The fine folks at AOL Shopping, in their infinite wisdom, have summarized a quarter-century of debate in their feature on whether you should buy a Mac or a PC.
The bottom line? "You should buy a PC, if you already own a lot of PC software that you want to continue using. [...] If you want to do artistic work on your computer (photography, video editing, graphic design), you'll find Macs much more intuitive." Of course, that glosses over the fact that Apple makes excellent Windows PCs that will happily run your legacy Win32 applications.
Still, this seems almost reasonable, until you get to this (practically throwaway) sentence: "If money is not an issue, go with a Mac."
Yeah -- 1991 called, and they want their talking point back. Study after study has shown that the total cost of ownership of a Mac is less than that of a comparable PC. This includes post-purchase factors like software, repairs, and upgrades. Agreed: the up-front price is higher (in many cases), but over time, you spend less money owning a Mac.
AOL Shopping suggests the opposite is true, simply due to Microsoft's sluggish OS release schedule. Having to update your OS once every seven years, to them, is less costly than upgrading every year or so. They neglect to consider the cost of your time in support calls and aggregate ease-of-use savings.
Even so, if their poll is any indication, two thirds of their readers still plan on buying a Mac.
Disclaimer: AOL is the parent company of Weblogs, Inc. and TUAW.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
6-24-2008 @ 3:35PM
dfnj123 said...
Way to go TUAW... dissing your own parent company!
Reply
6-24-2008 @ 10:16PM
LiqwidZero said...
Family Guy, The Simpson's, and Futurama all do that to Fox.
6-25-2008 @ 2:20PM
Pep said...
Yeah yeah. Especially not spending any money on Mac hardware upgrades. Because many Macs are NOT upgradeable.
6-26-2008 @ 8:24AM
eric f. said...
Disclaimer: It is our parent company we are calling " morons".
6-24-2008 @ 3:37PM
Eric said...
The OS upgrade argument is really not a factor...
Apple is still supporting Panther for some apps, are they not? That was released in 2003.
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6-24-2008 @ 3:42PM
Joe Sak said...
AOL sucks worse than any opinion anyone has about MS or Apple.
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6-24-2008 @ 3:46PM
Justin said...
AOL, what a Joke.
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6-24-2008 @ 3:48PM
Fred said...
If anybody is taking any kind of advice on ANYTHING from AOL they deserve what they get.
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6-24-2008 @ 3:57PM
anthony said...
This coming from AOL, a company that's just as outdated as the argument. Seriously, who decided this was news worthy?
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6-24-2008 @ 3:58PM
JohnPQ said...
For once, I'm in total agreement with AOL. Apple can't even update the Mac mini once in a year. There's nothing going on the Apple desktop of things. Well, unless you like staring at the glare off an iMac. Even the laptop designs are getting long in tooth. Plus, you can go into any old store and buy a comparable laptop for $799. And most of them have 15" screens. OS X is basically Apple's only trump card.
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6-24-2008 @ 9:05PM
LuminousNerd said...
Wow, way to say a bunch of stupid things that don't have anything to do with the article! Where can I learn to be as cool as you?
6-24-2008 @ 4:02PM
Bender bending Rodriguez said...
And the argument that Macs are better for graphic professionals is so outdated it's pathetic. Adobe has been putting it's best engineers on the Windows side for more than a decade.
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6-24-2008 @ 4:04PM
Andrew said...
Uhh, you realize that the "study after study" links you posted are basically all referring to the same source?
Oh and it isn't really a study at all, it's the opinion of a security researcher who begins with a false assertion that Mac's and PC's cost "about the same" which I think we'd all agree isn't the case.
I like Mac's, but leave off the FUD please.
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6-24-2008 @ 5:28PM
Neil said...
I couldn't have put it better.
6-25-2008 @ 7:39AM
Viper007Bond said...
Hear hear. This Mac fanboyism can be really annoying.
Go on true merits, not BS.
6-24-2008 @ 4:07PM
Brian Burns said...
Look how dark and gloomy that windows icon is compared to that shiny finder icon! MAC4lyfelawlz
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6-24-2008 @ 4:12PM
dpacania said...
what's AOL? is that what the mini-ethernet port is on my old DeLL for?
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6-24-2008 @ 4:34PM
Brandon Martinez said...
mini-ethernet, ha! i laughed out loud on that one.
6-24-2008 @ 4:43PM
Luna Lovegood said...
"Yeah -- 1991 called, and they want their talking point back."
BWAHAHAHA!
Where do you guys come up with this stuff?
/wipes tear from eye
Here's one free of charge: "Windoze"!
Reply
6-24-2008 @ 5:06PM
Greg said...
Wow.
Well, there's a reason no one uses aol for anything other than IM anymore.
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