The issue of the hardware or operating system one uses is almost a religious one in today's technology polarised world. I have heard people discuss the merits of their particular machines with a fervour that almost ended in fisticuffs between seemingly civilised people over the placement of a menu item or the fact that the boss of the company was widely considered to be the real-life model for Damien Thorne.
The marketing approach of "Switch" and later "Get a Mac" that depicted Mac users as cool and trendy while the Windows user was a sad pocket-protector type had underlined that sentiment and served to widen the gap.
What has my overall experience been? Well, I will qualify my explanation with an anecdote. I bought my son a netbook for Christmas. An Acer Aspire One. My immediate reaction was to say that I would install Windows on it, upgrade the memory and fit it in with our internal IT system, I have a highly computer-dependent family. Well, on Christmas day, Robyn wanted, quite rightly, to play with his toy so he fired it up and ran the Linux that was pre-installed on the machine. 500 megs of memory and an 8 gig hard drive goes a long way on such a system and he discovered that it did absolutely everything he desired from a computer. If it floats your boat then that's what's cool.
My own out-of-the-box experience with the Mac was great. In ninteen minutes I had a machine that was ready to go and was usable for e-mail and browsing, it has a cool look and feel, its seriously quiet and if all I wanted to do was install some shop-bought software I would be quite happy. I discussed with Chrissy, my wife, that a simple little Mac would be all she needs and she agreed.
However, I don't need to run overpriced software or limit myself to mail and browsing. I tried the development environment and I don't need to go back to the days of Borland Turbo C++ thanks, I have still not managed to decipher the mysteries of the provisioning profile and I can say with all honesty and after having cracked that whip for a week or more that my experience so far of doing real computing work on a Mac sucks!
Would I "Switch"? ha ha, not on your nellie but wait, I am typing this out on a slim white keyboard with a "cmd" button ;-)
The marketing approach of "Switch" and later "Get a Mac" that depicted Mac users as cool and trendy while the Windows user was a sad pocket-protector type had underlined that sentiment and served to widen the gap.
What has my overall experience been? Well, I will qualify my explanation with an anecdote. I bought my son a netbook for Christmas. An Acer Aspire One. My immediate reaction was to say that I would install Windows on it, upgrade the memory and fit it in with our internal IT system, I have a highly computer-dependent family. Well, on Christmas day, Robyn wanted, quite rightly, to play with his toy so he fired it up and ran the Linux that was pre-installed on the machine. 500 megs of memory and an 8 gig hard drive goes a long way on such a system and he discovered that it did absolutely everything he desired from a computer. If it floats your boat then that's what's cool.
My own out-of-the-box experience with the Mac was great. In ninteen minutes I had a machine that was ready to go and was usable for e-mail and browsing, it has a cool look and feel, its seriously quiet and if all I wanted to do was install some shop-bought software I would be quite happy. I discussed with Chrissy, my wife, that a simple little Mac would be all she needs and she agreed.
However, I don't need to run overpriced software or limit myself to mail and browsing. I tried the development environment and I don't need to go back to the days of Borland Turbo C++ thanks, I have still not managed to decipher the mysteries of the provisioning profile and I can say with all honesty and after having cracked that whip for a week or more that my experience so far of doing real computing work on a Mac sucks!
Would I "Switch"? ha ha, not on your nellie but wait, I am typing this out on a slim white keyboard with a "cmd" button ;-)
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