Excercise for you:
Add the cost of Bluetooth, PCI-X, 802.11G, Gigabit ethernet, SATA hard drives and controllers, DVD-R drive, power supply, all the other hardware stuff I've forgotten, plus iTunes, iDVD, iMovie, and the ten or so other bundled applications on the G5s, a Unix-based operating system with superior usability, and one year of free warranty and support for ALL of that stuff.
How much does your dual Xeon cost now?
Question: If this is branded as the world's most powerful
Personal
Computer, then why do you need SATA drives, a 1 GHz FSB, PCI-X, Gigabit ethernet, etc.?
And if this is meant for use in the industry, why do you need iTunes, iDVD, iMovie, etc?
I think the problem with Apple is not that they make bad products--in fact their stuff is great. But the reason I use a PC is that I can build it myself, choose my software, hardware and save money while getting exactly what I want. If I want a DVD-R at a later date, I can go buy it. Interestingly, at that later date, a DVD-R will be significantly cheaper than today. However, the G5 will not budge much from its current price point.
OS X is great, but it's not an all-singing, all-dancing, all-purpose operating system. There's no such thing. Consequently, Apple users often pay a premium for a lot of features you'll never use (or hardware that you use but don't notice the performance difference). Think about it this way: a BMW has a lot more HP than my little Toyota. But you know what? If I'm feeling saucy, I might push 80 on the freeway, which my car handles without a sweat. I don't miss the extra horsepower then and rarely ever will. Similarly, on my home-brewed PC (with a legit OS -- gasp!), I don't miss iMovie, SATA drives (though I have the connections), gigabit ethernet, etc. And if ever I do miss such a feature, I can just upgrade (and probably do it cheaply).
And for those of you attacking indviduals for not factoring in the cost of software, what do you say to a Linux user? There's plenty of damn good software out there that doesn't cost a penny and that you are free to tweak as you please.
Well, that's my two cents. I'd very much like to see benchmarks from other well-respected sources. Until then, I reserve judgement on the question of G5 performance.
