Devin on Earth

I refer you all now to the truth about switching, a nice little blog post that is refreshingly clear of hype and hyperbole. Now that we’re all on the same page, on to my additional commentary.

1.  Too true. It’s a lot more friendly, though, than it used to be. I credit the steady barrage of laptops with the ubiquitous Apple logo on TV and silver screen for the last few years. If Sydney Bristow and James Bond are cool enough to use Macs — and I can hack into alien motherships and save the whole Earth with one — then maybe they’re good enough for us “normal” people to use.


2. Oddly enough, I get this the most when I’m in the parking lot. Apple products come with a couple of discreet all-white Apple stickers, and I put one on my car. It never fails to get a conversation going, especially in combination with the Utilikilts sticker and the “Practice safe government; use kingdoms” sticker.


3. I haven’t seen this nearly as much, or rather, most computer users tend to be helpful. It’s just that many Windows users’ idea of helpful is “Install Norton” and “WebShots rules!”, whereas Mac users actually have a lot of the useful stuff built in, so the help they give enables you to make more use of what you’ve already got. And when they do tell you to buy a program, it’s usually pretty darn worth it.


4. I don’t see this one, but then again, I am pretty careful in my online hygiene habits.


5. Again, I don’t tend to see viruses even on my Windows machines. However, my Mac-using friends certainly don’t get as frothed about the latest virus/worm threat. Even my UNIX/Linux friends tend to spend a little bit more time worrying, just because those systems pack in so MUCH software that it sometimes seems like there’s always a new vulnerability in core libraries — and the patches cause their own share of problems, usually in forcing some library to get upgraded and breaking a host of other applications that they hadn’t wanted to upgrade yet.


6. Here, I disagree. I wouldn’t even claim 99%. There are definite issues even in some of the basic functionality between Windows and Mac versions of the Office suite. However, I tend to use each system for different types of things, so I minimize the pain that way.


7. I still see a lot of sites that don’t work well with Safari. Part of this is the HTML out there; part of it is Safari. I see it a LOT more on my 10.3 Mac mini than I do on my 10.4 MacBook Pro. And Firefox for the Mac just seems to be a bit slower and a bit less stable than it is on Windows.


8. Yes, yes, oh God yes. I get compliments on the MacBook Pro, and I love just how comfortable the laptop and keyboard are to type on. The touchpad won me over. The trayless media drive is just sexy. The magnetic power cable is invaluable in a house with four klutzes. Sometimes, I just want to roll naked in bed with this laptop, it’s that genius.


9. Figuring out how to deal with expired shared credentials for Windows file shares about drove me nuts, until I discovered how to manage keychains. I still don’t like the split between “Applications” and “Utilities,” especially for system programs — it seems to be very arbitrary.


10. I shared my “ah-ha!” moment already (see the last link about the touchpad), but there are other things. The whole way I can mount disk images easily and quickly, grab files out of them, then unmount them. Boom. I wish Windows did that — it’s just so nice.


11. This is probably my biggest gripe, but it’s been less of one since I’ve been spending more time on the MacBook Pro and have an actual Apple keyboard. I’ve adjusted fairly well to switching between Ctrl and Command keys.


12. No buyer’s remorse for me. I’m a lot less likely to spend money up-front these days, so I don’t suffer buyer’s remorse. (That, and I didn’t buy my Macs — but in both cases, I’d been wanting to.)


13. Another huge agreement from me. I spend a lot of time getting my profile adjusted to my preferred working style on each Windows box I spend more than 10 minutes on. I have a lot less fiddling to do on the Mac. I just go do the fun/hard/cool stuff.


14. Not only do I have to plan my reboots, I plan when I shut down apps. Firefox has been nagging me about an update for three days now. I don’t shut down my apps all that often even on Windows, but I’ll usually clear stuff out at the end of the day when I shut the laptop down. On my MacBook Pro, I just shut the lid and let it all sleep.


15. I’m not really into buying aftermarket add-ons and such; I’m saving my pennies for bigger purchases, like A/V converters. That and Parallels, for when I need to run Office without compatibility issues. (And then I can run Solaris 10 in a VM. Yum!)


16. Sadly true. I really need to dish out the money for a Tiger upgrade for my mini, but I’ve got sticker shock still (and I’m still grumpy about Apple’s “two weeks” policy for reduced-price upgrades, because I missed it on the mini by only a few days). I know what Windows retails for, but you can usually find a reseller who is letting go for a nice discount, and you don’t have to buy an upgrade every year. Windows Service Packs usually add enough new functionality to give you the “new OS” experience.


17. I hope so. Then again, I’ve got plenty of life left in the mini.


18. I’ve had this happen a couple of times — usually at Microsoft-themed conventions. The last couple of months have been fun — the big bad Microsoft Exchange MVP, busily working away on a MacBook Pro. It’ll be better when I have Parallels installed.


19. I don’t know if I am more productive, but I certainly FEEL more productive. I’m less inclined to download timewaster software to my MacBook. It’s so sleek and sexy! I don’t want to crap it up.


20. I haven’t run into this yet, but I’m not looking forward to it when I do.


21. Market share, shmarket share. Apple’s producing decent laptops (that can run Windows if they have to) at a good price point. They look nice, they work as well as other mid-to-high-end Wintel machines, and everyone is starting to get used to seeing the Apple brand around thanks to the iPod.


22. Yup, especially on 10.4. Connect, get what I need, disconnect. Share stuff out, stop sharing. It just works.

I guess you could sum all these points down thusly: Switching isn’t nearly the big deal that both Apple and the Wintel world want you to believe. Macs are great computers, but they’re just computers. At the end of the day, they’re tools; they won’t get you laid more quickly, help you write that Great American Novel with more flair, or save you money on your tax returns. Pick the tools you like and use them well.

 

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 4th, 2007 at 23:35 and is filed under Computers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.