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1) In "The Price is Right" box out the author bragged that his G5 PowerMac that cost £920 second hand, was now worth £280. Well 3 years ago and up until recently, I had an AMD Athlon x64 3500+ based system, that had an X800PRO Graphics Card, 2gb of XMS Corsair, a Coolermaster CPU fan so I could over-clock, a Coolermaster cased and PSU. All this didn't cost me anywhere near £920 in fact it was nearer £650 and before I sold it, I had the option of upgrading the CPU to a dual-core X64 4400 AMD for circa £70 to keep it around current spec for another year or so. So that hardly makes a 3 year old PC valueless and I can qualify that further, as follows:
I sold the RAM recently for £80, the Graphics Card for £25, the HSF for £10 and the MB and CPU I sold to a friend for £100 to upgrade his old Athlon system (Which saved him going out and buying a new PC). I am reusing the case and PSU. When you look at it that way, the Mac still represents pretty poor value as forgive me if I am wrong, but there is little you can upgrade on a Mac and all the parts that I bought, were brand new?
2) The introduction of Intel Mac's causing a 37% increase in sales is curious too. Could this not be because of bootcamp? Therefore one has to assume that people want to run XP or Vista on a Mac....why so, when Mac's are so perfect??? Perhaps people want to use Windows but want the vanity of a Mac?
3) The Mitchell and Web adverts are very childish, make some incredibly dubious arguments that are bordering on lies, and should have been challenged by Microsoft. Mind you, I doubt Microsoft would want to be dragged into anything as childish as that.
4) It has took me a while to comment on this too, but a few editions ago, I think the same author tried to convince people that Apple invented the GUI and that it was churlish to suggest otherwise. I take exception to that, for a very simple reason, they didn't invent the GUI...Xerox did. Why should Apple be credited with something they didn't do? Pathetic.
Having listened to these inane ramblings for years (I used to work for a repro-graphic company) you get to the point where the Mac users seem to convince themselves that they have made the better choice. I don't know if that is some kind of inferiority complex, but it sure is tiresome and repetitive.
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Lappy
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& a Nokia E61 for sofa surfing!
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486
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I feel the main areas of contention with this article had to do with some of the boxouts. "The price is right" part in particular did seem like it could have come from Apple's PR department.
I feel a a section of society will always as part of their identity wants to feel like a minority, feel different and exclusive and that's the big appeal of the Mac.
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Pentium
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Those 4 sides - Apple, System Builder, Retro and Amiga - are always a little odd, as thought they don't match the rest of the magazine. Perhaps they have a different editor.
In System Buidler this week, he says he bought his laptop for £229. Celeron 1.86GHz, 2GB, 80GB, Vista Basic, Microsoft Office, Front Page. Seems like a lot for £229!
gaming: E4400@2.66GHz / P5K-E / 2x1GB PC8000@533MHz / 2x80GB D'Max 9-RAID0 + 320GB / 8800GTS 512MB / ViewSonic VX2835wm
server+media: P4 2.8GHz @ 2.4GHz / 775Dual-VSTA / 2x512MB PC3200 / 1000GB+500GB+250GB / HD2400pro
also: P3 for the mrs and a linux box and probably enough bits to build another one
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A few thoughts on your points:
Mitch (16/06/2008)
1) In "The Price is Right" box out the author bragged that his G5 PowerMac that cost £920 second hand, was now worth £280.
I actually got that one slightly wrong - it should've been £420, but I selected the wrong processor when assessing its value. Unfortunately, by the time I realised this it was by then too late to correct.
I sold the RAM [from a £650 machine] recently for £80, the Graphics Card for £25, the HSF for £10 and the MB and CPU I sold to a friend for £100 to upgrade his old Athlon system (Which saved him going out and buying a new PC). I am reusing the case and PSU. When you look at it that way, the Mac still represents pretty poor value as forgive me if I am wrong, but there is little you can upgrade on a Mac and all the parts that I bought, were brand new?
So that's £215 back on your £650 machine, or about a third of its purchase price. I'd get about half the purchase cost of my G5 back, so it's clearly depreciated less. And don't forget not everyone has the time and the skills to sell components - how much would you have got for the complete tower system? Don't get me wrong - I'm not denying Macs are more expensive than PCs. Merely that when you compare like with like and factor in things like depreciation, the difference is nowhere near what you'd expect.
2) The introduction of Intel Mac's causing a 37% increase in sales is curious too. Could this not be because of bootcamp? Therefore one has to assume that people want to run XP or Vista on a Mac....why so, when Mac's are so perfect??? Perhaps people want to use Windows but want the vanity of a Mac?
Or perhaps they wanted to use OSX, but there was a Windows-only program or two they simply couldn't do without? That was certainly the attitude of most of the Mac evaluators at IBM, as quoted in the article.
3) The Mitchell and Web adverts are very childish, make some incredibly dubious arguments that are bordering on lies, and should have been challenged by Microsoft. Mind you, I doubt Microsoft would want to be dragged into anything as childish as that.
Yes, I've made this point myself in the past. Some of the digs made in the ads (the Hodgman and Long US ones as well as the Mitchell and Webb versions) are badly exaggerated, sometimes to the detriment of a valid point. I must confess, though, they've grown on me over time. In any case, they've been running since 2006 and we're still talking about them now, so they must be doing something right.
4) It has took me a while to comment on this too, but a few editions ago, I think the same author tried to convince people that Apple invented the GUI and that it was churlish to suggest otherwise. I take exception to that, for a very simple reason, they didn't invent the GUI...Xerox did. Why should Apple be credited with something they didn't do? Pathetic.
Not quite. Apple certainly didn't invent the GUI, but it's not as simple as saying 'Xerox did'. As I said in the article (Mac Mart 998), the GUI is essentially a coming together of numerous disparate elements which frequently already existed in operating systems or as proof-of-concept demos. Xerox was the first to bring them together into what we'd recognise as a GUI, but they did pretty-much nothing with it. Apple's GUI was not a derivative of the one created at Xerox PARC. In fact, Apple was already working on one when it saw the Xerox GUI. Apple licensed a few features, but none of the code.
As I pointed out in the article, Edison is regarded as the inventor of the lightbulb, even though his work is preceded by 22 similar patents which achieved precisely nothing. It's a slightly different situation here as Xerox did actually release a machine with a GUI, but it was so unsuccessful it could be erased from history without changing much at all.
Did Apple invent the GUI? Clearly not, as Xerox released its own first, and most of the elements which define the GUI predate even that. Does Apple deserve the credit for changing the way we use computers and bringing the GUI to the masses? A resounding 'yes'. The modern GUI traces its lineage to the original Apple GUIs, not to Xerox PARC.
Having listened to these inane ramblings for years (I used to work for a repro-graphic company) you get to the point where the Mac users seem to convince themselves that they have made the better choice. I don't know if that is some kind of inferiority complex, but it sure is tiresome and repetitive.
You could always stop reading Mac articles in Micro Mart! ;-)
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Ian Osborne (18/06/2008)
Mitch (16/06/2008)
I sold the RAM [from a £650 machine] recently for £80, the Graphics Card for £25, the HSF for £10 and the MB and CPU I sold to a friend for £100 to upgrade his old Athlon system (Which saved him going out and buying a new PC). I am reusing the case and PSU. When you look at it that way, the Mac still represents pretty poor value as forgive me if I am wrong, but there is little you can upgrade on a Mac and all the parts that I bought, were brand new?
So that's £215 back on your £650 machine, or about a third of its purchase price. I'd get about half the purchase cost of my G5 back, so it's clearly depreciated less. And don't forget not everyone has the time and the skills to sell components - how much would you have got for the complete tower system? Don't get me wrong - I'm not denying Macs are more expensive than PCs. Merely that when you compare like with like and factor in things like depreciation, the difference is nowhere near what you'd expect.
Can you really make a fair comparison of depreciation when comparing a new system and a second hand system?
Correct me if computers are an exception but I generally find products depreciate fastest just after purchase (sod's law says as soon as you buy a new item the seller drops the price  ) so if that's the case your mac would have lost the most of it's resale value already.
(I remember several Final Cut Pro users were desperate to get hold of the G5 power mac as they simply can't afford the Intel based Mac Pro, so it may not be representative of the "average" depreciation).
I to loath the "Get a Mac" ads, none of the reasons are at all relevant to a *nix/*nux user or arguably a savvy windows user. The fact to marketing ratio in these ads is surpassed only by the utter rubbish delivered by the prepubescent employees of DSG international stores.
Edited for my spoling
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Basil (18/06/2008)
[quote]Can you really make a fair comparison of depreciation when comparing a new system and a second hand system? Correct me if computers are an exception but I generally find products depreciate fastest just after purchase (sod's law says as soon as you buy a new item the seller drops the price ) so if that's the case your mac would have lost the most of it's resale value already.
It wasn't actually second hand - I got it from the Apple Refurbished Store, so it's a little cheaper than it would've been off the shelf, but not exactly second hand. In any case, for an accurate comparison, we'd need to compare the resale value of the Mac with that of the entire PC, not its individual components sold separately. Breaking down and selling piecemeal can often raise a heftier price than flogging the entire unit, which is why professional car thieves often dismantle luxury stolen cars.
I to loath the "Get a Mac" ads, none of the reasons are at all relevant to a *nix/*nux user or arguably a savvy windows user. The fact to marketing ratio in these ads is surpassed only by the utter rubbish delivered by the prepubescent employees of DSG international stores.
It's not the clued-in they're aimed at. 
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Ian Osborne (18/06/2008)
..Breaking down and selling piecemeal can often raise a heftier price than flogging the entire unit, which is why professional car thieves often dismantle luxury stolen cars
Don't know about increasing value but it's easier to sell/harder to prove it's stolen if the easily identified complete car is dismantled and sold as generic parts.
It's not the clued-in they're aimed at.
Sadly that is true of both cases but with respect to Apple's adverts they are deliberately made that way by a company that is competent in computers and should know better, in PC World I get the impression they just haven't got the slightest clue at all 
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Ian Osborne (18/06/2008)
A few thoughts on your points:
Mitch (16/06/2008)
1) In "The Price is Right" box out the author bragged that his G5 PowerMac that cost £920 second hand, was now worth £280.
I actually got that one slightly wrong - it should've been £420, but I selected the wrong processor when assessing its value. Unfortunately, by the time I realised this it was by then too late to correct.
I would hope to get £450 too, if I had bought a second hand PC for £920. (and all this refurbished/second user rubbish doesn't wash with me.....it's second hand and if refurbished, then if my days at ICL taught me anything, it means it was broken when sent out new, returned to the manufacturer, fixed and knocked out cheap!)
I sold the RAM [from a £650 machine] recently for £80, the Graphics Card for £25, the HSF for £10 and the MB and CPU I sold to a friend for £100 to upgrade his old Athlon system (Which saved him going out and buying a new PC). I am reusing the case and PSU. When you look at it that way, the Mac still represents pretty poor value as forgive me i | | | |