I was just reading an article on Technologizer about the “Apple tax” and whether it really existed. The conclusion came out pretty much as I expected (no it doesn’t) and the comments are pretty much on par as well.  There are numerous people on both sides of the argument having a polite(!) debate about the topic and about the Microsoft advertisement which prompted this latest article.

So to my views.

I’ve been using a computer of one sort or another since about 1981.  I’ve owned a computer of some sort since about 1988.  In that time I have owned exactly 4 computers. My first was an Acorn Archimedes, then an HP Pavilion (333MHz class), a beige box built to order (1.3GHz class) and now an iMac (2.1GHz dual core).  The Archimedes ran RISC OS, the HP ran Windows 98, the beige box Windows XP Home and the iMac runs OS X (first 10.4 Tiger and now 10.5 Leopard).

So which is the best bit of hardware? Well, actually quite obviously, it’s the iMac.  That’s because it is the most modern by a long way. In terms of reliability the only system I ever had issues with was the beige box, on which the USB ports failed one by one.

So there’s no major advantage to one piece of hardware over another, other than the relative price-to-performance ratio. The article pretty much clears up that there’s no major difference in purchase price between the compared models. If you were to go toward the cheaper end of the market, I am fairly confident you would find the same to hold true, though I suspect the differences in lower end hardware specs would be more substantial as there are more things to ‘leave out’ to keep the price down.

So that leaves software.  I used RISC OS for about 10 years, Windows (98 & XP) for about 9 years and now OS X for about 2 years. In my work I have used OS/2 for a couple of years and otherwise some flavour of Windows.  Given I have been working for 22 years, that’d be 20 years of Windows in the workplace.  So, with all that under my belt, which do I believe is the best operating system?

Well, that depends on one factor.  The best operating system for today is clearly OS X.  The best operating system for its time was clearly RISC OS. As RISC OS is not a viable option today, I’m sticking with OS X. It’s not perfect though. Far from it. OS X annoys me at least every week, but then Windows (and other Microsoft products) annoy me on a daily basis.

OS X could learn a thing or two from RISC OS, and indeed many of the differences between Windows and OS X are in the direction of RISC OS, but it still has a long way to go.

So, back to the original question. Is a Mac more expensive? No. Macs do exist at the higher end of the market though.

My question for you is “can you afford a Mac?” Because if you can, I think there’s no better choice.