Are Apple's computers worth it

[AceInfinity]

Even for a Graphic Designer it's not worth it.

The amount of money you pay for an Apple Mac, you could use to build a PC which is twice as good.
The only thing you're buying when it comes to Macs is the Apple logo.

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Lets put it this way... You can buy an iMac for £999 ($1550).
What you get for that is:
21.5" 1920x1080 monitor
2.5GHz quad-core Intel i5 CPU
2x2GB DDR3 RAM
500GB HDD
Radeon 6750M GDDR5 GPU
Webcam
Mouse
Keyboard
OS X Lion

Those specs are very average... The computer I'm currently building will cost about the same as that, but has the following:
23" 1920x1080 IPS monitor
3.4GHz quad-core Intel i7 2600k Sandy Bridge
4x4GB DDR3 RAM
500GB HDD
Radeon 6870 GDDR5 GPU
Mouse
Keyboard
Windows 7 Professional
+
Gigabyte Z68 mobo
Corsair H60 water cooler
Antec 650w PSU
Coolermaster case
Crucial M4 SSD

I'm positive that people more knowledgeable than me will be able to get even more for their money with a custom built PC. Even buying a pre-built PC you'd save so much money than buying an Apple.

The only Apple I would even consider looking at would be a 12 core Mac Pro, but they cost £4,000, and for that much money, I'd rather build 4 computers and have my own render farm!

I would agree with building a better computer, but Apple was designed for that type of thing, which is where the difference comes in. All Adobe's programs are surely to run a lot smoother on a Mac than a Windows computer because it's binary was first built to support it's architecture. I would still go with Windows, but that's because i'm used to it over a Mac. I don't have much knowledge about Mac really. So that's the other side of the story, you'd have to start early with them to get used to how they operate if you're not already familiar with them, but as a graphics designer Mac's are inevitably the better way to go.

Plus they seem to be more stable than Windows for graphic design software. Less freeze time, and if you go to any courses for graphics design, I could only assume that the majority of the professional courses will get you involved in using a Mac anyway.

If you're already used to Windows though like me, then that's the only reason I can't agree to using a Mac over Windows.

[Fragma]

Honestly though if you put a Mac and a PC with the same specs side by side and compared how Photoshop for example, performed on each, you wouldn't even notice any difference at all.

The only reason Macs are seen as a graphic designers choice of computer is down to their advertising, and brainwashing powers, which, credit to them, has worked. A lot of graphic designers will use Macs rather than PCs, because they've been brainwashed into thinking they're essential, when they just aren't at all.

If you were a company and needed computers, what would you do? Buy 5 Macs or 10 PC's?? Knowing that the more you have the more work you'll get done? I know I'd rather have 10 PC's....

Side note: I use Macs every single day at college so I've experienced the best of both worlds quite thoroughly. Yeh Windows can lag with certain Adobe programs quite a lot, but it happens just as often on Macs. The amount of times I've felt like smashing the screen after staring at that stupid coloured spinning wheel on the screen....

[AceInfinity]

Honestly though if you put a Mac and a PC with the same specs side by side and compared how Photoshop for example, performed on each, you wouldn't even notice any difference at all.

The only reason Macs are seen as a graphic designers choice of computer is down to their advertising, and brainwashing powers, which, credit to them, has worked. A lot of graphic designers will use Macs rather than PCs, because they've been brainwashed into thinking they're essential, when they just aren't at all.

If you were a company and needed computers, what would you do? Buy 5 Macs or 10 PC's?? Knowing that the more you have the more work you'll get done? I know I'd rather have 10 PC's....

Side note: I use Macs every single day at college so I've experienced the best of both worlds quite thoroughly. Yeh Windows can lag with certain Adobe programs quite a lot, but it happens just as often on Macs. The amount of times I've felt like smashing the screen after staring at that stupid coloured spinning wheel on the screen....

Yeah i've read and i'm well aware of your advertising point. But what are you going to do if you're forced to use a Mac in a course by standard image created by their marketing? I'd rather buy 1PC over even having 10Macs personally. I could understand the company/bussiness part about having 5 Macs or 10PC's because Mac's are definitely overpriced, so that's a better managed budget to buy Windows in my opinion. But if you're forced to conform to the image of being professional what are you going to do with all of those people who take something for what it is based on what they hear? And for how good Apple is in the marketing industry?

I'm used to Windows though, so even though i've read about this stuff, and even if it was true that Mac's were better to some extent, i'm more familiar in Windows by FAR, and therefore learning the Mac to where i'm at with Windows would be a waste of time, considering that even with where i'm at in Windows based graphic design is enough for my purposes.

[Fragma]

I wasn't referring to the people using the Macs within companies, more so towards the people in charge of the companies that choose to use Macs. I probably didn't make that very clear.

[★Cooldude★]

@God, you said you wanted a gaming computer. That would indicate that you wanted to game. Apple uses mobile graphics cards in most of their computers.

[Extasey]

So many PC fan boys in here.

Macs are great! Easy to use with a pretty small learning curve for the PC dickheads.

If you want to game: Windows... all the freakin way.
If you want mad battery life (portability): Mac

I'm not going to sit here and rattle off how Macs are just as good as PCs because I shouldn't have to and am preaching to a whole lot of people who aren't going to listen because they have no experience with them. I found my macs great because I got right into scripting with them... sure you can script in windows (batch) but its not as "powerful" as bash. Well not until microsoft introduced PowerShell.

I feel, Macs are worth their money as you get decent quality parts... one of the main reasons PCs are so cheap is that every dickhead and his dog can produce shitty parts for it, where apple at least uses decent gear and gets it all "synergized".

If you use a Mac for 6 months, I can guarantee you would love it.

[AceInfinity]

You can still download Powershell with it not being default on a Windows machine before NT 6.1 (Windows 7). Although for your point on portability that doesn't phase me as I would still prefer a desktop anyway lol.

[Extasey]

Yeah but I have tried this and it works like crap.

Also, macs being better for graphics: Maybe back in 1995.

Any serious application comes out multi platform now. Video editing, photo editing, pretty much anything. What is he going to use anyway? Photoshop of course! Annnndddd... its multi platform! Works just as well on either platform.

[AceInfinity]

Yeah but I have tried this and it works like crap.

Also, macs being better for graphics: Maybe back in 1995.

Any serious application comes out multi platform now. Video editing, photo editing, pretty much anything. What is he going to use anyway? Photoshop of course! Annnndddd... its multi platform! Works just as well on either platform.

What did you try exactly? Installing PowerShell? Why was it crap?

I don't see anywhere where it says he had intentions of using it for graphics...

Well I'm due an upgrade for my laptop and want to move into getting a good gaming pc or a apple computer (Pc or laptop).I want a good computer so only honest options as I don't want to get it then not like it just to know how bad I need a new upgrade I'm using a pc with 2GB Ram around 2GHz and 170GB hard drive.

So what I want to know is are they worth it what is the ratio for money:how good it is.

I see gaming in there, and you yourself said Windows would be best for that.

[Extasey]

Wasn't referring to original post.

Unless you're going to turn into a graphic designer, apple isn't worth it.

Tried it on a windows XP machine after writing a binding script in Powershell for Windows. Though

freakin great! I can update the old batch POS script to a single PowerShell script and have them all binding the same. I'll just drop powershell into the XP machines via SCCM

The script worked on windows 7 great, but not at all on windows XP...

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Also, you can use "BootCamp" on your mac to install Windows onto another partition.

When you want, boot into windows. If you only need a few files you can navigate through the disks! If you want to run an application quickly: Virtualisation!