reason why the Mac is superior to Windows PCs. Are you starting to understand yet?
I’ll offer a separate analogy because I doubt you are following as of yet. Can you think of the cheapest car manufactured by Porsche? They start somewhere north of $50,000 US. Why, you might ask, does Porsche not make a 3 cylinder, $12,900 sedan made primarily out of plastic? The reason is simple, and it is this: It would completely destroy their brand, their reputation, and everything they have worked for decades to build. It would not offer the same experience as, say, a Porsche Cayman S. Obviously the prices are slightly different in this analogy, but the concept is identical.
Here is what Apple “offers” to people on a limited budget: A used Mac. You can get a solid iMac with a 1.25Ghz G4 in it that is twice as fast as the Mac I am currently using for about $500 probably. That computer can do email, word processing, and anything on the internet just as fast as anything brand new can. Now go to eBay and find yourself a nice one there, or go to Circuit City and buy an Acer for $399. The choice is entirely yours.
–mAc
These car analogies are still used by clueless Mac zealots. I can build a computer with the latest hardware while you’re still stuck in Apple’s legacy hardware. Apple doesn’t even use Intel’s premium chipsets, worthless for someone who would like faster DDR2 memory (and now DDR3), a little better graphics capability, and overall premium featuresets that the major motherboard manufacturers offer.
Apple is just a plain hardware vendor, a good one at that but not at the level some of you make it out to be.