Actually there is. OS X runs on a limited amount of hardware and it's easy to test against that whereas impossible to test against the Frankenstein assortment of parts that make up OEM PCs. In addition Apple gives you a a better case, better keyboard and better display than the OEMs. That counts.
I was talking about the electronics it's made of are the same. There's no "special sauce" or Apple magic involved.
The case may be pretty, but it's not as important as the rest of the system. I don't know if you've ever been inside other workstations, but they tend to be rather nice internally (drastic difference between these and cheap budget boxes).
Monitor: Mac Pro doesn't come with one (this is the Mac Pro section afterall, not the iMac area).
Keyboard and mouse: They're not ergonomic (keyboard in particular). Pretty, Yes. But they actually hurt me, and I have to use 3rd party gear, no matter the system. Fortunately, such 3rd party equipment exists, or I'd have been in surgery (CTS).
As per the limited amount of hardware (aka closed system), in theory it produces fewer bugs. Unfortunately, this hasn't proven true in the recent past (particularly with the 2009 MP's). MR's full of threads on such issues (there are repeats), but there have been significant issues, such as the overheating issue by the audio drivers in the 2009 MP's amongst others.
Let's see: Safari, Mail, Bento, Keynote, Pages, Numbers, iTunes, iLife and many more. You might as well claim that Microsoft doesn't make much in the way of software.
I didn't say Apple doesn't write software, but overall, it's not professional related (more general use and entertainment related).
Most of your heavy lifting professional software comes from 3rd party vendors, whether it's run under OS X or Windows.
Many of the Mac software houses gave up making Windows versions for the simple reason that it wasn't cost efficient. Windows sales accounted for 15% of business, but Windows accounted for 85% of the costly support calls.
Why? Windows is required to run on a tremendous variety of hardware and the truth is that it often doesn't run very well on them. As above, you cannot test your software on every type of PC hardware.
Care to back this up with some proof? Particularly "many" part?
I ask, as when I think of professional software, I usually see vendors providing multi-platform support. Adobe, Autodesk, and even National Instruments does (one of their products even runs under OS X). There's others as well, but they go for Windows due to the fact that it's used by the majority of users. Thus there's a higher potential for profit, which makes sense.
For consumer grade software, they may concentrate on one OS, which is usually good for the consumer's who buy those products, as it's a natively written application rather than one that's been ported (such applications tend to suck).
Agreed. I use Scrivener 2 and Keynote for most of my work. Windows would be useless.
It all comes down to usage. What works for you may not work for someone else.
My usage OTOH, has to do with hardware design, so applications I use come from companies like National Instruments and Synopsys. Synopsys doesn't make OS X versions, and National Instruments only offers an OS X version for a single product. VM didn't work (had to pass hardware data from instruments), and rebooting between Windows and OS X is a PITA, so the best solution is to run Windows.
Further, I use RAID and do surface scans on HDD's before placing them in an array (allows me to find a suspect/bad disk prior to using it, and thus saves lots of headache trying to diagnose a bad one once it's in the array). Unfortunately, the sofware used (comes from the disk maker) is designed to run on a BIOS machine, which means the low level information isn't passed properly on an EFI/UEFI model (i.e. you cannot do this on a Mac). This may not be that big a deal for Mac users (until the disk starts having problems), but for me, it is.
Building a RAID system was also more expensive on a MP due to the case design.
So when I take the above 3 reasons into consideration, using a PC running Windows was the best solution in
my case.
I didn't say that at all. You implied that the important part of Reprographics was not the creation of it, but the printing. While the latter is an important part, the former is far more demanding.
The beginning if this had to do with the mention of Dell being better for servers. You then mentioned that there were cases it wasn't, and pulled up the idea that Reprography was one. It was about the hardware, not the effort involved in the content creation. Nothing more.
To me it seem's your truly an Apple fan, and that's fine. But you don't provide sufficient proof, or in some cases none at all, to the arguments you've made. That's why I've posted; counterpoint with fact, rather than just preference spun into superiority.
I'm actually platform agnostic, which means I don't care if the solution is Apple, Windows, or Linux. It's all a combination of odds and ends that should result in the fewest number of compromises = best solution for the particular need.
If you go back and look at various RAID threads, the vast majority of the OP's are using MP's and OS X based creative software. You don't see me trying to convert them to PC's and Windows versions of what they run. I just try help them figure out the right storage solution for their needs and budget.
Last time I checked, the display is not included in the Mac Pro.
Exactly.
Internet Explorer, Outlook, Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Windows Media Center/Player...
Pulling up the software card is always moot. If you need a software that is Mac only, then Mac is your only option but that is only you, so claiming that a Mac is better in general isn't fair.
Too much of Steve's special Kool-Aid perhaps.
If we get back to the original point, yes, the SP Mac Pro is still overpriced compared to its competitors. However, the extra price can be justified if your needs are driven by OS X. On the other hand, if one uses no OS X only software, then it can be hard to justify the big premium.
Nice simple way to put it.
