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Windows Expert Jumps Ship

Posted by kdawson on from the hello-apple dept.

An anonymous reader writes to let us know that Scott Finnie, Computerworld's Windows expert, has given the final verdict to Windows after 3 months of using a Mac. And the verdict is: "Sayonara." Finnie is known to readers here for his many reviews of Vista as it progressed to release. Quoting: "If you give the Mac three months, as I did, you won't go back either. The hardest part is paying for it — everything after that gets easier and easier. Perhaps fittingly, it took me the full three-month trial period to pay off my expensive MacBook Pro. But the darn thing is worth every penny."

4 of 939 comments (clear)

  1. Re:I still miss Windows by Lightborn · · Score: 5, Informative

    That said I still miss Windows for a few applications and MOSTLY for the keyboard commands (in the OS GUI). Window Key + R + cmd = CLI. On the Mac it's click or Apple + Space + Term + Click.

    Command (Apple) + Enter tells Spotlight to open the Top Hit.

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    My .sigs are not what they used to be.
  2. Re:Use what you want ... by MBCook · · Score: 5, Informative

    I agree. I've used all three for large periods, but my current computer is a Mac and when I replace it I intend to get another Mac. In general, I find it better than Windows. There are tons of little annoyances that I run into almost daily using my PC at work that I don't have when using my Mac. But I also like it for it's "best of both worlds" that it provides me. Commercial applications and an extremely polished UI in all places (where parts of Linux can get hairy, although it's gotten better), but the UNIX command line and GCC and all that for when I feel like fiddling low level/programming/etc. A real CLI that I can use (let's face it, the windows shell is ancient and pales compared to Bash. Maybe when Monad comes out).

    These facts have provided me with great benefits besides my basic preference for the Mac. When I worked on my senior project (LAMP site) while my friends were testing on the test box the school was letting us use, I was able to run the whole thing on my laptop easily because all the components were already there and easily setup (where with Windows I would have had to download/install/configure each part). When I changed code I could test it instantly, no "copy to server, test, edit, copy" over the slow connection. I could work on it without an internet connection, or worrying about interfering with what my partners were working on (overwriting them).

    The only "long-standing" problem I have with my Mac is the lack of big games, but I don't have a ton of time for them anymore anyway so my consoles work fine for that (although I miss a good game of CounterStrike, I'm on PPC so I can't run BootCamp).

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    Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
  3. Re:Lots of folks making the switch by grcumb · · Score: 5, Informative

    It's tricky to sell machines without an OS because MS have some kind of conspiracy going, not because consumers generally just want the machine to come with the current Windows OS?

    That's exactly correct. I'm surprised you would act incredulous, because the fact of Microsoft's abuse of its monopoly position has been clearly documented in a court of law. One of the things it did in the normal course of its business was to tell manufacturers that they could sell Windows only, or not at all.

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    Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
  4. Re:Not in my experience. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    I had to do a Mac port of an application I was working on about a year ago.

    I needed to edit a plain text file on the Mac, and the editor that came with it would only save files to formats like html, rtf, etc. And .txt. Not that you were able to figure out how.

    I don't know how to use old-school editors like EMACS And you're a developer?

    Now, there probably is at least one free plain text editor for the Mac, but I couldn't find it after about an hour of searching That just means you suck at searching. Like, really suck.

    Even after you pay the ridiculously high price for a Mac, you still have to pay for things (if you can find them at all) that are completely free on a Windows or Linux machine Oh good, a price troll. Because it's not like there's any overpriced shareware for Windows. And how could someone as helpless as you ever use Linux?

    And then there are those ass-backwards and poorly documented resource bundles Apple's developer docs are a bit hard to navigate, I'll give you that.

    And the fact that applications launched through the GUI have no current directory Yes they do.

    Macs are fine if all you want to do is surf the web and listen to music, but for a developer, they're severely lacking You're either incompetent or a troll, but I can't quite decide which.