A thought from the author: PC vs Mac
I came to a realization the other day while surfing around the net looking for things of interest. I happened to read a comment on a site from a PC user to a Mac guy. It was a very biased and ignorant comment that left me envisioning this PC user as a 5 year old kid with his index fingers in his ears yelling “Lalalalala. Macs suck. Lalalaa I can’t hear you!”
But then it hit me. I used to be one of those guys!
Wow! (Phrase is trademarked by Vista)
Golly! It’s like seeing yourself on video - drunk out of your mind and making a complete ass of yourself. How did I go from being one of those guys who was oblivious and blind to the merits of a Mac - to someone who now feels like he’s been enlightened and born again with the acceptance of them?
I think it’s kind of like Alcohol or drug addiction where the first step is to admit you have a problem. My problem was computers that rarely worked properly and were prone to excessive bugs, security problems, virii, malware, spyware, driver issues, etc. etc. etc.
I had accepted that fact as something beyond my control. Once I realized that I had the power to change that simply by changing my operating system I felt like a weight or incredible burden had been lifted from my chest. I became a proponent for Mac. The thought of computers actually makes me genuinely giddy now.
Now I feel like one of those born again religious people who wants to tell everyone how I accepted Macs God into my life, how it changed me, and try to convert as many other people as possible. (Ew. Bad image. I hate those zealots.)
So what now? What am I doing here running an anti-MS, pro-Apple site? If I’m not going to preach? Well, as the history of the world has shown, trying to force your opinions and beliefs on others never works out well. I’m not going to try and preach to anyone and cause arguments over what’s better. There’s enough of those arguments out there already. So I’ve discovered Macs. So what? Who cares? Certainly not a Microsoft fanboy. People only accept what they’re willing to. (You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink it.)
It’s a fine line between presenting cherry picked information that makes your preference look like the better choice, and trying to force your opinion on someone. But the way I see things is: When someone comes to their own conclusion after being presented with an overwhelming amount of impartial facts they’ll make up their own mind for themselves eventually.
So although you’ll never see any “Rah rah Microsoft” on my part… I’ll try to stay impartial.
You may not be able to make a horse drink water, but odds are… if you’re patient,
and enough other horses are drinking,
that horse will eventually want to join them.
Windows Vista Refunds!
June 19, 2007 at 11:27 pm
[...] the entire Mac vs PC Storey Add [...]
June 22, 2007 at 4:14 am
Wie man Windows Vista in 2 Minuten installiert
Ich will ja nicht gleich meine negative Meinung gegenüber Windows Vista breittreten, trotzdem tue ich es. Wer jedoch auf Vista angewiesen (vorinstalliert) ist, oder gar so blöd war und sich eine Originalversion zugelegt hat, der lernt mit diesem Vide…
August 31, 2007 at 11:23 am
not sure if youll read this, being as this is so far back in the archive, but i thought i would add my 2cents
i was the exact same way. i wasnt so much a fanboy as i was completely oblivious to macs. my only experience was the apple IIs we had at my elementary school. that is until my highschool bought a full lab of dual processor G5s for our multimedia class.
ive never been back. when i graduated and it was time to go off to college i not only bought a powerbook, but my roommate (who already had an ibook) and i talked the other two guys in the appartment into ibooks as well. im writing right now from my work computer, a compaq presario. and i hate it. i didnt even realize how little osx calls attention to itself just plugging and chugging away without me having to know whats going on. my (now macbook pro) computer boots up in about 20 seconds and it rearing and ready to go. lord help me if i wake this xp machine from sleep or the screen saver and try to open safari/firefox/whatever too qucikly. constant little blips to tell me that i have unused icons on my desktop, theres an update to some bloatware i had no say in having, or that my document had indeed printed like i hadnt thought was in question (afterall i did tell it to print… does it want a cookie?) all hovering there until i click the little x in the corner.
that doesnt happen with my mac. in the 3 years ive been using a mac, ive had the multilinqual ‘osx requires a shutdown’ that im not sure im supposed to tell people about… but in 30 seconds after that beautiful c-chord im up and running with my system exactly how it was.
one more thing. the biggest hastle i deal with on this computer is wanting to drag files into a program on the start menu. on my mac, i drag a file from the desktop to mail on the dock it opens mail and attaches it to an email. i do it in photoshop, it opens in photoshop. on xp, i drag it onto my already running inbox, it bring the inbox from hiding, and opens an error dialog saying that “you cannot drag an item into a program from the start menu. However, if you hover over for a second the program will open and you can drag it into there” Basically, “we know what you want to do, but we cant do it. Nice try.” then i have to reminimize the window, drag the file, hold it, and release it into my inbox. i just got so used to draggin images from anywhere to the top right corner to expose my desktop via expose then dropping it there or in any application, etc.
nice rant eh? thank you for giving me something to read while at work.
August 31, 2007 at 1:02 pm
My first experience with Macs and modern computers was at a friend’s place who had an older model Mac running Photoshop 2 or something (current at the time) I fell in love with computers at that moment even though I didn’t really understand the differences between PCs and Macs.
I ended up getting a PC with Dos 6 and Windows 3.1 and stuck with Windows ever since. I never got a Mac because I had grown familiar with PCs and Windows and Macs seemed to expensive for me. Cast off PCs and PC parts were easy to come by and back when I was growing up and didn’t have much money that was another factor that kept me on PCs.
Now that I’m an adult, I know the difference between PCs and Macs, and I have an income that lets me purchase things I couldn’t at earlier times in my life. I’m looking forward to getting a Mac. I’m fed up with Windows. It’s analogous to a bad marriage that you can’t wait to get out of so you can date someone new.
My own Mac is something I eagerly look forward to and am counting the days until the divorce papers are signed. Oops I mean until my local retailer has the new 24″ iMacs and wireless keyboards in stock.