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Pros and Cons of Switching From Windows To Mac
It's been a couple of years since Apple ran their Switcher ads — but folks are still making the switch. Rockgod writes to point us to his list of pros and cons after he switched from Windows to Mac recently. From the article: "It took me a long time to be convinced that Windows 3.1 was a better program launcher than X-Tree Gold, but it happened eventually. Since then, I have been a sucker for every upgrade — 95, 98, NT 4.0, 2000, XP... I bought the cheapest Mac available, a Mac Mini with a single-core Intel chip and the minimum of RAM — 512 MB. It cost me AU$949. Since plugging it in, I have barely used my $3000 Windows desktop... All this time later, I have almost exclusively switched to the Mac."
First, it isn't 10 Pros, and 10 Cons, it's 10 Pros and Cons (which I guess is technically what the article "says").
I recently ordered and am expecting a Nov 29 ship date (why?) for a new Mac Mini, the very first Mac I'll have ever owned. I'd never hesitated in the past to recommend to friends and family an Apple over a Windows box, and those who chose Mac virtually never came back with support issues.
As the blogger states, he's never looked back - my reasons for getting a Mac are more for being able to test my software on all platforms. I will review my experiences in my journal when the box gets here and I've burned it in for a few laps. I'm looking forward to it.
For the record, though the author loves his machine, I'd guess anyone considering today a Mac should look at a heftier configuration. (I'm getting the dual-core, super drive, 2G memory, 160G drive configuration.) I guessing I'll be happy with this box.
Probably more relevent to the /. crowd would be this article from someone that switched to Ubuntu from OS X and then went back to OS X:
http://digg.com/apple/Mac_OS_X_vs_Ubuntu
Let me say that if I could go into a store right now and buy a reasonably priced copy of OX X that would run on a plain PC, I would be running OS X at the moment (Yes, I understand that running on *any* hardware would make OS X less stable, but I would be willing to take the risk...and huge amounts of people would rather pay more for Apple's hardware and stability, and I wish Apple could see that and make us both happy).
But since that isn't going to happen, I'm really considering going to Ubuntu because I think MS is just going insane with Vista.
As the above mention, he doesn't think Ubuntu is too far behind OS X.
I would be interested in hearing others thoughts on this?
Transporter_ii
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
God I hate the mouse acceleration on my Mac Mini. Either you set the acceleration high so you don't need, you know, the entire desk to move the mouse a reasonable distance at the loss of fine movements, or you set the acceleration low so that you gain precision at the cost of having to drag and drop the mouse a few dozen times to get the cursor across the desktop. Windows doesn't have this problem. If you move the mouse a tiny amount your cursor moves in tandem; move it a lot and so does the cursor. Wow. Why can't my Mac do that? It's so retarted.
Don't get me wrong here, I love my Mac, but the mouse thing drives me nuts.
I'm buying my Mom an iMac, for the sole reason it's SEXY. It's slim, compact, and doesn't make alot of noise. Better tha the dell portable desktop they just made. Macs are like computing with a built in safety net. You can almost never break it. The only people I know that hate windows are the poor souls that manage to still run AOL, download weather bug, and install every piece of software that wants to install itself. I run windows XP, with firewall and firefox, and I watch what I download. My virus infection rate? 0. People need to LEARN how to surf, instead of just going out there all willynilly.
In Soviet Russia, dots slash you!
I use on a daily basis: Mac OS/X Tiger, Ubuntu, Fedora Core and Windows XP Pro. I consider myself an advanced user and a very good sysadmin on many platforms. I still prefer Windows.... - why? I'm not sure myself! (No I do not work for Microsoft). I've been trying to switch to OS/X as a primary OS admitting that it's driven mostly because of peer pressure - it's just not happening for me. I don't feel that compelled to switch - I don't see a good reason and I'm being opening minded about it, I feel like it's much more trouble than it's worth. Is there anyone else that feels the same way? I feel alone!
If you want a new Mac with more features than the base model and still save money, you need to get the base model and upgrade it yourself. I got a base model black MacBook (the extra $200 USD covers a bigger hard drive and the black sexiness) and I replaced the 512MB memory with 2GB third-party memory for $80 USD that took only 10 minutes to switch out. I will eventually upgrade the hard drive when SATA laptop drives get more reasonable in price. I had no problems using my MacBook over the last three months and the only Windows system that I still use is my gaming rig.
No shit. When I read the part about dragging text from the browser to the desktop in OS X and it actually created the file for you I was thinking of my mom (i.e. an old lady). Mom has never been able to grasp the concept of cut-and-paste despite my many attempts to teach her. A few times she seemed to be able to do it then would forget. I even gave her a keyboard (Logitech) that indicated "copy" and "paste" on the "c" and "v" keys to no avail. Kudos to Apple for having productive focus groups that must have included old ladies because a room full of *nix geeks would never have come up with that. Instead, it would have probably become an arguement over the lusers that couldn't freakin' cut and paste like everyone else. :-)
"A government is a body of people, usually notably ungoverned." - Shepard Book Quoting Malcolm Reynolds
Um My Mac earned me more money then I spent for it. Even though in reality my Mac was cheaper then any other system out there with the same specs with a good enough reliability rating. Just by using a Mac and getting use to the extra Nice GUI, it help me make better GUI's for my customer applications. Even for windows applications. Actually the time it takes me to make these advancement to the app over time adds up to be more then if I didn't have a Mac. Also Mac Interface make sure that I am spending more time on Billable Hours (Handy for Commission based Jobs) and less time on Non-Billable time for me to say research the name of the CD Burner software that came with my Linux Distribution, or having to download install it, figure out how it works, test it. Time is Money, The Less time I am focusing on stupid tasks that the computer should do easy anyways, vs spending more time on actuall work. Makes me more money and my powerbook well earned it extra $100 (Which it wasn't)
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
OS X is one of the few OS's to allow total customization of keyboard short-cuts. You can assign almost any combination to any menu item on any program. The downside is you have to do it from System Preferences. Although MacOS has always been mouse centric, it's actually more keyboard-friendly than windows or even linux (Gnome is only now getting good keyboard shortcut access via atk and other accessibility things). Shortcuts are very consistent and work in almost every program. Command-Q to quit, Command-W to close the window, Command-H to hide the entire app (very useful -- almost eliminates the need for multiple desktops when combined with expose and command-tab), Command-S to save, command-O to open, etc.
One thing that annoyed me to no end was the apparent lack of a way to communicate with dialog boxes using only the keyboard. Most of the time command-first letter works, but often it doesn't. I found that if I turn on some of the accessibility options in system preferences, suddenly I can tab between buttons and use the space bar to activate buttons (enter always activates the default button, not the one you're highlighting).
Knowing about how to set shortcuts, the default shortcuts, and the accessibility options has really made OS X more efficient on the keyboard for me than any other OS (well almost -- I still like activating menus on linux and windows with alt-letter). Certainly it's not as bad you illustrate.
I agree that all GUIs are lousy to a degree. Case in point is CAD software. The old autocad shortcuts (still available on autocad to this day) are the way to fly. Puck in one hand, 2 and 3 letter shortcuts in the other. Modern GUIs just don't lend themselves well to CAD.
I have been a PC Wiindows(Microsoft) bubba for over 20 years. I have a taught many classes on PCs and Windows. I recently purchased a Mac Book Pro. I started off dual booting. After about a month I realized I was hardly ever booting to the PC side. I deleted the Windows side and reclaimed the space.
l
;)
There is simply no good reason to get a PC. If you want to run Windows, fine, get a Mac and dual boot. At the least you double your chances of getting things done. It also makes you more versatile and more marketable. Apple was genius to first change to a BSD based OS and then to move to intel. The BSD based Mac OS X has the best of both worlds. Simply the best most powerful command line interface, and the most impressive and user friendly GUI.
I recently wrote and article for the Ins and Outs Magazine.
Viva La Revolution!
http://www.insandoutsmagazine.com/content_tek.htm
I advise all my clients and students that, if you are going to get a computer, get a mac. Once you go Mac, you will never go back!
I maintain a school district full of Macs (almost 1200 machines, including desktops, laptops, and servers) so I'd say I'm fairly familiar with their hardware and software, including the new Intel macs and OSX 10.4. So here are my criticisms of the Mac platform: 1. The finder is the worst file manager I have ever used. Nautilus, Konqueror, and even Explorer are vastly superior for manipulating files. You can't set it to default to list view or even alphabetized icon view, its "column view" is absurd, its tree view shows you everything in every folder(instead of just showing the folders), so moving something from one folder to another is a real pain, you can't have it list folders before files, it's slow over the network, it can connect to ftp sites but only in read only mode. It remembers how far you were scrolled down in a file list, even if you change view modes, so if you switch from icon view to list view and you're scrolled down to the bottom, you're suddenly looking at a blank space and have to scroll up to view files. If someone moves stuff around in a folder, and then you go to look at it, you see it as they left it - an arbitrary mess. In every other file manager you can set it to ignore customized folders, but not in the finder. I could go on but I think you get the point. 2. The Dock sucks. If you're using a resolution of 1024x768 or less (which is the default, and maximum size of the 12" powerbook and ibooks, which I use every day), then the dock constantly gets in your way. If you have it set to hidden, if your mouse gets anywhere near the edge of the screen it pops up, even if you moved to an area where the dock isn't - it's centered on the screen, and doesn't take up the whole width of the screen, but if you move the mouse to the corner of the screen it pops up anyway. You have no idea where the dock is when it's hidden. On windows and in gnome, kde, xfce, etc. you see a thin line on the edge of the screen to show you where you hidden taskbar/panel/whatever is hidden. With the dock, you just have to try the left, right, and bottom of the screen until you find it. The difference between running and non-running programs in the dock is minuscule - running programs have a tiny black triangle underneath them which is very easy for a new osx user to miss. We have people in our district who have been using osx for 3 years who still don't get this distinction. Since mac applications can still run without having any windows open, it's very easy for someone to have a bunch of stuff open and not realize it, then wonder why their computer is performing so slowly. 3. There's no "maximize window" button. I like to run some applications in full screen, such as my web browser. Instead of "maximize window", the mac has "optimal size". It makes the window just big enough to show you everything it contains. If you happen to be viewing a web page that's very small when you hit this button, then browser window will be very small. In order to get it to fill the screen, you have to move the window so it's top left corner is in the top left of the screen, then grab the resize handle and drag it into the bottom right of the screen. Also, the window controls are ambiguous - the don't show their icons until you hover on them, then they show the "dash square x". Granted, these glyphs are ambiguous in themselves, but at least someone familiar with other operating systems would be able to figure out what there were immediately. 4. OSX seems to corrupt its own file system through normal use. We have a lot of incidences of computers not booting - either they get to the apple logo and hang, or they flashing mac logo with a question mark icon. In order to fix them, we have to run a third party utility called Disk Warrior. Yes, macs come with fsck but this doesn't always do a good job of fixing the errors, and it doesn't fix the metadata in the filesystem (aka, the "resource fork"). I'm sure I see these kind of problems far more often than a home user does since I deal with so many computers on a daily basis, so my view of this is probab
Saying your "phone ran out of batteries" is like saying your "car ran out of gas tanks".
I'm a sysadmin in a Windows shop for my day job, and I have a Mac at home. I've always been partial to them, but I went back from a PC about 2 yeats ago.
The pros are definitely that I have to worry less about the computer. Security is an issue, no matter what anyone else says, but things like installing software and upgrading versions of software are much more predictable. I have a very busy day-job, and the fact that I can come home to a working computer for my personal tasks is nice.
The cons stem from lack of industry support. If you're a gamer, your choices of ported games are limited. Certain specialized software either doesn't exist for the Mac, or the Mac version is inferior to the Windows version. To combat this, I keep a Windows machine to run the occasional Windows-only program. Also, virtual machine technology can be a help here.
The software support issue may be going away soon anyway, given vendors' rapid move towards hosted applications. Take Windows Live mail for example (the hotmail replacement.) The UI is almost as good as MS Outlook, even in browsers other than IE.
We'll see what happens in the next few years. Personally, I'm happy paying the premium for what I feel is a better designed machine.
I also use Windows XP, Mac OS X, and Ubuntu Linux on a daily basis- desktop, laptop, and server, respectively.
There is something about Windows XP that just makes me feel efficient. I can get things done really quickly. If I need to do any sort of tedious computing task, I'd like to do it on windows.
However, sometimes I get in a "mac" mood and want to use my laptop. But as flashy and cool as it is, everything usually feels clumsy and cumbersome. Simple tasks seem to have many steps and seem to take longer. I feel like I am swimming in molassas, as opposed to water with windows. But it's a warm and comfortable molassas.
Ubuntu is bringing a very polished product to the table. If open source ever catches up with applications and drivers, Ubuntu could be a very real choice for many people. Linux was my primary OS on and off through college. Mark Shuttleworth is doing a great service to the public with Ubuntu. If I ever made it big time like he did, bringing high quality open source applications to Linux (video editing, etc.) would be high on my list. As they stand, Linux applications are simply too limited/unstable for my daily needs which include music and video production.
I still think that a mac is an excellent choice for the "casual computer user," due in no small part to the fact that you can bring it back to that Apple store and they are going to fix it. Computers are complicated machines and they have problems. The Apple Store is not going to tell you it's a hardware problem and so it's not their fault. They're not going to tell you that it's a software problem so it's not their fault. They're going to fix it, and that's what casual computer users need - service and support.
The windows desktop/mac laptop/linux server setup has been working very well for me and satisfies all of my OS moods, so I will probably continue with this for a long while.
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
I guess I am a little weird, but after 4-1/2 years of running a Mac with OSX I just went full time to a Linux machine. I loved the Mac, but:
- I spent over $3,000 for it in 2002 (PowerMac system with LCD)
- In order to keep current and keep all your software running, you have to buy a new MacOS X distribution once a year ($80-$129)
- Even an iMac replacement would have cost me $1,700 (20" with extra SDRAM and upgraded graphics) vs. $1,000 (HP AMD64 X2 4600+ with 20" high res LCD and upgraded graphics)
I have struggled a bit with configuration but the new system is humming along pretty well now.
Apple did not "get dumped" by IBM. The PPC chips they were using were manufactured by Motorola, not IBM. IBM simply partnered with them and Motorola to develop it, and went on to manufacture their own version of it. At one time, they did buy the IBM version, but moved to Motorola a few years ago.
Apple has been running an Intel version of Mac OS X since the very beginning. They began developing it in a dual process from the git go. How do you think they were able to switch from PPC to Intel in less than a year? You don't think they actually DEVELOPED the OS Intel version from scratch in a year? D'oh! So, actually, Intel really was their first choice!
And given the fact that their US share went from 4.8% to 6.1 % in just one quarter, then I'd have to say that, yeah, there is an increasing number of people in the computing world that ARE willing to pay for Apple computers, and they aren't all higher priced anymore, either. (and along with the US market, their standing worldwide went up too, just not quite as dramatically.)
"Money is truthful. If a man speaks of his honor, make him pay cash." Notebooks of Lazarus Long, Robert A. Heinlein
The primary reason was the hardware. I don't mean this in the sense that I have a particular affinity for homebuilds, or that there aren't any other reasons. The cost was simply prohibitive with Apple, and this was big enough to cut short any consideration I might have otherwise given to the platform, regardless of merit.
.sit and .dmg files downloaded from various websites (Apple, VersionTracker, etc), and so on. With Ubuntu, it's all available from a single interface. One front end handles all the installations, removals, and updates. Even proprietary things like video card drivers and Sun's Java are handled this way. This cuts way down on the time it takes me to get a system set up with all the various apps I need. Downloading something from VersionTracker isn't difficult, but doing that over and over again for dozens of different things takes a significant chunk of time. With Ubuntu, I've found that I don't need to do it all at once, because clicking a checkbox and clicking "apply" in Synaptic takes seconds -- installing an app is barely more difficult than lanching it, and making a list of things I need would be more trouble than installing them when I notice they're missing.
I needed a workstation, but I have no use for a quad-core machine, so a Core 2 Duo or Athlon64 could easily meet my needs. I also needed a large RAID array and a scratch disk, as well as other things like multiple ethernet ports, PCI/PCI-E slots, and so forth. With Apple hardware, the only way to get what I want is to spend large amounts of money on stuff that won't benefit me (like that extra Xeon). When I tried to price out a Mac Pro to meet the same requirements it couldn't be done without more than doubling the price. Even if I were willing to go around upgrading the thing with cheaper 3rd party hard drives, RAM, etc, that stuff wouldn't be covered by Apple's warranty, and that's a big downside for me. Even then, it would still cost thousands more, and it wouldn't even be that much easier than a homebuild when all was said and done.
A secondary reason was that I've had an iBook up until recently, and getting the various *nix software I need was significantly more annoying there. A good distro's package manager will have many times the selection of the Mac alternatives such as Fink and Darwin Ports, and the time I spent compiling the missing stuff by hand on MacOS was significant. This easily overwhelms any savings of effort that I might have gotten from MacOS initially, and that's not even that much with easy distros like Ubuntu. I'm not a rabid freedom fighter, I just know empirically it's a lot more trouble for me to use MacOS.
Another way this advantage applies is that the software I need comes almost entirely from one place. With MacOS, it was a mix of Fink, Darwin Ports, stuff I've compiled myself, various
I've seen what Macs have to offer, and I don't think I'd be interested even if it didn't cost so much more to meet my needs.
I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
Well, I think a lot of it is for us designers who have Photoshop, Illustrator and Indesign open 95% of the time, as well as Mail, Firefox, Office (OOo or MS) and maybe a couple of utilities here and there, not to mention dashboard apps. Then you add in the videographers and effects people running Final Cut, Motion, Logic Pro, etc... I mean, I'm saying this too from experience, as I bought a MacBook Pro recently and almost immediately had to upgrade from 1gb to 2gb of RAM just to be able to run things comfortably.
VS high end app? common I don't think you meant what you wrote there.
How about: Visual Studio is an ass-end app that requires a high-end machine to run.
Actually, if you change your editor settings to no longer track changes (the almost invisible green and yellow bars in the left-hand gutter that you don't pay attention to anyway) and if you disable the [mostly useless] navigation bar, VS performance almost improves. Of course, there is no fix for the mysteriously obstinate Properties dockbar that stays pinned no matter how many times you click the damned button. Don't even get me started on "Pending Checkins".
This post has made me so depressed, I think I'm going to go install Eclipse, Mono, and be done with it.
It goes from God, to Jerry, to me.
I was going to spend $399 on a full retail copy of Windows Vista Ultimate, but then I caught wind of the EULA they're including with it, and now I'm noticing that the low-end Mac Mini is only 50% more.
I'll likely be making the switch before Vista is released.
Yes, but since I mentioned that I've been working with UNIX systems of various flavors since 1976, a reasonable person might give my perception some consideration. I stand open to correction, but you haven't provided any further information.
Let me try to make my question more clear: Is there some feature set, some API, that OS X doesn't implement that makes it 'NOT UNIX'. Or perhaps you are refering to the fact that it is not 'UNIX(TM)'? If so, do you also correct people when they refer to "Kleenex(TM)" or "Xerox(TM)"? If Leopard Server is certified by the Open Group will it become UNIX with the stroke of a pen?
So let me get this straight. What you are basically saying is "Don't judge them by what they do, judge them by what they say!".
It seems to me that you need a good beating with a clue-stick if this is your position in everyday life. Now, it might just happen to be true in this specific case, with this specific company, in this specific time-period. And you may have other data to back this assumption up with. But from the data presented so far, I would consider the closed DRM-enabled platform with more skepticism then a competing open platform.