grannybuttons
Registered
A year after switching I'm still bitterly regretting buying a G4 iBook (Panther, Airport, Bluetooth, 640mb, 60gb) for home use, and will be switching back to PC as soon as I can afford it.
Nothing about this switching experience has been pleasant for me. The hardware is flimsy and unreliable, the software has been prone to crashing a lot, and the user interface feels a lot less flexible and is much more inefficient.
I've taken the machine back twice to dealers (bought by mailorder from Apple) and they briefly tested it on site and pronounced it OK. They warned that if it went back to Apple for full testing and was still deemed normal, I would be charged for looking at it. So I was intimidated to live with it.
After the second time, when I was convinced there's a design flaw in the trackpad, I was suckered into buying an expensive neoprene keyboard cover to raise the fingers so they weren't so likely to trigger the trackpad. (Yes, I've been through all the various system pref settings, don't bother to ask)
I've had to reinstall the entire OS four times in a year - more often than I expect to reinstall XP. And OS management is a lot harder for me. Screen display is fuzzy compared to my analogue Dell display at work. Fonts are harder to read. OS elements are unconfigurable without having to install extra software.
Where do I start about the OSX interface itself? Features that simply seem unusable (e.g. Expose makes me nauseous, I can't use it), software that seems kludgy and doesn't work properly (e.g. both Safari and Firefox don't work properly with a large number of key web sites, and although I have to use Firefox for some of them, it often crashes), inflexibility of the interface (e.g. can't adjust the size of the window elements such as control buttons, lack of word-by-word drag selection). Where do I begin?
I'd never had a Mac before, and I was expecting to be bowled over with delight. I was startled that my experience is the exact opposite. I'm sorry. I still work with PCs, and prefer them by a mile. But there's company politics for me. I borrowed money off my boss to buy my Mac, and he gave me half of it as a gift. I feel oblige to pretend that I like it, at least for the first year.
My heart now sings when I see the Task Bar at work in the morning. Why are there so few people praising the PC and condemning the Mac? I'd say that PC users simply want to get the job done and aren't interested in spending time in a love fest.
Perhaps the Mac really *is* better. Perhaps loving your computer makes you seem like it's more efficient than it actually is. But then Esperanto is 'better' than English. It's not necessarily more useful though.
Your mileage may well vary. If you want to know how Macoholics live and work, by all means get one and learn. It will do your resume good, after all. And you may like it, or even love it. But be cautious. Be even afraid - not of a bad computer - it's not, it's an OK computer. Be afraid that you may well find it a huge letdown, as I did.
Sorry, that's only one's man's bitter personal experience.
Andrew Denny
Nothing about this switching experience has been pleasant for me. The hardware is flimsy and unreliable, the software has been prone to crashing a lot, and the user interface feels a lot less flexible and is much more inefficient.
I've taken the machine back twice to dealers (bought by mailorder from Apple) and they briefly tested it on site and pronounced it OK. They warned that if it went back to Apple for full testing and was still deemed normal, I would be charged for looking at it. So I was intimidated to live with it.
After the second time, when I was convinced there's a design flaw in the trackpad, I was suckered into buying an expensive neoprene keyboard cover to raise the fingers so they weren't so likely to trigger the trackpad. (Yes, I've been through all the various system pref settings, don't bother to ask)
I've had to reinstall the entire OS four times in a year - more often than I expect to reinstall XP. And OS management is a lot harder for me. Screen display is fuzzy compared to my analogue Dell display at work. Fonts are harder to read. OS elements are unconfigurable without having to install extra software.
Where do I start about the OSX interface itself? Features that simply seem unusable (e.g. Expose makes me nauseous, I can't use it), software that seems kludgy and doesn't work properly (e.g. both Safari and Firefox don't work properly with a large number of key web sites, and although I have to use Firefox for some of them, it often crashes), inflexibility of the interface (e.g. can't adjust the size of the window elements such as control buttons, lack of word-by-word drag selection). Where do I begin?
I'd never had a Mac before, and I was expecting to be bowled over with delight. I was startled that my experience is the exact opposite. I'm sorry. I still work with PCs, and prefer them by a mile. But there's company politics for me. I borrowed money off my boss to buy my Mac, and he gave me half of it as a gift. I feel oblige to pretend that I like it, at least for the first year.
My heart now sings when I see the Task Bar at work in the morning. Why are there so few people praising the PC and condemning the Mac? I'd say that PC users simply want to get the job done and aren't interested in spending time in a love fest.
Perhaps the Mac really *is* better. Perhaps loving your computer makes you seem like it's more efficient than it actually is. But then Esperanto is 'better' than English. It's not necessarily more useful though.
Your mileage may well vary. If you want to know how Macoholics live and work, by all means get one and learn. It will do your resume good, after all. And you may like it, or even love it. But be cautious. Be even afraid - not of a bad computer - it's not, it's an OK computer. Be afraid that you may well find it a huge letdown, as I did.
Sorry, that's only one's man's bitter personal experience.
Andrew Denny
