Windows Expert Jumps Ship 939
An anonymous reader writes to let us know that Scott Finnie, Computerworld's Windows expert, has given the final verdict to Windows after 3 months of using a Mac. And the verdict is: "Sayonara." Finnie is known to readers here for his many reviews of Vista as it progressed to release. Quoting: "If you give the Mac three months, as I did, you won't go back either. The hardest part is paying for it — everything after that gets easier and easier. Perhaps fittingly, it took me the full three-month trial period to pay off my expensive MacBook Pro. But the darn thing is worth every penny."
Re:I still miss Windows (Score:5, Informative)
Command (Apple) + Enter tells Spotlight to open the Top Hit.
Re:I still miss Windows (Score:5, Informative)
Made such a change a long, long time ago (Score:4, Informative)
Ditching Windows was a little hard as I used to play games, but I was reaching the point where gaming held little appeal for me anyway. Switching to a platform that ran for literally years on end without major crashes demonstrated the value of Linux, and obviously, the lack of worth to Windows.
Microsoft only holds its place because people are too timid to try something else. Apple's OS is slick. Linux has had windowmanagers that mimic the windows shell for many years. For people who don't play computer games it shouldn't be a big deal to switch.
Are you playing any of these: (Score:3, Informative)
or how about World of Warcraft?
There are many games for the Mac.
Re:Dell Laptop + Linux (Score:5, Informative)
Is linux usable on the desktop? Certainly.
Can it hold a candle to OS/X in terms of polish and ease of use? Not yet. Is dell's hardware as aesthetically pleasing and stylish as Apple's? No way...
As a Windows/DOS user since the late 80s, and a Linux/BSD user since the mid 90s - my next computer is going to be a Mac.
Re:I still miss Windows (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Use what you want ... (Score:5, Informative)
I agree. I've used all three for large periods, but my current computer is a Mac and when I replace it I intend to get another Mac. In general, I find it better than Windows. There are tons of little annoyances that I run into almost daily using my PC at work that I don't have when using my Mac. But I also like it for it's "best of both worlds" that it provides me. Commercial applications and an extremely polished UI in all places (where parts of Linux can get hairy, although it's gotten better), but the UNIX command line and GCC and all that for when I feel like fiddling low level/programming/etc. A real CLI that I can use (let's face it, the windows shell is ancient and pales compared to Bash. Maybe when Monad comes out).
These facts have provided me with great benefits besides my basic preference for the Mac. When I worked on my senior project (LAMP site) while my friends were testing on the test box the school was letting us use, I was able to run the whole thing on my laptop easily because all the components were already there and easily setup (where with Windows I would have had to download/install/configure each part). When I changed code I could test it instantly, no "copy to server, test, edit, copy" over the slow connection. I could work on it without an internet connection, or worrying about interfering with what my partners were working on (overwriting them).
The only "long-standing" problem I have with my Mac is the lack of big games, but I don't have a ton of time for them anymore anyway so my consoles work fine for that (although I miss a good game of CounterStrike, I'm on PPC so I can't run BootCamp).
Re:Are you playing any of these: (Score:2, Informative)
Sorry, the mac is simply not a gamers platform.
They have some games, and some good ones at that, but if you like playing games, the mac is still a foolish choice.
Linux is ready now. (Score:2, Informative)
OSX and Ubuntu, the applications get out of the way, the key is the document, not the application. I don't want to use a word processor, I want to write a letter, it just so happens that I need a word processor to do it. So instead of clicking on the Office icon to start the word processor and then opening a file, I click on the document on my desktop and the relevant application (whatever it is) starts. If you look at a typical Windows desktop, there will be dozens of icons for starting applications and relatively few documents or files, it's completely backwards.
Re:I recently switched (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I still miss Windows (Score:4, Informative)
There's also an app that adds a small terminal to every window on the system (can't think of the name of it at the moment, pretty sure it's on sourceforge).
I do wish there was an easier way to universally access all menus on OSX from the keyboard, the way that Alt does on Windows (there is keyboard access, but it's nowhere near as straightforward), but beyond that I've found the Mac to be ridiculously powerful in terms of keyboard use, even before I found QS.
Re:Lots of folks making the switch (Score:3, Informative)
Yes, but it's also what's keeping them profitable. If they didn't limit the hardware base they'd have to jack up the OS price to something people wouldn't pay, to cover the support costs and loss of hardware revenue--and then go out of business.
About drivers for specialized hardware? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Lots of folks making the switch (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Macs ARE expensive (Score:1, Informative)
ubid.com. Tons and tons and tons of them.
B) No big business uses refirbs.
I don't own a big business.
C) Most office workers could do there work on an iMac. which is in the same range as most corporate bought PCs
Any computer made in the past 20 years can do documents. That's not a big deal.
No good accounting software. No good point-of-sale software. That's a big deal.
d) They will save money on maintainance.
What maintenance? Windows Update is automatic.
e) Since you are a business owner(and good for you!), I hope you are taking maintenance, viruses, EULA, and DRM into your TCO.
There's no maintenance. Viruses aren't a problem with basic virus software and employees that aren't brain-dead. EULA's are ignored. DRM isn't applicable to work.
In fact, I just threw out a Pentium 1 last week that I replaced with one of these refurbs. It worked just fine as our main machine (accounting, point of sale, shipping, email, and documents), but was slow. I couldn't get anywhere near that kind of longevity with a Mac because the software/hardware requirements for the OS and the apps changes so frequently.
Re:I'm sticking to Windows (Score:3, Informative)
Apple tried that during the wasteland years of the nineties (post- and pre- Steve Jobs). They were called clones, and from what I remember, the very first thing Jobs did when returning to Apple was axe that arrangement with third party manufacturers, due to 'quality concerns (not up to par)'.
For starters, I enjoy computer games every now and then.
That's one of the few issues left standing today. Another very specific example is US government standards, let me explain: My wife is a translator, working on a Mac, and she had to do a series of jobs for the Justice Department, which only accepts files in the WordPerfect format. Since there hasn't been a WordPerfect for the Mac since the mid-nineties, she got stuck and had to work elsewhere, on somebody else's PC, not a comfortable arrangement. Considering that this has been the lone compatibility issue in the years she's been working as translator, she prefers the Mac by a long shot.
Here's a bit of third-party Mac database software that has no peer in the world: Claris Filemaker, which I use every day. Sure, there's a version for PC, but it's not quite as astonishingly great as the original Mac version. Here's another: DVD Studio Pro.
The list of Mac feats is long and distinguished. Four years ago, I got a brand new Mac installed in my office, then called the tech guy to ask what the particular configurations should be to connect to the internet, as he had done none. The guy said "Click on the Safari icon". I said "But it's not configured". He said "Click on the Safari icon, it's a Mac, c'mon". I did. Within thirty seconds, I was staring at the Apple homepage. I was impressed.
BTW, I've been a Mac user since 1989 (B&W screen! No internal hard drive! Diskette slot!), and I've come to this conclusion:
Switching from PC to Mac may be perplexing, but switching from Mac to PC may be infuriating.
Re:Price (Score:3, Informative)
Ummm No! Most parrents look at the course requirements. After meeting the requirements, second is price. Some schools require XP & IE for their applications, Web applications, and/or secure wireless connectivity client. Not all schools or classes in a school have Microsoft requirements so Linux and Mac are OK. As Linux and Apple become more common alternatives to the MS monoculture, pressure is on the schools to become platform agnostic.
In many places the requirements instead of listing a platform simply list file compatabilities such as Acrobat 5, Flash 9, Firefox 5, Wireless G, etc.
Re:Lots of folks making the switch (Score:5, Informative)
You can't even configure that machine to be comparable to the iMac. To get in the same ballpark, you've got to jump up to an XPS 410, up the CPU to 2.13 GHz, add the 2007WFP and the Radeon 1300 Pro. Now you're at $1487, and you still have half the cache, a slower graphics card, no firewire, no wi-fi, no bluetooth, no webcam, and no remote. And it'll still take up much more space in your office!
So yes, even with the Intel Macs, you can get machines cheaper than what Apple well sell them for. However, it's no surprise you can get a cheaper machine with lesser hardware! However, if you try to match the basic specs, and a couple of the accessories (ie: no consumer machine today should ship without wifi!) you're not going to save a lot of money over the Mac.
Re:He's too kind to UAC... (Score:4, Informative)
UAC is not 'the little poppup that says do you want to do this yes/no' it's the whole system behind it, and the entire reworking of how windows deals with user accounts.
Vista's been rebuilt to work properly as you would expect with non administrator level accounts. Applications should work without error from lower level accounts. People you do not trust to tinker freely with 100% of the entire system should not have administrator access, period.
the "yes/no" prompt ONLY appears as a warning for possibly hazardous actions, if you are logged in as an administrator.
If your logged in with a lower level account, you are required to authenticate the action with an admin level user & password a-la *nix.
For the first time with reason in Windows, as an admin, you should be wondering 'why on earth is X webtard still on an admin level account, he doesn't need that access, he's a security risk' not 'why is UAC so stupid'
Re:Lots of folks making the switch (Score:3, Informative)
You must have meant Celerons. Centrino is the [any Pentium M up to and including Core2Duo Merom]CPU+Intel chipset+Intel wireless mobile combo. So the MacBooks are, horror of horrors[*], Centrino machines!
[*] welcome to the wonderful world of Intel marketing, Apple. Enjoy your stay.
Re:I still miss Windows (Score:2, Informative)
If that isn't flexible enough you could always create and edit ~/Library/KeyBindings/DefaultKeyBinding.dict by hand.
KDE Excellence. (Score:3, Informative)
What're these "must-have" features in KDE? Any time I've used it, I've found a bunch of stupidly-named applications, and a big, bulky UI filled with toolbars. I'd rather use GNOME. Hell, I'd rather use Windows.
There are a lot of excellent KDE applications, none of which require you to use their window manager:
There's more that I missed, I'm sure. Everytime I turn around there seems to be some nice new application from them.
Like I said, you don't have to use the window manager to use these applications. They work just as well or better under the window manager of your choice.
Best of all, it's all free! That's why there's so much of it and why it all works together.
A switcher (Score:5, Informative)
I only got the Macbook because it was a fast x86 machine that could run Windows (faster than most laptops, it turns out), and I had Parallels to run a virtualized Windows (Crossover and VMWare still suck on OS X, but won't before long I'm sure). But guess what? I haven't booted Parallels in a week, and probably won't for another month. Almost *everything* works under OS X. VLC Player filled in the "play windows media files" hole, which really was one of the last reasons to boot Windows. Good bye windows, and Sayonara indeed!
Yes, Jobs might be slightly evil ("Evil light, just one Calorie!" as Dr. Evil might say), but as compared to MS, he's freakin' Mother Theresa. (Oh wait, she was a little evil, too. But you know what I mean.) Even though Jobs obviously has Apple's shareholders' bottom line in mind, and embraces DRM, etc., etc., at least Apple shows a slight bit of respect for the consumer, while taking their money. MS is just stabbing in the dark, and nothing short of offensive in their business practices.
In short, I love my Mac. I'll develop on it, likely deploy on Linux (LAMP is LAMP, on OS X or Linux), while having a wonderful desktop to use in the meantime.
Re:Lots of folks making the switch (Score:5, Informative)
That's exactly correct. I'm surprised you would act incredulous, because the fact of Microsoft's abuse of its monopoly position has been clearly documented in a court of law. One of the things it did in the normal course of its business was to tell manufacturers that they could sell Windows only, or not at all.
Re:I still miss Windows (Score:2, Informative)
Re:I still miss Windows (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Lots of folks making the switch (Score:4, Informative)
Not to sound like a smart-ass, but... yes. One of the things that has come to light (in court, actually) is that Microsoft will actively raise the price of Windows for OEM's who sell computers without an OS, and will threaten to refuse to sell Windows to OEM's that wish to ship other OS's in anything more than trivial quantities. This is one of the things that BeOS ran up against -- they almost worked out a deal with Toshiba (IIRC), to include BeOS alongside Windows. Microsoft told Toshiba that if they did that, they would be unable to purchase Windows licenses. Toshiba (or whoever it was, I can't remember for certain) then had to drop BeOS.
Re:Not in my experience. (Score:1, Informative)
Dear god, if you couldn't work out how to find TextEdit (clue, Applications --> TextEdit) I really don't ever want to see the quality of your code!
Re:Lots of folks making the switch (Score:3, Informative)
This isn't a gunman on the grassy knoll here. None of this is in dispute.
Re:Not in my experience. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Not in my experience. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Not in my experience. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Lots of folks making the switch (Score:1, Informative)
You can pay $1300 for a mac...or you can spend $700 for a PC. Which do you THINK parents are going to buy?
That's not really an apples to apples (so to speak) comparison, though.
It's true that the bottom end of the price range for PCs goes below the bottom end of the price range for Macs, but the bottom end of the feature set does, too. Let's try a couple of more accurate comparisons:
1) I'm typing this on a new 15" Macbook Pro that my company just issued to me a few weeks ago. It cost around $2000. To get a PC notebook with a roughly equivalent hardware load will also cost about $2000. But it won't have OS X.
2) The cheapest Mac Mini on Fry's website right now is $599. Core 2 Duo 1.66, 512 meg DDR-2, 60 GB disk, CD-RW/DVD-ROM, Airport Extreme, Bluetooth, Gigabit Ethernet, 1 X Firewire 400, 4 x USB 2.0, DVI/VGA(with adapter)/S-Video/Composite video outs, Intel GMA 950 graphics (64 meg shared memory), built-in speakers, headphone jack, optical digital audio jack. On a quick scan around the Fry's website, I didn't see any PCs in that price range with a Core-2 Duo or wireless, but they do compensate by having maybe a bigger disk or more memory and a (cheap) keyboard and mouse, so you can get rough hardware equivalence at that price point, too. But - you don't get OS X.
If you look at more price points, I think you'll find more examples of what the above shows: that for a given amount of dollars, you can get Mac or PC hardware that's fairly equal. The big differences, then, are that when you buy the PC, you don't get OS X and you don't get the degree to which everything "just works" like it does on a Mac. Oh, and you don't Apple's top-drawer industrial design, either. No PC notebook I've ever had showed me the design elegance and advanced features of this Macbook Pro, not even my personal favorite, Thinkpads.
Comparing a $700 PC to a $1300 Mac is a bogus comparison. This really takes your whole argument down. The "spend twice as much on a Mac" line was once true - a long time ago. But it hasn't been true in years. The hardware premium on a Mac, if any, is fairly small. You're advancing claims regarding Apple pricing that ceased to be true before OS X even came out.
As to your claim that OS X is "an OS that TECHNICALLY doesn't do as much as Windows does" that's just ridiculous. You neglected to back that up with any facts, because you don't have any. OS X and Windows (and Linux, generally) all do the same things. The difference comes down to how well they do them. OS X does pretty much everything better than Windows, and Linux also does a great many things better than Windows. I have Windows machines, Linux machines, and now a Mac. The Windows machines are the ones I use by far the least, because the others are just better.
The one point you make that could potentially be valid is that Apple would sell a lot more copies of OS X if they sold it as a standalone OS for PCs. By potentially valid, I mean there are problems with it that could constrain sales of PCs with OS X. If it worked, a lot of new PCs could potentially go out the door running OS X and a lot of old PCs would be converted. The problem there is that Apple is primarily a hardware company, not a software company. Being able to buy a Dell or a Compaq or a Gateway with OS X on it would not gut Apple's hardware business, but it would take a bite out of it. At the same time, it would increase Apple's R&D costs and their support costs, and the licensing fees of OS X and its commonly included bits like iLife would not offset the drop in hardware profits and the increased R&D costs.
So, how, then, does Apple manage the costs of increased R&D and support expenditures from selling OS X for PCs? Vendors would have to pay a lot more than they do for Windows. Result? Whatever hardware price advantage the PC makers might have Vs. Apple would be erased (I think you see now where any price difference that exists comes from; Apple has to bear its support and
Re:Lots of folks making the switch (Score:2, Informative)
When you buy an Apple, you're giving your money to...Apple. There's no "tax" being added to the price of the computer that goes to funding a transfer of money from the manufacturer to another company for software you don't want.
There's no HP tax when your HP computer comes with an HP printshop/photo application. If you want to look at it financially, there's no revenue transfer--the price of OS X is $0. Its R&D and support costs are taken out of Apple's healthy margins. If you you think they should shave down that margin, well then I hope you choose which restaurants you eat at based on their gross margins, too, otherwise you're being pretty arbitrary.
Re:Lots of folks making the switch (Score:3, Informative)
When I buy a Mac (and I decided I'm going to) I'm going to get a dual-processor dual (or quad by then) core Xeon, then I can actually install PCI cards. It will probably run Linux 90% of the time,
Why would I buy a Mac for that?
Because their towers are QUIET. For me to build a dual Xeon which runs just as cool, and just as quiet, I'd have to spend what would match list price of an equivalent Mac, or hack together ugly components with outboard cooling. Supermicro chassis may be wonderful and well-built, but quiet is not a term I would use to describe them.
Oh sure I'd run OS X now and then, but truthfully, I can't stand the dock and I can't stand finder. Oh, and why is the ONLY place I can grab a window to resize it in the lower right? In both Windows and most X window managers, I can grab any edge or corner to resize a window. Also, with a keystroke (either win or alt depending on keyboard config) I can click anywhere on a window to move it where I want in X.
Vista? I may actually end up taking it home and installing it, but that's only because it comes with MSDN.
Re:Lots of folks making the switch (Score:2, Informative)
Re:I recently switched (Score:3, Informative)
I use both XCode and Visual Studio daily at work, even though I use a Mac at home I still prefer VS for development. Here are a few reasons off the top of my head:
- Quick work with large codebases. "Go to Definition" and "Go to Declaration" in my experience works much better in VS than "Jump to Definition" does in XCode.
- "References To" that allows me to quickly find all references to a particular function, this allows me to assess quickly the potential impact of any code changes without too much hunting.
- I still find VS' debugger to be faster and easier than gdb integrated into XCode.
XCode has some things that I really do wish Visual Studio had:
- A keyboard shortcut to jump between corresponding .cpp and .h files.
- A more comprehensive Find-in-Project feature that can generate a report instead of just taking me to the next found location.
IMHO XCode is the best IDE hands down outside of Visual Studio, but VS has a pretty big lead as #1.
Re:Lots of folks making the switch (Score:3, Informative)
But releasing OS X for generic PCs would kill OS X. Apple has neither the resources nor the experience to get OS X to run reliably on just any random combination of PC hardware. Microsoft can barely do it and Microsoft has broad vendor support! Even if Apple wanted to, they simply wouldn't be able to officially release OS X for white box PCs. People would stop buying Apple hardware. They'd pick up some cheap ass Dell, and then complain that it won't run OSX. Apple's reputation would be shot.
Well, Macs can be more expensive, but I wouldn't go so far as to say twice as expensive. A $1400 iMac, for example, is a pretty nice machine. Small (all built into the display unit), sleek, bright 20" LCD display, Core2 Duo, Firewire, WiFi built in, etc. Can you even get that in the PC world? Certainly not for $700. The only thing on Dell's site that I can find which is close is Dimension E521: http://www.dell.com/content/products/features.asp
Apple seems to be doing quite well for themselves these days if you ask me. The only real "fault" I can find is that they don't offer a wide enough range of base system options. I'd like something between the Mac Mini and the Mac Pro that doesn't have a built in display. I already have a nice 22" flat screen ($400 right there). The Mini is just too wimpy and the Mac Pro is way too much.
-matthew
Re:Lots of folks making the switch (Score:3, Informative)
In fact, in Eastern Europe, the "OS-less beige box" companies rule. It allows for max customization, minimal price and no Windows tax.
Ironically though, guess what people install on those OS-less beige boxes when they get home (hint: pirated Windows).
Re:Lots of folks making the switch (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Lots of folks making the switch (Score:1, Informative)
The GP is talking nonsense, you can open anything in a text editor on a Mac if you like, and drag-and-drop support is just unsurpassed. Mac OSX is a very friendly OS, but some people are STILL too stupid to use it. Hard to believe, I know.