Saturday, September 04, 2010

Mac Time

Should I switch from the functional black box of my Windows laptop to the gleaming toy of a Mac? I am probably 20 years behind in facing this question. Everywhere around me, I see people willing to live with single threaded Mac OSes, slow browsers, flash-less world, walled garden, whatever, to own and display Mac products. Here is the onion's take on this cult.

New Apple Friend Bar Gives Customers Someone To Talk At About Mac Products

3 Comments:

Blogger macshaggy said...

Threadless, flashless, walled garden world of a mac?!? Uh, last time I checked it had a UNIX base that you can actually touch and play with? It plays nicely with threads, like any other unix, it runs <*cough*>flash<*cough*>. I only cough because flash is horrible and always has been. I know coming from a windows world flash is a gem to have but I've always preferred perl, unix, emacs, and other open source applications, so the closed off world of flash I've never understood.

All I can say is that 20 years ago I left windows for BSD, and played with Linux till 2002 when I was tired with the crappy GUI implementations and picked up OS X. I haven't looked back and never will.

So, you can decide if it's for you. The GUI is nothing like Windows, it's easier in some instances in others confusing, to a windows person but I can tell you that all my scientific UNIX apps ported over just nicely and it took me seven years before I wanted to change out my old G4 box for a shiny new Mac Book Pro.

It's been just that stable that I have never needed to reinstall the OS for that seven years. And I say that because a friend of mine as had 3 machines and countless reinstalls of the OS in the same amount of time.

It may seem to be a toy but it's what a computer should be. Stay out of way and have lots of processing power for your applications.

Your choice if you want a new machine but consider why everyone seems to be buying a Mac around you if that is what you are seeing.

10:09 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I think OS X is better for getting work done than Windows (if your work involves programming). Most scientific / programming utilities are easier to get to compile in OS X than in Windows. OS X handles threading nicely, has a nice UI, has Flash (and Silverlight!). It's massively more expensive than a comparable PC, and Ubuntu is now actually quite good. As macshaggy said, Apple computers last a long time: I had my G3 iMac for 5 years and my current iMac for 3 years (with no plans to replace it).

10:33 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Thanx. I was biased by my ipod/iphone experiences... Um, Ok, I am going to hold my breath and jump.

-- Metoo

3:12 AM  

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