That’s the last straw, I’m buying a Mac.
Of course, that not me speaking. I’m not a quitter, I need my windows based machines, but I am still deeply interested in owning a Mac. David Coursey, of ZDNet writes about his troubles with windows and he is fed up. David closes his article with a statement that brings a question to my mind; Why do you keep going back to Windows when you are so confident in the performance of a Mac?
SO I’M DOING what I always do when Windows ticks me off (that’s not the word I really want to use, but this is a family AnchorDesk): I grab a Mac. Right now, I’m typing this column on a 15-inch PowerBook G4.
The nice thing about Mac OS X is that it’s darn near uncrashable. No matter what programs I install or uninstall or how I use it, OS X just runs. I’ve been using it since before the commercial release and have had only one serious crash–and that was during a hardware
installation. The machine then booted right up without further incident. Other that that [sic], the OS has been–at least in my experience–rock solid. And that’s more than I can say about my Windows machines.Sure, not all the programs I want to use run on Mac, but it’s like I tell people: If a Mac does what you want to do, it’s a much more stable OS than Windows.
The obvious answer is that there are so many application written for Windows and that if you should ever need professional help with your Windows machine, you would be able to find help on any street corner. I propose that you use the right tool for the job. If you know that you can rely on a Mac machine, buy a Mac and use it for your mission critical purposes. Save Windows for your leisurely computing tasks.
February 23rd, 2004 at 9:51 pm
Having used quite a few operating systems, I have to admit that I like OS X better than anything else that I’ve used. I can get it to crash, but it’s hard. It’s more stable than anything else that I’ve used, it’s more user friendly than any of the *nix platforms that I’ve touched, it has a good range of applications available, and it’s good looking. Every time I have to step back to OS 9 (at home) or 98 (one of the boxes at work) or XP (my laptop), I feel like I’m taking a step down.
OS X is brilliant. My next computer will be a new OS X box regardless of cost.
February 23rd, 2004 at 10:46 pm
I must admit that I hear nothing but good things about the Mac OS’s. I have never owned a Mac but this year I am going to try to buy an Apple laptop, unless they get word that I’m looking to buy one and give me one for free.
My career allows me to use a Windows machine primarily and Unix machine, by Samba or FTP secondarily. So needless to say, I don’t know much more than Windows. I am currently in the process of building a webserver using Linux and I must say that so far it has been quite a learning experience. BTW, Linux does crash! When I start playing with a Mac OS I’ll try my best to crash that too.
February 24th, 2004 at 10:20 am
“if you should ever need professional help with your Windows machine, you would be able to find help on any street corner”
Yea, and I think a lot of times, people do.
February 24th, 2004 at 10:24 am
It’s certainly true that you can find more people to help you with Windows problems than with Mac problems but that’s not much of an advantage, finally. I really do think that Mac users are less often befuddled by their machines (no DLL files, no registry, no uninstall issues and so on) and so have less need for close-at-hand support; but also I’ve found that Mac users are very generous with their time and advice. Find just one or two and you’re set. And of course, that’s before you even get to the substantial and thriving on line support community.
Give the Mac a try!
February 24th, 2004 at 10:59 am
He makes money doing tech reporting, so it makes sense that he often uses a win computer (put bread on the table). I make my money by day supporting win machines and go home or back to my desk to use OS-X
February 24th, 2004 at 11:01 am
I work on the technical support side of the advertising sales business (think big media conglomerate), specifically, as the Business Systems Manager. My two cents are this: the Mac is a much more elegant solution to computing than Windows will ever be, this has more to do with the culture of each company, and how it influences development of their products.
Yes, we do use PC’s - approximately 50% of them - but we use them for one application that is no longer written for the Mac platform (only one application to justify the expense of operating two platforms). With the rest of our business we can get Mac software that performs as well or better than most PC equivalents. In the end, after you consider software, we must consider support an training, and my experience is that the PC’s (we run Dell) require at least three times the support cost (crashing and corruption issues are most prominent) than our Mac’s. Training requirement are that we be more in-depth with the Windows users, yet often we can let a Mac user “run lose” with 15-20 minutes of quick “show and tell”. And yes, it is true, side by side the Mac’s rarely crash (you really do have to try hard), which is something I can’t say about my Win Xp laptop (which I am rebooting now as I type this on my Mac).
Last year, internally we were brought to our knees when the ‘Slammer’ virus destroyed our SQL server which hosted the backend of our intranet (1000+ employees), within half an hour I was able to configure a off the shelf Mac desktop, transfer our intranet files, and had our intranet up and hosting/serving, all using the desktop variety of OS X (1.2.1) and Apache (we have migrated since to OS X server). You have to admit that is elegant power. To this day most of our internal backend systems are now on Mac OS or Sun.
February 24th, 2004 at 11:28 am
All the above is right on, at least in my experience. What’s more, and I’m trying it out this week, is there is an open source project called Darwine, http://darwine.opendarwin.org/ , that will run if you have X11, http://developer.apple.com/darwin/projects/X11/index.html , installed. Still haven’t bridged to x86 completely, but they’re getting there. I will actually be able to test things in the windows env. without having to touch that bloated thing called Virtual PC!
I just hope with the success of OS X, that Apple doesn’t forget its roots (elegancy, security, stability) … just because it’s good now doesn’t mean they can’t muck it up later (remember going from System 7 to System 8, and then 9??) Ugh.
February 25th, 2004 at 1:56 am
Macs are just fast elegant and wonderful. They always were. OS X makes them better than outstanding. I hope everyone gets a Mac. That Microsoft corporation has been selling everyone down the river for too long, and people are getting the message finally. Windows switchers aren’t quitters they’re switchers, and smart!!!
February 25th, 2004 at 1:46 pm
Put me down as a Mac lover, too. It does everything I need it to. Maybe if I played more games I’d think about Windows, but I dont. (But then there are always consoles…)
I don’t like when Windows users who know nothing about the Macintosh spread wrong information (which they seem to have heard from other people with no Mac experience) — it makes selling the Mac quite difficult. But I can personally say that I’ve switched two friends over the Apple side, without any hard selling on my part. They got more fed up with Windows and Microsoft, more than anything. The first one raves about his 15″ Powerbook and is never going back. (He also knows some UNIX — he’s very happy.) The other is on his way — we need to analyze his needs more thoroughly. (He runs a successful online business and we still need to check out his accounting programs, internet postage, etc.) Little by little …
I don’t think one can look at just speed or application availability on deciding which platform to use. What about business practices? You really should take a look at how Microsoft got to be top dog. I can’t in good faith support than kind of a company, and they get ever more dangerous as they grow in size. People say they’re afraid to be “stuck” with Apple, but they’re greater slaves to MS than they realize. Neither company is going away anytime soon. And your crashes, reinstalls, virus checking, etc. costs more and more of your time which adds to your total ownership: going Apple coould save you quite a bit. People that just buy the cheapest thing they see often get their wish.
Ultimately, the only way to show Microsoft that you mean business is to vote with your feet. Invite one of your Mac pals to come over with their iBook or Powerbook and show you what Apple has to offer. Most people don’t know what they’re missing.