Why do you buy Apple products?

I was a mac guy until windows 7, blu ray, and trimmed ssds. However I must agree on the ipad 2 and iphone 4 being marvelous products mostly unmatched by current competitors when you consider the overall package of hardware quality and software quality. Sure android is more progressive in software features in some areas, WebOS has a more fluid Software flow and feel, etc, but I love the solid feel of the iOS hardware, software wise the iOS is more polished and optimized even if simplistic to a fault, the latter of which both a plus and a minus. The apps are the nail in the coffin for iOS competitors IMHO. But don't get me wrong, I totally dug my Palm Pre and Droid Incredible for their strengths, but they had more weaknesses for me than the iOS stuff.

So custom pc desktop all the way, if nothing if not for gaming and all, I dig the iOS stuff, but laptop wise is a tough choice. Apple has the hardware down so good, but I would miss trimmed ssds for example. Bootcamp did not work for me last time I tried :( ... For me at the entry level MacBook Pro price point is too good for the money, I'm going Mac. But at 2 grand, things from Sony and leveno start looking sweet too.

And the iMug is the best for coffee, hands down. Don't even bother with the windows mug, the coffee just leaks out of the windows :)
 
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I was a mac guy until windows 7, blu ray, and trimmed ssds. However I must agree on the ipad 2 and iphone 4 being marvelous products mostly unmatched by current competitors when you consider the overall package of hardware quality and software quality. Sure android is more progressive in software features in some areas, WebOS has a more fluid Software flow and feel, etc, but I love the solid feel of the iOS hardware, software wise the iOS is more polished and optimized even if simplistic to a fault, the latter of which both a plus and a minus. The apps are the nail in the coffin for iOS competitors IMHO. But don't get me wrong, I totally dug my Palm Pre and Droid Incredible for their strengths, but they had more weaknesses for me than the iOS stuff.

So custom pc desktop all the way, if nothing if not for gaming and all, I dig the iOS stuff, but laptop wise is a tough choice. Apple has the hardware down so good, but I would miss trimmed ssds for example. Bootcamp did not work for me last time I tried :( ... For me at the entry level MacBook Pro price point is too good for the money, I'm going Mac. But at 2 grand, things from Sony and leveno start looking sweet too.

Trimmed SSDs?

Trim works on OSX now, and it'll be native in 2 months in Lion...
 
For me at the entry level MacBook Pro price point is too good for the money, I'm going Mac. But at 2 grand, things from Sony and leveno start looking sweet too.

This is something that I see with Mac and PC laptops. For the price Macbooks offer a great mid-ranged product but with PC hardware there's simply options on the low and high end that don't exist in the Mac world. You can pay a lot less OR a lot more for a PC laptop than an Mackbook.
 
Trimmed SSDs?

Trim works on OSX now, and it'll be native in 2 months in Lion...

The interesting thing IMO is that Snow Leopard didn't show any issues with slowdown w/o TRIM. Numerous tests indicated that 10.6 didn't seem to need TRIM. No idea why, and AFAIK nobody figured out why, possibly something to do with the file system of OSX. But yeah, TRIM is enabled in 10.6, and will probably be standard in 10.7.
 
I buy Apple for many reasons. The primary reasons are this:

Sturdy and reliable products.
Stable, fun, and beautiful OS.
I have always had good customer service.
The option to triple boot OS's (legally, you hackintoshers ;) )
Battery life on their products.
Sleek and sexiness of the computers.
:)

I dont hate windows or pc's, I like them and they are as good as you make them, and if you enjoy them, awesome, but I prefer my macs. Two each his own.
 
This thread is about personal reasons, so criticizing each others reasons and saying one is better then the other is silly and not what this thread is about.

Having used PC's since Windows 3.1, working in IT for the past 15 years and running my own IT consulting company for the past 6 years, I recently switched over to Apple. In my opinion, windows was great when XP showed up, before that it wasn't so great, although on the right hardware NT could be rock solid. These days PC users still fight with windows issues, although much less now with windows 7, spyware, viruses etc. Since switching to OS X, I have had nothing but fun and understood why so many people switch from PC's and why many people in general love OS X. For me its about simplicity, stability and overall general ease of use. By comparison, in my opinion and by contrast, using windows is a freaking chore compared to OS X. I will give Microsoft credit, they have done a fantastic job with windows 7 but I just can't use it anymore on a day to day basis. I still sell, support and for my customers, use windows when I have to. As for Apple products, they are well constructed, look great and have fantastic support as well as brick and mortar stores you can actually go to in person rather then some voice in another country on the other end of the phone. As someone already said, to each his own.
 
Native on OEM drives. No word on nonOEM drive except that TRIM is not supported in the dev editions.

Yeah, well, "officially supported" by Apple OEM drives, it took me . . . 30 seconds or so to enable it for my Vertex2. I thought this was [H]ardforums though?
 
I buy Apple for many reasons. The primary reasons are this:

Sturdy and reliable products.
Stable, fun, and beautiful OS.
I have always had good customer service.
The option to triple boot OS's (legally, you hackintoshers ;) )
Battery life on their products.
Sleek and sexiness of the computers.
:)

I dont hate windows or pc's, I like them and they are as good as you make them, and if you enjoy them, awesome, but I prefer my macs. Two each his own.

I could easily triple boot any PC... it just might not have OSX on it. Shit ill sextboot any PC
 
Wow, I'm really impressed with everyone, this is exactly what I wanted, a thread that would give valid points that otherwise would take me days, and days and search after search to find out. Not to mention I would have only found extremely opinionated statements rather than the actual functionality of the product.

Thank you to everyone that has kept the tone a knowledgeable one, and not a fussy one.
 
I'll only spend my own $$ on a desktop that's a self-built PC.
I'll only spend my own $$ on a laptop that's an MBP (or MBA if a 15" model is available).
If work wants me to use something else and pays for it, I will.

:)
 
I don't buy Apple products. Nothing against them, I just have no need.

-Not a fan of Mac OS. Yes I have really tried it, used to do support for hardware on Mac OS. Plus I am DIY and part of being that is getting the most bang for your buck(ala custom Windows PC)
-Not a fan of the iPhone OS. The iPhone has nice hardware, just don't really care for the features of iOS
-When I need an MP3 player, I just grab my phone and listen to Pandora
-iPads are cool if you don't mind iOS. I really don't have a need for a tablet device yet though

Pretty much sums it up. I see the appeal of Apple products, they just aren't for me(yet?).
 
E.G. There are a couple of companies that produce a cradle kit to remove the optical drive from the MPB and install a HDD. Some, like the MCE Optidrive, even ship you an external USB enclosure that fits the superdrive coming out of the MBP.


you can get those for PC's, nothing new.

Ram, same thing for PC's... apple, dell, hp, none of them make hardware, they just stick their name on it.
 
you can get those for PC's, nothing new.

Ram, same thing for PC's... apple, dell, hp, none of them make hardware, they just stick their name on it.

Oh I know, but the DVD->HDD cradles are a lot fewer/further between on models that htey work with. The optibay fits in every Unibody MBP ever made (and most of the pre-unibody ones as well).

Similarly with the RAM/HDD/etc. I wasn't commenting on "how much better apple was" but rather how simple apple was, as one of the very common complaints with apple is "how hard they are to upgrade".

Though I will say, I've worked on/upgraded/repaired a few laptops in my day, and I've not seen a HDD cradle I like as much as the one in my new MBP.
 
Oh I know, but the DVD->HDD cradles are a lot fewer/further between on models that htey work with. The optibay fits in every Unibody MBP ever made (and most of the pre-unibody ones as well).

Similarly with the RAM/HDD/etc. I wasn't commenting on "how much better apple was" but rather how simple apple was, as one of the very common complaints with apple is "how hard they are to upgrade".

Though I will say, I've worked on/upgraded/repaired a few laptops in my day, and I've not seen a HDD cradle I like as much as the one in my new MBP.

I think as far as laptops go, Apple is just as easy to upgrade as any other thin and light. Everyone solders the proc to the board, but lets you change out drives and memory. One advantage Apple has is that they only have 5 laptops, so the parts are easy to find and iFixit has great guides. The downside is the parts are more expensive.

When it comes to desktops, I don't think the iMac is any harder to upgrade than any other all-in-one machine. People hate on "Apple" for being hard to upgrade, but really their hate is more about all-in-ones. The fact of the matter is that an all-in-one is always more expensive and harder to upgrade. Apple has just chosen to make all its consumer grade desktops all-in-ones. The Mac Pro, however, is ludicrously priced.
 
I think as far as laptops go, Apple is just as easy to upgrade as any other thin and light. Everyone solders the proc to the board, but lets you change out drives and memory. One advantage Apple has is that they only have 5 laptops, so the parts are easy to find and iFixit has great guides. The downside is the parts are more expensive.

When it comes to desktops, I don't think the iMac is any harder to upgrade than any other all-in-one machine. People hate on "Apple" for being hard to upgrade, but really their hate is more about all-in-ones. The fact of the matter is that an all-in-one is always more expensive and harder to upgrade. Apple has just chosen to make all its consumer grade desktops all-in-ones. The Mac Pro, however, is ludicrously priced.

Actually, the Mac Pro is usually pretty spot on, if you compare the server grade hardware it comes with, to other server grade hardware from other options. At least that's what people who actually care about ECC RAM, Xeon proc's and other things tell me. I have to take their word on that one, because I don't know/care about such things. /shrug.

I do know the Mac Pro isn't meant to be a consumer machine, it's meant to be a high-end workstation. And it does that well, and w/o much price-premium, if you're comparing apples-to-apples. But a mid-range gaming system beats it, but those will also beat any ECC/Xeon high end workstation from any other manufacturer.
 
The Mac Pro, however, is ludicrously priced.
Thinking in terms of a consumer machine, yes, as a professional workstation, no.

Dell Precision T7500 - add X5650 option, 6GB (6x1GB) ram option, 1GB ATI FirePro V5800 option (roughly equivalent price wise to 5770), add 1TB/32MB cache HDD option
~$5800
Lenovo configured similarly comes out to about $4k.

Comes out pretty close with the $5k 12 Core Mac Pro when you add in Apple Care to meet the 3 year warranty.
 
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Everyone solders the proc to the board

That's not true at all. I just pulled a P8400 from a Toshiba laptop the other day.
Soldering the CPU on the board is one of my biggest complaints against apple. But its not a very big complaint :)
 
That's not true at all. I just pulled a P8400 from a Toshiba laptop the other day.
Soldering the CPU on the board is one of my biggest complaints against apple. But its not a very big complaint :)

It's worth noting that Apple didn't solder the CPUs on early Mac Minis so you can put a C2D in a Core Duo Mac Mini :) The current iMacs also aren't soldered and people have swapped the i5 for an i7 without issue.
 
i have yet to work on a laptop that has the CPU soldered in, except netbooks recently. from dell, toshiba's, HP and 1 lenovo.

Apple doesn't want people getting around there method of making you buy a whole new laptop to get more performance from it.
 
Apple doesn't want people getting around there method of making you buy a whole new laptop to get more performance from it.
Which is why you can upgrade the RAM and storage at any time, right? I think it's more of an engineering rather than business decision. ;)
 
Apple doesn't want people getting around there method of making you buy a whole new laptop to get more performance from it.
This is the same reason other notebook manufacturers don't solder in their dedicated GPUs, correct?
 
OK i get the software but you still need a blu-ray player right?

Yes and a decrypter for encrypted discs it would seem according to the site:

Additionally MakeMKV can instantly stream decrypted video without intermediate conversion to wide range of players, so you may watch Blu-ray and DVD discs with your favorite player on your favorite OS or on your favorite device.
 
Yes and a decrypter for encrypted discs it would seem according to the site:
MakeMKV is a decrypter. The description is stating that it will stream video that it decrypts, not that it can only stream video that is already decrypted (or, rather, unencrypted).
 
MakeMKV is a decrypter. The description is stating that it will stream video that it decrypts, not that it can only stream video that is already decrypted (or, rather, unencrypted).

That's not entirely clear from the quote that I posted that that's what it does but upon further research it does indeed decrypt. At one point I know that MakeMKV didn't do this as the only thing at that did decrypt BDs was AnyDVD.

So now that that's cleared up, any 3D BD or CableCard support for Macs?
 
heatless - everyone gets your stance. ;)

I don't have any Macs and I'm simply asking questions about their capabilities. I was unaware about MakeMKV decryption capabilities obviously. I learned something and the neat thing about MakeMKV is that its multi-platform and it's useful to Mac, Linux AND Windows users. So by simply asking a question and getting an answer about Macs I know have a new tool to add to my Windows arsenal. Two birds, one stone.

And so yeah, what's wrong with asking about what Macs can do? I would think the Apple faithful would love to stick it to Windows guys like me touting their capabilities.
 
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