why MAC?

[webfrasse]

I work in software development in Silicon Valley. You should take a look at what is the most popular tool here among developers that pay for the tool with their own money.

A computer is a tool, not a status symbol. It is not how light or how much resolution, how much it costs, that it is cool it looks, that is makes you part of a community. It is a tool and when people pay double the price for the same tool then looks down on anyone who doesn't own that tool and spends a lot of time justifying the extra expense. People with PCs are the only ones who get it, because they are not in it for the status.

OK great but wouldn't it be better if the Air had an HDMI port that could plug into every HD TV made?

No, because all you need is an HDMI adapter. I found some for under $5 online.

That has been one of my complaints about Mac, it always seems like you need an adaptor to do anything with their laptops. You need an HDMI, and a DVi, and a VGA adaptor to make anything work.

Or could plug into every monitor made? With the thunderbold you have a very limited select monitor selection.

You don't understand what Thunderbolt is. It uses the same plug as DisplayPort so any DisplayPort display will work, and with an adapter, other displays can also be used, including VGA, DVI and HDMI.

I do, you need yet another adaptor.

Definitely not every display. No DVI, no DisplayPort and no Thunderbolt. In other words, less capable. Yet another factor in price differences.

Almost every display has HDMI or vga. But when Display port or Thunderbolt become widely accepted, the PC will have either of those ports. But because my precious HP costs almost half the price, when the port is available, I will have two 17" HP computers for about the same as the price of a single mac 17"

It makes the computer useful in what way? That it can connect to exactly 1 monitor made? That costs 1000 dollars? Or you could get the 27 HP Led IPS screen for 650 dollars that connects to every computer made that has vga/hdmi/dvi

It can connect to far more than 1 display. See above.

To me, the adapter makes it more useful, not the monitor

Now what I find interesting is Widi, but it is not available for the mac. But then again there is wireless HDMI, but wait, the mac air does not have an hdmi port, I'm sorry.

You should be sorry, since you're wrong yet again.

Don't have to be sorry, because there will always be a good or better alternative in PC available at near half the price or a lot less.

To me the computer is a tool, not a status symbol. So I like most people purchase the most features, power for the price. After doing some reading it appears that Mac has about 5 percent of the market share, which means people are looking at what mac has offered since sometime after 1978 and chose PC. It is true, Mac does have a few extra ports, but for the masses, most get and use PCs.

I will say that mac has some pro level equipment, which they can charge more for, but most people are not pros. If I were a pro and was lookng for a pro laptop that was, expensive, small, durable and had a lot of ports for pro level periphials, I would choose something like the HP EliteBook 2760p Tablet PC, aluminum which was designed to meet military standards for vibration, dust, humidity, altitude, and high temperature

http://www.shopping.hp.com/webapp/shopping/product_detail.do?storeName=storefronts&landing=rts_notebook&category=rts_notebook&a1=Category&v1=business&product_code=XU103UT%23ABA&catLevel=2

But I don't need that, most people don't, just like most people don't need the extra cost ports, features of the overpriced mac. It is just a tool, and with the same processors, video cards, hard drives, for most people they don't need the the extra expense for the marginal return in mac, which is again why the mac has only 6 percent of the market share over all these years, there are better tools for less out there.

So while you might argue that Thunderbolt is better, most people don't need it, and if they do, the PC people will include it, then we will start seeing some peripherals for it (or maybe not because USB3 is "good enough" and backwards comparable. Only the PC will bring Thunderbolt into mainstream if it is even possible. Mac has to small of market share to dictate what is new. Look at USB2 and firewire, kinda like VHS and Beta.

--
Mikael

--
Mikael

 

[webfrasse]

A computer is a tool, not a status symbol. It is not how light or how much resolution, how much it costs, that it is cool it looks, that is makes you part of a community. It is a tool and when people pay double the price for the same tool then looks down on anyone who doesn't own that tool and spends a lot of time justifying the extra expense. People with PCs are the only ones who get it, because they are not in it for the status.

They are not paying double for the same. People with PCs are the only who can't get it

Did you look up Industrial Design yet? Did you get it?

--
Edvinas

--
Mikael

 

[Najinsky]

I've enjoyed reading your comments because I enjoy a challenge and figuring out what you are trying to say is certainly challenging.

Let me summarise, to see if I'm getting it yet.

Current Macs can connect to any Monitor. The latest ones directly via Thunderbolt, and the older ones via DVI/HDMI/VGA adapter, but it's bad to need an adapter. Whereas PCs can only connect via older standards and can't use the new ones. However this isn't a bad thing because when PCs catch up, you can simply buy a new PC to use them?

FireWire is useless, except for your high end audio card, but you are special and nobody else needs them so everyone else can make do with USB.

A built-in Blueray is essential, even for those who don't own a single Blueray disc and never will? But it's okay for high end audio cards to be an add-on?

You think Mac owners are looking down on you because you own a PC. But are you sure it's only Mac owners, and because you own a PC?

Did I miss anything?

-Najinsky

 

[Richard]

You cannot order a laptop with a blue ray burner from the mac store. It is not a supported option.

There are 3rd party drives and there is no need for any support process as long as these peripherals use a supported interface such as USB/FW or TB.

Isn't the whole advantage of the mac laptops is they are suppose to be lighter? Do you want to carry around an external Blue Ray Burner? 3 adaptors for vga, dvi, hdmi?

So not only do you pay near double the price for a 17" laptop, you have to purchase a $175 (from Amazon) external BlueRay burner. The HP 17" laptop has a second drive bay so no need for an external hard drive or cable to connect just install the second hard drive in the laptop and you can configure it with a BR right inside the laptop. Now thats a system, because it is totally self contained. And with 2 drive bays you could have an ssd for speed and big spindle drive for slower large 1-2tb storage and large storage on burnable blueray disks. A photographers dream.

 

[Richard]

I work in software development in Silicon Valley. You should take a look at what is the most popular tool here among developers that pay for the tool with their own money.

Since mac has 5 to 6 percent of market share for consumer computers, and windows has everything else, which of course does not include the server world that runs windows, unix and linux. I would say the most popular computer is the windows PC.

Mac has been here before the 80's and has not increased its marketshare over 10 percent. You don't need to be a rocket scientist or a a software developer to figure it out. If I were writing software and wanted to make a lot of money, I would write it for the windows platform because it has a huge market share.

 

[Mark Smith145430]

Since mac has 5 to 6 percent of market share for consumer computers, and windows has everything else, which of course does not include the server world that runs windows, unix and linux. I would say the most popular computer is the windows PC.

What does that mean? Is that they are just because they are popular and cheap they are better or do you just feel good to be part of the crowd?

Certainly IT professionals are much more likely to own a Mac than Joe public why is that?

Cheap food sells more than real food, instant coffee way outsells beans—which is better and why?

Being a market leader doesn't mean better, or do you think sales are the best metric for qualitative judgements?

Mac has been here before the 80's and has not increased its marketshare over 10 percent. You don't need to be a rocket scientist or a a software developer to figure it out. If I were writing software and wanted to make a lot of money, I would write it for the windows platform because it has a huge market share.

The Mac debuted in 1984, the company Apple that make a product called The Mac and while 10% market share may seem small, the ecosystem around OS X is highly profitable for developers.

In fact some small indie developers I know say they make more on their Mac products as it's easier to be visible as a small fish in a small pond than one in a gigantic one.

Market share isn't one of the metrics for profit not for developers or hardware companies, something Apple understands and while your beloved HP struggles with it's bottom line, the same can't be said of Apple.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnologyandtelecoms/electronics/9099851/Hewlett-Packard-profits-halve-after-PC-demand-slumps.html

Shifting the most units is no guarantee the company will survive, in fact they considered dumping the PC division–tough times indeed!
So you might like to rethink that more market share more profit argument.

 

[Frammenti]

Despite what you read online every six months/1 years, there aren't viruses or spyware.

Mac hardware is optimized for the OS and this one is solid rock.

Moreover Mac has Aperture which personally prefer to Lightroom.

--
http://www.frammenti.eu - Wedding Photo Journalism

 

[Edvinas]

Certainly IT professionals are much more likely to own a Mac than Joe public why is that?

Cheap food sells more than real food, instant coffee way outsells beans—which is better and why?

Well, those two are very questionable statements, however it is very true, that you can't judge quality just by quantity of sold units.

--
Edvinas

 

[Mark Smith145430]

And with 2 drive bays you could have an ssd for speed and big spindle drive for slower large 1-2tb storage and large storage on burnable blueray disks. A photographers dream.

Richard what's the daft obsession with Blu-ray? Is it you're just think its a big selling point to have one built in rather than pay £40 for an external?

It's not a particularly good as a disc storage medium, in fact physical disks aren't really an issue for most folks–my next machine won't have one for the rare occasion I need them connecting an additional burner would be fine.

Blu ray isn't magic, its just a plain MPEG2 or H.264/AVC (MPEG 4) codec readable by 100% of Macs natively (they can create BR ISO images and read them). In fact Apple helped to develop Blu ray, possibly they helped develop its compression algorithms as they're the same ones used on OS X (but not Windows)

You seem to miss out that most people use BRD in home cinema type situations, it give no real benefits on something like a laptop where burning 50gb image files would be rare, slow and quixotic experience compared to using external storage.

Blu-ray is just a disk format, one you can burn on a Mac if (and I can't see why you want to be daft enough too) you wanted to make 50GB 'back ups on disc.

It's best use though is a carrier for compressed video in home theatre, which is what it was designed for and its core use.

 

[Edvinas]

Richard what's the daft obsession with Blu-ray? Is it you're just think its a big selling point to have one built in rather than pay £40 for an external?

It's very simple: it's his only ace - feature which present in PC world and absent in Mac world

--
Edvinas

 

[Mark Smith145430]

Certainly IT professionals are much more likely to own a Mac than Joe public why is that?

Cheap food sells more than real food, instant coffee way outsells beans—which is better and why?

Well, those two are very questionable statements, however it is very true, that you can't judge quality just by quantity of sold units.

They're not really that questionable, if you head over to tech blogs, IT departments (like ours) there are often higher numbers of Macs than normally you'd see.

Have a look at how many users at say Arstechnica have Macs, people in the industry are more likely to have owned or used a Mac than the average.

Secondly more people drink instant Nescafé coffee than grind their own beans, so I don't think that's questionable, nor is the quality of the two.

 

[Mark Smith145430]

Richard what's the daft obsession with Blu-ray? Is it you're just think its a big selling point to have one built in rather than pay £40 for an external?

It's very simple: it's his only ace - feature which present in PC world and absent in Mac world

I guess so, it's not really one I'd considered I don't have a use for BR not even occasionally, but if I had to get one I'd probably have it on the TV rather than my laptop.

Saying that I can encode my own content to BR standard on a Mac (H264/AVC) and burn a BR disk image in Adobe Encore for distribution, its an artificial argument as the rarity of this situation you just won't believe.

I guess if someone who doesn't or hasn't used a system sees a feature as the difference then that will be the one that counts.

I guess Mac users could say system wide spell check, colour management, built in raw converter and codecs for just about every camera, PDF authoring/editor/reader blah, blah

In the end those thing can be added to Windows by installing software, just as adding an external DR reader to your Macbook can give you [Sarcasm] a stellar cinema experience [ sarcasm]
experience

 

[Tom_N]

Since mac has 5 to 6 percent of market share for consumer computers, and windows has everything else, which of course does not include the server world that runs windows, unix and linux. I would say the most popular computer is the windows PC.

Which is relevant to what? Cockroaches are more numerous than humans. Does that mean that they are better? Turtles are more numerous than cheetahs. Does that mean that they can run faster? If smartphones become more numerous than PCs, will you toss your PC into a Dumpster and use your smartphone with its tiny screen for everything, because PCs are no longer "the most popular"?

Mac has been here before the 80's and has not increased its marketshare over 10 percent.

Apple was around long before the Macintosh, or the first IBM PC. But the Macintosh came out in 1984, not "before the 80's". As for Macintosh market share, some reports show it as over 11 percent. That's units, mind you. Apple's profit share in the PC market is much higher, because Apple sells to premium niches where people are willing to pay for good design, rather than to the "lowest price at any cost in value", "lose money on every sale and make it up in volume" segment of the market.

You don't need to be a rocket scientist or a a software developer to figure it out. If I were writing software and wanted to make a lot of money, I would write it for the windows platform because it has a huge market share.

Funny how both Adobe and Microsoft make software for the Macintosh. I was under the impression that Adobe and Microsoft were both in the software business to "make a lot of money".

 

[webfrasse]

500 million flies can't be wrong so eat sh*t...is that your argument?

I work in software development in Silicon Valley. You should take a look at what is the most popular tool here among developers that pay for the tool with their own money.

Since mac has 5 to 6 percent of market share for consumer computers, and windows has everything else, which of course does not include the server world that runs windows, unix and linux. I would say the most popular computer is the windows PC.

Mac has been here before the 80's and has not increased its marketshare over 10 percent. You don't need to be a rocket scientist or a a software developer to figure it out. If I were writing software and wanted to make a lot of money, I would write it for the windows platform because it has a huge market share.

--
Mikael

 

[webfrasse]

Yeah, I don't go anywhere with being able to watch blue ray's...

You might be chocked to learn that for the last 5 years I have ripped out my DVD player in my Mac to make room for a second hard drive so I can fit all my work in the laptop. That would a large number of photos (full copy of what's on my iMac) and a large number of VirtualMachines that I need for work. Have not missed the Optical drive once. USB flash drives is better for moving data. If I want movies on the I rip them and play them from disk. Uses far less battery.

Maybe you haven't noticed but optical media is dying and going away. Just like Betamax did...

You cannot order a laptop with a blue ray burner from the mac store. It is not a supported option.

There are 3rd party drives and there is no need for any support process as long as these peripherals use a supported interface such as USB/FW or TB.

Isn't the whole advantage of the mac laptops is they are suppose to be lighter? Do you want to carry around an external Blue Ray Burner? 3 adaptors for vga, dvi, hdmi?

So not only do you pay near double the price for a 17" laptop, you have to purchase a $175 (from Amazon) external BlueRay burner. The HP 17" laptop has a second drive bay so no need for an external hard drive or cable to connect just install the second hard drive in the laptop and you can configure it with a BR right inside the laptop. Now thats a system, because it is totally self contained. And with 2 drive bays you could have an ssd for speed and big spindle drive for slower large 1-2tb storage and large storage on burnable blueray disks. A photographers dream.

--
Mikael

 

[ekohn]

Just like an iPhone, try it, you might like it more.

 

[Brandon birder]

PC user since DOS days, Mac user 1 year.

I changed because my relatively new Windows 7 PC couldn't handle using Bridge and CS5. Interminable memory errors which no one could sort out and continuous disk access when accessing image files in Bridge.

A friend had a Macbook and Aperture 3. I saw how easy it was to use and how great the edits were. The macbook is an object of desire in it's own right. Aperture indexes images in a single database so accessing images was much quicker than Bridge.

I just use it for photography and the system is good enough for me to that from the comfort of my armchair. No hassles at all. Will not replace my PC when it dies.
--
Cheers, BB
FlickR site
http://www.flickr.com/photos/brandon_birder/
Flickr D800 gallery
http://www.flickr.com/photos/brandon_birder/sets/72157629726734905/
FlickR Nikon1 V1 gallery
http://www.flickr.com/photos/brandon_birder/sets/72157628774050455/

 

[webfrasse]

Certainly IT professionals are much more likely to own a Mac than Joe public why is that?

Cheap food sells more than real food, instant coffee way outsells beans—which is better and why?

Well, those two are very questionable statements, however it is very true, that you can't judge quality just by quantity of sold units.

Exactly....just as with Mac vs. PC

--
Edvinas

--
Mikael

 

[webfrasse]

You cannot order a laptop with a blue ray burner from the mac store. It is not a supported option.

There are 3rd party drives and there is no need for any support process as long as these peripherals use a supported interface such as USB/FW or TB.

Isn't the whole advantage of the mac laptops is they are suppose to be lighter? Do you want to carry around an external Blue Ray Burner? 3 adaptors for vga, dvi, hdmi?

So not only do you pay near double the price for a 17" laptop, you have to purchase a $175 (from Amazon) external BlueRay burner. The HP 17" laptop has a second drive bay so no need for an external hard drive or cable to connect just install the second hard drive in the laptop and you can configure it with a BR right inside the laptop. Now thats a system, because it is totally self contained. And with 2 drive bays you could have an ssd for speed and big spindle drive for slower large 1-2tb storage and large storage on burnable blueray disks. A photographers dream.

A photographers dream is to carry super large laptops? I have a 17" Dell Precision M6500 at work. One optical drive and 2 spinning drives. It's a good work horse but there is no way in hell I'm carrying that monster around on any photo trips. I can hardly get my camera gear to fit with the carry on restrictions.

I want to carry LESS junk around. My photo work is done to 99.999% in front of a 24" iMac (soon a new 27" dito).

BTW, the first thing I did on the Dell was to reformat the disk to remove Win7 and install Linux on it. Solid as a rock.

--
Mikael

 

[Edvinas]

They're not really that questionable, if you head over to tech blogs, IT departments (like ours) there are often higher numbers of Macs than normally you'd see.

Have a look at how many users at say Arstechnica have Macs, people in the industry are more likely to have owned or used a Mac than the average.

Secondly more people drink instant Nescafé coffee than grind their own beans, so I don't think that's questionable, nor is the quality of the two.

Drinking Nescafe is a British habit, just as drinking tea with milk. Believe it or not, but most of continental Europe consume much more coffe beans than instant coffee

The same goes to Mac usage in IT departmets - you can't really judge about global trends just looking at your own backyard

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Edvinas