Re: Yep, some more actual Mac advocacy (This is comp.sys.mac.advocacy, after all)

"Hasta La Vista" <noem...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
"-hh" <recscuba_goo...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
"Hasta La Vista" <noem...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

"George Graves" <gmgrav...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hasta La Vista wrote:
"George Graves" <gmgrav...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
Hasta La Vista wrote:
...
In my case I found Apple's prices to be double for what I paid
for my PC, for less hardware than I got.

IOW, more of less.

Please explain how 2 GB of RAM instead of 1 GB of RAM is "more of less.."
Continue on from there for a faster 500 GB HD instead of Apple's slower
120GB HD.

I see you have no answer for the above.

My apologies for overlooking it, but the answer really is quite
simple: your HP a1250n didn't come with 2GB of RAM or a 500GB HD. As
per your "Merry Xmas to me!" thread of 5 Dec 05, it had 1GB and a
250GB...half as much of each.

However, as per later threads, you've claimed that you paid $850 for
your PC ($250 more than the current mac mini price). As such, I'm a
tad confused: have you actually bought TWO PCs within the past 24-30
months?

In any case, while we can always say "more is better", hardware specs
are merely an intermediate to functional performance and primarily are
relevant when all other things are equal, but since the OSs are
different, this is not the case. Thus, the functional question is:
how fast does OS X run in 1GB of RAM versus Vista with 2GB?

And specific to the HD, I agree that the mini takes a performance hit
because of it, but the 2.5" drive is a "necessary evil" to achieving
its small form factor. Personally, I'd like to see the trade studies
that Apple went through in making this decision, as it wouldn't be a
killer to me if the mini's box were 1" wider and 1" deeper ... but I
suspect that due to power & cooling issues, it wouldn't likely have
been this minor. If the mini grew to a chunky box (eg the old 'pizza
box' design) its form factor would no longer neatly fit on a book
shelf, etc. In any case, the bigger picture here is that that HD is
the standard that's in all brands' laptops (size and capacity), which
the general public's consumers are buying more and more of (IIRC,
roughly half the market now) which is a clear indication of their
willingness to trade off this aspect of computational performance for
the non-computationally based performance benefits of transportability
and compact size. In other words, the general consumer simply doesn't
care, and there's millions more of them than just the two of us.


I knew what the analogy meant.    In reality I got ~20 oz. of Ruth Chris
steak from HP for half the price Apple wanted for 5 oz.

Its the OS that determines the grade of meat. Since your HP is
running Windows, your plate only can contain chopped meat.


After you cover those two we can discuss the other computer parts that
the Mac has half of for twice the price.

Such as total package size, which is the mini's strength.  What does
the price of the HP go to when that performance parameter is
*matched*?

You don't get to go on to discussing that after ignoring what I brought up..

Well, its now provided, per the above. Your turn to put up.

Its not a question of it is important to *you*, but merely
matching the products' salient characteristics that *someone*
may care about.

I'm unimportant, but this imaginary "someone" is important, because they'll
probably want a Mac Mini?   That's a strange argument, to say the least.

It is because a single person does not ever determine the success/
failure of a mass produced product. Myself included too. This is why
we all need to leave our personally myopic "me, me, me" preferences
set aside when trying to gain perspective for the broader and
holistically more objective comparisons.


I got two good steaks from Ruth's Chris for $25 instead of half
a steak for $50 from Apple.
Nope Rith's Chris doesn't sell two steaks for $25.
You retreated from your own analogy into literalism.
You've obviously not eaten at Ruth Chris <g>

How is that obvious?

Because if you had, you would have cracked a joke about their $8
potato. Ruth Chris isn' t worth their high price for their food
quality alone ... I've joked that they serve a nice $25 steak for the
bargain price of $50. This is often the price that you pay for
getting a "safe" meal at a restaurant chain in an unknown city, and
Ruth Chris is no exception here...its just positioned to be a bit more
high end than TGIFridays or Ruby Tuesday's.



The hardware doesn't matter any more
Yes it does.
Even when a major differentiating factor has become the OS?

Explain how the OS makes 1 GB of RAM just as good as 2 GB of RAM, or a 120
GB HD just as good as a faster 500 GB HD.

How many times have we heard complaints about how Windows is a
"Resources Pig"?

To use an automotive term, if your OS only gets 10mpg, then you need
more RAM/HD just to be the functional equal to another OS that gets
20mpg. The ultimate determinator is the productivity of the
computer's operator, and one doesn't measure that by hardware specs
alone. The problem is that we don't have easy measuring sticks for
this, so we tend to ignore it and look at only that which we can
easily measure - - eg, the hardware specs - - even though this is
known to be incomplete.


When Apple has successfully "demanded" and gotten more for their
products - - with market penetration of  laptops of particular note -
- when in many cases they're running on the same (or older!) Intel
architecture, if its not the hardware or trendy cachet, the only thing
left to differentiate is the OS.

IOW, Apple offers such a poor deal in hardware you'll just close your eyes
to it.

I can buy a $599 mini for $563 (because I can get a $36 employer
discount); others can get an EDU discount. As such, this means that
that Psystar clone would only save me a whopping $18.

YMMV, but I'm more than willing to pay the extra $18 just to not lose
the OS's automatic Software Update feature, even without having to
consider the issue of violating the EULA or considering the rest of
the hardware trade-offs (gain 3.5" HDs, lose size, lose firewire,
etc).


I'm willing to pay more to run OS X in lieu of Windows, because my
firsthand experience is that there's a significant-enough-for-me
difference in system maintenance and headaches to be worth it.

I don't know what you're talking about.   Windows has never been a headache
for me.

All OSs have design elements that represent compromises. If you
haven't found any yet, its because your attention to detail in product
design is not particularly high.


FYI, I'm also not willing to pay anything more for a 'LightScribe' CD/DVD
burner,

I paid less to have it included, not more.

as the feature reportedly has shelf life issues.

Who says so?

I've cited it before; go use Google.


 How many times am I going to have to repeat that I got
the same damn hardware, except more of it, for half
what Apple charges?

Besides the fact that you actually didn't get the same?

That's a lie, not a fact.

Except for all of the differences we just spent 200 lines discussing.


What you got was a pile of hardware that roughly approximates one of
the Apple products,

What I got is more hardware that is as good or better than I could have got
in a Mac, for half the price of a Mac.

Even if your claim is true, hardware without software is worthless.

Nobody here has shown how it's important for anybody.

It is Apple that's making the money from their products, which they're
doing through thousands and millions of retail sales. Its not just
all because of two guys on CSMA.



I never called a Macintosh "just a PC."

"They only sell PCs like you can buy from any other PC maker"
Looks like "just a PC" to me.

You interrupted the context below.

And above, you ignored the OS as a product differentiator.

I have yet to be given a reason why I should pay twice as much for a Mac,
to get less hardware, just to run OSX.

I'm not trying to convince you: just pointing out your perspective
biases. Personally, I don't expect that anything could be said here
that would ever be sufficient to convince you, and that observation
has nothing to do with the product or facts: you've dug in your heels
and are obstinately proud to have done so.


All the hardware in the Mac is the same as in any other PC.

Yet buying Mac hardware is the price of admission for using OS X..

Why should I pay that price?   If what I saw of Safari is what Apple's
software is like, I have no reason.

And most car buyers only test-drive one car: the car that they buy.
Wouldn't it be more logical to drive each of the 3 or 4 cars on your
short list before picking the winner? Go research what
'confirmational bias' is.


Now if you want to claim that Apple is ripping off consumers by only
making OS X legally available to Mac hardware, you have a long uphill
battle that you will lose, as this is a continuation of a centuries-
old precedence in IP and product differentiation.

No, I'll stick with my argument that nobody has given me a reason to pay
Apple twice the price for half the hardware I got from HP.

Be my guest, but do refrain from trying to generalize that specific
instance, since we do know that there are product points where Apple
is significantly cheaper than the competition.


If you have no interest in running OS X, then you have no reason to
pay anything extra to get it (or have the option).

I never said I had no interest in running it.

It is a tangential topic this week in particular because of the
Psystar clone.


However, that is
still just your **** personal **** choice, and just because
something's not important to you doesn't somehow automatically make it
unimportant for all others.

Just as your ***personal*** choice to pay so much more for your hardware
doesn't make the choice of getting more hardware for less money unimportant.

See, there you go making the mistake of generalizing already.

FYI, I already have my next Mac picked out...and as of this week, it
would cost me $1200 more to buy the Dell equivalent (you know how Dell
prices fluctuate; its usually been closer to 'only' $1000 more).
However, I'm not foolish enough to try to generalize this instance
into claiming that all (or even most) Macs are less expensive than
their Windows PC equivalents.


-hh
.

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