The Mac Hardware Report: Stop Saying Macs Cost More!
August 29th, 2006It’s pretty much agreed now that, for the time being at least, the Mac Pro is cheaper than a comparably-equipped Dell Precision Workstation 690. That won’t stop some from saying otherwise, but that’s not important in the scheme of things.
However, what annoys me is the fact that far too many tech writers and bloggers still insist that this is something brand new, that the Mac was previously more expensive, that this represents a new tact on the part of Apple. That’s not quite true, to put it mildly.
You see, once someone gets a reputation, particularly an unfavorable one, it’s not easy to overcome. Back in the bad old days when John Sculley was CEO of Apple, it was perfectly true that Macs cost a lot more. There’s no dispute of that. Through the years even after Sculley departed, you had to pay a premium to go Mac, even if the cost of upkeep was less. Apple made some bad decisions in those days, and, eventually, those decisions killed the company.
Even the iPod was once thought to be a more expensive product, until Apple secured those killer deals when it cornered the Flash memory market, that is. Then things became a lot more competitive. But a price difference of perhaps $50 isn’t so significant if you’re spending $300 or more on a consumer electronics product. If you factor that increase onto a product costing five or ten times as much, however, pretty soon you have real money.
When Apple moved to Intel processors, again the online chatter had it that prices would go down, forgetting that the prices for parts from either IBM or Intel weren’t all that different. In fact, some suggested that Apple paid a higher price to switch, and might have to eat the difference or pass it on to you and me.
Regardless, I’ve said this before and I’ll say it now: In recent years, a Mac has been extremely competitive with name-brand PC boxes with similar configurations. Now that Intel is inside both, the comparisons might be easier, but the end results still show that a Mac is not more expensive, and hasn’t been for awhile.
For the moment, let’s put the top-of-the-line aside, and look at the Mac mini. Yes, I know there are rumors that a new model may be in our midst soon enough, but, based on Apple’s current strategy, I don’t expect prices to change much. It may be faster, of course, and perhaps have more multimedia features, but that’s not the point.
Now we all know that getting consistent pricing on Dell is a needle-in-a-haystack quest, but since they are the number one PC maker, I’ll continue to compare them with Apple, even if it requires reading a few tea leaves.
The basic Mac mini, at $599, has a 1.5GHz Intel Core Solo processor, 512MB RAM, a 60GB hard drive, an integrated Intel GMA950 graphics processor with 64MB of shared memory, a Combo drive, gigabit Ethernet, built-in Bluetooth and Wi-Fi and a remote control.
The least expensive Dell equivalent I could locate was a Dimension E310 P4 Vista Capable, which has a 3.06GHz Pentium 4, which you cannot compare directly to the Core Solo or Core Duo, an 80GB hard drive, an older Intel GMA900 graphics processor, a remote control and FireWire. I couldn’t locate a gigabit network interface, though in fairness to Dell, it does have a modem, which the mini lacks, so let’s call it almost a wash in terms of hardware. Dell’s price is $565, reduced from $678.
A basic set of multimedia software and an optical mouse, to match what Apple provides, boosts the price to $622. This may, of course, change by the time you get to check it, but I expect the basic trend will be similar enough for the sake of this highly informal window shopping session.
Yes, there are cheaper boxes from Dell, but you have fewer options to customize, so you can’t really do an honest comparison. Just as important, the Dell I configured, though it is supposedly capable of running Windows Vista, contains older Intel chips, and performance is apt to be inferior, even though the processor has a higher clock speed rating.
But even if performance could be regarded as equivalent or close enough not to be significant one way or the other, you can’t make the argument that a Mac mini is more expensive. You can do similar comparisons down the line and prices will also be highly similar, until you get to the Mac Pro, where Apple has a huge advantage.
So why are the pundits saying otherwise? As I said, it’s hard to erase the memory of a bad reputation, even when it is disproved over and over again.
However, I’m more interested in the truth, even though that’s something a few out there still can’t handle. No, the Mac is not more expensive! This myth has to end here and now, and if someone tells you otherwise, insist they check their facts first.
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Sorry, but Macs are more expensive. Not very long ago my brother acquired one, and switching from the Windows world, also made some price comparisons before deciding whether to go for it. He ended up getting a Mac, of course, but the fact is that Apple’s solutions cost approximately 30-50+% more. Add to that the necessary Microsoft Office package that many low-end PCs offer out of the box, and the price difference grows even more.
I think a local PC magazine also made similar price comparisons and came up with similar results. Macs are more expensive, and the difference is the more evident the lower end computer is in question. That may not hold truth for Mac Pro, though, but that’s hardly important for some one looking for a Mac mini or an iMac, for example.
I was trying to price a Dell for the office for the office, and as usual kept getting different prices. Maybe they do that so you can’t do a price comparison, and then the time Dell gives you a lower price, you’re supposed to buy on sudden impulse. That process wouldn’t work for this kind of purchase.
I started with a $900+ Dell that was discounted to $799. By the time I added basic stuff we needed, it kept coming out about $1600 without any iLife-equivalent software. We bought a G5 iMac, which was a more capable machine, had more software that we would use included, and was what the secretary wanted to use anyway.
If our hearts had been set on a Dell, we could have perhaps kept rechecking the price and used different discount codes until it came in closer to the $1200 discounted price of the Mac.
Cost more? It really depends on what kind of user you’re talking about. For basic computing use, yes a Mac is comparable in price.
Business perspective: Hardware cost may be same or better but in terms of software and integration with business software I agree it does cost more. Mac software developers are hard to come by. .NET developers are all over the place. Who want’s to learn the obscure Objective C language when C# and the .NET framework is available?
Futhermore, my software partners won’t support an emulated PC period. So, that means my customers can’t possibly use any emulation. Using bootcamp means constant rebooting into each OS. I can’t have my business customers dealing with this. Switching to a Mac means dumping hundreds of good reliable P4 PCs. It will cost me customers and cost my customers more…much much more.
We were planning to switch one of our customers to macs, but had to switch back. During our testing we found that once users booted into Windows XP, they stayed there and never really switched to OSX. PC Emulation is not fast enough to meet their needs and many 3rd party software is unavailable on a Mac. New computers + another WinXP license equals high expense. No way, cannot do. Too expensive.
One reason why it feels more expensive is because so many Mac users in the past described Macs as a sports car compared to the PC (as a cheap import). People have preached this so well now that we believe it. It is more expensive.
The key to such a comparison is to actually compare the two computers with the same options. Otherwise the comparison is bogus. Apple doesn’t sell stripped-down PC boxes, and the companies that do end up making little if any profit from them.
If your local PC magazine did the same comparison, and got the same results, they made the same mistake. I have done this sort of comparison a number of times in the last couple of years, and Apple has always come out competitive. This 30-50% statement doesn’t hold up.
Peace,
Gene
Depends on the Mac and the emulation solution. Parallels Desktop offers from roughly 60 to 90 percent of the performance of the native Windows environment on an Intel-based Mac. For most applications, that’s more than sufficient and is, in fact, faster than a one or two-year old Windows PC. It also boots Windows a lot faster than most Windows PCs.
Peace,
Gene
Cost is a very relative thing, and any comparison that adds Mac-specific features to the PC (or PC-specific features to the Mac) are quite out of touch.
A good example can be found in my own office, where a 20″ iMac G5 is used by the office manager, a G4 Mini by my associate and a super-cheapo $300 Compaq desktop for temps and PC-only tasks (AILA-Link).
That super cheapo PC really did cost $307, which is $250 for the computer and $40 for the 512MB memory upgrade (total 1GB – 128MB for video) and a $17 wifi
card. I have no clue how fast it is (AMD Sempron 3400 at 2 GHz) in relation to a Core Solo Mini, but it feels very fast under Windows XP, Firefox and Office 2003 Professional. Could our Mac Mini or iMac do everything this cheap PC does? Sort of, but it would cost the same to add Windows XP or 2000 and a copy of Virtual PC (or Parellels if we had Intel) and we wouldn’t have the benefit of an additional computer for temps to use. A new Mac Mini would be quite a bit more expensive, and of course would still need emulation software and a copy of Windows.
More important is looking at what that computer really needs. take out AILA-Link, which is a specialized database program for immigration lawyers and you can level the software playing field. We need MS Word (the real thing, no free Open or Neo Office) to handle legal pleadings and other documents with complex formatting. Firefox is our standard browser, an email client that supports multiple addresses, and well, thats it. We don’t need firewire ports, DVI (the 19″ Samsung LCD I bought doesn’t even support DVI), card readers or even Apple’s wonderful iLife software. We do need the machine to be fast enough, to clearly draw a screen at SXGA resolution and to connect to the internet through our secure, firewalled wireless router.
There is no difference here between the cheapest $599 Mac Mini and our super-cheapo $307 Compaq PC for our use other than OS. The quicklaunch toolbar in Windows has, you guessed it, our database program, Word, Firefox and Thunderbird, which on a Mac’s dock would be an equally sparse Word, Firefox and Mail. Oh, as far as trying to be feature competitive, even though we don’t need any of that stuff, we would actually have to augment the Mac Mini to match the Compaq. That Compaq has 6 USB 2.0 ports (3 front, 3 rear), 2 6-pin Firewire 400 ports (1 front, 1 rear), a multi-format card reader,front AND rear audio inputs and a 100GB 7200 RPM desktop hard drive compared to the Mini’s slower 80 GB 5400 RPM laptop drive and more upgrade options. It has room for a second optical drive with connectors and a tray already in place, room and connectors for a second hard drive, a PCI-Express slot waiting for non-integrated video if it was ever needed and 2 empty PCI slots (the third is being used for the wireless card).
I’ll put the ATI X200 integrated graphics at a similar level as Intels GMA, maybe slower, maybe faster, but there is that open PCI-express slot that allows an upgrade if one is ever needed (unlikely). This cheap PC was made for general office work, and for that purpose it is difficult to improve on it.
Apple makes great computers and they are priced very attractively for their market, but the key here is that they aren’t in all markets, and like most companies, their prices are set by what their customers will pay. At the very high end they are less expensive, but at the low end they are more expensive. In the middle, they tend to be about even.
This is why I said the comparisons must be as equal as possible. Does your super-cheapo Compaq PC have:
1. Bluetooth
2. Digital audio input and input
3. Remote control
4. Gigabit Ethernet
5. Optical mouse
I’m reasonably sure your answer is no, just as I am sure that adding those options, assuming they are available, will bring the prices far closer. Also, as far as the graphics are concerned, does the ATI X200 handle digital video, as the GMA950 does?
None of these comparisons take into account software bundles, where Apple has a lot of value to offer.
There is no argument that you can configure a stripped-down PC, as you have done, and pay less. Apple doesn’t play in that arena. Should they offer such models for an office market that doesn’t need the extras (though I argue that gigabit Ethernet is important there too)? That’s another argument, a fair one, but not relevant to the immediate discussion.
Peace,
Gene
No it isn’t. People compare computers based on the needs they pose for them. If I need a computer for web, email, office apps, and the stuff like that, I’ll compare products that fulfill these needs. I can get a Windows PC that accomplish these tasks for half the price of a Mac. I can even get a 450€ PC laptop that does enough for most people. No, it doesn’t have a remote, iCam or any other nonsense. No, many wouldn’t want them either.
I’m not happy with a cheapo laptop or a desktop, but many people are. Convincing them for paying 100% more for an Apple product that offers add-ons they don’t need is somewhat difficult. A product that doesn’t even do serious word processing out of the box. Or provide any better than the minimum 1-year warranty. Really. I can go and get a cheap PC that gives me a three-year warranty and Office bundled in the package. The price difference to a Mac? Humongous.
So yes, Apple computers are most of the time a lot more expensive. Your average consumer is not a nerd. Comparing feature-by-feature makes only sense if those features are needed. If you go for a cheap desktop, you’re not going to buy a core solo or this or that AMD. You go for a computer. The fact that Apple uses certain components, but cheap PCs do not, is Apple’s headache. If a cheapo PC gives similar, or satisfactory, performance with a cheaper architecture, then why on Earth should one try to find a PC with this more expensive architecture just so that the comparison would be “fair”? People buy computers, not core solos or duos. And today, even the cheapest PCs offer enough performance for most people’s needs, despite what ever their processor, for example, is.
I don’t think the consumer is interested in the products’ profit margins. That’s the manufacturers job to think out.
Your comment, if restricted to prices for comparable hardware, strains logic. It’s not which is cheapest, but how prices match up when comparably equipped.
As I said, if you want to consider the option of having a stripped-down PC and want to suggest that Apple ought to play in that arena, that’s fine. They won’t, but it doesn’t make their products overpriced by any means, because prices do match up for comparable equipment.
If you want to talk about who makes the cheapest PC, however, that’s a different argument.
Depends on the performance you want. The cheapo PC is not going to match Apple’s performance in every respect unless it has the same equipment. If there’s no Bluetooth on the cheapo PC, for example, how do you compare its Bluetooth versus Apple’s, and what do you do if you want to add a Bluetooth peripheral, except to add the proper card? Then the price goes up.
There’s no getting around this here. You want to change the nature of the argument and I won’t let you get away with it.
Peace,
Gene
No and Yes. Mr. Tero’s heading “in the right direction” on being task-based for feature selection, but unless you’re the manufacturer, compromises are inevitable. The rest of us have to choose from those products that are available in the marketplace. And it doesn’t matter if we’re talking about computers or automobiles: it is an exercise in futility to try to compare Peanuts to Pineapples without any sort of measuring stick; comparing relative “equals” is simply one method of doing so.
If that’s all you honestly need, then a decade-old 25MHz PC with a 9600 baud modem is sufficient. Since these cost only €50 on Ebay, your 450€ PC laptop is roughly 10x more expensive than it needs to be, so you’re contradicting your own claims (your “do less with less” paradigm still has to obey the law of unintended consequences!).
The Pareto Principle says that “most” people don’t really most of their capability “most” (~80%) of the time. Doesn’t matter if we’re talking PC’s or automobile brakes.
However, the question is – how much is needed the other 20% of the time?
For example, my home PC was fine until I got a dSLR. I’ve been “getting by” for now, but some of the operations I’m now doing take 30-120 minutes to complete. True, a “cheapo” PC will do the job – – – eventually. But “eventually” is hardly the poster child for productivity.
Can my application be disregarded under a I’m not “most people” arguement? Probably not: Canon’s press release for their new EOS 400D dSLR last week specifically mentioned 21 million legacy customers as their target, and I’m sure that Nikon probably has more … overall, there’s probably a 50 million strong consumer base who’s expected to transition in the next few years and when they do so, will experience the same performance bottleneck issue that I already have. If you already have a digital camera, perhaps you’ve already started to get the hint of how taxing this is on PC hardware.
-hh
Gene wrote
“This is why I said the comparisons must be as equal as possible. Does your super-cheapo Compaq PC have:
1. Bluetooth
2. Digital audio input and input
3. Remote control
4. Gigabit Ethernet
5. Optical mouse”
None of those features matter at all on the PC in my office. Everything is wireless, so what good would gigabit ethernet do? Bluetooth? On a PC used for office productivity is quite unneeded, but if I did need it, it would be a cheap $20 card or USB dongle away.
Looking at the rest of the list we find more things that might be great for a home computer used for entertainment, but are absolutely useless on an office machine. Our G5 iMac has remote, and its never been taken out of the desk drawer. Digital audio jacks again are great if you are a musician or hook your computer to high-end audio components, but for listening to NPR or your favorite CD at low volume levels while working they are hardly required or even wanted. Our PC came with some cheap speakers that are far better than the single speaker in a Mac Mini, and while the iMac’s speakers blow them away at high volume, at low levels they sound great.
The Compaq actually did come with an optical mouse, a rather nice one with a scroll wheel and two buttons. Its plain, simple, and gets the job done.
Looking at your list again, lets add prices.
This is why I said the comparisons must be as equal as possible. Does your super-cheapo Compaq PC have:
1. Bluetooth $20
2. Digital audio input and input $100 sound card
3. Remote control can’t be added
4. Gigabit Ethernet $40
5. Optical mouse included with PC
Okay, so a Mac Mini has $160 worth of features that the Compaq doesn’t and a remote that the Compaq never will. What does the Compaq have that the mini doesn’t?
Upgradable video – can’t be added
PCI slots – can’t be added
Fast desktop hard drive – can’t be added
Multi Card Reader $30
Keyboard $30
USB hub to match the built-in $30
The Compaq has $90 worth of components that the Mini would need, raising its price to $689, compared to a remote-less upgraded Compaq at $467. The Mini has a remote that the Compaq never will, while the Compaq has desktop hard drives and optical drives, room for one more of each, upgradeable video and PCI slots that the Mini can never have, for $220 less.
I’m not knocking the Mini, and in fact own its G4 predecessor and rather like it. My point is that the Mini is NOT the cheap office machine that business wants, and cannot compete with such machines on price. The iMac and Mini are great consumer computers that are also very good in an office, but are not priced the same as PCs aimed at the office environment.
The Compaq is a plain-looking mini-tower that won’t ever win any design awards, while the iMac on my front office desk gets many compliments and enhances the decor of the office. The iMac was also cost-effective because it is used for entertainment as well as work whenever I bring my daughter to work with me. The iMac and Mini are also very good for use of space. My associate’s desk is very crowded, and the Mini, in addition to being attractive, doesn’t take up much room. For the front office and my associate’s office, where clients often sit and can see out equipment, style and use of space were a factor.
The point is you can’t figure the cost of the remote control into value of the Compaq when the task is office work, just like you can’t figure the upgradability of the Compaq’s video on a computer used for Word and the web, where even the cheapest integrated video of 2001 will do the job.
In fact, to take cost further, the reply describing old laptops is very true. I keep a 1998 Toshiba Tecra 8000 and a 2001 Toshiba Portege 4000 in a desk drawer. When we really get swamped, we’ll bring in three temps and put them on the Compaq and the two Toshibas. The 1998 Tecra has a 300MHz Pentium II processor and even with XP it does a terrific job. More than adequate for word processing, email and web-based forms.
The key here is that digital photography is more demanding than word processing. How many office workers preparing legal pleadings or online database forms need to edit images from a high-end DSLR as part of their secretarial work?
If you want to do image editing, then buy a machine suited for that purpose. The Mac Pro or Power Mac G5 are a great value when it comes to high-end image processing. Secretarial work has much lower hardware requirements, requirements that haven’t changed much since 1996, and won’t likely change much in 2016.
Let’s try this again: We’re talking about comparisons in which the features are as closely matched as possible. Thank you for missing the core nature of this argument entirely.
As to gigabit Ethernet: You do understand, don’t you, that it is MUCH FASTER than today’s Wi-Fi standards, right?
Peace,
Gene
Here’s a reminder, gentle reader, as to what I said in the article, since it seems that a few of the people responding choose to ignore it entirely, and I trust we can move on (though I’m not going to bet on it :).
What is there about the words “similar configurations” that you don’t understand?
Peace,
Gene
Similar configurations is something you keep going back to, but as I and others have said many times, similar configurations only matter if those specific features are important to you. Laptop shoppers don’t only compare laptops with built-in cameras when deciding between a MacBook and a something else, they look at the features that matter to them.
You say gigabit ethernet is much faster than wireless, and I agree with you. For moving 200k or even 20MB documents around, printing or browsing the internet (limited by DSL) it just isn’t important, certainly not worth the expense or hassle of running cat 5 ethernet cable and putting jacks where I think all of our desks will always be. Wireless is cheaper, easier, and fast enough. If I did wire the office, the Compaq has 100MB ethernet, which again while slower than gigabit ethernet, isn’t enough slower to matter in what we do. If it ever was needed though, it would be a simple and cheap addition.
We don’t edit video or large graphic files and never will. Why pay for that capability when we don’t need it? Our desktop PC will never be carried to a remote site for giving presentations or be used as an entertainment system, so why pay for a remote control? It will never be used with a headset or synced to a cell phone, but it it was, Bluetooth is a very simple and cheap add-on. Why buy it before we need it?
But that’s what the article was about, and that’s the only way you can really compare pricing fairly.
Peace,
Gene
Guess we have to agree to disagree.
Not what the article is about, which is pretty clear 🙂
On the other hand, as I said, if you want to argue about whether should offer stripped-down Macs, say for business users who don’t need the extras, that’s another argument entirely. And, in fact, I wouldn’t disagree with you about that at all. I think there ought to be special packages for the business market with just the essentials.
And, if Apple did do that, they’d still be competitively priced, only the playing ground would change.
Peace,
Gene
The concept of a PC being exclusively reserved to the domain of secretarial work went out with the 8″ floppy. As such, your arguement is 30 years out of date.
Actually it is changing: in many organizations, pure “Secretarial” work has been on a decline, and may disappear by 2016: they’re being replaced by ‘Admin Assitants’ (and similar titles) whose duties are more than a traditional ‘Secretary’, usually including the purchasing of office supplies on the web, as well as the more graphically-intensive tasks commonly associated with putting together a Powerpoint presentation, usually complete with “…twenty seven 8×10 colour glossy photographs with circles and arrows and a paragraph … explaining what each one was” (apologies to Arlo Guthrie).
The reality is that as the hardware/software is typically capable of doing more at affordable price-points, we generaly grow our expectations to encompass what we can do.
For example, an automobile today is expected to have airbags and ABS.
Within the realm of personal (non-business) applications, digital photos and videos are currently undergoing tremendous growth … just look at all of the free web-based hosting sites … and is becoming increasingly mainstream – – – and thus, image manipulation becomes yet another “Expected level of Capability” for virtually anyone’s PC hardware/software.
So even if the “secretary” doesn’t need digital photography as part of her job right now, she’s going to want to have photos of her kids as her desktop image, screensaver, etc, all of which consumes RAM, clockcycles and drive space to accomodate even as a workplace ‘quality of life’ feature…and this will invariably morph into the expectation that everyone knows the basics of how to retouch and crop photos, so this will become an expected duty when she’s putting together the boss’s Powerpoint presentation.
-hh
Desktop photos hardly require a high-end computer. I’ve had my daughter’s picture as my desktop wallpaper all the way back to my PowerBook 5300c in 1996. It worked fine back then on a 100MHz chip with 32MB of RAM, and little more is needed for it today.
Earth to Andrew:
Digital imaging has changed … just ever so slightly … in the past decade.
Circa 1996, a standard digital camera (such as the Apple Quicktake 100) was typically a 640 x 480 image – – in today’s parlance, that’s a 0.3 (ZERO-POINT-THREE) Megapixel camera.
By comparison, the cheapest digital camera that B&H sells today is the $89 Kodak EasyShare C310, which at 4.0 Megapixels, is more than a full order of magnitude more data. Its also $15 short of being a full order of magnitude cheaper than the Quicktake 100…hence, significantly greater marketplace adoption rates by Joe Consumer.
Plus, you apparently missed the part where I said: “…my home PC was fine until I got a dSLR.”.
The context here is that each shutter invocation eats up around 12MB of storage, as I’m shooting in JPEG+RAW mode. On digital scans I’ve done of some of my film, the largest file I’ve had is rougly 1.1GB … which is roughly 16x bigger than the maximum RAM than your Powerbook 5300c can support, and 10% bigger than the largest hard drive the 5300c was ever sold with.
As I’ve already said, some people will try to disregard my application under some sort of an “I’m not ‘most people’ arguement”. However, the reality is that Canon, Nikon and others certainly believe that there’s a big market worth the capital investments to compete for: the digital camera market projections for 2006 is the retail sale of 28 million units (that’s 1 for every 2.5 PC’s sold), which to put it into context for this topic, is roughly 5 digital cameras for every 1 Macintosh sold.
When it comes to how much digital images “stress” a system, I don’t disagree with the idea that in most general terms, one image isn’t all that much of a load (usually).
However, the fallacy is that no raindrop believes that it is responsible for the flood … but with many raindrops lakes, oceans, and rivers have been created.
With digital cameras, its easy to shoot a lot of images and go “make a lake”. Personally, I’ve already shot over 4000 images this calendar year…that’s a lot of raindrops, and on my current hardware, Adobe Bridge’s “bulk rename” function takes an hour to run on just a batch of 1000 (I can shoot that many in a week).
-hh
For a “home” computer belonging to a photo enthusiast you are absolutely right. For a home computer belonging to a “point and shoot” type, any semi-modern computer with a large hard drive should do. Back to looking at basic computers, a DSLR enthusiast will do better with something like my cheap0 Compaq than with a pricier Mac Mini. That $300 Compaq is likely faster than the Mini, has a larger and faster hard drive, and unlike the Mini, is easy and cheap to upgrade to an even bigger and faster hard drive, a faster CPU and a more capable video card should the demands of those high resolution digital images require it.
The general home PC with a P&S camera was doing okay until P&S’s started to exceed 4 megapixels around two years ago. At that point, people started to rediscover photography and it became increasingly common for their digital libraries to “raindrop” into a couple of thousand images. And because disk consumption is invisible, they don’t bother to throw anything away. You can quickly research online the extensiveness of the complaints that Apple got when iPhoto (IIRC v4) started to choke when it was asked to manage more than 5,000 images, which shows that its not just 1% or even 5% of their customer base that encountered this ‘barrier’ so quickly; you will notice that iPhoto ’06 now advertises that it can support 250,000 photo’s, which suggests that a significant number of photo libraries are more than 10% of that … ie, 25,000 images or larger.
I’ll solve my performance shortcomings by taking 2-3 steps DOWN in performance? I don’t think so.
I’m already using around 2x-3x more horsepower than that, and I’m contemplating doubling it again by moving up to a ‘Quad’ (dual CPU, dual core) Xeon system with enough drives to set up a RAID for faster disk I/O. I’ll be happy if I can spend less than $3K.
Even if it were to be totally maxxed out, it still wouldn’t even be the equal of what I have now…which I’ve already said has been found wanting.
And while I don’t dispute the ‘better’ expandability arguement versus the mini, its been my personal experience from multiple family members that for those individuals that don’t have particularly challenging computing performance needs that an inexpensive box (and/or mini) are suited, they are generally terrified (to put it mildly) of doing anything to their box, especially opening the box up to do an upgrade.
Which means that the arguement, while true, is often irrelevant.
For example, I know of one PC where the modem got fried, and rather than to put in a new modem (via USB), its owner chose to upgrade from dial-up to broadband, even though their budget can’t really afford it.
Bottom line is that internal upgrades are the domain of the hardware hobbiest, not a general application consumer. If you don’t want to believe me, go ask your parents, aunts and uncles if they’re going to install a Vista upgrade to their current PC, or if they’re going to just replace the whole thing. Of those that you find that are game to do the upgrade, I’ll bet that more than half of them have a Technical College Degree.
-hh
While I am a huge fan and proponent of Apple computers and other products, I do think it is disingenuous to claim that Apples are priced competitively with PCs. Apple intentionally configures their systems with unusual and unorthodox combinations of features to make direct price comparisons difficult if not impossible.
Sure, they’re competitive with “similarly configured” machines, but this is meaningless since there are so few similarly configured PCs.
Bottom line is that for someone on a very limited budget who has some basic functionality to meet, a crappy Dell PC will give him the raw speed, memory, storage space, and graphics necessary to accomplish one’s goals at a considerably lower price point than a Mac with equal or better core specs I mentioned. Naturally the Mac will be better constructed, more secure, more reliable, easier to use and maintain, more attractive, and will possess numerous unique (yet non-essential) features to justify the added expense. But these are still insufficient justification for someone who wants to get the job done at a minimal cost.
Case in point, I bought my first Mac (Powerbook G4) a year ago and I have no intention of ever buying a Windows machine again. But if someone with very limited funds asked me how best to spend around $500 on a basic computer I would certainly not recommend buying a Mac mini, because it’s clear that person could get a lot more basic functionality for their money with a mainstream PC.
Apple cannot, and should not, compete with the lowest common denominators. They produce premium quality integrated systems (hardware/software) and are priced competitively at the mid and high end of the market. The mini is a waste of money except as a low end introductory system for someone who plans to keep existing peripherals and would like a cheap taste of the Mac platform just to try it out.
Since it has been shown that you can configure systems from both platforms with mostly similar options, what you are saying just isn’t so. Sorry.
Peace,
Gene