Mac vs PC
This is something I find myself in on a regular basis and it's an age old argument really. But since I often find myself needing to explain this to people I figure I'll post it here and just direct people to my blog post instead of rehashing the same things.
I started out writing this as a response to a friend's question:
"With most of the creative community working on Macs, how come you're still a PC guy?"
I hear ya. If it's your only computer than the little ones can be a pain in the ass. And Windows does have a habit of bogging down over the years. I take this for granted because generally every 2 years I reformat my computer and start over again with a clean installation.
The Acer I got runs Linux and I expect will be much more stable than Windows. It's surprisingly zippy.
Why don't I use a Mac? I'm tempted. Always tempted. But then I'm brought back to the PC for a number of reasons.
1. Doing a cost comparison of the low end stuff shows that I have zillions more options for hardware. It's not until you get to the MacBook Pro that cost becomes less of a factor.
2. Windows XP with all updates and Vista are both a million times more stable than the use to be. I haven't seen a blue screen of death of in years and when stuff does crash they handle it really well and just shut down the offending program. On the other hand, OS X has increasingly become more unstable. Reports of crashes and random behaviour continue to grow. Software randomly closes. Unintelligible errors show up at the oddest of times.
3. This is likely more that I've used Windows and DOS all my life, but I find the interface and controls on a Mac incredibly awkward and difficult to use.
4. Why do I still go PC when so many creatives go Mac? Because I don't like being limited to Apple's vision of creativity. On a Mac you get primarily Apple apps to use with a few third party apps. Right now I have a few Mac users with FTP clients that don't like my FTP server. Problem is there are only two viable FTP programs on the Mac to choose from, whereas a PC has literally hundreds. Anything I can dream of doing, there is software, often free open source stuff, that I can use to bend my PC to my will. On a Mac? My will is controlled by Steve Jobs.
5. Everyone I know with a Mac regularly has problems connecting to anything but the most basically secured wifi networks. And far too often the odd resolutions that Macbooks use make hooking them up to projectors a challenge.
I'm not against the Mac. There are most certainly some really nice things about them. But I continue to find a much longer list of pros for the PC is much longer than the Mac list. For most Apple products I think the real thing that appeals to people is the software (the interface and the apps on the iPod and iPhone are actually much sexier than the device itself which is mediocre at best). Strip away the software and you are left with a computer that would fail on every level compared to a PC. No doubt the apps that Apple produces are easy to use and have fantastic interface design. But they are contained within Apple's world view, one that is too narrow for what I want my computer to do.
My 80GB 5G iPod has Rockbox on it. It's not as clean an interface as what Apple provides, but it's much more functional. My iPod Touch will be jailbroken so I can use all the great stuff that Apple doesn't want it to. I use iTunes in limited amounts but MediaMonkey for most of my audio library needs. No matter how much I find Apple products initially appeal to me, eventually I always feel the need to make them achieve more.