9 (pretty lame) reasons people use PCs rather than Macs.
March 8th, 2007 by Marcos
Hmm, so first we had this post about 42 reason why people might switch to the Mac. (Hooray!). Then later we got this response of nine reasons people should stick with PCs. It’s a doozy. Let’s go over it.
- Cost:PCs are cheaper
Well, there are PCs that are much cheaper than the cheapest Mac but they are also much, well ,cheaper than the cheapest Mac. Slower, with less features. If you compare similarly equipped Macs and PCs, the Mac is even or ahead. This shocked people when the Mac pro came out, but it’s true.
2: Operating System: yes, some may laugh, but with a PC you’ve got choices.
You’ve got Windows, which is precisely why people would want to flee the PC, and Linux . Linux runs on Macs too, but OS X has all the goodness of Linux anyway. If you’re sticking with the PC for Windows, well, God help you. Plus with Parallels you can run all these other OSes anyway, should you want, including Windows.
3: Software: The is a huge smorgesboard of software available for PC’s. Mac on the other hand suffer from a serious lack of options.
There may be a few situations where some specific application is unavailable or lacks a counterpart for MacOS X. But these are rare situations that will not effect 95% of PC Users. People don’t want 20 different programs that do the same thing poorly, they want one or two that does it well. Plus, you can run Windows within Parallels or boot camp if need be.
Gaming
This is a legitimate advantage for PCs. If you want to play the latest games, and that’s your priority, a PC is for you. You can Boot Camp it with a Mac and play them at good speeds, but you’ll have to drop some serious dough for Windows. Blizzard is awesome about Mac support, and Aspyr and others do some great ports, but gaming (due to people programming for DirectX) is something better done in Windows.
Servicability: something gone wrong with your Mac? not a problem, if you’re lucky enough to live near a Apple shop they’ll fix it for you…. Oh yeah, I nearly forgot, Apple doesn’t like you tinkering under the hood so you can fix it yourself. Something with my PC goes wrong, I flip the lid and have a look, or I take it to any number of PC shops that do repairs all within close driving range.
If you live far from an Apple authorized service provider, this might be a problem. If under warranty, Apple will overnight you a box which you can overnight a Mac back in.. at least, they do this for laptops. For heavier equipment this may be a problem indeed. For Mac Pros, they are quite serviceable by the user for something like a HD replacement. Most “regular” PC users aren’t going to want to perform surgery on their PC anyway, I thought this list for was “regular” computer users?
Parts/ Upgrading
I somehow doubt most 59 year old mothers are going to want to open up a PC and perform an upgrade. I thought this was about “regular users.” Anyway, the Mac Pro is the easiest computer to upgrade on the planet, with an awesome case design that allows for easy hard drive upgrades and access to all the PCI slots. The iMacs and Macbooks… not so much. All laptops are typically a real pain to open up, but the MacBook has a very simple hard drive bay, and RAM is easy on both the MacBook and Macbook Pro. The MBP has an express card slot. Most Macs have things built in like wireless networking and firewire that upgrades aren’t that neccesary. The biggest problem would be hard drive upgrades on an iMac. You’re sort of stuck with firewire or usb drives. Nor can you upgrade the video card on an iMac (that is lame). But, the notion that all peripherals work with PCs because of “extensive driver support” must be a joke. I’ve seen PC users struggle with getting hardware to work more times than I can count. (Let’s not even talk about Linux’s hardware support).
Peripherals: …Sure you can plug something into a Mac the same way as a PC, but will it work with a Mac? Believe it or not theres more to peripherals than digital cameras, which all work with a PC anyway.
Is this a joke? It’s often a driver install fest on PCs to get perihperals to work most things work on Macs that don’t even say they support OS X. What peripherals is this guy talking about anyway? USB memory cards work, no drivers. USB Printers work with the gimp-print drivers, or the driver from the manufacturer. USB Mice work, just plug in and go. External hard drives, plug in and go. Macs probably support a smaller set of hardware in totem, but it’s much more likely to work.
Better Peripherals: more choice and no stupid 1 button mouse. PC mice also come with a scroll wheel for scrolling, a Mac Mouse…well a weirdish rubber button thingy.
It’s fast becoming obvious this guy has never used a Mac. All USB 3 button / scroll wheel mice just work on Macs. I bought a $20 USB Kennsington mouse with 2 buttons and a scroll wheel and both the scroll wheel and all 3 buttons are recognized and used by OS X; I didn’t even install a driver. Mac Pros and iMacs have come with the 3 button “mighty mouse” for almost a year now. (not 100% sure about that time frame, but the mighty mouse is standard issue.) A legitimate critique would be say, force feedback joysticks and such; a Mac won’t know what to do with them. But, this goes back to the gaming thing, which I already conceded.
Usability: for the average person who doesn’t live in Silicon Valley, PC’s are actually more usable, after all, not only do you hardly ever find a Mac in an average (ie non-tech firm) business, very few other places run them, where as PC’s are everywhere and virtually everyone has exposure to Windows.
Yes, you’ll have to adapt from your Windows-entrained ways to use a Mac. Because the Windows-way is usually so complex and confusing that it may shock you when something is much simpler on the Mac. There is always inertia when moving to a different platform, but just because you use Windows at work is not a reason to tolerate it at home.
All in all, a very unimpressive list. Other than for gaming, I can’t imagine why I personally would ever want to deal with Windows.
kabababrubarta Says
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Mar 26th, 2007 at 6:48 pm
geoff Says
You could also mention that, say, reading a good book is better (more intellectual stimulating) than gaming anyway. Although I suppose that most PC users would probably find that reading a book is not complicated enough for them feel comfortable with it. Perhaps if someone could design paper that “crashes”.
Apr 8th, 2007 at 2:17 pm
Mac Mini Says
Only cool and unique people use Mac!
Besides using a PC is like the norm, if you want to deviate from the norm us a MAC!
Apr 14th, 2007 at 8:50 pm
Vaius Says
Personally I agree with the writer; The only good reason to go with windows instead of mac is work/gaming, and you can dual boot Macs, or install Parralels/VM Fusion/Virtual Box/Q/Whatever to run windows for that guy’s precious gaming “needs”.
Aug 16th, 2008 at 2:31 pm
Jeffrey Says
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Mar 4th, 2009 at 2:16 pm
Brandon Says
You mac users will never learn, your first point is completely false. $2500 will get you: Mac Pro 2.66ghz quad core 3gb ram 640gb hard drive NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 512MB(this card is CHEAP)
I’m currently building: Antec 900 case 700W PSU Phenom II 955be 3.2ghz quad core(will be oc’d to 3.7) 6gb ddr3 1tb hard drive ATI Radeon HD 4870 512mb and it will cost me about $900 and is FAR superior to the mac’s $2400 system.
To just be able to RAID your freakin hard drives YOU HAVE TO BUY A $700 CARD. There’s also no HDMI on the mac pro, and again, on my sub-$900 system there is. And I guarantee that my system will encode h.264 video FASTER than the $2400 mac pro. Please respond if you think you have a valid argument P.S. Steve Jobs is a prick, watch pirates of sillicon valley.
Jul 1st, 2009 at 11:47 am
LickMyMac Says
the problem with Mac user’s is they are highly retarded. so you have to give them something that they can’t screw up, and something that you can’t really do much with. they have the give me this, slap me with the basics, and make sure i can’t break anything, because i’m retard. windows is much more complex of an o/s but it under no circumstance (comparing windows 7) with OSX 10.5.8, is any less than Mac. infact it is much more. There are alot of things that do run on Windows that does not on Mac, by default, though, such as logging etc. All that contributes to more information for when problems go wrong, but when a problem (with a Mac) goes wrong, and it does happen so don’t fib you sorry ass – you’re only greeted with some simple options. ignore/restart/report. but have no idea, what happened. This is OK. but the point is, Macs are inferior to those who have atleast a modern breadth of knowledge of computers. It might be perfectly suited to the farmer, though.
Aug 8th, 2009 at 3:36 pm
LickMyMac Says
the only good thing about a mac is the design. but even so, it is frequently lacking in functionality (hardware wiss). you can clearly see, that it’s a good level of power hindered by, just 3 buttons. so you have a porshe, but you’ve got to drive it with a bicycle handle.
the MacBooks are what I congratulate though. Very nice design and backlit keyboard, constant height (just like a book, and keyboard. But, some more features are totally missing. no finger print reader?.. and there’s alot of wasted space on the keyboard area in the bigger models.
Aug 8th, 2009 at 3:40 pm
Brandon Says
Even the macbooks are overpriced though. If your comparing it with a notebook half the price, sure, it tramples it. But a comparibly priced notebook will still have much superior hardware(especially discrete graphics). It might not be as pretty, but if your buying a computer for it’s looks… you’ve got bigger problems to worry about than getting your money’s worth. I finished building the system I quoted in an earlier post, and spent a bit more, but got better hardware. 3.82ghz overclocked quad core(3.1 is stock) msi 4890gpu(about the same as a gtx275) 850w psu 4gb ddr3 1600mhz ram HAF 932 case msi 790fx-gd70 mobo TRUE 120black heat sink 1tb hdd and some other odd’s Cost me $1400, still $1000 less than the mac. Going to upg to a 5870 when the price drops into the $300ish range, and buy amd’s next flagship processor. This upg should be under $700, and will still keep me way ahead of a mac for less money. And windows 7 IS THE SHIT!! This OS makes up for vista’s f*ck ups, and beats the crap outta mac’s UNIX based POS operating systems. Build yourself an amd/ati system and trample shit shit outta mac for $1000 less…. and if you dont know anything about computers, or how to put them together, check some forums out, its as easy as LEGO.
Nov 11th, 2009 at 8:34 pm
obis11 Says
What windows users like Brandon dont understand about the difference between mac and windows is that 2gh in mac does not equal 2gh in windows. When running windows the operating system has a much larger footprint than osx, meaning if you look at how much your operating system is using you have much less available to the user in a windows environment than in an osx environment. On my macbook running 10.5 with 2.3 gh processor with 2 gigs of ram running no applications I am using less than 2% of my processor and less than 100 mb of ram. With vista and 2.2 gh processor and 2 gigs of ram and no apps running. I am using over 20% of my processor and over 700 mb of ram. Sure you got more computer for the price, but it is not actually available for you to use. How an operating system handles is more important than how much hardware you have. It like saying I have a machine gun and have 1 thousand rounds, but you are blind (= windows)…. do the math you might hit the target eventually. Compared to a sniper rifle with 10 rounds and an avid marksman (= osx)…. does the job in one shot or less.
Dec 31st, 2009 at 4:27 pm
JJ11 Says
obis11, it still doesnt change the fact that you may have this “extra speed” because your os doesnt eat the cpu, but your stuck with lack of use for that extra speed, there also isn’t much difference in cpu factor either its the ram and even then people have chucked a stigma on pc’s due to vista, windows 7 overall doesnt eat that much ram. And the comparison with the sniper makes me laugh, in warfare snipers have to take time before hand to set up where as the guy with the machine just pulls the trigger, its pointless arguing with you though you’ll have some BS about how im a PC user and i don’t know what im talking about. Also look at your adverts for Mac, this dissing of the other company really doesnt make you look better just makes your company look like a bunch of d***’s
Jan 11th, 2010 at 11:21 am