It Just Works... Right?
Reader Trasel has a great twitter feed tracking his or her switch from Windows to OSX. Some experiences are all-too common to the modern switcher...
Who created this tale about Macs not crashing? Actually, my MacBook seems to crash more often than my old Pentium 4 with 512Gb RAM. 12:43 PM May 12, 2008 from web
Connected a Lexmark Z600 to the MacBook and - guess what? - it asked for new drivers. Windows dèja vu. By the way, Epson printers are shit. 11:17 AM May 13, 2008 from web
I'd have pulled out more, but Twitter's just shat itself again, so no.
It Just Works [Twitter]
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I work around Mac users, and I've never, ever had to reboot my Thinkpad, but I've seen their iMacs crash all the time.
512Gb of memory. Either a clever way of saying ~64MB or just a typo I suppose.
You mean 64 GB. 8 bits in a byte. I suspect he meant MB.
This guy only has one error, and it wont matter if he's on windows or a Mac--- id10-t.
Matt: Yes, that is what I meant. Thanks.
Having done a half-switch from July for work (using the MacBook--which in no way cost 30% more than a comparable PC, I'd like to add--I actually got it because it was a great deal and was planning on running XP on it!), and then migrating to OSX at home (Mac Pro) a few months ago, I have to say this:
This guy is a moron.
I have had virtually no problems switching at all. I have been able to use all the printers I have run into with the included Ghostscript OSS drivers (actually, now that I think of it, I did update that package under Tiger, but that is updating the driver package for, like, every printer ever made...). I have had a few application crashes, but I think that between my 2 Macs, I've only had one OSX crash.
Both machines sleep properly. I've never had that happen under XP or Linux.
Is it a perfect user experience? No. Am I a moron who thinks such a thing is even possible? No.
And if this guy is doing a ctrl-click for right click, um... Wow, he's an idiot. Two-finger tap, dude. That's, like, you know... One of the sales points of the machine. Multitouch trackpad.
What's the point of posting this guy's Twitter feed on boingboing anyway? It's not like it's an insightful window into the realm of OS switchers or anything. It's not cool. It's not interesting. It's not witty or informative. It's . . . bunk.
In the past year and a half, OS X has crashed twice on me. My Windows XP box, which receives very light use has had more.
And that anecdotal evidence is worth exactly nothing.
Honestly, someone's Twitter feed? Can you link to my personal crap, too?
@ #6
Completely my experience too. Bought my Mac planning on running XP. Accidentally booted inot OSX a couple of times. Then started doing it on purpose.
I wonder how many people have ended up switching this way?
I have a multi-touch trackpad and zero use for it. Gestures were a novelty in 1998 and they're still a novelty* now in 2008. I always disable all features of the trackpad that aren't positioning the cursor, because otherwise it will interpret accidental touches as meaningful ones. Do people actually use tap-to-click instead of the "mouse" button? Or that right-side of the pad two-finger scrolling crap instead of just the spacebar (or shift-space) to page up and down?
*On an iPhone or Jeff Han's FTIR displays I'm all for multi-touch. On a display it makes sense.
Platform Wars? -- Well, I run Windows XP 64, I hate it but it almost never crashes. My 32bit XP on an older machine is solid as a rock. I love it. I used to have an old iMac, one of the originals. I love it too but it sure did crash a lot. Computers are just tools, if they work they work.
@#10/Zuzu
Er, yes? Keyboard = input. Trackpad = positioning. Scrolling is just another kind of positioning. Therefore yes, and no it's not a stupid function.
I'm uncomfortable with the idea that touching the trackpad moves the cursor, except if you touch it in some "certain way" that gets interpreted as something else entirely.
The reason why I accept the iPhone / FTIR, however, is precisely because then there's no cursor at all... just where you touch.
He sounds like a whiner that started with such a prejudice that when he hits a little bump in the road, he immediately throws his hands up and blames the computer. What a hater.
im going to go hide under a rock until all of the macintosh warriors finish defending their precious
As someone who works with XP/2K, Mac OS (since the original!), and Linux/BSD boxes, it's a dirty little secret that Macs and their apps don't crash any less often - in fact more often than either XP or Linux. However there are two things that contribute to the '[the Mac] just works' mystique (and it does in the way that matters).
First, and most importantly, the OS and applications try not to give you choices. That sounds bad, but when they choose sane defaults (and Apple is better than anyone about this) then it is a good thing that saves most people from choice paralysis and being overwhelmed by options that only 1% of people will ever use (hello Outlook and MS Word). It just does things the way you'd expect. Also, the OS and apps are much more consistent (though not perfectly so) than XP or Linux desktops in presentation and behavior, so the user is comfortable.
Second, much like the brain filters out blinking so you don't normally notice yourself blinking, Mac users seem to just filter out the OS or apps crashing. I worked with a guy whose Mac crashed at least twice a day, but he claimed it was just as stable as the XP box (which would literally be up for months if you didn't Update), and I think he believed it. Nor is this uncommon - it seems to be the rule with my Mac exclusive friends. It's only when a new version comes out that the brain allows them user to remember or admit any faults of the previous version that are now fixed.
Mac stability seems very variable between hardware. I have a now extremely underpowered Core solo Mac mini. Although applications often freeze, they usually recover, and I only encounter a system crashing error every few months. Slow but reliable.
I bought a Macbook Pro on april 30th and I had to replace it 2 times already, on account of dead pixels, weird fan noises.
Also, I already have a kernel panic flickr set: http://flickr.com/photos/takenbyhim/sets/72157605176612293/
Crashes caused by modem drivers, (apple)bluetooth, and unknown.
MattJ, if you even plan on seeling that Mini, I'm in the market for a slower, older Intel one.
I'm still waiting to see the benefits of paying about 30% more for an Apple notebook. MacBook is very good, but it doesnt seem 30% better
My entire beef with Apple summed up in two sentences. If you dispute that they cost 30% more, the burden of proof lies with you.
@Enochrewt: It's difficult to directly compare a PC laptop and a Mac laptop, spec for spec, but if I look at the similarly-spec'd MacBook for $1099 and the Dell XPS M1530 for $999, I'm not seeing a 30% price difference. If you consider all the free software that comes preinstalled on the MacBook (iPhoto, GarageBand, iMovie, etc) and their longetivity & resale value, I think the Mac comes out ahead.
Mac PCs crash, Windows PCs Crash, Linux Pcs crash get over it.
My macbook which was £700 and it has a premium price on a windows laptop for 700 smackers on a windows notebook you would probably get 4Gb of ram and a monster harddrive and definatly a dvd writer not just a combo CRRW/DVDROM the macbook has
This mac was £700
came with 1GB ram 80GB hard drive no dvd writer drive 2 Ghz Del Core Intel CPU
adobe need to sort out flash mac and maybe firefox won't bomb so much
#21: I just built a Dell XPS1530 to the exact specs of a MacBook Pro. I bumped it up to a Pro because the the XPS1530 doesn't come with anything smaller than a 15" screen and regular macbooks are 13". Also, the Macbook pro has a video card (nVidia 8600GT) that's also standard in the XPS1530. Here are the near identical specs for both machines:
Intel® Core™ 2 Duo Processor T8300 (2.4GHz/800Mhz FSB, 3MB Cache)
Glossy, widescreen 15.4 inch LCD (1280x800)
4GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 667MHz (2 Dimms) (Apple isn't specific on mem specs, and the XPS DOES NOT come in a 2GB flavor)
Size: 250GB 5400rpm SATA Hard Drive
Slot Load DVD+/-RW (DVD/CD read/write)
256MB NVIDIA® GeForce® 8600M GT
And of course there's all the respective doodads like wireless adapters, USB ports, etc. which for the purpose of the comparison I'll say are effectively the same. Yes, the Airport Extreme N wireless card in the MacBook Pro might be better than the Intel Wireless N card in the XPS, but the XPS has more USB ports (4) than the MacBook Pro (2). So we'll just have to call it even. The only blatent addition that the MacBook Pro has over the XPS is the 2 megapixel camera. I'll mentally add $100 to the XPS's price if that's included, and I'd think that would be generous.
Anyway, The grand totals:
XPS1530: $1,449.00
MacBook Pro: 2,249.00
So even giving the XPS a $100 2mp camera leaves it $700 cheaper than the MacBook Pro. For those keeping track at home, That's 32% cheaper for almost exactly the same spec. Don't believe me? Go build a a Dell exactly to a MacBook Pro's specs and see for yourself.