Why buy an Apple?

[Koelling]

My parents are web/print designers, and they use Macintosh. As owners of the small business, they were approached by a senior graphic design student at the metro college asking if he could fill an internship requirement with them. They thought, "Why not? it's free labor and maybe we can teach him something." The first day he showed up, they realized that he had no Macintosh experience aside from the class labs. He got in the way more than he helped. Not only did he lack the required skills to work in their office, he complained about it in a very unprofessional way. He was impressed with their productivity but as for him, he would not have kept his job because he was unqualified. Point is: learn the tools of your career. Most of today's jobs can be done better with Macintosh. Some can't. Don't close your options by only learning Windows or Macintosh or Linux. Branch out as much as possible.

[Ricky]

And don't you dare forget that multimedia on computers was born on the Mac. I'd say most of the commercials and TV shows out there wouldn't look nearly as good if they had been done on a PC. Yes, you heard me. Haven't you seen the commercials? Almost every commercial I see for major web sites is shown in a Mac interface with IE. Why? Because it looks so much better than Windows. My dad's friend uses Final Cut Pro on a Mac for video production, and he uses Photoshop along with that. They're an unbeatable combination. And they were both created on the Mac platform.

Other reasons I use a Mac:
[list=1]Ease of use. When I want to get something done, I can do it without fussing over details.
It stays out of your way. You can have a dialog box open and it won't command you to take care of it immediately.
The iApps. I created a photo album in iPhoto in about two minutes, including the photo import. iTunes is my music solution, and is much better than Windows Media Player on Win XP because the music doesn't hop around when you play it. I don't use iDVD because I don't have a SuperDrive, but I will be using iMovie for school this upcoming school year.
It connects to PC's. My work Mac works with our XP file server. That's all I need for my job.[/list=1]
So, you can do everything on a Mac that you can do on a PC. "Except crash, like the stock market."

[MDLarson]

Originally posted by Nummi_G4
No Windows OS. windows is made by M$. A horrible monopoly that wants to control your life. need I say more ?

That's funny… I wore my Microsoft Monopoly shirt today!

I got it at MacSurfShop.com a while ago. It's my favorite T-shirt!

[hulkaros]

...It's not from Wintel side of things which is the closest thing in the Dark Side of the Force in our realm

Seriously though: Working as a technician for both Mac and PCs (for PCs for ages while for Macs only a year or so...) I found out the truth: The PCs no matter what you do to them or from where you buy them or even what OS they have (Win2k server editions included) they misbehave! For no apparent reason even if you reformat them, clean-install apps and OSes they work like bombs: They just tic-tac then BOOM even if you or someone else didn't press the button ;(

At the same time the worst thing that can happen to a Mac is to reinstall the OS, apps and any backup you may have in just under an hour at the most! Hardware related problems are nowhere to be found!

For those they say that their PCs with Win2k and/or XP are rock solid that's far from truth: I've seen Win2k servers crash on installing a network device or app, or even worse power-supplies burning, hard disks crashing, Geforce's not working ANY resolution above 1024x768, NAT services crashing, security holes, viruses and other stuff that you ALMOST never see at the Mac side of the force... Hell, I've seen PCs with XP rebooting themselves just by running Media Player on a fresh installation after a minute or two with ONLY office 2k and/or office XP installed... Modems disappear after turning off the PC and starting over again... CD-RW NOT burning disks or lose previously written contents!!! Inserting CDs, DVDs for 5 or 10 times and after that you cannot read optical media no matter what you do, only a reset will get things back to normal... I could go on and on but at M$, Dell, IBM, HP, Compaq, Intel sites and MANY other huge PC companies' sites ANYONE can read the BIG problems that Win2k and XP have... but hey: I forgot! Your PC with XP does not have any problems... Well I have news for you: The world has hundreds of millions of PC users out there and they DO have problems with Win2k AND XP and you know what? HUGE problems... Do you know how many human working hours have been lost on Wintel's avatar? Infinity! And that's only part of the problem because you see you lose time and money too! Time that you could read a book, watch a film or simply hang out with your friends... Money that you could buy that book or film-ticket...

Anyway, I think that no matter what I or anyone says, a Mac is a Mac and a PC is a PC... Which one is better? Mac of course... Why? Because:
-Crashes less than ANY windows version
-You can troubleshoot a Mac with less time and knowledge
-If looks can kill, Mac is a serial killer
-Mac's TCO is cheaper
-I can GUARANTEE to someone that his/her Mac will work with his Digital devices
-Mac has the iPod (I know that it works with PCs but NOT that good)
-You plug devices and they work even if you HAVE to install the drivers
-When you put your computer to sleep you can have that word processor or app open and still got it back when you wake your computer and after all said and done Mac does it faster and 99% of the time
-Mac has the eject button on the keyboard
-Mac has the Dock
-Mac has the Column View
-You can be sure that when you shut down your Mac that it will do just that while a PC, yes even with XP, will tell you something that says that you, the user, HAVE to END NOW that stupid app that doesn't respond ?!?!
-Viruses? What viruses?
-Security holes getting fixed in less than a week by Apple and not after a month or more like that M$ company or dare I say that M$ DOES NOT fix 'em at all
-iApps rule!
-When you install Mac OS X.x.x you can guarantee that old-Mac-fella that his 10 year old app and/or device will work with the new OS but can you say the same thing with Win2k and/or XP?
-You can be sure that in a presentation that you will make at your boss, your clients, your friends, et al. your Mac will not make you feel uncomfortable by crashing on you
-You do not restart your computer after installing a 400KB update or a simple system utility... Even when you MUST do that at a Mac you can log out and log back in!
-Mac is like wine and/or whisky... After some time, it works better and most reliable while a PC gets slow, slower, slowest and then dies... Mac's life is closer to human's life time while a Wintel PC's life is closer to dog's time
-Aqua looks and acts better than Luna in any area
-No System Restore! If XP was THAT good then it would not needed such a feature (or is it another problematic utility from M$, hmmm?)
-No Activation procedure... Since when I have to buy 2 or more XPs just to use them for my 3 or more PCs? No thanks! I can be sure that when I buy Jaguar I can install it at my 3 Macs (for home use) without letting Apple knowing if and when I do such a thing... What the fack? Since when I have to buy 2 or more DVDs, Audio CDs or games to use them in my car, in my wife's car, in my living room, console and/or DVD player et al? Come on! We all know that Activation Procedure is NOT democratic by any means and M$ MUST be punished for wanting to act Big Brother on their customers...
-You can listen to the music, burn that audio CD, download from the internet, read/write/view that presentation for your work, have misc apps open and ALL these in an iMac 500Mhz/512 RAM/20GB/CD-RW without worrying that the system will crash or anything...
-Hell, even M$ says that some features in their Office:Mac are MUCH better than their windows counterparts at their own site!
-Hardware/Software MEGA compatibility! You can be sure that TiBook/iBook/PowerMac/iMac et al. can use the same apps, devices/peripherals with NO problems...
-Airport: You cannot find a wireless network solution that works THAT good in a Wintel PC with any OS installed...
-No floppy!
-No COM, LPT, IRQ, DMA, etc. BS that you find in that arcane Wintel platform
-Gigabit ethernet
-Xserve + unlimited licenses = less money and headaches than ANY Wintel solution
-Mac OS 9.x.x... Yes, I know that is old but it still does MANY things that no new OS can do and also you can have it at the SAME time with the new OS... Can you say that with ANY Windows version? Nope! For God's sake they went on and decreased DOS support into a minimal one in the new Windows versions!
-Final Cut Pro + DVD Studio Pro + Cinema Tools
-Photoshop, Quark, et al simply work better at the Mac side of the force...

Oops! The time passed and I still write why I use a Mac: Well, enough time lost explaining, lets get back using my Mac

[Dehuti]

I'll try to write brief: it's not about stability of OS (I hanged AIX, Linux, W2k, OS X also), it's about what lies beneath. I think Apple has got themself rank of immortal company, because of switching to UNIX in technical layer of OS. I saw many things in my life, but X is coolest system ever. That's why whitout any doubt I bought myself G4, gathering possibility to run commands like VI or ps -aux | grep <smething>. It makes life much easier when you can carry all power of that tools in you suitcase. Microsoft can't do that. I'll not deal with who is going to win on the market and (Apple or Soft&Micro) and which computer is better - it's worhtless. Apple makes computers for choosen ones, they are for sure better designed and more practical but still not for everyone (in terms of price for example or avaliability - in Europe/Poland it's hard to find reseller!). I'm proud owning one and be different than anyone here. Originality - that's what is all about.

[Ricky]

Hulkuros is right about one thing... the longetivity of the Mac. The PC seems to wear out after a couple of years... We have an 800 MHz Compaq in our offices that couldn't be more than a year old, and it's already almost dead... I know people who still use their Mac IIci's!

Apple is like a brand name shoe. If you buy shoes at a local K-mart, they fall apart in a couple of months. If you buy a pair of $50 Nike's, they'll last for about a year to a year and a half. So for $30 extra, you get so much more life out of the shoe. It's the same with Macs and PC's... People complain about the hafty price tag for a Mac, but you get what you pay for and then some. It lasts a long time.

This is why Macs are in the Industrial class of computers, while Dells are only Consumer class.

[marmotton]

I use both Windows 2000 at work and Mac OSX at home. I have to say that my experience with Windows 2000 is really bad in terms of stability: it crashes on me completely at least 2-3 times a week (however, this was a tremendous improvement compared to Window98 on the same system (multiple daily crashes) and Windows NT (about the same as now)).
I also waste a huge amount of time fixing stuff. Lately my problem was trying to uninstall some applications before installing a new version that my company required. A nightmare.

So this is why I like my Mac at home. If my company chooses to give me a Windows machine, it means they are ready for me to spend countless hours fixing it or being on the phone with IT support. I can't afford to do this at home, neither do I want to since it would take time away from my family.

Macs really just work. I have used MacOSX at 100% since last Fall. I had one kernel error one day (I still don't know why because it happened while I was away. Your guess is as good as mine) and that was my one and only crash. My computer is on all the time. Application-wise my biggest problem is Internet Explorer (Microsoft), which I have to Force Quit pretty often.

Installing applications on MacOSX is ultra easy. So is removing them. They are very well compartmentalized, so they don't interact with each other. I can have 20 applications running at the same time, I can't even tell the difference (well, OK I have over 1GB of RAM on my system so there is room)

I can move hundreds of file around and my system is still usable while it's happening (try doing that on a PC: take a folder full of images and copy them somewhere else: the system goes down to its knees and you can barely use it to do anything else. I was trying that on a brand new 2.4GHz P4 Compaq last week and I just could not believe it). On a Mac, not a problem. You have to love multithreading. That's a really pro system

I also like the fact that I can name my files anyway I want, and am not constrained by extensions.

And obviously I love iTunes. I was never able to find anything close to being as good to install on my Windows work PC ... still waiting. Bummer

So get a Mac, you won't regret it.

[fryke]

It's also a matter of style. Either you've got it or you don't.