Sore Eyes

You can probably guess what my stance is. Go for the Mac! Okay, now for specifics: I'm a big fan of using OmniWeb for my OSX browsing. It's free and it's fast, and it lets me do tricky things like spoof my user agent string and kill pop-ups and stuff. I still have to break out IE every now and then though. (My online bank accounts seem to hate anything but IE.) Lately I've been trying out a new little utility called LaunchBar (http://www.obdev.at/products/launchbar/) that basically lets you access anything on your computer via a few keystrokes. It's useful. For e-mail I'm just using the Mac Mail application. It does everything I need and the spam-filtering works really well. I also like how integrated it is with the Address Book and iChat. Appleworks is fine for what little word processing I do, but to be honest I've had some problems opening Word and Excel files from PC people. Luckily there are some nice little applications that will convert them for you. The Mac is also turning me into more of a Linux Chick than I expected. I use the Terminal a lot, and I get a ridiculous thrill out of seeing my uptime just climb and climb. The Snook helped me get XDarwin running and I now use the Gimp for all my image manipulation. It took a while to get used to, but now I can do everything I used to do with Photoshop with the added benefit of it being completely FREE! :)

Okay, so what don't I like. Well, the biggest problem is lack of software. Actually it's more of a perceived problem than an actual one. My computer does everything I want it to. It's just disheartening to go into a computer store and see shelves and shelves of crap PC software and not even have the option of getting it for yourself. I've also had some problems getting peripherals to work. Some companies just really don't care if they piss off the Apple market by never releasing OSX drivers. I couldn't use my scanner natively in OSX until somebody wrote an awesome utility called VueScan that supports, like, hundreds of different scanners. My dodgy digital camera won't work at all, and I have to use a card reader to transfer pictures. I guess the point of the "just works" stuff is that you have to have recent, well-made peripherals to begin with. If you've got a collection of random stuff like me, it'll be a bit trickier to get everything playing nicely.

I do have one OSX horror story too. All was well until I tried to do the 10.1.5 update way back when. My machine hung during the install and I ended up having to wipe everything and start over. It was a nightmare. I advise you to partition your hard drive right off the bat - leave at least 10GB for the system disk, and then keep all your applications and stuff on the other drive. I also regularly backup my home directory there as well. But to be honest, I haven't had a single crash or problem since the Jaguar update. So maybe it was a one-off.

So anyway, those are my only complaints, and they aren't even really about the OS or the machine. I'm just pissed off at the way other companies (retailers and peripheral manufacturers) don't put enough effort into their Mac offerings. But the only way out of that mess is for the market share to increase, so... GET THE MAC! :)

Somehow I had a feeling you'd be posting in favour of the Mac. :-)

Support for my existing peripherals isn't that big a deal. I have a dirt-cheap HP scanner with a parallel port interface which I know won't be supported on whatever system I buy next, and an HP LaserJet 4L which I could in the end just leave hooked up to my current PC and fire up as and when I need it - which isn't often, to be honest - if there's no useful OS X support.

I think the biggest wrench for me will be using something other than Agent for my email and Usenet reading. I'd much prefer an integrated mail/news client, but I can take my time finding something suitable because I'll probably keep using my current PC for at least some purposes during the transitional period.

I've read about LaunchBar on a couple of weblogs lately, and it's certainly something I'll look into if I do go the OS X route: being able to launch and drive most applications via the keyboard is something I really like about Windows, and I know OS X (and all the MacOS versions, pretty much) is much more heavily mouse-driven.

The major practical obstacle to my buying a Mac is probably that there are only two authorised Apple dealers in my area. One is my local PC World, which I wouldn't trust for any sort of technical support in the event of a hardware failue, and the other is a branch of the John Lewis department store chain which devotes a corner of their TV/Hi-Fi department to computers, and a corner of that corner to Apple hardware. Again, not likely to be much use if I really need support. (But then, since my current PC is still functional I'd always have the option of going online and googling for advice.)

I'm still keeping an open mind about Linux: the latest versions of KDE are clearly much improved, and if I'm willing to spend the time configuring this subsystem and installing an update to that library then I can probably get a satisfactory system. It's partly a question of whether it's worth the bother when for most purposes OS X "Just Works!"

Anyway, no doubt I'll be posting more on this subject in the weeks to come. In the meantime, thanks for the advice.

I've been waiting ages to comment on this! Firstly why update if you're keeping your old machine? Secondly, I really have a problem with Macs. I never saw why they attracted rabid enthusiasm and when I had to use one for any length of time I was pretty frustraited. Having only one mouse button (I've got 5 but 2 should be minimum) means that there are no context sensitive menus.

The biggest reason for not getting a mac is the lack of support and choice of software and hardware. You know that with a PC you can get pretty much anything you want. I don't know of any Mac only things and if there are any I'm sure they are miniscule to the number of "PC only" things.

What happens when something goes wrong? With a PC you have countless people to advise you and repairing is a doddle. I'd hate to think what would happen if the same happened with a Mac. Doesn't it have on-board sound & video?

The reason to update is that my poor old P-166 just isn't up to opening a dozen browser windows (or tabs), collecting my mail, downloading a week's worth of Usenet posts and running my mail server. The motherboard has already been taken up to the 64MB RAM capacity and that's barely adequate. I end up running with 20MB of swapfile in use as soon as I get to my desktop, before I even open an application. Furthermore, although my PC does have two USB ports the operating system I use (Windows 95 OSR2) doesn't "officially" support USB.

(I know I could have "upgraded" to Windows 98 or ME, but both had serious drawbacks in my opinion. The later versions of Windows - 2000 & XP - both require more RAM than my motherboard will take, not to mention lots more raw processing power.)

I'm used to a 2- or 3-button mouse too, but I figure that if millions of Mac owners have been able to cope with one then I'll get used to it too. Besides, if you click on an object with a mouse you should normally find that the application's menu bar shows context-sensitive options - the real difference is where the options show up, not whether they're context sensitive.

The key when it comes to applications is to have access to the data contained in your files. An awful lot of the data I have is held in formats which aren't platform-specific: I can open an HTML file for editing in a text editor regardless of what OS I'm using, and once OpenOffice is available for OS X I'll have no worries about the rare occasions when I - as a home user - have to open a Word or Excel file. (And in the meantime if AppleWorks can't cope with a MS Office file I can always open the files on my Wintel box and convert them to RTF or HTML or whatever.)

I'm still looking at some software categories, as I mentioned in my original post, but I think there are enough applications to keep me going. It's true that there are lots of applications which haven't been ported to OS X, but in the end there are very few types of data which a Mac can't handle.

As far as repairs and spares go, one of the reasons that Macs are relatively expensive is that they're much better made on average than PCs. It's true that the iMac is an integrated unit, but considering that I've owned the same PC for five years and haven't upgraded my video card I don't think I'm suddenly going to fall prey to the desire to keep up with the latest, hottest trends in display technology. I've upgraded my PC's RAM and my hard disk capacity, but that's about it. Whilst I fully acknowledge that in principle the internal expansion capabilites of the Wintel platform are greater, but in practice I've made so little use of them that they might as well not have been there.

It's most likely that if I want to upgrade my hardware it'll be in terms of adding RAM (which is at least as easy as with a PC) or peripherals like scanners and printers. The iMac has a plenty of fast I/O ports (USB/Firewire), and I can live with that. I'll grant you that if I'm less familiar with Mac hardware it may take me longer to figure out what's going wrong in the event of a problem, but I've used enough different hardware platforms over the last twenty-odd years that I'm not worried about learning one more.

The mouse button thing is the absolute WORST reason people give for not getting a Mac. First off, all Mac mice are USB. Just buy yourself a Logitech mouse with 14 buttons if it's that important to you and plug it in. Otherwise you can get context menus on anything by either A) holding down the command key while you click, or B) just holding the mouse button down for an extra half-second, while will bring up the context menu. Easy peasy. I'm a fan of the command clicking method, as I don't like to move my hands from the keyboard much. The point is, Apple didn't design a one-button mouse to be difficult. They tested it, and they found that most non-techie users have a lot of problems with right-clicking vs. left-clicking. It's a lot easier to tell Grandma how to check her e-mail over the phone if you've only got one button. And nearly anyone who uses one for any length of time (not just 10 minutes in the library) gets used to it. Now I find that when I try to use a PC, I'm constantly clicking the wrong mouse button. It just doesn't feel natural anymore.

(Sidenote: I'm trying to remember the last time I even pulled up a context menu and can't. It was probably to save an image off a web site or something. Most everything else has a simple (and standardized) keyboard shortcut that I use. Want "properties" for a file? Command-I. Open a new finder window? Command-N. People think Macs are mouse-centric, but I actually find with OSX that I use the mouse a lot less than I ever did before.)

Eh, sorry about the rant. I just get tired of seeing the mouse thing brought up (and debunked) over and over again on Slashdot. I've got one of the Apple Pro optical mice and I love it. The whole thing is one big button and I find my hand feels better after eight hours of using it. If you do get a Mac, John, (and you don't care about the extra buttons) I recommend them.

In terms of maintenance, if you want a custom setup and you can change around a lot, by all means go for Linux. With my iBook, the only thing I've needed to do in the past year was add some RAM, which I could've done myself (but ended up taking to the local dealer because I didn't have a screwdriver small enough). As for administering, based on what I've read at Slashdot most sysadmins would rather deal with Macs than PCs. They're just a lot harder to mess up. You don't have to worry about random missing DLLs and VBS viruses and stuff. Granted, it's taken Rodd some tinkering to get our machines both working together nicely on the network, but that's only because he had a jerry-rigged system to begin with. He admits that if he'd set everything up by the book, I would've been practically plug and play.

Whew! Still ranting. The only valid arguments, as I see it, are expense and software availability. There's no getting around the former. I think my machine is worth it. You may not. Fine. The latter can be deceptive though. I once argued with a PC-loving friend for half an hour over her assertion that there's way more free software for the PC. I kept telling her that I can run all sorts of Unix stuff easily. Eventually I got her to admit that what she really meant was there's not a lot of PIRATED warez for Macs. So yeah, if you're talking about cracked copies of Quicken or Photoshop, a PC is your bitch. I'm happy that everything on my machine right now is 100% legal, and I can do everything I used to do illegally on a PC. It's kinda nice to be on the right side for once.

Okay, will stop ranting now. I just haven't had a good OS debate in a while. :)

(John, feel free to get whatever machine you want. My OS loyalty won't preclude me from continuing to read your excellent site...)

Wow. I thought I'd logged into Slashdot by mistake there for a minute. :-)

On the mouse issue: I realise that I could plug in my USB trackball to an iMac, but I figure that getting used to a single-button mouse is worth a try. It's good to have the option to choose.

On the software issue: my PC is wholly legal software license-wise, and I have no desire to turn into a pirate if I buy a new PC of whatever type. (I'm fortunate enough that this PC isn't responsible for generating my livelihood, so there really aren't any "must have" pieces of softare for me.) Over time I reckon that more and more Linux software will end up being ported to OS X, so I don't think I'll run short of options in the areas that matter to me. The plethora of software options on the Wintel platform is a theoretical advantage, but not necessarily one that pans out in practice.

On pricing: I acknowledge that Macs are more expensive than PCs - but they're also much better built than the average random PC clone.

On reader loyalty vs OS loyalty: I never doubted it for a second, but thanks for the kind words. ;-)

I'll start by clearing up some misunderstandings. Firstly I didn't realise that you could do the command + click to get context menus up. However that might not have been on the version of Mac OS that I used.

As for the video card, I wasn't refering to upgrading but failure. My old olivetti's Video chip died and the only way to replace it would have been to get a brand new MB straight from Olivetti (probably sending the machine to them). If my video card dies I can have my system working again within an hour. The same goes for all onboard Hardware. I don't buy the argument that PC's aren't as well built. I think windows may make them less reliable but Win XP seems to solve that to some extent.

As for free software I would say that there's far more for the PC and I'm not including Warez (not something you'd include in a reccomendation IMHO). I've d/l'd many free programs that I've found very useful and I have my doubts that macs would have the same number. More over paid software is more plentiful AFAIK.

At the end of it all I just can't see any reason FOR the mac other than it's not a PC.

If you do want a mac why not get an Ibook (or whatever laptops are called). If you don't want to upgrade then you might as well get one and save some space at the same time as well as gain portability.

As far as hardware failures go, I take your point that a system with on-board video takes more fixing. But in several years of using a PC and being the person friends call when their PC goes wrong I've never yet had anyone suffer a video card failure.

I suspect that 90% of the time if it happens it'll be because of a manufacturing defect and will reveal itself within the first week or so of use. In that situation even if I could replace the video card myself I wouldn't do so, as it would be covered under warranty. Basically, I'll take the risk if I feel that the other benefits of the system outweigh the disadvantages of a hardware failure.

If I was working on an unlimited budget I'd certainly consider going for a PowerMac G4, which comes in a conventional tower case and is somewhat more PC-like in design. But they're dual-processor systems intended for power users, and prices (not including the cost of a display) start at the very, very top end of my price range.

If I were someone who was constantly adding hardware to my PC or upgrading components then I might be persuaded that it was worth the stretch, but I think that a cheaper iMac with some software would be a better use of my money.

As for the iBook, there are probably three problems:

1) the hard disk and RAM capacity of iBooks are somewhat less than those of an iMac;

2) I hate laptop keyboards;

3) I just don't need to carry a laptop around with me, since my PDAs (the Palm IIIx I carry everywhere I go, and the Psion Series 5 which I carry with me if I'm going to need to do some serious writing or spreadsheet work on the move) meet about 95% of my mobile computing needs. The other 5% involves mobile internet access, and right now that isn't sufficient reason for me to buy a big, fragile PC which I could leave on a bus or drop.

My experience with a friend's newish PC which came with Windows XP is that XP does everything it can to come between you and finding out what's going on under the skin. I'm sure I could get used to it in time, but I don't see any compelling reason to do so.

Free software-wise, I agree that there's a lot of good Windows freeware around. But take a look at these counts of the number of projects (summarised by target operating system) from http://sourceforge.net/softwaremap/trove_list.php?form_cat=199

Operating System
BeOS (313 projects)
MacOS (1520 projects)
Microsoft (11611 projects)
OS Independent (12264 projects)
OS/2 (82 projects)
Other OS (671 projects)
PDA Systems (454 projects)
POSIX (21169 projects)

POSIX incorporates the various Unix-like systems, and breaks down as follows according to http://sourceforge.net/softwaremap/trove_list.php?form_cat=200

POSIX
AIX (85 projects)
BSD (1788 projects)
GNU Hurd (65 projects)
HP-UX (111 projects)
IRIX (157 projects)
Linux (13640 projects)
Other (446 projects)
SCO (32 projects)
SunOS/Solaris (1148 projects)

(Admittedly this is just a list of Open Source projects, but that's very much the trendy way to do free software nowadays, and I have a gut feeling that the proportion of Windows to Linux freeware that isn't Open Source is similar to the picture presented by SourceForge.)

Some reasons to go for an iMac:

* OS X is a nice, stable Unix system with a really polished, friendly GUI;

* Apple concentrate on maximising ease of use, not walling in users with DRM and exploitative End User License Agreements;

* Apple simply design really slick products. (I know that's hardly a quantifiable point, but it's true!)