My favorite thing for 2005
I suppose I was late for the party, but this year I made the conversion back into a Mac user after a five year drift to the PC. My prodigal return has changed my work habits and improved my life beyond measure. Definitely the product purchase of the year for me (with the cloud blanket coming in just behind).
What made me switch?
I was driven to it by two things–an increasing frustration with fundamental flaws in Windows, and more importantly, by the thriving Internet development community around OSX.
To be fair, Windows has gotten better over the years and is now gearing up for another major release (i.e. Vista). But it is clearly on the defensive against the Mac with many basics–desktop search, stability, system management, networking, security. This is clearly a case where market leadership is a detriment–Microsoft can’t just scrap its cash cow and write a new OS, it has to build off its existing flawed system, leading to interminable delays in release and legacy issues. Apple, thanks to Steve Jobs, rewrote the whole OS, building on top of a well-established open source Unix foundation (BSD). As a result it is noticeably more stable, and faster for a host of features.
Though I was a loyal Mac user since the original 128k Macintosh from 1984 (I still own it!), I switched to the PC in ‘98 as Web development was becoming a real hassle on my beloved Mac. IE had become the standard browser, many sites were virtually unviewable on the Mac, and its OS was feeling increasingly archaic, slow and marginalized in the market. Apple was struggling, and I wasn’t about to be held back by its corporate growing pains.
The situation has reversed in many ways. IE, while still the browser to beat in terms of market share, is playing catch-up to less buggy, more secure browsers like Firefox and Safari that properly implement Web standards. Everything is looking better on Mac’s these days, and there are many amazing desktop apps that simply trounce their Windows counterparts. Even when there is a PC-only app it usually ends up ported to Mac in no time. Alas, it doesn’t appear this will be true for my favorite PC app, Picasa (see below).
A few things I love about it.
Hardware
• Keyboard: soft-touch keyboard, illuminated keyboard
• Screen: anti-glare screen, screen adjusts to ambient light
• Touchpad: two-finger touchpad scrolling, the touchpad in general
• style — it really holds up
Software
• Spotlight, the instant desktop search tool
• hassle-free networking
• smoothness of operation
• instant-on after sleep
To be fair, here are a few downsides:
• it runs too hot
• non-standard UI conventions
• iphoto is no match for picasa
What about the cost?
Others have done the math and demonstrated that the Mac isn’t a bad value at all. I live happily in San Francisco, one of the most expensive places on earth. I’ve tried living in other places (most recently in Napa) but the drop in quality of life for me and my family was considerable. Consequently paying more for a smaller house in a city like this is worth it for us. We squeeze tremendous value out of this hyper-cultural petrie dish every single day. For someone more domestic, for instance a nester who craves plenty of space for craft projects, ample parking and easy superstore shopping, it would be silly to pay the premium (monetary and hassle-wise) of City life.
I feel the same about my Powerbook. You can get a cheaper computer but you’d have to use it.