Community poll forum: How will Macs with Intel affect your buying habits?

* I have never really cared for the Mac OS, though it certainly has improved over the years. If I want the look of a Mac for a while I can transform Windows myself and save myself the trouble.

* The Mac hardware is too expensive for what you're getting.

* Why buy a Mac to run Windows? Almost all of the complaints I've heard are over Windows, not the hardware, so what would be the point?

* If you want to run Windows on a Mac, you'll pay a high price for the hardware, then go out and purchase Windows, assuming you don't have an available license already: just another expense.

Sorry, but I see no true benefit to running Windows on a Mac, and my general dislike for the Mac, and preference for Windows, will ensure that I remain seated in front of a PC. Additional partitions containing various flavors of Linux are good enough of a change up for me.

John

Apple did this for people like me who love the MAc experince, but have to suffer through the windows eXPerience.

Now instead of 2 different versions of hardware, I buy 2 of the same and for those times I nee too, I switch to windows, get done what I have to, and switch back to mac.

Scratch one PC purchase

I've always been a mac fan, although it's hard to afford their products. I keep my 4 1/2 year old iBook alive by running linux, and I'm working on installing Mac-On-Linux so I can run my old mac programs again. Linux of course has similar software to run windows programs, but my problem is that such an old laptop has lower resources and can't run both OS's.

I'm really excited about the ability to dual-boot XP & Mac. Obviously, anyone can dual boot linux in there as well, so computer geeks like me can have the best of bo-er- all *3* worlds! I'm not too worried about the security problems. Mac & Linux software are generally sound, and there are a few good protection programs out on the open-source community for Windows -- at least, good enough for casual civilian use.

i will never have anything to do with Apple. the only thing i have from them is QuickTime 'cause somethings need to be viewed on it

I only got a ipod nano cause everyone got one and it looked ***OKAY*** to buy(to pricey)

>> If I want the look of a Mac for a while I can transform Windows myself and save myself the trouble.
Right. I seriously doubt that the reason why some people, like myself, prefer Mac OS over Windoze is the sleek look of the UI. Common misconception by Windoze users.

>> The Mac hardware is too expensive for what you're getting.
Have you compared notebook prices lately? I think you'll find that buying a DELL business laptop, with similar configuration as the current MacBooks, will cost you more.

>> * Why buy a Mac to run Windows? Almost all of the complaints I've heard are over Windows, not the hardware, so what would be the point?
I for one welcome the opportunity to be able to run the odd Windoze program required for whatever reason without having to buy another computer.

>> * If you want to run Windows on a Mac, you'll pay a high price for the hardware, then go out and purchase Windows, assuming you don't have an available license already: just another expense.
See previous two comments...

>> Sorry, but I see no true benefit to running Windows on a Mac, and my general dislike for the Mac, and preference for Windows, will ensure that I remain seated in front of a PC.
What can I say...I can't make a blind man see...

Its not the look its that everything works and works well

OK I see it now. the pronblem is that you expect OSX to copy windows in how it does things. Mac OS does everthing you say it cant. But it doesn't do it the same way as windows. but thats often to its benefit. I find a new mac user needs one day to fall in love with the UI. we do supply a 2 button mouse, but other than that its standard, Training takes half an hour.

Actually its harder to do lots of things macs do in windows not the other way around. Try to properly close a flash drive in windows.. not easy. On the mac a simple right click - or CTRL-Click for the one button mouse and eject or drag the icon to trash and it ejects.

Its not windows, it will never try to be windows. But if its so bad why are all the features being copied into windows vista??

You are free to hate it, but at least keep it real

Plus of course there's Spotlight. You can search through all of the files on your hard drive in a few seconds.

Quicksilver is a brilliant Mac add-on which makes it not only quick to find things but take action on them. With just a few keypresses I can search for a Word document, convert it to PDF and mail the PDF to a friend, all without having to open Word or my mail program!

Gooood points: I agree 100 % on what you stated!

The whole benefit of this move is that anyone who buys mac hardware gets it all. If he lets every PC user install OSX he gets headaches trying to support all the drivers for all the silly hardware out there and les mac sales.

Nope OSX, Linux , bsd,... and XP will be only on Macs, and PC's will be windows and anything except OSX

Apple is a HARDWARE company... and its happy to stay that way. The whole reason MAcs work so well is that the hardware is standard and while that means less choices in some area's it also means a lot les headaches getting the stuff to work.

I once thought apple should sell OSX, but now I see the strategy I have to say its very sound. Apple want to sell Mac HARDWARE. Even if it means some sales of XP for Microsoft, it means much more for Apple.

An argument against buying a Mac, with nothing supporting the reason is nutty. It must be to see their name in a post or more likely a bias nutured over years from lack of knowledge. Like politics or religeon. Just let the trolls go on and complain about lost elections, inferior races and whatever.
What I see is different. I have owned both platforms. One reason why I will buy the intel is business reality. I am in real estate and many, like the nay sayers above, have chosen the PC over the mac to keep jobs in the repair sector.. job security so to speak. Macs require little IT work
And that is why our MLS is Windows, Explorer 6 req'd. So I use VPC now and they just keep their jobs. They will admit it to me but not to the ignorati who manage the board.

There is many reasons to run Windows in a Mac: the first one is that who has a Mac has the best combination hw+sw available on the planet... So running Windows is just a nice plus to run some program you can't run in a Mac. And speaking of value and money, now with an Intel Mac you have TWO computer in one! So you pay just 1/2 of the price to run ANY program you want... Undestand??

In my industry (marketing research), all of the decent software is Windows based, or Unix/Linux in a few high end cases. As good as the Mac OS might be for some purposes, the best software for statistical analysis, survey cross-tabulation, computer assisted interviewing, complex Web surveys, PDA surveys, etc. is just not available for the Mac.

So why would I pay extra for a limited selection of moderate performing Intel hardware that Macs offer? Any regular reader knows that even the slower AMD systems blow away Intel's best.

Perhaps if the price were comparable, I might then try a Mac laptop for its presentation graphics. But Windows graphics have closed that gap, if not eliminated any Mac advantage.

Good for you

I too will keep some cheep celerons and the like for silly dumb tasks, but as a professional my hadware is my life, every machine down costs me big bucks. so I have the best hardware and it works really really hard.

Windows Machines just don't cut the grade in the long term. Macs have yet to let me down, Unless the Smashed LCD on the old ibook counts). Even then we booted the bos in target mode, recovered the entire hard drive, Connected it to an external monitor and its still in use.

But some work needs a windows PC and its for me that steve has done this, now I dont need the PC, my mac can do that work too.

For me it means the money that would have brought the slow celeron D box can now buy a firewire hard drive for my mac instead.

If you never buy a mac I'll be happy. But now I dont need to buy a PC. I'll never have to buy another pc. When they die, a Mac can take their place. I too will be happy

And since I won't need those window boxes, the suppliers can sell them to you on special, and you can save even more.

Its win win N'est Pas