1. The Mac... it just works
Ask them — the millions of people who use and love their Macs — why it’s become such an integral part of their lives, and most will tell you that it’s because it just works. Letting them do what they want to do. How they want to do it. Intuitively. And there’s good reason. Only with a Mac do you find absolutely flawless integration of hardware and software. Only with a Mac do you get an operating system built by the same people who built the computer it runs on. Take a Mac out of its box, and you experience that hand-and-glove fit from the get-go. Plug it in. Turn it on. And you’re ready for anything. That’s because with a Mac, you’ll find all of the essentials built right in. USB. FireWire (IEEE 1394). Ethernet. Modem. Macs even come with built-in antennas for wireless networks. And every Mac comes with drivers for most of the printers, joy sticks, DV camcorders, keyboards, storage devices, digital cameras, input devices, MP3 players and game pads you’ll be connecting to those ports. So when you plug them in for the first time, they’ll just work, too.
These are the same promises Micro$oft has made for years. Full "Plug-n-Play" support. In the most recent versions of Micro$oft's OS, modern peripherals will work the second you plug them in, no matter what they are, with few exceptions. I hate to admit it, but Micro$oft can make exactly the same claims, except for "an OS built by the same people who built the computer." Linux, too, has a bad habit of working out of the box. RedHat Linux, Mandrake Linux, and SuSE Linux will work the first time you boot, and many peripherals will work when you plug them in. Of course, very new hardware usually doesn't work, bun in general most things will. Apple has no real advantage here.
2. It doesn't crash
Are you just a tad too well acquainted with the notorious “blue screen of death”? Bid it a fond farewell. With Mac OS X, you’ll become accustomed instead to industry-leading stability. In this elegant new operating system, memory is fully protected and applications can’t conflict with the OS or one another. And, oh yes, Mac OS X is built on the industrial strength of UNIX. Most Fortune 500 companies, governments and universities rely on UNIX for their mission-critical applications. And now, so can you.
Again, I hate to say it, but I wonder if these people have ever used or even seen Windows 2000 or Windows XP. Sure, these are "enterprise"-grade operating systems, but Windows 2000/XP support separating memory spaces for applications. With a little third-party help, your old DOS shit can come back, too. Linux and FreeBSD et.al. are Unixes, and as such support everything that MacOSX can lay claim to. Separate memory spaces, full threading and pre-emptive multi-tasking - the works. Apple can't make any claims here, either.
3. Simply the best in digital music
The critics all agree (and how often does that happen?) — not only does iTunes turn the Mac into an unequalled digital jukebox, but iPod has no peer among MP3 players on the market today. iTunes makes it easy to convert the music from your CD collection into MP3 files. Lets you make playlists to match your every mood. Offers one-button burning of audio CDs. And seamless integration with MP3 players. Like iPod. Which fits in your pocket, weighs just 6.5 ounces, holds up to 2,000 songs, features lightning-fast music transfers via FireWire, plays for up to ten hours and lets you bring your music wherever you go.
Windows has WinAMP, Sonique, Windows Media Player, and many many other media players, all free, and all supporting playlists. Some of them are even cross-platform. Linux has (most notably) FreeAMP and XMMS (a WinAMP clone), which are not only free, but open-source, so if you're of the programming mind, you can learn a lot about MP3s. Most of these players (on both platforms) also support OGG Vorbis and MOD formats (including MOD, XM, IT, S3M, et.al.). As for MP3 players, Windows can support the iPod (with third-party help - Mr. Gates probably has an iPod himself) and Linux hackers have done just about anything you can do to an iPod (one such mod turns the MP3 player into an organizer - on stearoids). Windows natively supports most MP3 players, and Linux has kernel-level support for MP3 players compatible with the Rio 500 and USB disk drives. Again, Apple's claims are moot.
4. The missing link in digital photography
Everyone loves iPhoto, which revolutionizes the way you save, organize, share and enjoy digital photos. Included with every Mac, iPhoto lets you easily download, organize, find and share your photos — as prints, in a slide show or on a website it will even help you build. Simply drag your mouse, and iPhoto magically grows or shrinks your photo thumbnails. So you can view individual shots in detail or see hundreds of photos on the screen at once, and quickly scroll through thousands to find the one you’re looking for. iPhoto even lets you create your own custom coffee-table books. You may never go back to using a film camera again.
This is, admittedly a damn nice peice of software. However, many OSes have support at file manager level for this sort of thing. KDE's Konqueror (available for every flavor of BSD, Unix, and Linux), for example, lets you resize thumbnails with quite a lot of flexibility, and makes it very easy to manage your music, movies, pictures, etc. Windows has similar support, but you can't change the size of thumbnails. Windows users can rejoice: ACD See is a nice application that does everything iPhoto can do - and more. Unfortunately, it's not cheap ($49.95). Again, no loss for Windows or Linux.
5. Your own digital entertainment center
Designed and built for today’s digital lifestyle, the Mac offers a complete ensemble of digital tools. In addition to iTunes and iPhoto, Macs come with iMovie and, on all systems equipped with a SuperDrive, iDVD, as well. Like the Mac itself, they’re easy to use and work together flawlessly. You’ll use iMovie to turn raw video footage into polished films — complete with soundtracks, titling and effects — that friends will actually ask to watch over and over again. And iDVD will let you burn your photos and movies onto DVDs that can be played on most commercially available DVD players.
QuickTime actually has quite a lot of this functionality on Windows. There are also a myriad of free and open-source tools for both Windows and Linux/BSD/Unix that can do all of this, and other software can write DVDs as easily as they write CDs. Another strike. score is still 0-0-0.
6. Goes everywhere you go
We think computing on the go should always be a first-class experience. That’s why we design our PowerBook and iBook computers the way we do. Light. Thin. Displays so bright and clear, you’d think you’re working on a desktop system. And they come standard with what some other laptops consider “extras”: capacious hard drives, built-in optical drives, USB, FireWire, Ethernet, modem, video out, audio in, WiFi. Consider this: Can your PC laptop go coast to coast with just one battery? Can you put the system to sleep just by closing the lid? Does it wake up instantly? Can your PC laptop automatically switch between Ethernet, dial-up and wireless connections on the fly? Without a restart? Ours can.
So can mine, and it runs Windows 2000 quite nicely, thank you. There are actually two standards for this kind of support, and both are supported well by both Windows and Linux. I have no experience with Linux on laptops, but IBM has long supported Linux on their laptops (the project was unfortunately recently cancelled, but the information is still available on IBM's website).
7. It's built for the internet
When did you last configure a PC for the Internet? Take you long? It won’t on a Mac. Fact is, most of our customers are up-and-surfing within 15 minutes. And that includes people who never touched a computer before in their lives. What will your experience be like? You’ll find moving your favorites, email contacts, and email messages to the Mac mere child’s play. And wait till you try the software. Microsoft built features into Explorer and Entourage found nowhere else, features that make browsing and email on a Mac an absolute joy. Feel like chatting? AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, MSN Messenger — all your favorites are available. In fact, you’ll find tons of Internet tool options. That includes QuickTime. When it comes to world-class streaming video, no product offers a better digital media experience. (And with QuickTime 6, we just upped the ante.) Of course on a Mac, it’s just as easy to stream video, chat, read email and surf wirelessly. That’s because every Mac is ready for WiFi (802.11) — we call it AirPort — right out of the box.
Yeah, last time I configured a computer for the internet was when I installed the OS. It took me 4 minutes each time. Last I checked, Micro$oft was making Internet Explorer for Windows and HPUX, not just MacOSX. There are also Opera, Netscape Navigator, and Mozilla, which support industry standards and run on nearly every OS people out there use. Oh yeah, they import IE bookmarks with a couple clicks. And chatting? Funny they didn't mention ICQ. There are a number of third-party applications for MacOSX, Windows, and Linux that log into the ICQ network, and work quite well. Streaming media? Windows Media Player, DivX Playa, RealMedia, and a number of other players are available and stream video and/or audio quite well. But last I checked, QuickTime only supports the .mov format, and most freaks use the Sorenson video Codec, which, coincidentally, is only available for QuickTime. I'm disappointed in them. They blame M$ for monopolistic behaviour....
8. Office is Office, and then some
The transition to a Mac is easy in part because you’ll continue using the same applications you already know. Microsoft Office vX for Mac OS X gives you Word, PowerPoint and Excel, all with the same familiar features and shortcut commands. And thanks to exclusive features, the Mac versions improve on their Windows counterparts. Office documents are all fully compatible between Mac and Windows, so you can share everything from spreadsheets to presentations. Beyond Office, you’ll find you can run more than 3,000 applications designed specifically for Apple’s new operating system, Mac OS X. You can do anything you’d dream of doing on the Mac — from CAD to databases to finance.
Interesting that they depend on Micro$oft for an Office suite, too. There are alternatives, and they read Word documents quite well. But I have yet to see a major 3D CAD application on the Mac. I'd like someone to point me to one of those. And bidding and estimation software is why my Dad can't move to the Mac - he can't find any. Ouch, non-locatable software; that hurts.
9. Works effortlessly with PCs
Standards let everyone work together harmoniously. That’s why Apple has adopted so many of them. Take networking. Networking on a Mac is built on the same technologies used by PCs. As a result, the Mac is at home on PC networks (or just about any other kind), making the business of sharing files and printers with PCs entirely painless. And in Mac OS X you don’t have to be a network administrator to make it all work. What’s more, Gigabit Ethernet is built in. As is support for 802.11 wireless, so you can network without cables inside your house using AirPort or another wireless access point. Of course, you can also swap files via data CD, floppies or Zip disks. And most new peripherals connect via USB or FireWire (two other industry standards), so you can use them with either PCs or Macs.
What's interesting here, folks, is that most of these technologies were designed for PCs in a Unix environment. Sure, Firewire is an industry standard (IEEE standard 1394), but only because it's on every Mac. One thing they fail to mention is the difficulty there is in setting up a secure wireless network. If you don't want people hacking your 802.11a/b network, yuo don't want to use an Airport. You want to use something from Lucent or Agilent that supports heavy encryption as well as password locks.
10. It's beautiful
Our designers and engineers agonize over every millimeter of every new Macintosh model, and every pixel of the user interface. The result: ergonomic products that are the toast of the design world. iMac. PowerBook. iPod. iBook. You can see obsession with design and detail wherever you look: the spring-loaded screws that secure the bottom plate of the new iMac, laser-etched text where others would put a sticker, the tough colorfast polycarbonate cases of the iMac and eMac, the swing-away door on the Power Mac G4, the elegant optical mouse included with all desktop Macs, the instructions on the back of the door you open to add memory to an iBook or PowerBook. They’re objects that would be striking even if they weren’t computers. Tools that are, at every level, a pleasure to use.
The case of the PowerMac G4 is the only thing i'll give them a point for. It's a beautifully designed case as far as engineers are concerned. Everything else is quite subjective. I, for one, hate the new iMac. I refuse to buy an ugly lampstand that looks like an "iTit". If they were to design something I could wrap my geeky heart around, (like the cube - BRING BACK THE CUBE!) I'd probably jump on it. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. But I behold no beauty in the Mac.
We think you owe it to yourself to experience a Macintosh first-hand. Check out the high- performance PowerBook. The ultra-fast Power Mac G4. The oh-so-portable iBook. And the beautiful new iMac. Come see one at an Apple store or one of our resellers soon. You’ll find the Mac can answer most of your questions itself.
Does that mean the Paperclip is back?
I'm quite sorry if I angered Mac users, or if Linux users believe me to be weak (for defending Micro$oft's OS). This write-up was not intended in any way to be a flame target, but I'll read all the flames I get and consider them.... Except for Vector's.
Rest assured, I don't suport or condone M$, and I have long been considering the purchase of a Mac (specifically, a dual-processor PowerMac). I've just found Apple's "Reasons to Switch" to be ludicrous to say the least, and I felt something needed to be said.
I'd love to have as many responses as possible from this. Comments, flames, feedback... Whatever.
