Why do so many sci/eng professors use Mac computers as their personal computers?

<p>Is there a reason why? I see it across all the science/engineering departments. Linux is often used on departmental computers, but the personal computers are all Macs.</p>

<p>Well my comp sci professors that had macs were able to boot camp windows or with Linux.</p>

<p>Personally I think that is the way to go, because I’ve gotten a lot of crap with my windows machine (Which cost more than the new i7 macs, with far inferior specs).</p>

<p>What?! It cost more than the i7 Mac? You got ripped off, buddy. Nothing costs more than the i7 Mac.</p>

<p>I agree with soadquake981. The 27" i7 iMacs and the Nehalem Mac Pros are both very nice computers, but if you bought a PC that cost more than either the i7-iMac or the Nehalem-Mac Pro and had worse specs, then you simply got ripped off, plain and simple.</p>

<p>Because Macs are now Unix-based. And it’s some sort of rule that science and engineering departments must love Unix.</p>

<p>Haha who cares?</p>

<p>I was referring to the 15" Macbook Pro i7, which is about 2 grand.</p>

<p>Mine was an HP 17" and it cost about $1800 but which additional stuff like shipping and warranties (definitely a rip off) it came out to a little over 2 grand.</p>

<p>That’s funny, I bought a brand new 17" HP laptop for like 700 after taxes. Yeah you got ripped off, imo.</p>

<p>For ones that do have them (and I question whether it is most but just don’t know) there are probably two reasons: (a) many of them just prefer Macs, and, more important, (b) the college likely has special deals with Apple allowing the profs to buy them fairly cheap and less than anything the rest of us would have to pay for them.</p>

<p>amarkov is right.</p>

<p>I don’t see it at all. Most of my professors are solidly window-based, plus linux for those that need to use unix.</p>

<p>But most of the Mac-using professors I know use them primarily because they want a more “hand-holding” OS. Mostly the older professors.</p>