Dominic's posterous

Well, i am a Mac user not because of them being fashionable objects, but because of them having above average PC quality and durability, their design being simple yet through out meaningful and though trough both for hardware and software (OS). The advantage of the OS being highly beta-tested on specific hardware is enormous not only in terms of performance, but it leaves problems with driver trouble to a minimum on the shipped system, which is great.

Now one can't generally compare this to the average PC. Meaning the average PC as every single computer out there which is not made by Apple. This because of the high-end computers used i.e. in this image is not remotely intended to perform common tasks, but are set up and used by some great engineers. And their software will in a huge degree be developed or highly altered to perform specific tasks. In this case buying a general purpose PC would not make sense being either a standard Windows box, or any Mac.

Comparing a Mac to a budget (Windows) PC would also be stupid. The budget machine as an advancement in price. It can also play more games. But it will have less battery capasity (if laptop), it will have e slower and lesser responsive operating system with more bugs and more security issues. It will not be far as durable, and it would (being my own opinion) have a steeper learning curve for new users.

In reality you could compare a Mac to a higher end PC, i.e. a Lenovo ThinkPad or more pricy HP running a Linux Distro. For playing games you would need also a Windows install on the same machine (being very impractical, and actually quite costy). And, if you are not a computer-geek, pay someone a fairly high price to install and get a linux distro up and running as perfect and full feature as possible. In the end this would match the Mac in price, or even cost more. And being fairly less practical in the day to day use.

Now i do have a Lenovo+Ubuntu setups which i use almost daily for various tasks. It has had a lot use and a lot of beating, but still works great for its task and does have a responsive, fast, reliable and fairly well thought out OS. And it's price has been around $400 less than an matching Mac.

One can, however, not come aside the fact that there is a lack on commercial software available for Ubuntu. Many of the Open Source alternatives are great, but one cant come aside the fact that there is a lack once it comes to any type user friendly rich media software. Meaning no tools to really match any of the Adobe CS programs, or no feature-full ready to go audio creativity software like Logic, ProTools, Cubase, Reason and so on, and so on...

This being available for Mac, and the fact that the Mac in addition does look great. Well, I go for the Mac.

Still, i don't use my machines for games.

PS. You should also know that i have a windows box set up, a fairly priced machine now running windows 7. Aside from the rare cases when i have to access info stored in files from windows specific programs, I have turned to using this machine for Internet Explorer debugging only.