@Hell_Labs Your comparison of a Ford against a Rolls Royce doesn't work. PCs and Macs now use exactly the same hardware components, so if one is more expensive than the other it is overpriced. The 2 makes of car do not contain exactly the same parts, and so the additional cost of the Rolls is because it has much better hand made parts. That is definitely not true of the Mac these days.
Mac Vs. Amiga: A New Perspective
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Nathanieltolbert
Active member
You should let me know where you get your LCD monitors cause my monitor does not produce any noise, nor is it as fat as an iMac. Saying that a Mac is inexpensive is like saying that a Veyron is slow. Mac's dollar for dollar are more expensive than PC's and to top it off they don't exactly use the best parts out there either. Foxconn manufactures a majority of their parts and most straight PC owners will tell you to stay away from Foxconn motherboards as much as possible. Your best bet for quality is always to research the parts, purchase them yourself and build a system. And since Hackintosh computers are easily doable, there isn't a restriction on what type of OS you use. Buying name brand is always going to have a premium and the reasons most people do it is for the bragging rights or exclusivity of the product. I cannot see spending 1000USD more for a nice case, less ram, smaller hard drive and slower processor, no matter how shiny the OS is.
Heck, my A600 with the 630 was my main machine for ages, running MacOS 7.5.3 and doing all the CD-R dirty work utilizing the 3.5 Toast s/w combined with a Squirrel + SCSI CRW4416 ! Never felt that i needed an actual Mac those days... 
Mac did the best they could at the time. The Amiga ran rings around every other platform in it's day. A real shame C= let it all slip but another conspiracy theory was that Bill had some say in the Demise of C= anyways.
Kin
commodorejohn
Shameless recidivist
I'm no expert, but I think probably a lot of the disparity comes from the hardware. The Amiga, as you know, has a lavish custom chipset that helps with all kinds of tasks, from graphics down to peripheral DMA. The original Macs, on the other hand, came out of a project by Jef Raskin to produce a low-cost "appliance" computer (irony, no?) and were designed by a guy who was highly influenced by Steve Wozniak's "clever minimal hardware plus clever minimal software" approach to things, so they had pretty much the bare bones, hardware-wise. (Not as much as the Apple II, but still.) So while a lot of tasks on the Amiga could be aided by or even just delegated to the OCS chips, Mac OS had to do a lot more stuff by hand.
If you want a good read about the early Macs, there's a terrific collection of stories by various members of the original Mac team here. Definitely worth the read.
I liked the early Macs just fine for the time although the Amigas obviously were much more powerful computers. The Macs had advantage over PC because they were much more user friendly, which I enjoyed at the time when using them at school, etc. I never owned a Mac of my own until I rescued a load of them from a local school district around 2002. One of my friends had a little Classic and I thought it was cute, but my A500 just squished it when it came to graphics and sound, my two main areas of interest. I always like the publishing software on the Mac back then. My current Macbook is a completely different animal with things like Garageband, iPhoto, and iMovie helping me keep family photos and movies organized with ease although I don's use Garageband since I have a much higher end PC for that in my studio. The story of my first Amiga is really interesting and maybe I will post sometime.
Allright you clearly don't know much about design and manufacturing. I'll do a breakdown for you:
Motherboard, custom formfactor.
PSU, custom
DVD, slot loading, probably also custom as it is in the older iMacs (1 wire)
Hard disk, standard PC
Display, panel is standard, control circuitry probably custom formfactor.
Case & cooling, custom milled from aluminium. Keeps your core i7, GPU, hard disk and display cool, 100% silent.
So, they create a new hardware layout (no ATX anywhere), design a new motherboard themselves, design a new PSU themselves, design a DVD burner themselves, design LCD panel logic themselves, and custom design a case to go around it that's roughly 1 1/4 inch thick at the sides and 7 1/2 in the middle, and you say they are overpriced because they "now use exactly the same hardware components".
No sir, they don't use the same hardware. They use the same chips. Big difference.
Let's have a look at an ATX case that has roughly the same build quality.
£253.76
going off of that, and comparing the amount of effort put into the iMac's case alone, logically the iMacs case should be closer to £300?
I fail to see the overpricing.
I still however find it strange to have such a discussion in a board where people pay top dollar for vintage computer equipment just because they like it. If one do that, one ought to understand paying the asking price for a mac because one want a great built, well specced computer without bothering if one could get it a tad cheaper by living with that tediously boring os called windows, and a big black box with blue neons or a plastic laptops with more stickers than the typical camper wagon blocking the view on the highview at any given summer day.
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@Hell_Labs. LMAO! true mac fan justification.
It matters little if a company spends money on shiny cases, custom heatinks... etc. If the CPU, GPU, screen, RAM, DVD and HDD are all the same parts, speeds and specs then they are identical. How they are connected together via the case and its custom parts makes no difference to its performance or use. And don't be deluded that Apple would be making PSUs and DVD drives because they won't. They will just be farming their manufacturing out to an existing maker of these parts with any changes needed for their design. The bulk orders they place will make little difference to the costs of manufacturing them.
It is design over substance, and is all pointless if you are buying a computer as a functional tool, not as a design accessory to fit into the corner of the room and look pretty.
Still overpriced!
It matters little if a company spends money on shiny cases, custom heatinks... etc. If the CPU, GPU, screen, RAM, DVD and HDD are all the same parts, speeds and specs then they are identical. How they are connected together via the case and its custom parts makes no difference to its performance or use. And don't be deluded that Apple would be making PSUs and DVD drives because they won't. They will just be farming their manufacturing out to an existing maker of these parts with any changes needed for their design. The bulk orders they place will make little difference to the costs of manufacturing them.
It is design over substance, and is all pointless if you are buying a computer as a functional tool, not as a design accessory to fit into the corner of the room and look pretty.
Still overpriced!
SkydivinGirl
Retro Girl
Hey Everyone,
Let's try to respect each others opinions and keep this civil. There are always going to be dissenting views on the value of different merchandise. What is a great deal to one person is a rip-off to others. That will never change.
Basically, don't feed the troll. Express your views, just don't berate others for theirs.
Thanks,
Heather
Let's try to respect each others opinions and keep this civil. There are always going to be dissenting views on the value of different merchandise. What is a great deal to one person is a rip-off to others. That will never change.
Basically, don't feed the troll. Express your views, just don't berate others for theirs.
Thanks,
Heather
Justin
Active member
wut she said ^^^^
When a vs debate is posted it will always happen as they will be fans/supporters for each side. vs debates are really always going to be arguments for and against each platform involved, with no agreed conclusion ever reachable.
It is therefore better if vs battle threads are not posted on Amibay.
It is therefore better if vs battle threads are not posted on Amibay.
Justin
Active member
yeah well, I like the Mac, but then I like the Miggy, so there's only one way to sort this out.........FIGHT!
I didn't even mean to post a vs thread in the first place. My title was suspect though and I did try to change it to avoid this. I only wanted to point out how well my Amiga hardware has held up. I apologize to everyone for starting this. The title was incorrect for the thread I was trying to start. I have seen some valid points about hardware quality though before it disintegrated into a vs thread. :shrug:
Yes, I apologise for being one of the members who helped to move the thread away from its original intent.
You wanted to discuss the period in time when Macs existed alongside Amigas, and which was better made, and which has stood the test of time better. Instead this moved on to arguments about Apple today, which is another matter.
So, if anyone has anything to say about the original topic of discussion, to steer it back on topic, please do.
You wanted to discuss the period in time when Macs existed alongside Amigas, and which was better made, and which has stood the test of time better. Instead this moved on to arguments about Apple today, which is another matter.
So, if anyone has anything to say about the original topic of discussion, to steer it back on topic, please do.
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