Why I hate Apple
Posted : Wednesday May 20th, 2009

Before I get started here I just want to say this. If you have a Mac and like it, then that's great and personally I would prefer just to run some Linux variant all the time myself. This post is not about why an existing and happy Mac user should use another kind of computer.

What this post is about is blowing up some stupid myths that are trotted out time and time again by Apple fanbois (and girls) to try and convince PC users that they should drop their PC for a Mac. Because frankly I get tired reading the same old nonsense over and over. So from now on when I see it I am just going to link to this post.

Myth : Mac hardware is better/different

Truth : No, Mac uses the same basic hardware as any old PC.

This myth is a good place to start because there was a time when it was actually true. Once upon a time Macs did use a different processor architecture (ppc) than PCs (x86). The RISC (Mac) and CISC (Intel) architecture debate is really beyond the scope of discussion here but suffice to say that RISC did offer certain benefits at a certain level of performance but with increases in speed and improvements and other changes the long term win has gone to CISC. This is why, among other reasons that since 2006 now Apple has been using Intel (x86-CISC) style processors in their products. All of which means the hardware is the same stuff as is in any PC.

Now there are still a few complications, like the fact that Apple likes to use proprietary outputs for video and various data exchange formats but the bottom line is that (a) the value of these proprietary formats from a customer perspective is at best highly dubious and (b) these relatively minor differences aside the hardware in a Mac and a PC are in fact the same and are the same in the most important way, the processor.

And a quick note on the dubious comment above. It would seem that most of the reason that Apple uses so much proprietary bits is so that they can force obsolescence quickly and force customers to constantly purchase the "newest" Apple hardware bits that will then in turn be made "obsolete" soon enough. Essentially Apple uses proprietary hardware so that they can use obsolescence as a marketing and sales tool.

Myth : Mac is cost comparitive with PCs

Truth : No, to get a reasonably equivalent system on a Mac vs a PC will cost you at least twice as much and usually much, much more.

This myth is a funny one because it doesn't get explictly trotted out by Mac cheerleaders but is almost always implictly present, along the lines of "Mac might cost a *bit* more". Double or triple the price is a bit? It's no wonder that the cheerleaders don't want you to know the truth about this one, although frankly I think most of the time a lot of these people are pretty divorced from the truth/reality to begin with.

At any rate apples to apples (ha ha), or as close as one can get, price comparisons are important because for a lot of standard users managing costs will mean reducing the performance capability of the system. It does nobody any favours to try and price compare a Mac and PC when the PC has two or three times the raw processing power. But let's look at a real world example shall we? (All prices listed below are Canadian dollars)

A new PC from Dell, with a quad core 2.66 GHz processor, 8GB of memory running at 1066MHz, 1 TB (1000 GB) hard drive, 512 MB graphics card and 24" flat panel display prices in today at $1914 before tax.

The same hardware from Apple, same processor (quad core at same speed), same memory (speed and amount), same size hard drive, graphics card and display prices in today at $4617 before tax.

Yes that's right, for the exact same hardware configurations Apple charges $2,703 more than Dell. And while $2,700 may or may not sound like a lot to you consider this. For the same price as the Apple equivalent you could purchase 2 of the exact same hardware based machines from Dell and still have $789 left over. Any way you look at it that is not an insignificant price difference.

But is it worth it? Well it's hard to see why it would be. If you are a long term Apple user and use Apple based software then really the Apple is probably a better choice for you, and the more than double cost is simply the cost of your doing business. But for someone choosing between a PC and Mac with all other things being equal? Simply put the answer is no. The more than double price markup is due to one thing, the Apple logo on the side of the case. Now for me a logo stamped on the side of a case is not worth $2,700 but perhaps it is for you.

One last point on this myth I want to make, just to short cut any whining. I chose a Dell machine with Vista to get a reasonably well known company and some equivalence with support and additional services between the two prices but you can do much better in price with a PC if you like. Starting by running a Linux OS instead. So the truth of the matter is if you feel the Mac price I listed is somehow unfair to Apple you should keep in mind that the PC price is actually relatively high but I tried to be as fair as possible to Mac.

Myth : Macs don't crash and PCs do

Truth : Happy little commericals aside this is pure and simply marketing rubbish.

It currently seems pretty "cool" to trash PCs, or at least Windows based PCs because unlike Macs they just crash "all the time". But is that actually true?

This myth actually has two parts, the first part of the myth is that PC == Windows, which considering Macs are running PC hardware has a certain irony. I'm pretty sure though that when Mac fanbois preach this myth they're not including my PC running Ubuntu. But for the purposes of argument let's just pretend, like those fanbois, that Linux doesn't exist and move on to the second part of the myth.

So does Windows crash more than Mac? This is a tricky one to answer, not because it's true but because it's difficult to prove either way. Certainly both sides have put out lots of propaganda studies to show that the statement is true or false. My personal experience suggest that the opposite is in fact true (Macs crash more than PCs). But putting aside propaganda and my personal experience what are we left with?

The reality of crashes is that much more than the OS the software used and how it is used matters. One of the problems in proving this myth one way or another is that one would need to compare equals and you just can't. Software that was originally written for Mac and ported to Windows is just going to be less buggy on Mac. Conversely software written on Windows and later ported to Mac is just going to be more buggy on Mac. And the expertise and behaviour of individual users is very hard to quantify. All of this provides the grains of truth that fuel this myth and those who would argue the opposite, it's not hard to picture how a long term Mac user with Mac originating software could find Windows a crashy and frustrating experience, but the fact is the reverse is true as well.

At the end of the day what one is really left with is that in terms of stability there is no major inherent difference, improvement or flaw between Mac and Windows. The OS's are different, and so is the software, and so is the experience of users interacting with the systems. But different just means different, not "better".

Myth: Macs are safer than PCs

Truth: Partially and in a significantly noticably way true but in total mostly false

There is no place to begin other than discussing viruses and there's no question that an unprotected PC is far, far, far more likely to be infected with a virus than an equivalent Mac. So on this front the myth is in fact true.

The problem is, and this is where this myth becomes the most dangerous of all, is that viruses alone aren't the only issue and often the reasons for PCs being more likely to be infected is badly misunderstood.

The reason that a PC is more likely to get a virus than a Mac is simply this, there are far more viruses written to infect PCs than there are to infect Mac. This is really a simple point but the truth of it seems to be lost on a lot of fanbois. Here's a quote from the Apple site in a FAQ question about are Macs secure...

While no computer connected to the Internet is 100 percent immune to viruses and spyware, the Mac is built on a solid UNIX foundation and designed with security in mind.

There are some truth in that statement that seem to slip fanbois attention. Starting with the fact that you cannot make a claim that Apple's are 100% virus, hacker, etc proof. They are not. And it's also interesting to note the UNIX reference which really means that any time one trots out a Linux version as an alternate to Mac the "security" issue dies a quick, inglorious death.

But the sad part of this myth is how so not true it really is. The virus issue is very noticable point, but is virus protection all that makes a computer secure. No.

Let me repeat that in case it isn't fully clear. No.

No operating system for example is going to protect a user from phishing attacks, or personal identity theft, etc. The fact is that the only person who can protect a user from those sorts of problems is, the user. And this is where this myth gets dangerous because there seems to be this idea among some that if you use a Mac you are somehow "safe" from all these sorts of unpleasantnesses but you are not. To my mind encouraging users to think that they don't have to be or shouldn't have to be vigilant because they chose OS X over OS Y is a really, serious mistake. Security of your personal information is something every user must always be vigilant about no matter what sort of computer they have.

Which leads into my final point on this myth and that is network security and patch and update frequency. At this point the most major security problems are arguably networks themselves and not the actual computers on them. You can have a locked down Mac but if you have an open wireless network I can do nasty things to your DNS and do a lot of very not nice things to you including stealing your personal information and otherwise getting control of your machine outright. Significantly on this specific issue Apple has actually proved to be pathetically slow in releasing patches for network security related issues. In the DNS cache poisoning crisis of last year Apple took significantly much more time than any other vendor, including Microsoft to introduce a patch to fix this serious security hole.

So all in all, yes it's true, a Windows PC has a much better chance of getting infected with a virus, but despite what fanbois might want you to know security doesn't end with virus protection. And the fact is that when security flaws are discovered Apple is actually worse than Windows most of the time in addressing these flaws.

Conclusion

I want to restate what I said in the first place. If you have been using Mac for some time, and/or you just use a lot of Mac based software, well, then you should continue to do so. For such a user Apple is a good choice and I don't doubt that migrating to a Windows PC would be a frustrating and annoying experience for you. But let's not confuse the real issue here, which is this, if you are not in the above category a Mac is not for you. Buying a Mac will cost you more money and has very few benefits and a whole pile of drawbacks. Different is different, but different does not mean better and I hope in this post that some of the myths espoused by Mac lovers as to why it's "better" have been exposed for the lies that they are.

Tags

Apple  hardware  myth  PC  price  security  stability  windows 

Categories

Technical  Security  Business  Personal 

Comments