About Steve Jobs and his fear of buttons

[Zopperoni]

Originally posted by Agathon
What's more. Zopperoni did exactly the same thing. Using a cheaper and less powerful power supply to reduce the price.

Fine, let's reconfig the Maingear:

1000W Enermax Galaxy Power Supply
NVIDIA nForce 680i SLI Motherboard
Q6700 Core 2 Quad (2.66GHz x 4)
Intel Quiet CPU Cooler
2GB Corsair XMS2-8500 DDR2-1066
Western Digital Caviar SE16 250GB 7200RPM 16MB Cache - SATA II
20X Dual Layer DVD±RW Drive w/ LightScribe Technology - black
2x NVIDIA GeForce 8800 Ultra 1536MB PCIe in SLI
Integrated 8-channel High Definition Audio
SAMSUNG 941BW Black 19" 4 ms DVI Widescreen LCD Monitor
Microsoft Office 2007 Professional w/ Access
Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate (32-Bit)
Logitech® Media Keyboard
Logitech® Optical Mouse
3 Year Maingear Warranty
FREE! Guild Wars: Factions PC Game

Price: $4,949.26
Verdict: still w00t, and still cheaper than the Mac Pro

[Nostromo]

That's not a Xeon, is it? Also, the Xeons use a more expensive type of memory, IIRC.

To which Mac Pro are you comparing this, BTW?

[LordShiva]

Originally posted by Agathon
Using a cheaper and less powerful power supply to reduce the price.

All that means is that you're comparing a less powerful machine with the Macintosh.

A beefier PSU does nothing to make a stable system any faster or more powerful. Perhaps Macs have more inefficient chipsets or RAM, which is why they seem to need more power?

[Agathon]

Originally posted by LordShiva


A beefier PSU does nothing to make a stable system any faster or more powerful. Perhaps Macs have more inefficient chipsets or RAM, which is why they seem to need more power?

Perhaps Dell's high end workstation is the same.

I see straws... straws that you are grasping at.

I'm done trolling through Dell's site. I think the idea that Apple's pro machines are somehow ridiculously expensive when compared to the opposition has been proven wrong, at least in Dell's case.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by nostromo
That's not a Xeon, is it? Also, the Xeons use a more expensive type of memory, IIRC.

See how desperate they are? Gateway doesn't appear to sell Xeon powered Workstations from my brief examination.

To which Mac Pro are you comparing this, BTW?

One of the mid range ones. I guess Master Zen went through all of them (since Imran was talking about the low end one) to try and find the one that he could make the best case for. Yet he crashed and burned.

[LordShiva]

Originally posted by Agathon


Perhaps Dell's high end workstation is the same.

Perhaps it is. Though if they can spec out exactly the same as Apple, except with better power (and therefore thermal, noise) efficiency, for cheaper, I doubt it.

Oh, and Vista Business is more than adequate for a workstation. Just because OS X comes in only one flavour doesn't necessitate picking the most expensive flavour of Vista. Workstations have no need for MCE. BitLocker (which comes with Vista Business) is rather useful, though. You don't get that in OS X, but I suppose the consumer-grade iLife, which no professional graphics shop would touch, makes up for it.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by LordShiva

Perhaps it is. Though if they can spec out exactly the same as Apple, except with better power (and therefore thermal, noise) efficiency, for cheaper, I doubt it.

The moral of this story is that once Apple moved to Intel, and stopped using the expensive IBM PowerPC processors, their high end computers ended up being about the same price as others (although HP's seem really expensive, but their site is a nightmare to work compared to Dell's - score one for Dell there).

[edit]The truth is that there really isn't any reason for them to be massively more expensive. Apple is the fourth largest supplier of personal computers in the US, and has a strong presence in the "creative professional" market. They probably sell a lot of Mac Pros, and so the price need not be extortionate. I'm guessing that Apple got a pretty sweet deal from Intel as well, since Intel were apparently over the moon at landing the contract.

That doesn't mean that their other peripherals are cheap. The monitors are pretty expensive, and while better looking than anyone else's, are not necessarily better at being monitors.

Oh, and Vista Business is more than adequate for a workstation. Just because OS X comes in only one flavour doesn't necessitate picking the most expensive flavour of Vista. Workstations have no need for MCE. BitLocker (which comes with Vista Business) is rather useful, though. You don't get that in OS X, but I suppose the consumer-grade iLife, which no professional graphics shop would touch, makes up for it.

You can get $2-300 off of Final Cut Express if you buy a Mac Pro.

I'd agree with you that Business is adequate. But the idea was to try to get something comparable, and OS X has one version with everything in it. The one version of Vista that does that is the Ultimate version (and it only costs $50 more if you buy a Dell, so it's not a bad deal).

[Master Zen]

My my, so Agathon can indeed surf the Dell site when it suits him!

Frankly I am dumbstruck at why Dell charges you over $500 for a 250W difference in power supply. It's illogical as no 1KW power supply by itself costs that much. In that case, I will concede that the Mac Pro wins out when you use the 1KW Dell (and 2 GB of RAM) as the final prices end up:

Dell: $5,451
Mac: $5,295

Still, a 900W supply is cheaper than 1KW so the difference is actually less. I still wonder though whether the power supply is all that important. We have stripped down the two systems to their bare essentials for either power or functionality. A power supply adds neither nor do we have any information whatsoever about its quality.

Suffice to say, the 750W Dell will perfectly match the 900W Mac Pro in every sense of the word and is cheaper. But whatever, in this Mac Pro vs 690 battle, I'll say it: the Mac won.

Still though, Mac vs Dell is hardly reflective of the overall situation between Macs and PCs in general. I stated it from the start and I'll state it again: Dell is expensive. Try other vendors and see what you can come up with and I truly doubt the Mac will win out every time (except say, against similarly or even more expensive brands like HP).

And in the ultimate price test, a self-built PC vs a Mac, you know who is going to win although someone like you will then start arguing that nobody builds PCs bla bla bla much less big companies. I should point out then that big companies often receive as much as a 20% discount from Dell. Not so sure Apple matches that...

Regarding why I didn't answer the rest of your points (you of all people should be familiar with such a thing), they became meaningless when the discussion became about prices and specs. You can waggle all you want about upgrading 1 GB of RAM and whatever or that Imran's specs are different, that's all moot. Most people will not upgrade, period, whether they are lowly home users or graphics professionals as the upgrading crowd is an entirely different segment of the market: the computer enthusiast. A CAD user or a video editor is not necessarily an enthusiast. Once again, my point stands.

As for the "overpowered for a gaming machine", my argument stands: a PC or a Mac with 1 GB of RAM and a 7300GT is not by any conceivable standards overpowered for gaming for the simple reason that a gaming machine needs a well-balanced set of components: it matters not that you have a killer processor if the vidcard is lame and you don't have enough RAM. Likewise, try playing a modern FPS with a killer vidcard and only 512MB of RAM and see what you get. But please, feel free to keep denying the ridiculousness of your statement...

In conclusion, you proved the Mac Pro was slightly cheaper than the 690. Whoopey friggin do. Still says nothing about the big picture.

PS Congrats to Apple for finally after god knows how many years they made a computer that's price competitive with a major PC retailer only by ending up with the PC's technology! How long did that take? Oh and kinda blows away all your other previous arguments of how the Mac was cheaper back then too...

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Master Zen
My my, so Agathon can indeed surf the Dell site when it suits him!

Frankly I am dumbstruck at why Dell charges you over $500 for a 250W difference in power supply. It's illogical as no 1KW power supply by itself costs that much. In that case, I will concede that the Mac Pro wins out when you use the 1KW Dell (and 2 GB of RAM) as the final prices end up:

It's not illogical. I noticed that the base price jumps the more you add. Probably something to do with cooling.

Still though, Mac vs Dell is hardly reflective of the overall situation between Macs and PCs in general. I stated it from the start and I'll state it again: Dell is expensive. Try other vendors and see what you can come up with and I truly doubt the Mac will win out every time (except say, against similarly or even more expensive brands like HP).

I never said that it would. I said at the beginning that as far as I remembered, when the Mac Pro came out, it was cheaper than equivalent machines from Dell and HP. I was surprised to learn that it still is.

And in the ultimate price test, a self-built PC vs a Mac, you know who is going to win

Of course.

although someone like you will then start arguing that nobody builds PCs bla bla bla much less big companies. I should point out then that big companies often receive as much as a 20% discount from Dell. Not so sure Apple matches that...

I don't think companies would build their own, unless they could support the machines for a smaller cost than the various warranties that Apple and Dell and company offer.

I don't know if Apple offers discounts for bulk. I expect they do. I do know that they offer educational discounts.

They do offer pro software discounts, or at least they have done from time to time. It's just another way of doing it: e.g. buy our computer and run our software on it (and not Avid's) and we'll give you a break.

Regarding why I didn't answer the rest of your points (you of all people should be familiar with such a thing), they became meaningless when the discussion became about prices and specs. You can waggle all you want about upgrading 1 GB of RAM and whatever or that Imran's specs are different, that's all moot. Most people will not upgrade, period, whether they are lowly home users or graphics professionals as the upgrading crowd is an entirely different segment of the market: the computer enthusiast. A CAD user or a video editor is not necessarily an enthusiast. Once again, my point stands.

The graphics design people do. Or at least the ones I have met. Usually it is just swapping storage.

As for the "overpowered for a gaming machine", my argument stands: a PC or a Mac with 1 GB of RAM and a 7300GT is not by any conceivable standards overpowered for gaming for the simple reason that a gaming machine needs a well-balanced set of components: it matters not that you have a killer processor if the vidcard is lame and you don't have enough RAM. Likewise, try playing a modern FPS with a killer vidcard and only 512MB of RAM and see what you get. But please, feel free to keep denying the ridiculousness of your statement...

You're agreeing with me. A gaming machine requires balanced components. But it doesn't require a massive workstation CPU. The Xeon is not a gaming processor. You will probably need a high end graphics card if you are using something like Apple's motion. But for rendering effects on video and encoding, you don't really need a powerful GPU. You do need an absolute tank of a CPU, or you will be waiting all day.

PS Congrats to Apple for finally after god knows how many years they made a computer that's price competitive with a major PC retailer! How long did that take? Oh and kinda blows away all your other previous arguments of how the Mac was cheaper back then too...

The reason is stated in a post above. PowerPC was expensive. It was also better (and still is, or was until recently) for things like Photoshop (someone embarrassed Apple by pitting a Mac Pro against a G5 and the G5 won the photoshop rendering contest - not surprising, since it has Altivec).

The old PowerPC Macs were quite cheap, once you took into account total cost of ownership. They always had high resale value and would last longer. It remains to be seen whether the same will be true of the Intel machines. I suspect not.

But that's another story. I'm dogged out.

[Master Zen]

For the record, here's a self-built PC with components from Newegg. Exception is the Quadro vidcard as newegg does not have it so I used the TigerDirect price. I also added a hypothetical $300 worth of tech support.

Note that some of these components might even be of better quality and performance than those offered by either Dell or Apple.

[Agathon]

It comes down to how much your time is worth.

Hell, I'm the kind of guy who bribes his wife to do his share of the cleaning.

I'm this man:

[Odin]

Originally posted by DaShi
I worked with this lady who bought a new iMac. A few months later she bought another one because it was then available in black. I think it's pretty obvious where Apple's profits come from.

Apple suckers in dumb yuppies by emphasizing style over function.

[Odin]

Originally posted by Agathon

That is a computer for people who work with digital video or digital audio, or do heavy professional graphics work.

AKA yuppie artists that think buying a Mac is somehow "sticking it to the man."

[Nostromo]

nm