Cost of PCs and Macs

Cost
(ie. total cost of purchase and maintenance)

Study finds Apple Macs 36% cheaper to run than PCs (link on this page)

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Looking for a cheap supercomputer?

Get a few hundred G5s

The University of Texas has just completed a Dell/Linux cluster that will achieve over 3 Teraflops or 3 trillion calculations per second. According to the Austin Business Journal it is not yet at full capacity but will cost $US38million.
Also in the US, at Virginia Tech's $US5.2M Apple/Mac OS X cluster of 1,100 new G5s, which achieves 17.6 Teraflops, has just been put into operation putting it about second in the list of supercomputers. Each individual G5 is a dual processor, 2GHZ machine with 4GB of memory.
Source

see Terascale Computing Facility Press Links for current press about the Virginia Tech supercomputer

The Earth Simulator, the big gun in supercomputers cost about $US350 million

Cost per Teraflop:
Dell at UT- $US10.3 million.
Apple at VT- $US295,000.
Earth Simulator in Japan - $US9.75 million

Commentary
A grain of salt with your c|net, Apple still shines. Alan Graham Jan. 15, 2004

Check the latest on the supercomputers here.

Macs include many features that cost extra on PCs. It's a widely-held, but false, belief that PCs cost much less than Macs. While some PCs offer a lower "base price" than Macs, a feature-by-feature comparison, including cost of maintenance, indicates that Macintosh computers are often cheaper to buy and maintain. Macs include many key features that either cost extra, aren't needed or simply aren't available on most PCs, such as virus software, bluetooth , Firewire³ expansion and sound cards. All Macs have sound cards; some PCs still don't. All Macs have had Firewire standard since 2000; some PCs still don't.

A survey of press advertisements was begun in August 2000 and it showed that in fact the entry-level (and sometimes even high end) Macs were sometimes cheaper than roughly equivalent PCs (and this is before maintenance costs are considered)!

The Reliability and Security section of this site cites many many studies from non-Apple sources indicating that Macs are more reliable and more secure (read "cheaper to support").

MacOSX 10.2 (Jaguar - $AU229) is half the cost of Windows XP Home ($AU 460)
source Apple Store online and Harvey Norman catalogue April 2003
Education prices: OSX - $175; WinXP $240.
OSX FREE for teachers (May - June 2003)

For current retail pricing of computers in Australia go to Mac -PC PriceWatch (part of this site).

Apple's new Mac mini is cheaper than the cheapest desktop on the Dell Australia website (January 2005). And competively priced in August 2005. See Mac -PC PriceWatch

At least one ISP reports significantly longer help desk calls from Windows users (from Whirlpool Australia)
http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=463999
"No worries. The answers you received from other providers regarding Mac support have surprised me somewhat. OS9/OSX are far easier to support in my opinion than the multitude of Windows versions. I rarely have a long Mac call, but may spend an hour solving browsing issues on the Windows platform." Craig (Support) AAPT Internet

Tiger Server Roars, Too by Sean Gallagher April 29, 2005
... Apple box running Tiger Server could do the same job as a Windows 2003 system for hundreds or thousands of dollars less.

Apple's Xserve could make inroads in the data center
Its dirt-cheap dual-processor server competes favorably with rival offerings
"Most Mac technical support personnel argue that the machines are far simpler to manage than Windows boxes. For example, when Genentech went through a recent upgrade on both its Mac and Windows systems, one technician could completely upgrade six OS X machines per day, while on the Windows side, one person could complete only two or sometimes three PCs each day. And for the entire company, seven technicians handle nearly 2,500 Macintoshes."

Macs Are More Expensive, Right? by Paul Murphy LinuxInsider 26th 2004 August
At the low end, therefore, the PC desktops are marginally less expensive than the Macs -- if you can do without their connectivity and multimedia capabilities -- and considerably more expensive if you can't. At the very high end, however, all of the design focus is on multimedia processing and the PCs simply aren't competitive from either hardware or cost

From Apple Should Stay the Mac Course: (by Sean Gallagher May 2004)
"I'm typing this column on a G4 Cube that I bought four years ago with my own money—and it's survived three operating-system upgrades without any noticeable drop in performance. If anything, it's gotten faster.
On the other hand, one of my PC file servers was literally rebooted to death by Windows Updates. As for the desktop PC I purchased around the same time as the Cube, the best I can say about this machine is that it runs Linux well.

I can say without hesitation that I'd rather support an office full of Mac OS X machines than an office full of PCs running whatever combination of Windows they might have loaded."

Apple windfall from Licensing
6 Kelly Mills November25, 2003 The Australian
' Cost was another factor in Apple's favour. "Surprisingly, it came out at about half the price of a Windows server and these days you just can't ignore that," '

Analysis: x86 Vs PPC (OS News July 2003)
http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=3997
" Things are changing, Linux and other Operating Systems are becoming increasingly popular and these are not locked into x86 or any other platform. x86 is running into problems and PowerPC looks like it is going to increasingly become a real, valid alternative to x86 CPUs both matching and exceeding the performance without the increasingly important power consumption or heat issues."

Ordinary buyers of PCs are often deceived into thinking that PCs are much faster than Macs - they are faster but not so much that differences in processor speed would be noticeable to most users. It is only when processor intensive applications like Photoshop and 3D animation programs are used that differences in processing times will be really noticeable. Sometimes processors can be too fast for ordinary users. Yes too fast. For example, mouse scrolling in Word on the latest Mac or Intel processor can sometimes be impossible to control.

For a rational and virtually flame-free discussion see In pro digital photography, megahertz matters ( If Raw photo and Photoshop batch processing are important in your workflow, then speed is what you need by Rob Galbraith Tuesday, January 7, 2003).

There have been claims that Macs can "toast" Intel and AMD PCs processor-wise. They are exaggerated. The speed of a computer is dependent on the bus speed (the System Bus is like a "pathway" between the processor and main memory), the speed of the hard disk and the speed of the memory and the amount of memory installed. Apple's claims of superior processor performance are narrowly-based.

Here are some references regarding the "Megahertz Myth". Note that most of them are not "pro-Mac" sites (pro-Mac sites are bolded)

There is also some concern about the alleged speed of the new Pentium 4 chip (being slower than a Pentium 3). See the PC World report (http://www.pcworld.com/news/article.asp?aid=35083)

Macs also require less maintenance (see also under Reliability) making them less expensive.

Backward compatibility.
The Mac has always provided backward software compatibility, ensuring that users can run their older software on new Macs or on new versions of the Mac OS. Every new version of Windows has included features that make backward compatibility of existing applications an issue. What ran on DOS or Windows 3.1 didn't necessarily run on Windows 95; and DOS, Windows 3.1, and Windows 95 software didn't necessarily run on Windows NT. When combined with changes in Windows, PC users need to be very careful when upgrading. (This is apparently also true of Win2000 and XP).

It has to be said, however, that MacOSX (“ten”) released in March 2001 will only run on a G3/4 processor and only applications specifically made for it will be able to take advantage of its features.

Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)

Because Macintosh hardware and software are both tightly controlled by Apple they tend to work together more efficiently than the hardware/software combination on Wintel PCs where there are numerous hardware manufacturers designing for a single OS. The Mac OS and the hardware it runs on are made by the same company and because of this they are more reliable than PCs. They need less maintenance which reduces their total cost of ownership⁴ . Thus while the Mac’s initial cost is sometimes higher for professional level computers (Apple is very strict about its reseller pricing and it withdrew clone licensing agreements some years ago) it is cheaper to maintain, one study putting them at 25% cheaper to maintain than Windows-based systems^5.See the references below and under "Reliability and Security" and in the references for "What schools should do".

Many people don't realise that parts for PCs, which as a general rule are cheaper than those specifically made for the Mac, can often be used in Macs: hard drives, floppy drives, CD-RWs as well as memory modules.

On a Mac, there is a number of programs which use less RAM and require less HD space than their equivalent Windows versions. For example: Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Internet Explorer. The multimedia CD-ROM "StageStruck" developed on Macs at the University of Wollongong (in conjunction with NIDA) requires 16Mb of RAM to run on a Mac. On a PC 32Mb of RAM are needed.

Software / applications.

With an emulator like SoftWindows or Virtual PC you can run applications written not only for the Mac OS, but also for Windows. Thus a single program running on a Mac (with sufficient memory) can give you the ability to run any PC or Mac applications and allow you to switch from one OS to another with a single keystroke(Cmd+M). You can also run other operating systems on a Mac as you can with a PC, and it is even possible to run a MacOS on a PC if you have the right software. It must be pointed out that emulators work quite slowly.

ADSL requirements for PC are often much higher than for Mac: two to three times as much RAM and twice as much more hard disk space.
http://www.primustel.com.au/jetstream/faq.html
http://home.netspace.net.au/adsl/hardware.php

The PowerPC Mac uses much less power and runs much "cooler" than a Pentium processor of a similar speed. Apple’s slot-loading iMac runs quieter than just about all other computers because it has no fan.

Virus protection software also increases the cost of PCs, a cost "input" often not considered by computer buyers (see below for a more complete discussion of viruses).

Apple offers a free Operating System (7.5.3). No Windows operating system is free. Indeed some would say that most Windows software is overpriced especially given the level of its sales. Read what consumer advocate Ralph Nader has to say about this issue: Consumer Harm in the Microsoft Case by Ralph Nader (Address to The Bazaar - An Open Source Software Event New York, December 15, 1999 - http://www.cptech.org/ms)

³ SCSI and Firewire are methods of adding peripherals to computers. SCSI has been phased out with the arrival of USB and Firewire.

⁴ Personal experience: this author has used Macs since about 1990 and PCs since 1995 (he tried Win 3.1 a few times). He has worked in a PC only environment on a WinNT 4 (service pack 4) machine. Between April 1999 and February 2000 he recorded over 140 software and hardware crashes/hangs/freezes; he had the computer looked at by three separate technicians and eventually it was reimaged He lost approximately three working days when the PC was out of action, including the time it took to be reimaged. In addition to that the PC's speakers and mouse had to be replaced (IBM brand). During the same period his two Macs at home(6 and 3 years old) - in an unsupported environment - needed no outside maintenance beyond periodic low level attention: clean reinstalls and routine defragmentation.(back to text)

⁵ Technical Support Costs In Dual Platform Computing Environment, Gartner Group, October 1995.

⁶ PCI (peripheral component interconnect) is a type of expansion slot. The circuitry connecting the slot to the main circuit board is also known as a “bus”.

⁷ PC Magazine, "The Big Business Upgrade," by Jim Seymour, September 10, 1996.

⁸ RISC: reduced instruction set computing (on MacintoshPower PC chips, made by Motorola)
CISC: complex instruction set computing (on PC chips made by Intel, AMD and others)