I’m an iPhone-loving mum who is looking to buy a desktop computer to store the bazillion photos I have of my kids. I’d like a machine that has longevity, reliability and one that’s fast for internet and email. Is a Mac going to be my best choice since the iPhone to Mac transfer is pretty simple or is spending the extra hundreds not worth it for me? I’m hopeless with technology, so any advice would be appreciated! Thanks, Lovely Luddite
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Dear LL,
If you’re on a tight budget and don’t require anything beyond basic computing and storage space, go with a Windows PC. Transferring your photos to a non-Apple computer isn’t that difficult: you can find comprehensive instructions for importing iOS pics here. Naturally, you can also access your iCloud Photo Library account from a Windows PC.
Unlike Macs, which start at $1699, you can snap up a competent Windows all-in-one (AIO) for under $500. These models come pre-assembled and usually include everything you need to get started, including the operating system, keyboard and mouse. To set your AIO up, all you need to do is plug it in and follow the on-screen instructions. Too easy.
For your specific needs, I’d pick extra storage space over faster hardware: ignore SSDs and go for a device with a 500GB or 1TB hard drive. This should be plenty of space for storing photos and videos — just be sure to back up your data and keep your photos in good order. This guide includes tips for keeping your photo collection safe and well organised. Good luck!
We’re also going to open this one to our readers. Are the user-friendliness and familiarity of Macs make it worth the extra money for tech-shy mums? Share your opinion in the comments section below.
Comments
87 responses to “Are Apple Macs Worth The Extra Money?”
*grabs popcorn*
Dis gun be good…
Hahaha. That was what I was going to type. 😀
Is it though? As far as my very limited knowledge gets me, there is no benefit to paying more, getting less and being restricted in what you can and can’t do.
I just started working for a Uni IT Helpdesk and the groans that come from every other person around me when they get a caller on a Mac give me the impression that they have a tough time dealing with Macs too.
*munch munch munch*
Not gettin’ dragged in. *munch*
Macs are generally much easier to troubleshoot than Windows PC’s its just that your average guy on phone support has no experience with them and isn’t interested in learning something new so they get irrationally angry.
Some of us put in the effort to learn Both OSX and Windows and its really not a big deal. I find I have to be delicate when talking to level 1 tech support because even if the problem is that your Fiber Link has been cut by a guy digging with a shovel if you mention the word mac during this they will just say not supported and hang up.
I use Macs at home and Windows at work…you do get what you pay for and once you go high-end, macs are better value.
If you want a cheap PC, buy windows, it won’t last…Windows will also eat itself…
Macs will last and be generally less troublesome…still running a 2007 Macbook Pro at home.
NOPE
Yes/No
Yes because good warranty, customer service is better than Telstra, they’re built for people who break things and Macs are hard(er) to break.
No because… TL;DW(rite)
Better customer service than Telstra… That’s a selling point?
I don’t personally know anyone that hasn’t had an awful experience when dealing with their customer service.
From what it sounds like I would recommend a Mac. Yes you pay extra. But the technology is consistently consumer focused. An everyday user (non-gamer) like the one we have here can benefit enormously with a Mac in the long run.
For a small to large business I would stay away from it. While it does support most enterprise features, they aren’t as ironed out as you would expect.
If you’re a regular, everyday user, then you’re paying way too much for mac hardware. As the article stated, a good AIO can be had half if not less than half the price of the mac with equal specs.
Why in this day and age would a non gamer not go portable?
Don’t get an all in one, get an ultra-book like the 13 inch air. Also for people who aren’t very good with computers Apple wins hands down. Backing up and restoring is so simple on mac it can really help you out when they inevitably screw it up down the line.
Another thing, how could you recommend someone not get an SSD, its like signing them up to having a slow computer right off the bat. I cant think of a more important item in a computer for your average user. When they have installed 30 new toolbars and registry scanners the SSD is the only thing that will keep that computer usable.
SSD’s are small and fast. This person is a self described Luddite. A standard HDD will still work faster than them. And they specifically said they wanted storage.
Yeah but these people think they need mountains of storage because they have so many photos without realising that quantity does not equal size.
Even people who document their entire lives in pictures only have about 100 gigs of photos.
I love my PC (gaming rig with 980ti’s in SLI) running Windows 10 (not bad). However I have a 6 year old iMac that I use as a media server as well as for graphic design (Indesign + Illustrator, I use the PC for Photoshop) and it’s been an absolute champ! Never anything major going wrong as I have never had to tinker around with it because it still runs a 6 year old version of OSX along with commensurate Adobe apps (none of this cloud based stuff for me!) I’m looking to upgrade sometime this year as work allows me to get a freebie version of the Adobe apps. So I figure that I have the best of both worlds!
I still believe that for computer novices the Mac and OSX is the way to go but for a beast machine that you want to run Photoshop or maxed out AAA games the PC is still king because you can build one from scratch (as I did)!
I think building a PC from scratch feels like a right-of-passage. Even if you’re not putting i7’s and SSDs into the box, the whole process is incredibly satisfying, and it warms the cockles when you first successfully boot into your OS.
and every boot afterwards, i still smile and think “man, i built this with my two own hands, mad”
If you produce music because its better for that, the layers between the drivers and the audio output on windows SUCKS (im a windows users lol) and i guess photoshop idk about that one.
if you do either of those macs are good, if youre a pleb too 😉
I dunno about music edition but the Photoshop thing is but a myth. It may or may not have been true over 15 years ago or so, but it was very much a falsehood long before Macs switched to Intel architecture, negating all their arguments of having a better system architecture than PCs.
It was rubbish at least 15 years ago as well, I remember playing on a G3 and there was all this nonsense being said about Power PC being much faster than equivalent x86 cpus and the games never played any better despite me having the same GPU in my G3 that I had in my Windows PC.
If anything it felt like Macs got massively more powerful when they switched over to intel.
Which is why they switched heh. When Intel technologies started putting out verifiable numbers they couldn’t keep pushing pseudo-mystical nonsense about being “better put together”. It’s kind of ridiculous that the myth is still around in our days as proved by the poster around, but that’s pretty much a result of music studios and advertising agencies (I know, I used to work at one) parroting it through the decades to justify a buy that it’s actually all about snobby reputation.
Been using Cubase on a PC for 7+ years. Started out with native hardware but have had a few sound cards over the years, more than does the job fine.
When people say “you need a mac for music”…. lol.
all of music studios i know run PC’s, and the best photographers i know use PC’s… its just a Mac user’s myth to justify spending twice the money, and getting the same internal hardware…. suckers…
ASIO drivers provide direct access to hardware and very low latency (<=7ms), Windows has supported them for an eternity.
Short answer: No.
Longer answer: You can purchase a much better specced Windows based machine for the same or even a lower price.
Unless you are particularly attracted to the hardware or MacOS there’s no reason to waste your money buying Apple hardware – ESPECIALLY if you are planning on installing Windows on it anyway.
Even longer answer: Optimisation of hardware and software (something you can only do when you know exactly what’s gonna be in the machine, like Apple does) means that specs alone don’t paint the whole picture of what’s better value for money.
I haven’t used a windows operating system since XP so I don’t know what’s changed since then, but macOS is significantly easier to use for someone who is a layperson as well as someone who has no need to tinker with the way their computer works (ie most people). Not having to worry about updating drivers or incompatible hardware etc is not a benefit that should be understated for those who need computers for work and general life use, rather than playing games.
I use mac as a designer and also a musician and the operating system makes things like font management (for example) much easier to use than PC. I have also owned PCs in the past that have lasted a year, but still have macs that are over a decade old that still boot up fine.
I think that viewing it from a strictly how many GBs or Mhz or whatever for your dollar you’re going to get is very reductive and the entire basis behind smart phone brands like Samsung’s marketing.
Windows has managed driver updates for users since at least Vista when WDF and WDDM were introduced. Certified driver updates for the majority of what’s in a standard consumer PC are pushed out through Windows Update. Incompatible hardware is also very rare, I’ve not encountered anything like that for the last decade, particularly since the introduction of generic device drivers.
The notion that “everything just works” with Apple is a marketing line, nothing more. It capitalises on difficulties people had in versions of Windows from an eternity ago and glosses over the fact Macs fail just as often. You gave some anecdotal evidence that Mac lasts longer or is better, but from having worked in a hardware lab years ago I can cite probably more examples of Macs failing than Windows. In one case, multiple fresh installs on an iMac G5 immediately crashed on startup.
Don’t take this the wrong way, but I’d say if you haven’t used Windows since XP then you’re a decade out of date on your information and I don’t think you’re on stable ground as far as comparing the two goes.
I work as a Sys admin for hundreds of macs and also hundreds of windows machines and quite a few of the things he said are still true. Driver issues on OSX generally aren’t a thing and quite often I will install a fresh copy of windows on a machine and 3 or 4 things just wont automatically get drivers from windows update. This just isn’t an issue on OSX.
Having generic drivers for your video card is an issue if you cant open things like Google Earth.
Mac does well at the “It Just Works” crap because they bundle everything your mum needs into the box. They don’t charge you extra to get a word processor and they have a very full featured set of apps for organising your photos or making them into boring DVDs that nobody will ever watch.
The hardware comes from the same manufacturers that a lot of windows hardware comes from so they are usually hit by similar problems to windows laptops (The Nvidia GPU incident of a few years back being a good example.)
What PC vendor are you using on your network and what version of Windows are you running? I’ve not seen any driver problems on any recent Dell or Lenovo hardware in the past few years Win7 onwards. Generic drivers aren’t an issue, Windows Update distributes WHQL certified drivers for Nvidia, AMD and Intel, which account for almost all GPU makers today. If you’re using Matrox or something strange like that you might have issues.
You don’t need to pay extra for a word processor on Windows, Google Docs or OpenOffice are both very capable, free tools, and there are plenty of others. There’s nothing stopping you organising your photos easily in Windows either, there’s a folder specifically for them and image viewer is a pretty solid program.
Apple’s hardware advantage in terms of unified platform is gone, it just doesn’t exist any more since Windows 7 except in the case of unusual hardware, which your average mum or dad isn’t going to have.
We are still using Windows 7 on Acer machines, with the graphics driver thing that has been something I have noticed when setting up peoples laptops that they bring in which can be a variety of models. We are switching over to Dells for our PCs though in the next year.
The display driver would have been for a recent AMD laptop APU. I used the google earth thing as an example as this is what they were trying to open and was saying no D3D support or something like that. Installing the driver manually from AMD fixed it.
Downloading something like open office or using google docs seems to be quite challenging for quite a large group of people that I have seen so the fact that it comes bundled in OSX counts as quite a plus.
Ah right, AMD APU. I never really liked them much, they may well still have driver issues. AMD’s never been especially reliable with their drivers to begin with.
They have certainly let me down recently and because they are so cheap I seem to have to deal with them all the time 🙁
First of all, yeah I agree about the not knowing much about Windows lately, that’s why I made that clear in my comment. You’ll see I was mostly talking about Mac’s benefits rather than windows’ failures in my comments because of that.
But you only need to bring up something like Arkham City’s articles in the search bar to see things like AMD vs Nvidia compatibility issues for a clear example of how different hardware can equal headaches for users.
If you’re a basic computer user, just using it for browsing the internet, listening to music, some office suite functionality, etc. Then mac is pretty much the better option aside from the price (which you could easily argue is worth it). No viruses (Within reason, and a huge benefit for average users), no driver issues (generally), better support through apple care / apple stores, better build quality overall, etc. This is especially true of laptops.
If you want a machine for hardcore gaming, then Windows is your only viable option, so there’s not even a conversation to be had there. Definitely run away from Apple if you care about playing games on your computer (I personally use my consoles for that, so It doesn’t bug me). If you have specific needs program wise then you’ll probably know what platform is right for you as well.
But it’s the basic users or people who mostly use their machines for general life things that would benefit most from mac’s simplicity and reliability, windows may be cheaper, but the poor man often ends up paying twice.
I should be clear, I didn’t mean any offense by that comment, just wanted to mention it.
The issues with Arkham City have nothing to do with the operating system or drivers, so it’s moot to the subject. It was badly written software. I just don’t agree on the other advantages you listed, they existed a few years ago through to Vista, but since Windows 7 things like virus vulnerability and such really haven’t been that big a deal.
Yeah no offence taken at all. Valid point. Bit hard to convey that over text.
any gaming at all you mean
No, if I meant that i’d say it. There’s a lot of games you can play, especially indie games, which make up the bulk of the PC gaming exclusives. If you want to play graphical powerhouses that leverage best graphics cards then windows is where you need to be. But there are a lot of games, including recent PC exclusive XCOM 2, that are mac compatible.
Honestly I don’t really care. Have fun with your mac.
Does the Pope shit in a funny hat?
Oh wow, I thought this was Kotaku, not a site on giving advice to ‘iPhone loving moms that need to store a bazillion photos of their kids’.
This site has seriously gone downhill in the last few years…
this post originally appeared on lifehacker
Most posts originally appeared on Reddit, but at least they have some relevance.
Misogynist
yet here you are, clicking on the article, expressing your interest.
If nobody speaks out about irrelevant content that just dilutes the quality of the site, it’ll just go to shit.
It’s a site about gaming culture. Not reposts from other sites just for the sake of padding content out.
The service that comes with Apple products is great if you live in a metropolitan area with access to an Apple Store if you need advice or something goes wrong. You won’t get that with any pc. Plus the longevity of apple products supersedes pc a hell of a lot more. Still running a mid 2010 MacBook Pro and it runs just fine as a portable computer but of cause do all my gaming on my big rig.
Of course you can get the same service as the Apple Store with PC. There are tons of high quality repair stores around for both PC and Mac that are leagues ahead of what you get in the Apple Store.
The longevity argument is bunk. Both have been using the same hardware for over a decade, neither lasts any longer than the other. To add to your single anecdotal example, I still have a PC from 2001 that runs fine as a media centre, complete with web streaming. The example laptop you mentioned is only 6 years old, there are tons of PC laptops that are still in the wild and running just fine that are older than that.
I have a mac laptop for work, it does that great. The only issue ive had was having the battery replaced under warranty because it wasnt lasting as long, and it was painless. My experience with an old windows laptop i used to own took MONTHS to get repaired under warranty when the inverter for the lcd died.
My mum has recently bought an imac, and we plugged in the power and network and it was up and running. She isnt awfully tech savvy but has had no problems at all switching from Windows to OSX, and i havent had to do the tech support thing since.
Only real issue is a mixed network, osx is a bit clunky talking to windows shares sometimes.
YES they are more expensive, but the support and ease of use are definitely worth it.
Any PC you buy you can plug in network and power and it will be up and running.
Just have to put in your name and name the PC and you are done.
Your mum sounds pretty good if she can just switch to Mac. I have had several people have issues with it. We let them buy them at work (we are a windows place) if they want to but get told they will get limited support. They have problems with the most basic issues 🙁
Owning an iphone would have helped I guess. All the icons are the same for the important stuff
There’s no need to spend all that extra $$ on a Mac if all you want to do is browse the net, check emails and store images. iTunes, iPhones etc all run great on Windows and Windows 10 is pretty user-friendly.
However, if you love Apple products and $1699+ isn’t all that much for you, go for it.
You gave yourself away when you said iTunes runs great on Windows, iTunes doesn’t run great on anything.
Heh, runs fine for me!
Doan like em. Hardware and OS is too inflexible.
Just like your mum.
Only if you need to edit audio, or you can’t think for yourself.
I love this argument, “if you can’t think for yourself”.
Look at the install base for each platform. Hell, throw in smartphones as well. Apple owns a fraction. Either the majority is so enlightened in this one specific field, ignoring every other trend about the ignorance of the majority that we already know, or you’re 100% wrong about consumers “being sheep” when it comes to Apple products.
The 60 year old running a failing small business doesn’t have outdated windows computers running XP because he’s “thinking for himself”, he’s got them for the exact opposite reason.
“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.” – Mark Twain
stop breathing like the rest of us then.
Jesus dude. “Kill yourself”? Really? Are you one of those people who forms their entire identity around the things they own? If so I pity you.
No it was in response to the adage of not following the majority. I don’t like apple.
I’ve got a 2010 iMac sitting next to me that is now so slow, it takes 15 minutes to launch an application. If it needs a restart, it’s a good half hour before it becomes useful. The most common icon seen on screen now is the spinning rainbow wheel of dread, simply because I moved the mouse over a menu bar. Every Apple update slows it down more and more. If I want to try to update anything to get some speed back, it’s all an unsupported hack that may or may not destroy the machine.
Needless to say the iMac doesn’t get used these days. The much older laptop running Windows 10 on the other side of the iMac is still as fast as the day I bought it.
Fairly anecdotal stuff there. I’m sure if you looked at averages the exact opposite picture would come apparent.
Sounds like u have hdd instead of ssd in the Mac. Cos I’m using a 2007 iMac 24 inch and it’s fast . Two options: go buy a latest Windows machine for a fraction of the price, or get an ssd from msy and replace the hdd urself and thank me later.
Hardware replacement and support mean zero to me. I could replace broken pc parts over and over again and it still be cheaper than a mac. Hell, i could buy 3 good computers for the price of some macs. And I don’t think I’ve ever used support from any company…. ever.
But I guess if you have HEAPS of money and know nothing about computers, apple will fill your house with amazing products that do work well. Macs are great for certain things so I don’t hate them. Just don’t see the point in them for everyday users.
I’m a strange fellow. My daily PC is a 2012 MacBook Pro running Win 10 in bootcamp. It still hums like the day I bought it (*touch wood*)
Love the hardware, but productivity software (Visio, Project, Word, etc.) is still not industry-standard on the Mac side (and I’m including Office for Mac in my assessment). Ultimately, I find myself jumping between Work PC (Windows XP, yeah, I know), MBP (Win 10) and home PC (Win 10) with OneDrive, all with an iPhone for good measure.
How is the battery use under win10 ? On my macbook win7 bootcamp chews through battery like nobodies business compared to osx
Nah, it’s fairly solid – I game on it pretty hard during my hour-long commute to/from work and it’s lucky to chew through maybe 10 percent of battery.
I’ve found that since about Windows 7 PCs have begun to edge out Macs in terms of how friendly they are to people who don’t aren’t tech savvy. Just make sure the main user account doesn’t have admin rights and seal the deal with a SSD. That PC will outlive and out perform a similar priced Mac, and even if they go cheaper they’ll probably still get something that lives as long or longer than a Mac.
Although I will admit laptops throw a wrench in the works. Apple’s offerings have a fairly good build quality that you can’t guarantee you’ll get from the lesser brands. It’s definitely possible to find a good, cheap laptop but if you don’t know what you’re looking at and insist on a laptop Apple offer a safe bet.
Personally when buying family members computers I’ll go with whatever they have in a newer model. If they’re using a Mac already I’ll get them a Mac. If they’re using a PC I’ll buy them something in a similar price range with more power and put the savings towards a good gaming mouse (it sounds like something only nerds care about, but trust me if you’re spending more than 20 minutes per day on the computer you want one).
Bought one for the parents (late ’09 version), Turns out they just can’t get into Mac, so I’m currently using it as both a mac desktop and a display for my Windows desktop. It is quite inflexible in that you can only upgrade a few things, support is great though, but my gosh are they a pain to bring to the apple store
If you are inexperienced with computers and only need it for web browsing and storage. It comes down to 2 factors:
1. Do you have a tech-savvy person in your life you can rely on for help on a whim (spouse, children, good friend), and
2. Does your budget allow for a Mac.
If you answered “No” and “No”, well then you have to go PC, to which I’d implore to NOT buy a Windows laptop. They are horribly slow and clunky, and much more of a pain than they’re worth.
If your answer is “No” and “Yes”, then seriously go with a Mac, hands-down. You will have an easier and safer experience, with great warranty protection (make sure to get extended warranty) and fantastic tech support. The amount of inexperienced family friends I’ve helped who have “slow” computers because I discover they’re filled with malware is ridiculous. One of them suffered a credit card scam from a program masquerading as their malware protection. Stay safe and go Mac.
If you answered “Yes” and “Yes”, then it is up to you, but really I’d suggest a PC. Having a tech savvy person around will aid you with any hiccups that arise, and if they know how to build a system, you will be able to get a MUCH cheaper system that runs a lot on par with Macs.
With the almost triple the price for a Mac, that runs a tiny fraction of the software, why? Yes there is less of a software gap but Macs aren’t really any more stable than non-custom PC (stable Mac is a myth) and even if you have the budget for a Mac you can either buy a PC that’s far more powerful and extra software, or just keep the extra cash for something else.
And if you have issues with a Mac, you have to send it off.
I think you’re missing the point of the recommendation. For people who have no understanding of computing and are really only going to use it for web browsing and storage, if they want an easier experience then Macs are great as a learning experience and wont suffer the side-effects of ignorant web-browsing (ie. malware, searchbar addons, etc.). There are little things that we who have grown up around the tech quite easily understand that Apple has taken into consideration for those unknowing.
If you take into account a requirement for specific programs or gaming, then of COURSE you don’t choose Mac. They’re built for CPU strength, not GPU strength. Rendering>Gaming. But again, that is not what this discussion is about. And your comments about unstable Macs and sending them off if you have issues? I don’t understand. I have used Macs since I was 6 and the only time I ever encountered Macs that were unstable were the “Jellybean” Macs we had in our school. My Powerbook Pro lasted 8 years before the screen started to fade, and my iMac has reached 8 years now with no sign of slowing down (knocks on wood). Compare that to all the PCs I’ve had and issues with viruses, memory issues, faulty parts, updates causing errors, etc. And as for sending away computers… yeah, I guess if you live out of the cities and cannot get to an Apple Store, but if you’re computer has an issue bad enough that it needs to be sent away if it’s a Mac, then if it’s a PC you’d have to wait for the replacement part to be specially ordered in to have the repair done. And then you’re paying for the PC’s repair, whereas the Mac is covered by warranty?
The safe browsing thing is a myth, of course. There are several viruses and malware out there that target OSX, even to the point Apple was forced to remove false claims on its website that Macs don’t get viruses. It’s trivial to add antivirus protection (and you definitely should, on both PC and Mac) and configure it to run in the background without prompts to the user.
On stability, I agree with @madadam81. In my experience working with both systems, I’ve found Macs to be at least on par with PCs for instability, if not worse on some occasions. PCs are much, much more stable than you seem to be suggesting.
Your warranty comment is just ridiculous. Macs have 1-3 years of warranty, PCs have 1 anywhere up to 5 that I’ve seen, and in both cases when your warranty is expired you’re required to pay for service. Where are you even getting nonsense like this one?
This is all just my personal experience growing up with both all my life. I lived in a Mac household, had my own computer when I was 6, went to a primary school (P-10) that taught us on Macs, Switched to PCs in secondary where I learnt animation, switched back to Mac in tertiary when I studied Multimedia, and switched back to PC again after I stopped that field.
I’ve seen the good and bad of both systems, from Mac’s ease-of-use to its restriction to customise, to PC’s openness to its vulnerability. Both systems have their have their pros and their cons.
In the end I only made my recommendation based on the original question regarding a computer for some hopeless with the technology. Being the tech-savvy one in the family means I’ve been called up to help countless relatives and family friends with problems. All serious problems have involved PCs, while most trivial questions regarding programs are from Mac users. I will not argue that there are malicious programs for Macs, but you also cannot argue that its easier to be hit with all sorts of PC malware and crap if you do not understand what you’re clicking on. Finding family PCs with half the browser window taken up by 10 different search bars is both funny and horrifying.
If anyone has even a basic understanding of technology then I would always recommend PCs, especially after building my own. I would just never recommend cheap PC laptops. They have been horrible every time I’ve used them.
What I referred to as nonsense was just the warranty part, not the whole thing. Sorry if that wasn’t clear.
pinwheel of death !!
Windows laptops are slow and clunky? That’s a very broad generalisation…
There was never a reason to waste the extra money on a Mac, not for writing, not for 3D, not for music, not for anything, because if PC didn’t match it, you could out the savings towards buying a professional tool to help even more.
If you can afford one then get one. If you’re only browsing the internet then up to you, but know that a Mac is going to outlive a plastic Windows laptop that will inevitably start falling apart and have things go wrong with it after a couple of years.
Once you actually start using a Mac to get things done with, it’s hard to go back to Windows. You know that whole ‘it just works’ thing? Yeah, 100% the reason I prefer my 2012 MacBook over my PC (which I built myself). Drivers are the single most frustrating thing about Windows. Hardly anything ‘just works’ on a PC. Even peripherals I have that don’t officially support OS X just work out of the box on my Mac, whilst I still have to fuck around with drivers just to get sound out of my DAC, get my printer working, get my wireless kb/m working properly, get my audio interfaces working properly, get my graphics tablet to work, get USB condenser mics to work etc. Doing anything in Windows is a stressful nightmare, and I haven’t even mentioned software yet.
The only downside of OS X that I can think of is that there’s no good substitute for Foobar.
Oh and don’t tell anybody not to get an SSD, that’s just stupid. Get an SSD and don’t look back.
Edit: oh and I forgot to mention the Mac’s trackpad, but that’s an essay for another day. Using a trackpad on a Windows laptop is my idea of hell.
Mac all the way guys!
My MacBook retina hasn’t had a problem. Apple customer service is the best. It’s still so fast today just like new!
On the other hand, my friend wanted to be different and bought a highly specced Sony notebook for “gaming”. Woops, a few days later the usual control alt delete, errors, then it got slower and slower, viruses, reinstall Windows 10 from backup, Photoshop and illustrator runs so slow. Been bricked and Sony did t give a crap. Customer service sucks.
Conclusion: wanna be cheap and in the end u pay for it. I’d rather pay more for quality!
Same here. I’d pay for quality, not the same specs in a shiny apple box for twice the price. Also wouldn’t buy a Sony, lol.
Thats why you dont buy a ‘gaming’ PC from a store rofl. Custom build mate, custom build.
I don’t think the OS/brand of laptop is the problem here, I think it’s your friend…
Used to be that Mac hardware was worth it because of the vastly better build quality and general look & feel compared to the average Windows box, especially for Laptops. PC manufacturers have largely caught up now though. OSX meanwhile is a bit of a dog – that hardware will run Windows better than it runs OSX.
I used to buy Apple hardware all the time but now I can’t see a good justification for paying that big markup.
I bought a second hand macbook pro for uni because: better battery life, very rarely crashes when I’m writing an essay. It’s not as powerful as my PC laptop and the screen is smaller but it never freezes or crashes or randomly needs to restart.
I wouldn’t spend the extra cash on buying a NEW one though, and I wouldn’t have bothered buying it at all if I didn’t need the portability for uni.
Half the cost, twice the power, and since Windows 7 Microsoft have been way ahead of Apple in terms of desktop OS. Window/file management in MacOS is an absolute pain without aero-snap and MacOS is missing easy ways to cut/paste files. I have to use some crappy Mac Mini’s at work and they’re an absolute piece of snot and make my life way harder than it needs to be. Unfortunately we don’t really have a choice as Apple force developers to use MacOS to develop for iOS.
I worked in a “apple” office with a bunch of middle aged women. The fact was, they were no easier for them. No gains at all. If anything they were less familiar with them so things were slower and they had to figure out certain things….which we all know causes mass confusion in middle aged people when they need to think around computers.
Drop Linux on either a Mac or Windows machine to make it infinitely better
I really don’t get why people put Linux on Mac as it’s already Linux…
Simple rules: go play in the store and decide. For programmers (like myself) definitely go for a Mac just so you have a full Linux system with a pretty face; go for a pc if you want gaming, and just grab a tablet if all you do is email and websites. How hard is it really to decide?