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TechTV Screen Savers Host Tries "The Switch"
lwbecker2 writes "Patrick Norton, from the TechTV show 'The Screen Savers', and an admittedly loyal Windows/PC user, recently borrowed a iBook from Apple and has written an article about his three-month experience with 'The Switch'. It seems like a well-though-out review and IMHO provides some balanced coverage of the potential issues and experiences involved in switching from Windows XP to Mac OS X."
I'd be very interested in seeing a survey along the lines of "Your a PC user, do you even consider the apple platform to be a real alternative?" My guess would be a very low % of people honestly consider the platform.
I disagree. I think many of us are in the same boat - seriously interested in a Mac but without the funds to buy one. I've already decided my next computer will be a PowerBook, once I can afford it.
He reported his experience the first time on last night's (02/26/2003) "The Screen Savers" TV show on TechTV. That's when the article was posted to the web site.
Ever dream you could fly? Get up from the Flight Sim. I Fly
Windows XP is not perfect. That's no secret. Just ask anybody who doesn't have broadband but has downloaded every single Critical Update for the operating system. Is Mac OS X that much better? Apple's 'Switch' campaign says so. So does Leo, my hard working co-host.
Leo and I have been debating the Mac vs. PC split for a while. He often claims that the Mac can do everything a PC can do, yet he just built a 2-GHz Intel Pentium 4-based PC to play games like "Unreal Tournament 2003."
To settle this long-running debate, I borrowed an iBook from Apple to make the switch. For the last three months I've been running OS X Jaguar on a fresh Apple iBook with a combo drive (DVD and CD-RW in one) and an AirPort card for Wi-Fi access.
The switch and the catch(es)
Here are the main issues I came upon during my switch.
OS X needs a fast, free Web browser that's stable. The latest beta release of Safari makes big strides in this direction.
One of the most important applications TechTV uses has no Mac version. Avid iNews basically provides the backbone of our show. Everything about the show is managed using iNews. I finally understand the feelings of Mac users in a world dominated by PCs and Windows.
For the money, the PowerPC processor needs to speed up or get shipped out.
In the words of a friend of mine, those aren't petty criticisms.
Why you should switch
With the criticisms in mind, the Mac holds great promise for users willing to try it.
The iBook came with more software than I needed, so as long as you don't need an "odd" application, like the iNews package I mentioned earlier, you should be more than OK. Apple bundles great video, photo, and MP3 software, along with an office package. That's just touching the surface.
OS X may have crashed once in three months, and I may have mistaken an OS crash for the browser going down.
The hardware really is wonderfully designed, and the OS is not only BSD stable, but it looks great.
People are starting to make some seriously slick apps (such as Konfabulator) to run on OS X.
The OS isn't the problem
The biggest problem with switching isn't the Mac or OS X. It's when you have to deal with the Windows-centric parts of the world. If you can avoid them (most folks don't need compatibility with odd applications in the office), you could be all set right out of the box with your Mac.
Read on for a deeper explanation of my points above.
As I write this, it's 9 p.m. in San Francisco, on Tuesday, February 25. A turkey breast is roasting in the oven. I've got a mason jar full of ice and Dr. Pepper in reach. I'm sitting at my kitchen table staring at an iBook. I'm trying to condense nearly three months of living in OS X ("Patrick and the Switch," as it were) into a few clever words and a handful of lists. It's not one of the simpler things I've tried to do for "The Screen Savers."
I was hoping it would be easier. I was hoping that Leo would be 100 percent right, that the iBook and OS X would prove so superior to any PC running Windows XP that I couldn't help but kick a hole through the ceiling, climb up on the rooftop and shout its praises at every passing soul.
It's not that simple.
There are great things about the Mac. There are things to consider before the switch. There are some things that suck about the Mac. And there are some myths about the Mac that should be debunked. Quickly.
The masses in mind
One of my political-science professors told me that a country gets the government it deserves. Thinking about OS X, I think it's safe to say that most of us aren't brave enough to buck the Windows majority, or are willing to put the time in to work around it. We get the OS we deserve: Windows.
The machines that run Windows are cheap. Most everything is designed for the great hulking mass of Windows users first.The games are plentiful (not quite bread and circuses, but you can't help but wander in that direction when considering the Mac versus PC question). If there's a computer store in your town, chances are it's stocked for PC users.
Which reminds me: Windows has some great Web browser options.
I've been flipping between TextEdit and the Navigator browser, Chimera, which is locked up. (Nothing against AppleWorks. I usually write in basic text editors. In Windows I use WordPad.)
As I write this, I'm watching what I rather less-than-affectionately call the little "rainbow swirly" (the peculiar icon that means your application is busy and won't respond) on my severely locked up browser. Frankly, I'm wondering if my not-quite-crashed browser will resolve its inner problem and let me change browser windows, or if my rather lengthy email to Paul at FireGuys Racing will be lost forever when I break down and force quit Chimera.
(For the uninitiated, force quit is the Mac equivalent of doing the three-fingered salute in Windows. It's like going to the Windows Task Manager and killing an errant application. OS X has slightly different shortcuts than your Windows PC. Learning these shortcuts should be a prime goal of any would-be supergeek when moving to the Mac.)
How can Apple throw in this painfully slow browser, Internet Explorer for Mac 5.2, on the iBook, or any other Mac? This is the company that gives you a solid office suite in AppleWorks, a killer video editor in iMovie, iTunes for your music, iPhoto, a free DVD player, and a rock-solid open operating system.
Apple's Web browser, Safari, is in beta, but I found it to be rather dysfunctional, even for a beta. Safari gets better with every beta release, though.
The article is up and loaded swiftly for me. That said, I was hoping for some more 'meat and potatos'. Short version:
1) I can't get my special app (iNews) to work. I need it for my work, so I'm kinda screwed.
2) Web browsing sucks (because IE is a hog). Safari is in beta, but getting better. He didn't mention Moz or Chimera (or whatever they call it this week).
3) It's very nice to work with. If you don't NEED a piece of software that is windows only, you'll love it.
I recently did some pricing (each with 1 gig ram).
Dual 1.25ghz power mac: $2400
Build your own dual Athlon MP: $1100
Build your own dual Xeon: $1700 (iirc)
I know it's not fair, but that's only because I can't build my own power book. (buy a dual Xeon, and you're in the $2-3000 range too.)
I'd love to have a (reasonably powerful) apple on my desk. I just can't justify the price difference.
Zapman
Maybe you're thinking of David Coursey?
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Was there supposed to be more than 3 pages to the article...
Yes... on page 2, there are links to 5 other article pages.
After Patrick Norton spent his three months with the iBook, he gave a great review right on par with what a daily Windows user would say. He likes the machine, and the operating system. The only problem was stuff he couln't go cross-platform on. They use some Windows-only scheduling software at TechTV. He also mentioned the price of the machine being a little high, but also commented on what software was already installed as a way to visualize offsetting the price. They'll probably rerun it in a couple of weeks. Check it out.
Mr. Bond, they have a saying in Chicago: Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time is enemy action.
..For all intensive purposes,...
what exactly is an intensive purpose?
did you mean "intents and purposes?"
If you want to watch the "Switch" commercial, you may run into the usual "you don't have a Windows Media Player plug-in" problem.
/ 20 03/ss030225q_165_0.asf
This can be gotten around by putting
mms://stream.techtv.com/windows/thescreensavers
into the "Open URL" feature in your copy of Windows Media Player.
Well, the one thing you have to look at in the Mac/PC debate- What are you going to use it for? If you're a bare-bones (E-mail and word processing) or a gamer, then I can't seee any reason in your right mind why you would want a Mac. On the other hand, if you have a digital camera/camcorder, a big CD library, or can't get over the coolness factor, then a Mac probably would be worth the extra cost.
By the way, pay attention to used Mac sites (I.E. www.smalldog.com or Ebay), you can get some (comparatively) cheap Macs. I've got a four year old iMac that still runs OS X pretty well. Unless you're a video/graphics monger, they should run pretty well for basic-pro system tasks.
>> I'd be very interested in seeing a survey along the lines of "Your a PC user, do you even consider the apple platform to be a real alternative?" My guess would be a very low % of people honestly consider the platform.
/. editors including CmdrTaco have switched, and so have many super geeks like James Gosling (Java Inventor), James Duncan Davidson (original author of Tomcat and Ant) and the Perl 6 core team (according to Tim O'Reilly).
Oh, really? But at least 4
Everyone should at least take a look at Mac OS X before buying another computer. Macs are no longer expensive and come with the best Unix and the sexiest UI plus tons of powerful programming tools and gorgeous applications. In fact, Apple portables are cheaper than similar Wintel ones.