I’ve been a huge PC man for about 15 years now. I’ve always had an interest in Apple and Mac’s – but really I’ve never really got what everyone else sees in them. I don’t have any massively different requirements to everyone else – I surf the internet a lot, design a few small websites, I do a lot with music, movies and photos etc and many Mac heads will say that for these types of things Macs are way better – full stop.
Ok yes I know they almost never crash and they don’t get viruses etc, but really I don’t have that many problems with my PC. I’m still using XP, a pretty old OS at this stage, but it works and I know my way around it very well.
I have given Macs a try a good few times, and really I just don’t get it. People say they are easier but it just does not seem intuitive to me. Maybe if you are completely new to computers a Mac may be easier to pick up, but I got one like the way there are lots of different ways to achieve one task on a pc, but on a mac there is often only one, and in my experience, any tinkering with settings behind the scenes can be quite tricky even for relatively simple tasks.
I admire them as a company cause they are great at what they do, but you have to wonder about the people who but them, is there real and true reasons why a Mac can do what they need better than a PC – or do they party prefer Macs because they believe the marketing?
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I’m a mac fanboy in a big way, but I see exactly where you are coming from. Just to let you in on a bit of relevant information about this whole thing.
Since the 1990’s (maybe even before that), Macs were used by the vast majority of people in Music, Design, and other artsy-fartsy stuff (a loose description of these people would be ‘Creative Professionals’ – a bullshit term I know).
If a music studio even had a computer, it was a Mac. This was simply down to Macs being comparitively mega-stable versus temperamental Windows machines when running anything music related.
Apple were very small then and were really just catering for a very small market, so they geared their OS and general development towards being suitable for Music, Video and Design, and were years ahead of Windows for a long time (bear in mind this is well over 10/12 years ago).
The legacy of this is that Macs were seen as expensive computers of the creative elite, so everyone aspiring to be a great musician/recording engineer/producer/artist/photographer decided to go Mac.
Remember only a few years ago, processor speeds and general computer performance was barely enough for any type of audio/video editing etc., so Apple captured a market by making machines and an OS specifically for these things.
While nowadays, you can do any sort of audio/video work on a PC just as well as on a Mac, that is a VERY recent development caused by the leaps and bounds of processor speeds.
Also, ‘Creative Professionals’, being a moody, temperamental, impatient and quite technologically ignorant bunch, like the fact that out of the box, a Mac is like a big shiny toy to them .
The bundled software like Garageband (a slimmed down version of Logic) and iMovie (a slimmed down version of Final Cut Pro) are light years beyond whatever comes with Windows machines.
Then there’s the other stuff which shouldn’t matter, but which ironically does:
1. They look cool.
2. They make you look cool (like smoking!!)
3.The OS and hardware are made by the same company.
4. The OS is so friggin simple for idiots (like me) to use to it’s full potential.
5. They look cool.
6. Many musicians used PC’s in the bad old days where they were a nightmare to use for audio/music/video/etc, and hence dread ever going back to them.
7. No viruses, no tinkering, far more stability for the general idiot user.
8. They’re fun straight out of the box (that’s a big one for many people).
9. Just look at them!!!!