Late entrant On 13/06/2008, at 12:12 PM, Brook Hinton wrote:
> When you buy a mac you are not primariiy paying for hardware. You are > primarily buying a specific type of functionality and a specific > manifestation of a computing experience, wrapped in a piece of > industrial > design. On a secondary level (primary for some), you are > buying compatibility with a set of applications from apple and other > manufacturers that work together in a particular way on macs (and in > some > cases are not available for windows). Hardware is just the base. > Which is > why if you only care about hardware power (and especially if you > care about > it in a bang for the buck way), and assuming you like Windows ok, > you should > not get a mac. friends sometimes ask me about buying computers, and they refuse to consider a mac because they think it is more expensive. As has been discussed here the difference is minor, if it exists at all. But what always intrigues me is that these friends regularly drive old european cars (they can't afford new ones). I point this out and they have all these answers which, at the end of the day, boil down to recognising the value of exemplary design. I then point out that that is what the mac is doing, and just like that clapped out Renault out there, it just does what it does in a way that is not just about getting from A to B. I think Brook nails this pretty well here, some of us want our computers to be hammers - we like our PCs - some of us like our computers to be Giustaforza torque wrenchs (sorry, struggled to find a tool analogy) - we like our macs. and we shouldn't forget Umberto Eco's essay comparing PCs and Macs to Protestantism and Catholicism! cheers Adrian Miles [EMAIL PROTECTED] bachelor communication honours coordinator vogmae.net.au
