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Why go Mac? The definitive thread.

F

FasterSoonerNow

macrumors member
Original poster
Jun 14, 2004
63
0
It seems the question you're asked most when telling people to switch to Apple/Mac is, "Why?"

Sure... They could go to apple.com and see their reasons.


But even on these forums, I haven't seen a "Reasons to Switch" post anyway.

I'd think one should be stickied.


So give your honest opinion. You're consumers. You're customers. Apple.com isn't.

Why go Mac? Why did you?

What makes Mac OS X that much more superior to Windows?

OTHER than the normal stability / no viruses / no spyware answer.
 
The Mac provides a feeling of comfort. Your own safe-haven with fully integrated applications combined with a stable and user-friendly operating system. The quality of the hardware is unmatched as is the design. There just isn't any better combination than Apple and Mac.

I wouldn't have it any other way :).

JOD8FY
 
Same Boat

I do alot of video editing on a PC and I have been through many different video editing DVD authoring software packages. Ulead, Pinacle Studios, DVD Complete, etc. I want to switch because of all of the problems and long hours it takes to render / recover from crashes...just dragging photo's into a slide show can be a chore.
I always get sticker shock at the Mac prices and decide to toil with a new PC just to have the same disappointments again. For me going to a Mac would be for what it does best and the things I do the most. I don't need it for gaming I just want to get my photo and video projects done right and the first time. I don't have experience, but from the pedestal point of view maybe a Mac with Final Cut would 'just work'.
I always come back to not being able to justify the cost. iMac is too slow for the money, emac just doesn't cut it. Powermac is expensive when you start with a large hard drive (160 - 250) and at least 1GB of ram.

I want to do it, but it comes down to cash and knowing that it is going to be easier and faster to get these projects done.

That is why i am on the block...
 
All that i can say is that I barely scratched the surface of the OS in OSX. With Windows i had o have a full understanding of the OS to keep my system running.

And, oh virus. So far we in the Mac world don't have to really worry like in the Windows world. This may change, but it is nice while it lasts.
 
Funny I saw this thread.

My girlfriend has a Dell that has, over the past few year, slowed down to a crawl. She decided to reinstall Windows XP.

Well she calls me up asking how to install the USB Wireless card. Apparently, when you put in the CD the installer just crashed. The following steps were taken to install said card.

1. Put in the DELL CD.
2. Select install USB drivers. Does this install the USB drivers? no this spits them out onto a directory on your C drive.
3. Right click on My Computer. Goto Properties -> hardware -> Device Manager.
4. Right click on USB Controller and select Update Driver.
5. Tell Windows to find the driver in the directory that the above program spit the files out at.
6. Reboot
7. Navigate back to that folder and run an EXE file
8. Reboot (I think)
9. Plug in the USB Wireless adapter. Windows will insist that it needs to find the drivers on the internet.
10. Go back into your Device Manager
11. Find USB Device. Right click on this and select Update Driver.
12. Point to a file on the Wireless driver CD.
13. Reboot. Pray.

I've never installed a wireless card on my Mac, it came with it preinstalled. So, how many steps does it take?

The above is why I switched to the Mac.
 
Switch from windows?

Easy, it's got more programs (commercial or freeware), is easier to use, and has better technical support than *nix. And it's not windows.

The above are not disputed by anybody, anywhere.

More reasons?

(non technical)
It has more freeware and less spyware than windows (count all the *nix open source as well).
The security is much better, both through obscurity and by better design.
The free software that comes with the OS is so good it ends up being better than almost all commercial software.
The hardware can be faster than all or cheaper than some packaged deals.
The community is more savvy and worth a damn.

(technical)
Way more modular, more efficient, more safely modifiable, faster, and more advanced OS.
More useful installed features which are more reliable (in the OS).
Built in personal firewall that's worth something, but is less required (in the OS).

I think that's all the substantive things there are, the rest are "it makes me feel better about myself" and other such wackiness.
 
How many time do you hear a PC user say my computer is "screwed up"?

How many time do you hear a Mac user say my computer is "screwed up"?

I download just about everything I can try out small games, P2P programs, system tinkering programs, and so on and NOT ONCE HAVE I SAID THAT MY MAC IS "SCREWED UP"

This also goes hand in hand with the fact that whenever I sit down on a PC I get over 100 popups in the first 15 Minutes
 
maybe i should add is that when connecting to my wireless at home I had not issues. My Toshiba had me go through their help assistant program till everything worked.

And with my work setup it recognized most of the settings. It took only a few minutes plugging in the missing values. Nothing like me needing a second party software when i was under Windows.

Also if I am using a USB HDD, I am not forced to a tray icon to "de-mount" the "drive". Under OSX, just click the unmount icon.

As someone that used OS 8 and went back to PC's for price and performance; I wonder why I ever left.
 
I switched to Mac for 7 reasons( main reasons on top to bottom)

1. Viruses. First my dell was uninfected with viruses. Then I noticed a virus every 2 weeks.

2. Crashes. I was on IE. For no reason it crashed the whole system. I had to reboot. Which brings me up to next reason.

3. Hard for me to reboot the thing. When the macs at school crashed you just pressed power button the menu comes up and says the stuff restart shutdown. On my pc the normal thing I did was just to force shut down because their was no way to get the mouse over to the start button and click restart.

4. My pc running 2.4 Ghz P4 over time start getting slower then my parents Powermac G4 400 Mhz.

5. Test drove Panther at apple store. I had the basics done in about 30 minutes on working on my future Powerbook.

6. Design. Apple designed their computers alot better then pcs. Dell just looks like they took a plastic box colored it and then throw the parts in. With apple you great designs. The cube for instance was a great design but, apple priced it to high. Hopefully some day we will see the comeback of the cube.
 
After reading other posts I decided to try an anology:

You are trying to build a Tower out of wooden blocks with a robot. Robot A is $500 but is also made very poorly and Robot B is $800 and is a little better. Just looking at them and comparing their specs. you see that they are equally capable of doing the job so you buy the cheaper one. When it arrives you realize it diddn't come with batteries so you have to go out and buy some for $100 so you do and spend an hour to install them. Then the robot spends 30 Minutes starting up and once operating asks you a series of 50 questions which wastes another 20 minutes. Then you tell it to begin to build the tower, but it turns out you don't have the program to do that so you spend $200 on a program at which point, it starts to build but while building it falls over and crashes so you take it in to a reapir shop and have it fixed, but it costs you $300. At this point you tell the robot to continue building and it does, but, starts to slow down and eventually finishes the tower in twice the time required and ends up costing a total of $1100! So, on you next job you decide to sell Robot A for $300 and buy Robot B for $800 you get it and right out of the box it starts up and you tell it to start building and it instantly begins the building speed is a little slower than Robot A but is still pretty fast. You run into no problems and it hardly took you any time to do! You decide to sell Robot B for a newer version and still get $750 for it!

Maybe its kinda stupid but it was just the first thing that popped into my head.

The bottom line: Macs are easier!
 
I used to use Macs - a lot. I loved them. Then I strayed to PC land and stayed there from about 1993 to 2002. Why? Work used PCs, so I used PCs, plus OS 9, IMHO, sucked.

Then, in the fall of 2002, my Dell PC failed. Or rather, became such a constant pain in the ass that I decided to buy a new system. Since my work provided me with a spiffy PC laptop, I checked out the iMacs at the Apple Store near me because I thought it might be easier for my wife to use - so she would stop calling me 10 times a day at work asking me how to do things.

We went and bought the iMac. I figured I'd install the RAM and Airport card, set up the system, and go back to work on my PC. This was a Friday afternoon.

My wife couldn't touch the iMac for three days, until I had to go to work (late) the following Monday. I was glued to it. I was amazed at how much came packaged with it. Whenever I'd gotten a new PC, it was worthless until I installed stuff on it. The iMac was fantastically stuffed with cool software - and OS X was the coolest of all. It was a revelation.

Last year, I bought a G5.

I don't think I'll ever buy another PC. At least not unless Apple stumbles again in the OS department - and I don't expect them to.
 
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