This is such an interesting topic, I had to respond!
I remember, back in the day, when I was a poor student. The year was late 1993 or 1994, and I had not quite heard (or understood) the concept of the Internet and its importance to future developments. I picked up a PC Magazine and began to read about a new operating system Microsoft was going to release called Microsoft Windows 95. This operating system made me see the stars. I was hooked to computers, and I realized computers were what I needed to communicate, express my thoughts, record my ideas; essentially I had the profound feeling the computer was a tool that would allow me to learn and grow as a human being.
Whats more, I felt computers could bring to the forefront topics of interest I had, but the general public did not seem to accept or learn about. I would be able to discuss news, science, politics, etc, with other people of common interests. By holding these discussions, we would all grow in knowledge, principles, and mutual respect.
Mind you, I was really struck by the concept of multimedia as that means of sharing thoughts. That small cds could fit things like an entire encyclopedia, and actually add to the medium by adding sound, more pictures, and video/presentations struck me as profound. However, in reading that article, I could see a clear focus towards communication amongst vast arrays of people all over the world. This would be a tool to help bring us together, and pool our resources of knowledge, and grow as a human race.
The progress of processors also encouraged me to believe that, while computers would be an incredible tool for people all over the world with the release of Windows 95, as computers would get faster, I would look back at Windows 95 and realize how archaic and limiting it was. Remember, at the time, looking at this 40 page spread of an operating system in a magazine with various windows of functionality laid out so that the average person could use a computer was an amazing thing to me. I wasnt very informed about Macs, the Windows world was large enough for me at the time that I didnt need to venture from it in order to learn new and fascinating things about computers. At that time, and at that place, computers seemed limitless, and I saw the stars.
With those high expectations in mind, when the release of Windows 95 occurred, it met some of my expectations. The Internet became a concept I understood, and I knew the computer and Internet access would spread throughout society and cause a revolution of some form. Yet, I found that Windows 95 and future versions of Windows to be a let down. Sure Windows 95 was a huge release. Yet future versions of Windows didnt add enough functionality or ease of use I was coming to expect. Sure Bill Gates was great at getting up in front of people and talking about the future with speech recognition, smart computers, applicances hooked to the Internet, etc, but the fact is each version of Windows offered not even a glimpse of the future, and not much in the way of progress in my eyes.
When Windows XP was released, Microsoft had let me down for the last time. Other then a slightly reorganized My Documents folder and a few other doodads, I didnt see much of an improvement over Windows 2000. It has the same clumsy interface, for the most part, that Windows 95 began with. There were new features, to be sure, but the interface was hopefully rift with complexity that it was still neccessary to consult a manual to locate useful but well hidden features built into XP.
Then the company I work for became involved with Apple. I began to go to Apples website, and look at their products. I was looking for a replacement to my old Athlon 500 MHZ PC running Windows XP. As a gamer, I needed a computer with a new video card to keep up with the modern games being released. I had long since given up on the gains in productivity and functionality I had come to expect in the early days.
In looking at Apples website, what struck me as much impressive was Mac OS X. Apple has just started advertising Jaguar. It was amazing that there were these iApps built directly into the operating system that would do so many of the things I had wanted for so long. There was nothing compelling on the PC to organize my music. Sure there were products such as Real Player and Music Match, but they offered the same clunky interface as Windows itself. They purposely held back on the features unless you paid a monthly fee or a price to purchase the expanded version (which is understandable, they are out to make money). Yet Apple had iTunes, and this was clearly the best program on the market to organize music; and when you ordered a Mac, it came for free!
I had always wanted to get into photography, as it is a great opportunity to express yourself and record your life, but I wanted the ability to edit and store my photos so I could correct and reproduce them seemlessly at will. If I took hunddreds or thousands of photos, Windows had no means of organizing them for me. Now, in my view, this is something an operating system SHOULD do. Not only does Mac OS X do it, it actually goes a step further and adds some very basic, yet version powerful, and quite adequate features to edit and share my photos.
iMovie and iDVD were obviously an incredible way for a beginner to get involved with video editing. Very simply, they didnt have peers on Microsoft Windows. It isnt just that Microsoft Windows doesnt come with comparable programs, what is really stricking is that I couldnt even go out and spend $500 and get comparable applications, that both offer the functionality of iMove and iDVD combined with the incredible ease of use. They even added even MORE features for digital photos with these two applications. I could import my photos from iPhoto into iMovie, create a huge slide show with music, and import that into iDVD with menus to organize everything, and then burn that slide slow to a DVD and send it out to family and friends so they could view it on their DVD!
And, there were other applications built right into the operating system. Sherlock, Mail, Address book, etc, plus the very apparent rock-solid reliability of an operating system in Mac OS X. What really amazed me was it became clear Apple would release new iApps and applications to its operating system in the future. Even the existing iApps would continue to progress and add new functionality. I was hooked! This was the platform I needed to use to express my thoughts and organize my life. This was the platform that seemed to match my ideas of what an operating system should be like, and take advantage of the powerful computers we have today.
When I first got my Mac, I immediately ripped all of my cds and organized them with iTunes. Since I had such a broad taste in music (Classical, Jazz, Classic Rock, modern Roc, etc.), I found that a service called Emusic was an incredible deal for me. I could download unlimited numbers of albums of music I was interested. I quickly had a music collection of thousands of thousands of MP3 files (Im currently at 24,297 music files and I enjoy so much of the music I have--Im sifting through the stuff Ill never listen to). Here I have all of these files, and yet I can scroll up and down, and instantly search for the song I want to listen to! I can even use all of my music to create slide shows!
A friend of mine sent me a photo of his dog recently through iChat (he is on a PC and was using AOL Instant Messenger). The photo was good quality, but it had noticable blemishes and the dog had really bad red eye. It took me 2 seconds to import the photo into iPhoto and about a minute to remove the blemishes, and get entirely rid if the red eye. It simply looked like there were no blemishes on the photo, and the picture came out perfectly. I sent it back to my friend without explaination, and he was so impressed when he saw the results, he wanted to know how I did it. I simply stated, Its because I own a Mac.
My Mac does what I need it to do. It meets, and in many cases, exceeds my expectations. I now have a freedom that wasnt met by Microsoft Windows to do the things I want to do. My computer is no longer just a means of surfing the Internet and sending email. It is a useful tool for me to ogranize my life, record my thoughts, organize myself, find the item I am looking for quickly, send files to people quickly; it just does so many things for me, I can really only speak in generalities and keep from writing a book.
Going back to my job, I do technical assistance for a company that provides a product specifically for computers (Sorry, in the context of this pro-Mac post, I cant divulge the name of my company). We have been primarily offering the product on PCs. Our Mac implementation was so limited when Mac OS 9 was out, we used to joke and say that only customers who enjoyed inflicting pain on themselves would use our product on the Mac. With our Mac OS X release, very suddently he had something we have been striving for 6 years on the PC. We had a great product, that worked seemlessly with the operating system. People didnt have to deal with a complicated installation. They could enjoy the product instead. If Mac customer called up, there might be a couple of technical issues, but we knew exactly how to resolve them. Pretty much, when a Mac user called up, it was pretty much a brief how-to-use phone call in which they had a few brief questions.
On the PC--even yesterday I can think of a couple of examples--a customer will install the product and if they are running programs, there will be conflicts with the installation, partial installs, etc. Everyday there is some .dll error message Ive never heard of. Generally I can work through the problem, but it is very challenging, and it takes a lot of creative energy to come up with fixes. There are so many issues, we find ourselves in uncharted waters much of the time, and we have to use our knowledge of the Windows operating system fo resolve these issues. It doesnt help that there are so many different versions of Windows, and each has its strrong and weak points. For instance, Windows 98 doesnt have the capability of updating .dll files dynamically. If there is a problem with the installation, there is a possibility of corrupt .dll files. If that happens, one can only remove them first, and if there is a real program with the installation, go into the registry and clean out the partial install from there. Im sure you can imagine that this isnt exactly an issue your average user could fix on their own.
About 99 percent of the time, these installation issues (along with the myraid of other issues that come up) dont even have anything to do with our product. There is either a program that is interfering, or some obscure setting or combination of setting in Windows that prevents our product from installing. One of my favorite is when a customer is using Windows XP, and the install with a certain username. Later on they create another username and then delete the original. Their software, including our product continue to work fine. However, if they have to uninstall and reinstall our product or other software for whatever reason, the installation will not complete and they will get error messages. Very simply, while they may have Admin rights to their computer, they dont have permissions to all of the folders needed to complete the installation. Now, since they are running XP, they may or may not be able to resolve the issue. If they are running XP Home, they are screwed. XP Home doesnt offer the ability to take ownership of folders on their computer, so they will not be able to gain access. XP Professional offers this feature, but you need to have installed the operating system using NTFS instead of FAT 32. Of course, the majority of installations are FAT32 since they were installed by the manufacturer of the computer. Essentially, while the customer didnt know it, by deleting their original user they used to install software with, they could potentially be pulling the rug out from under themselves and making their operating system partially broken. Sure, permission problems are possible on the Mac, but they happen far less often, and for the sake of Pete, they include a couple of built in tools that usually can correct any issues you may encounter!
I just marvel at how many of our customers have an operating system on the fritz. Very simply, its running abnormally slow because of some conflict, or its so fragmented, or some driver isnt properly installed, or they dont know how to do a fresh installation and the operating has so degraded over time it has all types of quirks and issues. But all of this avoids a much more simple and fundamental issue. People dont know how to use their Windows-based computers! Sure there is a lot of potential stuff you can do with Windows. But people dont understand the potential, and they also dont understand even the basics. The operating system is so clunky, customers are confused with right clicking and left clicking, alternative menus, obsure instructions and messages, etc.
It doesnt need to be that way! People dont need to be afraid of their computers, and they dont need to a book to use half of the features their computer provides! They shouldnt have to be shown how to get to a folder in their computer to locate a file they downloaded, but cannot find, because it moved to a Temp folder buried deep in the file system of Windows (people dont even know that File Explorer exists for Windows, much less if they did, they wouldnt understand what its for, or the meaning behind it). Microsoft Windows, whether it is represented by a multibillion dollar company that owns 95 percent of the market, or a small start up valued in the thousands of dollars, is a seriously flawed operating system, and so is the whole Wintel platform! It does not meet or entirely meet the needs of even the majority of consumers. It LIMITS the potential creativity and capability of people, and they dont even know it.
People have come to expect this type of mediocrity, and companies based on the Windows platform know it. They know it so much, that even during this bad economy, when their profits are threated, they are so addicted to this culture of making easy money by releasing half-baked, half-assed products, they still cant stop themselves from doing it. I mean, does it not put into perspective the point I am trying to bring up when I point out that the purported Windows-platform answer to the iTunes Music Store is BuyMusic.com?! The product didnt even WORK when journalists tried to use it for reviews. This is the year 2003 and yet it is like it is still 1995, and Windows 95 just came out and they are still adding even the most basic functionality and making sure it works (like plugging a printer into your printer port shouldnt crash your computer, for instance).
So, when you say you no longer feel the same excitement for the Mac platform, I can understand you getting used to it, and even beginning to take it for granted. However, I think you should always keep in mind that their are Windows users out there who dont know about Macs, or just write them off for various reasons, without understanding that if they purchase a Mac, they will be able to do the things they want to do, and even the things they never thought they could do! As somebody who is clearly experienced with the Mac platform, perhaps that is where you will find a rebirth of your enthusiam for the Mac platform. Perhaps, when you get a friend or family member excited about the Mac because they suddently realize the potential, and you watch them excitedly except delivery of their Mac, and then a few months down the road they tell you how the Mac has exceeded their expectations--perhaps then you will become excited for them and in seeing their excitement, youll become excited with your Mac again and realize again how you could certainly live without but, but you sure as hell wouldnt want to!
Then maybe you will not only be excited about the Mac again, but when it comes to computers, maybe you will again see the stars like you once did. There was a time I saw the them myself, and then I stopped seeing them, but when I purchased a Mac, I now see the stars again!
