We want you. To buy a Mac.
Posted on 01/21/2010 1:54:46 PM PST by Swordmaker
This is an oldie but a goodie, and I haven't written about it before — at least, not on my blog.
I'm writing this entry sitting on a sofa and using a Macbook Air. The desktop computer in my office is also a Mac. Why?
There are several good arguments for not using Apple's computers. For one thing, they're expensive; no cheap netbooks here. If money was all there was to it, I'd stick to generic cheap PCs — and indeed, I have run PCs in the past.
I'm on the public record as being a UNIX bigot. Although Mac OS X is BSD UNIX based, these days the various flavours of Linux will turn just about any PC (except for a few portables with exotic hardware) into a decent workstation. If it was just about the UNIX experience, I'd be running Linux on commodity PCs.
The reason I choose to pay through the nose for my computers is very simple: unlike just about every other manufacturer in the business, Apple appreciate the importance of good industrial design.
Most of the major computer vendors were started by salesmen or engineering executives. Over time, marketing took over as the main driving force. Design doesn't get much of a look in edgeways — with the intermittent exception of Sony's high-end kit, most PC vendors wouldn't know good industrial design if you hit them over the head with it. Apple, however, is different.
There is a focus on industrial design at Apple that is ubiquitous in other business sectors but absent from the rest of the personal computing industry. Automobile marketing is almost entirely design- and fashion-driven these days, followed by technology in second place. The PC business isn't; what passes for design is a choice of differently-coloured injection-molded plastic cases stuffed full of badly-integrated cruft. There are wires everywhere, bad ergonomics (did I rant yet about the iniquities of far eastern keyboard designers and their contempt for the right-shift key?), and to cap it all there's Windows — a dog's dinner of an operating system — plus lashings of try-before-you-buy junkware. Sure you can get decently designed PCs, but you'll end up paying as much as you would for a Mac: and you still have to scrape the crud off them to get a halfway acceptable experience.
Worse: for the most part, PC people don't understand the value of good design. The value of good design is simple, literally: stuff that's well designed is easy to use, fit for purpose, and doesn't put obstructions in the way of you using it to get stuff done. Design, in the computing biz, is all too often confused with technology, which is something entirely different. Yes, there is a place for advanced technology: but it shouldn't be getting in your face. All too often, PC vendors market their products by over-emphasizing the technology that goes into them, rather than by making the damn things useful. And then they look down their nose at anyone who complains that this stuff is hard.
I use Macs because I appreciate good industrial design when I see it; I work sitting in an Aeron chair in front of a 1970s vintage Swedish desk, and I don't want to spend sixty hours a week sitting at that desk staring at something that looks like it was thrown together from the spare parts bin. I want an operating system descended from UNIX under the hood, because I have twenty-plus years experience of bossing UNIX systems around (and UNIX, in my opinion, exhibits a degree of basic design consistency in its userland experience that is missing from the Microsoft world). I like the Mac OS X graphical experience because it looks good, (as it should, because before it could be released it had to satisfy a fanatical design perfectionist obsessed with caligraphy). And I am sitting in front of this thing for sixty hours a week. I have better things to do with my time than nurse a balky, badly-designed system that shits itself all over my hard disk on a regular basis, or spends half its time running urgent maintenance tasks that stop me getting stuff done.
I could write while sitting on a cheap IKEA stool in front of a kitchen table, banging away on a netbook loaded with Windows XP. But after a week, my back and my wrists would hurt and I'd be bleeding from the eyeballs every time I looked at the screen. It'd be like spending sixty hours a week driving a cheap Chevrolet Shitweasel instead of a Mercedes: sure, think of the savings — but the pain will get to you in the end.
Let the average price of a laptop PC (when you add in the necessary applications) be £600, and the average price of a Macbook Pro be £1200. Amortized over a year, I'm paying about £2 a day for a decent working environment. That's the price of a cup of coffee in Starbucks. If you drive to and from your day job for an hour a day, you'd seriously consider buying a more comfortable car. A better, more comfortable computing environment costs peanuts in comparison.
One day, I hope, the entire PC industry will cotton on to the value of good industrial design and start taking it as seriously as Apple; or that those companies who don't will go bust. I'll spend less of my time answering questions from confused friends and family. Maybe it'll mean less employment for technical support staff. But for the rest of us, it'll mean more time to do the things we consider to be important.
If you say so, or at least if that's what you hear when you talk.......
If you say so, or at least if that's what you hear when you talk.......
Well, I can't imagine any other reason for the a**hole Windows users to come onto Macintosh threads and their discussion -- except -- to "save the Macintosh world" from itself... :-)
If you could, they wouldn't need saving. Why would you imagine yourself out of a your rightful role as saviour? That would just be silly.
We want you. To buy a Mac.
I told you already! I never bought "that Mac"!
If you could, they wouldn't need saving. Why would you imagine yourself out of a your rightful role as saviour? That would just be silly.
It's the Windows a**holes who come in and try to save the "Mac users"... doncha know... LOL...
And Obama thinks I use Windows!
You know, I'm a big Mac guy. I love Macs, and I've got four Mac Pros. They're the top-of-the-line Mac Pros, maxed out. And they just had a new system upgrade, went to 10.5 Leopard, and they've had two upgrades since October. Yesterday brought 10.5.2, which was loaded.
NB: All right, I've got just one more quick question for you. Last time I saw you, you'd just gotten an iPhone. How's that working out for you?
ROVE: I love it. My life has changed. I have a shred of coolness. I've got my 3,500 people in my addressbook on the phone, I can sync my calendar. I keep track of my modest little stock investments. I can check the weather of my house in Washington, my house in Florida, my boy at school, my hunt-lease in south Texas. I can surf the web, I'm just–I get part of my email there.
You chose the right phone, Karl!
I mean it is just shocking how much better, how much more productive I am. I no longer carry around a giant address book, if I don't have my calendar close at hand, I can quickly check it out of my– I don't have to carry, I used to carry several notecards, now it's just as easy to scribble on my little notepad, I can take photographs and forward them on immediately, it's just remarkable.
In 1997, Bill Gates contributed $35,000 in support of a Washington state ballot initiative supporting gun control. In 1993, he ponied up $80,000 to fight a conservative initiative seeking to roll back state taxes. And ever since 1994, the William H. Gates III Foundation, Bill's private philanthropic funnel, has been busy channeling millions to groups that specialize in "reproductive health and family planning."
I don’t like to trash other peoples religious beliefs, but when I can build a mac from mail order parts, upgrade where I want to upgrade, customize what I want to customize, and run 90% of the software on the market, and not violate any laws in the process, I might consider a mac. But why bother? People talk about their prius in the same fashion. But my honda is just fine.
...and run 90% of the software on the market, ...
Sorry to hear you've got that kind of a problem... LOL...
Macintosh users can run 100% of the software in the market from the Mac OS X system, to the Windows operating system to Linux operating systems...
And with the Mac OS X, you can run Windows software, right on that Mac OS X operating system desktop... although I have no idea why anyone would want to run a Windows program... :-) [but they can if they want to...]
Why do you expect a hardware company to let you build your own version of their hardware? I suspect you don’t feel the same way about Dell or HP.
Btw, just upgraded the ps to 750 watts - corsair, and added 6 gb ram. If I wanted to, I could have added some cool LED’s if I was a guy who bought computers cause they “look asthetic”.
Then again, if I had a mac, instead of upgrading, I could hAve just gone out and buy a new mac, and drop a couple thousand instead of spending a half hour dealing with those patriarchal Phillips head screws.
Btw, just upgraded the ps to 750 watts - corsair, and added 6 gb ram. If I wanted to, I could have added some cool LED’s if I was a guy who bought computers cause they “look asthetic”.
And if you put four wheels and tires on it, added a steering wheel, along with an air pump and controls, you might have a cool-looking low-rider, too... LOL...
But, for us Macintosh users, we prefer computers that "just work"...
Have fun with the lights and bells and whistles... you might try entering it into a contest for coolest looking PC on wheels or something like that... :-)
I have a PC and a MAC.
My MAC (mini) is my back up machine, I hardly ever use it....cause I’m so used to a PC. (I’m a part time gamer too)
Sorry.
Using my Mac, I can run 100% of the software on the market and not violate any laws in the process.
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