What computer do you have?

[johan]

The only reason I use them is because they cost anywhere from about the same price to maybe twice or three times as much as a pc of comparable spec, but its been my experience that they last about 5 times longer. If my experience changes, I will seek other options. Shrug.

If you build your own PC desktops (or get a shop to do it for you) then you can buy quality components for it that last. Or learn how to fix them whenever anything goes wrong. It's why I would never touch Apple with a 10 foot barge pole. They don't want you to open up their gadgets and do what you like with it.

Not that I've ever noticed a PC not last a very long time. I like my equipment to last at least a decade.

mmmm yeah, about that....

Although I've moved on to better things, there was a time when I did computer tech work for a living. So I've built more than my fair share of desktops for myself and for clients over the years. The macs I'm talking about are laptops. I have zero desire to build after market laptops. Nor do I recommend anyone entertain anyone's custom built after market laptops.

As desktops go? I recently rebuilt my studio music machine from parts. Why? Because the music composition/recording software I use and love is windows only. There is finally a mac beta version due in the next few months. If a fully baked mac version were available now? I'd have to seriously weigh options over whether I'd build a PC or just buy a mac for about the same money. Why? Why not?

Car guys will eat me for breakfast here but I'll use the analogy anyway. A corvette is a fast car and so is a porsche. The corvette gets its fast via a huge engine that turns copious amounts of dinosaur bones into horsepower at an alarming rate. Porsche does the same thing by cramming as much torque as possible into a very light weight vehicle. 

And so it is with PC's and macs. I can build a PC muscle car that achieves performance via raw horsepower. And thus needs regular upgrades to constantly raise said horsepower in order to keep up performance as software updates continue to impose higher and higher loads of the hardware. Or you can get a mac with similar torque and much more lightweight software which will therefore run great now and continue to run great even after years of software upgrades. 

For me? Its a very close race. Obviously for you its less so. 

Does apple build in planned obsolescence? Of course they do. But I've run macs all way to their obsolescence and I've run PC's until they were well past the point of deserving resuscitation and I have to tell you, in my experience from a practical usability point of view, the mac was much more usuable for much longer. And that's with regular hardware upgrades and clean OS installs for the PC and almost no hardware upgrades or clean OS installs on the macs. 

Believe me, I was as hard core of a PC only guy as they come. I bought my first mac ONLY so I could learn my way around the OS and therefore expand client base to include mac users. After using both side by side for many years, I got to the point where I could no longer argue with results. They are hands down a better value for my mission and the mission of most others that I know. If they're not a better value for you then they're not. But to be perfectly blunt, I did this shit for a  living for many years. So please quote me and try to make out like I don't know what I'm talking about because it's disrespectful and quite frankly, kind of annoying.