Two years since my switch: Why I love Macs
I just celebrated my two year anniversary of being - near as I can - an all-Mac operation in my personal computing.
Ten overwhelmingly positive experiences have kept me strongly in the fold:
No spam - There is no better spam filter than Spam Sieve. It’s a Mac-only product and it catches 98 percent of my junk mail.
No worms or viruses - None. Zip. Zero. Not a single one in two-plus years now.
No adware/spyware - Same thing. These are non-issues on my Macs.
No crashes - It just doesn’t happen with OS X. I had one crash in December 2002, but I was running OS 9 at the time and it was a very old program (from 1994-ish) and I was curious to see if it worked. It didn’t.
Total integration - Apple’s iSync application keeps my calendar, address book, Web bookmarks and to-do list automatically and flawlessly synchronized on my desktop, laptop and handheld Treo 650 smartphone. And it backs it all up on my .Mac account, meaning I can access it from any computer with a Net connection.
iTunes and the iPod - Need I say more? Granted, these also work with Windows. But on Macs, they work the best.
Total freedom - Airport Express lets me set up a wi-fi network anywhere I want in seconds and it extends my wireless network at home as I need it. Last summer, I hooked it up out by the pool.
Mac software - I mentioned SpamSieve and iTunes. But then there’s other special Mac apps like the RSS-reader NetNewsWire, GarageBand, Safari and Final Cut Pro. I can not imagine computing without these apps.
Compatability - I realize this is a PC world. So I use Microsoft’s Office for the Mac. Truthfully, it’s been my experience that it works better than Office for Windows. And Entourage makes Outlook look like a poor cousin. I use Word all the time and there are no issues with my PC-using editors or friends. Same with Excel. Quicken comes for the Mac. So does QuickBooks.
Community - When I was all PC, I used to laugh at the Mac zealots. Now that I am one, i understamd why they love their computers. I never heard a Windows user say that. The Mac community is for the large part caring, supportive, creative and amazingly well-informed. That’s not to say that Windows people aren’t the same. But I’ve never felt as connected to an affinity group as closely as I am to my fellow Macheads.
For me, Macs have made the last two years an adventure just waiting to be clicked.
Feel free to add your reasons in comments.
Hi Mike,
Congratulations. I just switched in April, and I was literally stunned at how elegant and smooth the Mac experience has been. No crashes, no spam, no pop-ups, no spyware and not one second of downtime.
I’m using the least expensive Mac, the eMac, that I bought refurbished from Apple for $599, and it’s perfect.
The one product I doubted would work on the Mac (since I had such a difficult time configuring it on XP) was my Epson large format printer.
So I set aside an evening to troubleshoot it; imagine my surprise when I plugged it in and OS X added it to my Printer List. That was all it took. Ten seconds, tops.
I figured I’d have to go out and buy Office for Mac, but so far TextEdit has opened every Word document sent to me, and Appleworks has opened every Excel document.
If I had to point out one little gem that makes me smile every time I use it, it’s the Bounce feature in the Mail application. As the Mail filter picks up the 100 or so pieces of spam I get each day (but don’t get in my e-mail account) I just Bounce them all. I don’t know that it cuts down on my spam, but it sure feels good.
I wish I knew how to convince all Windows users to try the Mac.
Keep doing your part.
If you are a switcher, or know people who you think should switch, come over to http://www.macmove.com
i guess if all windows users switched to macs then the spyware and viruses would very quickly start to appear in the macs and apple would become a microsoft like company with millions of customers and they really can not concentrate on anything or please any one…
mike,
you said u usai garageband and final cut, i just would like to know on what system do u run final cut pro and which version is it
and as far as garageband do you play an instruments or do you have fun with the loops?
or do u actually make music out the loops u have?
“uess if all windows users switched to macs then the spyware and viruses would very quickly start to appear in the macs”
Macs cannot get these problems because it is a modern unix based OS. Not a dll-registry hell. Check it out, then come on over.
I, for one, would rather confront the spyware authors than run away to a more obscure operating system.
I love my PC. So now you can’t say you never heard anyone say that.
I totally understand your love with Macs. I was a programmer at a software company for over ten years between 1983-1993 so I have the experience that most Mac users don’t have, namely, the opportunity to write code / software for the MAC OS environment and at the same time for IBM, Commodore, TRS 80, and other ancient OS’es. Even back in 1984, programming the MAC is ten times easier and more fun than the other OSes. Granted, my experience programming the MACs ended with OS 7 but the love never did.
Congrats on your anniversary Mike. I’ve been a MacHead since I first used one back around ‘86. The Mac universe has certainly been an enjoyable place to be for nearly 20 years for me, but it’s much larger and more sophisticated than simply enjoying Apple’s products. Apple isn’t the most perfect company in the world, and they continue to cause head-scratching moments often, but they are the closest example we have where technology works FOR us, not against us.
steven am not all that technical, but if you say so I would believe it…but i think viruses can be made for the macs, as far as we heard
You know if my first language was English I would use nothing but macs, except if its a business need for some kind of special software…
but sometimes it get on my nerves because some website have like built in windows media player technology that can not run on macs i think cnet.com is one of them and so is orbitz.com or hotels.com …one of them i can not remember..
also some websites have like software to use that can be run only in a windows environment which a pity really…it is a windows world. Macs are great things