p2pnet.net News:- It never fails.

Every time I post something that doesn’t say Steve is God and Apple is His gift to mankind, I get slagged rotten.

Forbes’ Lisa DiCarlo wrote recently, “It is widely acknowledged that Apple Computer enjoys the kind of slavish devotion among its customers – and fawning adoration from the press – of which other companies don’t even dare to dream.

“That is, it’s acknowledged by everyone but Apple.”

Anyway, amongst the diatribes and foaming was an interesting rebuttal of my Blind Mac post.

Read on

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I believe the outlook for the Mac mini is much more promising than the article suggests it ought to be.

It’s true that the $500 spent on the least expensive Mac (ever) could also buy a fully functional Intel-based system – a system with all its parts in place – and that such a system running Linux would be more than a match for the Mac mini. But … a person with the chops to work with a Linux box is not the target audience, nor is it more than a significant minority of those who buy low-end PCs.

The low-end PC buyer is not likely to be hung up on any sort of expensive software. Maybe they have Office, or Word, more likely Works or its equal. They get that with the mini – its equal. They get a choice of browsers – more than most PCs offer – and a Mail program that eats Spam for breakfast. And a great movie editor, a great music player, a great music creator, every Unix tool in the book, and no known problems with malware.

OK, Linux is pretty good against malware, too, but the Mac offers a greater library of top quality games than Linux can claim – just nothing like what Windows has on offer.

Oh. A keyboard and mouse can be bought for maybe $50 (total) and a monitor costs as little as a hundred – should you not have one left from your previous system. And Apple may not tell you this, but if you want to do anything interesting then you want the $75 RAM upgrade. That’s up to $250 over and above the cost of the naked mini. The 70,000 pieces of malware are unavailable at any cost.

OK. It isn’t perfect. It isn’t always as low-cost as it might seem. It isn’t anything close to a supercomputer. It has a much smaller game catelog than WIntel systems brag of.

But, remember that you’ll have to replace every bit of software when you replace your Win’9x machine anyway. Remember that your last PC was never touted as a supercomputer. That the best games DO make it to the Mac. That the mini has the software built in that 90% of non-gamers need – plus IE, which they don’t.

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(Here’s another that recently arrived.)

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Earth to Steve Jobs: Not This Way.

Chopping parts off a racehorse might lower the price tag, but at what Cost?

The Total Cost of Ownership is the key. With a Wintel box, the customer has to pay & pay & pay all along the lifeline of the unit. With a Mac, you pay most of the TCO up front & just use the thing henceforth.

Educate the world and hold fast to the high ground, Steve! End Users as a group aren’t as stupid as they once were. The *depth* of stupidity is getting worse (e.g. Bonzi Buddy, MSMessenger, ActiveX Wallpaper, voting by Party), but the *breadth* is diminishing somewhat.

Before you know it, paying the entire cost of ownership up front will make perfect sense to Ma & Pa Kettle, working *with* the PC instead of *ON* the PC will be de rigeur, and the horrors of Windows will be more like a recollection of a collective nightmare than a crappy User Interface masquerading as an unfinished OS.

Or all the intelligent people will get forced Ritalin doses, the User community will get more stupid, and there will be no one bright enough to use a Mac anymore anyway. “How am I supposed to use a mouse with just one button??” Either way, cutting off your IO to spite your competitor’s UI is not the answer.

Ferret

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And this (email) from C. K. Lester, Just In, as they say >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

I’m a Windows user. At work I manage a network of 5 five Windows-based PCs (one is a laptop). At home I run a network of three Windows-based desktop PCs and one FreeBSD desktop PC. I have no Macs.

That’s going to change, because of the Mac mini.

I’ve always wanted to try Mac OSX at home, but have always been leery of the price. I always felt that my computing dollar went further with a Wintel box. That’s just a "feeling," not a confirmed fact. But now, like Steve Jobs said, I have no excuse.

It’s funny to hear all the complaints about the new Mac mini’s price vs. "comparably-equipped" Wintel boxes. But, with a little research, one discovers that nobody is comparing apples with apples.

The Mac mini lacks a monitor, keyboard, and mouse. I have one extra of all these things lying around the house, so it won’t cost me anything (except, maybe, aesthetics). If I didn’t have these extras, it would cost me less than $100 to get them! (A local PC dealer sells refurbished, large-screen (19"+) monitors for $50-$90.)

So, I’ll spend $499 on the Mac mini, and another $100 on the peripherals. The G4 in the Mac mini <a href="http://www.cpuscorecard.com/">will blow away</a> the Intel Celeron chip you find in a <a href="http://www1.us.dell.com/content/products/features.aspx/low_price_dimen?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs">comparably priced Wintel box</a>. The graphics capability of the Mac mini (the ATI Radeon 9200) is much better than entry-level Wintel PCs (Intel Extreme Graphics (integrated graphics (on the motherboard) that utilize system RAM)).

What most analysts skip over is the software. Along with my superior hardware, I’ll get superior software. Of course, <a href="http://www.apple.com/macosx/">Mac OSX</a> has received great reviews, and it does things that Microsoft’s OS won’t be doing for another few years. Besides that, "budget" PCs come with Windows XP Home. But Windows XP Home is <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/howtobuy/choosing2.mspx">crippled</a>.

If you’re going to compare the two systems, you at least have to use Windows XP Professional. And then, <a href="http://www.xvsxp.com/">OSX wins</a>. Even die-hard Windows fanatics <a href="http://www.internet-nexus.com/2005_01_09_archive.htm#110558221384765759">agree</a>.

Then there’s the bundled <a href="http://www.apple.com/ilife/">iLife</a> software, that includes things for which you must pay on a Wintel box.

So, despite what you hear around town (and on the ‘net), the Mac mini is far superior in every way to any comparably-priced Wintel box. The reviewers who say differently are either ignorant or suffer from blind allegiance. My research and investigation shows the Mac mini to be an attractive opportunity to look into the "other world" of personal computing. And, who knows? Maybe I’ll never have to return to the world of Microsoft Windows (Plug and Pray, bloatware, Notworking (I mean networking), "product activation," BSoD, etc.). That, in itself, would be worth $499.

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See:-
acknowledged – Of Apple and ’slavish devotion’, p2pnet, January 7, 2005
Blind Mac – Apple and its ‘blind’ Mac, p2pnet, January 17, 2005

This entry was posted on Monday, January 17th, 2005 at 5:37 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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