Why are people telling me not to buy an iMac ?

My 4yr old PC has died, that's the 3rd in 9 yrs, I always have problems with work PC'c, (use a lot of heavy programs, Cad & Cam etc), and I've basically had enough of windows, I don't want to invest in another PC
so i've just gone to the Apple shop and tried an iMac and decided to purchase one at the weekend,

now out of 30 odd people i have around 5-6 saying the ''best thing since sliced'' etc and the others are all saying ''don't iMac's are shit they blow up all the time'' etc etc, 😯

views and thoughts please. 😐

buy one

I'd say "Don't buy an iMac" but I'm a pedant…

I've had one for 3 years and I've never had a problem with it.

My dad has had one for 2 years and it's had to go back to the shop twice for hardware fixes under warranty.

Realise this probably doesn't help much 😀

But one and then when it blows up don't go crying to those that said don't.

They're expensive but are good if you can afford one and can justify the extra cost who cares what anyone else thinks.

What you need is an iPC

I don't know of any that have "blown up". I'm working on one now (well I should be working). This studio has used nothing but for years. No faults. At all.

What you need is something that lets you see which forum to post in 😉

If your doing a lot of CAD/CAM work check for software compatibility or you may end up working in windows on a mac which solves nothing.

If the budgets there I'd consider a mac pro over the imac for what your doing.

4 years from a PC does not seem so bad considering how fast the technology moves on.

I've got 2 i7 16Gb ram iMacs on my desk right now and they are far and away the best things I have ever used.

With Parallels installed, I run Mac OSX, XP and Windows 7 simultaneously without a stutter from the iMac.

You won't regret it.

i bought an imac three years ago – still have the same one

it just works

buy one….

Lovely computers although my dads' been returned due to faulty sd card slot and whilst checking it out they realised the main logic board was a little off… his was one of the first batch of the current generation imacs mind so probably have all the bugs ironed out.

Wouldn't let that put you off getting one. One of the few apple products worth their money, next to their MacBooks (puts flame proof jacket on).

Buy one, if only for a change. IME all computers tend to get a bit jittery after a few years, either due to repeated software updates/installation/removal or ageing hardware.

Buy one, become one of the herd buying over priced tat, but buy an extended warrenty, as they're expensive as **** when the hardware breaks.

What happened to Mr. Nutt's hardware problems in the end?

Do what you want, it's your money. Just so long as you know why you're paying extra for an iMac.

I have a mac pro, the best laptop i have ever had, as a designer they are the best thing to use, you will always get people for and against them.

Plus there better looking and if you buy one you are classed as elite and not just a common pc user, ups mite have upset some folk there 8)

BUY ONE, YOU KNOW YOU WHAT TOO

you need a hackintosh, there is nothing a "designer" needs a mac for unless its software specific, I can think of a shed load of better ways to spend money…

coming from a designer, film maker and longterm brown nosing it geek.

General Technophobe here……

I have had my iMac for two years now and am won over by it.

I only ever use a PC now for work.

If you can find someone with a student ID 😉 you can get some very attractive deals.

I just upgraded my OS to Snow Leopard unlike every update I did pre Apple it made the OS better and smaller.

When asking the same question two years ago I got a very mixed response but still fancied something new. My wife made the change over a year after I bought mine and hasn't looked back – uses it for work/Uni with no problems.

We did buy (NHS perk) Office for Mac (£17 IIRC) but have not needed it s Apples office software is great to use….

Like I said at the start though I am a technophobe!

bought an imac G5 May 2005, still using it today but hope to upgrade to a macbook prob his year!

Mac OS X is miles a head on windows

few niggles on ours…..

take the headphone jack out, and it crashes after a short while. Hardware updates haven't fixed this.

For a video processor it's not very powerful.

Weird thins like when you click through a few folders on finder it just jumps back to the root folder then eventually lets you navigate to where you wanted to be.

Stupid positioning of usb slots

no firewire 400 port.

little niggles (except the crashing thing)

All the solutions suggested online have been work arounds rather than solutions.

iMmac keeps my skin silky smooth and hair free

I have one of the latest generation iMacs – it's bloody brilliant it works without any trouble – all the time. How many PCs can claim that? Prior to that I had an eMac for around 5+ years – nothing ever went wrong with that either.

I work in an ad agency and all the creatives and production people use them – never heard of one blowing up.

About half the machines in our office are iMacs, one went back with a dodgy disk but otherwise they're aout the most reliable thing in the building.

Wouldn't entertain buying anything else myself.

The larger sized ones have much better quality screens as well as being simply bigger. If you can stretch to the 27" then do so if you're working with graphics of any sort. Mine is a 24 which has been replaced by the 27 but the boss has a 27 and both blow away the 20" we have in quality.

Macs are just a quality threshold, and a pretty box.

PCs are more common, more abused and more variable. You can get super stable super high power PC setups, you can get cheap cobbled together for $50 windoze boxes.

Apple make a point of not selling cheap ass machines. Unlike every other PC manufacturer.

Its a lot easier to just go out and by a Mac if you want something you know will work. They are not intrinsically better than PCs.

thanks guys,

don't quite understand all those points, i'm just buying the base iMac ?nothing flash about that I know of, even priced around the same a average PC,

it's just a case of getting fed up with windows hanging up and crashing etc etc, as i said i run solidworks and alphacam at work as well as a host of other 'heavy' MRP databases etc on a pc, I have no intention of taking work home, so no worries about that,

I just want something that works and doesn't need an upgrade everytime it starts up, also not having to run a virus scanner is quite appealing,

i Don't want to spend the money, it is part of my new landrover fund and i worked hard for it, but needs must and i currently have 140 itunes albums (paid for)and nearly 20gig of photos hanging by a thread on an
unbaked up hard drive in an increasingly volitile pc,

much love and thanks

I just want something that works and doesn't need an upgrade everytime it starts up, also not having to run a virus scanner is quite appealing,

I'd suggest that a Windows 7 PC would do all that fine – well you would have to install AVG or other similar free virus scanner but since it looks after itself I don't see the issue.

I bought Mrs Tyred an iRon – complete waste of money, she never uses it.

imo macs are awful so my views are very oen sided. I used macs at college for graphics and i thought they were awful. Slow, crashed frequently and generally couldnt get much work done on them.

I also remember seeing a comparison of a computer and a mac in terms of hardware performance. i think the equivelant of a £900 was a £300 computer.

Now, to try and drop the prejudice a bit i would seriously recommend lookign at windows 7. It really is ace, vista was shite. If you dont want to take an interest in your pc/mac with virus checkers and stuff accept that you will get viruses and lose lots of data. Its like not insuring your house/car, only do it if you accept the consequences in advance.

Also 3 computers in 9 years is really very good. If you are a serious user expect your harddrive to die EVERY 12 months, have a backup on the go and switch them out. They really arent expensive. This will affect both a mac and a pc so it doesnt matter which route you take.

ARGH I swore to myself not to get into this thread but its too late, I think I've found an appropriate subject that "boils my piss"

I hate this notion that "osx is much more advanced" and macs are all things shiny and good… there not… there cheaply made and over priced, things fail in them as much as pcs, you take the hit on any prebuilt system pc or mac and usually you have to follow this with after service or you'll end up with a money pit if anything goes wrong.

The idea that "designers" use them because they are better is bollocks and the suggestion notion is from people who dont really know.

the problem is the hardcore geekery coders fight for pcs, really hardcore.. linux and the people who get confused usually sprout up for osx.

if you want to get the best value for money any day of the week build your own system, its piece of piss and will save you hundreds, I run windows 7 and snow leopard on the same system and know lots of other high up editors and designers that do the same.

I look after and work on over 30 £3-10k mac systems and the system is certainly no more stable than windows its just "different"… a funny thing I find about all this is that photoshop and the adobe suite is notoriously more unstable on osx than windows…. thumbs up to all you people that know what the internet has taught you for gospel and not actually sought true advice.

my rule of thumb is…
if your a bit special on a computer and when it has a problem you want to hit it… get a mac with customer support.

if you want to get value for money and performance and stability matters, do some research or send me an email i'll happily point you in the right direction.

and whats even worse is the macbooks have got well more expensive, less features, worse screens, chargers still knacker the batteries and then die and with apples latest news problem with the iphone 4 antenna, god knows how you can think your getting anything of value when they refuse a obvious problem as a problem.

"breathe"

The imacs have really nice screens….I'd have one if I was after a desktop. But then i have a macbook pro already…

Not a student/teacher are you? get a free 3 year warranty if you are…

haha an i thought i was being blunt alexxx. Exccellent post.

How do you know they are nice screens, do you even know what screen they use other than big and shiny? sorry im not having a go but its comments like that producing a mass of people thinking they know what there getting.

Twisted nematic (TN) In-plane switching (IPS) Advanced fringe field switching (AFFS) Multi-domain vertical alignment (MVA)Patterned vertical alignment (PVA)Advanced super view (ASV)

and what do they mean in terms of colour accuracy, value, longevity, quality?

I have two iMacs. Both have been bomb proof. Have had maybe four crashes in four years, all of which simply needed a reboot and all was well. No blue screen of death, no "go to manufacturers website to download drivers" when you try and connect anything. Much better than my experience with a PC. Would never go back. I have an external USB drive connected and it does an automatic back-up (Apple call it "time machine") on ongoing basis, so even if there were a problem you're covered.

I would only ever build my own PC and then install Linux on it, more stable than Windows & Mac OS, just as fast or faster, and 100% free. But I can understand it may not be suitable for specialised applications. However since switching to Linux over 2 years ago my main PC has not crashed or frozen once and it is used everyday.

Like someone said some PCs break due to manufacturers skimping on quality parts (e.g. the Power supply) MACs are no different in construction than PCs apart from standardised parts and a different BIOS chip on the motherboard. Having standardised parts also helps MAC OS be more stable than windows as you don't need as broad a range of drivers to run the hardware. A PC built to the same cost as a MAC would be at least as reliable and much likely have better componentry.

right again, im sorry but…. what do you do on it day to day in 4 years, what kind of user, programs, stress? time machine… wasnt invented by apple it infact stems from a long line of windows based back up systems… if you want good back up id suggest to you all a drobo as unraid is probably the most cost affective way… the backup hard drive isnt as safe as you'd want to think…

also time machine isnt that affective. off the top of my head what about acronis and norton ghost for pc backup or even the inbuilt windows 7 one? all more powerful than time machine.

sorry again, not having a go just think when your looking to buy a products facts are better than if's and maybes

Also 3 computers in 9 years is really very good. If you are a serious user expect your harddrive to die EVERY 12 months, have a backup on the go and switch them out. They really arent expensive. This will affect both a mac and a pc so it doesnt matter which route you take

That's not right, or at least shouldn't be. You're either buying bad hard disks, or doing something horrible to them.

I'm typing this on a PC which I bought in 2001 running windows XP. It still works fine, including the original hard disk, and is okay for everything except watching HD video on vimeo. Been used for everything from video editing and real time audio / video processing, to software development. It is a little slower than new ones (1.4ghz processor, although I am surprised at how little difference there is).

I think I replaced a fan once because it was a bit noisy, and I added more memory in 2003 or so. I reinstalled the operating system once, when I got Windows XP in 2002 (it came with Windows ME). Since then it has pretty much just worked. I've looked after it okay, but nothing special, no maintenance to speak of.

If you had a mac from 2001, it might just scrape working too, although modern software probably wouldn't, as I think that was pre-intel, and it would be a heap of crash-tastic rubbish, unlike the modern intel macs, which are mostly quite nice PCs.

Joe

I think given your reasons you've made a good choice to go for an imac, but I guess time will tell whether you're happy with it (horses for courses and all that)

I grew up using imacs (my Dad and Brothers are in design so we had Macs from the very early days), didn't use a pc properly until I went to Uni and could definitely see some advantages (especially in terms of writing software), but hated that it crashed and had viruses all the time.

I now use a MacBook for business and our home computer is imac, my hubby also uses macs for teaching media and film studies. We haven't had any major problems with them compared to the masses of issues we've had with the couple of pcs we've owned. They do have their issues and can be frustrating at times as well as being a fair bit more pricey for the spec, but I don't think either of mine have ever crashed or lost data and I love them for that!

Oh and btw, I love the fact that you wrote "much love" 😀

I really hope you enjoy your Mac and find it to be well worth the cash! Much love, MM

P.S. Does anyone else find this thread strangely similar to the "HT vs Full Suss" threads?!

Right I'm not posting any more I forgot the masses live in wonderland

FWIW our iMac is now 2 1/2 years old and just works, never puts a foot wrong.

PCs are getting there now that you can get all the security tools from Microsoft (you're no longer in a constant battle with your virus checker) but you still seem to need to be a bit of a geek to get the most out of them – we're still fighting with the crap HP pre-installed on Mrs R's Win 7 netbook to "enhance the experience". And as for getting Vista 64 to boot off a RAID array – don't start me 👿