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Absolutely incorrect. Both Apple and Microsoft were given tours at PARC at pretty much the same time. Both borrowed heavily from Xerox' work and both borrowed from each other.

Do you swallow every myth you hear, hook, line and sinker?
Both Apple's and Microsoft's CEOs were invited to tour the Xerox PARC facility. After the initial tour by Steve Jobs, he asked Xerox for a return visit with some of his engineers. The truth is that Apple PAID Xerox for the 8 hour tour with the engineers and the rights to use what they observed with 1 million shares of pre-IPO Apple stock (worth about $3,000,000 at the time of transfer - Xerox sold it after the IPO for about $15 million). Microsoft did not return for another visit nor did they pay anything to Xerox.
Incidentally, the Apple engineers walked away with absolutely no code or even screen shots of the PARC work. Two years later, Apple hired some of the research engineers that Xerox let go from PARC in an "economy" move.

So you can cherry-pick a couple of examples of cheaper software, ignoring the various other products that either don't exist on the Mac or are more expensive for that platform. Sounds fair.

Cherry picking? I don't think so. We are the ones who are buying the Macintosh software... and we see the prices. You are repeating FUD you've heard and cannot prove. You have been challenged to come up with software that is more expensive on the Mac than it is on the PC... do it. Find us a software title that is more expensive on the Mac. Prove your allegation.
Let's see:

Microsoft Office for Mac from Microsoft's online sales $399.95
Microsoft Office for Windows from Microsoft's online sales $499.95
SoftwareKing offers Adobe Indesign for both Mac and Windows for $255.
They also offer Adobe Illustrator for both Mac and Windows for $214.99.
Best Buy is selling World of Warcraft for both Mac and Windows for $19.95

And I could point out that every Windows title is also available for the Apple Mac when run under BootCamp, Parallels or Fusion... at the same price... which shoots down your "don't exist" claim. Did you know that there are more internet browsers for the Mac than for Windows?
Right. Mac software is more expensive than Windows software.

Seriously, though, I'm not knocking the Mac per se. I'm just not buying into all the hype.

When you repeat canards that have been proven false time-and-time again, especially when evidence is produced in the very same thread that you are wrong and then you repeat your FUD, you really cannot say that you aren't "knocking the Mac." You are.

Apple has made a lot of mistakes since the late 1970s and they are just now looking like they might be able to recover from them as a company. They aren’t doing it on their computer line, though.

"...just now looking as they might be able to recover..." Sheesh. Have you even BOTHERED to research anything? The fact is that Apple has been on a roll since 2001. That's six years, Filo. Apple's Stock has risen from $15 a share to over $380 (accounting for splits)! Apple stock has increased the second largest percentage of ANY company offered on any stock exchange in the last ten years. (The number one company increased from 7¢ a share so really doesn't count.) It is selling record breaking numbers of Mac computers and making record breaking profits (incidentally, 60% of Apple's profits come from their computer division, so it is indeed coming from the computer line), its growth in computer sales is two to three times the industry average and it has more than doubled its share of both international and US sales in the last three years, Apple's notebook sales are ~18% of the market(!) and climbing, and YOU say "[Apple]...are just now looking as they might be able to recover..." from mistakes made 30 years ago. When do you think you might put a "Buy" on Apple stock, Filo?

"Oh, sorry Filo, you said It was 2 to 3 times more expensive... Not 50%..."

I said both, but in different contexts. Perhaps you should learn to read instead of misrepresenting what others say?...

...The PC costs 1/3 of the Mac for comparable usefulness.

Excuse me? Learn to read? Did you not just say you did indeed say both? We have continually provided hard facts and price comparisons of as close to equally equipped computers showing that Macs are either less expensive or comparable to the PCs prices and you continue to spout nonsense about $500 computers being somehow comparably useful as $2500 workstations. Filo, if that were true, then no one would be wasting their money on $2500 workstations be they PCs or Macs.

Her new 3K Mac won't give her any more than her 1K PC except for the fact that she's a Mac person and can't get her stuff done on the PC. It's not that it's not possible - the PC has all the same software - it's that she, being a Mac person, can't do it.

So you allege that Mrs. Filo could be just as productive on a $1,000 single dual core computer as she could be on a $3,000 dual dual core computer? I don't think so. If she does any rendering, transforming, apply any filters, then the dual dual will be much faster making Mrs. Filo more productive. When I was doing graphic arts production, I charged about $100 per hour. The difference in price of those two computers is a mere 20 hours of work... it would not take too long of me twiddling my thumbs waiting for the slower machine to complete some rendering over the useable lifetime of those two computers to waste the short sighted, false economy purchase of a much slower computer... and after that I am eating productive time while I twiddle.
We've already shown you that trying to duplicate that Mac Pro in the Windows world actually can cost you almost a $1000 MORE than the fully configured price of a Mac Pro... so to duplicate the power and functionality of the Mac Pro in a PC is considerably more expensive... I really cannot understand your assertion that a $1000 computer can match either one of those.
If what you claim is true and that she can do her job with a less powerful computer, since she is a Mac person, buy her a Core 2 Duo 2.4GHz iMac with a 24" screen, 320GB HD, and an ATI Radeon Pro HD-2600 256MB Graphic card for $1799. Have one of you enroll in a college course for a semester and buy it for $1699. Add a couple of external 320GB Firewire II drives (I just bought one for $97 at Fry's) and Max out her RAM with memory from Crucial and save yourself $1200.

Do you swallow every myth you hear, hook, line and sinker?

Certainly not. I haven’t bought into the Mac is superior myth, for instance.

Both Apple's and Microsoft's CEOs were invited to tour the Xerox PARC facility. After the initial tour by Steve Jobs, he asked Xerox for a return visit with some of his engineers. The truth is that Apple PAID Xerox for the 8 hour tour with the engineers and the rights to use what they observed with 1 million shares of pre-IPO Apple stock (worth about $3,000,000 at the time of transfer - Xerox sold it after the IPO for about $15 million). Microsoft did not return for another visit nor did they pay anything to Xerox.

Incidentally, the Apple engineers walked away with absolutely no code or even screen shots of the PARC work. Two years later, Apple hired some of the research engineers that Xerox let go from PARC in an "economy" move.

Which has what to do with anything? I won’t deny that MS is cheap and that they took their look and went forward with their product while Apple did a bit more research and then went forward with theirs.

I also won’t deny that Apple had the better windowed operating system, then and now, although current comparisons have MS catching up (relative to 1986.)

Your claim was that Windows was copied from MacOS. That claim is patently false. Both were copied from the work done at Xerox PARC, initially, and there was plenty of copying between in later iterations.

Cherry picking? I don't think so. We are the ones who are buying the Macintosh software... and we see the prices.

I buy Mac stuff as well. The last time I purchased Adobe software (CS) I paid over $100 more for the Apple version than the PC version.

I just checked at NewEgg and they are charging a few $ more for Apple over PC, but it’s in the noise relative to the price of the software. I’m glad that product, at least, has price parity.

Microsoft Office for Mac from Microsoft's online sales $399.95

Microsoft Office for Windows from Microsoft's online sales $499.95

Nice try. The Professional version of Office 2005 for Mac is 499.95 but it is older software than the $499 version of Office 2007 for the PC. It also doesn’t contain MS Access which is a key component of the software.

Comparable versions of Office are substantially cheaper for the PC.

Right. Mac software is more expensive than Windows software.

Glad you agree!

When you repeat canards that have been proven false time-and-time again, especially when evidence is produced in the very same thread that you are wrong and then you repeat your FUD, you really cannot say that you aren't "knocking the Mac." You are.

Sorry, but I do like the machines, I just find the people that evangelize them as some sort of second coming to be very tiresome and entirely wrong.

The fact is that Apple has been on a roll since 2001. That's six years, Filo.

Yep, they’ve pulled themselves out of a hole. Mostly by selling iPods and other gadgets. They still lag considerably in personal computers and will continue to do so for some time, if not forever.

They had the world in the early 1980s and then they got cute. They came out with a crappy Apple /// (I have one), a deeply flawed Lisa system (I have several) and a proprietary Mac system and abandoned virtually everything that made them an early success.

They went from a massive market share in 1980 to a meager one in 1990 to an almost non-existent one in 2000.

If they’re lucky they may be able to flirt with double digits sometime this decade. I still don’t have that kind of confidence in them, though, since they are still a proprietary shop in an open system world.

When someone else is selling Mac clones or when Mac OS is offered for other platforms I’ll reconsider my opinion of their corporate strategy.

When do you think you might put a "Buy" on Apple stock, Filo?

I’m more of a buy low sell high kind of investor. Buying now doesn’t fit that strategy.

If they do what I said above I’ll buy.

Did you not just say you did indeed say both?

Yes, but not in the context(s) you imply.

We have continually provided hard facts and price comparisons of as close to equally equipped computers showing that Macs are either less expensive or comparable to the PCs prices and you continue to spout nonsense about $500 computers being somehow comparably useful as $2500 workstations.

My point exactly. I never said that a $500 computer was of comparable usefulness to a $2500 workstation. I said that my wife, as a specific example, doing her job could be just as productive on the $1K PC we just bought as she would be on the new $3K Mac workstation she wants.

That’s quite a bit different than you represent.

So you allege that Mrs. Filo could be just as productive on a $1,000 single dual core computer as she could be on a $3,000 dual dual core computer?

I don’t allege it, I state it categorically. I know what she does (which puts me at an advantage in this discussion, don’t you think?) and the extra performance she’ll gain from the extra cores will yield her no more than a few seconds a day at her job.

I don't think so.

A perfect sentence for the first three words, then you went and ruined it. . . ;-)

If she does any rendering, transforming, apply any filters, then the dual dual will be much faster making Mrs. Filo more productive.

If she were doing that kind of thing often she’d certainly benefit from the speed. She’s not doing most of it at all and the rest she does so infrequently as to make the speed gains irrelevant.

The main reason she needs a new machine is because her old laptop doesn’t have the hard drive space. With the tower we can dump in extra hard drives as she needs them. Of course, the new PC she has could be upgraded with a multi-terabyte RAID and we’d still be well under the price she’ll pay for the Mac Pro.

When I was doing graphic arts production, I charged about $100 per hour. The difference in price of those two computers is a mere 20 hours of work... it would not take too long of me twiddling my thumbs waiting for the slower machine to complete some rendering over the useable lifetime of those two computers to waste the short sighted, false economy purchase of a much slower computer... and after that I am eating productive time while I twiddle.

You clearly don’t have a lawyer’s mentality. If you used a Mac Classic to do your work you’d be a rich man, charging by the hour. . . :-D

We've already shown you that trying to duplicate that Mac Pro in the Windows world actually can cost you almost a $1000 MORE than the fully configured price of a Mac Pro... so to duplicate the power and functionality of the Mac Pro in a PC is considerably more expensive... I really cannot understand your assertion that a $1000 computer can match either one of those.

It all depends on what you do.

And taking a single vendors offering in comparison isn’t a fair comparison. I could build a workstation class machine for far less than Dell or Apple will sell it to me. I can get any number of other vendors to do that build for me.

With Apple I can buy from Apple or I can buy from Apple. . .

If what you claim is true and that she can do her job with a less powerful computer, since she is a Mac person, buy her a Core 2 Duo 2.4GHz iMac with a 24" screen, 320GB HD, and an ATI Radeon Pro HD-2600 256MB Graphic card for $1799. Have one of you enroll in a college course for a semester and buy it for $1699. Add a couple of external 320GB Firewire II drives (I just bought one for $97 at Fry's) and Max out her RAM with memory from Crucial and save yourself $1200.

That’s certainly an option. My $1,800 will get me pretty much exactly what I got for $1K on the PC side with a lesser video card than I have. Actually, to be fair, the 24” monitor would set me back another $350 or so.

Unfortunately I’ll probably still end up with the tower. Mac folks are into status that way. . .

Besides, as I’ve said, it’ll end up being a business expense.

And by the way, you should NEVER shop at Fry’s. They are thieving bastards and should have been run out of business long ago.