fca780 said:
Liesje, I read your posts, but macs are made for the people who want to be ahead in what normal PCs of gamers or let's say also "excel-only" employees of some companies.
My point is that there is no excuse for a gamer to say that he or she wouldn't buy a mac because of the graphics/video performance and although you are not using all of your iLife suite at some point you'll do because we all have the need to wonder thourgh this things that are pretty interesting, for ex. I have use iMovie only 2 times in my life, but I use a lot iWeb for my webpage. I mean maybe you are not using all of your built-in apps but you are going to use a lot of them and some you just can throw to the trash and save memory. Now for what I understand, if you just enjoy building up a PC that is your choice but I prefer using the latest tech available in the market and see how Apple impresses me once again.
-FCA
Don't get me wrong, I'm a Mac user/lover myself. I realize Macs have the same video capabilities. What I'm saying is, say I only have $800 to spend. With that, I could build myself a high-end gaming PC, no problem! As for Macs, that would get me the cheapest Mac available if I had and ed discount, or some reburb, neither of which would work for what I want to do. Sure Macs have great video components, but you can't build one from scratch and save yourself a thousand dollars like you can with a PC. My husband is a gamer and he'd never consider a Mac b/c why would he want a 250 GB hard drive? He'd rather save that money and use it on an even better graphics card. He couldn't care less if he was iLife suite or not. iLife doesn't play his games so why would he spend way more on a Mac to have it? Many gamers prefer PCs because there is way more choice. You can build your own machines and not be limited to the smaller range of specs available when you purchase a Mac. The reason I did not get a Mac this last time was because the range of specs was so limited, I couldn't get what I really wanted b/c it added all these things I didn't need and couldn't afford.
I can't say one way or the other about the Mac software b/c I don't use it and never had a need to. I already have perfectly good programs that I use for graphic design, web design, web publishing, video editing, etc. iLife isn't necessarily "the latest and the greatest technology". There's much more professional stuff available for Mac and PC (for example the applications I use for web design I have on my Mac and PCs). I'm sure iLife is a good program, but it's not like other programs don't do the exact same things on both PCs and Macs. It's probably the most user-friendly in it's quality range, but none of my web design and computer programming friends use it and we get on with our jobs just fine.
Like I said originally, neither platform is inherently "better" than the other. I'm not really defending PCs here, I'm just saying that Macs aren't really any better than a high-end PC b/c they've got the same stuff. Dollar per dollar, they're basically the same. You really can't compare most common PCs to Macs because the specs are so uneven. Of course a Mac is going to last longer and perform better than a $400 PC desktop. Unfortunately, most people don't think this far ahead and develop this assumption that PCs are "worse" in general. If you built or purchased your PC to have comparable hardware components, you would be spending the same as you would on a Mac.
It's really only a matter of personal choice and what rage of specs are available for each platform.
Like I said before, I'm a computer technician and I fix both machines everyday. If you take into account the fact that 2/3 of our people use PCs and 1/3 use Macs, the ratio of major hardware or operation system failures for both platforms is pretty much even.
Macs are actually far more difficult to service (hardware-wise) than any PCs. For example, the Shift key on the keyboard of my aunt's Pro broke and we had to replace the keyboard. With a PC laptop, you flip two latches and pull the keyboard off. It takes about 2 minutes to replace a keyboard. With the Pro it took our hardware people several hours, as the laptop had to be taken apart in several places and the components are very difficult to reseat. Another example - Friday a professor put a CD into a new iMac and the drive was broken so it would not mount or eject the CD. The iMac doesn't have a manual eject and to remove the drive the whole thing had to be ripped apart, plus the drive itself had to be taken apart to get the CD back. Macs are designed for looks, style and portability, but are beasts when it comes to repair and servicing.
We have 5 in the house. 
