It perplexes me that Apple products sell as well as they do. I find Apple's value proposition to be questionable. For example, compare an iPod to just about any comparable media player, or a Mac to a comparable PC (in terms of HW power).

I think Microsoft is very smart to point this out, as I do not think this perception has reached the general public. Also, there's a line in the commercial like, "I guess I'm not cool enough to be a Mac person." A clever way for Microsoft to imply that Mac owners are paying extra for the Apple image. This is also an idea that I do not think has really reached the general public.

when my 360 died, microsoft left it up to their partner (best buy). who hassled me about their absurd return policy despite my having purchased their extended service plan that clearly covered the situation. after a frustrating experience that required forty-five minutes of my time and escalation past the first tier of management, i did get new hardware.

I then got home and found out that the XBox Live content i'd purchased was tied to my old (now-dead) hardware. If i didn't have an active internet connection, it couldn't be used on the new hardware. Most times I'm connected, so it wasn't a -huge- deal -- but it still bit me in the ass a few times until Microsoft released their fix for the DRM situation (18 months later).

To sum-up: the value Apple offers isn't in the hardware specs. It's in the single point of responsibility, excellent customer service and lack of bullshit.

I don't know a single person who fits the straw man of 'buying apple to be cool'. Everyone I actually know who owns apple products switched out of sheer frustration with the Microsoft model of eighteen levels of indirection and blame game nonsense whenever anything goes wrong.

It appears to be very difficult for people to see this though. When the original iPod came out, some people were claiming it was over-priced while other people were removing the hard-drive and selling it on for more than the cost of the entire iPod.

Also if, when you compare Macs and PCs, you do so in terms of "HW power" then you are missing the biggest part of their value proposition: software.

There are competitors who can create good high end PCs, but at the moment they suffer from a severe case of bad taste. Maybe most producers being Asian doesn't help either - nothing against them, just the tastes seem to be different.

This is most pronounced in car designs. Japanese and Korean cars designs generally look like they are "trying too hard", especially in the recent years in their high-end models. Maybe they are going for the funky-factor of the ricers, I don't know. British, Italian, and French cars usually look the least desperate. German and American cars are somewhere in the middle. Just my opinion.

Being Asian myself, I concur we have different tastes. ;-)

Most Asian cultures(Japanese, Indian etc)have their own aesthetic sensibilities. I concur that they are different from the "default" western sense of style. I just don't think it is true Asians have "questionable" taste!

NB: I am not getting into culture wars etc or claiming victimization etc, I just think that sentence is not true.

To be more specific, perhaps I should've emphasized that "modern" Asian cultures have questionable tastes, which is in direct contrast to traditional Asian sensibilities. I feel that modern Asian cultures are too busy imitating what's trendy in the west. It doesn't help the fact that instability of the past century made people lose faith in their indigineous cultures, while the western culture has evolved quite a bit since to adapt to changes of the world, thus leaving a big gap to catch up.

I'd venture that the vast portion of the old Asian cultures are appreciated now-a-days merely for their exotic aspects, even by Asian people themselves. Whatever is preserved for practical reasons don't always fit in a coherent manner, there are plenty of rough edges to work out.

I guess a bad analogy would be that Asian culture is like Unix, Apple is Europe, Windows is USA, China is BSD, and Japan is Ubuntu. The kernel is the philosophy, command line is the traditional culture, GUI is the pop culture, and the internet is globalization. Windows eventually took over and became more accessible over time with its killer GUI apps. For the time being, Unix lacks the ecosystem to build killer GUI apps, so they created Wine to run Windows apps. There are also plenty of native Unix GUI apps that sprang up, but most are created in response to their existing commercial counterparts, and many of their GUIs are imitations. FreeBSD has been around for a while, went through several regime changes, and is still kinda authoritarian with its userland programs. Ubuntu is later to the game, has the most success in adapting to modern GUI needs, but there's still some distance to go to catch up to Apple and perhaps Windows. Even though Unix is weak in GUI stuff, it's strong as servers, especially since the internet became popular.

Sorry about the silly analogy, perhaps I need to take a nap. :)

Also, all the makers have far too many options to choose from.

Both seem like solvable problems to me, but perhaps they are doing well enough as it is?

Also go for simplicity, I suppose. No fake parts designed to look "high end" in a phony way (kind of like "spoilers" on cars).

To me the utmost example of bad taste is the leather coating ASUS is going for in their latest creations. But then I don't like leather in general.

Just try to remove as many superfluous parts and elements as possible I guess. Just as Apple does - battery covers are superfluous. Mouse buttons are superfluous. Multimedia buttons are superfluous. Shiny areas anywhere but on the display are superfluous. And so on...

Important: large borders around the screen are superfluous and look cheap.

I can't think of a situation where multiple colors would look good (ie notebook cover red, bottom black), but I am not a designer.

I don't think Apple have any interest in selling something at lower price points, because like Sony, Porsche etc. their brand is of a better quality product which of course should cost more.

SGI, Sun, HP all used to sell high end workstations at the top the market (~2-20x more than what Apple charged at the time) - that market got eaten by PCs when they couldn't differentiate anymore. Unlike those high end machines, Apple has no performance advantage over PCs. Apple's only real difference is the OS.

Apple's emerging threat is Linux/Open Source, which has many of the same advantages OS X over Windows does and of course was good enough for Apple to take a kernel, browser and printing system from. Linux/Open Source doesn't have to be better than OS X - it just has to be better than Windows and good enough that people don't want to spend extra on a Mac.

Edit: this is classic "The Innovator's Dilemma": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disruptive_technology

Apple make some fantastic software - the iLife suite is pretty awesome. That might be reason enough to buy one - (and the hardware design is typically good as well). But just looking at the OS - and what I use the system for on a day to day basis - and Apple's advantage in the OS space is a lot less than it used to be. (And snow leopard doesn't look like changing that from an end user perspective)

"Apple's emerging threat is Linux/Open Source, because " [reasons]

to which you (mikecuesta)replied

"I don't think for a second that Linux/Open Source is an emerging threat to OS X, " with no rationale or logic to support that viewpoint.

"I don't think X", without supporting reasons is an almost meaningless response in a discussion. I am surprised it got so many upvotes. Just imagine someone responded to you with "Oh yeah? I do think so" without providing any rationale.

Your response could validate rythie's "classical innovator's dilemma" argument, since in a classic innovator's dilemma the proponents of the disrupted product never "think for a second" that the disrupting product is "an emerging threat" till it is too late.

I doubt that the Mac can really compete in the market for high end games since most of the machines it sells are not very upgradeable.

A market for enthusiast PC gamers who value the customisability they get will, of course, persist, but the mainstream is going elsewhere and moving into gaming appliances like consoles. And if somebody's got an XBox 360 or PS3 for their gaming needs, does it really matter to them how well their computer plays games?

The trend in gaming right now is working in Apple's favour, not against it and the fact that Apple does not have a place in its line-up for a customisable gaming machine is becoming increasingly irrelevant.

Another big reason why Apple fans pay a premium is for the seamless integration experience that doesn't make you think. Since Apple controls 100% of the hardware it can ensure that there are never any problems like x drivers that crash randomly and take your system down.

Linux will always be oriented towards the hobbyist type that, when things break down, opens up the box and tinkers inside. Linux can't control the hardware it's deployed on so it'll always be at a massive disadvantage.

I inserted a USB thumb drive, it asked me if I want to install something or other, giving some warning that Microsoft hadn't approved it or something. Then I plugged in a mouse - it did the same thing. Then I started Office and again with something about installing and then asked my name. Even that process is simplified since someone had already installed/bought Office which doesn't normally come with as full version on most machines nowadays.

To do the same on a fresh install of Ubuntu I just plug in the USB stick and double click - I never get asked anything.

I would say Ubuntu is already better than Windows XP.

That said, Windows 7 (and even most of Windows Vista) is more polished than Ubuntu in its current state, and its plug-and-play is much better.

Windows 7 isn't mindblowing. I actually dislike a lot about it. Microsoft doesn't have a clue regarding their design.

That said, when you plug in a mouse it works without complaining. My point was that the specific gripe ("Windows XP has a lot of noise") was taken care of in Vista and is now fairly polished for Windows 7.

What do you mean?

Any vendor can take Linux and tailor it to their hardware (e.g. Tivo) and make it a seamless experience for the enduser. You might not recognize it as Linux at that point, but it still is Linux and that is one of its design potentials (if not goals).

The problem, of course, is the effort. Software is hard.

Mac OS X got it's first (server) release in 1999. And even that was a reboot of Nextstep which was originally released in 1989.

Of course, the whole point of Chrome OS is (apparently) to not have a traditional GUI and apps, just a browser, which is most of the stuff Apple had to add onto BSD.

I meant my comment in the context of the message I replied to. In that in 2002 they first tried to push a new OS to the desktop market as it was then. From what I heard about it, nextstep was not anymore advanced compared to the rest of the market than Linux/Ubuntu/Gnome is now to it's market.

I don't believe any company could afford to start back right down to the kernel and low level libraries for a new desktop OS, even it was just going to run a web browser. I would say that any competitor to Apple and Microsoft would have to use a Linux kernel, CUPS etc. as a base - just as OS X used NextStep/BSD as base.

It's more like the choice between a hydrogen Porsche and a gas Camry. In that case, even if Porsche are content to sell a few, high-margin vehicles, they will have to worry about whether the model is sustainable given that if customers can't find a place to fill it up, they're not going to buy one no matter how nice they are.

Hell, most people don't even know MS Office exists on the Mac.

In fact, after using a Mac for 3 years now I have to say that for a lot of day-to-day tasks, Mac apps beat Windows apps hands down. FTP? Use Cyberduck, it's infinitely superior to any free FTP client on Windows. IM? Adium is classier than any of the all-in-one clients on Windows (including Pidgin). I can go on...

The point is, whatever you used to do on Windows can all be done on a Mac (save for a few domain-specific things like drafting or gaming). And the difference is, Mac developers actually give a damn about UI, which is a lot more than can be said for most Windows apps.

P.S. Whoever decided that unlabeled, nondescript, 16x16 icons lined up in multiple rows at the top of the screen is good for usability needs a serious reality check.

Adium and Pidgin both use libpurple, the same IM backend. If you want to talk about design aesthetic differences between open source and the Mac ecosystem, it's probably the definitive example.

Not only that, but the people using Macs are largely using Macs because of the UI, so there is a much higher standard set for developers. In general, it seems, people using Macs have a much higher expectation for their Software, which means that the general crap that Windows developers put out would never fly on a Mac.

Also, OS X was my first real exposure to working in a unix based environment. Some people may disagree, but I discovered a definite preference for working in unix/linux. I eventually replaced the OS on my old desktop with Ubuntu, which is nice, but it's still hard for me to imagine a non-technical person like my girlfriend using Ubuntu. However, my girlfriend has switched over to OS X as well, and is much happier than when she was on windows xp. I guess I see OS X as basically being a linux distro with an excellent user experience.

Of course, your mileage may differ.

However, the BSD back-end of OS X has completely sold me on mac laptops as a work machine forever. (I know I can install Cygwin, or switch to an actual linux desktop, but those are the things that feel clunky and glued together to me.)

Hardware in terms of firm design, usability, compactness, and aesthetic: I can't think of anything that comes close to Apple's design. I can barely think of computers that come close to looking as good, and those are ones that don't feel good when you're actually using them.

(An HP) http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-det...

http://store.apple.com/us_smb_78313/configure/MB871LL/A?mco=...

Very, very similar. The apple's CPU is about 200 dollars more, and its video card about 100 dollars more. But the difference in the computers' prices is about 1500 dollars. To me, it's a pretty big ripoff, but I guess that's the value of branding. BMW and Lexus are also ripoffs by any objective standard.

Very well said. I bought a mac laptop because I enjoy working on it much more than I do a windows PC; I didn't make the choice by comparing the prices of the components, or the relative value of the chemicals involved in assembling the thing.

The only real hardware advantage that I can find which isn't available elsewhere is the nice, fully internal battery that the Pros come with now. You can get one that performs similarly from Lenovo, but it doesn't look as elegant.

The T400 has five buttons around the trackpad... and Apple accomplishes the same functionality with one trackpad and one button (and no button on the new models).

The T400 has a lit keyboard toggled by a key. The light is actually just an LED pointing down from the lid. I can see the PCB it's attached to. Compare that to Apple's ambient light sensing backlit keys.

There is a key on the T400 to zoom the screen, but it just changes the resolution! Compare that to control+two-finger-drag on the MacBook, which smoothly zooms in on any region of the screen.

The T400 has a physical switch on a corner of the case to turn off the wireless hardware. The MacBook provides it through a menu.

The T400 for some reason still has a plain old full-sized VGA connector with screw posts, compared to mini-DVI.

It's a holistic thing, I guess. A design is either "together" or not. Lenovo doesn't have it.

The T400 appears to have five buttons around the trackpad because it has an exta "trackpoint" red nub in the keyboard, so you can handle cursor, scrolling, and typing without moving either hand from the keyboard--indispensable to all the people who have learned to use it.

The T400 has an LED to illuminate keyboard and slightly more so you can turn it on or off when you need to, rather than when an ambient light sensor thinks best, and you can hold anything under the light to see it. (Think airplanes.) Very useful.

The T400 has a physical switch to turn off wireless hardware so you can do it when the machine is off, quickly, without booting up and using a menu, and so you can physically verify its status.

The T400 has connectors for devices most often found in its environment. ThinkPad evolves its connectors, but a little more conservatively than Apple. Which plan is best depends on what particular users need to connect. You also get some complaints that a new Mac can't connect to existing peripherals.

Design is vital, Apple has some great design points, but ThinkPad has some different but equally great design points. Read David Hill's blog (http://lenovoblogs.com/designmatters/) for insight into the meticulous design thinking behind ThinkPad.

Why would you want mini-DVI? Mini-DVI is a proprietary Apple-only connector that forces you to buy an adapter so that you can connect all other hardware to it. By the way, the T400s has DisplayPort, which, OTOH, is an open standard.

The macbook keys light up at inconvenient times, the thinkpads only lights up when I want it to -- and it lets me read dead-tree notes easily

I've never used screen zooming so I wont speak to it - the mac solution sounds nice though.

The T400 has an obvious, provable way of quickly disconnecting from a network. It's like pulling out the netword cord. And it has an option to turn that off in software.

The T400 connects directly to my projector, my monitor at home, my cheap plasma tv. For the mac I've got to drag around an extra converter thing.

There are plenty of designs you can knock as not being "together". The thinkpad design is pretty well tested though.

PS: She did not have the free time to mail it back to be fixed, and waited for a break so she could migrate to the next machine. I suggested a new Dell every 18 months, but that was not worth the hassle. And worst case she can show up at the apple store and get it fixed while she waits.

Go into Best Buy and you’ll see RAM, CPU speed and hard disk sizes listed on the features tags. Those specs are increasingly meaningless for most consumers as any computer in the store will do what they need.

The more they focus on these specs, the more PC makers allow their product to become a commodity.

Design, usability, buying experience and after-sales service are what really differentiate computers. If any computer is sufficient to do my daily tasks, I’m going to look for the cheapest one available. But I’ll pay more if you can sell me on those intangible benefits. That’s the high-end of the market.

Having said that I own a ThinkPad W500 and a Macbook and think both have strong/weak points, but given a choice of only having one I would probably stick with the Macbook, simply because I can do anything I need to with it (a la bootcamp).

There are only two considerations, really: do you (or the end user you are helping) prefer OS X or Windows, and are your skills/available time competitive with the Apple hardware premium?

The 'debate' consists of large numbers of people insisting that their answers to the foregoing questions are somehow 'objective'. They're not. If I won the lotto tomorrow I'd buy the most expensive G5 and install Windows 7 on it.

Seriously, silly me - I meant the top-end Mac Pro with the dual quads etc. I was thinking of the beautifully engineered case and internals, which I still associate with the g5.

I recently was given the opportunity as a reward from my employer to name my next notebook, it could be anything at all, I didn't have any set price limit, I specifically got asked to just pick whatever would be the "ultimate" in computing power for me. I had a look at the mbp lines, did a few enquiries on notebookforums, and ended up with http://www.p4laptops.com.au/main/D900F_P4laptops.pdf

It looks like a big, black laptop, the vast majority of reviews I could find on it spent about 50% of the article pointing out how it was not very pretty and size and other form factor related nonsense I didn't care about, then another 25% raving on about how heavy and loud it is, and then the last 25% of the article actually examining how the tool performs for it's intended purpose! Man I hate the world at times, you people are all f*cking crazy. It's like I bought a fork and spent all my time pointing out how it wasn't very well chromed and I didn't like the way it sat in my hand, and then just toward the end there mentioned "but hell, it's really good for picking up food"

Eugh.