The Mac Myth

To start, I love my new macbook pro. To me it is better than any Dell I have ever had and OSX is far better than XP. I won't even compare OSX to Vista. We have it on a machine in our office and all I will say is %$^#$%&#&%^#$%^. My mac is easier to use and 'funner'. The old idea that there isn't any software on the mac isn't true anymore and since I'm not much a of gamer, that wasn't an issue either.

Even with that, though, I think there is a myth out there that Macs will solve your relationship problems while allowing you to post images directly from your outdated blackberry to flckr, picasa and some obsure coppermine database your Linux geek friend put together in 2002. All at the same time. All while you 'handbrake' a dvd. Oh and you can open any email and run any program and it won't hurt anything because Steve Jobs will personally grab any wayward programs and swallow them up with his sweatshirt.

So here's my view on the mac myths.

1. Macs crash just like windows. - sure they don't crash as much, but your mac will probably lock up on occasion. My motivation for this blog entry was my macbook pro locking up when I simply enabled bluetooth. Maybe it was hardware, maybe it was something else, but it locked up and that's all most end users care about anyway. The most stable system I have ever used was Suse Linux back in the day (2000), but Linux has it's own issues and still hasn't met my needs, though Ubuntu is pretty friendly.
   
2. Things are easier on a mac, but you still need to possess a brain to be able to use one. - Yeah, iPods are easy, but I've had mine not sync and screw up on occasion. Same with my mac. Sometimes things don't work right. Time Machine is a good example. It should be drop dead simple, but when I tried to hook it up to my firewire, it tried to turn my machine into a 286 running CAD, if that's even possible. I imagine it would be like installing Vista on a 3 year old computer. Anyway, it took over and I won't go into the gory details, but let's say that you can't just plug it in and expect it to work without thinking. Maybe it will for some, but my guess is those people also possess a brain. It's not just me because about every other mac break weekly is a big discussion about which backup software to use with or besides Time Machine. For the record, I use SuperDuper and it rocks.
   
3. Yeah, there is Microsoft Office for the mac, but it is fugly. - Most people want Office. Most people want office sex. Since office sex is more complicated and Office is on the approved list, it gets the nod. Office 2008 on the mac works, for the most part, but it makes you feel like you are running some legacy app. So even in a mac myth list, i get to bash Microsoft. How fun. I will say, however, that Entourage does actually connect and sync to Exchange reliably, which was impossible for me with Office 2004. That alone was worth the upgrade.
4. Mac apps are not bulletproof - On the whole, mac apps are more stable than windows apps and have less of a chance of dragging down the system if they crash, but crash the can do. I seem to have the most trouble with Adobe apps, but maybe that's just me. The iLife apps will crash sometimes (iPhoto anyone?) and they should be the most stable of them all. For instance, I had to take some photos yesterday and I needed to quickly email one of them. I had iPhoto up and plugged in my digital camera and it was beachball city. I've come to loathe the beachball as I did the hourglass. I waited and waited, but after about 10 minutes gave up held the power button while cursing. Actually, with windows, I would probably have been able to control-alt-delete, but command-option-esc wasn't doing me any favors on my mac.

So, just remember, next time someone tells you how their macs are perfect, they are full of shit. If a windows user states this, call the proper authorities at once. However, if a linux user says they haven't crashed in two years, they are probably rationalizing the two crashes they have had as 'user error', therefore not linux's fault. Also, it's harder to crash from the command line in my experience.