7 Comments, 7 Threads

1. 1. bains

   I notice that they were running Vista on the PC’s. I wonder how XP would fair (even PM noted that Vista is, in comparison, a memory hog).

   April 16, 2008 - 6:39 pm   Link to this Comment | Reply

   

   
2. 2. Campisi

   I tried to read the link, but for some reason all of the ads were superimposed upon the text.

   April 17, 2008 - 1:25 am   Link to this Comment | Reply

   

   
3. 3. Casey

   Favorite quote:
   

   In our speed trials, however, Leopard OS trounced Vista in all-important tasks such as boot-up, shutdown and program-launch times. We even tested Vista on the Macs using Apple’s platform-switching Boot Camp software—and found that both Apple computers ran Vista faster than our PCs did.

   (emphasis added)

   Priceless!

   April 17, 2008 - 10:31 am   Link to this Comment | Reply

   

   
4. 4. Slocum

   Nah. They made the elemental mistake of all these comparisons where they picked a Mac Model and then went to try to find an equivalent PC. But there are very few Mac models so that biases the comparison (for example, toward all-in-one units that are a tiny, tiny fraction of the PC market).

   In terms of price comparisons, the bottom line is that there are all kinds of functional PC laptops (we have a couple in the house) that can be had for around $500. These things all have dual-core processors, 15″ screens, and DVD burners. Apple offers nothing for purposes of comparison. The cheapest Mac notebook with a DVD burner is $1300, and if you want a 15 screen, it’s a minimum of $2000 for a MacBook Pro. That’s nuts.

   The MacBooks have faster processors, but that’s a very expensive feature that makes for nice benchmark scores but is of no value to most users, since the dual-core processors in the $500 PC laptops are far more than adequate for typical uses.

   April 17, 2008 - 10:58 am   Link to this Comment | Reply

   

   
5. 5. Stephen Green

   Yes, Apple’s notebooks are so overpriced and over-featured (at the same time, Slocum?) that they’ve captured 20% of the portable market.

   There’s a phrase for that: The sweet spot. And I’d say Apple is sitting right on top of it.

   BTW, those 15-inch screens on $500 laptops? Typically they have the same (or lower) resolution than my 13-inch MacBook, display fewer real colors, and have that horrible “screen door” look. Which makes them harder on the eyes and 100% useless for photo editing.

   Oh, and the MacBook will last longer and give you a higher resale value. Is it even *possible* to sell a three- or four-year-old Dell Craptop? My nearly two-year-old MacBook (initial price: $1200) will be worth about $500 on eBay two years from now.

   Still think cheap means inexpensive?

   April 17, 2008 - 11:13 am   Link to this Comment | Reply

   

   
6. 6. Slocum

   “Yes, Apple’s notebooks are so overpriced and over-featured (at the same time, Slocum?) that they’ve captured 20% of the portable market.”

   Sure at the same time — they put unnecessary premium features (overpriced processors) in their entry level products to try to justify the premium price and prevent ‘apples-to-apples’ comparisons with low-cost PCs.

   Apple may have 20% of the U.S. notebook market, but last I heard they were still stuck at 3% globally. More and more of the world’s billions of people will be acquiring laptop computers, and they sure as hell won’t be $1300-$2000 Macs.

   OS X would run perfectly fine on those $500 notebooks (and, it will if you want to go through the trouble of hacking an OS X install). In fact it’ll run on machines with a lot less power than that:

   http://www.engadget.com/2008/04/16/os-x-made-to-run-on-a-samsung-q1-ultra-premium/

   If Jobs had any balls, he’d really try to sell computer for ‘the rest of us’ rather than only to rich Americans and Europeans. But he doesn’t, and he won’t.

   “BTW, those 15-inch screens on $500 laptops? Typically they have the same (or lower) resolution than my 13-inch MacBook, display fewer real colors, and have that horrible “screen door” look.”

   Now *that* is funny — Apple is the only manufacturer I know of who recently settled a class action lawsuit for claiming their notebooks showed ‘millions of colors’ when it turned out there were only 6-bit displays (like everybody else’s):

   http://www.macnn.com/articles/08/03/26/millions.of.colors.suit/&startNumber=20

   Some of those people who dropped $2,000+ on a MacBook Pro were not happy.

   AFAIK, all laptop displays are 6-bit. A problem, perhaps, if you’re a working professional photographer, but not for 99.x% of users. If you really want an 8-bit display, buy an external LCD. My wife has 20-incher she plugs her machine into at home. Even with that added in, the system is still about half the price a MacBook without an external monitor.

   As for size in general — a 32″ 1080P HDTV and a 50″ 1080P HDTV also have the same resolution, but I’d prefer the 50″ myself. Maybe that’s just me, though.

   “My nearly two-year-old MacBook (initial price: $1200) will be worth about $500 on eBay two years from now.”

   I’m skeptical, but even so, you’d have lost 40% more in depreciation than my wife’s and daughter’s machines cost in the first place. Since the shoemaker always has the oldest shoes, I’m still running a 4-year old Compaq notebook with no particular plans to replace it (it still does everything I need it to do).

   April 17, 2008 - 1:16 pm   Link to this Comment | Reply

   

   
7. 7. adam

   BS. They used an overpriced Dell niche product for the desktop “comparison”. And surprise! It was more expensive than a Mac.

   You can build a similarly spec’d PC for $1000. For $1800 you can build a better machine.

   April 17, 2008 - 6:43 pm   Link to this Comment | Reply

   

   

Comments are closed.