@Cyril said:

I dont know where you live, but buying a PC from somebody that as one shop, will scare me. You dont know what is inside ! it could be parts that failed to 100 % test

You should look at the Apple refurb, you can get up to a 1000 $ off your Macpro ! ( I have bought my two last Macpro from refurb )

And if you take the Apple care they come to fix it in your house ! (3 years garantee an support for about 300 euro)

Cyril - you talk out the back of your backside at times - try and think before you speak sometimes !

I own a business  (yes, I only have one shop) that specs PC's that work - So why do you think a specialist single shop always sells faulty products? 

If you think buying a Mac is remotely a good value  idea, then you are the perfect gullable customer that Apple exist from.

What scares me, is Cyril giving advice !

1)  I said : "I dont know where you live "

So if you are leaving next to the shop it's less risk, if you have to send your faulty computer and get it back, that will take many days ; i have a friend of mine that has been waiting 3 month for a repair of a brand new faulty PC.

2) If this little company goes bankrupt you are f..... With the billion that Apple has in cash there is a very little chance that it goes bankrupt

3) If you by Apple it is security very good support and very good service, specially with the Apple care, is your shop going to fix PC at the client's home ??????????

4) MACPRO are design for Audio and Video, they have a fast bus, Xeon processors ....... and the price of a Macpro at Apple is around the same as a DELL, if you can get from refurb it is even cheaper !!!

5) How can you know that the card or the motherboard you have in your PC is made with components that pass the test at 100 %, the shop that is buying those board does not even know ! so it is not the shop problem it is the manufacturer problem ! 

If you invest 4000$ or 5000 $ for a high end Audio/Video computer you take much more risk than buying a hypermarket PC at 1000 $.

In short words ; buying a MAC is SECURITY, buying from a small shop that is far away from where you live is an ADVENTURE.

For me I do not make an adventure at 5000 $

Best

Cyril

@PaulR said:

The usual MO for an Apple employee is ripped jeans, sandals and an almost overpowering, glazed expression of total self deprecation and an immenent bout of patronizing. And that's just as you walk through the entrance.

LOL

The Apple téléphone support is great and it is a free phone number !!!!!

When you have a problem, you start to speak to the 1st level support, if he cannot reply, you go to the 2nd level, if they cannot reply your problem goes directly to Cuppertino ingeniours !!!!

OK Cyril!

I'm off to Exeter tomorrow and I will go to the Apple shop tout de suite and buy one immiedatement!!

Merci Beaucoup

That should keep that Andyjh quiet now Cyril. That showed him!

We French have to stick together!

@PaulR said:

OK Cyril!

I'm off to Exeter tomorrow and I will go to the Apple shop tout de suite and buy one immiedatement!!

Merci Beaucoup

That should keep that Andyjh quiet now Cyril. That showed him!

We French have to stick together!

Hi Paul

the "refurb"is ONLY from Apple.com, but you have normally a 48 hours free delivery

Best

Cyril

@Cyril said:

It is sure that you are not going to find a 50 $ video card in a MAC but a hight end Radeon that cost 5 times 

Lets have a look at the facts...

Apple charges $250 for the Radeon 5770, which scores 1,687 on Passmark. Costs $115 on Newegg. For a PC, you could get a Geforce GTX 480, which scores 3,524 on Passmark, costing you $220 on Newegg.

So it is not really paying 5x as much for the same thing, but only 2.2x. Not considering that the 5770 is a dated part that a PC builder would not buy today 😊

@Cyril said:

Hi Paul

the "refurb"is ONLY from Apple.com, but you have normally a 48 hours free delivery

Best

Cyril

Merci Cyril! 

The thing is Cyril - is what all these silly people from PC land forget is this. Rich people like you and me Cyril - we don't care how much a Radeon Bollocks Video Card costs. This is where they get it all tort.

I drive a Porsche 911 Turbo (that's just one of my cars). I CAN'T DRIVE AROUND IN CARS LIKE THAT - and then tell people I OWN A PC!!!! What do you think that would do to my standing in the community, you silly PC people??? Cheeessuuuusss. FFS - if I suddenly owned a PC I would have to drive around in a Ford - or a Vauxall. 

Good afternoon.

Hi Martin,

It's for shure the Radeon 5770 is outdated, but that was the 2010 Macpro, may be on the 7th of March we will know what are in the 2012 Macpro.

For the 5x, you must compare the price of 2010.

It is known that Apple makes big money on memory and extras !

But you have the certification that the memory or the card  is supported by MAC OS X !!!!! so if there is a problem they do not tell you remove the xxx card and re do the tests

When I bouht my RocketRaid 640 I could have bought it from a PC supplyer I would have save a few $, but what is a few $ when you have god's garantee !

Another example, I had a weird reaction having 2 x video cards in my Macpro. Switiching one of my 4 screens to my other Mac, the mouse became crasy , Apple fix it with next version of Lion

If I had bought anoter video card they would have said, we dont support that card, would not have fix the bug in Mac os X

If I had the same problem with a PC made by some one else and Windows, Microsft could have reply, it's not Windows fault, it's the mouse driver, it's the video card one driver, it's the second video card driver, it's the USB board. the driver of the USB board, it could also have been the fault of my grand pa, my brothers and my sisters, oh oh what happines !!!!!

With Apple you have one perso to talk to !!

 I have a very good setup for fiding bugs !!!!!

Now let's speak of VSL, why VSL would not answer about the dongle !

I have wrote a mail twice asking how much it will cost me is my dongle brakes or is stolen !  NO ANSWER from support@vsl.co.at

At VSL you are very good for not answering, by the way,  Martin, I am still waiting of an anwer of my last mails !!  and your RSS ist still down

Best

Cyril

Martin,

the new Radeon are costing 249 and 349 $ [6]

Michael

@Astro said:

And then, of course, there are serious issues with many of Apple's business practices.  The recent news about the conditions in their manufacturing plants and the treatment of employees was alarming to me.  I am liberal American who believes a good business is one which is fair and ethical while still making a cutting-edge product.  When I see companies making obscene profits by taking advantage of people who have little control over their own lives, it makes it unlikely for me to do business with them.

You are mixing every thing, It is not Apple employe it is the Employe of the Chinees company that buiding for Apple and other like DELL.....nd probally some piece that is in your PC

The profit that Apple is not obscene, as for a Macpro with equivalent proc it is the same than a DELL server !

Iphone and Ipad are selling like croissants, Apps are selling vey well, 25 billions !!

Apple is very user friendly with prices of ther software compared to Microsoft

Look at the price of Mac os 10.7. ==> 23.99 euro  look at the price of MS Windows 7 pro 264 $ (at Amazon)

Look at the price of Mac os 10.7. server ==> 39.99 euro  look at the price of MS Windows 7 pro server you need to have a quote depending of the number of user !!!!!

Look at the price of MS office 199$ and at 279$ for 2 install, compared to the price of Apple office suite Iwork 79 $ and at 99$ for the family pack !!!!

They also introduce the price of the APP at 99 cents

Apple drop the price of Logic at 149.99 euro

This is a sale politics, do you sell very expensive at a few people like VSL does, or do you sell very cheap at at million people

Hello Astro,

Well I'm glad that you settled with ADK and I hope they won't disapoint you.  I bought my first machine with them five years ago and the only thing I've had to replace was the Nvidia video card which was pretty easy to do myself.  I didn't even use the customer support.

@Cyril said:

The profit that Apple is not obscene, as for a Macpro with equivalent proc it is the same than a DELL server !

Iphone and Ipad are selling like croissants, Apps are selling vey well, 25 billions !!

 

Even if the profits are "obscene"  well, GOOD FOR THEM!!!  If you make a product(s) that a lot of people are willing to part with their hard earned money to obtain then that's a good thing isn't it?  So what if you bank a lot of dough in the process.  

And what exactly constitutes obscene?  And who decides what is obscene and what isn't.  Why is it, whenever somebody comes up with a good idea, it sells like hotcakes, it's just assumed that instead of being successful they have been corrupted and they are now a big bad evil corporation and they got that way because they rapped pillaged and stole from the little people.  There should be some equalizer to come in and make things right. 

What a bunch of crap!

And so who is going to equalize the equalizer? 

Excuse me.  I should stop before I go off on another rant.

@Astro said:

And then, of course, there are serious issues with many of Apple's business practices.  The recent news about the conditions in their manufacturing plants and the treatment of employees was alarming to me.  I am liberal American who believes a good business is one which is fair and ethical while still making a cutting-edge product.  When I see companies making obscene profits by taking advantage of people who have little control over their own lives, it makes it unlikely for me to do business with them.

Largely OT, but if the labor unions have their way, the poor whose lives are improved by their employment by multinational corporations would all be thrown out of work. Capital investment in poor countries will cause wages to rise over time by increasing the marginal productivity of labor. If you want to support the Third World poor, purchase more of the products that they labor to make in the capitalist enterprises that have located there.

@PaulR said:

I drive a Porsche 911 Turbo (that's just one of my cars). I CAN'T DRIVE AROUND IN CARS LIKE THAT - and then tell people I OWN A PC!!!! What do you think that would do to my standing in the community, you silly PC people??? Cheeessuuuusss. FFS - if I suddenly owned a PC I would have to drive around in a Ford - or a Vauxall. 

That was my problem with all the "I'm a Mac, and I'm a PC" advertisements. Apple attempted to present itself as the (un)cool, unshaven messy teenager dressed in dregs, basically being the typical young turd whose whole preoccupation is iLife, and whose total lack of aesthetics is deliberately flaunted all over his body-language and attire. Who are they trying to kid? (morons obviously). Apple has always been all about aestheticism - many times sacrificing substance for it - and their guy should appear in those commercials draped in Armani, Gucci, Vacheron, and Bausch. It is the PC that should be looking like the derelict, made up of disparate apparel/parts etc., as in real life.

But Apple didn't want anybody accusing them of 'elitism' now did they? What an awful word... 'Elitism'... What unhealthy connotations can be extrapolated from such dreadful, politically incorrect notions... How can I cleanse myself of such anachronistic posits? I know! I'll just listen to some Hans Zimmer! What a salubrious soma for such conditions! What deliverance!!...

P.S.: I have to totally agree with Paul though regarding Apple employees in the stores and the telephone support has been completely unacceptable in my few experiences with expensive Applecare: A Paki answering the phone from the other side of the universe with absolutely no english beyond "Can I help you?", taking 5 minutes to write down my serial numbers successfully (on my long-distance support call!), not being able to help me at all(!) for what I considered basic support enquiries, both because he was incompetent AND due to non-existent english, and worst of all, trying repeatedly to sell me advertising (on my long-distance support call!!!). Apple do have a lot to answer for hiring the cheapest common denominator to serve (sic) its customers. It says a lot about their regard for us...

If you want to "take far more control of your MAC" just run "console" and you have all Unix commands under you fingers [:@]

@Astro said:

I absolutely agree with this too,  with the money I saved by not buying into the Mac thing,  I bought the complete VSL Super Package, and my £1500 PC works flawlessly with unnoticeable low latency and plays any score I throw at it (and I use big full orchestrations all through MIR).  And at times I have Sibelius running in the background with it's memory hungry library running too.

No fancy raid set up, no SSD, just a cost effective Win 7 PC that allows me to get on with my music.

@Errikos said:

That was my problem with all the "I'm a Mac, and I'm a PC" advertisements. Apple attempted to present itself as the (un)cool, unshaven messy teenager dressed in dregs, basically being the typical young turd whose whole preoccupation is iLife, and whose total lack of aesthetics is deliberately flaunted all over his body-language and attire. Who are they trying to kid? (morons obviously). Apple has always been all about aestheticism - many times sacrificing substance for it - and their guy should appear in those commercials draped in Armani, Gucci, Vacheron, and Bausch. It is the PC that should be looking like the derelict, made up of disparate apparel/parts etc., as in real life.

Exactly. And this is the way I talk about computers. I don't get into parts of a a computer and tweaking this or sticking my finger into something just to see if I get electrocuted. For 10 years now, you still get this slightly ridiculous nonsense about sample libraries juxtaposed with computers. What a load of crap! 

By now, you should be able to just plug sample libraries in and they should just work well. Period. Who care HOW they work  - as long as they work. My experience of people that spend inordinate amounts of time talking about computers is generally - they are crap musicians. Total crap. If they spent as much time practising their scales as they did talking about computers they'd be brilliant . It's no big deal - they just got their hobbies mixed up.

Anyway - Lightroom 4 just came out. Oh wow! I'm so nervous. Will my computer have a problem? Is there enough gigabums? Oh what will I do if there's a problem etc etcetc etc.

 I love PaulRs descriptions of various people he encounters.  

Since I like to tinker things together I tend to gravitate toward PCs which allow you to stick one device into another at the least expense though you are not being cool like a Mac. It costs money to be cool so I am uncool. 

My current PC has two extra hard drives that I made cardboard holders for because I didn't want to buy the fixtures.  I did paint them black though, so they would be a bit more cool.