Wednesday, March 10, 2010

will likely switch back to PC one day

I'm not a Mac person. This is my conclusion after having owned one for one-and-a-half years. I suppose my issue with Quicken is part of the issue, but I'm generally not very impressed with the whole package. I see myself going back to a PC the next time I buy a computer, probably in 12-18 months since this one isn't very old and is perfectly serviceable. It's just that I'm a PC guy and while I'm not much of a computer person in the end (I use them, but I don't tinker these days), I know what I like and I like PCs.

Perhaps my biggest reservation with my laptop has nothing to do with the Macbook itself, but rather the incredibly twatty commercials and the pretentious air that they constantly project. Yes, you make beautiful hardware and "user-friendly" software, but you don't need to be such wankers about it. (I'm not sure about the goofy references, perhaps it's some British comedy bender that I'm on.) Hey, Justin Long, no one likes you and your wretched romantic comedies.

I dislike how often Safari crashes, the weak software options (Quicken, MATLAB, CAD programs, etc), the one-button mouse, browsing through Finder and general folder searching/sorting/moving about, the non-games (even though I don't have time to play), and the overall anti-Flash stance Apple has taken. I'm still torn on iPhoto since it's a bit of a black hole. It's great for sorting photos, but I like to modify copies, move them about and deliberately save them in different places. Also, while every laptop is going this direction, Apple has fully embraced the widescreen trend that is sort of annoying. Most of my work flow is vertical, not horizontal.

It's not all bad. iTunes is better on a Mac, VLC is not too shabby, and after all, it is a nice looking computer. I'll also admit I have never invested the time to really get to know the Mac system and appreciate the benefits (whatever they are) of OS X. But in the end, I'm a PC guy and while that may change, it just doesn't seem likely.

3 comments:

buickguy said...

Welcome back!

Mike said...

Now that win 7 is out, switching back may be tolerable. However, office '07 is still horribly unusable compared with '03. Wait for office '10 or whatever it ends up being. Mac office '08 is a bit better than '07, but still annoying.

As a mac user, i do understand how some programs are not as good on a mac. For what I do, it's the best platform, if I had to choose one. Which other platform has native UNIX tools AND things like photoshop? I use both on a daily basis.

So yes, that may be over-confident and snotty. Realistically, I use all three choices on an almost-daily basis. I'd recommend getting something like VirtualBox or VMWare fusion, and you can run windows almost like a native machine, and install the questionably-obtained MATLAB that you've become addicted to (not speaking from experience, of course...). You can't really do the opposite and install Mac on a virtual machine on a PC.

And about that mouse ... either use the two-finger click shortcut (it's there) for right click, or get yourself a real/external mouse like everyone else does.

Brian said...

Mike - I know, but they could at least just put a second button on the machine. (Although now they've done away with the button entirely, sort of). Realistically, my home computing needs are pretty limited. I want a bit more oomph than a tablet or a netbook, but not much. And yes, we had to migrate at work from Office 2003 to 2007 and I'm dropping a lot more f-bombs these days.