I recently bought a Mac Mini, And I thought I'd talk about my experiences in the transition from Windows XP to Mac OS X.
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Member since:A classic, this one. This sort of thing is both the despair and the delight of Cupertino Marketing. The delight, because it tells them that the faithful will carry on buying whatever they put out until they die, and there's no reason to worry about informed comparisons to the alternatives out there. That's the good news. The bad news is that as the uncommitted read this sort of stuff, they conclude that you have to be in a truly weird state of mind to be 'an Apple person', and they want to stay well away from it.
So if you are Cupertino, you say to yourself, I can always sell to these guys, and that's great, because....as long as I am selling to these guys, I'm probably not going to sell to many other people....and that's not so great at all....
The greatest weakness a company can have may strike it and its customers as an enormous strength: the uncritical adulation of a niche market.
Member since:"A classic, this one."
Not a very original post, and not really tied to the ongoing threads. You seem to lump the "Mac Faithful" together due to some sort of cognative dissonance and stereotype you have built for yourself.
Yes, we like our Macs. No, the G4 is not underpowered and overpriced. To be underpowered it would not do it's job. To be overpriced, it would also be incapable of producing. I find Macs do both their jobs and
I find the whole, "well, my $150 intel pentuim four is at 2.8 Gigaherz overclocked so it ownz everything as far as productivity", to be mastabatory self-maniupulation. It ain't the tool it's what you do with it.
Member since:Yes, it will be very easy to get this kind of reputation and really hard to shake it.
I can tell you one thing though: although I am in general a serious afficionado of all things Macintosh, calling me uncritical... let's just say that not too many people in my user group would call me uncritical. I have voiced many concerns against developments on the platform [from 7.5.1 on] and if you think YOU are the original complainer about equipment that's too expensive, that ship has sailed A LONG TIME ago. Until something like 5 years ago, I thought that Macs were awesome computers but they were hugely expensive. The top of the range now is still not what I would call cheap but compared to a time when they cost $5600+, there's a huge difference.
As far as comparing goes, I'm also not a greenhorn on other platforms. I have been using Windows since it was first released [everybody at work was swooning over it, as an Amiga driver I was far from impressed], so it's not as if I haven't set eyes on a different platform. I've also used a few 'Nixes when Apple was still playing with the pre-X systems. I'm biased, yes definitely, but I'm NOT uninformed. Small difference, huge consequence.
The weird state of mind is a personal thing, I don't see that in too many Apple users. Weird is the nature of the beast, but then we live in a weird world.
Weird to me is: being called uncritical when I hear news stories for years mentioning the massive economic damage caused by viruses and malware attacking PCs. Yet, everybody heralds them as the far superior platform. I haven't spent a day worrying about viruses in the 11+ years I've driven a Mac.
I'm wondering why you guys put up with all that misery when you have an alternative that's painless. "Hi, welcome. Do come in and make yourselves comfortable. Can I get you a nice, cool glass of sparkling water?" "Thanks, we're fine. We just pumped a tank full of sewage out of the drain pipes, we're good for a while." Whatever floats your boat, partner.
I'm not saying that a Mac is impervious, that would be the kind of uncritical thinking that you seem to think I'm engaging in. But the UNIX platform and its offspring has been around for a while, wouldn't you agree, and yet it seems to largely miss out on the kind of vulnerabilities the Windows platform has been suffering from for quite some time now. Yet Unix systems have been hosting a lot of interesting data. I'm not dissing the Windows user, but if you think I'm not critical, why are you and others like you, if you're using Windows at all, not posting outside the Redmond campus demanding something better than what's been inflicted on you for all these years [again, assuming you're using Windows].
And to use Linux and its many flavors as a desktop computer. I'm not saying Linux is a bad system, but the thing is, when you try to run some hardware on it, like say a DVD player or a photo camera, you have to hope and pray that you can get the thing to recognise there's something happening in the periphery, much less have it working flawlessly.
Would I use it in a server environment? Absolutely. No question about it. Would I use it on my desktop? No. Is it an interesting intellectual challenge to get it up and running? Hell yes! But you see: I can't be bothered. It's just too much work between the dishes, the laundry, mopping the floor, paying the bills and the ton of other zany stuff I do running my household. I just can't afford to spend 3 nights in a row to try and get my camera connected so that I can print my goddaughter's birthday pictures. I know it's a dumb and trivial thing, but you know: life is dumb and trivial [some of the time at least]. I can't afford the time to battle with my system just to see whose got the bigger balls. I want the memory card to plug in, import the pictures, do some crap with it in iPhoto/iMovie/iDVD and ship it out.
It's just too much trouble to call forth the gods of past and present so that they may grant me the wisdom of selecting the right jumper switch and adjusting the correct ini setting. This is the 21st Century, man. I've got too much stuff to do, not enough time to do it in. I'm sure I can't be the only one.
It has to work now, not tomorrow, and if it 'just works' than that's just enough for me.
This will sound weird to you, but I'm absolutely not second-guessing your personal choices. Live like you want to live, baby. You have my every good wish.
Member since:
You guys almost make me feel jealous with your switcher stories. I haven't got one and I won't be having one anytime soon. I've never owned a PC and to switch to Windows just to have a switcher story seems like overdoing it.
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I could move to Linux or sundry systems, but I don't really feel like arcane rituals involving dead chickens, runed candles and blood [or kool aid, whatever is more readily available] just to get my computer to talk to my printer [just joking about the kool-aid, guys
So it turns out I'm the old hand and many of you are the new guys. Hey, welcome to the club.
I agree with one of the earlier posters that another recent-switcher-story may not be the most newsworthy, but what does strike me is that I hear [here and otherwise] quite a number of stories of people taking the plunge and, overall, actually liking it. As someone whose been through some interesting times public relation-wise, it is quite refreshing to read and hear so many good stories instead of being the token-doofus for owning a Mac instead of a sensible Windows box like-everybody-else.
This is a good thing for Apple and Microsoft alike. Apple will see a lot more development on the platform making it an intresting and viable proposition for home and business users, but also for Microsoft because they will be forced to take care of the quality of their products. Everybody wins. And I'm certainly not dissing the Linux people, you're here to stay. We need you to stir up trouble, you're an essential part of a healthy IT-eco system. Open source is the lifeblood of this sick [as in mentally depraved] and twisted industry.
Go forth and make great stuff, all of you!