It’s time for another podcast! Yes, we haven’t been keeping up the normal 2 week schedule but hey, there’s a lot of stuff going on, and we don’t get paid to do the podcast, so unfortunately it sometimes becomes a backburner item.
In this thrilling episode we discuss Apple VS Microsoft, Laptops VS Desktops, and – believe it or not – POLITICS! With all the hubbub going on with the banking bailouts and the election we just couldn’t resist…
Listen to Benheck.com Podcast Episode 50
Plus an awesome contest, in honor of Mega Man 9 –Design the lamest Mega Man villain robot ever!
- Must include artwork, the primary weapon and their main weakness.
- Bonus points for making an 8-bit accurate “pixelated” version.
- Even more bonus points for using an existing item ending in “man” as the name. Such as “Congress Man” (prints money to shoot at you) or “Leslie Man” (emits vomit on Steve Carrell).
- Contest ends upon publication of the next podcast (roughly 2 to 3 weeks).
The 2 best entries will win a Guitar Hero III wireless guitar with a custom Benheck.com faceplate! I have a bunch of these left over from the foot pedal project, so I figured why not unload a few? You can even choose Xbox 360 or PS3 version!
Email your entries using this link. Good luck and enjoy!
you guys are right apple is totally overrated. people just buy their computers because they think they somehow make them cooler. and i’m a laptop kind of guy since i can go anywhere in my house to somewhere more comfortable like an armchair in front of the tv.
You all may want to do a fact check on the DRM free music. I do believe it is now $0.99 for the DRM free stuff. I am a Mac user and I still use XP but I prefer my Mac because Windows always seems to run really slow for me. I don’t know maybe I just have bad Windows luck.
Will do Lincoln. I suppose these other vendors forced iTunes hand, which is good=competition.
-Ben
I just want a faceplate (PS3, pretty please ben) 🙁
Will it be modded to not break when you play it? I mean sometimes the strum bar breaks, also the hammy bar.
The reason why Macs don’t get viruses is not market share. Windows has 80% of the market share and has over 60,000 viruses, Linux has less 2% of the market share and less than 100 viruses, Mac has 21% of the market share and has less than ten viruses.
@Commodore
So how is the # of viruses not a product of market share? The numbers you cite pretty much support what we said.
sorry ben, but photoshop, according to wikipedia, WAS originally Mac exclusive
also, it’s “distros” not “bistros”… but I kind of prefer the term bistro, so, I’ll use that from now on.
My fav opening for the podcast thus far!
The arguments you gave against open source in business are not very valid. Sure, it was irresponsible for the creator of filezilla to add a feature to lock out insecure servers, but any business using filezilla or any other open source software for their mission critical business processes isn’t going to roll out any upgrades without testing first. The biggest reason businesses aren’t adoption open source is that if something goes wrong, they have no one to call.
The other arguments you had against linux had to do with the GUI on the desktop which is completely different than linux on servers.
@Commodore256,
1. Your figures total 103% market share.
2. The PC has had a lot longer to build up those 60,000 viruses than the other platforms
3. The low number of viruses on Macs can absolutely be related to market share. You’re assuming that 20% market share would equal 20% virus share, but that isn’t the case. Most virus writers are going to write for the largest market no matter what the ratio is. It’s not as if for every point market change you lose or gain a virus writer.
Jones, Apple has less market share than Linux and Linux has more Viruses.
By your Logic, Macs should have more viruses because that have more market share.
Brakk, I meant to say “Roughly 20%”, When I type too fast, I leave some stuff accidentally.
Everybody, Even if Market share was involved, wouldn’t it be best to surf the web, do work on a mac or Linux box for now and play games Monopoly OS.
I wish all third party software was cross platform.
Commodore256: You’re making inferences from statistics that don’t necessarily correlate in the manner you’re suggesting. The vast majority of virus’ are written for PC’s, because the vast majority of computers are PCs. There is no such thing as a 100% secure system. The whole notion of saying “operating system X is inferior because there are more viruses, or operation system Y is better because it has less viruses” is so terribly flawed.
Not to mention, I have NO idea where you’ve gotten the idea that “around” 20% of computer users are on Mac systems. Thats absurd. The number is closer to EIGHT percent (citation: http://apple20.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2008/10/01/mac-market-share-hits-record/).
Regarding your suggestion that it would be “better” to surf the internet on a Mac… of course it would be. MacOS is a great product. Anyone who says otherwise has a personal agenda. That however doesn’t mitigate the fact that you’re over paying by at least 50%. Its like saying “wouldn’t it be best to drive a Lexus (MacOS), or a car you built yourself from spare parts (Linux)?” Sure it would be better. Most people don’t have the income to waste money on an operating system with zero learning curve, or the ability/inclination to use an operating system that requires constant maintenance, and upkeep like Linux. Linux people like to say its easy to use, but they’re lying to further their agenda (which they *DO* have).
I can’t afford a Lexus, and I can’t build a car by myself.
So I use Windows. The cheap, and easy alternative.
If you hate Windows… maybe you should reconsider whether its Windows you hate, or Microsoft… and then re-evaluate your life, because hating Microsoft makes you pathetic.
Hey guys, just a couple comments I’d like to make:
First, I agree that Macs have become status symbols and some people buy them just to ‘be cool,’ which is a stupid reason to do anything. Personally though, I’ve been using Macs all my life, and even though I use Windows at work and sometimes at school and very rarely at home I still prefer Mac OS to Windows, I think in the end it comes down to personal preference. I don’t mind paying a little more (more on that later) for a computer that I feel is more reliable and does everything I need. My computer at work gets considerably slower by the end of the day after I’ve restarted in the morning. My Mac desktop can be on for months at a time with no slowdown. I like that.
Anyway, as someone mentioned above, Adobe Products (Illustrator was one of the first) came out on Apple computers first. NeXT (Steve Jobs’ second company after Apple) never really got far enough off the ground to get any kind of exclusive products like that.
Now, as far as cost goes. Ben, you compared the cost of a Mac to the computer you built. I don’t think that’s a fair comparison. Try going to Dell’s website and configure a desktop with the same specs as yours. I bet it costs more. If you spec out a Mac Pro and a Dell Optiplex or XPS workstation with the same specs, you’ll find the cost difference isn’t that much. Same thing with laptops. Yeah you can go out a laptop for $600 or so. Try comparing that to the new MacBooks though. I doubt the $600 laptop will have a discrete graphics card with 256MB of VRAM, a big hard drive, 2GB of RAM, or a bunch of features that come standard on the Apple laptop. Macs are not budget machines, I agree. But you can’t compare them to budget machines and say they should be priced the same when you get more.
Please note I’m not saying Macs are a superior platform or that everyone should use them. Like I said above it’s all up to your preferences. If you like Windows or Linux go ahead. If you don’t like Macs because they’re status symbols or because you don’t like the operating system or for some other justified reason, I can respect that. But there’s a lot of misinformation out there IMO, and I hate to see it perpetuated.
I admit to not having looked into pricing on Dells in a while, but not too long ago (like a year or less) it wasn’t hard to get a damn nice Optiplex for easily under a grand.
As far as the laptops go there are plenty that are well under a grand that wipe the floor with any MacBook’s specs. I’ve been considering getting one looking at them lately at Circuit City.
Right now there is a Toshiba Satellite A305-6857 for $800. It has a 15.4″ screen, 320GB HD, 4GB of RAM, 2GHz Core 2 Duo processor, 358MB of shared video memory, DVD burner, etc. All in all not a bad laptop by any means and at a great price.
http://www.circuitcity.com/ssm/Toshiba-Satellite-A305-S6857-15-4-Widescreen-Laptop-A305S6857/sem/rpsm/oid/215100/rpem/ccd/productDetail.do
Now at Best Buy (since they sell Apple stuff there) the closest match I can find is MacBook Pro with the same 15.4″ screen size, DVD burner, 256Mb VRAM, and slightly better processor at 2.4GHz (Core 2 Duo). It also has a smaller HD (200GB) and half the RAM (2GB). Oh, and a pricetag of $1,600. Exactly double that of the Toshiba.
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=8764429&type=product&id=1203815206412
It is ridiculous. I don’t dispute that Apple makes a good product, but the premium they charge is outrageous. If it were maybe $1,000-$1,100 I could see it, but not $1,600. That’s just a joke.
Apple makes fantastic products. Its entirely the price that makes them inaccessible.
Ben said something to the effect that you could build your own PC for half the price. That sounds about right (although I’ve not personally checked). Black Six (two posts up) says that if you went to Dell, the price would be higher. Of course thats true. As someone who’s used Dell for both of his computers over the last ten years, I’m something of an “expert” (in sarcastic quotes, because if you were an actual expert regarding Dell computers you would be lame and pathetic). When I bought my last computer, which was relatively recently, and certainly in this last generation of chip-sets, I looked very seriously into Mac. I like Mac. I like the way the company works. I like the operating system (OSX is a great system). However *ANY* Mac… down to the bottom of the line Mac Mini… was going to cost me at least 1.5x as much as the equivalent PC from Dell.
That means a $1500 PC would have been easily over $2250 on a Mac.
Why would I pay that much? What about the Mac system means I should pay the extra 750 dollars?
Because I have to reboot it more then once every few months? 750 dollars?
Because I don’t get that one noticeable virus every ten years (my track record with Windows)? 750 dollars?
Because I can’t brag about having a Mac? 750 dollars?
Seven hundred and Fifty Dollars.
I’m not sure if thats a lot of money to everyone reading this. Three quarters of a thousand dollars. To me, thats a lot of money. If that amount of money means nothing to you… if you can just throw it at a *DIFFERENT* billionaire, because you want a computer that only has to be rebooted every few months, if being able to tell people you own a Mac is that important to you… then by all means spend the extra SEVEN HUNDRED AND FIFTY DOLLARS.
Thats your choice.
I just think its a shame that so many people… when their heart is truly splayed open… make that decision because they think owning a Mac is “cool”.
Other than the “cool” factor, a Mac is the exact same thing as a PC. Yet people are willing to overpay for the half of that equation that doesn’t do as much as the other half.
Yet some people still insist isn’t about the “cool” factor?
Right.
Good luck with that.
I can has Podcast #51?
Jones, since you admitted yourself the two laptops weren’t an exact comparison, I took the time to spec some stuff out on Apple and Dell’s websites:
Apple Mac Pro: $5,898 (http://www.bzpower.com/black6/mac_vs_pc/Mac_Pro.pdf)
Dell Precision Workstation T7400: $6,767 (http://www.bzpower.com/black6/mac_vs_pc/Dell_Workstation.pdf)
I gave them both the closest specs I could as far as processor, RAM, harddrive, and video card (this was the thing that blew the budget on them both). The Mac is about $1,800 CHEAPER?! How could it possibly be?
Apple MacBook Pro: $2,827 (http://www.bzpower.com/black6/mac_vs_pc/MacBook_Pro.pdf)
Dell Latitude E6500: $2,120 (http://www.bzpower.com/black6/mac_vs_pc/Dell_Laptop_1.pdf)
Del Precision Mobile M4400: $2,331 (http://www.bzpower.com/black6/mac_vs_pc/Dell_Laptop_2.pdf)
The Latitude didn’t have a video card, so the Precision is the closer match. It’s about $500 cheaper, which is still significant but not half the price by any means.
I tried to find that Toshiba on their online store but couldn’t. Likely it’s an old model that’s been discontinued, hence the good price. I’m not saying it’s not a great deal, it is, but there’s a reason for it.
As I said in my first comment, yes there is a premium for buying Apple products (in some cases), and if that’s not worth it for you, no one’s making you buy it. When you compare two similar products, however, it seems to me that the price difference isn’t as huge as some make it out to be.