Why am I such a Mac enthusiast?
I've been a computer geek my whole life. I bought a computer of my own in 2nd grade. A Tandy Color Computer 3. Instead of playing outside all the time, I would program my own games in Basic Code. When the PC came out, I began learning DOS and then Windows. I was a PC guy for years. I hated MAC and everything about it and swore I would never own one. "Stupid Macs with their one button mouse." When I became owner of a production company, I was forced to use the Mac. Final Cut was so much better to me than Premiere. I loved the fact that it never locked up on me and it scrolled through video so smoothly. "Like Butter." I started playing with other programs and then bought a Mac laptop of my own. Suddenly I was more productive than ever. Having been extremely well versed in the workings of PCs, I knew what was involved to keep one running. Yet even with my advanced knowledge of computers I still had trouble with viruses, spyware, adware, lock-ups, drivers, & computers slowing down for no reason. Every time I wanted to do something it seemed like I was fixing something first. If I wasn't doing that, then I was dealing with the lock ups. The laptop I bought never had those problems. Yes, the GUI was cool, but the time I saved on every project was incredible! If a program did lock up (very rare,) I could end it without the whole computer crashing and acting funny. In the 3 years I've owed my Powerbook it's only locked up about 10 times. Besides major upgrades, those are the only 10 times it's ever been turned off. Eventually I found a program to replace everything I ever used on PC. They all ran and interacted with each other better than anything I ever had on a PC. Over the years I've purchased an iPod, a Nano, and a MacMini. Our business has 3 dual G4 towers, I convinced my business partner to buy one, my girlfriend, her brother, her parents (they bought a 2nd one they liked it so much,) one of my long time friends from high school, his parents, his friend, a manager of one of the artists I know on the road, my podcast co-host, 3 other friends from high school (one bought two of them), a screener at the airport, I bought my parents one, and I bought both my parents and brother an iPod. That's how much I like the quality of the Mac. Most of those people also bought an iPod. On the road over the last 5 years, almost all of our crew has switched to Mac. Every single person has been amazed at how much easier work has become for them and none of them have looked back. That's why I praise the Mac so much.
5 Comments:
w00t! awesome!
I'm in a similar boat to you, man I hate windows and tried linux and so on... never did it for me. When I got an iPod for christmas one year I started to look at apple's stuff and I was impressed (unlike during the 90's :p) and now I'm all Mac, all the way.
I got my parents to switch and they love it! I got my fiance to switch and she goes on and on about how she loves it! Even a bunch of my winblows buddies from school start saying things like 'oh man that thing lasts for 4 hours!?' or 'how did you make it do THAT!?' talking about expose and so on.
It's like I found my love of computers again!
Great great, OSX rules, so separate it from the hardware so I can BUILD myself the PC I want rather than being forced to use Jobs' choice of what he thinks is the best hardware for me.
M$ sucks but at least I can build a PC from parts I like & trust at free market prices.
Yeah, i can definately see both sides of the coin here. I've been a PC user all my life, but like most ppl I HATE M$ with a passion, more so with every passing day. But at least i have the option to customise my hardware however as I see fit.
That is sort of the chicken-and-the-egg problem with Macs. They run so great and solid and stable BECAUSE Apple tightly controls what hardware they sell and is used with Macs. They only sell hardware that they have tested rigorously and ensured 100% software compatibility with. If they were to allow open-standard hardware to be used, then Mac's stability would go right down the drain, thereby eliminating the #1 selling point Apple has, and the #1 reason ppl like Dave try to get me to switch to Mac (and YES I have considered it). Without that added benefit (and a few others like it), Macs would go the way of the dodo, because why buy one unstable machine (standardised Mac) when you can just buy the unstable machine that 90% of the worlds desktops are using (PC/Windows).
On the other hand, Windows is looking less and less appealing, and quite frankly, I think M$ has got ENOUGH market share, and far be it from me to try and drum them up more business by recommending their crap. I have realised recently that we are slowly entering an age where , if big corporations have their way about it, our computers will no longer be machines that we can have do what we want... they will be machines that companies like M$ ALLOW us to use, within the scope of their agreements with other companies (go and google Vistas new DRM crap, just to touch the tip of the iceburg, and you'll see what I mean). This is honestly the first time in my life as a PC user that I'm considering leaving the world of Windows, but I get the feeling that it will be almost impossible for me to leave it completely.
The only other major option is Linux. It's been about 5 years since I've messed with Linux much, and as I've been getting back into it over the last year I must say I'm very impressed with how far it's come. I have been looking into the possibility of replacing my general computing tasks with it, though I'd expect to have to keep an XP partition around for a few things (lots of games, etc) at least for a while. That said, Linux is still BY NO MEANS a proper replacement for the average computer user, though distros like Ubuntu have really done a lot to help make it a viable desktop replacement for the average user. I'll be really exploring it soon, so talk to me this time next year and I'll be able to say a lot more about that.
All in all, OSX is really a great OS platform, but I'm just not willing to fork out for a Mac twice what I'd pay for a comparable PC, especially now that Macs are all x86 and we all bloody know what is under the hood. Basically you're paying $1200 for your hardware, and another $1000 for the TPM module located on the motherboard. No thank you. I have toyed around with and got working OSX on my standard x86, and it did work quite well (though I have not gotten my sound working yet) and I am absolutely considering using this as a primary platform. However, with no licensing available for such a scenario it's not exactly an appealing route to take for permanent computing tasks because it's difficult, and often impossible to retrieve OS updates etc when you have hacked OSX into your system (running the OS updates skews around everything I had to do to get the OS up and running in the first place), as well as drivers for a LOT of hardware are simply not available at all. I am not done exploring this avenue, however.
I guess the whole point of all this, and even Dave's article here, is that there are now some VIABLE alternatives to using Windows these days for not only specialised computing tasks, but also general computing, and even gaming. The MORE PEOPLE who switch away from Windows and to the other platforms like MacOSX and Linux the better IMHO, because quite frankly, M$ has got enough market, Windows can be too unstable and bloated, and quite frankly, why should ANY OF US trust M$? But for those of us who are completely entrenched in Windows, it is very difficult to break out of it, and it will likely take some effort on our part to do something about it.
This comment was written on a WindowsXP machine, btw :P
Dave, you said, "They run so great and solid and stable BECAUSE Apple tightly controls what hardware they sell and is used with Macs."
Wouldn't you say the same about PC's? I built my PC with top of the line components... everything. I connect many different mp3 players, a USB camera, UPS's, joysticks, scanner, two USB printers, USB hub, video camera, Sony Ericsson P910 cellphone, Bluetooth mouse and keyboard, SageTV DVR software streaming HD content via Firewire all run flawlessly. I buy quality PC software.
My computer has never crashed except for when I fire up Sony Vegas while cablebox is recording firewire (weird software glitch).
So is the solution Mac/OSx or is it simply buying quality? BTW, I love competition, so GO APPLE! Oh, and I have a Sansa e280 mp3 player. So much better than a Nano and integrates with Windows Media Player as well as Nano with iTunes.
anonymous said "Wouldn't you say the same about PC's? I built my PC with top of the line components... "
Oh, i absolutely agree with you there man. It's all about quality control and finding the parts and software that work good together. I guess it's just that Apple does all this ahead of time (which is probably one of the other reasons they charge more), and it's up to us to do it ourselves with our PC's because we have such a range of hardware to work on. This is an advantage in more ways that I can count, but for someone who is not savvy with hardware, etc. it can be quite daunting. We do of course actually have companies that try and do just that with PC's, like Dell, HP/Compaq, etc etc. and that is precisely why these OEM companies are so successful and have as much control of the PC market. But they're successful to varying extents because they get caught up with too much partnership marketing crap and you end up with a bunch of excess unneeded software that you want to uninstall the moment you take your shiny new PC out of the box. Plus, they don't always necessarily use "quality" parts (If I had a nickel for every Conexant modem i've replaced in a Compaq.....).And, as any Windows machine will do, it still degrades over time with just normal usage, God forbid some one cruise the internet for a year or 2 with no decent spyware or virus protection. That said, we'll see how life is under the Vista regime :P...
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