I think you were responding to TW there. I didn't get all philosophical and stuff:D

Guilty as charged, Your Honour. Sorry; got a bellyache, it's distracting.

By the way, TW: far from jumping you, I very much agree with your point about the three Abrahamic religions. "The narcissism of minor differences" is what the psych boys call it. And in a bloody-minded religious society it is much better to be a heathen than a heretic.

Whoops! what I get for not fact-checking the output of my own brain. or wait - are you sure there wasn't a time machine involved in that, somehow? :D

I can upgrade your Thirty Years War to a Hundred for 29 dollars, if you place the order before the end of the year. Or send me three wars, and I'll combine them and throw in the last ten years of massacre, starvation and cannibalism for free. :)

By "customization" you mean that I can build my computer to use the cheapest Celeron CPUs and VIA components, then you're right. You won't find a Mac with crap hardware.

As to Apple dictating how I run my system couldn't be further from the truth. I can customize OS X to my hearts content.

Apple is in the hardware business, and builds the highest quality/best engineered computers on the market (Check Consumer Reports and Popular Mechanics). Microsoft writes software. Because MS has to leave their system open so that anyone can write drivers for even the worst of hardware, they also have to leave it open so anyone can write viruses and malware. This is the true reason Macs don't have viruses.

can I substitute outcomes - trade in the whole religious schism thing for something more post-apocalyptic, maybe? Zombies are optional, but you have to make sure that the city-wreckage is scenic city-wreckage; the post-apocalypse won't be any fun if everything looks dumpy.

If you want to compare the ability to customize the interfaces of Windows Vs. OS X, Windows will come out ahead. Just the sheer number of third party apps that allow this is way much more than a Mac. To some people this is a non issue. To me it is a non issue as I like a clean desktop, with a dock and now that 10.5 added spaces I am pretty content with my OS X desktop.

When I build a PC I don't use low quality no name parts. Last year I built this for 1100 and change plus like $100 or so in rebates so in the end it was just over $1k build.

Intel Q9650 Quad Core processor
4Gigs of Corsair RAM
2 TB of SATA2 HD space
EVGA Nvidia GTX 260
Antec True PSU 900w
HAF 932 Coolermaster Case
Asus motherboard (P5N model I think)
22" Samsung LCD Monitor
16x DVD Burner
*motherboard came with eSATA, FW, USB2, Bluetooth and a slot for wifi card if I wanted it, gigabit ethernet, built in 6 channel digital audio

My PC is 1 year old and I did not use low quality or low priced or no name parts and I got a killer deal on it. You couldn't beat that with a Mac for the same price.

Now, I don't think that is a fair comparison because the only true desktop Apple offers is the Mac Pro. The iMac and the Mini aren't really comparable to this because they are in a different class of machines. The mini is in the small compact micro ATX realm, and the iMac is in the all-in-one category. So, I try to not compare them to what I built, but spec for spec for your dollar you can almost always build a PC for a bit cheaper than what you get with Apple.

I am not saying that Apple makes low quality machines at all, I think they are all high quality, but I don't think they make a higher quality machine than what I can build either.

I'll just say (as someone who's reasonably good with Windows, but much better with Macs), that the reason I dislike Windows is that dealing with anything out of the ordinary is such a royal pain. In normal operating conditions, Windows and the Mac OS have always been roughly equal (well, the Mac's always been a bit more intuitive and friendly for me, but maybe that's just me..). but let something go wrong... ugh! Even serious problems on the Mac I can solve with a little bit of investigation and a few trial runs; on Windows, it may take me hours just to figure out where I'm supposed to start, and then the real fun begins.

just my PoV.

There are some people who I don't want to use the Mac because the net effect of people like them switching is to degrade the platform. Fortunately, most of those people won't switch anyway, so there's no need to argue with them unless there are other people present that they might be swaying. In that case, I point out that Windows apologists use terms like "properly configured", "maintained", and "antivirus software" while my 80 year old father who knows very little about computers manages to do whatever he likes on a Mac without trouble — except when he lets some "PC expert" use his machine.

If you're referring to themes, I have to disagree. Themes are readily available for the Mac as well. Actually, they've been available for the Mac longer than Windows.

I happen to be the person that wrote the first Control Paneled theme for the Mac (WDEF III) back in 1990 for System 7, long before any themes were available for Windows. This was actually the second publicly available WDEF (Window Definition) made available. I was inspired by the original NeXT WDEF, a very, very basic WDEF written in C. I modified and improved the original and release that publicly as NeXT WDEF 2, then I started from scratch, rewriting the whole thing for 4 color support on color Macs. WDEF III was written on a Mac+ and gave the user NeXT like windows as well as a Smooth WDEF version that stopped streaking on the early greyscale Mac notebooks.

BTW: While WDEF III was shareware, I only received payment from one person; Greg Landweber, the author of the later popular theme utilities, Greg's Buttons (System 7) Aaron (System 8) and Kaleidoscope (System 8+OS 9). His paying the Shareware fee gave him access to the original code. I never cashed that check. :)

I don't hold up the whole who did it first thing on any kind of pedestal at all. The fact remains when it comes to themes, Windows has more of them. Quantity does not always equal quality but they do have more and more options for an end user. I was simply pointing that out, not trying to say one OS is better than the other.

Windows can look like a Mac, look like a classic mode PC, look like gnome, or whatever. I mean the Windows interface can be tweaked to emulate any interface you want it to.

I do prefer the Mac platform in most cases, but there are a few exceptions where I like Linux or Windows better in a few regards.

In reality the differences are business model and it comes down to personal choice?

Lest you think those of us who used it were just cheapskates, I used it back then, for a day or so before reverting. I think I installed it once again later on, just to show somebody it could be done. If I did, I removed it soon after. Not that it wasn't well done, but themes are distractions, and while there are always going to be those who like them, distractions detract from the user experience. I think that's why Apple has discouraged themes in OS X.

I've yet to see themes on Windows, as hard as they try, that comes close to the Mac interface. I would never consider trying to install a theme to look like Windows.

@cwtnospam - Not a problem! I did it for fun and shareware was a brand new thing. Few ever made money with it back then.

I've used Win machines and I've used Mac. Mac is better. What else needs to be said?

You guys are forgetting the old days..... remember when the other machine didn't have a mouse? Pull down menus? Windows 95 was a huge catch up, but still ......

Remember the days when adding a device to a Win machine was pure torture, and Mac was buzzing right along with "plug and play"?

Sure, if you want to compare MS office on a Mac and a PC, well not much difference and I'll be the first to admit that Windows has closed the gap to a pretty good degree.... but I still remember the old days and I am sold on my Mac(s).

Having just encountered this thread and read through it, I must say that I agree with tw & woodsman that it's because the differences in the broadest sense are actually small. Having said that, it's a value judgement, nothing more, nothing less. As the owner of two Hondas, I've never understood why anyone would drive a Chevy either.

Nope, I was talking about something else entirely and I think so was Jay.

Squawked here on the Forum when I had switched, this time last year, and NaOH pointed me to some partial solutions to the interface customisation I needed. It's about coloured backgrounds in apps. White surfaces, at any rate in the evening, really murder my eyes, in Windows I can set background colours at OS level, which then work in everything except webpages. NaOH taught me Online View and background colour in Word, and Thunderbird for the sake of its coloured panels, but the various tricks don't quite add up to what I had in Windows. Sometimes, therefore, I work in sunglasses, though I had to get them customised too, as the iMac emits polarised light that clashes with the sunglasses I had before. Being told that I can't do my thing because it would compromise Apple's design values I found quite provoking. Even though I have Shades as an essential app, it remains my opinion that making the iMac without a properly functioning dimmer is incompetent and an insult to the paying customer.

So, to relate back to the thread title, I would argue for Mac to a Windows user on other grounds, as indeed I described, but not on grounds of interface customisation. Or even interface generally; I think Finder is an abomination, and that's my taste and preference. But as I say, it's easy to report 100% satisfaction if you ignore the dissatisified on the grounds that they are idiots who just don't "get it", and so their user experience "doesn't count". Which is the vibe I often get. (That's a closed system, the same dynamics as religious fanaticism -- if you don't buy my testimony, the devil must have hardened your heart.) So when I recommend Mac to friends and colleagues, I do so with a reservation about fanboy exaggeration they might encounter elsewhere. I think they appreciate the realism.

I often am exactly the same way. Out of most of my close friends and pretty much all of my family I am the only technology adept person, everyone else is quite inept. So, I often get asked for help and my opinion. I tell my friends/family that there are pros and cons to running different platforms. I almost always rule out Linux to all of them and the ones that want it, I tell them that they will have to be patient and learn on their own as I don't have the time to teach them everything. I taught myself, but I took the time (about 4 years of steady usage) to sit down and really use it and learn it before I got handy enough where I could use it in my sleep.

A lot of people are turned off by the price of a Mac. That is just one major thing. Arguing over it, is ultimately pointless and you are just likely splitting hairs or playing to one fan boyism or another.

I try to give down to Earth advice. I say if you want to do this and this Mac and Windows can both do it. If you want to play video games, just get a PC.

Of course if a car has a steering wheel that falls off when you try to change lanes it might not be a selling point.


Egg.

But what basically got the Anglicans going (to the detriment of the Catholics) was Henry's demand for a divorce from Catherine. That's the minor tiff I was thinking about.

And the Nazis weren't anti-semitic in the 'you are Jews, we are something else' sense, they were just anti-semitic and white supremacist. They didn't care all that much what religeon people practiced, as long as it wasn't Judiasm. Yes, the beliefs are centuries in the making, but there wasn't that much direct causality.

However, this is getting _really_ off topic :D

Touché! But then, in my simile, the Toyota fanboy would already have told the prospective Honda owner that he must resign himself to being unable to change lanes at all, so he probably wouldn't try it. Seriously, the real-world equivalent of the steering-wheel here is stuff like "You can't transfer files in Windows by drag-and-drop" or "It takes ten operations to dismount a stick".

Constructive suggestion for those with friends or family who bitch about the price of Macs: find an Apple fanboy who says "You can't do XYZ in Windows", lay a bet with him, do XYZ with witnesses, and take his money. Lather, rinse and repeat, and soon you can stand your buddy a Pro for Christmas. :p Maybe it would work the other way round, too, so that Mac-haters get to finance your cousin's next games machine.

I agree that the Nazis were by no means traditional Christian anti-Semites, although they used some Christian rhetoric and profiled themselves as the party of Family Values contra degenerate liberal modernity (cough). Their animus against the Jews was primarily because they identified them with not only said liberal moral degeneracy but also with the Bolsheviks. This was not entirely unreasonable, as the correlation between Jews and communists in the period was very high, but they made it out to be even higher than it was. All Bolsheviks were Jews, they thought, and therefore (sic) all Jews were Bolsheviks. However, Nazi anti-Semitism used themes from previous versions of anti-Semitism, all the way back to the medieval Blood Libel, as well. So -- the Jews were at one and the same time Evil International Capitalism and Evil International Communism. Neat trick, eh? That way the Nazis could recruit both those who were pissed off at greedy financiers (like we are now) and those who were afraid of Communists murdering them in their beds and appropriating their small businesses. So who did that leave?