Relatively speaking you're more likely to get a virus on a Mac today than any other time before, and each and every day the risk is rising due to the strong performance of Apple. Maybe it's not enough to justify running an anti-virus program but thinking you're immune is likely to result in heartbreak eventually.

 

Well, I don't actually run antivirus software.  I only install it when I want to check and see if I have any viruses.  I figured it would be a good idea.  Better safe than sorry.  Turns out there were no problems.  I uninstalled the program and will consider checking back time to time.

Mac's have way too small a portion of the market share, not to mention basically none of the market share in the professional world. There's no incentive for anyone to make a virus for them, yet. If they keep getting more and more popular, tough, there will be plenty of spyware and viruses out there for them. It's not that they are inherently safer at all, it's just that not enough people have them.

 

That depends on what kind of professional world you're talking about. Most "creative" professions use them exclusively, like graphic designers, photographers, web designers, even an increasing percentage of developers, since OSX is a Unix system and plays well in the LAMP development world. I work at an advertising agency and everyone there, including "non-creatives" like account execs and project managers have macs.

Brand loyalty. I don't think Apple will ever get much more of the market share, at least not in terms of operating systems and computers.

 

Smart Phones, netbooks and tablet devices will continue to encroach on the marketshare of traditional desktop/laptop computers in general. I imagine Apple will have a pretty strong foothold riding on that new wave of devices, at least in the short term future.

Brand loyalty. I don't think Apple will ever get much more of the market share, at least not in terms of operating systems and computers.

I'm not sure about that. Look at android.

 

Nothing is ever 100% certain.

 

Apple products are user friendly and the beginning the commands were different now they emulate windows commands. I see the gap getting smaller.

 

I wish I could find the information i have consumer vs. corporate spending.

 

Consumers over the last 6 years on the consumer side apple is winning. Corporate side microsoft controls but it's slipping.monopoly on brands.

 

Nothing is ever certain but cell phones aren't the only other thing Apple is involved in. They're eating that Apple stuff up in other countries right now. Clearly Apple is about as good as it gets when it comes to user-friendliness and design. That's only going to help them. The iphone and even the iPod were sort of revolutionary. Apple knows how to innovate. They create markets.

Mac's have way too small a portion of the market share, not to mention basically none of the market share in the professional world. There's no incentive for anyone to make a virus for them, yet. If they keep getting more and more popular, tough, there will be plenty of spyware and viruses out there for them. It's not that they are inherently safer at all, it's just that not enough people have them.

 

That depends on what kind of professional world you're talking about. Most "creative" professions use them exclusively, like graphic designers, photographers, web designers, even an increasing percentage of developers, since OSX is a Unix system and plays well in the LAMP development world. I work at an advertising agency and everyone there, including "non-creatives" like account execs and project managers have macs.

 

A lot of creative professionals do, but I wouldn't say most.  Graphic and video realms are really the only ones that use Mac's exclusively. 

 

What I was getting at was the business world, namely banks and corporates, though.  It's much more enticing to steal social security and bank account numbers than creative content, hence the allotment of viruses out there.

A lot of creative professionals do, but I wouldn't say most.  Graphic and video realms are really the only ones that use Mac's exclusively.

 

And even that is not actually true. Plenty of video guys are using Windows. Adobe Premiere didn't just roll over and die because Final Cut became dominant. Keep in mind the Adobe Creative Suite runs great on Windows. With the same hardware setup, you can't really find much difference in performance between Macs and Windows-based machines these days. The Avid software also runs well on both systems. Then there is Edius, which is Windows-only, and seems to be the fastest editor pound-for-pound. You get lots of real-time rendering with pretty weak system setups. I use a dual 2 GHz system with a measly 2 GB of RAM (nothing these days), and Edius is about as fast as Final Cut with twice those specs. Edius really cooks. I can only imagine what it would be like on a quad-core machine with 4-8 GB of RAM. It has some penetration in places that have insane deadlines like broadcast news, because they don't have time to sit around and render. The big weakness of something like Edius is that you are on your own when it comes to learning it. There is nowhere near the literature and support you find with Final Cut.

 

Final Cut is great (I think it is the best editor and the Apple Pro Training books are excellent), and it certainly spread like wildfire in the post-production world, but there are still plenty of places using other systems. What is really bad is when you get a mixed house- lots of time and productivity wasted on converting to different codecs. It's best to be either 100% Apple or 100% Windows. A lot of people find it tough to be constantly jumping between the two.

 

The big issue with Windows is that it just sucks compared to OS X when it comes to stability under high-stress situtations. It does have a history of being crashy as hell (and a lot of times if your editor crashes, it takes the whole system with it). On Macs, it's easier to force quit software and not have to restart the system. I have no idea why this is, but it has been my experience. Hard crashes are a horrible experience when under tight deadlines. I think a lot of people have been burned so bad by Windows that they are reluctant to try their new (and improved) products. If anything, that would explain Mac's dominance in the creative world more than anything else. There is something to be said for reliability.

 

Windows has a PR problem more than anything else. They have addressed a lot of their weaknesses, but it's tough to win back scorned customers. This is kind of like what the Detroit auto industry has experienced. Even if your prices are better and your current cars are every bit as good as the crap designed in Japan, there are lots of people who had a bad experience in the past and don't want to give you a second chance.

Final Cut Pro came with my computer but I deleted it lol

 

I don't even know how to use it.

I do have to wonder what's next.  They got every reach of the media and communications market covered.  Appliances next?

 

BTW, I'd like to mention the people that convinced me to use apple were actually my parents.  They've always gotten stuff before me.  My dad has had the ipad since it came out and it's great using it when I'm home for the holidays.  My parents like to travel, and the internet is a major plus on this device.  It's easier to hold an view than a laptop.  Unfortunately it will and always be out of my budget range.

 

Still plan on getting a new itouch sometime soon.  The photo and video quality is great.  Heck, I could do photo tours (by bike) just using that and not have to drag around my DSLR all the time.

A lot of creative professionals do, but I wouldn't say most. Graphic and video realms are really the only ones that use Mac's exclusively.

 

And even that is not actually true.

 

Agreed. It may have been true in the 80s and most of the 90s, but not so much any more.

 

Having gone to school for a degree in Interactive Multimedia Technology from 2000-2003 and working various jobs in the creative sector from 2003-2007 (mostly graphic design & web design but also doing some video edited, flash animation, light programming and scripting, and plenty of digital photography) I personally found that both educational and real-world environments mostly use a mix of both Windows and Mac platforms. That may not be the case for some creative firms that work more exclusively on either PC or Mac, but generally speaking, Photoshop is Photoshop and PSD files have generally played pretty nice cross-platform for over a decade now. I'm sure the same holds true for most creative software.

 

When it comes to creative professionals, the Mac VS Windows debate is primarily a personal preference-based argument rather than a functionality-based argument. You can easily accomplish the same tasks on both platforms with (generally) the exact same software.

FWIW I'm writing this on my iPad and I love it.

http://www.verizonwireless.com/b2c/splash/iphone.jsp

A lot of creative professionals do, but I wouldn't say most. Graphic and video realms are really the only ones that use Mac's exclusively.

 

And even that is not actually true.

 

Agreed. It may have been true in the 80s and most of the 90s, but not so much any more.

 

Having gone to school for a degree in Interactive Multimedia Technology from 2000-2003 and working various jobs in the creative sector from 2003-2007 (mostly graphic design & web design but also doing some video edited, flash animation, light programming and scripting, and plenty of digital photography) I personally found that both educational and real-world environments mostly use a mix of both Windows and Mac platforms. That may not be the case for some creative firms that work more exclusively on either PC or Mac, but generally speaking, Photoshop is Photoshop and PSD files have generally played pretty nice cross-platform for over a decade now. I'm sure the same holds true for most creative software.

 

When it comes to creative professionals, the Mac VS Windows debate is primarily a personal preference-based argument rather than a functionality-based argument. You can easily accomplish the same tasks on both platforms with (generally) the exact same software.

Apple lost a lot of the Macromedia & thus Flash crowd in the days prior to Jobs' return.

Anyone in Columbus maybe interested in buying a current model MacBook Pro? (2.53 GHz, 15 in.) PM me for details on it if you might be interested. I know these things are usually very expensive but I'll work with 'ya. Plus, you get a free external mouse! Something else I really need to get at the moment, so I'm considering liquidating this and buying another one later on down the line. Gotta think priorities...parting with a luxury for something more of a necessity.

 

I'm restoring it but I'll re-load CS5 Programs, MS Office, and Final Cut Pro if I still have it, as an extra bonus.

Mac's have way too small a portion of the market share, not to mention basically none of the market share in the professional world.  There's no incentive for anyone to make a virus for them, yet.  If they keep getting more and more popular, tough, there will be plenty of spyware and viruses out there for them.  It's not that they are inherently safer at all, it's just that not enough people have them.

 

Ya know I've been hearing this theory for years. So I asked my friend who is a PC guru and in IT for calvin klein. He thinks that theory is mostly untrue because the hacker that "takes down apple" is going to get tons of publicity, and theoretically if this was easy, it would have already happened. His opinion is that the architecture of the mac is what makes it less prone. 

10 is 10

or X is 10

or X is X

whatever

http://www.reghardware.com/2011/03/24/apple_mac_os_x_ten_years_old/

Mac's have way too small a portion of the market share, not to mention basically none of the market share in the professional world.  There's no incentive for anyone to make a virus for them, yet.  If they keep getting more and more popular, tough, there will be plenty of spyware and viruses out there for them.  It's not that they are inherently safer at all, it's just that not enough people have them.

 

Ya know I've been hearing this theory for years. So I asked my friend who is a PC guru and in IT for calvin klein. He thinks that theory is mostly untrue because the hacker that "takes down apple" is going to get tons of publicity, and theoretically if this was easy, it would have already happened. His opinion is that the architecture of the mac is what makes it less prone. 

 

I completely disagree.  Most problems people have with their computers are actually spyware, even though everyone attributes the problem as being a "virus" (such as when people say "my computer is running slow" or "I have a bunch of popups").  Spyware is generally less harmful than annoying, and often times is used as a sort of "advertising" (or "infiltration" as you may call it).  There is little motivation to get attention through spyware as it is really just another spamming technique (like Spam Email), so it would be pointless to target an OS which has far less users.

 

Actual viruses are few and far between (despite what the anti-virus companies want you to believe).  I doubt many people here have ever really even had one.

Macs don't get spyware as much as PCs so I really don't understand how your point pertains to this discussion.

I love Thinkgeek! Start the Apple brainwashing early with your kids!

 

http://www.thinkgeek.com/interests/looflirpa/e8bb/?pfm=Carousel_20110401_Apple_Store_2

I love Thinkgeek! Start the Apple brainwashing early with your kids!

 

http://www.thinkgeek.com/interests/looflirpa/e8bb/?pfm=Carousel_20110401_Apple_Store_2

 

LOL @ the optional line pack....with Woz on a Segway!

Macs don't get spyware as much as PCs so I really don't understand how your point pertains to this discussion.

 

Reread my post then.

 

I said that most people think they have a virus when they actually have spyware.  I then said that spyware is used more as a form of "advertising" whereas viruses are meant to be harmful and often times the hackers do it for attention.  Then I stated how it wouldn't be advantageous to target an OS with a (comparatively) small user base if your goal was advertising rather than infamy.  All of this was in response to someone stating they didn't buy the "small user base as a reason Macs don't have viruses" argument due to the fact that many hackers write viruses for the recognition.

Ohh. Oops. Sorry man.

So I'm going to get a Macbook Pro.  My question for fellow mac users is this - should I get the AppleCare warranty?  I plan to get the educational discount so the cost would be $183.  I have one friend that says it works out to only $61 per year so I should just get it and I have another friend who says not to.  I typically don't buy warranties because I feel like they are a waste of money.

 

What do you guys think? 

I'd say it depends on how good you are with computers and how much the fee would break you. I never sent my laptop in to a technician, I just opened it up and fixed it myself. Apples are well-built computers; better quality and design than any PC I've had or worked on. Plus, you open up a Macbook Pro and everything is right there exposed and easy to get to. Your Macbook Pro will outlive its own usefulness for you. I guess it's up to you. 60 something a year seems really reasonable but hell, I've never even had to restore mine. I frequent questionable sites like Pirate Bay and haven't gotten spyware, let alone a virus. Apples for the most part are indestructable beasts. The biggest issue is someone stealing it. Once you get a Macbook, you'll find that you can't even take it in public without people trying to buy it from you for pennies.

I callled tech support for apple once because I had issues with a wireless printer that was incompatible with Mac and they helped me out despite my warranty being expired so I'm guessing you still get free tech support regardless.

Just now, I'm breathing a sigh of relief. For data storage I have a pair of 1TB drives in a mirrored RAID. This morning when I booted up, I got a flashing red message flagging both drives as degraded. The system froze. I have another external mirrored RAID on continuous backup, but I've never been entirely confident that the drive/software combo is 100% reliable.

 

Ordinarily I prefer to buy stuff online, usually from Tiger Direct, but this morning I headed out to Best Buy and paid too much (that's why I usually buy online) for an external enclosure that will allow a SATA drive to be connected via USB. My system recognized the external USB device, but couldn't even find the first drive I put in it. I'll play with that later and see if I can bring it back to life. Fortunately the second drive came right up and everything appears to be intact. I think I'll load a couple more backup drives before I do anything else.  I think it's time to start shopping for a new motherboard & CPU anyway; this one is five years old and it's working ten or twelve hours on a lot of days, seven days a week. I'm starting to experience some sketchiness, like one of the USB ports has died, and I need more horsepower to handle Photoshop CS5 and the big RAW files from my current camera. I'm maxed out at 3GB memory, and I'd really gain some productivity if I could go to 64-bit OS full-time and at least double my RAM. I'm running dual-boot XP and XP64 now, and I've finally managed to track down 64-bit drivers for all my external gadgets.

 

Edit: Got a new 1TB drive from Tiger Direct and installed it along with the surviving drive, went into the RAID setup at startup and selected "Rebuild Array" and it took right off. I didn't even have to initialize or format the new drive first. I think I need to start partitioning my storage into smaller segments; the rebuild took a little more than 24 hours.

 

I'll stay with PC for my next system. I can build it fairly economically myself because I can reuse my case, power supply, DVD burner, and system drives. I've asked a couple of friends, one a pro photographer and the other a graphic designer and illustrator, if they thought I should switch to Mac, and neither one thought I should. They pointed out that at the hardware level there's precious little difference now between Mac and PC, and I'm already producing respectable output that wouldn't be dependent upon hardware platform, so I should stay with what I know.

Glad to hear everything worked out Rob. Checkout the de-branded HP systems that are floating around out there on geeks.com and the such. They come without an OS but you can't build one for the prices they are selling them for.

 

Ok, here is my mac question. Is there any reason that an 27" imac with a quad core not have enough horsepower to handle my wife's work in INDESIGN and the other CS5 graphics programs? She is doing a lot of the media for her roller derby league and has a lot of freelance graphic design work coming in. My old dual core athalon 64 can handle it but it's not exactly speedy, so she is bugging me to get a new computer. I don't anticipate any video editing in her future, so is there any reason to bump up to the Mac Pros with the xeons and ECC memory? From what I can tell there isn't.

 

^ It should.  I have the 24" imac, the generation just before you with duo core.  I've had excessive workload before with dozens of heavy .AI files open, and a 200 page ID document with tons of imagery + photoshop and after effects.

 

I don't know the reason to be honest, it should be able to handle it.  You certainly have sufficient memory  What else is running?  The only time I run into slowdowns is when I run Mac OS and Windows 7 at the same time

^thanks. Sorry my current computer isn't a mac it is an old hp that is running win7 on late xp hardware. It's only ddr2 memory and pretty small caches on the processors. The processor to memory bus is the bottle neck. The processor maxs out all of the time.

 

 

Oh and she had everything in the world open at all times. At least 500 mb of memory supporting all of the firefox tabs that are open..,.

The processor maxes out all the time? Even if your computer is a little old it sounds like you might have spyware. Have you tried restoring your computer?

^It's not a malware issues. Normally it's fine when you are surfing the web or doing anything normal, Actually it works quite good with Windows 7. The set up was dirt cheap, and when I bought it she wasn't doing any graphics work. It maxes out the processors when she's got huge InDesign/Illustrator files open or if I am converting video.

L1 Cache on processors is one of the most overlooked items.  It's likely that is making a bigger difference if you have a small amount than the number of cores, type of RAM, etc.  It's why the old Celeron processors were awful.

^ oooh those old celerons were crap... my sister had a cheap dell lappy with one. It was soooo slow doing anything.

 

We'll probably just end up getting the iMac, which is fine by me, because I can claim ignorance when something goes wrong, unlike windows. I am a few years out of the loop on hardware but those MacPros have some pretty heavy duty power. But seeing how well the CS5 stuff runs on my current machine given the hardware, the iMac should be more than enough. 

I disagree to an extent about cache (does the amount even vary much anymore between processors used in desktops?) because the more cores you have, the more cache you'll have as each core has cache and if you have a dual-core or quad-core, you have 1 or 2 cores focused on executing instructions while freeing up the other 1 or 2 cores for accessing cache memory or RAM or some other task. If the processor has to access RAM after running out of cache memory, the processor goes via the Bus so is limited to Bus speed which is way slower. Adobe programs are coded for multi-threading and are highly dependant on it so the more cores, the better, especially if it's CS5. For graphic design you really don't want to risk losing great work and the safest bet is to not have any component slowing your project down. Any new computer minus a netbook should work alright though, I'd think.

Wow, am I out of the tech loop. I have no idea what any of the last three posts meant. Are you speaking in Esperanto?

L1-L3 caches are extremely important because it reduces the amount of times the processor needs to fetch data from RAM.  In addition to BUS speed, there is latency.  1,000 1KB request will be much slower than 1 1MB request.  The larger the cache, the less latency and the larger chunks the processor can pull.  Also, for well optimized code, the processor may be able to reuse portions of what's in the cache and not have to go back to RAM at all.  The more cache, the higher probability this will be the case for a given instruction.  L1 cache is by far the fastest (it's on the processor chip itself), but also the most expensive.  Quad core processors have L1 cache on each chip, yes, but this doesn't necessarily mean they have more total, and this will only be used effectively if all cores are being used by optimized code (which isn't always the case).

 

I didn't say L1 cache is the only important thing for a computer's real world speed, I just said it's often overlooked.  Obviously BUS speed, RAM chip type, L2 and L3 cache, hard drive seek time and throughput, amount of RAM, processor clock speed, etc. are all going to affect the speed of the computer.

^haha. I am trying to get back in the loop. The last time I was up on the computer lingo was when it was a question of Pentium 4 vs AMD Athalon XP, and RAM-BUS vs DDR-RAM, oh and the G$ Macs were still running Power PC chips and SD-100 ram.

 

I did some research at lunch and actually found quite a few threads comparing the two Macs I am considering, and the 27" imac quad core i7 definately is a better value (for me). It has basically the same specs as the single xeon quad core MacPro that is in our price range. The processors are basically idenitical, minus Intel branding and the imac has faster memory because it's not EEC (1333 Mhz vs 1066). Plus I won't have to buy a monitor and the imac accepts HDMI in so I can use it as a TV too if I get another tuner from Uverse. I don't care ifI am giving up expandability, I don't have anytime to play with a computer anyway.

 

EDIT: She'll probably insist that she need a MP... just doing the research now. I'll fight that battle when I get there.

 

I know what you mean but a single core processor with a lot of L1 cache is still slowed down by being overwhelmed with so many instructions and executions. Plus, I wonder if there's a conflict with CS5 and single-core processors or 32 bit operating systems since Adobe programs are coded to take advantage of multi-threading. It would at least be way too demanding. I can see why a lot of L1 cache can help but I think there's too many variables to single out cache memory as the main culprit. His processor wouldn't be at 100% with a quad-core. Also, I've never known Adobe to function well with a small amount of RAM and people I've known who upgraded RAM saw their Adobe programs perform better/stop crashing but of course not everyone has the same hardware/situation..

On a random note, I am looking forward to a Mac to see if itunes will actually work. Because the windows versions are buggy as hell, especially on the 64-bit OSes. I would never use it if it wasn't required for my ipod touch...

 

^ I am running CS5 on a Athlon X2 dual core (512k cache per core)64-bit with 5 Gig of DDR2 RAM, w Windows 7 64. Actually CS5 runs fine unless she is doing a huge project like a 500 pic photocollage or the proof for a 30 page booklet. That's when the lack of HP with the processor shows up and things get laggy. I have been impressed with the way CS5 manages memory and the swap files, It really doesn't eat up that much RAM, given the size of the pieces that are being manipulated.

I've found Photoshop CS5 to be buggy in 32-bit XP Pro, particularly when opening Perfect Resize 7.0 (formerly Genuine Fractals) (.STN) files. Anything larger than a desktop JPG (1024 X 768, 72dpi) image opens with artifacts that are thin horizontal bands of pixels from another portion of the image.

 

I'm running a PC with Athlon XP64 3700+ CPU and 3GB DDR2 RAM, and it's set up dual-boot with XP Pro and XP64. If I reboot into XP64 and run CS5 there, I can open the same .STN file and it comes up perfectly artifact-free. I plan to go fully 64-bit soon, and just reserve the 32-bit XP Pro in case I run into something that won't run in 64 bit. The only thing that held me back was that there were no 64-bit drivers available for my older Microtek flatbed scanner, and Nikon never released any for my film scanner and apparently doesn't plan to. I've replaced the flatbed with a new Epson that is supported in 64-bit, and Vue Scan drivers and software will run my film scanner in 64-bit. A friend with an identical film scanner and 64-bit Windows 7 says that Vue Scan is more intuitive and works better than Nikon's proprietary Nikon Scan software.

Oh, you always lag when you do big projects like that. Especially if those 500 picture collages contain like 12 megapixel pictures with large file sizes. You have to resave them as smaller images before working with them if you have something like 500 elements you're working with simultaneously (so f-ing annoying when you have to do a bunch of resizing.) 

^ I am just the IT support in our house. What she does with it is her problem.

 

The driver support for scanners just stinks. The only thing that I did have to dump when I made the jump to 64-bit was my cheapy Espon scanner, so it wasn't a huge loss. The more painful thing to lose was my Laserjet 1100 B&W printer that had acted up at my mother-in-laws office years ago, so she gave it to me. My new MoBo didn't have an LPT1 port...

Dell apparently hates Apple. I wanted to use a Dell wireless printer and needed a driver for Mac and tech support told me they don't support non-dell computers. I said Aaahhh, yes, but who is the company that manufactures the printer before you slap your sticker on it so that I can get the driver from their website? He goes, "We're not allowed to give you that info." Bastards.

^ Hmmmm that's odd.  I'm trying to think...I got a driver to work with my Dell Monitor hooked up to iMac.  Without the driver it was okay, but I wanted the monitor to be perfectly color matched with my imac.  I remember getting a driver to do this, but I think it was some third party site.  Maybe you'll have to search around the internet for one.  There's sites that have drivers for almost anything out there.

Hey, has anyone used both the Macbook air 11 inch vs 13 inch? Other than screen size, is the performance substantially different on the bigger machine? Is the 13 inch worth the extra few hundred dollars?

 

I'm also considering the Macbook Pro 13 inches. Any thoughts? It's only a few hundred dollars more than than the Macbook air 11 inches, and seems to have more features...

 

Also, is the apple warranty worth getting? Or do these computers have good shelf lives, especially if you take care of it?

I don't have much practical experience with the Air models.  However, the always churning Apple rumor mill has new Air models being announced later this week.  Keep in mind the previous rumor was that they were going to announce them last week.  So if you can, don't be too hasty if you think you may want one.

 

This is an oversimplification but if you feel you could get 95% of what you need to get done with a computer on an Ipad if only it had a keyboard and a true office productivity suite and that remaining 5% isn't media manipulation or non-casual gaming then the Air is probably a great option for you.  If you need to use a pro or semipro photo/video editor regularly; or you want to play a contemporary game title; or any intensive computing application, then a traditional computer like the Macbook Pro is what you'd want to look at.

 

Obviously, with the Air your dollars are being spent to make it ultra thin and light.  If that's not important to you and you'd rather have those dollars spent on performance pick the Pro.

Hey, has anyone used both the Macbook air 11 inch vs 13 inch? Other than screen size, is the performance substantially different on the bigger machine? Is the 13 inch worth the extra few hundred dollars?

 

I'm also considering the Macbook Pro 13 inches. Any thoughts? It's only a few hundred dollars more than than the Macbook air 11 inches, and seems to have more features...

 

Also, is the apple warranty worth getting? Or do these computers have good shelf lives, especially if you take care of it?

 

Can speak about the models, but with any "investment" purchase like this I suggest a warranty.

 

my family bought several 24" models and my nephew has the 27 monitor.  We had warranty's on all the products, all the products are taken care of, I mean my father and my grand parents aren't power users by any means or downloading a bunch of extensions/apps etc.

 

At almost the same time the monitors starting going white.  Called mac, they tried to fix over the phone.  Things would be ok for a week then it would happen again.  Took the units in, they fixed them.  Come to find out there were hardware issues/malfunctions/defects, if we didn't have warranties, the work would have been ~$1,800 per unit.  You could almost buy another unit for that price.  For some reason my fathers unit kept having the problem, so apple replaced it with a new unit.

 

My nephews monitor completely burn,  graphics burned into the screen.  Apple replaced it with a new, not refurbished, unit with no questions. On top of that they upgraded all his software and photography software for free.

 

The price for products is high, because they need to make sure they pay for customer service retention.

 

I strongly suggest buy an extended warranty as there is no garauntee your unit wont have an issue.

 

Thanks guys. Regarding the MacBook air 11 and 13 inches, is there a substantial difference between the two beyond the screen size? I'm looking at the apple website....and I realize how computer illiterate I really am

Edit:  Don't forget that the Air lacks most notably a DVD/CD drive ($80 accessory) but also doesn't have an Ethernet port ($30 accessory).

 

http://www.apple.com/macbookair/compare.html

 

The larger size gets you:

 

The possibility to select more storage capacity 64/128GB vs 128/256GB (64GB is pretty small. If you've purchased a laptop in the last 5 years you've probably had more capacity)

 

Higher resolution screen (I'd recommend ignoring this in the decision process and just stick with the screen size choice)

 

A full size SD card slot (Camera/Accessory media slot)

 

0.6 pounds heavier

 

a step up in processor performance

 

2 more hours of stated battery life (more room for more battery)

_____________

 

Here's the compare page for the Pro as well if you haven't visited the compare pages yet.

 

http://www.apple.com/macbookpro/specs-compare.html

Anyone ever upgraded components before?  I have 4 year apple care and would like to upgrade the hard drive in my imac, but I'm not certain if opening my imac will void my warranty despite that it's relatively easy to open up and swap parts. 

You should consult the user manual/materials relevant to your specific model.  The user serviceability has varied over time with the evolution of the product.  I believe the models for at least the last few years restrict the RAM to being considered the only "user serviceable" parts inside the unit itself.  Opening the unit will not void your warranty but replacing the HDD might.