First quarter of 2010, the Apple Mac is 3.6% global market share in sales of all personal computers.

Wooo!!! That's almost worth mentioning! :LMAO:

But Apple has 91% of market for $1,000us+ high end PCs :-)

But Apple has 91% of market for $1,000us+ high end PCs :-)

HelloMost here are using PC's that could be considered "high end"But 91% are not using Mac's,Mac usage for Flightsim is probably in single digits.Apple probably has 91% of the "overpriced PC" market, those who really need performance tend to build their own rigs.

But Apple has 91% of market for $1,000us+ high end PCs :-)

There are PLENTY of reputable websites that rip that statistic to shreds. That statistic only covers computers sold in certain big box retail stores. Most retail stores don't sell many "PC"'s that cost more than 1000 dollars these days. Almost every single Mac costs more than 1000 dollars. The statistic has absolutely nothing to do with the countless people who build their own systems or buy them from outlets not included in the market study, nor does it count business, government, or education contracts...:Raised Eyebrow:

Ya know, a friend told me once: 99,5% of statistics is bull.What I always tell people who think of buying a Mac instead of a PC, is the following: you buy a mac so that you can use Mac OS X. You do NOT buy it for the hardware, because you can get FAR better deals. No, Macs are there for the OS. If you want to use Mac OS X, you get a Mac. If not, you buy a PC. It is because of this that I think that the discussion concerning x% of high-end market that uses Macs, is an inane discussion. Macs should not be about hardware, but about software. Sure, the design is very nice (and the screen is absolutely gorgeous. the 27"screen is the best screen I have seen, truthfully said), but ultimately is th software that's different from the PC. The hardware is sort of the same, but with a different case.

If you want to go for MAC because of the hardware, thats probably not a good decision.As many others said, build your own PC with selected parts.(try to configure your own MAC and look at the price. Then take the single parts and search for them with pricerobots. You will find, that you have to pay the half in the free market. But if you go for a nice looking computer, then go for MAC)If you want to go for MAC because of the OS (which is a kind of taste), then also consider EFIX.this enables you to install natively OSX on a PC with no restrictions.I have had it for work, (because MAC Users weren't able to work with OT-Fonts ) and it was working very well like a native MAC.What me annoys me the most with Apple is, if Microsoft was critisized for years (till today) for bad behave, spying etc and Apple is 100% worser than M$ ever was. For sure M$ dreamed about that state and power, that Apple has today.But I'm silent now, don't want to force a M$/Apple-war here, sorry.

do your research .. buy the one thats a good fit for you... you cant miss with either choice.

Those that own a Mac seem to almost fanatical about them. My son has been using one since he was in college. He's a graphic designer by trade and says a lot of graphic design work is done on Macs. That being said, if something goes wrong, be prepared to shell out major bucks to have yours repaired. His "logic board" (motherboard) to the rest of us, died. To have Apple repair it would have cost in the neighborhood of $800. He ended up buying a new computer for a few hundred dollars more.

Two things are important to understand here:1. Macs *are* PCs - the internal hardware is Intel CPUs and motherboards, Nvidia or ATI graphics chipsets etc. The only differences are in the external case aesthetic and the fact that it uses EFI firmware instead of a BIOS. You are not getting higher quality internal hardware in a Mac.2. Macs lag behind normal PCs you can build yourself as far as the hardware power and generation. You can't get a GTX4xx series video card on a Mac. You can't overclock the CPU on a Mac - this is a big problem for FSX because the i7s need to be OCed up to ~4GHz to really perform well in the sim.I would highly suggest building your own PC - you can get a system with better hardware than a Mac will have for the same or less. If you're worried about HD crashes you can build the system with solid state disks and never have to worry about that - there's no moving parts.

First quarter of 2010, the Apple Mac is 3.6% global market share in sales of all personal computers.

But just hit 10% market share in the US, and Apple is now the 3rd biggest computer seller in the US behind HP and Dell, because it just surpassed Acer.http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2010/10/apple-breaks-10-market-share-in-us-lenovo-climbs-globally.ars

But just hit 10% market share in the US, and Apple is now the 3rd biggest computer seller in the US behind HP and Dell, because it just surpassed Acer.http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2010/10/apple-breaks-10-market-share-in-us-lenovo-climbs-globally.ars

Yeah and they also have the second largest market cap for US companies at $290 billion, with only Exxon Mobil currently around $329 billion ahead of them. I'll bet Steve Balhmer at MS wishes they could be doing as well as Apple, since MS is currently dead money. I never though I would see the day Apple would be worth more than IBM,HP, MS, or Wal-Mart.

The only thing holding me back is running FSX. Are there any folks who are running FSX on a MAC? How's it going?

I develop addons products for FSX and run a Flight addons company, and use only Macs since 2003. My main machine it's a 2009 Mac Pro with 2 Dual 4-core Xeon, so it's 8 real cores in total with an ATI 4870 and 6GB RAM. It runs FSX perfectly, although you might get slightly better results and spend less money with an homemade overclocked i7.However, it works better than any PC from a developement point of view, since it allows to run many program at once (FSX, debuggers, graphic editor, web, email ) without slowing down. It's very reliable and quiet, since it's built very well, no cabling at all in the inside, which helps with ventilation, everything is plug-and play including the 4 internal hdd bays, no screws are used anywhere, and the mainboard is splitted in two parts, for easy access, like when upgrading RAM, since the area with cpu/memory slides out when opening the case and again, it's all done in seconds, without any screws. I added myself an LG Blu-ray burner in the 2nd optical bay, again without having to turn any screws and without any visible cabling, and it tooks about 2 minutes.Yes, it's expensive but, a *comparable* Dual Quad-Xeon from Dell or HP would cost just as much (it's the *Xeon* that is expensive and there are two of them, not the Mac!!), and would probably not offer the same build quality and it won't run OSX, at least not without very unreliable hackery.Macs runs Windows very well, and Bootcamp is NOT an emulator, it's the real thing: it's booting directly into Windows, and Windows is getting access to the hardware, just like on a PC. This feature is included with OSX so, you only need to supply your own Windows copy and install it, after a very easy hdd preparation.You CAN run Windows into an Emulator, there are several of them, Parallels, VMware Fusion, Virtual Box, etc. and it's very convenient when you don't need 100% graphic performances, because with virtualization, you can launch Windows when working in OSX, and even share data between the two very easily, compared to Bootcamp, which requires to reboot into Windows.I don't suggest you buying a Mac ONLY to install Windows: you main reasons should be wanting to use OSX, which might be convenient if you are an iPhone/iPod/iPad user, since they work way better in OSX than in Windows (iTunes for Windows is really bad and slow compared to the OSX version), but if you want to switch to a Mac just for the hardware reliability and plan to use Windows 100% of the time, it might not be worth it. And, the iMac, which is what you'll probably want, doesn't have much room for hardware expansion, and the Mac Pro, which is easily expandable, is too expensive for home use.What Apple really miss in their offer, is an i5/i7 desktop without a monitor, that could offer some of the Mac Pro expandibility, at a lower price, that would be an ideal Mac to suggest to gamers. But I don't think it will ever come, since there's a lot of competition in that field, and home users are generally moving to laptops anyway (where Apple is *very* strong), and hard-core gamers are not such a big market.

Yeah and they also have the second largest market cap for US companies at $290 billion

LOL, I do recall when I've decided to switch to Mac in 2003, because I saw what potential OSX had (my Mac came with 10.2 Jaguar), Apple shares were 25$, now they are 300$!! It's nice to know I was right in my prediction, but I should have bought shares, instead than a Dual G5, back then...

LOL, I do recall when I've decided to switch to Mac in 2003, because I saw what potential OSX had (my Mac came with 10.2 Jaguar), Apple shares were 25$, now they are 300$!! It's nice to know I was right in my prediction, but I should have bought shares, instead than a Dual G5, back then...

LMAO, tell me about it. I bought 500 shares of AAPL back in March of '09 when the market made it lows and it was trading at $85.00. Then a few months later in June '09 it hit $145 and I sold all mine and it started to go back down. Everyone though that about $150 was as high as it would go. Sure enough after I sold all mine it started to go back up in July and has been going up ever since. I never got back in because I kept thinking I was going to be buying at the top, but was clearly wronge since its at $314.00 now. I think a few analysts just slapped a $350 to $380 price target on it, but with them reporting earnings this week it will probably sell of a little. At this point I am just going to stay out and say that I missed it. The only way I might get back in is if it sells off to around $250 then maybe, but I sure as heck will buy some puts for protection.

Do any of you guys frequent Ars Technica? if not? They have started with a very nice series of articles about the quirks of Windows and Mac (Mac is coming tomorrow). the Windows article illustrates very well why I personally prefer Macs. Because the article says it very nicely: Windows feels rushed. I can't put it any differently. There is absolutely no consistency in the UI. Sure, the point is that it works correctly, but if that's the case, why not go to DOS... I mean, it works, right? Here's my point: i want that my OS and the programs in it work the same way. This makes the workflow efficient. When you get a new program, you'll more easily understand how it works, because you are roughly familiar with the concept of the UI. I think that the reason many Mac OS X programs look alike (and thus offer consistency) is because Apple provides developers with Xcode, an Aple-made developing interface.guenseli: With the risk of sounding arrogant or pompous: many of the things you said I have said in the post right before yours. I normally do not care about people rehashing points I previously made, understanding that many people don't have the patience (myself included) to read threads from the beginning. But, at least read the post before yours...One last thing: Guys, it's spelled "Mac". No, not "MAC". Sorry to be so nitpicky. I don't care if you like or dislike Mac OS X, but at least spell it correctly... I know, I sound like an &@($* now most probably, but these little things... well. Everybody has a weakness, I guess.

Um... I hope you do realize... Apple's primary income source is the iPad and iPhone. iPad and iPhone income is ~$8 billion U.S. dollars versus ~$4 billion U.S. dollars from Mac sales. Apple software sales is less than $2 billion U.S. dollars. Microsoft does only software and brought in ~$19 billion U.S. dollars in 2009. One should take into account that the Apple Mac is significantly more expensive than a non-Apple PC and thus the Mac sales revenue probably doesn't accurately reflect physical sales quantity comparisons against non-Apple PCs.Apple's primary income is hardware, Microsoft's is software. You really can't compare the two primarily because of that alone. Now... that doesn't mean that you can't compare Apple PC sales versus Windows-based PC sales... just, not directly against Microsoft itself. Microsoft doesn't make computers and phones and such.The world's commercial industry still relies primarily on non-Apple PCs. They are far, far more flexible in archetecture, offer (vastly) lower maintenance costs and offer a significantly larger software base to draw from.