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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
While I like your column in general, your recent one bordered on pure stupidity. Maybe if you made some sort of argument about PC spyware/virus probabilities and the costs associated with repairing such items I might have possibly agreed with your title.
You, however, present an argument based on a tiny resale market for PC/Macs and intend to extrapolate that to the industry as a whole. I would have laughed if you weren't being paid to write such drivel.
Lastly, your smarmy comment about the most recent Windows operating system is utterly pointless and irrelevant to your headline topic. I dislike Micro$oft as much as the next guy, and I agree that the most recent OS is atrocious, but I'd still appreciate it if you stayed focused.
Good luck next time.
I'm sure this point has been made earlier by others, but it bears repeating.
I shuddered when I read this. The fact is that Macs are now priced competitively with PCs from quality Intel-based manufacturers like Sony and Dell. Sometimes they are a better deal (like the new iMacs), sometimes not, but they are always in the same ballpark. Apple only competes in certain segments of the market, but where they do compete, they are serious about it.
There's simply no arguing with this point, which can be shown definitively now that Macs have Intel processors in them, if you are willing to be honest and detailed about real-world comparisons, and yet Farhad actually manages to somehow suggest through this shallow resale-value shell game that Macs are still more expensive.
I'm done reading Machinist. It's a waste of time -- he's good at a few things, like gaming, but he lacks the understanding to have any real vision with respect to technology -- there are no "big ideas" here. When I see a Machinist headline that interests me, I'll go elsewhere to read about it.
If you're looking for a really strong and well-informed Mac advocate to argue with, try Roughly Drafted.
Hmmm.....well, let's see. I worked as a systems engineer, mostly on the hardware side, at a Big-10 university for 7 1/2 years, and my experience is utterly to the other end of the spectrum.
As countless others have mentioned herein, the easy and cheap upgrade paths offered by most PCs' open-ended design prolongs their useful life, for most users, far beyond what a contemporary Mac can offer. I used to build my own, as a hobbyist, but also b/c of price concerns as a student. I could probably bolt together the hardware for a machine in about 15-20 minutes and have the OS up and running before the hour was up. I had precisely zero hours of specialized training, took the minimum number of math and science credits required, and never cracked any electrical engineering tome of any sort. In other words, I was entirely self-taught, an autodidact. I'll tell you, too: I'm not that smart. If I could do it, almost anyone could who had the inclination. I would keep my machines for years and years, upgrading the mobo, cpu, RAM and GPU as appropriate every so often.
Now, I don't even bother with that small triviality. The last machine I bought was a Dell PowerEdge server, which I got on Craigslist 3-4 years ago for the princely sum of $250. This, for a 2.8 GHz hyperthreaded processor. Oh yeah, I'm sure this will make you cringe, Manjoo, but the components are extremely well made. The PSU is rated at a paltry 250 watts, absurdly low by today's standards. You will not find a decent video card made in the past 2+ years which would admit to running on such low wattage. Yet, I plunked in a 512MB ATI x1950 about half a year ago, for the likewise princely sum of $149, and the friggin' thing didn't even hiccup. The box demands a 450 watt PSU right on its face; in practice, the ancient and puny Dell factory PSU chugs right along, like The Little Engine That Could. Oh yeah, also--never a virus in my life. Never. No crashes. Ever. 100% uptime--I leave it on 24/7 and virtually never reboot. It's also whisper quiet. It's black, yes. I guess that sucks for Mac fans, but I love its Spartan and professional appearance. I think most Macs look more like children's toys than tools. I would be embarrassed, e.g., to open a tangerine MacBook, I really would. Such an absurd thing would undermine my credibility with clients and opponents alike.
Apart from that $149 for the videocard, I bought 2GB worth of RAM from Crucial.com for a song (via their web application that automatically detects your architecture and directs you to the proper memory for your rig), and that's it. I haven't spent another dime on it. So, I've had a machine for about 4 years now that is STILL capable of running splendid FPS rates on even new games, for a grand total of under $500. I fully expect to use the machine for at least another 3, without any further upgrades (AGP is end-of-lifed now, and XP doesn't benefit much from >2GB of memory, so there isn't much point). That means I'll pay about $0.19 a day for the privilege of having an ultraquiet, ultrareliable, perfectly fast machine. I guess I could resell it in 3 years if I wanted, and end up paying a dime a day for the experience, but whatever.
Specious article, and all too typical of the garden variety Apple zealot. You love Macs, great. They aren't cheaper, never have been, never will be. You can go ahead and love them, but be honest about the reasons. I well imagine the true impetus is fear of the minor steps you must take upon first taking possession of a PC to make sure it properly administers itself, e.g. setting it up to make a daily restore point on its own, run scandisk daily at 4am, run defrag weekly, install some mindless AV software, a couple of free adware and spybot destroyers, and click a radio button to activate your firewall. Yeah, that's a bitch for some people. I get it. I get that shifting gears is a bitch for most people and that's why 95% of the cars sold here are automatics, even those manuals are plainly cheaper to own and operate, and provide superior horsepower despite better gas mileage. I enjoy shifting. I enjoy the control over my car, and the sense that the increased interaction helps to heighten my awareness of the road and my surroundings, and makes me a better drive. I like that the PC forces me to know a teensy, tiny bit about what makes it tick in order to fully reap its benefits. The wall really isn't that high, Private Pyle, but I'll understand if you prefer to rock out back down on the ground, thumb firmly planted in your mouth. Just don't try to hurl BS my way about what a dipshit I am and expect me not to laugh, because I can read a scoreboard.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
