the ad doesnt say mac's dont have power!!! its saying its expensive becuase of the brand name rather than extra computing power!!!! and i am not a pc fan or mac fan. i have a pc and macbook pro. that comment about the ad is wrong. beside its all marketing. when did an ad ever said the truth. is any of mac ads are true???

How about updating the title of this post to "A Microsoft employee doesn't agree with new ads?" I am a Microsoft employee, and a Mac user, and I still agree that Macs are more expensive. My dad bought a quad core PC this weekend, Intel, 8GB Ram, 640GB Hard Drive, 1GB nVidia video, TV Tuner...$799. That's barely more than Apple's LEAST expensive computer and it's infinitely more powerful. I would say that proves both points.

As a Microsoft employee, I must say that nearly every person inside the walls KNOWS that there is an Apple Tax. We hear about it every day from our customers. Especially in the enterprise where Macs are nearly completely rogue boxes. Compliance and management tools are lacking and mostly immature. There is no idea of configuration compliance. If you dont believe me, go to Gartner and search for "Mac management". You can do the same at IDC or Forrester.

In the consumer space, they are fine and can clearly organize Music, create videos and web browse. However, when it comes to business productivity beyond the personal type. They are a nightmare to manage and application support is WAY behind Windows. Dont believe me, go into an Apple store and count the apps. Then go to Best Buy.

There is one important factor that is not reflected in this price and power comparison. The amount of overhead (in terms of time) required for maintaining a Windows PC is much higher than that for a Mac. What you pay extra as a one-time fee gives you a much greater experience, and save much pain for years to come.

In case anyone throws the "fan boy" kitchen sink: I use four computers at home and at work. One of them is a MacBook Pro, the others are a laptop running Windows XP and desktops running Ubuntu Linux and Windows Vista. I do software development on all four of them. The Mac has given me the least amount of trouble.

Yeah, I have to say that since I migrated to the Mac (still run WinXP both in a virtual machine and on other PCs) I have been well and truly "converted" for ease of use and just the general lack of "hassle" in everyday tasks. Today I discovered another neat trick - renaming files while they're open. No problem, the wordprocessor is notified and all is fine. How many times have I been frustrated by locked files on the PC...

On my desk here at work, I have a Mac (10.5) and an PC (WinXP).

Both pretty much the same spec (not including graphics cards. I do all my presentations on the Mac, All my word processing and all my spreadsheets. The only thing I use the PC for is Email, and intranet access.

Why?
Although the mac word processor and spreadsheet are "less powerful" than office, they do everything the I need for day to day use, and the interfaces are easier to use (for me at least). The multi touch on the trackpad is really missed when I switch back to windows. things like two finger dragging. In fact on the mac I do not use an external mouse any more, it's too restrictive.

I would say I have paid back the "mac tax" three time over, in the year I have had my mac, in time saved trying to find menu selections in windows and moving around documents. YMMV

As with anything I use 8 to 10 hours a day I want what is comfortable for me. Not what Cupertino or Redmond tell me is better value easier to use. It is not just the money I give to the sale person, it's quality of life after.

Also with my mac If there is a real need to use windows, I simply load up VMware fusion and off I go. Just because I have a Mac doesn't mean the boys from redmond are not getting there slice, oh and I do have a MSDN subscription, and do write Windows Apps, possibly more so than Mac apps.

If you really want to take pot shots at Apple hardware go after the desktop machines (mac pro anyone?).

"Although the mac word processor and spreadsheet are "less powerful" than office, they do everything the I need for day to day use, and the interfaces are easier to use (for me at least)."

There you go, you said it "for you atleast", trust me its "for you only". lol

"I would say I have paid back the "mac tax" three time over, in the year I have had my mac, in time saved trying to find menu selections in windows and moving around documents."

You should have gone to spec savers, would have still paid alot less :D.

"Also with my mac If there is a real need to use windows, I simply load up VMware fusion and off I go. Just because I have a Mac doesn't mean the boys from redmond are not getting there slice, oh and I do have a MSDN subscription, and do write Windows Apps, possibly more so than Mac apps."

Thas is just gggrreat.. So for day to day browsing and word processing you got a Mac (which by the way my 5 year old Inspiron can do just as fine) and for some serious work and development you use Windows.

Need i say more..

Hi Noms,

Perhaps you should visit spec savers :P

Where did I say I used my mac only for word processing and web browsing? I actually use it for project planning, mind mapping, presentations, drawing, photo/video and sound editing, programming, running windows & linux, spreadsheets and word processing.

I could do all of these things on a laptop or desktop from any manufacture. I just chose to go for a MacBook pro. And yes I agree there is a mac Tax, I guess they do not sell in the same volumes as HP or Dell. But really I don't care, it's my money (now Apples admittedly), and I make enough not to really care if Dell/HP/et al. or Apple(+mac tax) to get it.

The Apple for me is just what I want or need and it's my money. As I said YMMV. Some people here have tried Apple and did not like it, fine at lease they tried it. This is why not every one in the world drives a Ford or eats MacDonalds. The world is about personal choice, and if you cannot see that then the ad man has won and got you by the short and curlies.

Buy what YOU want, and don't dis people just because they don't agree.

oh and quickly your other points:

> There you go, you said it "for you atleast", trust me its "for you only". lol

Hmmm, Yes correct for ME, as I said MY money. Trust you, possibly NOT. Sorry but it's because you find it funny??? I could not see (or get) the tag line.

>You should have gone to spec savers, would have still paid alot less :D.

Checked the website (on my mac) and they don't have a branch close to me sorry...

>Thas is just gggrreat.. So for day to day browsing and word processing you got a Mac (which by the way my 5 year old Inspiron can do just as fine) and for some serious work and development you use Windows.

Think (hope) I covered this, but will add I hope you did not pay the "advertised" price for your Dell, This would be the equivalent to paying delltax :-p

>Need i say more..

Hopefully NOT. But may you have a wonderfully frugal life.

Actually, I would say the only reason a Mac has a lower overhead is because it's inaccessable. It's a closed box. Completely closed source. Second reason, is that it's less popular than a Windows PC.

A lot of the maintenance for a Windows machine is virus and malware cleanup related. Which is only because Windows machines are the dominant architecture. As soon as Macs become more popular, they will start getting hit by malware overnight. Thing is, Apple is still preaching malware invulnerability so it will hit people harder.

End result: Windows = more powerful, cheaper and quite reasonable on the maintenance side if you know what you're doing. Keep them backed up, defrag, scan for viruses once a week. Can schedule that for an overnight run. Don't even have to think about it. =P

Chris

> Actually, I would say the only reason a Mac has a lower overhead is because it's inaccessable. It's a closed box. Completely closed source.

Unlike windows of course. LOL

> A lot of the maintenance for a Windows machine is virus and malware cleanup related. Which is only because Windows machines are the dominant architecture.

Or could it be that until Vista security was an unknown word at Microsoft. Actuall cannot wait for windows 7, They should get security just about right there.

>Thing is, Apple is still preaching malware invulnerability so it will hit people harder.
Please give an example, anything is breakable so I do not think apple could back this statement up, if they really made it ;)

>End result: Windows = more powerful, cheaper and quite reasonable on the maintenance side

More powerful than what?
Cheaper agreed,
maintenance = what ever OS you want/use, backup! (always back up no excuse not to.
Defrag (don't need to defrag MacOS native formats, a-la linux systems.
Aren't phishing attempts and unsecured network connections, more of a problem know. both of which are not OS specific problems. Maybe I am lucky but the only places I see viruses now-a-days is in spam email and pirate software, both of which avoid. same claims for virus security can be made for Linux.

I guess it is true, Microsoft really has some dumb people working for them.

As mentioned, the point isn't that Apple doesn't make a computer that can do everything you need, but rather you will pay more because it says "Apple" then you will for another computer with the same hardware (or close to it).

While I like Apple's products, from their computers to their MP3 players, I don't own any as I have let to see an economic reason to pay a higher price for their products. Looking cool isn't enough reason for me.

The apps I use on a daily basis are on windows, I get my work done and my computer is my entertainment centre. I have no problems doing all I need to do. I have a Mac too, and while I was dazzled at first, I soon grew tired of the interface and found it counter intuative and unproductive. I want the OS to run my apps and I really don't need bouncing icons, coverflow and fan shapes. For Vista, I don't need it to index my control panel when I just need to do a setting change. Annoyances abound no matter what the OS is, but it sure is nice to have powerful, stable, useful systems for all.

I find it interesting that everyone insists that the only reason that anyone purchases a MAC is to look cool. The last three people that I know who have recently purchased a MAC instead of a PC, they switched because they were tired of Microsoft. It is sad when people are willing to pay more just to avoid being associated with a company.

In the end this is all about convenience, what solution works best for you. Some people like the mac look and the power is more than enough for what they do. On the other hand windows is useful, but only because "THAT piece of software" you need only runs on windows. Linux, what can I say? it's Frankenstein, an OS stitched together that is often acceptably buggy forcing users to go to terminal... every OS solution out there is a C average. The winner, the hardware industry. Get a good machine, Tiny XP Bare, slap vmware on it. Use Mac, Win, Nix for work, then install your games on the Tiny. Perfect.

This Microsoft employee (only one outta how many?) needs a lesson in logic. Just because the MS employee thinks a Mac of the same price has enough power, doesn't mean the guy in the ad does. Why have high end graphics at all? Maybe the guy wants to play a couple of games in his off hours. With that MS employees own logic, one should NEVER buy a more expensive computer. And the ADs are not low balling or dishonest in ANY way (other than the "paid actor", but even that argument is a lowball) they make a simple, truthful, point in a manner that is appealing to customers.

The Apple ads were COMPLETELY lowball, making repeated stereotype statements that just are not true. Apple ran a very successful ad campain that tarnished the image of a perfectly decent OS in an act that I would attribute to no less the liable defamation. Vista, dispite its initial lack of 3rd party driver support, was slim and performed well compared to previous MS/OS', when accounting for cost of hardware at the OS release date. What $1,000 would buy you in 2002 would not run XP as well as what $1,000 would buy running Vista when it was released.

The author is clearly hallucinating.

You might want to check the link to "Keith Combs" blogsite, it returns 404 and when I went to his main blogsite there was nothing about the commercials.

While I don't doubt that there may have been a post like that, I can answer Keith's question -> "What is it about the MacBook listed here that doesn’t meet your needs?"

Keith, it would be the PRICE POINT!

If you really are an MS employee and you really did have that post and subsequently removed it, I have a suggestion for you:

Listen to what the commercial is touting. Use those comprehension skills that a blogger is supposed to possess.

The point of the commercial is that non-Mac systems tend to cost less out the door when you do a hardware inventory comparison. Nothing more, nothing less.

As a home user of a mac book (and the reason for buying a mac at the time was that it was best value [dollar wise] in terms of hardware and what was needed for home use) and a PC user for work (Vista, XP and Server 2003) I am completely happy with the price paid for the Mac. It just works and it is not over powered, because it doesn't need to be to do its job. I need a PC as a software developer since we are a microsoft shop, but love the way Macs do what they are told all the time and don't require huge amounts of power to do what I need at home.

This whole report is fundamentally flawed, first the machines that windows run on are not Microsoft machines, thus the windows os is not specifically designed to run in top performance on any particular machine and the mac is an apple machine with an os designed specifically for it. So to do a head to head comparison you must compare apples to apples so to speak.
If you remove either operating system from either of the machines that have the same specifications, then install Linux on both, you will find that both machines will be equal in performance and both machines will run faster and better than they would with their "own" respective operating systems. This is simply because Linux is not a resource hog, and is customized for every machine it is run on.

You should also note that last month, the newest updated and patched mac fell to a hacker challenge within 10 seconds, and the new Windows 7 fell within 20 minutes, I suspect that a Linux box was not invited to this challenge this year, because it was the only os left intact after the challenge was done last year. The reason windows and software written for it is so easy to hack is because of a fundamental flaw in windows design, to fix this flaw by redesigning windows would cause most of the software that the world relies on to stop working on the new windows platform. The reason that macs are getting hacked is because they are designing windows capable software to run on a mac, thus opening the security holes of windows software. There are proof of concept hacks in Linux, but they will only do what a user lets them do, and are much easier to prevent than anything windows has done to date. I am confident that the more mainstream Linux becomes the better it will get,and will out perform anything apple and Microsoft can do. I have personally used my Linux software to fix many windows machines that have been brought to the knees by hardware and malware problems.

Um... OSX is better. I didnt think anyone who's used it for more than a few minutes has ever contested that...
Plus its an investment you make once ever couple years.. Is anyone REALLY worried about a couple hundred dollars spread over a few years?????!!! I spend that on Mt.Dew in a month. Cheap bastards, buy the better product. Not the cheaper product.. No one compares the Ford Escort to the mid level Jaguar..

As long as noone is willing to challenge my coolnes factor I'll keep using my XP machines (and I have three). I can't really REALLY argue about which OS is better, Windows or MacOS. Honestly, can anyone, given the wide variety of applications and respects that should be considered? Can anyone claim that this or that OS is better? The only valid argument so far in favor of MacOS that I have read here is that it allows the files to be renamed while open. And that's great! I wish my XP machine could do that. And I do get frustrated by the amount of time it takes for Windows just to show all the thingies in the Control Panel. Sometimes it seems that all the high-tech that's working under the hood is needlesly complicated and it works in such convoluted ways that noone dares touch it, in fear that it would make older applications incompatible. Sometimes I wish for a total reboot of the IT industry and OSes written from scratch, with all the knowledge gathered so far. Wow, that was an extended rant. I'll bother no more.