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Why did you chose a Mac over a PC?

Personal preference

and at the time, Macs were the primary machine for graphic design use.

I continue to use Macs all these years later for their ease of use and less hassles than my PCs at work. It really boils down to the OS and ease of use for me. I'm willing to pay a little more for that ease of use and peace of mind.

I'm not a Microsoft fan at all. I'm reminded why M-F at my job.
 
Almost 4 years ago I decided to 'try' a Mac. I bought a Mac Mini on the assumption I probably could get 75% of the value back if I didn't get on with it.

Initially it was a struggle, especially only having 512mb. Rosetta emulation of Photoshop was fairly bad. Anyway after a few weeks and a memory upgrade I've not looked back.

I still have a couple of PC's, but they're only around for legacy things like my SCSI film scanner.
 
I'd used PCs for a decade but all the pundits and web designers I followed used Macs. I wondered what all the fuss was about; how could they be that much better. So I bought a MBP and now know why Macs and OS X are better. It would hurt to go back to PCs completely.
 
My dad had one of the old early version macs, and the very first mac laptop. My grandpa was always a mac guy. So I had some experience with them. My conversion was for three reasons:

1: I really like the look of the lineup. I have a MacMini as a media center, and it takes up the least amount of footprint of all the other devices on my shelf (external DVD burner, wii, speakers, xbox360)

2. My brother is still using a G4 mac pro, which is approaching 12 years old, I think. The guy he bought it from is a tech head, so I guarantee it was top of the line at the time and well maintained throughout his ownership, but either way... hard to find a still functioning 12 year old PC.

3. My wife had a laptop when we met, bought a new one just before we got married, and a third about 3 years ago. XP, XP and Vista respectively. All three of them had some issues. One broke the toggle switch for the wifi antenna on/off, another fried the motherboard, and the third was running Vista. I bought her the most recent MacBook update, and she has had no problems at all, and loves it. So yeah, for a similarly spec'd PC I would have paid less, but, if this computer lasts the 6 years of the previous three, then the extra couple hundred bucks was well worth it.
 
Because I got tired of reformatting my hard drive and re-installing windows.
Every Mac I have bought for the last 8 years still works. Seriously.
 
...because right now I'm going thru 43 driver updates to try yet another "fix" to what was originally a $2149 ultraportable Sony TR3a laptop 6+ years ago...

RAM replaced under crucial lifetime warranty, new Toshiba 60 Gb 1.8" HDD, new Mobo and a fresh winXP install that didn't automatically load any device drivers...

If it works, it will still be cheaper now as a repair than purchasing a "new" netbook and the screen at 1280x768 is still a great panel!

...winVista was really a bomb but win7 is at least on par or better than OSX depending on what tasks its being used for...
 
I have always had PCs also. The quad core 27" iMac is my first and I LOVE IT.

Why? some of the more simple reasons:

It takes less than 30 seconds to boot up from full shut off.

It doesn't pester me constantly for security updates and force me to have to restart it.

I have never had anything on it lock up and have to use the equivalent of task manager to shut it down.

It looks beautiful and I love the screen.

Sure it was a bit of a learning curve to go to Mac from PC and I have never bothered with paralells or putting windows on it. I still have an Asus laptop that I can use for other things but I almost never turn it on.

Those are some of my reasons. It never ceases to amaze me how well it boots up, works, sleeps and doesn't pester me.

WW
 
Because it didn't come with the **** known as 'Windows.' And pretty much every other reason listed here.
 
thedon1 said:
Mac cost a lot more than their similarly specced pc counter parts. What made you pay the extra and want the pac?
Click to expand...

This is one of the major misconceptions about Macs and isn't really correct when you consider the total cost of ownership. Which include money spent for malware protection and resale. BTW this isn't scientific by any means and can be easily argued.

Let's say you spend $1000 for a really nice desktop PC and $1700 for an iMac. With the PC you need to factor in getting Antivirus and anti malware software every year to stay up to date, this will probably cost about $50 year or $150 over 3 years. With the Mac you don't need to spend a dime because there currently zero virus's for OS X.

What is a 3 year old PC worth, I think most agree it's going to be pennies on the dollar. But let's be an optimistic and say it's worth $450. I paid $1700 for my iMac 3 years ago, the other day I checked on both Ebay and Craig's List and the configuration I have is getting between $900 and $1200 dollars so let's shoot on the low side and say mine gets $1000, that means I really only paid $700 for it. When I do the math that comes out to:

Mac $1700 + $0 (antivirus costs) = $1700 - $1000 (resale) = $700 / 36 months = $19.44 month.

PC $1000 + $150 (antivirus costs) = $1150 - $450 (resale) = $700 / 36 months = $19.44 month.

So is a PC really less expensive than a Mac? And what price can you put on OS X, less down time, less noise, and for most a better user experience etc..?

Regards,

Roger
 
Because I'm a sucker for good hardware. :)

Just picked up my first mac. A 27in iMac, and honestly, I'm pretty happy with it so far.

I'm a Windows Systems Admin, have used Windows/Dos for over 20+ years, and this is my first Mac I have ever purchased. I've never been anti-mac, just never saw the reason to purchase one over the other considering price difference. But having a 27 inch screen at 2560x1440 w/all the components built in and no tower is very nice!

As for the OS, it's all preference, I use Windows exclusively and will continue to because that is my business, but having OSX is fun too.

This way I have the best of both worlds.
 
Because I was born into a Mac using family.

In the early 90's, my dad was a journalism teacher at a high school that used Macs. He liked them enough to purchase one for home use and to work on a local newspaper with my mom. This was my first Mac, a Macintosh Performa 575. From then, I've used a myriad of Macintosh computers growing up... from Classics to PowerMacs to eMacs to iMacs to MacBooks & MacBook Pros.

I choose Mac over PC simply because of my familiarity with them. I've been a Mac user my whole life, I grew up with them. In fact, I don't even think I knew that there was anything besides a Macintosh until I was older! Using a PC was, and still is, a very foreign experience. I only know how to work with PC's today, because my elementary, middle, and high schools only had PC's. But I've never liked using them.

Also, the Performa 575 still works!
 
I've used both Macs and PCs for going on twenty plus years now and I see the pros and cons of each platform.

I just "retired" my custom built PC running Windows 7 and got a refurbished 27 Core i5 iMac. Why?

I got tired of many issues with Windows such as driver issues, registry bloat, and other assorted maladies that are inherent with that platform. With Mac OSX I do not have those problems and the experience is a much more "streamlined" one. For those times I want to play my older games I've got Windows 7 installed via Boot Camp and I'm planning to install either Parallels or VMWare to access the Boot Camp partition on the very rare occasion I may need to use a non-game software package that is not available on Mac.

That and you can't beat the look of the Mac hardware and I just didn't feel like building a new PC.
 
Wanted to try it four years ago, back when I bought my first Mac. Now I buy it simply because I like using it more than Windows (which I also use a lot).

Try it, figure out if it's for you. :)
 
"Why did you chose a Mac over a PC?"

The OS.

It's that simple.

Using Windows on a PC has never entered my mind.
 
I got a Mac because of the OS, and because of the design. They're gorgeous.
 
In the past I used Macs (had four of them in 7 years) because of the OS.
Now I am back on a PC with Windows 7.

Apple has simply no desktop computer, made for my pocket.
 
Because the Mac has a Unix base, which is inherently more stable and secure, and also has both commercial and open source applications.

Previous to switching to Mac I used SGI (I haven't used Windows since 1991 when I got tired of having to restore from tape twice a week). When SGI stopped supporting desktop systems I started switching to Mac. In many ways the 1998 SGI (my last SGI, which I used from spring 1998 to summer 2007) was far superior in speed, stability, and ease of maintenance than the Mac Pro that replaced it. However, having to compile every application was a pain after the vendors stopped software support for the IRIX O/S, so when it had a hardware fault I switched my last SGI system to Mac.

If anyone is wondering why I didn't switch to Linux, it's because I want to use my computer--not fiddle around with system administration. Like the SGI, Linux requires you to compile every application (or trust someone else's compilation) and there are few commercial apps.
 
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