Why Switch to a Mac
My History with Personal Computers
Let me begin with a brief run-down of my own history with computers:
- Radio Shack TRS-80 “Trash 80″ – first exposure in middle school
- Commodore 64 – our family’s first computer
- Macintosh SE – saw a friend’s Mac, with MacPaint and MacWrite. MacPaint was THE app I loved, being a fledgling artist
- Amiga – my uncle bought one of these, and I fell in love with DeluxePaint — it was just like the Mac, but in color!
- Atari ST – another friend had one of these, and I spent many hours over at his house, playing SunDog and Empire. Eventually, when I got my first job, I purchased my own ST.
- PC’s – at work, I saw the transition from MS-DOS (green text on black field) to Windows 3.0 and 3.1. It was actually quite exciting, seeing new PC’s arriving in big cartons from the likes of Compaq (if I recall correctly). Here was the user-interface that was similar to the Mac and ST, little did I realize that Microsoft was planning to “take over the world”.
- Unix – when I worked at PDI, I was exposed to the Unix operating system and
Years went by. PC’s did take over the world. And Macs were relegated to artsy folks with technical inclinations–including several of my friends. So, whenever I visited them, a good chunk of time was spent checking out what they had running on the Mac.
The Tipping Point – when I decided to switch
Fast forward to a few years ago, when Apple announced they were going to switch to Intel processors. Here was news worth salivating over. Soon, we found out we can even run Windows on the Mac under Bootcamp or virtual server via Fusion or Parallels.
After that, I bided my time, saved some money, and voila — bought my Mac Pro desktop in late 2007.
I haven’t looked back since.
The Mac Experience
I will admit that after a year and a half of using it, that the Mac does have its share of issues at times, but certainly no where as aggravating as dealing with a PC.
Here are some thoughts:
- Stability – OS X 10.4 and 10.5 are rock solid. I would never leave my PCs on for extended periods of time, much less put them to “hibernate” — they usually never woke up. Now, I am in the habit of putting my Mac to sleep if I’m going to be away from my desk for short periods of time. (I’ll still shut it off completely to do my share to go “green” when I’m away longer, or go to bed).
- Useful Apps – OS X comes with full-featured useful applications such as Mail, iCal, iPhoto, iDVD and Safari. I’ll admit, though, that I do use Firefox and Gmail instead of the Mac equivalents, but I get to sync my gmail calendar with iCal, iPhoto’s great, and making and burning slideshows with iDVD is much easier than on a PC. In a future post, I’ll talk about my favorite 3rd party applications.
- Booting off an external drive – For me, here’s where the real “meat and potatoes” — the best reason to use a Mac. As with Windows, we have to install third party applications. That can take hours, if you add up all the time spent inserting discs and waiting, etc. One time, my Mac failed to reboot after an Apple software update — it happens, even with Macs, which is why I have a back up of my boot disc. I shudder at what I would have had to do on a Windows machine, but with the Mac, after powering down, I plugged in my Firewire external Seagate drive, rebooted while holding down the Option key. It then displays a screen asking where I would like to boot from. I select the external drive, and moments later, I’m in! At that point, all I had to do was run the back-up software and copy the contents of the external drive back onto the internal boot drive. Total time required: 1.5 – 2 hours. Now, I’m sure there must be ways to do this with a Windows machine (ghosting a disc image, or something like that), but with the Mac, it’s just so much easier.
Conclusion: More Time
There are only so many hours in a day, and for me, making the switch to the Mac was one of the best things I did for my business and my personal life. I know there will be occasional bumps in the road — for instance, I purchased Quickbooks 2009 for the Mac, but it’s still not as good as my old Quickbooks 2006 which I run on Windows under Fusion — but so far the ride has been pretty smooth and enjoyable.
If you’ve made the switch, feel free to share your thoughts.
