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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."
This is so much better than any Ellen Feiss 'switch' ad, and Yao Ming, and certainly and Jeff Goldblum voice-over. I know that TechTV may be already preaching to the choir (i.e. nerds) but 95% of nerds still dont use Apple computers. Personally I don't have a TV but as my neighborhood "mac guy" my friends are laways mentioning 'that new cool apple thing' that they saw on TechTV and specifically Screen Savers.
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. But with the 50/50 split of airtime and having a host 'switch' - Apple just cannot buy better advertising.
---- The real Slashdot is still here. You just have to browse at -1 to read the comments.
Fuck Slashdot
I work for an ISP of which name shall remain unknown, and no not AOL, but anyways I have noticed that a lot of the techs there are also very loyal to their OS X. I even admit that I have tampered with it a little and the interface really is kind of nice. If I could afford to buy one I might even do that, maybe some other time...
great, thanks for the update.
you jest, but look closely and you'll see my reply to my own f1rst p0st got modded up interesting!
and they say moderation isn't broken...
__
s//Bush says war is key to peace in middle east/ &&
s/(key|to|in|middle|east)//g #
This was on TechTV in January, I thought. It was around the time of the MacWorld SF.
Did someone just come across the article in an archive?
Patrick is pretty good about giving in depth, objective feedback on things... although he does have his pet pieves and strong opinions on some things.
-Alex
I've already decided my next computer will be a PowerBook, once I can afford it.
It's worth it. I bought one for my wife, and for me to port some of my game projects over to (since the Mac has a smaller, but less cramped game market). I now need another Mac - she loves it, and I would really like to have one o' my own after doing some work on it. I bought the 12" Powerbook - very nice.
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 been hearing that from A LOT of people lately - "My next computer will be (insert Apple product)." Heck, part of 'em I know have picked out exact model and specs. Something about the platform really tends to grab people after they play with one a bit, and not within just a certain grouping - geeks and non-geeks both.
I think Apple's sales strategy should be this - give everyone a Mac to play with for a week, then take it away. Treat Mac OSX like a drug - the first hit is always free ;-)
Davis Ray Sickmon, Jr - looking for something to read? Check out my three free novels at MidnightRyder.org
This is typical tech-tv article. Nothing to it. He bitches about the browser and says that Mac's are expensive.
from the article: "...I couldn't help but kick a hole through the ceiling, climb up on the rooftop and shout its praises at every passing soul"
Yep, he's from San Francisco.
I'm flabbergasted. What a moron.
-- Cerebus
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.
Was there supposed to be more than 3 pages to the article. Patrick just kinda trails off at the end complaining about web browsers (where was Mozilla?).
Other then the web browser problem, I agree with everything he said. I'm lucky, I work in education so almost everything is cross compatible and the funky school information system software is becoming web based.
Apple does need to fix the perceived speed of the Macs, they come across slow. Case in point, we are moving from Macintosh Manager under OS 9 to Workgroup Manager under OS X. Log-in times under OS X seem so much slower than OS 9, even though they are the same, around 15-18 seconds. The difference? Under OS 9 there is an indicator that something is happening, but under OS X there is nothing. Now if they played a little animation or something, they would still appear to be fast.
What, me worry?
With regards to the 3 main peeves:
... although doesn't Avid make their other software for the Mac platform too? I imagine if there was enough demand, they'd consider making an OS X port.
OS X needs a fast, free Web browser that's stable. The latest beta release of Safari makes big strides in this direction.
Hey, Windows needs a fast, free Web browser that's stable too. Yes, Safari is nice. So is Mozilla. Etcetra. My point is that I sure hope that Patrick wasn't referring to MSIE.
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.
Can't really comment on this one
Later on, he says that the iBook is great and comes with all the software you might need, unless you need something "odd" like iNews. Well, how many Windows laptops come with "all the software you need"? At the least, most people are going to have to purchase MS Office or some equivalent. And how many come with iNews? You're going to have to buy iNews anyway, no matter what platform rocks your boat. His argument is a bit thin.
(And hey, he could always follow his own advice and use VirtualPC.)
For the money, the PowerPC processor needs to speed up or get shipped out.
Depends what you do with your computer, doesn't it? Yeah, the iBook is using a G3. Why didn't you try out a Powerbook? Or an iMac/eMac/G4 tower? And isn't Apple due to move to a new PPC chip this year anyway?
Tuus crepidae innexilis sunt.
Haven't we seen this all before? I feel as all these "second looks" at Apple and Macs seem to all come down to the same thing: OS X is great, there are some great apps, but the hardware side of things still needs work. I too am a recent "switcher" of sorts and do love my TiBook...but certainly wouldn't give up my PC, if only for the gaming. I'm just happy that the Mac and PC have at least *started* to live in harmony. Rendezvous and Samba do a nice job of connecting things and start to bridge the PC/Mac divide. It's too bad Patrick didn't spend more time metioning this instead of repeating things we've all heard already. My only other qualm with the article was the use of an iBook in the review. As a professional in the tech industry, I think he should have been taking a look at the Powerbooks, but I suppose the iBook has its own merits as well.
I was expecting a little more info, perhaps another page or two. But mainly he complained about the lack of an app that I've naturally not heard of, and IE for Mac. I've got 5 web browsers installed myself, there's plenty to choose from. It just seemed to end abruptly, like part of the article is missing.
"Common Sense Ain't" -Unknown
Another oddity in this review was that the things that went well with the platform usually only barely deserved mention. His evaluation model had Airport built-in, and the iBook pretty much is the ideal wireless notebook. But this apparently wasn't worthy of mention. Another awesome feature of Apple laptops is the "instant wake-up" upon opening thing. Again, no mention. I guess I can't blame him for not worshipping Rendezvous since he only had the one Mac to play with, but even still...
I am glad he noticed that iTunes rules, though. But then puzzled that he thought AppleWorks was so great when it's just...well, Appleworks. In summary, this article is not worth bringing down their server over. :-)
Babar
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
OS X may have crashed once in three months, and I may have mistaken an OS crash for the browser going down.
Typical Windows user; can't tell the difference between an OS crash and his browser going down.
A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
You dont' have to buy the monitor from Apple. That's if you want the shiney one, the flat pannel cinima one. I picked up a sony (yeck) trinitron for $50 at a company sale. Works nicely.
Mind you, you don't need the fastest system. Apple's "mid-range" systems are still hella fast. My 400mhz runs all my apps, 'cept java ones (they gotta speed up the jvm), perfectly. I'm doing medium photoshop on my machine w/o problems. Heavy maya and photoshop users, those heavy duty guys would want the 1.4ghz. Java compiles are still fast on my system. As a developer, who doesn't need every millisecond on medium source code, I don't notice the diff between my wintel 1.5ghz and my 400mhz mac.
But you are right, it still is more expensive than the PC equiv. But a 1ghz machine and monitor (~$1600 total) for a non-hardcore gamer, like myself, would be just as fine.
-
ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
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.
Some gaming magazine reviewed the 800mhz TiBook (single-processor laptop) very favourably.
The 1ghz TiBook is price-competitive with comparable machines at $2,800-odd, includes a DVD writer which is very cool, and looks and feels very fast indeed. If you need a laptop, that might be the best way to ease your way into the Mac world, since they are not as proportionately expensive as Apple's desktops.
That being said, you may want to wait a few months for the aluminum version of the 15" laptop, said to be coming out Any Month Now. I tried the 12" aluminum notebook, and I thought the keyboard was quite a bit nicer than that on the 15" TiBook I own.
Another thing to bear in mind is that the 20" monitor is a 20" LCD not a CRT; it's pretty darn big. If you compare it to other 20" LCDs, it's definitely within a reasonable premium of what everyone else is charging. Not to mention the giant 23" LCD at $1,999, which is just a shade over half what its competitors are charging.
D
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.
It would have been nice if he went and explained what exactly he meant here. For all intensive purposes, particularly those that his core audience probably would be interested in, a Mac integrates fine in Windows dominated environments. The biggest focus of most (and I know not all people) is going to be file and printer sharing, and the transfer of Office documents -- something OS X handles nicely. A mention of a good version of Office for OS X would've been nice too.
Which reminds me: Windows has some great Web browser options.
Emm, and I'm wondering what exactly those are? OS X has Mozilla, Chimera, Omniweb, iCab, Opera, MSIE, Safari -- the options seem to be fine.
As someone else pointed out, he failed to make any mention of Virtual PC, that probably would've handled his Windows-only app acceptably.
This has actually been one of the worst Switch articles I've read. It didn't really go into much depth, and the things it said that were accurate, one could basically deduct without even owning a Mac. This was written after 3 months of research and use? I could've wrote this after 1 hour of intense use (he probably did). Why is it this article looks like some lazy-ass had a Mac, didn't use it for three months, then tried to meet an article deadline two nights before?
You get a lot of bang for your buck in the PowerMac range.
Remember, Apple doesn't sell bargain basement systems like Dell "$599 for a 3Ghz PC!" which ends up costing $1500 when you add extra memory, dvd, powerful graphics etc.
As a gaming machine, either the 1Ghz or the dual 1.25 would be more than adequate. A dual 1.25 gives you a couple of Ghz to play with, combined with a fairly meaty graphics card.
The 1Ghz machine is comaprable to a PC with a similar speed of CPU. My battered old Athlon 500 with 32Mb GeForce 2 can handle pretty much any 3D game i throw at it (although I think it would stuggle with the latest incarnations UT2003, Doom3 etc) and the SP G4 is twice as quick as that with a better graphics card.
The unseen extras come in the form of software. Not only will you get Jaguar, but a slew of excellent apps to get you started, and a unix core that you can mess about with all you like (ok, so it's BSD 4.4 so a bit behind the curve, but it's rock solid).
The fact that I can have the terminal open while running OS X essentially giving me two operating systems to work with has been a godsend.
You can also use your box as a webserver with Apache, a mail server, or any other purpose that you'd use a unix box for.
The case pulls open with one little handle on the side and opens out so the MB is horizontal with the cables routed near the hinge. It's upgradeable up the wazoo with any parts you care to pick up in BestBuy. The only proprietry parts are the cpu(s) and motherboard itself.
As an example, we're using a Dual G4 450MHz with a Rage 128 card to run a professional video company using Final Cut Pro 3. We can capture and edit full frame DV without any hitches (via the built in firewire ports from our pro DVCAM camera).
It's more than fast enough for our needs. Add a Radeon 9000 or a GeForce 4 and you'll be well away to a stellar gaming machine.
Just remember there are fewer games out for the Mac, but still a fair number. You'll get OS X into the bargain too.
Journalists that aren't already Mac zealots will, unfortunately, highlight every little problem that they encounter when they use a Mac... even if it's not Apple's fault... but if it's on a Mac... it's going to be perceived as a Mac problem.
I think it's a fair article but it seems to end rather ubruptly. I share some of his concerns.
After five years with a Windows laptop (then desktop) last December I splurged and bought a 1 Gigahertz 15 inch TiBook with a Superdrive and after using both my PC and Mac for a few weeks... now I just turn on the PC to play games while my Mac burns DVDs!
I'm extremely happy with my choice but something things are inexplicably slow on the Mac... moving a large group of files for example feel slower on a Mac than on a PC. I say FEELS because you have no indication of how long the process will take. Just a rainbow swirl that lingers on for a really long time.
Viewing preferences seem to switch back to the default almost at random... in some folders but not all.
I wish that the Free Space Left on Your Hard Drive problem would get fixed. It's very disconcerting to empty your trash can and see LESS free space on your hard drive and not MORE.
I'm sure that future versions & upgrades of OSX will smooth these problems out. I'm keeping current with upgrades and have already seen some of my pet peeves eliminated. These are not catastrophic problems... but for someone who is on the fence between OSX and XP, this makes the system appear less "finished" than it really is.
"Under the spreading chestnut tree, I sold you and you sold me."
I just had to chime in on this one. We had a PC sales rep (either Compaq or Dell, I can't remember) stop in at the University IT Department I work at. We are on a three year replacement cycle for the roughly three thousand machines on campus (only about five hundred Macs right now, the rest are Dells). He happened to be listing off some figures to a fellow employee. His statistics listed the useable lifespan of the average PC at 2.1 years whereas the average useable life of a Mac was 3.8 years. I'm not sure what these averages were based on, but I thought this crowd might find it interesting.
1. Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball. 2. Do not eat iPod shuffle.
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.
Damn, and I had mod points earlier today.
Anyway, I just wanted to respond to the valid question posed.
I've worked with everything from Debian on SPARC systems to Windows XP and I've never been as productive as I am with my Mac.
Until Mac OS X was released, I laughed at Macs. I wouldn't waste my time with them. With OS X that changed. OS X offers the stability and tools of a robust UNIX environment, as well as the software applications that I needed to stay productive.
Back when I had the time and the inclination to "mess about," building my own was great.
If you've got the time and the inclination to make your PC hardware work (whether that be with Windows, BSD, or Linux) then that's probably the right choice for you.
When you're ready to get work done, look at Macs.
Notes From Under *nix: blas.phemo.us
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.
This was a very biased article. I only read the article itself, granted, and did not click any of the links therein.
However, he is constantly complaining about the Mac having fewer VERTICAL market applications - such as that iNews, or whatever it was. The funny thing is, Apple created (NeXT created) Cocoa for just that purpose! Vertical market business applications. It has expanded since, of course.
He never actually seems to have USED the Mac. And what I mean by that is, he never really points out what's unique about it. Right then and there, there's bias. How? Simple, he babbles about how unique the PC's vertical market applications are a holdback for Apple, and yet he doesn't mention that the Mac has applications not available on the PC, et al.
I found it particularly interesting that he gave a MS app -
"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."
A negative review.
In fact, the Safari negative reviews can only help Apple - consider this article's only true function as a Safari Bug report by someone unable to diagnose the bugs.
I'm a Mac person, but I admit, that issue gave me cause to consider going dual platform.
However, thinking about it, I think you really have to look at _what_ games you play...
For instance, I play:
Suffice to say, my Mac plus my PS2 really covers all my gaming needs and my work needs. The Mac for work and strategy games, the PS2 for all other gaming - and it's signifigantly cheaper than a comparable PC system (since you'd have to add in a DVD-ROM, kickass video card, USB controller, etc., and still not get all the good games... but you're also paying for things you don't need, like a floppy drive and a modem)
I think, with consoles as advanced as they are, the 'games' reason for having a PC kind of loses steam. Even more so when the PS3 comes out.
-T