Why I Chose a MacBook
I have been asked by many why I have chosen an Apple MacBook when I have had such a long experience in the field of DOS and Windows – and even Linux.
I think that deserves an answer. My love for Apple is a long story. It actually began when I first saw a Mac up with friends in Sweden. At that time I did a transcript on an old Mac classic and was impressed because at that time I only had an old CP/M machine with two disk drives. Seeing such a smart little machine where all the hardware was packed into this rather smart little box with a fine screen was awesome. So was the prices at that time, I might add. This is dating way back to 1988.
When I studied at a business high school in Roskilde I saw IBM-compatible PCs. I saw prices being about half of Apple Macs at that time, and programs seemed to be more readily available. What I later learned was that much depended upon your perspective. There was quite a lot of software already available at that time, but I wasn’t really looking. Neither were all that many other people in the computer magazine industry, so noone rocked the boat…
What changed the whole thing was seeing Apple Macs down in France. Our lovely friends had long talked about their Macs and I began to see many new facets of the Apple saga. Many of the prejudices some of you readers may have are quite logical. I understand where many of you are coming from because I was exactly as you. Skeptical about all this positive press that people gave Apple products.
Some might say it’s almost like a lodge or a religion. The quality IS top-notch, the price is fair and stability is excellent. None of these things can be said about any “normal” PC’s — if they’re running Windows anyway — because everybody complains about battery times (when running Vista about half of the same notebook running XP) or lack of RAM. All these issues are just the tip of the iceberg.
When I ran consultancy for people I always saw the same ten problems, usually entailing:
- temporary internet files and cookies clogging up people’s machines
- fragmentation clogging up speed on programs
- lack of RAM memory when people used Microsoft Word for writting and Photoshop for picture manipulation and possibly even having Outlook in the system bar (running in the background) — and mind you this problem could be fixed with FREE programs, e.g. OpenOffice, Gimp and Thunderbird.
- people who didn’t update their programs
- mail issues because people had Outlook Express installed. People didn’t check the hyperlinks they clicked and consequently were subject to “clever” phishing…
- people running Internet Explorer. Every person who moved over to FireFox decreased their problems by 90%.
- people experiencing problems with Word especially when inserting graphics PRIOR to having completed their text editing. Issue has been corrected in updated versions, but was critical until about 2006/07.
- ZoneAlarm and Norton System Doctor issues. These memory hogs could turn a decent machine into an age-old machine if setup wrongly.
- Antivirus problems. People who downloaded things they shouldn’t have done and consequently were subjected not only to spyware but also viruses and worms, some of them rather destructive.
- Hardware incompetence. Some people couldn’t understand why there were jumpers on some extension cards, and when their machines wouldn’t boot they were lost.
There are, of course, many other points but the above ten are among the most widely experienced problems for pc-users.
In fact only weeks ago, we talked about how little time we spend in fault-finding and tracking problems. Things have worked excellently for those of us who have moved on. If that ticks off some pc-users so be it. Our enthusiasm is based upon facts as we see them. Those skeptics should test what we say. We KNOW you will love Apple Macs if only you gave these machines a fair chance.
Carpe diem. 🙂