“I guess I'm not kewl enough to be a Mac person”

re: “I guess I'm not kewl enough to be a Mac person”

Peder Vendelbo Mikkelsen — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 01:35:31 GMT

@Zenium

I always liked notebooks from IBM/ Lenovo better than HP/ Compaq, two of the reasons were because of less crapware and a way better keyboard.

A couple of days ago i bought a HP Mini 2140 netbook with Vista. I were surprised by the lack of crapware and i think i can learn to live with the small keyboard. But i miss a trackpad.

I also like the reaction from the women, they all go "aaw, thats a cute little machine".

My point is; HP is capable of delivering machines which dont suck (if they ever make a notebook with a trackpad i might even consider buying it).

re: “I guess I'm not kewl enough to be a Mac person”

Jordan — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 01:31:19 GMT

@Nick: See my reply to keith.

@Keith:

I think the ad works fine. Its meant to show consumers that they can go find a PC that suits their needs at probably a much lower price than an Apple.

She may have specifically wanted a 17'' for herself (i dont know why, im not her). But I think the point of the ad is that you can find a huge variety of options, features and add-ons from a bunch of different OEMs and basically pay the price that you want to pay.

Vista can do anything OSX can do, and in most cases better. Not even speaking to Enterprise.

re: “I guess I'm not kewl enough to be a Mac person”

Keith Combs — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 01:19:31 GMT

LOL.

There is WAY to much energy being put into this.

Let's put aside the technical debates for the moment.

Does the ad work? What was it supposed to do and for what audience?

re: “I guess I'm not kewl enough to be a Mac person”

nick — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 23:54:05 GMT

@Keith: Sorry for the long post. If you wish to disapprove to prevent this from sparking more debate i understand. I at least wanted to make an attempt to make these points though.

@Jordan...and when did this become a debate on the viability of Apple's place in enterprise? They actively shy away from big business. And if you want to debate enterprise hardware that's fine. But attach enterprise price tags to it. If you're a department supporting 100,000 users I'm pretty sure you'll have a nice fat support contract associated with almost any large hardware buy you make, factored into the cost of the buy. You don't have that with Apple because they don't provide it. They never have even TRIED to invade big-iron enterprise. They're making attempts to attempt AD and Exchange based on user demand. Regardless, basing opinions on Apple upon piss-poor enterprise experience earns you nothing more than my pity. Regardless, on the enterprise side I'm with you. We use a variety of server makes, typically running Windows or Solaris. A few of the research clusters here have Xserves and Xserve RAIDs, but those are isolated for specific purposes.

My points were never about enterprise, and last time i checked, the Pavilion in that ad wasn't on any enterprise-grade list. And Apple's hardware is NOT superior, and I never said it was. I may have said a Macbook Pro is superior to that HP Pavilion (um...duh? see below). There's very little that Apple does special any more, aside from some custom firmware here and there, and of course their custom manufacturing processes, but the chips are all the same. BUT the ONLY thing that HP laptop had in common with its Apple counterpart was the physical screen size.

Keith wants some facts, which I can appreciate, so here ya go:

Fact: HP Screen Res: 1440x900. Apple MBP17 Screen res: 1920x1200.

Fact: HP CPU: AMD Turion 2.1Ghz Apple MBP17 CPU: Intel Core2Duo 2.66Ghz

Fact: HP RAM: 4GB DDR2. Apple MBP17 RAM: 4GB DDR3

Fact: HP Graphics: Shared Onboard ONLY. Apple: Dual onboard/dedicated with 512MB Dedicated Graphics

Fact: HP Networking: b/g Wireless & 10/100. Apple MBP17: a/b/g/draft-n Wireless, 10/100/1000 (I didn't know either Intel or AMD still made a chipset that *didn't* have gigabit)

Fact: HP: 7.8lbs Apple: 6.6lbs

Fact: HP: Crap plastic case, questionable frame. Apple: Unibody Aluminum, light, strong, durable

Fact: HP: 1.7" Thick Apple: 0.9" thin

Fact: Apple has MagSafe, Firewire 800, etc.

See for yourself: http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=9166635&st=HP+17+inch+laptop&type=product&id=1218041148373

Point: All of this contributes to a higher cost of a laptop, it doesn't matter what name is on the outside. That is laptop on a Par with a Precision Mobile Workstation or even an XPS or high end Latitude machine (using Dell references). Let them do a sane comparison, and base it off of more than price and screen size (especially a 17" screen @ 1440x900 on laptop...seriously?) and I'll call THAT a good ad.

Again, that ad is preying upon ignorance, nothing more, nothing less.

(I just want to note that I'm completely setting aside the OS debate here and how much OS X is worth to myself and any other mac-aficionado. I, personally, don't mind paying the "mac tax" for my workstations and mobiles. I'm more productive on them, which is why i switched in the first place. Different strokes for different folks, others don't want/need/like the features OS X provides and I have no issues with that. My issue is with the bad choice made in the add. hell, odds are they could have specced a Precision or Latitude (or whatever HP's equivalents are), given her a $2000 budget and STILL beat the Macbook Pro. At least that would have been something of a fair comparison.

re: “I guess I'm not kewl enough to be a Mac person”

dovella — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 18:43:43 GMT

@Jordan

You re ROCK!!!!!!

Thanks!!!

re: “I guess I'm not kewl enough to be a Mac person”

Jordan — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 15:03:36 GMT

@nick

I am a systems engineer for a massive institution with over 100 physical locations and around 100,000 users.

We have plenty of macs in our environment, from the newest unibody macbook pros to flavored imacs that are slower than my phone.

Here are some (real) facts for you.

1) We have over 2 times the hardware failures/support calls on under-warranty apples vs any other OEM (Dell, Lenovo, and a local oem we use)

2) A hardware replacement takes, on average, 5 times longer on an Apple than a comparable PC OEM machine.

3) Our techs are trained, ACMTs and other certs and know what they are doing, yet the time required to replace parts remains ridiculous.

4) OSX is not enterprise ready. Hell, it lacked even things such as Packet Signing until 10.5. Don't get me started on the fact that companys have to buy third-party software at hundreds of thousands of dollars to get decent domain functionality out of ANY apple computer.

5) the hardware in an Apple is not superior, its simply marked up. Did you forget that ASUS makes the apple laptops? Almost any part you find inside an Apple (aside proprietary peices like the case) can be found in many other laptops, that dont cost a fortune.

You can spend less than a thousand dollars and have a very nice laptop. Generally you pay 2x or more for an Apple than you do a ocmparable PC for the same operational ability (excluding enterprise ability, bc OSX cuts your knees out from under you there)

Quit sippin the apple juice so hard.

re: “I guess I'm not kewl enough to be a Mac person”

dovella — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 14:25:45 GMT

Mr. Keith

the real problem of "PC"Windows (notebook) is crapware . In all my PC and friends PC i format and reinstall Vista CLEAN and avery people love IT .

I hope in Windows 7 Microsoft can take a different position with OEM partners.

I sent feedback to Sinofksy asking the clean OEM Download for PC distributed OEM without DVD

re: “I guess I'm not kewl enough to be a Mac person”

Keith Combs — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 05:11:20 GMT

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Let me first of all be clear about my blog policy as it relates to comments. I moderate all comments. What this means is that I may choose not to approve a comment. Or I may choose to edit and approve only a portion.

With that in mind, I did decide to go ahead and approve nick's latest comment in full.

That doesn't mean I agree with it. I don't. The primary reason I don't agree with the comments I am seeing are because they lack detail and are really just trolling for another response. That isn't how I roll so if you want to comment, make sure you bring facts to support your comments.

Since I have not personally used the HP Lauren picked, I have no basis to form an opinion about the machine.

re: “I guess I'm not kewl enough to be a Mac person”

nick — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 04:14:40 GMT

@Jordan, as somebody who has used both quite extensively, and is a Windows Admin by day (primarily from an iMac!), I will say that quite often they aren't lying. They often bend the truth to an extent, and there is obviously marketing going on, and they tout their own horn a little loudly sometimes. But, I love how when I ask somebody to quantify "overpriced computer" I hear circular arguments that generally lead back to cheap people buy cheap machines; they aren't Apple's target audience anyway. Microsoft can't respond to Apple's ads in turn, because for the most part they poke fun at holes in Windows' big enough to drive semis through ("You are coming to a sad realization, cancel or allow?"). So they resort to poorly researched comparisons presented in biased light, wrapped in outright lies and misinformation. Part of that is marketing, sure, but again, back to what I said. Its one thing to tout a product you feel is superior and make claims. Its another to prey on people's ignorance that its an Apples-to-Apples comparison and that that HP is _JUST_AS_GOOD_ as any 17" Macbook Pro.

Bottom line, comparing a cheap HP laptop with a crappy screen, last-gen processor, memory, and hard drive, that i would guess on its best day could manage 3 hours of battery life that would rapidly degrade due to poor quality control, a horrible warranty, crap bundled software (i'm going to stop here, but pretend that this list goes on for a while, because it could) to a Macbook Pro is like comparing a Ford Fiesta to a Chevy Corvette and claiming that the Fiesta is superior because it costs less.

The chick was broke and bought what she could afford, that's the story of a lot of people's lives right now. Good marketing? Perhaps, given the level general consumer-ignorance and the closed or shallow pockets people have right now. Ridiculously off-base, unrealistic, bad taste, and bad form? Definitely.

re: “I guess I'm not kewl enough to be a Mac person”

dovella — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 00:31:18 GMT

Hi Mr. Keith ,

pls see here :D

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=63071488236&ref=nf