Apple may use Intel chips

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OK, a simple exercise for you.

Apples are embarrasingly more expensive with far less features and the machines are slower.

Let's put this myth to bed right now. Along with a motley collection of other machines, I've got a 5-year-old Mac G4 (not the newer G5, mind you)--and a relatively new Athlon 64 3200+. Guess which one's faster when I go to do heavy-duty multimedia work? Guess. I'll give you a hint: it's the machine which has the 128-bit vector processor built into the CPU.

Now--here's an exercise for you: open your Yellow Pages (assuming you live in a large metropolitan area) and call all of the audio recording studios, video production houses, advertising agencies, newspapers, magazines, print shops, design studios...and ask the pros what they're running. Hmmmm...not many PCs, you'll find. There's a reason for this. Think about it.

Yeah, anybody can run a PC if you're really not doing much with it. They sure look pretty sitting there with no software and not doing any time-critical, got to have it now or we lose this account work. But then again, I've got a cell phone that will do as much--and make phone calls, to boot.

Oh, and I've got a 10-year-old Mac Quadra that's still pulling like Jack the Bear. That's not uncommon in the Mac world. It is uncommon in the PC world--because by and large PC motherboards are pretty shoddy affairs compared to the Mac equivalents. Lots of Grade B components on the board. And that RAM you just bought? Watch out--lots of substandard RAM being sold in PC Land. A lot of this (I think it used to be called "B Lot" RAM) should really never be sold. Strictly speaking, it isn't up to snuff. Yet, you'll usually get sold this stuff, even from places you assume would treat you better, unless you're smart enough to specifically ask for better. And then you'll get charged more, of course.

Substandard components are par for the course in PC Land. Seriously. 9 out of 10 PCs I crack the case on are just...junk. Especially from some of the "Name Brand" manufacturers, who apparently can't even design a case which can be opened without breaking cheap little plastic tabs and whatnot (anybody ever try to get into one of the early compact Sony VAIO's? Lots of fun, and I did it without breaking anything, but I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy). There's really no excuse for some of the brain-dead stuff being sold out there, and the average Mac owner has heard the horror stories--like the stories of several of my clients who have Dell desktops where the USB doesn't work properly. Criminy! From DELL, no less! Stuff that Mac folks take for granted as just working, you can never tell for sure whether it will be there or not on a cheapo PC. Part of the mystery and intrigue, you could argue.

Posted by: Yen_z   Posted on: 05/23/05 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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