From: bcoleman@hayes.com (Bill Coleman)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.misc
Subject: Re: MACS COST TOO MUCH (NOT!)
Date: 9 Sep 92 14:33:08 EDT
Organization: Hayes Microcomputer Products, Norcross, GA

In article <1992Sep8.234432.29305@nwnexus.WA.COM>, kanefsky@halcyon.com (Steve Kanefsky) writes:
> General comment:  There's a lot of discussion of "PCs" vs "Macs," and
> there's a lot of confusion because people mix up PC hardware with PC
> software, operating systems, file systems, etc.  

Steve, I see where this is leading. You want to separate comparisons from
hardware and software. 

*YOU CANNOT SEPARATE THE PARTS OF A COMPUTER*

Would you independantly compare the engine and the seats of a car? No, you
must look at the whole. Computer hardware is so much expensive silicon
space heater without software. And software can't do one heck of a lot
without computer hardware.

> Almost all of the arguments
> claiming that PCs are cheaper refer solely to hardware, and not to OS's or
> software.  

Hardware is useless without software. Mac software is only available 
(realistically) on the Mac. Since the Mac software is one of the strengths
of the Mac, I see no reason to exclude software from the discussion. It would
confuse, rather than simplify the issue.

So, even if you do buy a cheap, fast PC. Big deal. You need software to do
anything useful with it. The quality of the software available for PCs is 
lousy compared to that for the Mac. If you bought a equivalently fast
(but more expensive) Mac, you'd have better software. Indeed, the software
might be so much better you could actually get along nicely with a slower
(but just as cheap) Mac. Hence the perpetual flame war.

Further, the hardware being compared is never equivalent. The Mac comes
standard with stuff like sound interfaces, SCSI, serial ports, desktop
interfaces, etc. Not to mention universal system software support of all
these bits of hardware so all applications can use them. On the PC,
these things are extras. Even when you can fit out a PC with these 
hardware devices, the software support isn't there -- and cannot be bought
at any price!

> NeXT is porting their OS to the PC hardware platform.  Think
> about how many of your arguments wouldn't make sense if you were running
> NeXTstep on a PC.  

Just as soon as NeXT starts shipping such an OS, that will have to be part
of the evaluation. Of course, you'll need a more expensive PC to run NeXTstep
anyway. And it has yet to be shown if the NeXTstep UI is significantly 
better than the Mac UI. 

> To counter the "PCs are cheaper" arguments, we have to
> demonstrate that the hardware itself is inferior, and thus that any
> conceivable operating system running on a PC is at a disadvantage.

Why? PCs can only run those operating systems available for PCs. There's
not an uncountable number of these, there are only a handful. PC advocates
frequently tout the advantages of several of these OSes, even though they
may personally only use one. 

The OS used on the overwhelming majority of PCs is DOS. Period. A small
percentage of these DOS users are also running Windows. 

> I'll leave it to the experts to expound on the many advantages of the
> Motorola architecture over the Intel architecture, and just address
> more down-to-earth issues like construction quality and attention
> to detail.

I find these endless Intel vs Motorola arguments a) inaccurate and b)
pointless. Inaccurate because the overwhelming majority of postings contains
erroneous summaries about one or the other processor, or makes grossly 
simplifying statements. The recent 80286 = 68020 made me retch.

Pointless because we are rapidly approaching the time when the hardware
will cease to matter. The average user doesn't give one whit what kind of
processor he is running. Nor does it really matter. Apple is talking about
running the Mac OS on a RISC CPU. When that happens, where will all of
these Moto / Intel be?

> I don't think there's any doubt that, by some measures, PC hardware is
> cheaper than Mac hardware.  

That depends on exactly what you are measuring. If you are just looking at
a box labelled "computer" and comparing price tags, you might come to this
erroneous conculsion.

> Even after setting up many dozens of Macs, I still love this stuff.  I've
> set up an equal number of PCs and they are a royal pain in comparison.

This is the real test. How do people FEEL about their experience with one
or the other machine. How do you compare that? Perhaps PCs are cheaper.
But if you feel miserable after owning one, the few extra bucks you pay for
a Mac might be well worth it.

-- 
Bill Coleman, AA4LR                ! CIS: 76067,2327    AppleLink: D1958
Principal Software Engineer        ! Packet Radio: AA4LR @ W4QO
Hayes Microcomputer Products, Inc. ! UUCP: uunet!hayes!bcoleman
POB 105203 Atlanta, GA 30348 USA   ! Internet: bcoleman%hayes@uunet.uu.net
Disclaimer: "My employer doesn't pay me to have opinions."
Quote: "The same light shines on vineyards that makes deserts." -Steve Hackett.

Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.misc