Victor, I use a hackintosh at work everyday, my company does not support macs, they do not let them in the door. I have a hacked copy of OS 10.5.3 (I have a purchased copy of leapord that is sitting in my desk draw for a true license , but I am braking the ULA), I have a 500G sata dual boot Vista and OS X drive. I have no problems with it. I am waiting for apple to release a $800 tower that I can set up the components of my choice like I did with my PowerPC G4. I have a Mac Mini, and a Macbook. The benefits of a hackintosh is you can play PC games, which we still lack on a true Mac( am waiting), but I am a very advanced user, My first advice for any new user is to buy a true mac, but If you a Windows user, especially gamers, hackintochs can help them move closer to using the OS X operating system.

I have to say I am with Victor on the need for a mid range machine. I love the iMac, but know my displays out last my computers, and I hate the concept of having them tied together. More important I use 2 Dell Ultra Sharp 30 inch Dell Display the iMac goes to 24 inch. So my choice was Mac Mini (already own), Mac Pro (too expensive) or buy a iMac or MacBook (already own) and forget the display. My issues was the mini and macbook pro just did not have the power of a full machine. I constantly render finalcut express content, convert audio files, and convert video. Well I got the Mac Pro. Hated having to spend the extra money but Apple provided no real valid other choice.

I love USB and firewire but I like to keep as many devices as I can in the computer case. Adding an additional internal hard drive, DVD/Blu-ray, SATA Card, Smart Card Reader or any other device would be useful. I have enough junk I connect via USB/firewire so when I can reduce the wire mess I try to.

The reason I love the iMac is Less wires but then I have to chain 5-10 USB devices and hubs off the machine and I am back where I started.

Tinker with your machine or not any one remotely concerned about finance needs to tinker with their Mac because apple charges obscene prices for most upgrades. 9k for 32GB of memory that i can get else where for 3k. 300% mark up. Now wonder people run windows and buy dell

I also NEED a Mid Tower Apple computer!! just in the middle of a iMac and a Mac Pro. A do a lot of video editing and animations in After Effects and FCS. I wold love to have a mid tower Mac that I can put a eSata card and a Video Capture card like a Black Magic Design Intensity card (http://www.blackmagic-design.com/products/inten...) to viw my video in a external LCD via HDMI!! I do think it should be an Apple product!! The hackintosh is a great "paltform" for a second computer but not for a real production environment!! That Product would be Perfect for my needs!!

Hi Victor,
Love the show and this is my first feedback on an episode. I would love to hear a future episode about the "missing model Macintosh tower" where your guests don't toe the Apple company line, but actually respect other people's preferences and needs. Here's my need:

What is the most important part on a computer? The hard drive. Every hard drive will die in time. When it does, replacing that critical part can be as easy as Apple has made it on the MacBook, or as difficult as Apple has made it on some iMacs. Case in point: I bought my sister a G5 iSight iMac when I bought my own, and 18 months later her hard drive died. Mine is still fine. I had to pay a service tech to install her new hard drive because, unlike earlier G5 iMacs, the iSight model was not simple to work on for hard drives.

I don't want a 1,000 dollar Macintosh tower because I'm a gamer wanting graphics card expandability (although I understand that need and respect it). I want a consumer tower Mac because all hard drives eventually die, and I prefer to keep my total cost of ownership low by replacing hard drives, for space increase or breakage reasons, without having to pay somebody bench time. Tower computers easily allow that, and users don't have to buy a monitor they don't need when they buy a tower computer. A gorgeous monitor on an iMac is still useless if I already have a separate monitor that I prefer using. I don't care about Steve Jobs' fetish for thinness, I don't even care about an upgradeable processor--I just want to replace a hard drive without paying someone for help. And don't get me started saying "you should buy Apple care". On most Macs, Apple Care will be over by the time the hard drive dies.

I also agree with the comment that not having a tower means we have exernal hard drives all over our computer desks. It's a very messy, un-elegant, un-Apple solution. A tower with room for only one extra hard drive would be a great help to me and my work area. Two hard drive bays would be terrific.

Thanks again for a provocative episode.

Tim thanks for taking the time to write this so everyone can see a different point of view. I've always said that although I love Apple, competition is a great thing and so is choice. I think your points are terrific and I'm sure this subject will be spoken about again on the show as more choice becomes available to all Mac (OS and hardware) users in the future.