Windows expert to Redmond: Buh-bye
Microsoft’s marketing materials for a past version of Windows used the phrase, “It just works.” But the only computer that tagline honestly describes is the Macintosh. Don’t translate that in your mind as, “Yeah, so what, the Mac is easy to use.” Any new computing environment takes some getting used to. The easy-to-use aspect is nice, but not all that significant. When Mac users say, “It just works,” what they mean is that you spend more time on your work, and a lot less time working on your computer.
Bingo! Nice to see something I’ve been saying for… ever, validated once again. If you want to spent endless hours futzing around ON a computer, your best choice is honestly a Linux box. If you want to just get stuff done, go with a Macintosh.
If you want to spent your days swearing AT your computer, go with Microsoft Windows.
Microsoft tries real hard. They spend billion$ on thousands of programmers and flog them mercilessly to come up with every possible way to make Windows “cool”… make it “usable”… make it “work”. But in the end you realize that is exactly the problem. This is an Operating System created by commitee. Mind you, so is Linux, but it is made by a commitee that never sees or talks with each other.
MacOS X is really a INTERFACE, not an operating system. The OS underneath it is yet another UNIX variant, but the average computer user would have a hard time noticing that. It is an amalgam of NeXTStep and FreeBSD, both solid UNIX variants with a long history of excellent performance. What Apple has done is tweaked the user interface with all those years of knowledge and experience they gained with the Macintosh, from 1984 to 2001. OS X is hardly related to the “real” (or as Apple calls it in a sugar-water reference “Classic”) Macintosh that was shipped in 1984. Instead it is the tried and true, been in development since the late 1960s, UNIX, with an Apple created User Interface on top.
I’ve been managing UNIX systems of various flavors since 1989… SCO (long before they turned evil!), SunOS 4.X, A/UX, AIX, Solaris, NeXTstep, FreeBSD, Linux, Irix, etc. They have been great multi-user systems, perfect for their task, but what Apple has done is build a UNIX that is suited best as a PERSONAL COMPUTER. That is all about interface, and nobody builds better UI than Apple.
So… tired of fighting your computer? Tired of running the computing equivalent of bending over in the prison shower? Tired of running a spam spewing robot without your knowledge? Tired of cleaning up the mess of backdoors, trojans, viruses, worms, etc?
Get a Macintosh.
With the DRM stuff built in to Vista, the Mrs. and I are probably going back to Mac on our next upgrade. My only problem, is, yet again, the cost of Apple hardware. To get a machine as capable as a PC I can cobble together for $1500 (sans peripherals) I have to spend more than twice that on a Mac (sans peripherals). But I’ll probably choke it back.
Apple hardware costs were partly what drove me away in the first place.
One thing: I think if the positions were reversed, Apple would be the operating system with the virus, malware, etc. problems. The attraction to the folks who write that sort of stuff is market share. It wouldn’t surprise me if the Apple OS had a more solid foundation, but there are always cracks to be exploited. nVIR, baby!
In my job I purchase a LOT of hardware, and from what I see the stuff Apple includes pretty much evens it out.
As for the malware issue, I don’t buy your logic, at all. Windows suffers from these issues because of the inherent flaws in Windows. It has NOTHING to do with market share. There is no causal link between a product’s market share and how vulnerable it is to compromise. Apache is the dominant webserver software by a HUGE margin over every other competitor… where then are all the Apache malware?
Microsoft rose to dominance by guile, shrewd business practices, and strong-arming vendors into lockin (not to mention quite a bit of deceit and tactics of dubious legality), NOT because they made the best sofware. They were letting the whole Internet revolution pass them by until 12/7/95, when Bill Gates issued his famous memo. From that point they pursued market dominance by the only ways they knew… feature bloat and bullying tactics, at the expense of making security any sort of priority. The users are paying the price today.
nVIR was one of a sum total of *maybe* two dozen malware created for the MacOS in over twenty-three years. How many have appeared for Windows in the same timeframe? half a million??
Finally, your peripherals will (most likely) work with a MacOS X machine.
–chuck
In total agreement Chuck. Ever since my mom has gotten a Mac my calls from her regarding “slowness”, “crashes” and “freezes” have disappeared just like the dodo bird. Knowing that there is a Mac with its built-in software firewall (why this comes disabled by default on new Macs is a mystery to me) and router that has all the ports blocked makes me feel comfortable at night knowing that she wont get hacked or hit with a nasty package of software.
You definitely know more than I do, Chuck, about malware but I still contend if the market was 85% mac, 10% Windows and 5% Unix that the malware folks would find a way. They have enormous resources and are enormously smart, collectively.
I agree completely about the steaming pile that Windows generally is, and my nVIR mention was a joke.
I got my start on a ][ and then a Lisa. I bought a IIx for $7500 in 1987 and didn’t switch to windows until ’97. Heck, I received the memo directly when I was still at Microsoft, and, indeed, deisgned and developed the first (to my knowledge) independent MSN “subsite” back in ’93 or ’94, when CD-ROM was still king and the internet was viewed with suspicion.
All that said, 85% of my “customers” view my “product” on Windows machines so it made little sense to not work on one…especially as until recently there hasn’t been a really decent Mac browser. With Firefox 2 on the Mac, it’s now a bit more realistic, and parallels really opens up opportunities for me. All that said, I still baulk at the hardware cost, especially as my past experience buying Apple was to dish out heavily and then have it be outdated within three days of purchase.
Yep. This is why I (A complete and bona-fide nerd) run linux and fBSD on my user machines, and my wife has a Mac. Because I never ever have to fix it.