Sidebuster

@drakino

Damn, I kinda want an iMac now.

@(Unverified)

"Have you ever had to call tech support for your computer, or get the company to fix a well-known problem with it? In my mind, that goes a long stretch for the extra money spent on a Mac."

No I haven't. I build my own computers. If one of the components go bad I'll replace it or RMA if it's under warranty.

"I'm not saying it justifies every dime of it, though your $2,000-to-$700 comparison is ridiculous being that an iMac comes with a monitor, wireless keyboard and bluetooth mouse, and the Dell comes with no monitor and cheapest damned keyboard and mouse in existence."

I agree, that the monitor really turns the table in terms of value.

"You also have to consider the quality of parts. I've bought a PC and had the network card die on it within a week. I look up info about it online and it's a well-known common problem. Know how much of a pain in the ass it'd be for me to ship my system off to the manufacturer just to get a network card replaced? So I ended up spending $20 on a new one. I've had this happen with RAM as well upon purchasing a cheaper PC."

A lot of the time, parts are made by the same Company and then another company (say Kingston) will put their name on it. My sister had her mac book main board go out and they turn down fixing it for her because they claimed some one spilled coffee on it (she doesn't drink coffee). Mac are not higher quality internally, maybe the case is though.

"If you've ever even glimpsed the inside of a Mac Pro you'd understand. The whole case is SOLID, THICK aluminum. To install a harddrive you slide out a damned tray, screw in four screws, slide it back into place. No mucking with wires and taking 20 minutes to hook the thing into the right spot because your case was designed by a monkey with a tackhammer. Their RAM, by company policy, all has heatsinks on it. The case is designed to provide the best airflow across all components. There are no wires dangling all over the inside of it so it's a breeze to clean out with an air canister when the time comes."

The computer I built is very clean and has good air flow too. You don't need heatsinks on RAM unless you are going to overclock them.

"To be clear, I own a PC, it is my home computer and gaming rig, but damned if I don't wish it were a Mac sometimes after using one for 8.5 hours a day, 5 days a week for the last 7 years doing graphic design. Especially every time something breaks on it since I could just take it to a nearby Apple Store, for free, and have them look at it, no matter the age of the thing, and even moreso if there were more decent games for it."

I do own an iPhone and love it to death (and hate iTunes to death too). Too each his own I guess. I'll say I lost the argument right when some one mentioned the high quality monitor. I forget I'm a little biased towards PC's because I build my own and if I were to buy a new PC I would just use the monitor I already have.

@S0lid Sn4ke If I could game on Linux, I would install Ubuntu in a heartbeat.

@Chrisness That's true. The monitor is the bees knees. I'm always tempted to get one, but I'd rather just upgrade. Maybe if I had started with blank slate I'd get a mac.

@MystileArmor

Do you have any benchmarks to back up that claim that Macs are more stable and are faster than Windows computers? I'm sorry but the common claim of Macs for audio/video/photo editing being better than PCs is just a made up justification from mac users who need to make themselves believe that lie. Could it just be the fact that since the macs are for work that they don't have all the misc programs running in the background that a home computer would?

@Sidebuster Just want to add that I think it's cool of Valve to do this and I do think Mac deserve games as much as any platform. I just don't get why everyone and their mothers think Apples are so great.

A $2000 Mac has the same specs as a $700 Windows PC. I don't get it. Is the Apple name really worth all that extra money?

$1999.99 for an iMac
2.8GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i5
4GB 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 2x2GB
1TB Serial ATA Drive
8x double-layer SuperDrive
ATI Radeon HD 5750 1GB GDDR5 SDRAM
Apple Wireless Keyboard (English) & User's Guide
Magic Mouse

$899 Dell
Intel® Core™ i5-650 processor
8GB DDR3 SDRAM
1TB Serial ATA hard drive (7200 rpm)
NVIDIA GeForce GT220 graphics

@JonahFalcon That's a damn good idea.

I still don't know what to do with my Tabula Rasa DVD. It just sits there in it's sleeve waiting to be used. They should have made the game free to play with ads or something.

It would have been cool if it was like A Tale in the Desert. Where it takes a server of people to build and maintain a city.