I'm switching... back again.

[villicodelirant]

Now, I have been using computers for the last 15 years.
Windows 95, 98, NT, 2000, XP, Vista, every flavor of Linux, Mac.

I had used Macs before, but my first Mac was a white iBook G3 I bought in 2003.
Loved it.
in the beginning.

Then I started to hate it.

By 2008 I wanted it and Apple to turn to dust.

Why?

Stuck with Tiger, forced incompatibility with the new OS, no new iTunes, wouldn't play Youtube videos (I mean SD ones - oh, by the way, thanks Adobe, I hope HTML5 will wipe Flash away), couldn't add DVD-R, couldn't add AirPort (you see, Apple discontinued it and it went for like 150$ on eBay).

So I switched back.
Bought an ultra cheap Acer box in 2008, Vista had just come out and did a lot of interesting things ripped straight out of OS X (e.g. Spotlight-style search).

Sheer CPU power helped me a lot at the time because I was producing and performing music, so being able to run a couple of VSTs on stage with little latency was a good thing.

I also had very tight money at the time (or so I thought - NOW I really have tight money).

Well.


That was a bad idea.

"Well, it's almost the same".

That's what I kept thinking for the first 2 weeks I had it.

I spent the subsequent 5 years thinking: "I hate this piece of ****".

That, and buying additional hardware, reinstalling software and experimenting various combinations of EVERYTHING to have a smooth experience.

Now, I can affirm that a smooth experience can't be had on a PC.

You can do a lot of interesting things with PCs.
Many things you can't do with a Mac, even.
But if you want a Mac-like desktop experience... no way.

Oh, by the way, Macs are also very affordable, in comparison with all the money I spent on junk over the past 5 years.

As soon as I land a decently-paying project (not easy in the current economy) I'm throwing all of this garbage out of the window, burning the desk, too, and then I'll get a MBA or a Mac Mini (more likely a MBA) and a shard of glass to put it on.

What do you think?

 

[Young Spade]

Wow. That's what I think.

Using Windows 7 as a Bootcamp partition and running Ubuntu in Parallels right now, I can say that you can definitely have a smooth desktop experience, you just have to know where and how to get it.

EDIT: Had to take down because my IP address is on there lol; will edit and repost later.

That's what my Windows 7 looks like and I'm working on Ubuntu right now, although have to do a lot of reading to actually get accustomed to the OS.

But yea, you're going to love OS X. SL is great and I'm sticking with that for a while but Lion is... interesting. It will take some time to get used to it but once you do, I'm sure you'll love it.

 

[villicodelirant]

Wow. That's what I think.

Using Windows 7 as a Bootcamp partition and running Ubuntu in Parallels right now, I can say that you can definitely have a smooth desktop experience, you just have to know where and how to get it.

I know where to get it: store.apple.com.

I tried Ubuntu too.
I'm more of a traditional Linux guy (I'm writing this from a Slackware box), but I tried Ubuntu too.
It's close, just... not quite the same.
It's like OS X 10.2, at best.
In the meanwhile, Lion guys have gestures, incremental filesystem, Time Machine, a number of very clever user interface tweaks, Mission Control, resume, autosave...

And Snow Leopard guys just have a system that's beautifully designed and integrated, where every bit makes sense.

I can't get that out of a PC - God knows I tried.
Doesn't feel the same. Even if you enable the top menu bar in Gnome.

 

[Young Spade]

Oh ok. So.....yea, use Lion/Snow Leopard then?

In total you like SL/Lion because it feels like a more complete system.

There are alternatives on pretty much any OS to get what you want done there as well; when I first got a Mac I found out about keyboard commands and had no idea they were there as well on Windows.

The polish of applications and the coherence you have is definitely higher on OS X though. But hey, that's what you get with a closed ecosystem and software designed specifically for hardware.