Apple's Price Beats Dell and Hand-Assembled Computers

Which is what I said earlier - take the OS out of the equation, and a mac is an expensive PC that you can't upgrade as easily, if at all in some cases.

Expanding on that, while I won't deny that, with certain very specific combinations of parts you may be able to get a Mac for a competitive price as compared to a non-Mac equivalent, they lose overall in terms of price to performance comparisons simply by virtue of the almost limitless flexibility gained in the general PC market, and while an Intel box can be built to match any Mac system that can be built today since the abandoning of the PowerPC architecture, the reverse is not true - Mac's proprietary construction misses many windows in the PC market, such as the low- and mid- priced tower systems and dedicated gaming machines, as well as certain payment windows, such as building an inexpensive-but-solid system immediately and then a gradual improvement by repeated upgrades as money becomes available - a feature only available on the already-expensive higher-end of the Mac product line, largely negating the benefit of the concept.

This myth is busted. The Mac Pro is a PC. If you run WinXP on it, you can put whatever you want into it as long as it has a WinXP driver. Anything.

No myth is busted, you're just arguing a point I didn't make to avoid tackling what I actually said. Sorry Ulrika.

Only the mac pro is like a PC. With the exception of comparing the crappy Sony and Gateway computers that are built into the monitors, the Imac is a joke.

That was BY FAR the best wording of what I've been trying to say the whole time. Very well worded. Excellent.

I see. To reply to your point I'd say that this is simply a trade off. If one chooses to assemble their own computer, they will have nearly limitless choices in how to put that together. If one chooses Dell, HP, or Apple, you're limited by the product of their independent component choices (in the case of Apple, a Mac Pro can be configured about 5,000,000 different ways). However, the benefit is that the work is done for you, there are high-quality drivers, and there is a single point of contact for sales, warranty, and repair.

So is Apple, Dell, and HP evil because they don't offer infinite permutations of hardware? No more so than parts sellers are evil because they don't offer single points of contact for sales, warranty, and repair. It's a trade off.

~Ulrika~

The only company out of your list of Apple, Dell, and HP that I find "evil" even to a small degree is Apple because they only allow their OS to work on THEIR hardware, even though it's perfectly capable in working on other hardware. You have said to separate that out of the picture, but that's like asking people to nevermind that windows is made by Microsoft.

And you said that "in the case of Apple, a Mac Pro can be configured about 5,000,000 different ways"--the lowest price configuration is $2,100--you can't get something mid grade. They don't make it, and with Dell and HP and the rest, you can get whatever you want like low end, mid grade, high end, and super duper high end, not like apple where it's just high-end and super-duper high-end, or an Imac.

--And what in the world are you talking about with "there are high quality drivers"? Are you trying to say that the drivers for their hardware is better than the drivers for other manufacturer's hardware? Are you talking about software drivers for separate pieces of software? What are you talking about?

89,579,520 ways, by my quick math, but that's including choice of bundled software and warenty plans.

While you are limited if you go with (to you use the only two choices you offer) Dell or HP, you are not *as* limited - Indeed, I can create essentially any configuration I could want from Dell's website, although I may not be able to choose brands of the parts in all cases, wheras, as I mentioned, there are types of configurations that simply do not exist for Apple.

Plus, you're ignoring the intermediate-step, another market that simply doesn't exist for Apple: Companies that specialize in build-to-order systems, and are NOT one of the Mass Market brands. Alienware (Now a Dell satalite company, granted), iBuyPower, CyberPowerPC, MonarchComputers - Many of these (Not Alienware ) will get you the best of both words - the price and flexibility of building the machine yourself, but the unified care and warenty of a single dealer.



Your putting words into my mouth. I didn't say evil. Like Fmeh says, if Apple is evil for any reason, it's not that.

Then don't use their OS. The Mac Pro is a PC. Run WinXP.

~Ulrika~

its still got that fruity apple on it

Yeah. I see now that stepping down to 89,000,000 unique configurations is a bitch. How could anyone expect to live with such unreasonable limits?

The point of this thread is to show that the Mac Pro beats Dell and a hand-assembled computer in price for equitable hardware. And they toss in MacOS to boot. It's a heluva deal for those in the market for a professional workstation, regardless of the OS of choice.

~Ulrika~

The alternative is Dell, with the E that's tipping over.

you did catch the produce joke right?

Speaking of ways to configure, the Precision 490, which that article used as a comparison, can be configured at least 3,491,499,529,469,952,000 ways, in theory.

Provided my math is right. I'll be the first to admit I royally suck at math, but since I used the same formula for each one, even if my math is off, the basic premise holds - More configuration on the Dell scale.

And, the lowest end dell clocks in under 1.5k - much lower than the lowest possible configuration of the Mac Pro.

Mac Pro beats Dell and a hand-assembled computer in price for equitable hardware

And had that been your subject line, we wouldn't be having this discussion right now. Thank you for acknowledging you're original thread subject was misleading. I knew you had it in you.

If over the next year, Apple doesn't offer any alternatives, I'll be forced into running a hacked version of their OS on my computer. I'd rather get the OS legitimately, or buy a mid-grade tower from Apple and have the OS come with the hardware, but since they probably won't offer either of those options, I'll just have to go the pirate route. It's THEIR loss, not mine.

I wouldn't wait a year. If you know you won't buy their hardware, then go for it. It's not like they're losing money. Plus, you'll get to play with the OS, which in my opinion is absolutely delicious. I don't know how I could live without features like Exposé.

I saw the pun but after thinking about it, I thought that it wasn't intentional.

That must be why they charge more.

I have to wait until I can afford one of the standards that OSX supports--it won't be too much as it's basically the motherboard/processor combo I need to get. Currently I have a Pentium 4 3.2ghz, and to my knowledge, that is not compatible.

I also won't say I won't buy their hardware--if they actually release a mid to low end tower, I'd probably get one. Apple is really good at being secretive. They said they weren't going to relase a video Ipod and then turned around and released one.

If you're curious, you could always pick up a refurbished Mac Mini from their online store. I saw one for about US$500 the other day. I understand it can't be upgraded but it's not that expensive.

I had a G4 tower for a while that someone gave me (some things just needed to be reset on it, particularly that button on the motherboard, and then some other commands that needed to be held down when restarting, and the hard drive was crapping out--maxtor, what does one expect--the hard drive was so bad it crashed every 15 minutes--so I put an old 20gig seagate in it--the mac place where the guy took it said it would cost $800 to fix, which is why the guy gave it to me--he had already replaced it with a mini) and had fun with it, but a friend of mine still had an old mac g3 that was starting to crap out on him (especially the Maxtor hard drive that was in it), and he's a musician (I'm a musician as well, and my p4 system is doing me well in that area), so I gave it to him. He's been immensely thankful. It was really fun working with it though. I truly love OSX.

Nice try That might be true if the pricing scale was consistant across the market, but it's not, remember.

ya know what? i'd like to see all machines formated, have XP pro installed, and have a whole petheria of benchmarking tools ran on them. that would decide everything. numbers = good, calling someone a smelly doo-doo head = bad.

as for OSX being 'better' than XP it might be, after all i think it came out afterwards? the same could be said about the new vista once it comes out, after all it will be newer than OSX, and then in 2 yrs OS11 will come out, yada yada yada. they both steal ideas back and forth, ect.

now the important question, when you go out and start calling corps evil, which company gives back the most to the world on both a percentage scale and a monitary value scale... is steve jobs fighting aids in africa?