My first and only Mac was an Apple ][e oh so long ago. It was no great shake. My first PC was a (God help me.) Packard Bell Pent 90 with an 810 hard drive. Since then all I've ever used has been Wintel and all laptops. A Compaq Presario first then a Toshiba Sat, now a Dell Latitude. Nice system. Throughout this entire time I've played with Macs from time to time. OS 8 OS 9, etc. I've never been impressed. Always thought Mac OS was a huge joke Jobs was playing on the Mac user base. If someone mentioned Mac OS as being better then Windows I would point them to WinNT and tell them otherwise. When W2K came out I thought it was a godsend. MS took the best of NT and the best GUI aspects of 98 and smashed it together to make one heck of a fine OS. Still insecure as heck but what OS is perfect right? Last fall a friend of mine purchased a used iBook with OSX 1. I'm sorry but its a sexy beast. The underpinnings of the system have Unix that is synonymous with a strong stable secure OS. Still I wasnt that interested.
It wasnt until Jaguar made its way onto the scene with little refinements that my interest was perked. Most times I didnt jump onto the newest version of Windows until SP1 at least came out. Jaguar was SP1+ for OSX. About 2 months ago, I think, I was walking through the Mall of America and ran across an Apple Store. (heh Didnt know they had one in there.) Figured what the heck and went in. 3 Word. 17 inch PowerBook. Oh my god is that laptop sexy. Its the Porsche of the laptop world with the engine of a Geo Metro
I realized it was time to get myself my first Mac since my ][e. However the system itself is in need of a major tune-up IMHO. With the G5s soon to be released I expect some revamps this fall in the laptop product line. Probably not a G5, wishful thinking, but from the rumor sites it may be a revamped G4 1.3Ghz chip. Assuming it gives the system a decent performance boost Im getting one.
Apple still has the potential to be a player in the PC game. 3 things NEED to happen, IMHO.
First they need to stop being so damn stubborn about change. It has taken apple how long to update the architecture of their desktop line?!?! Its insane. Hardware needs to be revamped on a more frequent basis. Im not talking once every 6 months but enough to stay abreast with PC hardware in terms of speed.
They NEED a cheaper G5 model to attract the price conscious family. The G4 simply doesnt get it done in comparison to PC hardware. If Apple could produce a G5 around $1,500 with a monitor you would have a sweet machine.
Finally software selection. I stick to my notion that without more software backing the Mac platform Apple has no place to go but down. Therein lies the problem. Its a standard catch 22. Software developers arent going to develop for a platform that doesnt have a decent user base and the average consumer isnt going to touch a device that has limited software support. Mac users claim that the software on a Mac is quality and PCs software has quality but also has a lot of filler. This may be the case but the appearance of having a large software selection (Show me quality software by walking down the rows of Best Buy or CompUSA.) is going to further kill Apple. Not all it once. A slow death.
So why am I even bothering with a Mac if I think its dieing? Simple. It aint dead yet and with Virtual PC I can run Windows 2K perfectly fine. I also have another reason. Actually I have 2,557 reasons. That is the number of security patches, bug hole fixes in Windows 2000 SP1-4. This isnt even bothering with SPs for EI. How many more hundred would that encompass? Its ridiculous that end users have to be beta testers for MS Operating systems. Sure I have few problems with 2K but there it it in black and white. I compiled a spreadsheet of all 4 SP updates. Go to MSs site sometime and scroll through the list of what is fixed in each SP. Its insane stuff like: Error Message: The Event Log File Is Corrupt, Deadlock in USB Stack While Resuming from Suspend, You May Not Be Able to Install Game Controllers on Some Windows 2000-Based Computers, Write Caching Settings for Hard Disk May Not Persist After You Restart Your Computer, OL2000: Error Message: "Explorer.exe Has Generated Errors ..." When You Search for Files or Folders, Explorer.exe Hangs on ALT+F4 If Shutdown Restrictions Are in Use, Explorer.exe Generates Errors During Search on Remote Computer That Has No Shared Folders. And on and on and on and on and ON!! Sure. I dont expect an OS to be perfect but hell Im surprised W2K even freaking runs let alone the fact that Im had my desktop up for months without a problem. Im sick of dealing with patches. Im sick of dealing with heavy handed tactics *coughs*Paladium*coughs*Product Activation*coughs*DRM*coughs* Honestly Im just sick of dealing with windows and having to go over to my relatives houses once every 6 months to fix something that broke in XP or ME.
My argument with anyone who defended Apple was look at NT and 2K. They are stable. They dont crash!! Its no longer about stability. The kernel may stay up but how many other things can break in the OS? My favorite is having Explorer.exe blow up on me because Im browsing a website which ends up taking down my entire GUI. (Hence the reason I no longer use IE at all.) What do I do? ctrl-alt-del. Task manager. Run. Explorer.exe. I equate that with having your car stall on you while its still rolling. I will keep my desktop around simply because I want to play windows games. There are a few that I like that cant be found on a console or on the Mac but other then that I see no reason to stick with Windows. The next major revamp of Windows will be with Longhorn in 2005. I use to get onboard with the Consumer Preview release of ANY version of MS Windows I got excited over it because I expected better, stronger, faster. Frankly at this point I just dont give a damn about Windows anymore.