I think that it's all a great big MOOT point.

Macs do some things better than PC's do. My iMac is a bitchin' PC and I really like it too. But,.....I've decided to give it up to one of the kids that needs one for school. I'll get over not having it around, but couldn't do without my gaming PC's at all. It's a matter of priorities and now that I'm retired, I use them for fun more than anything else. My PC's do gaming like the Mac never could. They absolutely blow the Mac out of the water when I play games. They encode Movies faster too. Now that we have a good OS to deal with, they are stable and secure if you know how to make then so. (hint: it ain't so hard to do these days) I like messing with OS-X, but then again I like Linux too.

I guess it's just a personal choice that each one of us has to make, with some of us being able to own both kinds.

As long as you're happy with what you have, then more power to you.

(As an aside, I have some of the parts that I need to build a Hackintosh already sitting on the shelf)

In the US Apple's market-share now stands at 10%. If you count the iPad as a computer, which it is, Apple's US market-share stands at 25% making them the number one vendor in the US and they command a 35% share of worldwide computer profit. Rather impressive, right?

They also surpassed Microsoft in revenue this quarter.

blog101:

What's the other 4GB for? Penis enhancement?

We don't have to even think about that Skippy. But you sure are,...................just saying.

PCs rule the gaming world. I won't argue that. But the mobile gaming world is shifting to Apple. The iPhone, Touch and iPad are destroying the other mobile gaming platforms. They may not be the kind of games you play on a PC but the market is huge and Apple has already put a serious dent in Sony and Nintendo. id's "Rage" is a good example.

Apple is looking at sales of 100 million iPhones and 40 iPads next year, on top of the 100 million iDevices they've sold this year.

The reality is that 90% of the population are casual computer users, this is who Apple caters to on the consumer side.

On the professional side they dominate all of the creative fields in film, music, graphic design, industrial design, photography, animation, etc,.

Apple is clearly focused on those who make and consume content. That market alone is easily the size of the the corporate enterprise business and PC gaming market that Microsoft caters too.

It's not hard to see where Apple plans to spend that $50 billion cash-on-hand they have.

Nothing like a lively debate, Gents.  But please, keep it anything but personal, k?

http://media.laptoplogic.com/upload-images/9349/9349_mac_vs_pc.jpg my opinion

Berseth:

http://media.laptoplogic.com/upload-images/9349/9349_mac_vs_pc.jpg my opinion

Nice!  That's pretty funny and there is some truth here. Would you mind if we decided to publish this, if we gave you credit/linked etc?

FTFY:

(I believe my example is more realistic, because the tricycle in yours cost 15x less than the Ninja to which you compared it)

Hi All.

I actually joined this site specifically to comment on this topic. 

Really enjoyed the article, thought it was fairly unbiased, offered a fair view and some of the replies have been entertaining. 
They all serve to really show how much rivalry there is between Mac and PC users.

Personally I've used both, I enjoy using both, but I would never own a Mac. There's a few reasons; one is the so called 'apple tax' that may or may not exist.

The main reason however is customisation, and I feel it's a point that severely lacked in the article.
Mac's are crap, and amazingly so when it comes to customisation.... I would love to be able to build a mac from the ground up, but it's impossible. If i want to do any upgrades to a mac, I have to buy apples upgrades.... That restriction is proof of a tax, albeit not a monetary one.

So when you consider that a workstation mac, according to the article above costs over $2k, and when I built my current workstation PC for less than $1500, operating system aside, the Mac would be the most expensive ornament I own.

Just my 2 cents.

I welcome comments, criticisms or just discussion :)   

gijoeski:

I welcome comments, criticisms or just discussion :)  

Welcome to the site.

Some people are building Hackintoshes for much less than a Mac costs, and they seem to be happy with them too. Do a Google search to see what I mean. I've read four accounts of their experiences.

I own a iMac 24" and like it just fine, but one of the Kids needs it for school, so it's going to him soon. I'll get by just fine without it too. (maybe miss it just a little)

I've been using both systems for awhile now.  Another poster mentioned that technical support on a PC can be expensive. I just had to point out that for the most part, any support/service work on a Mac ends up costing more - at least if there is no apple store nearby.  For most people without an apple store nearby, your stuck looking for an 'apple authorized' service/support centre.  That 'Apple authorized' tag adds at LEAST a $50 premium.

That may be true for some areas, but not all.

I frequently do repairs for a fraction of what people are quoted by The Apple Store (or find out after the repair is done)  our standard service rate is less than your "$50 premium"

OK, so do half of that upgrading with an iMac.

I agreed that most of the models (MacBooks, iMacs, Mac mini) are upgradable except ram & hard drive.  And it is only with the newest iMacs that they can handle more than 4 or 8 GB of ram.

This is why I own a MacPro and not an iMac.  (I would need 2-3 iMacs to equal what I do with my Mac Pro, and it wouldn't be as efficient at many of the tasks)

You would have similar restrictions from most "PC" notebooks, small form factor systems, and all-in-one designs.  Some of these small form factor systems and All-in-one designs do have at least one or two half-height PCIe ports which does allow more future-proofing of new technologies (Adding USB 3, or potentially light-peak for example) which could be significant to at least some users.  Based on what we see at work, even with standard windows systems, most users only upgrade ram and boot drive, they do not add additional drives or add-on cards.  By the time they might think about it, other technologies have changed enough that it is better to just replace the entire system with something newer and more up to date.

BrianM:

even with standard windows systems, most users only upgrade ram and boot drive

Not so sure of this statement, but I've been tweaking windows systems in every way for many years. The one component that I change the least, is the case that it's all enclosed in. Everything else is fair game, often.

BrianM:

I would need 2-3 iMacs to equal what I do with my Mac Pro

My 24" iMac has the Intel 2,800MHz. 'Extreme' dual core CPU in it with 4GB of RAM, and it's very fast for what I do with it. You must be curing Cancer or something with yours,......

Actually, my two Quad Core Windows boxes encode video lots faster than the iMac does.

I bought my iMac in frustration with Windows Vista Ultimate. I had bought three copies (pre-ordered) based on all of the hype that Microsoft was regurgitating back then, and as many of you know, it turned out to be a major bust. Vista Sucked. I had it installed onto some very high-end computers too. Well then I got mad and sold two of my PC's and bought the iMac shortly afterward. I was happy as can be with the Mac's form and function, and what a difference OS-X was compared to (steaming turd) Vista. At that point in time, I had no plans of returning to a windows solution ever again.

Then, Microsoft GAVE AWAY Windows 7 BETA for a whole year!   (smartest move they ever made)

When I tried it, I was hooked. It was stable and it played my games without any problems. (even the old ones) So, now I have five PC's with Win-7 on them and they work just as good as my iMac does. I can play ANY games on two of them but not on the iMac so much. Now that I'm retired, Games are important to me. One PC is for my Photo collection and never even goes online. One is a Laptop for when I travel. And my wife has a totally upgraded Dell that she loves.

I've migrated all of my data and photos off of the iMac in the last few weeks and my son will be here to get it before long. With my Windows boxes working so well, I'll never miss the Mac at all.

BrianM:

You would have similar restrictions from most "PC" notebooks, small form factor systems, and all-in-one designs.

I agree, most notebooks are an all inclusive, total design, and I usually only upgrade the RAM and HDD's in them. I just did a HDD, RAM, and added a Super Drive to an Intel MacBook-Pro for one of my kids. It was easier than what I thought it would be.

Well the article , in my opinion, is fare and clear on what is based on from what I understood, which is comparing base models (Price/Components) from major PC vendors and not a comparison of a Build it Yourself  Pc vs an Apple Machine. Plus the pros and cons relevant to each side, such as battery life, the OS , Build quality and more, were clearly described. Good research and very unbiased.

But , I felt that it wasn't  complete and the title "Apple Tax" was not fully represented.

To me , the heart of the "Apple Tax" comes from the Upgrade path. Base configurations of these machine (and upgrades) "'TODAY" are better priced than what they used to be, and I do Agree Apple makes Beautiful and excellent crafted builds with high standards that are well worth the premium.

But the complaint has always been the abusive prices on "Upgrading" components straight  from Apple, such as video cards , Ram , Hard Drives, heck, everything, especially on the Pro models.

I'm sure every body here in the last couple of years has hit the "Configure" button on the Mac Pro and Macbook Pro, plenty of times. And also, go to another site ,like Dell or HP, and fully maxed the limits of each computer to compare.

Sure ,I wont get into arguing that building a PC yourself, a lot of times,is cheaper than buying from a PC Vendor, but what you pay is for quality, guarantees, warranty, customer service, and reliability, not to mention that factory workers salary that does an exceptional build at assembly.

But Jesus, I Remember just adding 2 GB's of ram to A Mac Pro cost an additional 300 or 400 bucks, and don't even get started with the minuscule Video cards, also $300-$400 upgrade cost for a card that's worth  $100 to $150. Hard Drives, don't even talk about it, even today , adding a 2TB 7200 rpm drive cost $300.

Yes, Apple's Computers are a work of art, the finest of craftsmanship, Fashion Leading and graceful. Every body falls in love with their Mac , that I respect , but the to join the club , the title shouldn't be "Apple Tax" , it should be "Royalty'...

"Apple Loyalty Royalty" ....fits Better

That's just silly. Macs use the same hard drives and upgrade components as PCs. Most Apple users usually buy the base model and purchase upgrades on the open market at the same price as Windows PC users. So there is no reason to purchase these upgrades from Apple unless you don't want to do it yourself.

The most important thing to remember is that upgrading and building a Mac or Windows PC is easy. Building one the other hand is something else, something that 95% of people will never do. In fact, beyond hard drives and RAM most users never upgrade their computers. By the time the average user decides it's time to upgrade the video card, they are usually ready to purchase a new computer.

Most of the people on this forum are in the minority when it comes to computer usage, since so few people build PCs these days or even bother to upgrade them beyond hard drives and RAM. Most people also don't need a high-end video card, even if they are doing serious work. The only real exceptions are 3D (games and professional 3D apps).

As a professional filmmaker a stock MacBook Pro, iMac or MacPro would do just fine. High-end video cards just don't make that much difference outside of 3D apps like After Effects, Motion or Auto-CAD. Going beyond 2 processors or 4GB of RAM has diminishing returns, since most apps can't utilize more than 2 cores or 4GB of RAM in any meaningful way.

If the average users really wanted to see a difference in performance, they'd be wise to replace their hard drive with an SSD. Hard drives are the most significant bottleneck these days. This is why the addition of an SSD as a standard component in the MacBook Air has made this new model so popular.

The bottom-line is that upgrading beyond 2 cores, 4GB of RAM and a mid-level graphics card has very little impact on 90% of users, thus making upgrades somewhat irrelevant. Again, by the time its become long in the tooth, they are ready to purchase a new computer. This is not the 1990's when computers were always underpowered, now a days stock computers are more than powerful enough to do 90% of what most people want them to do right out of the box.

The fact that 34% of people purchasing a laptop in the next 6 months are buying a Mac laptop or 24% of people purchasing a desktop in the next 6 months are buying a desktop is very telling. IT means more an more people see a value in the easy of use and level of integration that Apple is providing.

You are not most users =)    Most users are lucky if they know the name of the program they are using to do things, like "surf the web" or "email".  They have no interest in opening things up to replace ram, or have no idea where to even start to upgrade their hard drive.  (Much like I have little desire to learn how the engine in my car actually gets repaired, not to mention lacking proper tools)  My mother at least knows what program she is using, but has never had anything other than ram upgraded in a computer she has owned (PC or Mac, she has been working with computers since punch cards in the 60's)

I do many things, jack of all trades, master of none, many things always running, video editing of various projects it the biggest demands on storage space though.  1 TB is dedicated to my security system (gives me about a week of history)  While I'm not an expert in any one field, I have a large general base of knowledge which comes in handy doing Sales, Training and Service.

Actually, a 27" iMac Core i7 with 8 to 16 GB of ram might meet my needs for processing & ram requirements, plus a decent video card (although not quite as good). but I would need either several external hard drives, or a multi-drive box, both of which would add to the cost.  And the video card isn't upgradable then. And I'd be restricted to the one built-in display (it is very nice, but I've long since gotten very used to having at least one monitor for status information, email, and my main one for working, plus the connection to the HDTV at full 1080p, which would require another iMac, or at least a Mac mini in addition)  Cost of outfitted iMac 27" like this would be about the same as a Mac Pro I would buy now (without monitor).

Windows 7 is the least annoying version of Windows I've ever used, if Mac OS X did not exist, I would likely be happy using it.  And the Beta program that public users could try out was genius, mostly techie types tried it, and it did swing opinion from what had happend with Vista.  There are still things that annoy me about it, especially at the technical support level.  (for Mac work, I frequently use an external hard drive with the latest OS version installed to verify that a problem exists, completely isolating the internal drive, it can boot any Mac released up until that OS version was released)

Actually, only Mac user can play any game legally, because the Mac will run OS X,  Windows, Linux and Unix native without any kind of hack.

What baffles me about this entire article is that it's done for a hardware site. People who visit hardware sites are usually tech savvy enough that they know how to build their own computers. Coupled with the fact that because they know how to build their own computers, they also know how to shop for them, thus know the prices of hardware. With this in mind, most techies have already come to the said conclusion as Ray stated. As others have posted, from a hardware pov, depending on deals and discounts, you can definitely further the price gap (and even further by building your own).

However, we do get new people to this site and people that are just starting to dabble in building, repairing, or adding stuff to their PC. This article is perfect for those people who actually compares the hardware pov and then tries to price the software/design pov. I have to disagree with one thing as I work as an IT consultant with heavy traffic. From what was monthly, I feel like we get bi-weekly customers now where people say they think they got a virus on their macbook. It should also be noted macbooks do crash and they also do need a reformat sometimes, which definitely also seems to be occurring more frequently.

Just my 2 cents.

What baffles me are your comments...

"From what was monthly, I feel like we get bi-weekly customers now where people say they think they got a virus on their macbook."

The Mac has no virus in the wild. Socially engineered malware, yes, virus no. So did you actually find a Mac virus on any of these computers? Sure I find plenty of PC virus but they don't run on a Mac nor can they infect a Mac. They get on Macs via file copies from PCs.

"It should also be noted macbooks do crash and they also do need a reformat sometimes, which definitely also seems to be occurring more frequently."

Might have something to do with Mac market-share going from 3% to 10% in the US. Amazing how that works. Include the iPad and Apple hold 25% of the US PC market. Of course, the iPad is a PC so 25% it is.

Might want to take note of this...

Winners and Losers

Apple once again smoked the competition

http://www.pcworld.com/article/211074/the_tech_brands_you_can_trust.html

"Apple once again smoked the competition in the desktop, notebook, and smartphone categories, winning high praise from customers in all reliability and service categories."

^an Ipad is not a PC... Its more a Smart phone than a computer. My droidx can do more than the Ipad can... 

By your logic an iPad is a computer because can do more than a VIC-20 or Commodore 64. Those are computers the last time I checked.

Plus the iPad large screen enables it to be used for far more tasks than a DroidX. Last time I check no one has been able to beat Apple on price either, a 7" Android tablet for the price of a 10" iPad... please... that's 55% less screen space. Where is the Apple Tax?

• Apple: Repeating his Buy rating, Reid raised his December quarter EPS estimate to $5.21 from $4.93, “following recent store checks and industry data that suggest Mac, iPad and iPhones are tracking above our previous estimates.” He inches up his iPad unit forecast to 6.6 million units from 6.5 million, boosting his FY 2011 forecast to 22.5 million units from 22.1 million. For iPhones, he now expects the company to sell 9 million units in the quarter, up from 8.4 million. His Mac forecast goes to 4.27 million units from 4.13 million.

Stifel Ups Apple Ests; Downgrades RIMM

http://blogs.barrons.com/techtraderdaily/2010/11/17/stifel-ups-apple-ests-downgrades-rimm-starts-garmin-at-sell/

Um by my logic an Ipad is not a computer I was mearly making a comparison to something that is smiler and  is also not a PC. Also in case your fan-boy-ish is blinding you, there have been tablet PC's out for years (about 6) that even the first one could run circles around an Ipad. The current generation has 10-13" scenes, CD2 processors, 4gb ram, 500gb HD, and also have a keyboard, they cost about $799. An Ipad and all current "tablets" such as the Samsung galaxy S are not PC's they are net tables.