What would make me touch a Mac

Mike Halsey MVP
Mar 5, 2012
Updated • Jan 4, 2018
Apple, Companies
|
13

2012 or early 2013 will be the time I finally take the plunge and buy an Apple iMac.  This might surprise those of you who know me as, being a Windows MVP (Microsoft Most Valuable Professional) awardee and a Windows author I'm certainly not the typical Apple, Mac or OS X type.  I don't even currently own any Apple products, I never have.  So why am I now pretty determined to buy a Mac and what is it that's standing in my way?

The main reason for buying a iMac is aesthetics.  While some PC all-in-ones are certainly pretty and unobtrusive, they don't hold a candle to what Sir Jonathan Ive, the recently knighted British lead designer at Apple has achieved in the last decade or so.  Nobody is going to complain about Apple's product design or the quality of those products, and they are as desirable as they have ever been.

There are problems associated with this however, and some people do see them as insurmountable.  The main one is the price premium you have to pay for any Apple product.  Not only are the computers far more expensive than their counterpart PCs to begin with, but once you start configuring them on the Apple website the price really begins to rocket.  For example on the Apple UK website (which will forever be apple.com/uk and not Apple.co.uk after the company had an argument with the Beatles, seriously yes the 60's band!) an upgrade from 4Gb of 1,333MHz DDR3 RAM to 8Gb costs a whopping £160.  Conversely a full 8Gb of the equivalent Corsair memory can be bought online for just £37, making the Apple markup quite substantial.

When you buy an all-in-one computer though, be it from Apple or any other manufacturer they are not intended to be upgraded by the user, and Apple's machines can be considered even less upgradable given the way they're assembled and the attention to detail that goes into them.  This all will make the specification of the iMac I would like to buy a staggering £2,500 which is double the price I'd expect to pay for an equivalent PC.

So why would I bother you would think, other than to say that I own a Mac?  Well being a Windows author it would be extremely useful for me to have a Mac for work both so that I can regularly use Windows in Boot Camp, but also so that, as my mother keeps telling me, I don't get blinkered by Microsoft Windows.  I could just then buy a Mac Mini and plug it into my existing set-up of monitor and keyboard, but that's just over-complicating things when the whole point of the exercise is to buy a new all-in-one that will look great in my home.

The price, you might be surprised to hear, isn't a barrier.  It isn't for me and it's not a barrier either for the millions of people worldwide who go out and buy a Mac every year.  So what is the barrier and how would I get over it?

The barrier is simple and singular.  Touch.  Apple are an odd company when it comes to supporting new technologies.  They like to do things their own way and in their own time.  There's still no BluRay drives in their products and they refused to include USB3, despite its obvious advantages and the cheapness of the components, instead going for Thunderbolt, but a copper-based variety and not the original fibre-optic version (originally called Light Peak) that Intel had first planned.  This latter decision, while also made with Intel, mostly concerned price but price doesn't seem to be a subject that Apple executives tend to spend much time debating in meetings surely!?

Touch-screen technology is certainly the way forward however and it's now an important enough technology for me to be able to say that all of my new computers going forward will have to include support for it.  Currently there are no Apple iMacs or Apple monitors that support it and while it may be built into the next version of OS X, Apple are certainly keeping it quiet if it is.  If you want to use touch on a Mac you're currently limited to the magic trackpad, which I've used and personally find frustrating.

So is this a deal breaker?  Well I began this article by saying that "2012 or early 2013 will be the time I finally take the plunge and buy an Apple iMac."  I mean it too, I will.  It won't be a wholesale move away from PCs for me as I'll still need a PC for work but neither does it mean that I'll use Windows exclusively on the Mac.  It's a very interesting time in the computer market at the moment, and there have been so many interesting and, indeed, fascinating technologies coming into the arena including touch, Kinect, Thunderbolt, USB3 and sensors.  I just wish that Apple would start supporting more of them!

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Comments

  1. The Dark Lady said on July 9, 2023 at 11:19 am
    Reply

    Martin, I would appreciate that you do not censor this post, as it’s informative writing.

    Onur, there is a misleading statement “[…] GIFs are animated images …”. No, obviously you don’t seem to have take much notice of what you were told back in March regarding; Graphics Interchange Format (GIF).

    For example, https://www.ghacks.net/2023/03/31/whats-gif-explanation-and-how-to-use-it/#comment-4562919 (if you had read my replies within that thread, you might have learnt something useful). I even mentioned, “GIF intrinsically supports animated images (GIF89a)”.

    You linked to said article, [Related: …] within this article, but have somehow failed to take onboard what support you were given by several more knowledgeable people.

    If you used AI to help write this article, it has failed miserably.

  2. KeZa said on August 17, 2023 at 5:58 pm
    Reply

    AI is stupid, and it will not get any better if we really know how this all works. Prove me wrong.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IYl1sTIOHI

  3. Database failure said on August 18, 2023 at 5:21 pm
    Reply

    Martin, [#comment-4569908] is only meant to be in: [https://www.ghacks.net/2023/07/09/how-to-send-gifs-on-iphone-two-different-ways/]. Whereas it appears duplicated in several recent random low-quality non relevant articles.

    Obviously it [#comment-4569908] was posted: 9 July 2023. Long before this thread even existed… your database is falling over. Those comments are supposed to have unique ID values. It shouldn’t be possible to duplicate the post ID, if the database had referential integrity.

  4. Howard Pearce said on August 25, 2023 at 12:24 pm
    Reply

    Don’t tell me!

    Ghacks wants the state to step in for STATE-MANDATED associations to save jobs!!!

    Bring in the dictatorship!!!

    And screw Rreedom of Association – too radical for Ghacks maybe

  5. Howard Allan Pearce said on September 7, 2023 at 9:13 am
    Reply

    GateKeeper ?

    That’s called “appointing” businesses to do the state’s dirty work!!!!!

    But the article says itself that those appointed were not happy – implying they had not choice!!!!!!

  6. owl said on September 7, 2023 at 9:50 am
    Reply

    @The Dark Lady,
    @KeZa,
    @Database failure,
    @Howard Pearce,
    @Howard Allan Pearce,

    Note: I replaced the quoted URI scheme: https:// with “>>” and posted.

    The current ghacks.net is owned by “Softonic International S.A.” (sold by Martin in October 2019), and due to the fate of M&A, ghacks.net has changed in quality.
    >> ghacks.net/2023/09/02/microsoft-is-removing-wordpad-from-windows/#comment-4573130
    Many Authors of bloggers and advertisers certified by Softonic have joined the site, and the site is full of articles aimed at advertising and clickbait.
    >> ghacks.net/2023/08/31/in-windows-11-the-line-between-legitimate-and-adware-becomes-increasingly-blurred/#comment-4573117
    As it stands, except for articles by Martin Brinkmann, Mike Turcotte, and Ashwin, they are low quality, unhelpful, and even vicious. It is better not to read those articles.
    How to display only articles by a specific author:
    Added line to My filters in uBlock Origin: ghacks.net##.hentry,.home-posts,.home-category-post:not(:has-text(/Martin Brinkmann|Mike Turcotte|Ashwin/))
    >> ghacks.net/2023/09/01/windows-11-development-overview-of-the-august-2023-changes/#comment-4573033

    By the way, if you use an RSS reader, you can track exactly where your comments are (I’m an iPad user, so I use “Feedly Classic”, but for Windows I prefer the desktop app “RSS Guard”).
    RSS Guard: Feed reader which supports RSS/ATOM/JSON and many web-based feed services.
    >> github.com/martinrotter/rssguard#readme

  7. Anonymous said on September 14, 2023 at 6:41 pm
    Reply

    We all live in digital surveillance glass houses under scrutiny of evil people because of people like Musk. It’s only fair that he takes his turn.

  8. Anonymous said on September 18, 2023 at 1:31 pm
    Reply

    “Operating systems will be required to let the user choose the browser, virtual assistant and search engine of their choice. Microsoft cannot force users to use Bing or Edge. Apple will have to open up its iOS operating system to allow third-party app stores, aka allow sideloading of apps. Google, on the other hand, will need to provide users with the ability to uninstall preloaded apps (bloatware) from Android devices. Online services will need to allow users to unsubscribe from their platform easily. Gatekeepers need to provide interoperability with third-parties that offer similar services.”

    Wonderful ! Let’s hope they’ll comply with that law more than they are doing with the GDPR.

  9. sean conner said on September 27, 2023 at 6:21 am
    Reply

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