Preface
I was recently incited to write a response to my soon-to-be G-6’s (the Kansas Guard’s CIO) enflaming response about Macs. I found out later from my XO that he was makin’ junk up to provoke me. But it worked out well, because I have been needing to write this paper for some time now. Here is the email, it also explains the strange title. (Look for large, bold, red words).
Why I like Mac Better
At the beginning of this year, I received a new Macintosh PowerPC. It was a gracious gift from my uncle and grandma. Since then, I often find myself explaining why I like Mac better than IBM Compatibles. (Though it would not truly be correct to call the wintel machines IBM-compatibles, since the Mac is the only one with an IBM PowerPC RISC Processor in it.) So let me say a couple of qualified things (qualification near the end):
- I notice with increasing regularity that the folks that hate Macs only use wintel machines (so they speak from either no experience, or OS9 or lesser experience).
- The folks that like Macs (almost without exception) use both, and prefer by a wide margin the Macintosh. I have not yet met someone who uses Mac OS X who prefers wintel machines:
- it is more stable (UNIX-based)
- runs faster (even with a ‘slower’ PowerPC processor - because the processor is superior, and is made better use of by OS X)
- more accessible
- and more aesthetic
- With few exceptions, it does everything a windows computer does and better, even utilizing the same basic (and advanced) software (Adobe Creative Suite 2, Macromedia Studio 8, Microsoft Office, etc.)
- It also does some things that a wintel machine can’t (or at least has not, like the truly unsurpassed graphics handling, most every graphics, audio, and video app is either exclusively built for the Mac, or at least better developed on the Mac, and those are the most processor intensive apps)
Why They Gave Me a Mac
I am a programming/web design/development student at Washburn in Topeka, KS. I am a geek deep down. I bleed silicon. My father is a self-professed ‘hardware cluck’, my (step) dad (a UT grad) is a Programming Instructor at UAA. One of my uncles works for Apple at Cupertino, the other works for Raytheon. They are all are all electric/electronic engineers, all but my dad are college educated, my father went to the school of hard knocks.
I was introduced to UNIX about three years ago when I was working as a sort of intern at Irwin Army Community Hospital in the Radiology Department. I had been working in the ER as a medic, while in the regular Army, and wanted to develop more understanding about computers. Joyce Latimer who maintains their DINPACS was the one who proctored me. As I learned a little of the value of UNIX I thought it seemed strange (in my ignorance) that there was not GUI for UNIX. While I was wrong to think there was none, SUN has not done for UNIX with their GUI what Mac has for it’s BSD derivative Darwin (whose name and logo I loathe).
At some point, last year, while visiting with my Grandparents Eldridge and uncles in Colorado Springs, I complained to my uncle (who works at Apple) that I am disappointed with Windows (machines), and I sorely want to move off of the platform (XP, at the time). I was sure that he could sympathize. I have wanted to move to Slackware, or some other Linux or UNIX flavor for some time. He capitalized on a situation where he and my grandmother wanted to give me a gift, and helped to alleviate my ‘problem’.
Why Windows Is Still Superior
I found myself recently telling someone that I think that Wintel machines are superior to Macs, much like Dodge, McDonalds, and VHS are (or were) over their competitors. However, that Apple came into a mature market to sweep Rio and Sony off their feet with the iPod, but that is comparing iPods with MacBooks.
Some Qualifications and Concessions
While I think I can fairly maintain that Macs are superior, by far. I would heartily agree that they are still made by fallible men. I think the vast majority of them are not American-made, though the conceptual process happens at Apple’s Cupertino, CA (Silicon Valley) campus. They even come with security flaws, as someone pointed out to me just today. My Mac has a left shift key that is not working properly, and I have hung my computer about two times since receiving it. (I would have hung many more times during the same period had it been a wintel machine. When using Windows, I generally have to reinstall the OS every year or a little more, even with the more stable NT-based OS (because of a corrupted registry). Most of what people think is great about Windows was cleverly borrowed from Mac OS X, a long-standing tradition with MS and Apple (even down to the creatively renamed “gadgets” that MS has fashioned after the “widgets” on the Mac Dashboard.)
But I am in the middle of making concessions here, so on with the story: Macs are still just computers, but they are good computers, they are fun to use, and lack the headache I am so accustomed to with wintel machines. Truly, they are expensive (though not overpriced). Whatever great work Steve Jobs did by making them open-source is nearly undone by the fact that the hardware is so specific. MS is at a disadvantage with the whole plug-and-play thing. They have to anticipate much more than a Mac, because they play with a much wider variety of parts. (But that is the lot that they chose, they wanted to be a software producer.) Steve Jobs has always seen the software as a better way to get you to buy his hardward, even when he was with NextStep.
Finally
So, while they are not perfect, I am looking forward to the day that this is a Mac house, exclusively. I have never looked forward to an operating system’s release, like I look forward to OS X Leopard. I mean this in a different way than with MS Windows. Windows are not innovators like the folks at Apple. I went to a conference for both MS Office XP and Windows XP. I care about junk like this and have for a while. But I have so much more fun computing on a Mac, than I even have on Windows. Windows has been playing catch up with security bugs for years now, while Apple is making more and more capable apps, etc.
It does me no good if you buy a Mac, but it may do you some good. I would consider the fact that there are a lot of weirdos out there like me, who are letting folks know that using Macs really is better. Why would we be so interested in making this point and be so zealous about it if it were not so much better. In AmWay they get a commission. I won’t even likely get an email. Just the same, I hope you consider it.
Posted: 2006.08.02.1902
Edited: 2006.10.31.2245
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