Re: MAC Vs. PC

["Arlen P. Walker" <Arlen -dot- P -dot- Walker -at- JCI -dot- COM>]

      In the world of Mac, software is limited and the number of
      third party peripheral manufacturers are significantly fewer.

This is Bogus. What are the HD manufacturers you can buy from for PC's? Seagate,
Quantum, Maxtor, Western Digital, Connor, IBM, DEC, HP ... have I missed any?
All make drives for the Mac as well. Name one disc drive manufacturer who
doesn't make a hard drive which works in a mac (I said manufacturer, not some
fly-by-night mail order house who simply relabels and drop-ships drives.) How
about monitor manufacturers? Anyone? CD-ROM? Truth is, there are none.

In the world of SW, there are some niches where PC software exists and Mac
doesn't (the ones I'm aware of are tight little custom niches, like radio
playlist management). Other than those, while the PC market has perhaps a larger
quanitity, you find the market dominated by the same companies producing the
same software for both platforms.

Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of good reasons to choose one platform over
another. It's just that particular canard isn't one.

"Choice causes problems?" <the gist of what I clipped> There's no valid reason
for users to need to choose configurations which cause problems. Valid user
choices should be about storage space and speed, not whether this drive is
compatible with my current controller. They should be concerned with monitor
specs of resolution and color, not whether this monitor and video card will talk
to one another, or worse, whether this video card will render my CD-ROM
inoperable (which has happened in some of our PC's). Forcing users to make
detailed choices is simply a sign of a lazy manufacturer. It most definitely
isn't the sign of higher performance.

      On the other hand, if you were to start
      messing around with a basic off-the-shelf Mac, tearing it apart, and
      adding third party hardware, you potentially would end up with the same
      headaches.

Sorry, I've never seen a Mac video card kill a hard drive or CD-ROM.

       In any situation, some manufacturers make quality, compatible products
      and some do not. That's a matter of doing your homework.

And market tolerance. If the market doesn't tolerate sloppy manufacturers, then
the sloppy manufacturers can't continue to exist.

      I believe the only real questions regarding the PC vs Mac is - What do
      you need to do and how simply do you want to do it?

A statement I can agree with. And, as I said earlier, there is plenty of room
within this statement to choose PC's over Mac's. The "more choices" one,
however, is, for the most part, bogus.

      No pain, no gain. Mac's are simple, but you don't learn much.

This is (almost) the most stupid remark I've ever read. You learn what you want
to learn. If you want to learn about your machine, you can. What he's really
saying here, is that Mac gives you a choice about whether you want to become a
techie, but he can't say it that way, because then he'd be ascribing a good
feature (choice) to a platform he wants to run down.

      I gotta tell ya - I ain't never heard an off-the-shelf Mac sound that
      good.

And you never heard an off-the-shelf PC sound that good either. And you can add
the same class of hardware to Macs as well. Take your own advice and stop trying
to make out that PC's are inherently superior to Macs. Both platforms have
advantages. In my tech days, I spec'ed out plenty of systems of both platforms.
The key is what the user wanted to do, not which box had some absolute mythical
superiority.

      The notion
      that you have big problems anytime you install new software or add a card
      to a PC is just plain nonsense. My advice to PC users - do your homework.

This statement is amusing. It's nonsense that such additions cause problems, but
you have to do your homework? If there wasn't the real possibility that problems
would occur, why would you have to do your homework? And if that probability
wasn't higher on a PC, why don't Mac users also need to do their homework? :{>}

(I make no bones about my computer preference, but *my* preference isn't what
you need on your desk. *Your* preference is. Take a look at what you see on all
platforms, and at what you need to do, and select the system which does it best
for you, regardless what the so-called experts on both sides of the fence keep
screaming at you. If you're relying on someone else to spec your machine for
you, get them to give you system specs for both platforms. If they're reluctant
to do so, find someone else.)

Have fun,
Arlen
Chief Managing Director In Charge, Department of Redundancy Department
DNRC 124

Arlen -dot- P -dot- Walker -at- JCI -dot- Com
----------------------------------------------
In God we trust; all others must provide data.
----------------------------------------------