Normal to be 'unhappy' with my iMac?

[chex]

Define 'normal'...your happiness is your responsibilty. Sounds like you're a computer tinkerer which means windows/linux self build or even self built OSX86 would be great for you.
With the field I work in I do not have the time or inclination to maintain a windows computer, watch it deteriorate over time and need fresh OS installs, I want a computer that is fast and efficient to use in terms of ergonomics and UI and that gets the hell out of my way when I use it.

My brother has a Win 7 laptop and I still bloody hate it and its clunky interface

 

[Irish_Tom]

Thats your opinion.

15 years of experience using both tells me otherwise. (14 if you want to be pedantic - 6th birthday!)

W7 is good, but not 10.6 good.

Thank's Concorde, the exact sentiment of my response to that post.

I think that was more to do with you than the cost of a PC vs. Mac

I'm not quite sure what you mean. I appreciate that Macs come with a price premium but that's a one-off cost (per machine). Considering how often I was buying new parts for my PC when I was modding, although the initial cost may have been cheaper, the final amount spent was well over the cost of a mac.

Panzer

 

[citycm]

I'm not quite sure what you mean. I appreciate that Macs come with a price premium but that's a one-off cost (per machine). Considering how often I was buying new parts for my PC when I was modding, although the initial cost may have been cheaper, the final amount spent was well over the cost of a mac.

Panzer

I'm not even sure the systems are that much more if you consider the quality of the screen, etc.

Even the Mac Pro is cheaper than a similarly spec'd Dell Xeon workstation.

 

[PardonTheWait]

IConsidering how often I was buying new parts for my PC when I was modding, although the initial cost may have been cheaper, the final amount spent was well over the cost of a mac.

Definitely.

Macs are much more of a buy it, use it, when it's worn out, sell it and buy a new one. You'll get a surprising amount for your old one.

If you must tinker, then no they're not for you. I used to love to tinker with PCs, I used to use Macs at work and PCs at home, when I got my first Mac (to swat up for a new job, I'd been away from Macs for a bit and needed to revise!), Tiger completely won me over.

For me, Tiger was when Macs became viable for home use. It's when they became 'proper' home computers.

It's a different mindset. Some people suit it, some people don't. If you want to get under the bonnet and that makes you happy, then Macs just aren't for you and no one can convince you otherwise. If you want it to just sit there and chill and do its thing, and you're happy with buying a thing that will pretty much remain that thing (bar RAM and sometimes HDD upgrades), then you might well get on with it.

For me, once I bought my first Mac for home that was it, I won't go back. Some people just can't be doing with not being able to tinker, and that's fine.

Of course there's a price premium but you do get a very high quality machine, if the high quality bits are of no consequence to you, or you're not interested in them, then yes you will be paying 'over the odds' for the machine, but those bits that bump the price up are not inconsequential for a lot of people. I personally think that having a computer that was hewn from a slab of metal is worth money, not everyone agrees

Design and beauty is worth money to me, but it's not worth it to everyone.

 

[Spyhop]

Even the Mac Pro is cheaper than a similarly spec'd Dell Xeon workstation.

Then again, I doubt many people actually buy a Dell Xeon workstation for themselves.

With Apple, you're railroaded in to it if you want a tower, whether you truly need a Xeon platform or not (you probably don't).

 

[PardonTheWait]

Then again, I doubt many people actually buy a Dell Xeon workstation for themselves.

With Apple, you're railroaded in to it if you want a tower, whether you truly need a Xeon platform or not (you probably don't).

Thing is though... are you THAT desperate to keep your monitor that you'd say 'know what? I won't spend £949 on a computer that includes a monitor because I already have one, I'll spend £1800 JUST BECAUSE I HAVE A SCREEN'?

Or would you just buy an iMac and eBay your monitor? Or just run it alongside the iMac's display?

It's hardly railroading. I get it with the 15" MBPs, it kind of sucks that you can't get the lower spec MBP in the 13", but meh... it's not that bad.

Saying that anyone who owns a display has to buy a Mac Mini or a Mac Pro is ridiculous.

 

[samat2001]

It's funny...I have three computers - a gaming PC, a Macbook Pro, and a 24' iMac, bought in that order. I've had the gaming PC for a few years, but upgraded it now and then to keep up to date. The Macbook Pro I bought in Jan, and the iMac in about August. I honestly can't remember the last time I turned on my PC - I just don't use it anymore. I've kinda lost interest in PC gaming, and that would be the only reason I use it anymore (I'm happy with my 360, Wii and PS3).

Having said that, I also don't use my iMac much - not because I don't like it, but my Macbook Pro does everything I could possibly want. I can honestly say I haven't had a single problem with it; when I bought it, I was a Mac newbie - I had toyed with the Macs at the Apple store, but I didn't really know how to use it (and I'm still learning things every day). Having used it for almost a year, I can't see myself going back to Windows - OSX is just so good and does everything I want it to. The touchpad is ingenious too. Having said this, I can appreciate it's not everyones cup of tea.

 

[citycm]

Thing is though... are you THAT desperate to keep your monitor that you'd say 'know what? I won't spend £949 on a computer that includes a monitor because I already have one, I'll spend £1800 JUST BECAUSE I HAVE A SCREEN'?

Or would you just buy an iMac and eBay your monitor? Or just run it alongside the iMac's display?

It's hardly railroading. I get it with the 15" MBPs, it kind of sucks that you can't get the lower spec MBP in the 13", but meh... it's not that bad.

Saying that anyone who owns a display has to buy a Mac Mini or a Mac Pro is ridiculous.

I don't think he was saying that. There are more reasons why you may need or want a tower. Before 2009, the Mac Pro was your only option if you wanted dual (identical) displays. The Mac Pro is the only option if you want x amount of terrabytes of internal storage or a truly decent graphics card.

I don't think it's just about keeping your existing monitor

 

[Spyhop]

Saying that anyone who owns a display has to buy a Mac Mini or a Mac Pro is ridiculous.

Steady on, buddy, I didn't even mention displays.

The iMac is railroading on the opposite end. It's an all-in-one desktop computer, with fundamental choices made to be as such, which limit your flexibility and possible upgrades.

Who actually needs an all-in-one desktop computer instead of a tower? I don't, so I wouldn't buy one.

 

[PardonTheWait]

Thing is... how many people want xxxx terabytes of internal storage? Honestly? Not many. Not iMac customers. It's a pretty small segment of the market that to be honest, Apple are happy to let go.

Again - who really needs a ****hot graphics card? Gamers. And gamers don't want Macs anyway.

You have to look at it from the other side. People moan that Macs don't do this, Macs don't do that... but these people, largely, tend to be people that wouldn't buy a Mac even if it DID do those things.

The hardcore gamer wouldn't suddenly buy a 27" iMac just because it would play Crisis, they wouldn't buy a Mac if they could have 4tb internal storage, and so on and so on.

Apple aren't about to introduce entirely new product lines that won't sell, just to satisfy people with relatively unusual demands.

Steady on, buddy, I didn't even mention displays.

The iMac is railroading on the opposite end. It's an all-in-one desktop computer, with fundamental choices made to be as such. Who actually needs an all-in-one desktop computer? I don't, so I wouldn't buy one.

But you say they're railroading?

You're saying that Apple are FORCING people to buy their computers.

What Apple do is offer products. If people want them (which apparently they do) they will buy them (which apparently they do).

Apple do things to make people want them, but that's business. You mention someone needing a tower. Why would anyone need a tower? No one needs a tower. People might need things that only a tower will offer them (an abnormal amount of 3.5" drives? er... four optical drives? 14 USB ports?), and that's fine. But no one NEEDS a tower just because it's a tower.

They need a computer that can do what they need it to do.

I agree with you about the laptop screen sizes, it's a little frustrating when you think well I want a big screen, but I don't need a high spec laptop to go with it. You're stuck, Mac wise. You have to spec up, or put up with a smaller screen.

But there's no 'railroading' going on with iMacs. They're just trying to simplify computers, which, whether you like it or not, the vast majority of people want.

People come into my work, and they came into my old work (Apple store), and they're used to the purple shirts.

You pick your product, then some oik says well you NEED to buy this and you NEED to buy that and you NEED to buy this and the total tots up tots up tots up.

You buy a Mac, and the vast majority of the time, what do you need to buy extra? Office software. That's it.

People like that. You forget we're on a computer forum, people expect a huge amount out of their machines and want to do pretty specific things.

Most people, they want a computer, to do.. computer stuff. iMacs are perfect for that. You get that thing out of the box, you can edit HD movies, record a song, webcam with people across the world, make a website, do all your normal cool computer stuff.

Here, on this forum, we're big fat geeks and we want our machines to do some quite weird stuff.

You may call it railroading, but to be honest it's providing 90% of the world with the computer they want, as simply as is feasible.

And who wants an all-in-one desktop computer?

I don't know.. how about nearly everyone.

 

[PardonTheWait]

here's another (very cheesy) way of looking at it. And I'll set the scene first.

As an employee, I strongly dislike Apple Retail. I don't like Apple Retail as a company, they crap on their employees. Not always, but often.

But I worked as a Creative for quite some time. People will come in, not really know what they're doing with computers. Six months down the line they're doing things they had no idea were possible, and they're doing it on their own. I know on this place we focus on the advanced user, and I consider myself an advanced user as well.

But day in day out I would teach little old ladies to do things they didn't even know were possible. I can teach a 60 year old woman to edit movies from her camcorder with music, titles, cool transitions, in an hour.

So she goes from having four hour long, unedited crap holiday videos, to making a 20 minute video of her escapades that's actually watchable and interesting. And to do that with her Mac she didn't need to buy anything, she didn't need to sit down and learn something difficult. It's amazing!

For the average joe to be able to make a pretty decent flick from their camcorder and put it on a DVD with proper menus with relative ease.. I mean come on that has value.

I've been using Macs for about seven years in a professional capacity. I completely overlooked the entire iLife suite. When I went to work for Apple I learned all of this stuff, then went on to teach it to regular people.

The things you can do out of the box with a Mac are absolutely incredible, and tragically overlooked by people that 'know what they're doing'.

I 'knew what I was doing' with Macs. I could take a 72 page newspaper to print with my eyes shut, but I couldn't bang together a decent film and put it on a DVD, I couldn't record a song, I couldn't make a passable website in 20 minutes.

There's somewhat of a gap between the novice user and the advanced user, of course, and I think that Macs appeal more to the novice, but I know my **** with computers and if I can help it I'll never touch Windows again. But I think a lot of 'computer people' completely miss the point of Macs and will never be convinced otherwise, and it's a shame.

Tons of questions on this forum get asked, how can I do this, how can I do that, what software do I need to buy or download blah blah.. and the answer is 'you can do that right now with the software you've never looked at because you thought you were too good for it'.

Some people can have a Mac sat right in front of them capable of stuff, but they can't see it can do it because they can't pull their head out of their arse for five seconds to find out. They think it has to be more work than it is.

 

[pingwing]

*waves*

I got my macbook pro about 5-6 months ago now, its replaced having a power house pc and a work laptop so well that i cant picture what life would be like without it! Mainly as it can do everything iv ever wanted it too (including portable gaming so going to a mates to play l4d is made a lot simpler)

I can see how many many years of windows tinkering can be a hard habit to get out of, i mean i still fondly remember the days i managed to get ie completely out of windows 2k and ran that on my pc for a bit, but it reminds me of being 16-17 with more free time on my hands. Now, like a couple of my mates up here at uni, the whole it just works go do real and useful things is just more helpful now really

 

[Spyhop]

...

I do accept your points regarding typical purchases and customer desires - you have a lot of knowledge of that area. Discussing things from the enthusiast standpoint is more enjoyable and appropriate, though!

There are good universal reasons to be set on buying a Mac (OS X, primarily), and if you've decided that, what I mean by railroading is that, especially on the desktop, Apple are making a ton of decisions for you, meaning that the path you end up taking is pretty much on their terms. That can be a good thing and a bad thing.

 

[Fillado]

I'm not quite sure what you mean. I appreciate that Macs come with a price premium but that's a one-off cost (per machine). Considering how often I was buying new parts for my PC when I was modding, although the initial cost may have been cheaper, the final amount spent was well over the cost of a mac.

Panzer

I meant that it was you and you alone that decided to have a rolling upgrade going on your PC - for whatever reason you decided. As you said the initial cost was cheaper

The iMac does force you into getting a screen you perhaps didn't need. I have a perfectly good 22" Acer LCD monitor. Which means I either go with a Mac mini or a Mac Pro and use the monitor. Or spend money on something I didn't need and get an iMac. Choice is sacrificed for Apple's profits (few product lines = cheaper production = more profit) and to "avoid consumer confusion" as they put it.

Most people, they want a computer, to do.. computer stuff. iMacs are perfect for that. You get that thing out of the box, you can edit HD movies, record a song, webcam with people across the world, make a website, do all your normal cool computer stuff.

Err that isn't what most people want them to do.

Very few people edit HD movies. They just stick whatever they have on YouTube. I'm not denying there is a market for home movie editing but they'll be the exception.

Record a song? No "average" user wants to record a song.

Webcam? Really useful on iChat, which uses AIM, which NOBODY in the UK uses.

Website? Thanks to Facebook/Myspace/Twitter/Blogger the reason for someone to build their own website is pretty much non-existent. Of course for this to "work out of the box" you need to subscribe to MobileMe. Otherwise it's uploading to FTP which an "average" user probably doesn't have a clue what it means.


They want something to browse the internet, check their email, watch iPlayer/4oD/Demand Five, organise photos, use Microsoft Office, use the MSN IM network, use their iPod & iTunes and perhaps play games of varying types.

The Mac can do everything (bar the "hardcore" gaming) beautifully. A PC can do it for the third of the price.

 

[Beansprout]

Sitting next to me I have a quad core, uber-powerful Vista system....yet I'm choosing to use my 17" MBP. I use it perhaps 95% of the time because it's quick, portable and efficient. I tried to use my PC the other day to copy files, and "Windows Explorer needs to restart"!

I only really use it to watch Blu-rays and to use Outlook...

 

[PardonTheWait]

Err that isn't what most people want them to do.

Very few people edit HD movies. They just stick whatever they have on YouTube. I'm not denying there is a market for home movie editing but they'll be the exception.

Record a song? No "average" user wants to record a song.

Webcam? Really useful on iChat, which uses AIM, which NOBODY in the UK uses.

Website? Thanks to Facebook/Myspace/Twitter/Blogger the reason for someone to build their own website is pretty much non-existent. Of course for this to "work out of the box" you need to subscribe to MobileMe. Otherwise it's uploading to FTP which an "average" user probably doesn't have a clue what it means.


They want something to browse the internet, check their email, watch iPlayer/4oD/Demand Five, organise photos, use Microsoft Office, use the MSN IM network, use their iPod & iTunes and perhaps play games of varying types.

The Mac can do everything (bar the "hardcore" gaming) beautifully. A PC can do it for the third of the price.

That's weird, because the people I was training (normal people) asked to do all of that stuff.

There are so many people out there with camcorders who want to do something useful with their footage.

They don't give a **** about youtube, they want to show people on their TV.

People DO want to edit their movies - they just don't realise that they can. A lot of people who own small businesses or are sole traders DO want a website, they just don't realise they can make one that looks half decent.

You know your mate's dad who plays guitar? He wants to record a song.

EVERYONE takes photos, and iPhoto is an amazing photo app for 95% of people. I know plenty of pro photographers who still make use of some of iPhoto's features because it's quick and easy. Maybe it's only slideshows for when they're on site, but they're pros and they're using it.

iChat? Forget iChat. Old people love Skype. You can believe me or you can not, but OLD PEOPLE LOVE SKYPE.

I don't care what you think you know about Apple's market, but five hour long sessions a day, five days a week for a full year (twelve hundred hours, give or take) plus selling macs for six months and doing a few hundred hours of sessions while I was learning, then four months working in an independent APR says otherwise. Bear in mind 1200 hours is over seven weeks solid.

But, you know, you know best. You should email Steve Jobs, he'll be interested. I obviously don't know anything about what Apple customers want, it's only my job.

 

[James J]

I really loved my macbook but sadly it broke very early on and due to a stock shortage I ended up getting a rather decent HP vista laptop instead. I have a desktop pc which was purely for games but now im finding im using it for a lot more than my laptop, including writing up uni work, 3d mapping for half life games and general web browsing.

I did vastly more on my macbook though including a lot of blogging, web design, photo manipulation and dvd conversion as the software on it was far easier to configure and use. General internet use seemed a lot nicer as well.

If I had the cash, id get a macbook pro straight away for my uni work as it would be so nice to go into the library where the wireless hotspots are and sit down and not have to worry about my battery life which is a problem with my HP laptop

 

[LordSplodge]

I do both. And would take Windows over Mac OS any day tbh.

Do you work in IT? I work in IT and the last thing I want to do when I come home is tinker with my computer. A Mac fits this bill. I am also starting to do some production work at home and OS X + Final Cut Studio is in a different league from Windows 7 and Adobe CS4.

I'll happily pay the "Apple Tax" for that alone nevermind the fact that they look damn good.

For me, Tiger was when Macs became viable for home use. It's when they became 'proper' home computers.

Naw, it was System 7.5!

 

[LordSplodge]

The iMac does force you into getting a screen you perhaps didn't need. I have a perfectly good 22" Acer LCD monitor.

Go and have a look at the screens in the new imacs (especially the new 27") and then have a look at your Acer 22" LCD. Oh and you can always use the 22" as a second screen (as I will be doing with my current Dell 22" screen)

PardonTheWait has answered the other points so I won't bother repeating them!

 

[oldbag]

I have an imac and I think it's great. I spend all day fixing PCs/Servers/Switches, etc and it's nice to come home, hop on the mac to do my stuff and it just 'works'.