Used to repair these. Actually had to take the apple tower down to the bare motherboard to remove that kilowatt power supply, sometimes even needing to remove the board. Apple definitely doesn’t want their users inside their machines.
A friend of my dad runs a computer recycling center and he came across one of those Apple 24” monitors, he gave it to me for free. When I plug it in and put it next to my other 24” monitor, I definitely prefer the apple one more.
Apple makes some nice, shiny, toys, but I could never justify spending that amount of money on them.
Making this comparison is kind of pointless. People who buy Apple computers are aware of how much they are spending on their machines. They do it anyways because they want an Apple product.
I work in the entertainment industry as an animator. We animate on PCs, but all the editing, compositing, and graphic design are done on Macs. It really depends on what your needs are. I have always had Macs at home (6 since 1990), but I’m hardly a fanboy and I have nothing against PCs. I’d happily spend twice as much on my computer just to avoid a virus. I’ve never had one on any of my Macs, nor have I ever needed repairs or tuning of any sort.
I spent $3,000 on my 27″ iMac, and I’m quite happy with the purchase.
nice one. I think I wrote a pretty polite rebuttal to the image, and I think it’s funny you guys are inclined to be rude from the safety of your keyboards.
Well I could call you a consumer whore in person even if I risk that you hit me, but I don’t plan to waste money on plane tickets, cabs, and probably on medical bills.
So yes, keyboardin’ all the way.
To be civil, I’ll just say that regarding your monitor WIF KEWL GFX is not a necessary piece of hardware, just an extravagant (and overpriced one).
It’s not whether or not the thing operates like a $3000 product, it’s that you get the same functionality with less money involved. It’s just eye-candy with some people, and that’s like faith, you can’t argue against it.
Where did the PC price come from? Because I just priced this out at Dell and got $4,353 and they didn’t even have dual 24″ monitors or 12GB RAM as an option. www.imageleech.net/data/media/1/Screenshot.png
Your mistake is here “Because I just priced this out at Dell…” Fuck Dell and other pre-built companies. Go with a custom build company, or better yet, build it yourself, and newegg FTW. To be added to the PC column, “can be built by end user” and “easily serviceable by end user”
Dual monitors can be extremely handy, i work as a designer and being able to have blueprints on one screen and a 3d design on the other saves so much time, I don’t want to be minimizing all the time
also games one screen, msn + itunes or a tv show on the other 😀
i don’t think I could go back to using one monitor
yeah when we animate in Maya, it’s nice to have one screen dedicated to your 3D viewports, and the other screen dedicated to hypergraph, curves, modeling tools, other windows.
Aaaaand the point of getting either of these with such specs is…? Thanks, a run-of-the-mill desktop pc, laptop pc or Mac would serve my computer needs just fine at a much lower cost.
No, the mac would not serve your needs at a much lower cost. For instance, the cheapest iMac ($1,199.00), has about the same specs (a bit lower, actually) as the following non-Mac (I don’t say PC here because Macs are actually PCs too).
AMD Athlon II X3 425 Rana 2.7GHz Socket AM3 95W Triple-Core Processor Model ADX425WFGIBOX
ASUS M4A77TD AM3 AMD 770 ATX AMD Motherboard
G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL9D-4GBNQ
SAMSUNG Spinpoint F3 HD502HJ 500GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5″ Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive
ASUS DRW-24B1ST/BLK/B/AS Black SATA 24X DVD Burner – Bulk – OEM
You left off an operating system. I realize that everyone here is probably ok with pirating, but if you’re going to compare apples to apple, you have to take that into account. Add in cost of putting it together (your time is worth money, unless you’re a moron) and the REAL price of the PC is easily $1100.
It can all be put together and have an OS loaded on it in about an hour and a half to two hours. And you are correct, I did leave off an operating system. As the newer Mac OSs are Unix-based, it may make sense to also use a Unix-based operating system. Ubuntu is a good choice, and at $0, it adds very little to the overall cost.
Or, if you prefer Windows, Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit 1-Pack for System Builders is $99.99, bringing the cost of components up to $784.90. That means that the difference between the Mac cost and the custom build cost is $414.10. So, if your time is worth $200/hour, then yes, I could see going with the low-end iMac.
Just about. As an estimate I’d say more like $50 per hour. For someone who doesn’t build PC’s all the time, it would take more like 8 hours, start to finish. And there you have it: if you make about low six-figures a year, its a better use of your time to get a Mac.
If your time is worth $50/h, including time that you are not at work (because who would waste annual leave on a PC build), then you would be making ~$1.5 Million per year. (Assuming that you do not earn money while sleeping ~8 hours a day)
Just because somebody assigns a dollar value to their time doesn’t mean that they make that much money in that amount of time. It’s more of a way of determining things such as if it’s worth it to drive back to the grocery store to pick up $X worth of groceries you forgot, assuming the trip takes Y amount of time and uses Z amount of gas, or, in this case, is it worth it to buy less expensive hardware if you have to assemble it yourself.
8 hours?! When I was 11, I built my first computer in under 4 hours without really knowing what I was doing other than putting all these components together. Yes, that includes putting the standoffs in the case (hardest part for me, as it required squeezing them while sticking them in, a process for which, at that point, I didn’t quite have the necessary strength). Maybe installing an OS at that point took an hour, since I was installing Windows and the version I was using took a rather long time to install (maybe a bit over an hour).
Basically, you can’t screw up that much, as, for the most part, if something fits in a computer, it’s where it’s supposed to be.
Oh, also, I forgot a power supply. If you add a bit less than $100 (a high estimate for a low-end machine) for that, it brings the cost up to about $880, and the price difference between the mac and the not-mac to about $320. If it takes 5 hours to go from components to working computer (a somewhat high estimate), then your time would need to be worth $64/hour to make the mac the better option.
If you haven’t assembled a computer before, you would be surprised at how easy it is. All the parts really only fit together in certain ways. They’re built to be assembled by monkeys. The most difficult and time consuming part is making sure all the parts you order from newegg are compatible, and I’d bet there’s tech support there that would be more than willing to help.
PS Best buy techs are just a half step below the target monkey level, so take what they say with a grain of salt.
macs can “become” pcs, and still be macs because windows and windows software runs equally well on a mac, but i have never heard of a pc that successfully runs mac software, even under the best of circumstances…
This is clearly trollbait anti-Mac propaganda, but I’ll bite anyway.
I just brought up these specs on the Apple Store, and got a price of $7297, so I’d say the price they claim here is accurate, more or less. The only difference is the 2 TB hard drive rather than the 1.5 TB listed here.
The biggest discrepancy I can see is that it doesn’t list “upgradeable” under the Mac. Just checking the options on the Apple Store, I can see that I can still upgrade this model in the following ways:
2x 2.66 ghx quad-core processor —> 2x 2.93 ghx
12 GB RAM —> 32 GB RAM
add three more 2 TB internal hard drives
add two more NVIDIA Geforce GT 120 512 MB video cards, or get a Radeon HD 4870 512 MB
add an additional SuperDrive (although I have no idea why anyone would want to)
add a whole slew of various softwares, but I assume there are PC equivalents, so this is probably not a plus
It’s also important to note that the monitors are $899 each. I find it extremely difficult to believe that equivalent monitors are SO cheap elsewhere that you can get two and still come in at $2000 while buying the other hardware for the PC model.
Finally, this is all from the Apple Store. Who the hell buys from the Apple Store? Apple is notorious for inflating their prices and any Mac owner with a brain knows to buy from a third party dealer.
I can get a 24″ monitor for AUD$226. Might not be quite as pretty as the “Apple Cinema Display”, but given that “state side” computer parts are always cheaper than here in Aus, its less than US$210 at the current exchange rate, I suspect that you could quite easily get a pair of 24″ LCD monitors for ~US$400. That leaves $1600 for other parts, which seems feasible to me.
CONGRATURATIONS
U HAV UPGRADERD UR PROCESSOR BY 300 MHX THAT’S AS MANY AS 30 TENS
AND U ADDED 20 MOAR GIGABYTES OF MEMORY BECAUSE 12 IS NEVAR ENOUGH, NOW U CAN DO SO MUCH
AND ADDED 6 MOAR TB THATS ENOUGH TO HOLD ALL MY 927489032Q347902 ITUNES
OMG THREEEEEE GEFORCE GT 120 NOW U CAN PLAY HALF-LIFE 2. THREE TIMES
ADD TEH SUPARDRIVE 2 PROTECT AGAINST CRYPTONITE
YES MOAR SOFTWARE I ALWAYS WANTED TO EDIT PHOTOS
THESE ARE EXACTRY THE KIND OF UPGRADES THAT DIY PC USERS WILL MAKE IN TEH FUTURE
A WINNAR IS U
This from a Mac friend (seriously, I don’t own one & am not qualified to judge):
“You’re paying double [for a Mac] not for the same components but for the fact that the components are zealously tested with that OS to provide performance far superior to what any Windows-based system can produce with the same hardware. 1Gb of system memory on a Mac is worth 2Gb to 4Gb on a Windows system. Same goes for the processor, the storage, the graphics and nearly anything else.”
The Mac Pro uses a Xeon 5500 series CPU which is designed for a dual CPU board. The 2.66ghz quad core 5550 is $999 on newegg. Cost of CPU’s alone almost match the price of the PC. www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117182
Just to clarify the reason why anyone would purchase the Mac as stated in the image. This is the industry standard for a majority of design and publishing firms. They are far more stable and consistent than a majority of the Windows based machines. The reason why one would get 12 to 32 gb of ram is to make working with 1 to 5+ gig files that much easier and faster. That type of machine has a purpose even though I wouldn’t mind seeing that purpose expanded beyond what it is, I WOULD NOT recommend this for an everyday run of the mill computer user.
Don’t get me wrong here, I have built 2 Windows machines and I own 3 different Mac’s. It ultimately comes down to your own personal preference as to what you enjoy using the most.
Used to repair these. Actually had to take the apple tower down to the bare motherboard to remove that kilowatt power supply, sometimes even needing to remove the board. Apple definitely doesn’t want their users inside their machines.
Left side should also say “runs games”, making most of that hardware actually relevant.
As a gamer, I thank you.
Mac is getting Steam. Also, bootcamp.
A friend of my dad runs a computer recycling center and he came across one of those Apple 24” monitors, he gave it to me for free. When I plug it in and put it next to my other 24” monitor, I definitely prefer the apple one more.
Apple makes some nice, shiny, toys, but I could never justify spending that amount of money on them.
“macs; just for fags”
That silver apple is sure worth a lot.
macs are just for fancy ppl with money who only use such shyt for internet anyways, thats prolly why they are still in buisness
youre so insightful
Making this comparison is kind of pointless. People who buy Apple computers are aware of how much they are spending on their machines. They do it anyways because they want an Apple product.
I work in the entertainment industry as an animator. We animate on PCs, but all the editing, compositing, and graphic design are done on Macs. It really depends on what your needs are. I have always had Macs at home (6 since 1990), but I’m hardly a fanboy and I have nothing against PCs. I’d happily spend twice as much on my computer just to avoid a virus. I’ve never had one on any of my Macs, nor have I ever needed repairs or tuning of any sort.
I spent $3,000 on my 27″ iMac, and I’m quite happy with the purchase.
If you’re smart online you don’t really need to worry too much about a virus at all to be honest.
word
exactly. I’ve had my current PC almost 4 years without any virus protection. Never had trouble.
Fair enough. I was just being dramatic.
You spent $3,000 on a 27″ iMac, and you’re definitely a moron. definitely…
Not just a moron, a consumer whore too!
nice one. I think I wrote a pretty polite rebuttal to the image, and I think it’s funny you guys are inclined to be rude from the safety of your keyboards.
Well I could call you a consumer whore in person even if I risk that you hit me, but I don’t plan to waste money on plane tickets, cabs, and probably on medical bills.
So yes, keyboardin’ all the way.
To be civil, I’ll just say that regarding your monitor WIF KEWL GFX is not a necessary piece of hardware, just an extravagant (and overpriced one).
It’s not whether or not the thing operates like a $3000 product, it’s that you get the same functionality with less money involved. It’s just eye-candy with some people, and that’s like faith, you can’t argue against it.
at least when our keyboards need service (if ever) we won’t have to sent the whole pc back…
accidentally downvoted you dude, sorry.
even tho i have never had a virus give me any trouble on a PC.
s’all good
Where did the PC price come from? Because I just priced this out at Dell and got $4,353 and they didn’t even have dual 24″ monitors or 12GB RAM as an option.
www.imageleech.net/data/media/1/Screenshot.png
Probably newegg prices.
The only 8-core processors I could find on Newegg were AMD, so not from there.
they dont have macs either, maybe making them a bad call
Your mistake is here “Because I just priced this out at Dell…” Fuck Dell and other pre-built companies. Go with a custom build company, or better yet, build it yourself, and newegg FTW. To be added to the PC column, “can be built by end user” and “easily serviceable by end user”
So easy casemods can do it.
If I had a PC, I’d build it myself. I’ve helped friends put together their machines.
even if the cost is 5, or 6k, there’s still a difference of $1,000+. I refuse to pay $1,000 for a name and a logo.
add under the left side (some assembly required)
Even if you lacked the basic technical knowledge needed to put a PC together you could drop it into a store and the labour’s going to be max $200.
i’ve built 4 computers, so i dont have that problem
To be honest I wouldn’t want dual monitors. I’d just rather have one really big nice one.
Dual monitors can be extremely handy, i work as a designer and being able to have blueprints on one screen and a 3d design on the other saves so much time, I don’t want to be minimizing all the time
also games one screen, msn + itunes or a tv show on the other 😀
i don’t think I could go back to using one monitor
yeah when we animate in Maya, it’s nice to have one screen dedicated to your 3D viewports, and the other screen dedicated to hypergraph, curves, modeling tools, other windows.
I know I sure couldn’t. I hooked up 2 just for the sake of trying it because I had seen a friend do it. And man what a difference.
Dual Monitors rawk… A lot of things you can’t do with just a single huge monitor.
Aaaaand the point of getting either of these with such specs is…? Thanks, a run-of-the-mill desktop pc, laptop pc or Mac would serve my computer needs just fine at a much lower cost.
No, the mac would not serve your needs at a much lower cost. For instance, the cheapest iMac ($1,199.00), has about the same specs (a bit lower, actually) as the following non-Mac (I don’t say PC here because Macs are actually PCs too).
AMD Athlon II X3 425 Rana 2.7GHz Socket AM3 95W Triple-Core Processor Model ADX425WFGIBOX
ASUS M4A77TD AM3 AMD 770 ATX AMD Motherboard
G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL9D-4GBNQ
SAMSUNG Spinpoint F3 HD502HJ 500GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5″ Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive
ASUS DRW-24B1ST/BLK/B/AS Black SATA 24X DVD Burner – Bulk – OEM
XFX PVT94GZAFG GeForce 9400 GT 1GB 128-bit GDDR2 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready Video Card
ASUS VH226H Black 21.5″ 2ms(GTG) HDMI Widescreen LCD Monitor
COOLER MASTER Centurion 5 CAC-T05-UW Black Aluminum Bezel , SECC Chassis ATX Mid Tower Computer Case
Logitech MX518 8 Buttons 1 x Wheel USB Wired Optical Gaming Mouse
LITE-ON SK-1788/BS 2-Tone PS/2 Wired Standard Keyboard
Total cost: $684.91
You left off an operating system. I realize that everyone here is probably ok with pirating, but if you’re going to compare apples to apple, you have to take that into account. Add in cost of putting it together (your time is worth money, unless you’re a moron) and the REAL price of the PC is easily $1100.
It can all be put together and have an OS loaded on it in about an hour and a half to two hours. And you are correct, I did leave off an operating system. As the newer Mac OSs are Unix-based, it may make sense to also use a Unix-based operating system. Ubuntu is a good choice, and at $0, it adds very little to the overall cost.
Or, if you prefer Windows, Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit 1-Pack for System Builders is $99.99, bringing the cost of components up to $784.90. That means that the difference between the Mac cost and the custom build cost is $414.10. So, if your time is worth $200/hour, then yes, I could see going with the low-end iMac.
Just about. As an estimate I’d say more like $50 per hour. For someone who doesn’t build PC’s all the time, it would take more like 8 hours, start to finish. And there you have it: if you make about low six-figures a year, its a better use of your time to get a Mac.
If your time is worth $50/h, including time that you are not at work (because who would waste annual leave on a PC build), then you would be making ~$1.5 Million per year. (Assuming that you do not earn money while sleeping ~8 hours a day)
I’ll stick to the “PC” thanks.
Just because somebody assigns a dollar value to their time doesn’t mean that they make that much money in that amount of time. It’s more of a way of determining things such as if it’s worth it to drive back to the grocery store to pick up $X worth of groceries you forgot, assuming the trip takes Y amount of time and uses Z amount of gas, or, in this case, is it worth it to buy less expensive hardware if you have to assemble it yourself.
8 hours?! When I was 11, I built my first computer in under 4 hours without really knowing what I was doing other than putting all these components together. Yes, that includes putting the standoffs in the case (hardest part for me, as it required squeezing them while sticking them in, a process for which, at that point, I didn’t quite have the necessary strength). Maybe installing an OS at that point took an hour, since I was installing Windows and the version I was using took a rather long time to install (maybe a bit over an hour).
Basically, you can’t screw up that much, as, for the most part, if something fits in a computer, it’s where it’s supposed to be.
Oh, also, I forgot a power supply. If you add a bit less than $100 (a high estimate for a low-end machine) for that, it brings the cost up to about $880, and the price difference between the mac and the not-mac to about $320. If it takes 5 hours to go from components to working computer (a somewhat high estimate), then your time would need to be worth $64/hour to make the mac the better option.
If you haven’t assembled a computer before, you would be surprised at how easy it is. All the parts really only fit together in certain ways. They’re built to be assembled by monkeys. The most difficult and time consuming part is making sure all the parts you order from newegg are compatible, and I’d bet there’s tech support there that would be more than willing to help.
PS Best buy techs are just a half step below the target monkey level, so take what they say with a grain of salt.
AMD CPU, everyone, run for your lives!
So to summarize: The prices are wrong and the PC fans have more time than money.
since when can a pc “become” a mac?
macs can “become” pcs, and still be macs because windows and windows software runs equally well on a mac, but i have never heard of a pc that successfully runs mac software, even under the best of circumstances…
i’ve successfully been running osx on a netbook for well over a year now.
additionally, when my mac pro tower kicks (that’s the shiny one on the right) i’ll probably build the one on the left and hackintosh that too.
i prefer the apple os, but i definitely agree that you’re paying an apple tax on hardware.
lmgtfy.com/?q=hackintosh
And here I thought this post would skyrocket like the moldy bible one from way back when…
You never know what will ignite an extreme post comments onslaught.
gimme some time to work my magic please…
This is clearly trollbait anti-Mac propaganda, but I’ll bite anyway.
I just brought up these specs on the Apple Store, and got a price of $7297, so I’d say the price they claim here is accurate, more or less. The only difference is the 2 TB hard drive rather than the 1.5 TB listed here.
The biggest discrepancy I can see is that it doesn’t list “upgradeable” under the Mac. Just checking the options on the Apple Store, I can see that I can still upgrade this model in the following ways:
2x 2.66 ghx quad-core processor —> 2x 2.93 ghx
12 GB RAM —> 32 GB RAM
add three more 2 TB internal hard drives
add two more NVIDIA Geforce GT 120 512 MB video cards, or get a Radeon HD 4870 512 MB
add an additional SuperDrive (although I have no idea why anyone would want to)
add a whole slew of various softwares, but I assume there are PC equivalents, so this is probably not a plus
It’s also important to note that the monitors are $899 each. I find it extremely difficult to believe that equivalent monitors are SO cheap elsewhere that you can get two and still come in at $2000 while buying the other hardware for the PC model.
Finally, this is all from the Apple Store. Who the hell buys from the Apple Store? Apple is notorious for inflating their prices and any Mac owner with a brain knows to buy from a third party dealer.
I think they were talking more upgrade it yourself after you get it.
“A Mac owner with a brain” is a contradiction in terms.
I can get a 24″ monitor for AUD$226. Might not be quite as pretty as the “Apple Cinema Display”, but given that “state side” computer parts are always cheaper than here in Aus, its less than US$210 at the current exchange rate, I suspect that you could quite easily get a pair of 24″ LCD monitors for ~US$400. That leaves $1600 for other parts, which seems feasible to me.
Hmmm, after another look at the specs for that AUD$226 24″ monitor, I’m kinda thinking of going home via the computer shop tomorrow.
CONGRATURATIONS
U HAV UPGRADERD UR PROCESSOR BY 300 MHX THAT’S AS MANY AS 30 TENS
AND U ADDED 20 MOAR GIGABYTES OF MEMORY BECAUSE 12 IS NEVAR ENOUGH, NOW U CAN DO SO MUCH
AND ADDED 6 MOAR TB THATS ENOUGH TO HOLD ALL MY 927489032Q347902 ITUNES
OMG THREEEEEE GEFORCE GT 120 NOW U CAN PLAY HALF-LIFE 2. THREE TIMES
ADD TEH SUPARDRIVE 2 PROTECT AGAINST CRYPTONITE
YES MOAR SOFTWARE I ALWAYS WANTED TO EDIT PHOTOS
THESE ARE EXACTRY THE KIND OF UPGRADES THAT DIY PC USERS WILL MAKE IN TEH FUTURE
A WINNAR IS U
This from a Mac friend (seriously, I don’t own one & am not qualified to judge):
“You’re paying double [for a Mac] not for the same components but for the fact that the components are zealously tested with that OS to provide performance far superior to what any Windows-based system can produce with the same hardware. 1Gb of system memory on a Mac is worth 2Gb to 4Gb on a Windows system. Same goes for the processor, the storage, the graphics and nearly anything else.”
But hey, thanks for the negs anyway, faggots.
Anyone want to attempt an actual rebuttal?
The Mac Pro uses a Xeon 5500 series CPU which is designed for a dual CPU board. The 2.66ghz quad core 5550 is $999 on newegg. Cost of CPU’s alone almost match the price of the PC.
www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117182
The 2.66ghz quad core i7 W3520 is listed at $280 however this CPU (from what I have been able to find) can not be used in a dual cpu system.
www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115202&cm_re=i7-_-19-115-202-_-Product
So unless you can find a cheap Xeon you won’t be able to match the 8 cores/Dual CPU of the Mac Pro, with this PC at that price.
I’d love to see the detailed specs of the PC
May I just add, I love how the main defence of macs in this thread is “I’m too stupid and/or lazy to use a PC, so I’ll go for the next best thing”.
Just to clarify the reason why anyone would purchase the Mac as stated in the image. This is the industry standard for a majority of design and publishing firms. They are far more stable and consistent than a majority of the Windows based machines. The reason why one would get 12 to 32 gb of ram is to make working with 1 to 5+ gig files that much easier and faster. That type of machine has a purpose even though I wouldn’t mind seeing that purpose expanded beyond what it is, I WOULD NOT recommend this for an everyday run of the mill computer user.
Don’t get me wrong here, I have built 2 Windows machines and I own 3 different Mac’s. It ultimately comes down to your own personal preference as to what you enjoy using the most.