Why I Told My Sister to Buy a Mac
In
my circle of friends, I am well-known as a computer geek. As a geek,
people are drawn to me with all their mundane computer questions. I get
calls all the time from people asking me how to speed up their system
or what to do when their hard drive crashes. I tell them I am really a
web designer and not a computer technician. I even have a T-shirt that
says, "NO, I will NOT fix your computer!" But, I still have six
computers in my office now, each in various stages of disrepair. Not
long ago my sister called to get my help with a new computer purchase.
Having recently bought a MacBook Pro, I tried to get her to convert as
well. Here are a few reasons why I think Mac is a great choice for the
average user, and an even better choice for the design professional.
First
of all, and very important to my non-geek sister, Macs come pretty much
loaded out with what you need. There are less decisions to be made
about RAM and ROM and those other troubling issues that confound a PC
user. Sis pretty much just plays games on her system. She wanted a
computer that would run her games faster than her old PC. Right there
is one problem with PCs. A computer novice tends to think if it is
"new" that it will be faster. That is not necessarily true. On Black
Friday my sister got up at 3:00am and raced to Best Buy to grab their
advertised package. For $399.00 she would have a "new" system. It was a
real let down when I pointed out to her that the new system was not
really that much more powerful than her old system. Yes, it had 2 gigs
of RAM and a 320 GB hard drive. But the processor speed was way low and
the graphics card was totally inadequate to run the games she wanted to
buy. With a Mac, there aren't any tricks like this. The stats are
clearly listed on a Mac and they come with a minimum level of
sufficiency. If I send her to buy a MacBook, the lowest processor she
could get would be a 2.0 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo. That would be quite
sufficient for her needs. And the fact is, because the Mac OS is
specifically built to handle the hardware that is installed, it is much
more efficient and faster. Apple doesn't license out its OS to various
manufacturers. For example, Microsoft sells their OS to pretty much any
computer company who wants to throw one together. That computer
manufacturer will, in turn, purchase hardware from whatever source and
software from another source and put the machine together. That means
that the various hardware components will work together, but are not
designed to work together efficiently. With a Mac, all the hardware
components are engineered to work with the Mac OS. You get a system
built by the same people who make the OS, the applications, and the
computer itself. This means that everything works together flawlessly
and efficiently. Whatever you can do with your 512 MEG graphics card
and 4 gigs of RAM, I can do with half the hardware in half the time on
my Mac. This is just plain amazing! So, I can trust my innocent sister
to Apple and know that she will walk away with a usable system.
Another
important thing to an innocent user, is the virus factor. I get lots of
calls from people with all sorts of strange things happening to their
system. The screen is shaking, or they are locked out of their files,
or they've got a BSOD. I begged my sister to buy a Mac, because your
chances of getting a virus are so much less. There are over 100,000
harmful viruses lurking out in cyberspace. Most of these are designed
to infect PCs. Macs are immune to most of them, in large part due to
its UNIX based OS. It is much more stable. In order for any software to
mess with your system, you have to type in your password. Vista has
tried to copy this innate security, but has failed miserably. Again, I
have received countless calls from people with compatibility issues
after upgrading to Vista. I have pulled my hair out trying to figure
out why Vista has suddenly locked my clients out of their files or
won't let them use their routers. It's like Vista has a mind of its
own–and has LOST it! But when I upgraded my Mac to Leopard it was
flawless. Again, Apple knew what hardware components were in my system
and it just worked. I want my sister to have a system that "just works"
because that means I can spend my time doing what I want to do, and not
feel obligated to run over to her place to format and restore her
system.
And that's another issue with a PC. Every
year or so it is recommended that you format a Windows computer. You
can delay this by defragging every so often...but eventually it will
get so bogged down that you just have to clean house. Now a lot of
novices would just figure they have a virus or something, and go out
and buy a new system at this point. You've got to wonder if this is
really some diabolical Microsoft marketing plan. To avoid buying a new
system, many users will haul their system into the shop where the techs
there advise a format and restore. It's truly sad. Bad things happen
when I format. It seems I always neglect to back up some little file
somewhere and end up losing something that was "irreplaceable." With a
Mac, it defrags "on the go." You avoid all the hassle associated with
defragging or formatting.
The other thing my sister
was worried about, was being able to use the software that she already
has. By software, Sis means games. She wouldn't know a word processor
if it jumped out and bit her on the ...well you get the picture. But
she can rest easy knowing that she can, in fact, play all her favorite
games. And she has several choices about how she does that. If she
wants to use a Windows game and wants all of her system resources
dedicated towards that game, she can install "Boot Camp." This program
was created by Apple, and it's FREE. Basically, it creates another
partition on your hard drive, on which Windows is installed. With this
program you can shut down your Mac, and select "Windows" as you boot
back up. Your Mac comes up and acts just like it's a PC. It may even
run slightly better than most PCs. Then, you can use whatever games or
applications that you ran on your old PC.
If you
don't want to have to restart your computer to run Windows, there are a
couple of good third-party applications that let you work in both OSs.
You have probably heard of "Parallels." This program creates a file
that runs the Windows OS, right along with the Mac OS. The two run
simultaneously. You can flip from one OS to the other like a book. You
can copy and paste back and forth between programs running concurrently
in the two different OS's. Your other option, and my personal favorite,
is called VMware Fusion. This is another third-party application that
is just incredible. It allows you to run your windows programs directly
from your Mac dock. You just run through the dock and select that
option. Then the program springs up and you can easily run the software
you need straight from your dock. No muss, no fuss! However, the caveat
to this is that when you run in the Windows pasture, you are going to
step in the same dung that all PCs get mired in. You are going to be
susceptible to viruses and that horrible NTFS is going to slow you
down. Your system may begin to get spyware and malware and crash, just
like a PC. That means you may have to defrag and format and all that
crap that we thought we were going to avoid with a Mac. These problems
won't affect your Mac side, but they will sure get to your Windows
files. In light of this, you want to try to get away from Windows and
all the horror that comes with it. You can run a program called
"CrossOver" for Mac. This program is truly the brightest thing out
there. CrossOver emulates Windows in that it takes any windows
application, and magically turns that ap into an executable Mac
program. You don't have to infect your Mac with Windows. Using
CrossOver you can stay away from Windows completely.
Another
great thing for my sister, is that Mac really has superb support. If,
heaven forbid, I don't answer my cell phone; she can call Apple. If she
gets the AppleCare Protection Plan, she could call Apple with all her
questions and problems for the next three years. I could have a life
again! She would get world class support, based right here in the USA .
If my sister bought a Mac, it would be a win-win situation for the both
of us.
These are just a few of the reasons why I
recommend a Mac to my friends and family. But there are even more
reasons to recommend a Mac to a Web designer. First of all, I find that
Mac is much faster than my PC. I've got to have a system that flies
along as fast as my hyperactive mind. I hate waiting, and I find that
my Mac glides along at breakneck speed. Again, that's because
components are all engineered by Apple to work together.
Another
thing I noticed is that my Mac is able to run several different
applications and not get bogged down. I can have Flash up and running,
and also have Photoshop and Fireworks there ready to go. To illustrate
this, I can tell you that my PC has a 512 graphics card, 4 gigs of RAM,
and a 4 GHz processor. With my PC, I could run Flash, Firefox, and
Illustrator together at the same time. But if I needed to open up
Photoshop or any other program, I would have to shut down an
application to make room. These programs are all pretty big resource
hogs and they maxed out my PC quite fast. But with my Mac, I routinely
have 19 or 20 different programs up and running. I like to keep my mail
program and IM open, as well as Safari, Flash, Firefox, Illustrator,
Quicktime, Transmit, Coda , SK Edit, BB Edit, Fireworks, Photoshop, and
usually iTunes . Of course, I have to have a browser with Webforumz
open, too! You may not believe me, but I can run all those programs
simultaneously, no sweat, on my Mac. When I switched to Mac it was like
entering a time warp and being transported to the future. And, I am
loving every minute of it.
Macs come with Apache
installed. All you have to do is turn it on. Once activated, this
allows you to test your code locally without having to upload it to a
web server. This saves a lot of time. You can test your HTML and
PHP/MySQL locally without having to download it and make edits, then
upload it to test it, then repeating the process over and over and
over. You can use Apache in combination with a program called
"Transmit." Transmit allows you to to synchronize your local files with
your remote server. This means that you will always have the latest
version of your code on your server, as well as in your local files.
As
mentioned, Transmit is a great program. Mac has several of those great
"can't live without" programs for designer geeks. Another is Coda. Coda
has great color syntaxing. This helps me a lot as I am slightly
dyslexic and sometimes have trouble seeing coding problems. Coda lets
me keep track of all my websites, and makes accessing them for edits a
breeze. It also lets me view my sites in different browsers. When you
get a Mac, deciding what programs you need can be a little daunting.
I'm going to link to my favorite ones so you can study up on this
yourself.
I hope that you will give more thought to a
Mac. It has been a great choice for me. For some reason I wasn't able
to sell my sister. She came home on Black Friday with another PC. Gee,
I wish she was a paying customer! I foresee many visits to her place in
my future. But you geeks who are more savvy than she, may want to take
the plunge. Once you go Mac, you'll never look back!
Links:
http://www.panic.com/coda/
http://www.panic.com/transmit/
http://www.skti.org/skEdit.php
http://www.barebones.com/
http://macromates.com/
http://www.slappingturtle.com/home/
http://www.vmware.com/
http://www.parallels.com/
http://www.apple.com/iwork/
Apple Store
http://www.panic.com/candybar/
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