Why do people buy Apple / OSX?

[meems]

Sure there is a price premium attached to Apple products (just going to focus on computers/OSX here), and you may not get all the features that you might expect in that price range (my first macbook didn't have an SD card reader, at a time when my last 4 years of pc laptops had all had one built in)... but in general the build quality is very good, the price of an equivalent laptop isn't that dissimilar once you start adding in options like the ultra hq screen, and finding a super slim light weight laptop)

the warranty and instore support is unsurpassed
and it's just a much better OS than windows

I have linux running on other laptops - a guy at work even boots and runs Mint on his MBP, OSX just worked and works out the box. My Lenovo edge (ultrabook) - it doesn't sleep or hibernate properly, his mint/mbp install... brightness and volume adjustment doesn't work from the keyboard...

Yes you can have a linux equivalent that works almost as good for a much lower price, but if you value time over money, and can afford the premium for something that "just works"...

I like OSX and Linux. It pisses me off that if I want to watch sky go, or even my slingbox, I have to jump through dozens of hoops under linux to get it working (using stuff like wine and xbmc scripts, that aren't guaranteed to work seamlessly or keep on working through updates). On my Mac (as with Windows)... it just works, but more importantly, it is supported and so much more likely to keep on working. Sure that's not Linux' fault, it's just a reflection of market forces and popularity - but it's yet another thing that for OSX, it "just works"

[Biscuit]

I cant even be arsed to reply to that pile of (mostly) nonsense.... so i will just say

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrjwaqZfjIY

[matts-uk]

As I put it to my wife earlier this evening. I like OSX because it has the robustness of Linux and the ease of use of Windows XP.

I use Linux on servers a lot but it's just way too much faffing for me to want to use it on the desktop.

Vista convinced me to switch to Apple and I hate Windows 7 almost as much as Vista. Apart from the reboots and updates which constantly distract, as a systems engineer the things I do most often, Windows buries within a condescending user interface or hides behind security features which are practically useless. The extra mouse clicks add up over an 8 hour working day and it's very irritating for me.

Build quality is another thing I value; possibly because computers have been such an important part of my life for so long. My Macpro is a work of art. I recently built a gaming PC and you just can not buy a PC case of the same high quality, at any price. Having said that, I am not blind to the fact that chips in an Apple can fail just as quickly as in a PC and when they fail in an iMac it's a very expensive repair. Over 7 years and the ten Macs I have owned personally, I have had one (ATI graphics) failure, which is better than any of the PC manufacturers I deal with.

As has been said, if you compare like for like and value your own time, the Apple premium isn't half as bad as it seems at first glance. With most of the PC manufacturers struggling to make money and support their products, you might even see a sustainable margin as a good thing. The price includes some very usable applications too. Pages and Keynote are, in my opinion, better than their Office equivalents and cost peanuts.

Macs are also the only machines which can run Windows, Linux and OSX in a VM legitimately.

[meems]

I cant even be arsed to reply to that pile of (mostly) nonsense.... so i will just say
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrjwaqZfjIY

I assume you are talking to me... considering this entire thread is based on peoples opinions or what people value most.... nobody is wrong, they just have differing opinions/priorities - pull your head out of your arse and you would see that.

I run a macbook pro laptop and xubuntu desktop at work... at home my machines are a combination of win7, win8, xubuntu and debian..my dedicated hosted server is Centos, my work platform is RHEL/Solaris, whether that qualifies me to offer an opinion on each of the OS's is up for debate, but it sure as hell qualifies me to have an informed opinion on what matters *to me*.

<insert silly youtube link because I have nothing intelligent to say>

[Biscuit]

I assume you are talking to me... considering this entire thread is based on peoples opinions or what people value most.... nobody is wrong, they just have differing opinions/priorities - pull your head out of your arse and you would see that.

I run a macbook pro laptop and xubuntu desktop at work... at home my machines are a combination of win7, win8, xubuntu and debian..my dedicated hosted server is Centos, my work platform is RHEL/Solaris, whether that qualifies me to offer an opinion on each of the OS's is up for debate, but it sure as hell qualifies me to have an informed opinion on what matters *to me*.

<insert silly youtube link because I have nothing intelligent to say>

I was referring to the non-opinion parts regarding build quality and 'it just works'... just couldnt be arsed to use quotes

I have detailed my opinions pretty clearly earlier in the thread, although a while ago they still stand.

Build quality is generally pretty average, style is good but it is mostly at the expense of genuine quality. Full blown Mac Pro is a bit of an exception, or at least the last few i have been inside have been.

It just works is utter nonsense. A load of my friends switched to mac and im fed up of having to remote in to fix things because they dont work the same as they way they are expecting them too. They wouldn't need amazing in store service or 'genius' bars if it just worked.

[Oswald]

It's all about marketing.
I once tried to match the pricetag on the imac 27 when building a computer, and I had to put in some crazy hardware to get to the same price. I had to put in several top gpu's and still had a hard time matching the price of the imac. Apple is crazily overpriced.

[meems]

It's all about marketing.
I once tried to match the pricetag on the imac 27 when building a computer, and I had to put in some crazy hardware to get to the same price. I had to put in several top gpu's and still had a hard time matching the price of the imac. Apple is crazily overpriced.

2 machines ago, when purchasing my next work laptop (coming from a Mac that wasn't powerful enough).. I decided between a Lenovo W520 or MBP. In the end i went with the Lenovo at £2k (i7 with 16GB ram, full HD screen) the deciding factor being 16GB of ram, versus apples inability to go above 8GB ram. The apple was coming in at around £2200 (i7 with 8GB ram, upgraded screen)

That machine is/was great. The first thing i did was blitz windows and install Linux. Over the next 9-10 months I occasionally struggled with Linux's readiness for the corporate world (and the software/systems/services that go along with this). I'm now back on OSX (i7 MBP, £2500 with a 256MB SSD) - I miss a bit of Linux' flexibility (e.g native support for more than just HFS and FAT) and the package manager (brew is a poor substitute), but the machine is a great performer and integrates 'properly' with the corporate systems in place here.

I bought two tablets on the same day - an ipad2 for my missus, a xoom for myself. There was a £50 price difference between the two (and on paper, my xoom obliterated the ipads spec). Her ipad gets daily use, she can use catchup tv, bbc iplayer, sky go. Mine barely gets taken out of the drawer... no catchup tv, bbc iplayer app was just a bookmark to the website... no sky go app.. etc etc. And yes, those issues have nothing to do with the hardware or device, it's entirely down to the media distributors that prioritise apple over all other platforms, but the reality for you or I is a tablet that is super useful versus a tablet with the potential to be good... maybe... some day

[afrangers]

My Girlfriend find it really usefull for her uni work, used it the other day, was pretty nice

[najiro]

This is all about preference and willingness to pay. Apple's marketing is really impressive considering the array of evidences that suggest PCs computing power is way superior than Macs. I have a friend using a Mac powered with i5-2500 and HD 5770, he was using photoshop and he was really impressed with it (considering he came from a dual core PC). I was watching it and it was lagging and choppy when loading huge and complex pictures and when loading the program itself. And he asked me "pretty good huh?" talking about the mac. I just didn't tell him my cheaper PC build with a i5-2500k overclocked to 4.2Ghz and GTX 560TI runs photoshop faster. Still, people would believe Apple products it better which is superb marketing I believe. PC users or Mac users, most probably know by now the strengths and weaknesses of each build.. now it's up to you to choose.

[abaxas]

Hmmm.... howcome your average hexulite is taken in by the intel marketing, not apples... hmmm

[kalniel]

Hmmm.... howcome your average hexulite is taken in by the intel marketing

What makes you think that? I think Hexites tend to rely more on objective testing than marketing, but do you know something contrary to that?

[abaxas]

What makes you think that? I think Hexites tend to rely more on objective testing than marketing, but do you know something contrary to that?

Do you realize that most 'benchmarking' is marketing by intel?

[kalniel]

Do you realize that most 'benchmarking' is marketing by intel?

Only the Intel provided results. Same as the AMD or nVidia or ARM or Apple provided results. Thankfully there is a whole plethora of review sites carrying out testing for us to look at instead. And the advantage of having so many is you can examine if any of them are being influenced. And with the prevalence of free benchmarking materials we can perform our own tests as well to back them up - see the Hexus x264 or handbrake threads for example.

[phil4]

I've seen many people with an IPhone or an Ipad think that as they find them so useful and cool, they'll get an iMac or similar.

That then often doesn't go quite as well. These are people used to using a Windows PC, not too tech savvy, and while they can turn it on and connect to the internet, everything else is just to hard for them, and they end up hating it. In essence the iMac isn't what they dreamed of, and isn't similar to the iPhone etc.

I know apple are trying to reduce this gap, what with the App Store. And Microsoft for that matter, have gone the whole way with their "Modern" interface.

I did buy an Mac Mini, mainly intending to do IPhone development. For some reason while the basics worked out of the box it was trivial things that have left it as a paperweight. Things like mouse acceleration not being "right".

If it weren't for that as a daily machine it would be just as good as my PC, with the exception of Gaming.

So people I know have bought one thinking it was the same as an iPhone and regretted it. Me I bought one and while it worked it has both niggling deficiencies and a lack of games.

Linux was something I ran a while back (ie. RedHat prior to Fedora), but everything just felt clunky or awkward, so I stopped.

[Platinum]

My Macpro is a work of art.

Its a slab of aluminum with a glowing logo in the back, the design is dated imo and hardly a work of art, Apple users have a funny and dull definition of art.

[abaxas]

Its a slab of aluminum with a glowing logo in the back, the design is dated imo and hardly a work of art, Apple users have a funny and dull definition of art.

What about thinkpads? Ugly, outdated but definitely a work of art.