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Comment by KirinDave | Hacker News Reader

Yes, they're much more expensive. But I think that saying it's the hardware is to miss the point. People don't really think as much about the mac hardare as much as the mac software.

And let's be honest here, smart and educated software engineers go out of their way to buy macs when they definitely have the skills to install and run linux. They could definitely buy a cheaper Windows PC. Unless you want to be utterly derisive and dismissive, you can't simply say, "It's a fashion item."

People are buying macs because they want Mac OS X. Maybe instead of arguing about how "overpriced the hardware is" or "how people love candy coating" people in charge of competing products/projects should look into the reasons why hen you go to a tech conference you see a sea of glowing Apple logos. People there are not stupid, and if you just dismiss their choice as such you're going to miss out on key information.

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I'm a developer, I've run various OS's over the years, Windows first, Mac OS X after that, and after my iBook's hard drive failed, I now run Linux on a refurbed ThinkPad. Windows was the only environment that I had to get out of. The amount of friction Windows created in my everyday development was enough that I felt it necessary to switch to maintain productivity.

The difference, though, to me, between working on OS X or Linux, though, is negligible. I suspect that most conference goers with glowing Apple laptop lids can be just as productive in Linux as they can in OS X. (I'm not a Mac developer, I imagine that crowd would disagree)

I use a text editor and a browser to get my work done, Macs don't offer me any software advantages in that department.

> The difference, though, to me, between working on OS X or Linux, though, is negligible. I suspect that most conference goers with glowing Apple laptop lids can be just as productive in Linux as they can in OS X. (I'm not a Mac developer, I imagine that crowd would disagree)

Since most of the tools are the same, the only real difference is in the GUI and underlying software toolkits. If you aren't targeting a HLL like Python or Ruby, Apple's NeXT-descendent API really shines. There is just nothing like it in the Linux world, although Qt has tried to copy it. So you can definitely start noticing that.

I used to be a Linux user too, and I still develop software for Linux. To me, I vastly prefer the OS X user environment because a lot of niggling detail work involving clipboards, image viewing, indexed-content search etc are all done, and done such that they generally work, and lots of not-necessary-but-pleasant-things like mixed-channel sound work without even considering them.

Yes, I could get most of these things working in Linux. I know the software, I know how to install it and configure it... but I just can't bring myself to do all that to get what, at best, will be an equivalent experience.

Most of the tools aren't the same - as has been discussed here, the Mac repositories are far smaller than their Debian and Ubuntu equivs, which means you're less likely to find what you want. In my experience they're less tested too.

Personally I prefer the Linux middle-click paste (especially compared to the key Macs use instead of Windows for Ctrl, which messes with my muscle memory by being over to the left), and viewing images, content indexing, and mixed channel sound have worked out of the box for years.

Misinformation: "There is just nothing like it in the Linux world"

http://www.gnustep.org/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNUstep

Why was this voted down? He said "Apple's NeXT-descendent API really shines. There is just nothing like it in the Linux world" when GNUstep is very much like it.

I didn't vote it down, but I imagine it was voted down for laughable incorrectness. GNUStep, while a noble effort, is largely a copy of the pre-OSX-era NeXTSTEP API (although I guess technically it's trying to rebuild Openstep, but it seems the history of these projects is so confusing that NeXTSTEP is used interchangeably because it's so iconic), which is literally a decade behind.

GNUStep is not seem to be, nor does it seem to want to be, an effort like Mono to create an open Mac OS X platform (at least last time I looked at it, which was late. It also can't use some of the finest decisions that Apple and NeXT made (e.g., ".bundle", ".app" and ".framework" paradigms) because the underlying linux platform is hostile to them.

Comparing modern OS X to gnustep as anything more than a historical curiosity shows a degree of ignorance and dismissiveness that borders on flagrant. Even assuming the best in people, most mac developers I know would have a frown forced out of them at such a comparison.

I meant very much like it in terms of compared to other frameworks, not in the mono->.Net kind of way, more like the java and c++ being very much alike because they support object oriented programming with built-in features.

You're totally right, though and I would like to recant my previous posts. Oh well, it is too late. My apologies.

For me it's the other way around. I like the MacBook hardware a lot but I'm not so happy with Mac OS.

Mac OS memory management is awful compared to Linux or Windows and makes the entire system feel sluggish. Safari keeps crashing. Spaces is broken. Not being able to maximise windows is annoying. Transparent menus are hard to read (what am I supposed to see behind them anyway?).

There are a lot of positives as well, but all being said, I'm not going to pay that premium next time.

You can disable the translucent menubar. Just uncheck the box in Desktop & Screensaver's prefpane. Spaces can be disabled as well (in the Expose & Spaces prefpane) so you can use Virtue instead for virtual deesktops.

Also, Safari's been stable for me (except on delicious2.0 for some reason, but I dont use delicious often). But thats just one piece of data, not really enough to make any sort of conclusion.

I have disabled the translucent menubar. But you cannot disable the translucent menus. I have disabled Spaces because it breaks Cmd+Tab switching but I would like to use it if it actually worked.

I like the MacBook hardware a lot but I'm not so happy with Mac OS

You can easily install Linux on Apple hardware. There are detailed instructions somewhere on the web. I'm writing these words from a Mac Mini with Ubuntu. I used to use Mac OS X as my primary system for a long time before and my experience was good. On OS X you can have most of the things you have on Linux, but some things require much more effort to set up and some don't work. The fonts look much nicer on OS X.

I'm considering to do that. It's just that last time I looked the atheros wifi chipset wasn't supported by Linux out of the box and I was simply too lazy to mess with drivers again.

'And let's be honest here, smart and educated software engineers go out of their way to buy macs when they definitely have the skills to install and run linux. They could definitely buy a cheaper Windows PC. "

Some do, some don't. I prefer to save some decent money and get a Dell laptop with the screen size and rez I want (completely unavailable in Mac laptops) and the clitmouse I want (completely unavailable in Mac laptops), install Kubuntu, and hack away.

I gather, form the many people I know with Macs, that it's the perceived "it just works" factor coupled with a Unix dev environment. Linux desktops are still falling a bit short on that, though it just works good enough for me (and really I think the issues I run into with Kubuntu are equivalent to what Macs users tell me about with their laptops. Plenty of annoyances and WTF to go around.)

Unless you want to be utterly derisive and dismissive, you can't simply say, "It's a fashion item."'

People are buying macs because they want Mac OS X

There are about 15 people so far who have said the same thing. Maybe it's true, but it seems to be getting a little desperate. I'd wager that many Mac purchasers did not have a long experience with OSX before buying one, nor could they describe in any serious way the differences between various OSes ("It just works". Memo: Windows "Just works" also). They have, however, been exposed to the bountious fruits of Apple's marketing department, and could tell you quite clearly the differences between "I'm a mac" and "I'm a pc".

99.99 percent of the time, using a computer, you are not using the OS but the applications. Firefox, an IDE, a music player, an IM client, etc. These don't vary too much.

> There are about 15 people so far who have said the same thing. Maybe it's true, but it seems to be getting a little desperate. I'd wager that many Mac purchasers did not have a long experience with OSX before buying one, nor could they describe in any serious way the differences between various OSes ("It just works". Memo: Windows "Just works" also). They have, however, been exposed to the bountious fruits of Apple's marketing department, and could tell you quite clearly the differences between "I'm a mac" and "I'm a pc".

Because the hacker crowd at JavaOne: known for making uninformed and unresearched computer purchases based off marketing. Could you at least try not to be derisive? Why don't you just say, "Go play with your shiny toy, kiddo?"

> 99.99 percent of the time, using a computer, you are not using the OS but the applications. Firefox, an IDE, a music player, an IM client, etc. These don't vary too much.

Yeah, and even then I like the choices on OS X better. I prefer Adium to Trillium, Safari to Firefox (the Safari web inspector is like firebugz, but fast), iTunes is pretty much the standard player.

And then of course, most of my day is spent in a text editor (of which I have a wide variety of excellent choices, from Linux standbys like emacs and vi to modern contenders like TextMate) and a terminal.

Why is it that these things are so hard to believe. Is it that hard to imagine?

While windows "just works", OS X is the desktop nix that "just works" and works with all the peripherals I own and there is a high-quality ISV market.

99.99 percent of the time, using a computer, you are not using the OS but the applications. Firefox, an IDE, a music player, an IM client, etc. These don't vary too much.

This is actually false. The Mac development culture is far more UI/User-experiece-centric than those of either Windows or Linux, and so the OS X applications tend to be more polished and simply more fun to use. Please try it for a while before trolling.

If you work on your computer all day every day, as many HN readers do, and it lasts a couple of years, then paying a bit extra for something that makes that work more efficient or more pleasurable is well worth it. After years of PC use, I changed to a Mac a couple of years ago, and it's worth every penny.

After finally conceding the demise of the Commodore Amiga around 1996, I started using a mixture of Windows NT and GNU/Linux. I loved the Unix way of doing things, especially for software development.

But I am not only a programmer; I also spend a lot of time doing music arrangements and production. I hear that things have improved, but last I tried, music-related applications for GNU/Linux were fairly woeful.

I ended up getting a Mac in 2002, largely as an experiment, and have bought three more since then. I would likely prefer GNU/Linux systems for software development, but MacOS is plenty adequate for my needs there, and I can run my music/sound applications.

I do think Macs look pretty spiffy, but when it gets right down to it, they just proved to be the best option for what I need my computer to do. They might not be the best option for everyone, and that's okay too.

I agree. There is a great lesson to understand here about pricing and profiting from a premium product offering that customers enjoy.

Definitely. Another thing to note is that apple haven't really done any black magic marketing (though they have done that too) to get their margins up. They simply differentiated effectively. Noone else has in that market so it seems like voodoo. But in most markets (batteries, soap, jeans, cars) you have differentiated brands that command different premiums.

A mac is not comparable to a windows pc (in the minds of many consumers at least). So the get to raise their margins. Dell including XYZ = Toshiba including XYZ. The specs are the value, pretty much exactly. So, like petrol stations, they don't have margins.

Another thing to note is that most price comparisons compare based on seller costs. Because in a competitive market that is what market prices reflect. The value to a consumer is necessarily higher (or they wouldn't buy) and it can be much higher.

If the cost of production is $1000and & the value to the consumer is $10000, the machine will be priced somewhere between those two. The more competitive (less differentiated) the market is, the closer to $1000.

I'd really like to let my manager at work read your comment. He recently went to a local "Web 2.0" conference and was surprised by all the Apple laptops everyone else had (both attendees and presenters).

Yet, he still continues to bury his head in the sand when the people he manages complain that they want a Mac for work (web development and design). He says there's no room in the budget, but we seem to get a steady stream of new Dell shitboxes every year or two.

You can run OSX on hardware besides Apples.

http://wiki.osx86project.org/

osx86 is hacky at best. It's worth buying a real mac box if you're getting a laptop (to have working power management).

And if you use a desktop, well, I'd recommend getting a mac anyway, just so you can update without having to reinstall or sacrifice a USB port to that efi hack.

Yeah, you can, and it works fine, and then you need a fix, and then it's not cracked and won't install, and now your computer's broken.

i think that for people who only use simple programs, all the OS's look the same (except linux, which can't seem to get rid of its shoddy gestalt.) i think for these people, the external design of the computer as an appliance makes a big difference, partly because it's something they can actually valuate

i don't see a problem with buying/selling the candy coating. if i bought a mac it would be for the case/monitor design. it is very pretty and elegant

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