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Wednesday, November 7, 2007 12:00 AM

Once and for all, proof that Macs are cheaper than PCs

Let's put to rest the myth that an Apple computer will set you back more than a Windows PC. In fact, it'll cost you less.

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  • Tuesday, November 6, 2007 09:20 PM

    Fanboys, idiots, etc...

    There has always been a lot of disparagement launched at Macs. In my experience, most of it has come from Windows and Unix powerusers whose problem is less with the Macintosh platform itself than with annoying people who use the Macintosh platform.

    I'm reminded of a tech I knew back in the days of Windows 3.1. He came into the lab where I worked to pick up a PC in need of repair and saw me working on a Quadra.

    "Have fun with your MacinToy," he said on his way out. "But don't expect me to fix it when it breaks."

    "Denny, has anyone ever brought you a broken Mac?" I asked.

    I'm not positive, but I'm pretty sure he said, "Fuck you," as he went down the hall.

    Denny was actually a pretty nice guy. I don't think he disliked me. I don't think he disliked my computer. But I do think that he disliked how much I liked my computer-- and I really, really liked my Macs back then. Considering that our lab had five Macs and only one Windows PC (used exclusively for Lotus 123), we weren't doing a very good job of keeping Denny in business.

    If anyone cares, this was in 1994. That Quadra was connected to an Applied Biosystems DNA sequencer and an ABI DNA synthesizer. I was able to telnet from my own Mac at home to the lab's Mac and initiate new sequences and oligo sythesis cycles. At the time, there was no Web as we know it today. What passed for the Web back then was a bunch of academic machines running Mosaic... slowly and not very interestingly. Considering that, it amazes me that I was able to do everything I did, with such scant resources.

    This is how 'fanboys' are created: make it work; make it work all the time; and make it work better, faster and easier than the competition. Apple did it back then, and it's still beyond me that it was during those Win3.1 days that MS gained ascendancy.

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