The argument of Mac vs PC (or more accurately, Mac vs Windows) is as old as time itself - that is, if time started in 1984, the year that the Mac was introduced.
Sure Windows is bad. Awfully bad (I'm looking at you, Vista) but according to Charlie Brooker of The Guardian, there is something worse than Microsoft's operating system: the cult of Mac worshippers!
Consequently, nothing pleases them more than watching a PC owner struggle with a slab of non-Mac machinery. It validates their spiritual choice. Recently I sat in a room trying to write something on a Sony Vaio PC laptop which seemed to be running a special slow-motion edition of Windows Vista specifically designed to infuriate human beings as much as possible. Trying to get it to do anything was like issuing instructions to a depressed employee over a sluggish satellite feed. When I clicked on an application it spent a small eternity contemplating the philosophical implications of opening it, begrudgingly complying with my request several months later. It drove me up the wall. I called it a bastard and worse. At one point I punched a table.
This drew the attention of two nearby Mac owners. They hovered over and stood beside me, like placid monks.
"Ah: the delights of Vista," said one.
"It really is time you got a Mac," said the other.
"They're just better," sang monk number one.
"You won't regret it," whispered the second.
But never fear, dear Mac lovers, Microsoft is trying to brew its own cult by using Windows 7 Launch Parties propaganda: Link
One of the biggest is Finder. It speaks volumes that there are commercial alternatives out there that do what Finder doesn't. I was mortified not to find the option to 'cut' when right-clicking and frankly this has really slowed me down; so far CMD+X as an alternative is not working for me so need to fix that.
Other bug-bears; renaming files can be frustratingly slow, and no support for batch renaming has also spurned commercial alternatives.
For me this basic functionality in 2010 should come way before a pretty GUI and beautiful design, and I have the feeling that I'll be paying out quite a lot of cash to get my MBP to where I was with Win XP functionality.
I'm sticking with the Mac and am slowly weaning myself off Parallels 5, but am frankly so far underwhelmed by my initial experience.
My overriding impression is that Macs are more suitable than windows based machines for those with limited technical knowledge, although from what I've read they are also highly customisable by more experienced users. Other negatives I've found;
- after only a week or so of owning my sexy MBP, installing a mobile broadband USB stick killed my system and I had to pay someone to get it back up and booting. As a newbie I didn't have the knowledge to fix the problem, but this should NOT EVER happen on any OS - and I never paid anyone a penny in 20 years of using Windows OS.
- the 1 year warranty is a big putoff and that needs to be changed sharpish to increase consumer confidence in the product and to reward the faithful.
- there is much less available freeware for Macs
- the virus thing is a non-argument and I never had a virus on Windows. Those who open every attachment they receive and download everything that shines deserve what they get. Keep boasting about how virus-free Macs are, and hackers will soon write something to piss on your bonfire.
I hope you read this Steve (my cup is half full) and take on board the comments. Meantime, I'm sticking with it and I have to say that your pad thing is simply EXCELLENT ... always plugged a mouse into machines before, but this is a joy to use - cheers.
p.s.
you need to spank someone in your organisation for not having sufficient magic mice available for Christmas. Despite your good recent results you lost a shedload of sales over here in Europe for that reason... and pissed a lot of people off.
Of course you might say what MS did was take some of the best Mac features and copy them onto Win 7 (some of my favorites: task bar buttons that either open current windows and only if there aren't any then open a new copy of the application--visualization of windows from the taskbar [reminiscent of expose], widg-er-gadgets, nice looking visual effects, etc). Anyway, it's pretty darned good, I think. Still have to think more about viruses (don't start telling me "that's because windows has more market share..." because how does that change the fact that I still have to deal with them? I don't care WHY it has viruses or that the Mac COULD have viruses, I care that windows DOES have viruses and the Mac, for the most part DOES NOT).