Why I use a Mac

I read Paul Kafasis' article on why he uses a mac, and although his article is insightful and funny, his reasons are different to mine.

I work in corporate IT, programming in C# on Windows XP (bored yet?), supporting a network of windows servers. I spend all day programming, troubleshooting or maintaining systems. At least once a day, one of my users has a problem with an indecipherable error message, a virus, popups, or just trying to do something thats denied by default on windows XP.

At home, things are different, My wife and I both use Macs. I never have to deal with the same issues as I do at work. I just use it, it just works. Its why we have Macs at home.

Most of my friends and family have windows computers (I have converted a few to the cause!). I watch how they use their computers and when I show them the Mac way, they love it, and then continue using windows.

For example, almost all have photo libraries. Without exception, they save their photos in a folder structure that is set up manually. Several have Picasa installed but still use the folders. There is no tagging, no search, and all their picture file names are incomprehensible. I use iPhoto, it manages the files for me, I tag and name the pictures and I can search with ease. Thats is why I use a Mac.

For music, most of my friends use folders too, a few with iPods use iTunes.

None of them have experienced a video chat yet (and more than half have webcams!).

When I show them RSS (built into safari or even more impressively I show them NetNewsWire) they start drooling, they still type in web addresses over and over again to get their news. None use tabbed browsing.

For email, they all pay extra, a lot extra for Outlook. Outlook drives me insane (yes, I use it at work too). It reformats emails by removing line breaks at random, blocks access to many attachments, and has warnings all the time about html email formatting. And whomever decided to make MS Word the default editor for emails deservers to be spayed! Its slow, ugly, expensive and the PST file format is proprietary. On the Mac, I use Apple mail, its single purposed, fast and does not get in the way of reading and writing email. Thats why I use a mac.

I also watch my friends when they are just puttering around. They seem to spend a lot of time doing maintenance, moving files, renaming things, reorganizing, or just plain trying to find stuff. And waiting, waiting, always waiting while they search, looking at an hourglass as the anti-virus slows them down. I spotlight, and thats why I use a mac.

I really have no need to delve into the following stuff, the 'Get-A-Mac' ads from Apple or the blogosphere cover them adequately:- spyware, malware, trialware, nagware, interceptware (like the Dell DNS interceptor), anti-virus, anti-spyware, memory protectors, Genuine Windows Advantage (people buy Vista knowing that they can be locked out of their own computers by Microsoft - don't get me started!), DRM, running as an admin by default - are you nuts! My 2 year old work laptop is barely functional with all that installed. My 4 year old powerbook G4 flys better than when it was purchased (I am writing this on it now flying over the Caribbean sea!) That's why I use a Mac.

Oh and it is darn pretty Paul.

So why don't they switch? The excuses range from 'I am used to it' (I say switching is easy) to "I need more buttons on the mouse!' (You can) to "Its more expensive!" (Not!) to "But I need X software" (which they either never use or there is a Mac equivalent!). I make no excuses, thats why I use a Mac.

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