Once you go Mac, you’ll never go back
December 18th, 2006 by Asia
My reasons for never going back to PC again
- Inbox Spam Control: I used to get so frustrated with Outlook’s spam controls. They were always breaking or not working. With mac mail the controls for spam are seemless and I’ve never have to edit complex rules. Mail offers one quick little icon that I just click and and not ever worry about again.
- Clean Desktop: I love the mac interface, no crazy corporate logo’s anywhere that drive me to insanity that I have to change the background, color schemes, etc.. No more annoying “windows recommends” or other weird popups on the corner of my screen. No ram intensive desktop themes with additional harddrive intensive software to install. It’s just so CLEAN!
The Linux Interface: The Unix-Like Features of Mac OS X: I can’t tell you how excited I am about the Terminal which allows me to SSH into my servers for easy code and access to anything anywhere and anytime. I LOVE THIS!- Drag and Drop: Now here’s the easy part, almost anything on my imac can be dragged and dropped with ease. No right clicking, no clicking through folders, just drag and drop and forget.
- Firefox 1.5 on Mac: It’s just so pretty, feels like Firefox was made for mac. Safari is pretty too, hopefully Apple will get that tightened up.
- Plug and Play: This could not be further from the truth! I plug and it actually plays, no crazy clicking install popups. Life could not be better!
There are many more reasons that I will never touch a PC again, but these are some of my top reasons. I have to thank Guy Kawasaki and my IT Network guy Emil at Seeb Technologies for recommending imac and simplifying my life.
Posted in Mac / Apple
December 18th, 2006 at 1:57 pm
Totally Agree, 10 year Windows User…..never again. Love MAC OS X! Have a new Macbook Pro
1. ‘Expose’ simple feature but amazing. Use it all the time.
2. ‘Stable’ this is a very concret OS and i’ve never had to restart in order to get the machine to run again.
3. ‘Clean’ love the clean interface. I love simplicity
4. It all just works..everything a used to do I can do on a Mac sometimes even better
December 18th, 2006 at 2:34 pm
I am feel you on never going back to PCs. I have grown up with PCs and currently work in the IT field surrounded by PCs but I just bought a new C2D Macbook for my Fiancee and myself and we both love them. To quote her, “Everything is so easy and it is all there right in front of you”. I think she nailed it right on the head. She is not a very technical person and she can navigate around her Mac better than she ever could her PC. Her Airport card is really being flaky, but I am hoping that 10.5 will fix this. Other than the Airport issue, I have had no troubles at all. My next purchase will deffinately be another Mac.
February 23rd, 2007 at 7:47 am
Doesn’t seem to be a way to trackback this, so here comes a long comment instead:
I’ve been a Mac user since october 26th 2006, which was when I bought myself a Macbook, the Core Duo. standard configuration (now with plans on a supposedly much needed RAM upgrade). Two weeks later the Core 2 Duo version came out with double the RAM and more harddisk space for the same price, but still .. it’s a great laptop.
Before the Mac purchase I was an on-and-off Linux PC user, all the way from the late 1990s, around 1999 over to 2000. But in august 2001 I considered it all to be mature enough for a complete desktop experience so I decided to never dual-boot Windows and Linux again. It was all Slackware back then, following with a switch to Arch and then lastly Ubuntu.
I thought I would compare my Linux PC setup with the Macbook:
* Did I make the right choice to boldly go from being a Linux pragmatical fanatic to a Mac addict? Yes, absolutely!
* Did I get displeased by sacrificing the Linux advantages? No, because I never sacrificed anything: X11 server is an optional install found on the OS X DVD, which makes it possible to either run X11-for-Mac designed apps, or export applications directly in a network transport from the Linux computer over to the Mac OS X desktop, just like as if the Mac had been a graphical Linux setup.
Not that I ever use it (X11) now at all but it was important the first two weeks when I needed a “safety net of familiarity”, or more concrete put: seeing my favourite Linux apps run transparently and easy on my Mac desktop without hassle. They were there to use right away if I needed a specific Linux app I had relied on for a task, for years. Until you find the Mac equivalent it’s good to have that feature. Some will say it’s a must.
An SSH client is something I expect to be built-in to every OS. It’s a mystery why Microsoft hasn’t integrated it with Windows Vista, or have they? Because I never at least heard *anyone* say so.
Anyway, overall I made the best decision I could have ever made to switch over from a PC with Linux to a Mac computer. I haven’t used Windows in a serious manner since 2001, so I don’t belong to the “everyday user” group of people. Therefore my experience and expectation, including openness to “thinking different”, might differ a bit from the author.
If anyone would like to comment further you can also send me an e-mail to this address: tony (AT) osswriter (DOT) com
February 23rd, 2007 at 10:48 am
Thanks for the comments guys - I still love my imac and macbook and have no intention of going back. I’ve considered a vista upgrade on parallels but I really don’t want to spend the money for it - I just don’t miss windows at all. Unfortunately I have to keep parallels to test compatibility with IE and Firefox css issues - otherwise - never use it.
I’m doing some research on whether I should go with a Mac Mini vs an
iTVApple TV for more flexibility on watching files on my hdd through my tv. Any suggestions?Tony: I’m a huge fan of Debian Linux, I haven’t had much time to mess around in Ubuntu but heard lots of great things - But I’m skeptical about anything commercialized - especially Linux. I’m a bit old school however, I prefer to use VIM and browser refreshes for wysiwig than I do using dreamweaver or other html editing software. It just feels right and keeps me sane! So SSH on mac os x was a dream…
I might be interested in giving the X11 on my imac a chance tho - I’ve never looked into the cd, thanks for the tip! Visited your blog - I love it!
February 25th, 2007 at 7:35 pm
The name for the final product is not iTV - that was just a codename. The product name is Apple TV :-). I don’t know exactly which one is the better choice: the Apple TV is made for the living room out of the box and with an updated Front Row as far as I could see on the demonstration. But if you want something that works both as a computer and something that is part of your livingroom as a 2nd priority, then the Mac Mini is a better choice.
Apple TV: livingroom set-top box. Multimedia and prepared for television sets, sort of.
Mac Mini: a full-fledged computer that also has got some pretty decent livingroom features as a bonus.
The best thing to do is to talk to the nearest Apple retail store and ask them for a demonstration and make sure to know the exact difference in experiences and features between the two machines. I think most people will say the same thing as me if you ask around which one to spend money on. Another option is to save money for both
Regarding Linux ..
Ubuntu is an immature operating system for daily use - needs lots of tweaking because of the “will never include full functionality from first install”. It won’t handle mp3 and AAC support is hard to configure.
I can highly recommend PC Linux OS for an out-of-the-box experience. Ever heard of that one? The website is simply pclinuxos.com so it’s easy to find and a click away from a download. And yes, it is based on Debian behind the scenes, as far as I can remember.
For editing, I use GUI tools nowadays. But still, in an ssh session my favourite choices are vim and nano, the latter being great for jotting down memos and todos. VIM feels nicer for configuration files.
X11 for Mac is great. If not else to see Linux apps pop up on your Mac desk. Guaranteed to make you say “wow!”, and NOT in the Vista kind of way (thankfully) ..
February 25th, 2007 at 7:44 pm
Addition:
Ubuntu does play mp3 and aac files, of course, but not until you add it yourself in the repository configuration. It’s the whole “Ubuntu only wants to deal with free/liberal software” thing.
I myself at least prefer to have obvious multimedia features ready and done after the distro installation is complete. In these days you are not supposed to have to set those features up yourself, right?
It should just work, as it does with iTunes and.. well.. Windows Media Player 
February 25th, 2007 at 10:07 pm
(fixed iTV)
I just can’t get into the whole Ubuntu thing, I remember when I first got into linux, an old friend recommended Red Hat as a starter distro - but I found Debian to be much easier to install and Potato was my first distro - didn’t get far into the RH install and chucked it quickly. I have a bootable potato on a mini cd just to remind me how geeky I can be.
Vim’s the only text editor I use on Linux - wouldn’t dream of using anything else - I cry at the site of emacs lol.
I’ll pull out the X11 when I get a chance this week and let you know how it goes. I may just run potato on parallels with X11 too - that should be a neat experience. (Did I mention that I love my imac?)
February 26th, 2007 at 12:44 pm
The way I understand it, you like things in Linux the way they were back in 1999 some time, with things pretty basic on command-line and very simplistic desktops such as AfterStep version 1.x and GNOME 1.2? If I remember correctly, Debian Potato is from the Linux kernel 2.2 days and there barely was any USB support even. I was always a fan of Red Hat Linux 7.1 and SUSE 7, 5 CD edition (boxed)
Anyway, one thing with Ubuntu I got thinking about today is that they will pull things off nicely if their userbase keeps getting larger and larger. Unlike a commercial enterprise like Apple where things are already perfectly implemented and Just Works™, Ubuntu with their Canonical needs a much larger marketshare to show hardware vendors that they are ready for prime time. Smaller unknown companies like System76.com provides this demand for a full hardware + open source OS bundle, and there are more small companies that does the same too. Linspire is doing a good job as well, and I read today about Dell thinking seriously about pre-installing Linux on future systems. It’s great news, even though Dell has fallen to second place now among computer makers
Source:
http://www.dell.com/content/topics/global.aspx/ideastorm/ideasinaction?c=us&l=en&s=gen
PS. I adore my Macbook, even though it needs quadruple the RAM purchased.
March 7th, 2007 at 1:51 am
I guess my only issue with Ubuntu is that it’s commercialized. I like that Linux is getting the much deserved attention it’s been needing, I just prefer my old school ways.
Sorry about not checking up on my spam postings, the URL you posted pushed you to spam