- Joined
- Jan 9, 2016
- Messages
- 23
- Motherboard
- Asrock z97e-itx/ac
- CPU
- i7-4790
- Graphics
- GTX 1080
- Mac
I'm 45. I wrote my first code when I was very young on a TRS-80. I wrote code to make money in high school. I had an internship my freshman year of college working with Oracle and the 1.0 version of MS Access connecting to Oracle on a VAX. I was the first and second WWW conferences talking about this strange idea of using a SQL database to provide content on the WWW via Mosaic. I worked at the #2 most traffic website (some say #3) in the late 90's. Then rebuilt all of a huge publishers website. Now I work for one of the largest software companies there is as a transformation architect. I've hacked and programmed computers people have never heard of - Imagination Machine anyone? I even have pretended to know what I am doing on a CM5 (looks it up).
The reason I never reply to this nonsense on Mac cost is that it is entirely what's wrong with civilization: inability to think through the cost of the entire lifecycle of choice. We do it with computers, infrastructure, in business...everywhere.
The bottom line is TCO is a thing, and while the upfront cost of an MBP might be high, I have to do anything to keep it running. This computer is my way of life - it helps me to feed myself. I cannot have a flaky computer if I do I don't get work done, and I don't get fed.
Why did I move to Mac way back when? Two things:
1 - I never had to mess with IPX/SPX drivers again (anyone old enough will get this one!), but seriously I turned it on, plugged in my phone, got all my contacts synced and could get to work.
2 - Del laptops were (are?) terrible. As a consultant, I travel a lot. Years ago I had to take my last Dell out of my bag. The DVD drive popped out of the chassis, hit the floor, slid across the floor, through the security line, and caused untold chaos. I was done.
Moreover, after that, I'll tell you what think is the final area of debate, which is just silly. Read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: some people want the least expensive way to do something. Some people want something beautiful. This is true of watches; as an example, my father is proud of his 1990's g-shock. He thinks my mechanical watch is absurd, "mine is more accurate and costs nothing" he always asserts. He will never understand that for me I look at my watch many times in a day and in a world of ugly Soviet-style utilitarianism I want to look at something pretty for 10 seconds.
If you do not care about aesthetes, you don't. If you do, you will pay not to have a cheap plastic thing.
Now some will talk about performance. You are right; I need the newest X to read my email and work on CAD. No. I don't. Maybe 5% of the user population does.
My brother is one of the worlds best-known CUDA programmers. He does it for a living. He cannot use a mac for work; he needs Nvidia chips. So he has a Razer or some other laptop to work on the go. However, he still has a mac to do his other work. This is a man who could have any computer he wants and has some that are one of a kind prototypes. However, he works on a mac because it just works, he says.
Finally, when I get a new MBP, maybe once in 3 years, I give my mom my older one, she drives them into the ground, and she loves them. Once I started to do this, I never got a call for tech support once. That alone might have saved my family! HAHA!
