In this pasta, I will address the entire line. Macbooks, iMacs, the Mac Mini, and the Mac Pro.

Macbooks: As with all Macs, you'll get better performance per dollar out of another computer. But there's much more to a computer than just pure performance and specs mean much less for laptops than they do with desktops. Macbooks are remarkably good laptops, definitely some of the best. I'll give them this. If I said they were bad laptops, I'd be full of crap. The problem with them is that they're just not as good as other offerings, and I'll explain why in as much detail as I can.

1. Glossy displays. There is no point in a glossy panel besides making the colors falsely appear more vivid. A glossy finish makes the screen much more prone to fingerprints and glare is a huge issue. In short, matte panels are far superior to glossy panels.

2. Build quality. They're built well in that they are well-assembled, but durability is awful. Aluminum dents extremely easily and the unibody design does not allow for easy replacement of parts of the enclosure. Warping frequently causes problems with the hinge, which often results in a broken display cable and/or a loose screen. I deal with a lot of Macbooks daily, and this is a disturbingly common problem. Much like the iPhone, the design does not allow for resistance to impact damage. Impacts will cause warping and cracked LCDs very easily.

3. Heat management. Using any Macbook for CPU-intensive tasks reveals this problem. The cooling design is not effective enough and temperatures skyrocket almost immediately, causing the fan(s) to ramp up to max speed. This becomes extremely loud, but it's still not enough. Temperatures stay dangerously high under load and because aluminum is a good conductor of heat, it goes right to whatever surface it is on, like your thigh. In theory, this should help with heat dissipation, but Macbooks still run too hot and that heat is transferred to places you notice it, like the keyboard, bottom, and palm rests. This is one of many examples of Apple's form-over-function design principles causing problems that could have been easily avoided.

4. The specs are not up to par with other similarly-priced laptops. Apple computers perform far worse than comparable PCs, and this is not limited to the Macbook line. Still, laptops in particular are much more than pure specs. Macbooks have some things that don't show up on a specs sheet, like solid trackpads, unibody construction, and a pretty design. A cheap Toshiba laptop with the same specs can't compare to the Macbook due to factors like build quality, design, size, weight, looks, and trackpad quality. Macbooks focus on the intangibles of the user experience, while many PC manufacturers strive for the best specs on paper. Still, that does not mean Macbooks are the only computers with these traits. Lenovo Thinkpads, for example, place less of an emphasis on raw horsepower in favor of quality, but in a completely different approach from Apple's. Thinkpads focus on user experience and prioritize things that make a laptop a good laptop, like ease of use, battery life, screen finish, keyboard quality, input, reliability, and durability. Given the specs compared to other computers, yes, you do pay a premium for both brands. What you get is a better user-experience, which is what laptops should be about. It explains the surge of Ultrabooks into the market with their reduced processing power but great storage speed, portability, battery life, weight, and size.


iMacs: This is where specs begin to make all the difference. You're no longer taking factors like portability, battery life, and durability (as much) into consideration as you're not lugging the thing with you or running it off a battery.

1. Performance. IMacs are more like big laptops than desktops. The AMD Radeon 6970 advertised in some higher-end iMacs is slower than the desktop AMD 6850, which is misleading to the average consumer and demonstrative of the inferiority of the iMac's performance. The CPUs used are also "mobile" revisions, which are equaled by desktop CPUs of less than half the price. An Intel 2600K will wipe the floor with the highest-end CPU available in an iMac in a system that can be a fraction of the price. User-service is almost impossible and advised against, even things that should be simple like removing and replacing the hard drive and RAM (204-Pin laptop RAM).

2. The competition. As previously mentioned, if one were to build a PC to equal any iMac in performance, the price would be a fraction of that of the iMac. Even one of the biggest and most valid selling points of the iMac, the display, can be easily acquired for around $300. The 27 inch iMac uses the same LG panel found in the Dell Ultrasharp U2711 ($800), but this S-IPS 2650x1440 panel is also available in the Yamakasi Catleap monitor ($310). For this price, the competition overwhelms the iMac on every front. One might argue for the quality of the aluminum casing and compact form factor, but high-quality aluminum cases are available in various sizes from a number of PC case manufacturers. The prospect of a custom-built PC also brings tons of extra features to the table, like far superior cooling, numerous drive bays and connections, superior I/O selection, infinitely more possible graphics configurations, much higher RAM capacity, expansion cards, user-serviceability, long individual part warranties, re-useability of components, overclocking, faster CPU options, and a specs sheet that can be molded to fit the needs of any user.

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