1 definition by IP Address

The iMac was the first ever computer intended for home and office use. It was later copied by Microsoft to produce the first PC. Since then, Microsoft PC sales have outstripped Macintosh sales. Today, the Macintosh only makes up around 4.5% of worldwide computer system sales.

The most basic Mac system can cost many times more than the most advanced Microsoft PC. Having said this, thay are much more reliable (their UNIX-like infrastructure being far less suceptible to the 114000 odd viruses that attack PCs). The Mac is generally prefered for multimedia manipulation and is used by many people in the film industry, artists, music composers, architects and generally creative people. One noted Mac enthusiast is Mr Stephen Fry.

Only recently has Apple started incorporating Intel processors into the iMac product line. You cannot, however, remove an Intel processor from a Mac and expect it to work in a PC (It just does not work - different processor structure and all...).

When the Mac was first launched, Apple put all of its funding into copyrighting its processor design and as a result of which, ran out of money to pay its design team and programmers. So they paid their team with shares of the company instead... During this time, the PC processor design was not copyrighted - which of course meant that anyone could manufacture them (note AMD, Intel, IBM & Cyrix) which of course would keep the price down.

But on the whole, PCs are cheaper and Macs are more reliable. Macs cannot be upgraded for a simple reason: you don't need to - they're powerful enough (some have 8-core processors and 32 GB RAM, 5 TerraByte storage etc).
Stephen Fry: "Yes... I love the iMac. Not the PC... *makes spitting noise (to signify spitting on a PC)*"

Steve J: "I've got a new computer with 32 Gigs RAM and an octi-core cpu..."
Bill G: "I've got a new computer. I've got 2 gigs of RAM and a dual core cpu with support for all the games in the world and tons of software is fully... oh crap... its crashed again."
by IP Address August 1, 2007
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