There Seems to Be More Mac Users Lately

I wanted to switch for several years but was afraid the cost of new software would be out of sight. The new ability to run virtual windows for some programs gave me the boost I needed.

What's really funny is that I find only have one program I really miss so I might just spring for the Mac version and be able to go solo Mac. Utopia!
 
Greetings,

As a former Windows user I can tell you that the ability to run Windows on a Mac does not interest me too much. The thing that caused me to switch to a Mac was Windows. My wife answered YES to a Windows update and it installed a Microsoft Update utility which turned on Windows Update, disabled the ability to turn it off and had no way of uninstalling the Microsoft Update. Microsoft then continued to push a video driver to my computer which killed it. I corrupted the Windows update (on purpose); every time I logged in Microsoft Update would tell me there was a problem with Windows update. That was annoying. Finally, two days before Leopard was released, I downloaded a required patch and Windows corrupted the registry. The computer was totally hosed. I figured if I had to boot from a CDROM to save the hard drive, I might as well back up all the files, buy a Mac and reformat the PC to Solaris 10.

If I ever do need Windows I'll buy Vmware Fusion (Bootcamp does not work for me; there is no way I'm letting Windows touch my Mac hardware directly).

P.S. I had a look at Windows Vista. The Windows Vista trailer from Apple is funny because it is true. Windows XP was annoying; Vista was unbearable.

P.P.S. I've had three people at work ask me about Mac when they found out I bought one. They plan on getting one for Christmas.
 
Amie said:
WHAT? :eek:

Why??? LOL
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To learn. If in your first week you accidentally try that "sudo rm -rf /" command and delete your Mac's harddrive and have to reinstall, you're taught not to meddle with Terminal.app unless you know what you're doing. Just as an example. I think it's very healthy to dig a little and just go ahead. A testdrive, so to speak.
 
I remember when i used windows i downloaded a number of updates from microsoft. To my surpirise one of the updates killed my task control. The tabs the sent my to veiw my processer and ram and all the other was gone, whats worse the miniumize, maximumize and close buttons were gone too. I had close task control with left click in the task bar. Microsoft updates don't seem to be doing any good.
 
fryke said:
To learn. If in your first week you accidentally try that "sudo rm -rf /" command and delete your Mac's harddrive and have to reinstall, you're taught not to meddle with Terminal.app unless you know what you're doing. Just as an example. I think it's very healthy to dig a little and just go ahead. A testdrive, so to speak.
Click to expand...

Well, this is why you can also set up a VM with whatever OS you want and tinker with that. FOr example, I have various Windows VMs and GNU/Linux VMs in VMware Server on my Windows computer at work. On there, I test stuff and sometimes I end up breaking things. All I have to do is revert to a snapshot that I've taken earlier and I'm back in business.

Of course, that's not always an option especially with OS X which won't install on VMs like VMware and Parallels (unless it's OS X Server). For this reason, I usually set up a spare Mac or PC and tinker that way. If it breaks while I'm trying something out, then I either try and fix it or just reinstall. I would never do this on a production computer that I use for everyday things.
 
Vista is really killing microsoft right now. It's a matter of security winning out over freedom.

Mac's marketshare, I hear, has risen from 4-5 to about 8%. Not sure if that counts the sheer ubiquity of the ipod...Macs are easy to use and they have consistent interfaces. Windows has...windows. That's about it. :) But I don't want to start another poo storm mac vs. pc on this thread.
 
Marketshare. I heard this figure on Leo Laporte's netcast This Week in Tech. Not sure where the figure comes from. I assume it's total world marketshare.
 
Natobasso said:
Marketshare. I heard this figure on Leo Laporte's netcast This Week in Tech. Not sure where the figure comes from. I assume it's total world marketshare.
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I had heard that particular episode and I had read about it way before that. The numbers were only for US marketshare, not global.
 
fryke said:
To learn. If in your first week you accidentally try that "sudo rm -rf /" command and delete your Mac's harddrive and have to reinstall, you're taught not to meddle with Terminal.app unless you know what you're doing. Just as an example. I think it's very healthy to dig a little and just go ahead. A testdrive, so to speak.
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Um ... I think I'll learn it's not good to meddle with Terminal by reading Mac books, thankyaverymuch. :D
 
Someone here mentioned that "Vista is really killing Microsoft right now." What exactly does that mean? Granted, I've strayed far, far away from Microsoft (ex-Windows user) during the past several years that I've made the switch to Apple, so I'm not really "on the up" where Microsoft in concerned ... but I thought Windows Vista was like "ooh-la-la" suave OS for Windows, no?
 
Amie said:
Someone here mentioned that "Vista is really killing Microsoft right now." What exactly does that mean? Granted, I've strayed far, far away from Microsoft (ex-Windows user) during the past several years that I've made the switch to Apple, so I'm not really "on the up" where Microsoft in concerned ... but I thought Windows Vista was like "ooh-la-la" suave OS for Windows, no?
Click to expand...

Microsoft release Windows XP in 2003. They have had 4 years to develop a new operating system. Vista is not really that much better. If you have seen the Mac ads where some guy in dark sunglasses is approving everything said in a conversation between 'Mac' and 'PC'. That is what Vista is like. They have so much 'security' that it interferes with the user's ability to use the operating system. Additionally, as a software developer most our software is broken on Vista. This means upgrading to Vista will cost you a lot of money (just for the OS) and you will have to spend the time and money upgrading all your software. The pain you will feel is not worth the new feature that Vista is offering.

After evaluating Vista, as a software development company, we concluded it would be a lot of work just to get our software to the state it already was on Windows XP. We polled our customers and found most of them wanted to stay on Windows 2000. Some upgraded to Windows XP just because Microsoft dropped support for Windows 2000. None of them were eager to upgrade to Vista. So we don't support Vista and have no immediate plans to.

This is the general word I have been hearing from friends who work at other companies. I have one friend whose company still supports Windows 98 but they REALLY don't want to support Vista.

Bottom line, many people are realizing that switching to Vista or switching to Mac will be similar but upgrading to Vista tends to be more painful. I kept hearing about how much better the Mac OS is. I evaluated Linux Redhat, SuSE, Ubuntu, Solaris 10, Windows Vista and Mac OS X. The Mac came out as the best choice. It has a UNIX base (good for power users like me) but a really user friendly GUI (good for people like my wife).

The ads for Mac imply you can just plug it in and it works. I took hours trying to get my Windows Vista to work with PPPoE, VNC, ssh, etc. I took about 30 minutes configuring everything on SuSE and Solaris. I took 10 seconds (LITERALLY) to get PPPoE running on the Mac. It took another 5 minutes to get everything else running... and here is the real kicker... my wife could have set up everything on the Mac. There is no way she could have set anything up on the other OS.
 
Let me ask you guys a question.
Do you think Microsoft time in the sun is running out?
I found this video showing the longhorn concept
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9ifQvQCO7Y
This video says to me that Microsoft had better operating system in development before they released vista. I gotta ask why would Microsoft throw away a good idea like that and replace with an xp clone.
 
Why do you think Gates stepped down... ;)

Seriously, I think some users are just sick of problems. My daughter, who is in college, has finally switched. Mostly due to 2 other Windows laptops killed, by spyware and viruses, in less than 3 years. They seem to have A LOT more problems than just their OS'S...
 
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