I feel like I’m becoming something of an advocate for Apple machines these days, which is not something I ever saw coming. I hadn’t even used one until almost 12 months ago, and like many long-time PC users am guilty of having poked fun at them in the past (hur hur, one mouse button, hur hur, poor game support) but now that I’ve had one for a while, I’ve changed my tune. I’m finding that I can heartily recommend them for quite a wide cross-section of users, particularly when it comes to a portable machine.
My parent’s XP-based Dell laptop keeled over and died recently and while they’ve managed without a PC for a little while (!), they’re missing it. They’re faced with being forced (in practice) to switch to Vista if they buy a new Windows laptop, and they’d heard bad things about it (and not just from me I might add, their friends bought a Vista machine recently and have complained to them a lot about it) so were wondering what to do. My parents aren’t particularly technical but know their way around a computer, so long as nothing goes wrong, and aren’t looking for a gaming or power machine, just something that does email & internet, office tasks etc. Someone else in the family ‘knows someone at Microsoft’ (join the club ;)) and suggested to them that if they were reticent about Vista, the sequel would be out next year so they could always look forward to that, but of course that got me chuckling. I explained that not only was Vista several years late, so predictions about the release of a sequel are somewhat premature, at this point we have no idea of what it will be like.
They even asked me what I thought about desktop Linux, since they’d seen it as an option in one or other shop they went into - something that surprised me actually. However with no on-site support from me (since they’re now 3+ hours flight & train time away) I considered that to be a recipe for disaster, given my experiences even with the latest Ubuntu. Great if you’ve got a tech you can call when things go wrong, not so good otherwise, so I ruled that out.
So, my advice? Although they’d probably be ok with Vista, particularly since SP1, given they would have to re-adjust to Vista’s changes anyway, and given the kinds of things they want to do with it, I really think a MacBook would be a better fit for them as very casual, relatively non-technical people. I didn’t recommend this lightly, because they’re not made of money (being retired) and they will have to save up a little more than they would have to buy a budget Vista laptop, but I honestly think it will be better in the long run for them. There are no drivers to worry about, OS X is definitely easier for regular people to use even counting the adjustment from Windows, and in general everything usually just works with considerably less faffing about. The software to do most of what they want is already there as standard, and works in a consistent fashion. I also think face-to-face support is more readily available if they can find a Premium Apple Reseller; they had been shocked at the outrageous prices they were quoted just to *look* at their slowly dying Dell to see if it was economically fixable. Small Apple specialists seem to be better at providing that kind of more personal service if our local premium reseller is anything to go by, certainly more so than unit-shovellers like PC World / Currys.
Simply put, I honestly think people like my parents will have a better experience with a Mac longer term. I’ve advised them to find a decent reseller first and play with one to make sure they’re happy with the idea of making the transition, and that they’ll have some local hardware support to make them feel comfortable given I can’t be there to organise it, but I think if they get over that bump it’ll be plainer sailing for them.
May 30th, 2008 at 1:14 pm
Same here. I have never used a Mac before 2+ years ago, and while it does have shortcomings (from a developer POV: XCode is so behind Visual Studio; OpenGL is so behind D3D; …), the OS and general “feeling” is very nice. And, oh, the machine even looks nice, whereas most PC laptops come from a “we need no stinkin’ designers! we’ll just slap on a dozen stickers instead!” land.
May 30th, 2008 at 1:45 pm
I don’t know whoever it was they know at MS, but it was very foolish to spout such nonsense.
I would love a mac book pro myself but can’t afford one. If I did get one I must admit I would put bootcamp on it and load Vista
It’s a shame about the bad press Vista has got - a lot of it is vendor drivers… this shows an advantage Apple has when it controls both hardware and software to a tighter degree.
May 30th, 2008 at 2:29 pm
Indeed, I curse about it when the Apple drivers lag behind the vendor ones, but the advantage is definitely one of control.
It’s not just vendor drivers though, MS’s own software is often less reliable on Vista; certainly VS2005 has been considerably more flaky there for me, crashing during builds etc, and even Office 2007 has had some reported issues. Add to that that support for older software is getting dropped (e.g. Office 2000) forcing people to upgrade again, and for what tangible benefit? Very little for a non-power user. A lot of people are thinking that if they have to replace their software & hardware anyway because it won’t run on Vista, why not look at what Apple have to offer now? I don’t blame them.
I’m happy with technical bells and whistles but Vista hasn’t convinced me at all that it’s worth the hassle & expense, so it’s an even tougher sell to regular people, especially when the Macs are looking slicker all the time. MS dropped the ball in a big way on Vista, IMO it’s only the existing market conditions (inertia & lock-in, desktop Linux not being ready, Apple concentrating on consumers and not business, etc) that stopped it being a major catastrophe. To be fair I’m sure MS knows what a pigs-ear it made of it and I’m sure they’ll come back with something better, but we’ll see what the market thinks in due course.
May 30th, 2008 at 3:26 pm
Hey, that’s not what I said! I said if I was in charge I’d release Windows 2008 Workstation ASAP!
No idea when Win 7 will be out although they did a demo this week that was cool to watch.
[)amien
May 30th, 2008 at 3:48 pm
I wasn’t talking about you mate, AFAIK you’ve never talked to my parents’ UK-based family
Friend of a relative of my Dad’s, I have no idea who it even was.
May 30th, 2008 at 6:30 pm
Remember that Dell ship their systems with Ubuntu on it, so that’s probably where they had seen it. I’m making the switch next month, although I’ll still need to virtualise Windows XP, and it’ll definitely take me a while to get the hang of things. I’m looking forward to the switch, that’s for sure
May 31st, 2008 at 12:49 am
Too bad that from a developer point of view Apple simply sucks and makes Microsoft look like Open Source champions.
May 31st, 2008 at 11:42 am
From a developer point of view Macs are a very nice platform though, notwithstanding XCode not being as good as Visual Studio yet there are far more open source tools available, more easily. At a corporate level they’re users and not contributors to open source I’ll grant you - they’re in the same boat as people like Oracle there. But since the core of the OS is rooted in open source (if not the upper levels) I’d say it’s actually more open than Windows is on balance. It’s possible to grab most *nix oriented open source code and build it on OS X with fewer problems than on Windows.
And I’d say it’ll take a lot more to make MS look like Open Source champions. A LOT more
May 31st, 2008 at 2:32 pm
Everyone complains about Apple using open source but not supporting it when they couldn’t be more wrong.
Apple often contributes to open source having given back plenty of source code to the FreeBSD project (which Darwin’s userland is based on, and Darwin itself is also open source, as you said).
Apple also now owns CUPS, which is a major standard for printing on OSX and Unix.
My wife switched to Macs as soon as she used one, and my parents switched to avoid Vista. Even my brother who usually loves everything Microsoft has replaced Vista with XP on his new PC.
May 31st, 2008 at 6:08 pm
I recently played a couple of minutes on a hi-end Mac - I’m a MS user since fetus state - and I was surprised on how ‘basic’ and minimal it all looked.. I mean I don’t know but in Windows I feel I have control and more detail!:P
PS. With Linux you have way too much control:)
May 31st, 2008 at 7:23 pm
You have just as much control, it’s just a little more out of your way, generally speaking. More things are defaulted or implemented via drag/drop. It’s a bit of an adjustment at first, took me maybe a month or two to be really comfortable, but once you’re acclimatised it’s definitely nicer to use.
June 2nd, 2008 at 6:50 am
“PS. With Linux you have way too much control:)”
How can there be anything as “too much control”? In Linux, and particularly with some distributions such as Ubuntu, you can control simply as much as you need. You can simply select a different theme from a menu, or alternately you can create a custom theme from installed icons sets, controls and window borders. There are varying levels of options, and you by all means don’t need to make use of all of them. I like to know that I can customize applications and features to suit my needs, even if I may never actually require it. I used to be a Windows user, and I was accustomed to ignoring “locked” features which I disliked. With Linux, this is never the case.
June 2nd, 2008 at 3:31 pm
I am not even talking about support Open Source but rather about Apple being extremely secretive ( to the point of absurdity) about all their new stuff which not only affects their customer relations but also extends into their dealings with developers.
This is not my personal experience since I don’t do Apple related development, I just keep hearing this complaint from a lot of people who actually do develop for Apple platforms.
June 2nd, 2008 at 3:33 pm
Irddev:
He has a point. There is nothing wrong with being able to control everything … the problem is ( or at least used to be ) that Linux required a lot of customization to get some sort of sensible behaviour out of vanilla system.
June 6th, 2008 at 10:29 am
Ubuntu has definitely raised the bar in that regard, but it’s not quite there yet. Plus, because it is so configurable it’s rather easier than some other systems to mess about and completely screw something up such that you need to call in someone who knows what they’re doing to fix it.