Funny enough, the people I know who use Windows (and who in another context might even pass for "knowledgable") will completely refute this. Their attitude is that anyone who doesn't aspire for the level or status of power user or über-geek aren't worth the time to consider their opinion on this. Anyone else have this kind of conversation with a Windows geek?Marky_Mark said:
"Windows is just as secure as MacOS if you maintain it and keep up on stuff," they'll say. "What about people just trying to get their work done who don't feel the need to know everything in the world about all the viruses, et al, and the obscure things and tricks you have to do, or even the drudgery of having to make sure all your security software is kept perfectly up-to-date at all times and just want to get their work done?" I'll ask. "Well," comes the inevitable response, "then they really shouldn't be using a computer, should they?"
I, personally, think that any product a person owns should be adequately understood by it's owner. However, you don't have to be a mechanic to drive a car or a computer programmer to use a computer, nor a doctor to maintain your own wellness. And when "what needs to be done" crosses the "common-sense usage" line (as I like to call it) by leaps and bounds, then there's something fundamentally wrong with the product in question.
The point I usually try to drive home to people looking at computer purchases (either first-time users or those "open" to alternatives) is that it really doesn't matter what OS you buy into; as long as it's not Microsoft's OS, none of the rest are aflicted and will require the same effort of maintenance and turf war-style defense.
I'm not going to get into it here except to say that one of the reasons that Mac OS X is as fundamentally good as it is is because of it's open-source heritage. The absurd amount of UNIX-environment development that has gone on since the 1960s and continues unabaited today is what gives us, the computing public, such a robust alternative to Windows. I mean, there's been probably hundreds of thousands of people who have over the years contributed to the development of the UNIX platform. It's an absolute no-brainer when you look at it in this context.
I mean, compare using Mac OS X to using all the previous incarnations of Mac OS Classic. Having used Mac OS since 1986, I can absolutely vouch for the fact that there's never been a more stable OS on a Mac than X. Period, hands down, no questions asked. Even the 3.2/4.1 days weren't as good and stable as almost any version of X.
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