A Friend Who Uses Windows
We thoroughly enjoyed a visit from a friend in Slagelse yesterday. We grilled and enjoyed fellowship which was excellent. We are both tech nerds. He is an avid user of Windows whereas I left Windows for the Linux operating system and in November 2007 I took the FINAL move to the MacOS operating system. I have never regretted that decision whatsoever.
Nowadays some people discuss the Windows 7 promises versus the MacOS experiences, as in this article: “Windows 7 vs MacOS X Snow Leopard: Competitive Origins.”
I find the discussion somewhat pointless in the sense that some are LOCKED in their beliefs that Apple machines are more expensive and there is less software available for them. That observation is OUTDATED but no matter how often you show the values of the MacOS operating system you always end up in a war of features. I don’t doubt for a single second that a well-versed Windows user (which I, admittedly, was) can get a lot from an operating system as Windows. The problem isn’t in using ANY of the operating systems. The problem lies in fault-finding. It becomes rather tedious as the Windows system is closed more and more towards the user. Everything is set into boxes of who is entitled to do what, when and where. If unchecked your operating system will be open to all sorts of attacks, if set you are constantly faced with having to enter your password.
And this is where it gets dangerous because then people settle with letting their passwords be short (and easy to hack) which, again, leaves you highly vulnerable…
We did enjoy discussing that the Safari browser was FAST – even under Windows. Those things are clear for all to see, so definitely a good step in the right direction for Apple to profile itself well among all users worldwide. The fact remains there are only a few browsers worth using: Mozilla Firefox, Safari and Opera. As for Internet Explorer I think it’s safe to say that versions 7 and 8 are the only decent attempts at defining themselves as browsers. Prior to version 7 it was a painful piece of software that could not render anything with CSS correctly. PNG-images also caused errors prior to MS-Internet Explorer 7 which I discovered two days before going to an exam in multimedia design….
So definitely, it’s a choice. I choose the MacOS environment, and I respect those who can settle with Windows. But understand why they choose as they do is beyond me. 🙂