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What are your reasons that you must have a Mac?

I think of Windows and Android as pretty much the same thing as OS X and iOS. I can fix and navigate through Windows and Android. I also like both.

I'm fairly new to Mac. Short test last year but went back to Windows as i'm a big gamer. This year i got my first new Mac and decided to run both.

Media, photo editing and social... just relaxing... Mac. Gaming... Windows. Both can do all these things fine but i enjoy the former on Mac.
 
Have always used OS X even in corporate, just in the background. These days I work for myself and as rare as it is to see a Mac in my profession, I never have issue, the job always gets done. Battery run time is a big issue for me, I can easily make the day thanks to Apple`s hardware & OS X. Mostly I just want to get through things as fast as possible with the least hassle. To me the computer is simply another tool, equally I don't want it to dominate my workflow and want the system to aid me not work against me.

All in all I don't have a problem with Windows, all the same it`s not a "space" I want to work in, or deal with. I am comfortable with OS X, it does what I want and more than I need, most importantly it`s secure. Apple`s not perfect and I can see the attraction to W10, I just kind of like it, when things work :apple:

Q-6
 
I've been using Macs since the Macintosh SE days. With that said, I've always had a PC in the house as well. I like both platforms and both have things to offer.
 
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I bought a Mac because it's the only way to get a somewhat modern PowerPC CPU in a laptop.
 
I used microsoft windows since the 3.1 days up until 2008, when i first bit the bullet and bought myself a macbook pro because I wanted something different and was tired of all the virus issues that window had at the time, not sure about now. So once i went Mac I never went back. Now this mid 2012 that i have now is my mobile office used for Spreadsheets, presentations, email, internet research, video editing, SFX, design and music production. At home it's sometimes used for movies and music listening. Basically this machine has became a necessity for me.
 
I've been using Macs all my life, so I don't really want to use anything else. I've used Windows computers at school and whilst they are usually tolerable, I wouldn't want to use one as my main computer at home.
 
To me it's primarily about the hardware.

Still find Finder disgusting. Having network shares under multiple accounts to the same computer does not work at all. The latest OSX has been released with awful quality.
Wifi did not work. TM backups were not valid anymore because of the altering computer name due to DNS changes. This is from the company removing Ethernet ports from ranges of laptops.
Apple can't get their graphics act together. Really sad.

Monday I receive my new maxed out MBP 15". Really hope the experience is not ruined by Yosemite. I can always run Windows 10 on it.

My windows 7 work computer with 3 large displays is fantastic. Do heavy C++ development on it all the time. IMHO Windows is superior to OSX in many ways. Especially networking and graphics.

But you can't beat the MBP hardware.
 
I spend 8+ hours a day on a Mac so I don't want one at home. Macs and OS X are fine they're what I recommend to most people but they're not for me
 
I used windows all my life (which sounds like a long time but it's not). Like many others I just grew up with it. One day I needed a new laptop for university (september 2012). I decided to go with Mac just to see what the fuss/hype was all about.

I figured if it was horrible I could just return it.

Got home used it for a few days and went from Apple hater to Apple lover. Absolutely love Macs now. My next purchase will probably be a Macbook Pro.

What I love most is:
- Mac OS X
- Trackpad and gestures (you seriously have no idea how awesome a stupid thing like that can be, also I'm a tapper not a clicker)
- The simplicity
- The fact that it stays fast even years after purchase
- Buildquality. I've dropped my MBA so many times, with windows the plastic cracks, hinges break. MBA has a only 1 noticeable dent.
- And of course the design. They're just beautiful.
- iCloud. If you have an iPhone, which I do, they work seamlessly together.

Just the little things. It came with a mail app, various media apps (itunes, iphoto which is now just photo's) a calendar app. It sounds stupid but windows in 2012 (windows 7 era) didn't even come with a calendar app or mail app.

How are you advertising it as a 'work' operating system but it doesn't come standard with a calendar or mail app.

Using OS X just feel a lot nicer, more personal. It's just a joy to use. Windows just feels like a machine.

But windows is changing a lot and Windows 10 is really looking nice in my opinion. They have been making great strides. Windows comes with a photo's app, better trackpad gestures for productivity, nicer browser, mail app, and of course calendar app. It's funny because Windows has gotten better and OS X worse..

I'll still not go Windows because I can just use it on my next or current Macbook. And I'm counting on Apple to improve OS X greatly. But if Microsoft made a laptop (whether 2-1 or just regular, just not surface form factor) I would definitely consider using it on the side. Never as a primary laptop because like I said I really love the iCloud sync between Mac and iPhone and I can't imagine going windows phone.

iPhone is the best, bar none.

Oh and also I love how deleting an app works compared to windows. On the mac you just drag the app from the app launcher to the trash can.

Windows? Start - Configuration settings - Uninstall a program - choose program - click delete (or at least it used to be like that).

Not that I'm deleting apps all the time but this situation just showed me the simplicity of OS X versus Windows 7.

(I love Windows 7, it was the most nicest version of Windows I used but OS X is just nicer)
 
I don't say that I 'must have' a Mac. I can easily do everything I need on a Windows computer. I just like the Mac platform and hardware and so I choose to use that. With that in mind I still run Windows in a virtual machine on the Mac as well.

At work I use all Windows machines and servers.
 
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Three reasons that make me feel as if I must have a Mac
1) It's not Windows. I dumped that monstrosity in 2001.
2) Linux is a mess. It works great (I spent 13 years on the platform) but it's like going to eat at a restaurant where 50 chefs prepare your meal in 50 different kitchens and they don't collaborate on anything.
3) For me, a Mac just works as expected out-of-the-box and with a lot less effort on my part.

Others may choose what they feel is best for them, but I choose a Mac.
 
For me, I just happened to get a Mac (a 2011 27" iMac right after it was refreshed) at a time when I was just plain frustrated with Windows. My HP desktop of 2 years kept giving me problems and was becoming downright unusable, so I had to make the choice of either more of the same, or switch platforms in hopes of a better computing experience.

That iMac is still serving me very well today. Sure, it cost more upfront than a typical windows desktop at the time, but that has been 4 years of hassle-free computing. I will say that my Apple products have more than paid for themselves in the form of fewer problems and improved productivity.

I know Windows has undergone a lot of changes in the meanwhile, but I find myself more comfortable with the Apple ecosystem these days (having picked up an iPhone, iPad, MBA and Apple TV along the way). For me to consider switching back, Apple will have to screw up big time, and / or Microsoft will have to have some paradigm shift where Windows is like 10 times better than OS X.
 
SlCKB0Y said:
Why was this important to you?
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I like RISC designs better and ARM is not well supported on OpenBSD yet, so PPC Macs are the cheapest way for me to get one in a laptop that runs the OS I want. Open Firmware is also very nice and I wish it came with all laptops. I have a serious dislike and distrust of Intel after their RDRAND nonsense and prefer not to have their CPUs in my devices whenever possible.
 
I come from a computer hardware retail background where I sold both Windows and Mac computers to both individuals and corporate clients although I don't do that any more. I also used Windows PC's exclusively for about 17 years personally until I switched to primarily using a Mac PowerBook in 2005. From my experiences from both the retail and personal use sides I have found the overall user experience to be far far better on Macs.

Yes you can pretty much do anything on a Windows computer that you can on a Mac and vice versa but when it comes to the day to day overall user experience you can't beat Macs. Plus as I own a Mac Mini, iPad, and iPhone as well as a MacBook Pro they all integrate seamlessly together. Plus as Apple is responsible for both the hardware and OS that makes up their computers the two integrate far better then on the Windows platform where MS is responsible for the OS and other third parties are responsible for the hardware.
 
Crugga said:
Personally my view of Windows was tainted by what they did for me between about 95 and 2000, spent half my life with the side off, downloading 3rd party drivers and removing spyware.
2 Imacs, a Powemac, a Mac pro and several Macbook pro's later i'm glad I took the plunge back in 2000.
You are to a degree paying for a brand but within that brand comes some brutal strict quality control and despite a few complaints a very stable and reliable product that will be like that trusty favourite hoody that always does the job.
Sure a Moped will get you to work and back every day but a BMW will be so much more pleasurable and after £30k miles the moped will be going to scrapyard while you can get half your money back on the BMW.
Buy a Macbook pro and look after it then sell in 2 years and you will get half your money back, try that with a knackered Windows machine and you'll be lucky to get 10-20%.
I mean you are asking on an Apple forum which to choose so there is likely to only be one answer but I do believe in this case you get what you pay for.

I did buy a cheap Windows machine and use for 3 months earlier this year as a stopgap and it has come a long way since the older versions but there was still issues where things just didnt work as they should and just a slight feeling that it wasnt quite finished, not to mention that god awful block desktop thing. The trackpad was terrible also, the Macbooks trackpad has to be used to be believed
Overall I believe the OSX experience is better than that of Windows which for me along with the investment issue is the defining factor.
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Both OS have matured so much since 2000 that it is an unfair comparison lol
 
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At first, I really liked the stability and reliability of the OS and expose/mission control. With Windows 10, both have these things. I still get macs because the hardware is so superior to PC counterparts. No one has a trackpad and keyboard that is half as good. No one puts in 3x3 802.11ac either except Apple.
 
Travel and the laptops.

I have searched long and hard for a laptop that matches the MB Pro. Build quality, size, screen quality, and speed. You can get Windows laptops with all those qualities but none of them have as good mix as the MB Pro. The comments about the track pad are 100 percent true. I cannot believe no one in the Windows world has figured that out. They do not realize how much an impact the track pad on the usability of the device.

You can get laptops as nice as the Air but on the MB Pro side there is nothing that has the build quality. Most of this is just due to the fact its 100 percent aluminum. Most of the Windows are metal/something else.

In other area's I think they are losing ground. I preferred my Note 4 to my iPhone 6S and if your looking at the difference between an iPhone 6 and Galaxy 6, the Galaxy is a superior phone. OS X has lost its innovativeness. Plenty of new features, just features no one really cares about.

The iMac is a great machine but its also very expensive. I used to say the 5K was a great deal because for a couple of hundred dollars over the Dell 5K you got a whole computer but now that HP has a $1200 5K Monitor that argument goes out the window.

I personally think the reason the MB Pro design has not changed is they are having a hard time improving on the design. The tooling cost has long since paid for itself and its probably a cash cow for them.

I went back to an iPhone for the watch but even that is not compelling enough reason for me to stay. If the rumors of the Note 5 are true I'll go back, or even if they do the Galaxy 6+ I'd go back.

All the complaints about Windows 8 I think are just crowd bitching. I use both every single day and since 8.1 was released they addressed every single issue. Win10 is better yet but the flip side is Microsoft is so fractured in their infrastructure. I don't expect much out of the phone/tablet convergence.

Apple makes a better tablet all the way around. Windows tablets are useless, they are 100 percent a compromise solution. Android tablets are comparable but the iOS tablets do it simpler and better.
 
So I just switched after using Windows for more than 18 years and the reasons for the switch are the following

- coding (I may not be a full time Web Developer by my client asks me to edit codes from time to time and its just so good coding in Mac than on windows and all of our pages renders accurately than on Windows)

- keyboard (I don't know its just Macbook Pro's keyboard is very much comfortable to use than my Acer laptop)

- trackpad (I'm not sure why this kind of trackpad "Force Trackpad" was not invented on windows)

- stability (I'm pretty sure Apple will always optimize the OS to match with their hardware unlike Windows is just a n OS at the end of the day)

Pretty much we have all other reasons to switch to Mac but one thing for sure its not for gaming. Though I tried gaming once via bootcamp and its fine but Mac does not have a DGPU so that acceptable. But certainly I would stay with Mac since I already paid for this new 2015 rMBP 13" base model.
 
galaksy said:
What are your reasons that you must have a Mac? …
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Mainly: Mavericks, OS X 10.9.x.

> Notebooks > MacBook Pro

The Mac that's provided to me by my employer is often used off-campus. The Pro features are useful to me.

Years ago instead of travelling with an entire notebook, I travelled light with my home directory on a mobile hard disk drive. The disk was used with a Mac at work, a Mac at home.
 
galaksy said:
I heard that if you want to get into video or music editing Mac is better than Windows. Is that still true?

I ask because I am not sure whether to buy a Mac or Windows laptop or desktop, because all the computers at home are fairly weak and I need to buy a new one, and I feel like I have to use only Mac or Windows because external hard drives have to be formatted to be used with either Mac or Windows. So if I buy a 4TB external hard drive to store family videos, it can only be played on a Mac or Windows but not both.
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That is NOT true... Windows PC, Linux PC, Unix PC, or Apple PC are capable of making awesome video/music editing. It is all depend on how much you can afford it or use it.
I chose Apple because the OS X is awesome over Windows 7 when I first got a MacBook Pro with Snow Leopard.
 
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Because the hardware is minimalist and beautiful. Also how tightly integrated the OS and hardware is makes me prefer it to any Windows alternative. I also find that Macs don't slow down as fast over time (of course slowing down is inevitable) and usually last longer (they seem to be more durable). I mean my MacBook from 2006 would really be able to do mostly everything that my Air does (apart from gaming - yes you read that right, gaming on my Air :p). If you forced me to buy a Windows laptop, it would have to be the Razer Blade just because it looks so nice and is equally powerful.
 
jamesjingyi said:
Because the hardware is minimalist and beautiful. Also how tightly integrated the OS and hardware is makes me prefer it to any Windows alternative. I also find that Macs don't slow down as fast over time (of course slowing down is inevitable) and usually last longer (they seem to be more durable). I mean my MacBook from 2006 would really be able to do mostly everything that my Air does (apart from gaming - yes you read that right, gaming on my Air :p). If you forced me to buy a Windows laptop, it would have to be the Razer Blade just because it looks so nice and is equally powerful.
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So Alienware is not so equally powerful???
 
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