I think the point he might have been going for, but of course I could be wrong, is that macbook pros (and that one generation of macbooks, I recall) have a better external build. The aluminum, I would think, can take a little more abuse than the plastic found on most laptops. I also don't get the warnings about HDDs. When I upgraded my PS3 HDD, my dad accidentally knocked the new HDD off a table (about 5 ft off the ground) onto solid tile, and it's never had any problems. My former coworker spilled water onto his macbook's keyboard. He was freaking out, but after letting it air dry for a couple of hours, it powered up just fine. I've never heard a story like this regarding an HP/Dell/Asus/whatever non-apple brand.
You have a point, and I should've clarified. The drive is much less likely to be damaged if it's not powered on.
Which could've been avoided if you had the original boot disk (or even a retail boot disk) handy. Not a problem with the computer, but rather a user error. This anecdote comes from someone who worked in a windows/linux/OSX repair shop for just a little under a year.
This also needs more clarification: the disc drive was physically damaged and wouldn't take any disc. Using the original disc (or even a copy) was out of the question.
That's not entirely true regarding the RAM. If you don't use Apple RAM, you have an extremely high chance of the system not properly recognizing the RAM or using it at the appropriate clocking speed, as some RAM needs a little tweaking via the MoBo bios to get the clock speeds to work as advertised. You can't get to the BIOS on a Mac, at least not easily. I also find that the thermal compound in apple laptops (never opened an iMac or Mac Pro to check) is usually correctly applied, whereas I usually had to reapply the thermal compound in HP and Dell laptops because it was smeared on way too thick (and sometimes a hardened mess by the time I got to it). That's a subtle difference I've noticed between the two.
I used aftermarket RAM and the Apple guys I worked with did, as well. This might've been true in older Macs, but anything 2007/2008+ doesn't seem to mind aftermarket RAM. You also might've been lucky with the thermal compound, or my coworker was unlucky, because he was cursing the people who applied it to his CPU. He removed/reapplied and his temperature went down 5C.
Also, Macs use UEFI, not a traditional BIOS.
Also, and this is just a rumor asaik, apparently the new all-in-one iMacs won't recognize a lot of after market internal drives.
That sucks.
The same can be said regarding the confusion as to why people insist on berating people who own Macs (or any Apple product), either it's A) the cool thing to do, or B) a result of envy because others can't afford or simply don't own that particular piece of equipment. These days, you could argue that the newer computers are worth the premium price. After all, there aren't any other machines with the thunderbolt port currently on the market. What's to come of that venture, I honestly couldn't say; history could repeat itself and the lesser format can snuff out the powerhouse port, or we could see a shift in power, like what happened when blu-ray overtook HD-DVD.
For the record, before I get called an Apple fanboy, I use a linux box and an iBook as my main computers (when I need computers).
My original post wasn't meant to berate Apple users, so I apologize if anyone took it that way. It's just frustrating when I hear someone say "I'm going to get a Mac because I'm just tired of my computer breaking!", and then a few months later I start getting questions about why their Mac has a virus or a sad face at bootup.
I don't care what people use. I just don't like misinformation to be spread around, but I guess whoever doesn't research something before they buy deserves whatever they have coming to them.
I would also say that I
liked my Mac, quite a bit. I bought it because of the engineering quality of the Aluminum Unibody (I loathe the white/black Macbooks), but I got tired of being locked down to OSX, and Windows 7 boot camp drivers were pretty awful at the time (I've been told they have improved since then). I switched back to a Thinkpad and haven't looked back. OSX was fun for awhile, but I get more out of using Linux. It's all down to personal preference.
