The PC industry is built around an idea of almost infinite variation: different Wi-Fi adaptors, different Ethernet chipsets, different GPUs, different USB3 controllers. This variety is then reflected in the systems available from manufacturers—and more importantly, it's reflected in the way the systems are actually built. … The big reason that HP wants to get out of the PC business is that it's simply not very profitable for HP—and that's true for all the major PC OEMs, Cupertino excepted. Cheap PCs are certainly important for making computing accessible, but they also mean that PC vendors have made themselves vulnerable: endless price cuts and a failure to emphasize the value of a quality product have cut revenues and slashed profitability. Desperate to compete on pricing and pricing alone, the mass-market PC OEMs have ended up cutting their own throats.Ars technica explains why the PC industry is having such a difficult time trying to build a competitor to the MacBook Air.
obiwanwasabi: But many who buy Apple want a Unix-like OS humming along gracefully under a gorgeous GUI and not have to worry about tracking down obscure drivers all the time, particularly for their portable electronics that are similarly well designed. More expensive? Sure, but my time is expensive, and so time saved trying to configure that wireless card that won't come out of sleep mode is money wasted anyway.Exactly.
This ignores any possible price differentiator beyond raw cost. I'm not saying that any Apple anything is the optimal price/cost ratio for anyone, but seriously. Just because someone CAN charge $399 for god knows what, and a vaguely equivalent $999 apple whatever is equivalent... Like, come on.Yeah, like, come on. Obviously that apple logo is totally worth $700!
But many who buy Apple want a Unix-like OS humming along gracefully under a gorgeous GUI and not have to worry about tracking down obscure drivers all the timeI don't think I've had to haven't had to "track down an obscure driver" since the 1990s. It's not something you have to do if you're not using obscure hardware (And you'd still have to do it if you used those parts with a mac, if there even were drivers)
None of the above are going to make PC laptop manufacturers hemorrhage money, but they would go a long, long way towards competing with how effortless and painless it is to own a Mac. I honestly don't think manufacturing price or cutthroat competition is the differentiating factor here.Again with this idea that it's somehow "painful" to use a PC. It doesn't really require a lot of effort. The thing is, the "least painful" way to use a computer is actually "the most familiar." If you're familiar with apple, it might be frustrating to use a PC. But what apple zealots don't seem to understand is that it works the other way too. If you're "good with computers" or willing to learn it probably wouldn't take much time to adapt.
At the very least, because of registry and endless malware problems, I would have to wipe a Windows laptop's hard drive and reinstall the operating system on a frequent basis, in order to get it back to a usable state. I have outgrown my technical support role; I do not enjoy this kind of work any longer. -- Blazecock PileonYeah, as we all know Blazecock Pileon is super reliable when it comes to the differences between macs and PCs.
Have you ever tried to carry your desktop into a library or archive to take notes from sources which you are not allowed to move? Or have you flown overseas for work where you need a computer and taken a desktop with you?So get a netbook or cheapo laptop. I don't really see the need to have a powerful laptop, I see it as a suplement to a desktop. For the price of a Mac, you can buy both.
With the accidental coverage, Dells are no longer cheap, but they are very robust -- you don't really care how well they are made when any fault/broken bit is simply replacedI don't know about that. Before I got my HP laptop. I had a sony that I had to send in twice during the warrenty period. Then the battery died on me making it pretty useless.
It's not something that employees can control for the most part, and I don't think the IT Procurement office is going to get MBA's for their employees anytime soon for work. I'm just talking about people buying laptops for personal use.I might be nice to work for a company that can afford to buy expensive stuff for you, but that's not everyone. There are, I imagine, lots of people who have to work freelance and buy their own stuff.
I've done the desktop-netbook combo, and it was very frustrating. I was overseas for 3 months, and I didn't have access to all my work files and programs - I was very limited in what I could do. So the very next time I had the opportunity, I switched to a laptop as my only machine.I'd be worried about losing it. My cheapo 2008 laptop works fine as a 'real' computer if you're not gaming. The only thing it has trouble with is 1080p video. But it does feel kind of 'cheap'. If I was packing and unpacking it every day, typing all day long there might be some wear and tear.
This is one of the things that infuriates me about mac developers. They are *certain* that Mac is better for development. It's not. It's sometimes better for development.Just tell them you run Linux :)
The PC industry is captured by the legacy environment from which it sprung...That of the hobbyist rolling his own box at home. The corporations and support industries were created and molded to feed that market because those hobbyists were the bread-and-butter of the nascent personal computer industry. The problem today is, of course, that the industry is still trying to supply a, now, relatively non-existent market. The three-of-four geeks still building their own boxen can't keep the parts industry afloat.Hahah, are you serious? Apple had to completely abandon PowerPC and switch over to the same generic components that PCs had been made out of. The only difference between a generic PC and an Mac is the BIOS. Other then that, they are generic PCs, period.
Apple, meanwhile, never had that sort of legacy.
I replaced that with the 24" iMac in 2009, I think, and I still can't sense this machine getting slow. The *only* reason I'd consider buying another one (replace this one? It still works!!!) is that I'd love to have the 27" screen.Yeah, buying a whole new computer to get a larger screen is totally reasonable.
I hear the netbook segment is dying, and that makes me sad, because typing on a picture of a keyboard on a screen is about as satisfying a substitute as fucking a fleshlight. It's also sad in the sense that I carry my netbook everywhere,Well, if you like ASUS and you like physical keyboards there's the Asus Eee Pad Transformer, It's an android tablet that you can attach a keyboard too.
Did you know when you close the lid of your laptop it goes to sleep? And when you open it, it wakes up again?You mean just like my cheapo HP laptop?
I'd heard rumours that Windows laptops could do that since, oh, 1998. But it never seemed to actually work ... With an Apple computer, that kind of thing just works right.Yeah, this is the annoying thing about Mac boosters. The claim their system "Just works" as if PCs didn't. Most of the time PCs "Just work", and sometimes Macs don't. On top of that Mac users seem to have really weird ideas about what actually happens when you use a PC.
Once you attach a keyboard to a tablet, you're beginning to be back to having a netbook, laptop, etc.Well, some people like those things. You can type a lot faster on a real keyboard then an on screen one.
But now that I own a Mac it's like being part of a secret society, a society of good typography. Join us!Not everyone likes excessive font smoothing, at certain sizes pixel-sharp letters look better. I find it kind of annoying. Windows will do font smoothing on fonts that don't have the hinting to look good without it. Apparently OS-X used to give you the option to disable it, but they took it away.
I'm sure Apple laptops are, in terms of the case and hardware design, nice. But the argument is that apple's products are somehow nicer looking and better made then all PCs. That's where things get a little ridiculous. I said that people who thought that Apple's products were objectively better then all PCs, as opposed to subjectively better were the ones who were confused.People go on and on about Apple's Aesthetics. All of those things are subjective. Anyone who thinks Apple's products are objectively better looking then anyone else's are probably being blinded by brand loyalty.This is a tired and insulting cliché. It's just as tired and insulting as some no-nothing wagging their finger at a Windows devotee for all their nonexistent malware problems ... Beauty may be indiscernible to you. Maybe practicality or price is your top priority. These are totally legitimate yet equally arbitrary preferences..
Science would tend to disagree with you there. Just look at how maths is applied to geometry and design throughout history. And in nature.Whaaaa?
That seems like a huge hassle. Much more work then simply unplugging the old monitor and plugging in a new one.Yeah, buying a whole new computer to get a larger screen is totally reasonable.It sure is if you plan on selling the old one and don't mind the performance boost as a bonus
I'd prefer to be able choose providers, so just getting a USB modem with my favorite (as much as one can have a favorite) carrier and plugging that in is much more viable, I think. Not to mention Apple would probably be stuck on 3G antennae for the foreseeable future. With USB modems it's no sweat to upgrade to 4G/LTE.This is really a problem with the way cellular works in this country. It's not just a utility that you can buy. Cellphone companies want to lock you in, and they control who has access to their network. Imagine if household internet worked that way in the '90s: You got your internet from dell and could only use dell PCs with it and access dell websites. It would have sucked.
Okay, cruel kidding aside. Multitouch track pads on any OS are best thing ever:1) It requires moving more than my right pointer and thumb off of the home keys. That's a lot of movement - I can always tell who's using a trackpad because they have this little in-out-in-out-in-out movement going on with their right hand as they go back and forth between the home row and the trackpad.
(1) It takes no effort to move the cursor. Track points always seem to require a fair bit of pushing in ways the human finger really isn't meant to move.
(2) Gestures, OMG gestures. Easily swipe back and forth between tabs in firefox? Check. Easily bring up Expose with a swipe? Check. Zoom in and out in pdfs? Check.
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posted by benito.strauss at 9:19 PM on September 5, 2011 [1 favorite]