The interest in Mac is an at all time high these days. The public follies of Windows Vista, coupled with the superb marketing and positioning of the Mac by Apple, has led to an increased presence of the Mac in the eye of the computer user today. A tech bloggers like myself really enjoy covering Apple because they really are on the cutting edge of things and cause a lot of hype.
I pretty publicly switched to the Mac last year. A long time Windows user, I am now using 100% Apple hardware. But, the reaction to many might be: “must be nice to be you. YOU can afford it!”. So, the question is: How can you switch to a Mac without breaking the bank?
Macs Being Expensive
I am a firm believer in the fact that Macs are not overpriced. The Mac, regardless of what many Windows fanboys will say, is a higher end machine than your typical desktop sitting at Best Buy. Obviously, when you build your own box, you have complete and total flexibility in your choice of hardware and it isn’t incredibly hard to beat the out the Mac when it comes to pricing. But, retail PC to retail Mac (which they all are), the pricing of the Mac is on par for what you would pay for a similar quality machine on the Windows side of things.
Where I fault Apple is that they don’t offer enough options. The only tower the company offers is a Mac Pro. The Mac Pro is beyond the budget of most computer users. The IMac is within the price range of a lot more people, but many people prefer to have a tower, not a fully integrated system where little is upgradeable. Apple offers no tower option that is within the price range of the typical consumer.
Tip for Apple: If you put out a tower with similar specs to the IMac, you’d win a lot more market share. I’m just saying.
Is a Mac Clone Worth It?
This one is easy – NO.
Obviously, now that Apple is using Intel in the Mac, there is increasingly little difference between the Mac and the PC when it comes to hardware. So, it goes to say that you should be able to run OS X on a PC, right?
It has been done. Some have managed to hack OS X to a point where it will run on non-Apple hardware. It will work. However, what you’re left with is essentially a crippled pseudo-Mac.
A non-Apple hackintosh is not going to be able to receive updates from Apple. Anything in the OS or in software that expects to see certain system setups will not work because the system will not be recognized by the operating system.
Psystar, a south Florida based company, made huge waves when they very publicly came out and offered “open computers” for sale. Essentially, the “open computer” is a standard, run-of-the-mill PC for which you can choose the operating system. And, yes, OS X Leopard is an option. Reviews of the Psystar hackintosh certainly show that they are no Mac. In fact, they seem like pieces of crap all around.
So, if you want OS X, use a Mac.
Cheap Macs?
If you don’t want a laptop and don’t want to spring for the bad-ass Mac Pro, then your options are the Imac and the Mac Mini.
The IMac starts at $1,199, which is in the ball park of a lot of potential buyers. However, spec to spec, you can get more for your money by going PC and buying a separate monitor. The Imac does have an integrated screen and incredible style, but for the same specs, you probably could buy a similarly equipped PC, a 24″ stand-alone monitor and come in at the same or slightly less money.
The Mac Mini usually doesn’t enter the radar of a computer buyer because it doesn’t really look like a computer. It starts at $599 and does sport an Intel Core 2 Duo with 1 gigabyte of RAM. It is actually a pretty decent little machine. Of course, you don’t get any monitor or even a keyboard and mouse with that. You have to buy everything else separately.
Screw Apple, Go Used
Trying to sell a PC today is practically a lost cause. PCs are a dime-a-dozen and you’d be likely to get only a tiny fraction of what you originally paid for the computer when you sell it – IF you find a buyer at all.
The Mac, on the other hand, has pretty nice resale value. So, that means you can go on the market for a used Mac and often find some pretty good options for much less than you would pay to Apple. Yes, the machine you buy will not always be the most modern, but they still work. Macs also have a habit of working for many years fairly trouble free, so you can buy a used Mac and it will be good to go for some time.
Always check out Ebay for deals on used Macs. In fact, I bought a brand new Mac Mini on Ebay and saved over $150 on what Apple would have charged me.
You can also check out sites that sell used or refurbished Macs, such as:
Buying Used? Consider This
If you are a long time Windows user and simply want to buy a Mac to try it out, use it and see what the fuss is about, you probably take some comfort in the fact that you can run Windows on it as well. This is most certainly true, given one condition: you must be using Intel.
If you buy an older, PowerPC-based Mac, you are not going to be able to run virtualization applications like VMware Fusion or Parallels. You also will not be able to use Boot Camp to dual boot into Windows. So, if you want Windows as a backup plan, you must get an Intel-based Mac.
Like what you read?
If so, please join over 28,000 people who receive our exclusive weekly newsletter and computer tips, and get FREE COPIES of 5 eBooks we created, as our gift to you for subscribing. Just enter your name and email below:
