Tell me again why the Mac is better?.
I'm
still finding the Mac experience surprisingly frustrating. I posted
this in the comments, but it's worth putting it on my main blog to
invite people to respond.
My biggest surprise is that I'm seeing few things that are actually better on my Powerbook than my old Thinkpad. Can someone help me out here?
The reasons for preferring the Mac that I've heard so far are:
- Better stability — I believe this is true, but in a week
with the Powerbook I've had two crashes requiring me to remove the
battery, and at least one force quit per day. No unexplained chronic
problems like I got from time to time with Windows, but again, it has
only been a week. - fewer viruses — Definitely true. On the other hand, I
used a firewall and virus checker on my Windows machine, and didn't use
Microsoft's email or Web browser apps. So I never spent any time
dealing with viruses on my Thinkpad. - Better networking — So far, this has been the biggest
surprise. My Powerbook doesn't recognize the Linksys WiFi access point
right next to it, and it often fails to recognize USB hard drives and
keychain drives. Since I use USB drives all the time for backup and
file transfer, the latter is a royal pain. I also couldn't get the
Powerbook to print over the Internet to a laser printer that worked
right away on my Thinkpad. So, how is the Mac actually better in this
department? - Print to PDF — Useful, but that's just bundling a feature I already had with Acrobat.
- Dashboard — Doesn't do it for me. If I'm going to use
widgets, I want them always available on the desktop, rather than
requiring a mode switch. I know I can get that with Konfabulator, but I
had that on Windows. - Spotlight — A nice feature. But the biggest thing I
search through is email, and I can already do that with much more
powerful features within Eudora. - Instant on from sleep — Better, but trivial.
So, what am I missing? Why is a Mac today actually better
than a PC? Virtually everything I've seen so far is an improvement in
basic, out-of-the-box functionality, but not an advantage over the
tuned Thinkpad I gave up.
And before anyone flames me, I'll reiterate that I was a die-hard
Mac user for a decade before I (grudgingly) went over to Windows. I've
just spent $9,000 on Mac hardware and software, and I want to feel that
I made the right choice. [Werblog]