So some guy has gone out and done this; they took a 2.66Ghz Core i5 CPU, 1TB hard drive, 8GB of 1,333Mhz DDR3 RAM and XFX Radeon HD 5770 1GB DDR5 and stuffed it inside of an Amazon shipping box. He spent about $800 on a computer with better specs than a $2500 mac. Oh, and it runs Snow Leopard. That REALLY says something about Macs, doesn't it?
There, fixed for ya! This isn't anything new about Macs, they have always been a bit behind in terms of hardware.
One word: support. The reason why you pay a premium for Apple-hardware is, that you have manufacturer-support for both, hardware and software in your neighbourhood. Apple has to pay for personal in stores, where you can go to and have your problems solved, if the machine isn't working anymore.
Yes, because people would rather pay $2000 more to have somebody else troubleshoot, when you could do it yourself and fix it for free using warranties. Its still ridiculous.
Yes, the fact is, you can build a hackintosh for tiny money (atom board + leopard, anyone?), but I do think the new iMacs are worth it when you factor in the absolutely gorgeous IPS display. They're not gamer machines, but they are quick as hell. (Btw, speaking as a man who's never bought a single Apple product)
Yes it is true. Apple has the best support. If something goes wrong you can expect a RMA in store within a day or two. But for the same money you can just buy two computers and just use the backup when one dies. You still get support and warranty, just 2-3 week RMA periods which is fine because you have two computers. The Cinema Displays are mediocre at best and way more expensive than the competition. They chose to use crappy LEDs just because its a new thing and they can market it to chumps. If you think LED improves color, that would be the LaCie 700 series which has RGB LED backlighting. The cheap white LEDs the Apple and every monitor that isn't the LaCie 700 series is worst than CCFLs in terms of color. While for cheaper than the Cinema Displays you can have a NEC or Dell H-IPS panel that would look better than the Apple. The only apple product I ever bought was an iPhone. They genuinely make a good phone (though a bit expensive) its quite a bit better in terms of Apps and battery life than the rest. Though my next phone probably won't be an iPhone when the droid phones gets more competitive with their app base because for the same price people can change phones twice instead of buying an iPhone.
Here's the 21.5" iMac: 3.20GHz Intel Core i3 8GB 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 4x2GB 1TB Serial ATA Drive ATI Radeon HD 5670 512MB GDDR3 SDRAM 8x double-layer SuperDrive Apple Wireless Keyboard (English) & User's Guide Magic Mouse This costs $1699.00 The build you linked to was $900, if you're not an idiot like those people and you want to put it into a case, call it $1000. You'll need to include a monitor, wireless keyboard and mouse to match up with the iMac. 23" NEC IPS LCD - $340 with shipping Wireless Logitech laser mouse + keyboard - $85 with shipping We're at $1,425, just $250ish less than the iMac.. Now let's factor in power consumption. The iMac is basically a laptop stuck to an LCD.. According to this (http://www.apple.com/imac/environment.html), the thing consumes <100W with the display on, which is likely much more than the other computer. If you also consider the outstanding support offered by Apple, you can easily account for the price difference. The 5670 isn't as good as the 5770, but the CPU is clocked quite a bit higher. The specs are fairly even. Plus, you get the great space saving design of the iMac over the standard case+monitor+keyboard/mouse layout you'd get with the hackintosh. Plus, you can't be legally running OSX on that hackintosh..
Fixed. I'm sorry, but the Apple screens are a rip off, and you can get much better screens for less if you look elsewhere. Plus, the Apple screens aren't even that great anyway. They're not quick as hell when you compare them against a similar priced PC. My PC is 21 months old now, and will still outpace a single CPU Xeon based Mac Pro, and was one third the price. Building a Hackintosh is the only way to go IMO. Apple support is pretty damned useless anyway. They're just as crap as anyone else's online support. All your Hackintosh components will be under they're respective warranties anyway. You lose nothing by building a hackintosh.
