San Diego Housing Bubble News and Analysis

Mac's are the best! Converted a couple years ago and am never looking back.

Oh, I just bought a MacBook Air with that deal at the UCSD bookstore today. I'm waiting to see if the ipod rebate is for real. Seems too good to be true!

The sad thing is that currently the best build quality PC laptop with a good powerful video card is a Mac...

I'm an Apple fan. I own an iPhone and stock in the company. But I won't buy their computers. Why?

Read the specs. In particular, look at:
Processor type & speed
Bus speed
RAM
HD capacity

Then go to a site like Newegg and build a PC with the same specs. You'll save at least $500 compared with an equivalent Mac.

I'm not an Apple hater, but I think people should be aware of the (frequently massive) cost difference. I'm shopping for a new laptop. For a 33% discount, I'll be able to put up with Vista and all its flaws.

Did you include your Vista license in your comparison? How about the 2-3 hours of your time that it takes you to build the machine and install the OS and all your software? Or the time debugging if a piece of hardware is incompatible or you can't find the drivers? Or the hours or days of time it will take you to clean off all of that spyware from your Windows machine in a couple months?

There is more to consider than just nuts & bolts when it comes to comparing computers. So while it may cost more up front for a Mac, the saved time, avoided headaches, and piece of mind saved with them is well worth it in my opinion.

Full disclosure: Raised on DOS/Win3.1, currently a UNIX network admin, AAPL stockholder, typing this on a WinXP machine, listening to music from iTunes, and currently downloading a HD movie to my AppleTV.

You can buy a Compaq laptop for $400 on sale at Staples.

So what if it's a little slow? Use it for a year and throw it away. Then buy a new one. It's still a lot cheaper than the Apple.

*

BTW, I do have an iPhone 3G ;) and an iPod.

I am a recent convert but haven't made the jump to their computers yet. I freaking love my iphone 3G, I can't say enough about it and I'm never going back to blackberry/palm or other phones. I don't even want to look at macs because I know i'll want one and they are considerably more expensive. I understand why people love their macs, if my computer was as ingenius and innovative as my phone (while being more user friendly and reliable) then I'll never look back and become a mac person, and I'll pay through the nose. I am going to hold off as long as I can.

I just picked up an iMac for my wife and she loves it. She signed up for a web design class to take for fun and through Apple was able to get the student discount of $100 for the iMac.

She also picked up an iTouch and Printer as the rebates covered them completely. The rebates were easy to process and she received the rebate checks in four days. She will probably keep the iTouch and sell the printer on ebay or Craigslist for $50.

The final kicker was if she were to purchase Adobe Create Suite 3.3 Web Premium (includes Dreamweaver, Photoshop, and numerous other programs) at the same time as the iMac, which was needed for her class, she would get that for $299. Retail on that directly through Adobe is currently $1599, and was offered at Apple for $1399.

Great experience, now debating on whether or not to pickup a MacBook Pro and eliminate the remainder of our PC's that are lying around.

If you're going to purchase a Mac, or even an iPod, I would wait. Big updates across the board are coming out in September, supposedly the 9th.

"I'll be able to put up with Vista and all its flaws."

You were rational till that sentence. Why pay and suffer Vista when you can get Ubuntu for free? (they will even mail you the CDs for free) I use Ubuntu on an old Dell laptop and the performance is twice that of a Windows machine (Thinkpad) with twice the hardware resources (MHz, MB RAM).

If you do want to send some money to Redmond, at least get a XP.

My GF's got a brand new iMac and that things gives us more trouble than my cheap Dell Laptop. It freezes all the time..

I also noticed that Mac laptops are a lot less durable in "on the road" type situations. I've seen so many dented MacBook Pros/cracked LCD's etc..

Those thin almunm cases are cool looking but not too good at taking hits. The cheap plastic on Dell's and HPs withstand drops/falls/spills much better. Also they come with fans inside..so I don't need those laptop stands to keep mine cool either..

But I guess they look cool if you only use it in office type situations.

Take it to the Apple store and if they can't fix it, they will replace it - another benefit of owning a Mac. You can't do that with a machine you make from parts off newegg.

Apple products? I never used them previously...but in the last six months I got my chance with an odd work assignment. Bosses told me to go buy about $10,000 of Apple products (Mac Air, iPhone, iPods, iTouch...) and use them then take them apart and write up reports on design and assembly.

So after playing with them for a couple weekends I have to admit, Apple makes some pretty cool products.

The worst part of the assignment was my having to disassemble (destroy) $10K of all those BRAND NEW great toys from Apple. My wife also fell in love with them also so was sad to see them later as a bag of dissassembled parts.

I'm hooked on iTunes now. That is really cool software. But I'm using it on my Dell windows laptop, so I'm wishing for an iPHone or iTouch.

Now would I use a Mac laptop for work?

Sure if I did graphics design for a living. I don't.

I run CPU-intensive engineering software. I have a dual-CPU Dell laptop that is way faster than any laptop Apple offers.

Be aware a Unix machine which the Apple is, is way more
effficient in memory use, which doubles systems performance

look at Linpack benchmarks.

I won't buy Apple. I do a ton of video and gif editing, and all of the free software in windows is just too tempting. I also like to save movies in compressed avi format so I can stream them to my modded Xbox in the living room (no digital here). That requires a bunch of software that I am not sure is available on the mac.

I am just too cheap to buy a Mac but I have heard really good things about Ubuntu.

Also I won an Ipod nano at some industry event and I hated the damn thing because I hate iTunes. I just want to drag and drop my damn mp3 files. So I gave the nano to my son. He of course doesn't mind itunes and uses the hell out of that thing.

That requires a bunch of software that I am not sure is available on the mac.

I just wanted to say that now that Macs run on Intel chips you can dual install Windows on the machine. If you don't like booting up a seperate OS, then there are now amazing programs that let you run Windows without restarting the computer. From what I heard it's nearly flawless. If I was to ever buy a fully built computer, it would be a Mac. With that said, I enjoy building a computer and it's certainly been much cheaper for me. Mainly because it can be upgraded a bit more piecemeal, so I don't pay for replacement software and components that I don't need.

Macs are NOT the best. I agree that a MAC is a powerful computer and the GUI/OS experence is exceptional, but they give you little hardware flexibility and their products tend to be close to double the expense of a PC. All things considered the BEST computer available is a PC running LINUX. Cheap and excellent.

I swear that the plastic they wrap Macs in must contain some kind of intoxicant. What a cult!

I use and work with Windows and Mac boxes every day and I can tell they _both_ have their issues, but at the end of the day, I run into the least dead ends with Windows stuff. In the same way it's the target of hackers and like, it also gets the most attention of software and hardware manufacturers.

...and suggesting that people use Linux as an everyday desktop is just loco. Sure it's fun and if you're an enthusiast or need to run a website, good for you, you've done fine, but for the average college student, business person, and, well, pretty much anyone else, nope.

You can just drag & drop files to your iPod. Just check the box that says 'manually manage my music' in iTunes.

My point was I just hate using iTunes period. My stuff was already organized (good enough for me) in directories. With other mp3 players I had I could just dump an entire directory into the player.

You can do all this kind of stuff with iTunes, but I just didn't care to spend time figuring it out. None of the other players I've had required something like iTunes.

My point was I just hate using iTunes period.

iTunes at one point was a nice program. However, feature creep has made it a bloated piece of junk. I'd much rather not require a program to put music onto my iPod.

I used to be anti-iTunes (WinAmp 4 life!), but at some point my library became so big that it was literally impossible to keep track of it all in a nice and orderly fashion. I'm currently at over 18,000 songs (110 GB) and iTunes is the best tool out there for managing such a large library.

The smart playlists feature is really powerful for filtering data (eg: "All songs greater than 2 minutes but less that 8 minutes that have a genre of Alternative that came out in the 1990s that I have rated 4 stars or above that I have listened to less than 3 times, but don't list anything by band X").

I like the ease of being able to just import and play.. not having to worry about naming/tagging/filing into folders/getting artwork for everything.

If you do get a Mac and plan to use it heavily (e.g. bringing it to work everyday), I'd suggest getting Applecare. It will easily pay for itself the first time you have a hardware problem. Applecare is one of the few extended warranties that Consumer Reports considers worthwhile.

One thing I really like about Macs is how easy it is to connect to things in a network environment, particularly a mixed unix/windows environment. They really try harder here and can connect to pretty much everything.

... my library became so big that it was literally impossible to keep track of it all in a nice and orderly fashion. I'm currently at over 18,000 songs (110 GB) and iTunes is the best tool out there for managing such a large library.

My response: I completely agree with above post!

I will refrain from incriminating myself (revealing in a public forum how many mp3 songs I'm managing with iTunes). In any case, I am AMAZED how effortlessly iTunes handles my huge mp3 library. I have many more than 18,000 of mp3 songs!

Here's what I like about iTunes after already having tried WinAMP, Roxio, Musicmatch Jukebox.

1) iTunes seems to have the biggest most comprehensive online music matching database. Almost every time iTunes finds the correct album and song info for the CD I've just popped in for ripping
2) downloadable album artwork from iTunes (resolution, color) album artwork, and a is good quality and pretty comprehensive library
3) More convenient to sort music using front end interface
4) very easy to rip CD's into mp3's - but you gotta set it to convert to MP3 instead of the stupid Apple proprietary format.
5) I love the albumflow interface that lets one "spin" through a visual jukebox of your album covers to choose something to play.
6) I love the ability to modify any field of multiple MP3 album/song info at the same time. You can select all songs in 10 different albums and edit any fields all at once