Comments

With two batteries for my PowerBook, there's nowhere I can fly that I will run out of power to my Mac. If I'm flying more than 10 hours, then you can bet I'm doing a lot of sleeping.

Posted by J. B. Rainsberger at January 8, 2006 9:48 PM

The amazing thing for me, since I made the switch to Mac, is that I now spend about 99% of my time working on my projects; whereas with Windows, I spent about 60% on my projects and the rest of the time trying to get the computer to do what I wanted.

Posted by David Adams at January 8, 2006 10:26 PM

The only downside to telling others how much better Macs really do work is that many other folks may start using 'em. :) Macs start much faster, use the software I need, and just keep on going without problems.

Joel

Posted by Joel Heffner at January 8, 2006 11:06 PM

Mac's are wonderful.

I became a "Switcher" on February 28, 2001, at 8:35 PM when I picked up my first Mac at the retail store at Tysons Corner Mall in McLean, Virginia.

We now have five Macs in our home, wirelessly networked to the net, and iPods out the wazoo.

They just plain WORK without any hassle.

I love things that WORK.

Posted by Erick Blackwelder at January 8, 2006 11:09 PM

"mmmm Macintosh..." I love saying that or... "If only it was a mac..." Especially when at a clients and they are bitching about the windows stuff ups...

In all the time I have mac'd I have only had a few errors, and lost files, only due to operator error, not hardware!

To 'mac' is to elegantly perform tasks with ease, to 'window' is to look out of one and wish you could! (I know because in various roles I have had to endure windows).

Steve Gray Mac'r for 15 years +.

Posted by Steve Gray at January 8, 2006 11:19 PM

Hmmm i might consider Dell now since i read your post i'll try getting one hope no regrets.

Posted by Pain Reliever at January 9, 2006 12:00 AM

I totally agree with David Adams: with Mac, any Mac, you can focus on working instead of waist your time fixing problems.

Posted by Francisco Fernández at January 9, 2006 6:25 AM

I hear you, Steve. I just made the switch to a Powerbook, and I've never been happier with a computer in my life. It amazes me that the sleep function works so well after it failing so miserably on windows for so many years.

Apparently, getting a laptop to come out of sleep mode properly is not just the fevered dream of a madman.

Posted by Ryan at January 9, 2006 9:08 AM

Four years now. I'm on my 2nd iBook, and it's great - a move up from G-3 to G-4. I gave away all of our MS machines and we have an eMac as a desktop, too. Flawless. I like the fact that Apple makes products that work for me, instead of the other way around. Nice!

Posted by Earl at January 9, 2006 10:41 AM

If you're in the market for a Mac, wait until tomorrow to see what Steve drops on us - there might well be some announcements of the new Intel-based laptops.

Posted by Tony at January 9, 2006 11:47 AM

Guy Kawasaki now has a blog (we've all been waiting for this I guess). He talks about his dream laptop in this post. Lots of interesting comments...especially on CD drive unusefulness...How many times do you put a CD in your CD drive? Don't you feel it is becoming obsolete now that we have memory sticks, iPods and online downloading?

Here is the link...enjoy!!!

http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2006/01/dear_god.html

Posted by Samir at January 9, 2006 4:17 PM

Odd, I've never had any trouble with any of my PC's, but never brought a Dell.

I've heard so many Dell horror stoies but their market shares continues to grow (I think).

I once tried to use a Mac (or an Apple anyway) but could not figure out how to turn it on.

Turns out the "on" switch was on the keyboard - cool.

Why then does why corporate america still buy wintel?

Posted by carbonboy at January 9, 2006 10:13 PM

here here steve...i made the big switch last year. i know that part of microsofts problem is that being the biggest they are the targets for bad stuff...but my imac and g4 laptop work beautifully and reliably....cant belive it took me so long to switch...Dell support drove my 80 year old mother crazy...I will never ever ever buy anything dell again...unless Michael does a public mea culpa. Microsoft and Dell are gneration x's General Motors and Ford...big dumb companies....

Posted by Mike at January 9, 2006 10:55 PM

It has been 12 years since I had a Mac and I have just switched back in the past month to a new iMac. I agree with the comment "it just works". With Windows you have to play with preferences and tinker with it to make it work. The iMac just worked straight out of the box - the wonder of controlling the hardware and software - and included 80% of the software I needed to do my job. I love it.

Posted by Neil at January 10, 2006 3:18 AM

Hey carbon boy, your last comment is a no brainer, corporate america (or anywhere for that matter) are used to buying what they are told to buy... their tech heads are people weaned on MS windows and the like, they can get in and tinker for hours.

Just note what most people have said about their macs... "I just got it out of the box and it works..." what do the tech heads do with a mac therefore... nothing much... it would be great if this spell was broken.

Posted by Steve Gray at January 10, 2006 5:16 AM

Steve,

There are a number of important reasons why Windows is chosen on the desktop. Very few relate to tech heads tinkering. A lot of developers would rather have Mac because of the Unix core.

It's partly about perception - Mac is for designers, right? More importantly, it is about price, software and people.

Macs cost how much more than PCs? Quite a lot. People perceive PCs to be cheaper.

How much software is there for Macs? Try and find something in a specialist market like mortgage software or AFP print generation. You may find a Mac tool, but you'll have a much smaller market of options.

Then there's people. There are hardly any OSX developers out there. What sort of support does that give your internal applications?

This isn't an anti-Mac post. And the situation is now circular - people use Windows because the software is there, and therefore people write software for Windows first.

Posted by Tim Almond at January 10, 2006 6:49 AM

Can we do some Apple Bashing please!!

Seriously - is there a danger of Apple and it's evangelists becoming a little too smug and a backlash against them?

Ipod rollouts have been far from problem free

I use a Dell laptop at work - never had a problem with it.

Posted by PaulH at January 10, 2006 8:09 AM

I bought one for my wife as an excuse for me to try it. We just love it. It's fantastic. I love the way it turns on, works, it's fast, doesn't hang, and is beautifully designed... I still use windows but regret that.

Posted by Wilson at January 10, 2006 10:19 PM

I haven't had one crash with my Powerbook G4 since I bought it 2 years ago. Yup, there are a few applications I can't get for it, but I'll never go back.

Posted by John O'Leary at January 11, 2006 12:17 AM

Hey! Let's not forget that this love for Macs is on Tom Peters' blog. I've followed Tom for the past 20 years. He's probably the reason why I got terminated from Rogers Telecom recently. I just admired his Re-imagine book (that I listened to on my iPod) and stuck it to the company (no regrets though).

Like many of you, I'm good at fixing Windoze problems. My first piece of advice to my friends and family (lemmings) is to buy a Mac. They're the ones that still think e-mail was created for sending hoax mail. If they don't switch soon, they'll miss out on the great Mac applications that allow users to be creative, experimental and advanced in digital technology.

Posted by Dean Sprung at January 11, 2006 1:39 AM

Hi Steve!

It's officially been 3 weeks since I switched to a Powerbook and I have similar positive emotions using this amazing machine. I just made my first home video DVD and it was the life of the party! It it just us or is the shift accelerating?

Is it possible that we are seeing an accelerated shift of users because of the effect of iPod and the never-ending and persistent chant of Mac users?

And now that there's the new Macs running on Intel, this is an exciting battle to watch.

Posted by Dennis Balajadia at January 11, 2006 11:32 AM

Hi Steve!

It's officially been 3 weeks since I switched to a Powerbook and I have similar positive emotions using this amazing machine. I just made my first home video DVD and it was the life of the party! It it just us or is the shift accelerating?

Is it possible that we are seeing an accelerated shift of users because of the effect of iPod and the never-ending and persistent chant of Mac users?

viagra in india pfizer And now that there's the new Macs running on Intel, this is an exciting battle to watch.

Posted by Dennis Balajadia at January 11, 2006 11:33 AM

Hi Steve!

It's officially been 3 weeks since I switched to a Powerbook and I have similar positive emotions using this amazing machine. I just made my first home video DVD and it was the life of the party! It it just us or is the shift accelerating?

Is it possible that we are seeing an accelerated shift of users because of the effect of iPod and the never-ending and persistent chant of Mac users?

And now that there's the new Macs running on Intel, this is an exciting battle to watch.

Posted by Dennis Balajadia at January 11, 2006 11:33 AM

just watched the passionate mr jobs give his macworld preso.
beautiful slides
amazing software
gorgeous design
been a windows user since 3.1, but now i think the time has come to switch.
my god. it does all that? that easily?
wow

Posted by mikey at January 11, 2006 10:37 PM

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Bought an iBook three weeks ago and haven't regretted the decision! Does the job, is easier to navigate (even though I've been away from the Mac fold since leaving university eight years ago), is very quiet and it looks good too.Chipping to 1 gig was a very wise decision though...

Once this month's writing work's out of the way, I'm going to start playing - copy deadlines first, iTunes later.

Cheers

Keith

Posted by Keith Rickaby at January 12, 2006 2:55 AM

I own a Mac and between all my immediate family we own four iPods (all different models). I think the products are elegant and easy to use, but unfortunately the hardware sucks. My ibook keyboard disintegrated within a month of purchase, the CDROM drive had to be replaced and the operating system regularly went into "pinwheel mode." The batteries on all for iPods work for less than one hour on a full charge. No wonder Apple is always flogging their extended warranty! Better to make a product that doesn't fall apart. BTW, my IBM laptop is absolutely bulletproof.

Posted by Stuard at January 13, 2006 7:17 PM

[rambling]
I like Mac and Windows and Unix/Linux.

I'm on my second Dell and have had no problems. Friends & relatives have bought Dell and I know of only one that had a significant problem; Dell addressed the problem promptly.

Apple builds a wonderful computer, but even clearly superior products do not always [immediately] win in the market for a number of reasons. There are [not insurmountable] challenges that will make it difficult for Apple to gain a significant share of the corporate market in the near future. Right now, I would say that Linux may take market share for Windows in the corporate world before Apple does.

Remember the old saying: "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM"? Wintel boxes have since received the same attitude (although that has started to change somewhat with a number of companies experimenting with Linux desktops).

For companies that develop apps internally, Windows can seem more attractive because there is a larger pool of Windows developers. Of course, there is a decent pool of Unix/Linux developers as well.

There are a lot of enterprise applications (CRM, ERP, Infrastructure Management, ...) that don't currently have native Apple clients. Some of these have Unix clients that can be ported to Linux. The good news for Apple, however, is that the trend for some of these is to move toward browser-based clients that will not be so OS-dependent.

I believe the MIS programs at most business schools are still pretty wintel-centric, so graduates are coming out with that background. Here, too, Linux may be making advances. It probably wouldn't hurt for Apple to make sure they're represented there as well. They already own the English and other Liberal Arts departments.
[/rambling]

Posted by Donnie at January 15, 2006 1:54 AM

I switched this year and I love it too!
I can say enough about my ibook G4.
No silly buggy problems ... the thing just works!

Posted by M. Alverson at January 17, 2006 2:12 PM

Add the amount reboot time, system maintenance and other fiddling about stuff you need for a microsoft platform and the lifetime cost of ownership increases WAY beyond that of an apple platform.

Purchase price is not the issue. Usability, reliability and productivity are!

I run a small business, I switched and the amout of "maintenance time" I had to invest dropped to zero.

Posted by C Griffiths at January 20, 2006 7:24 AM

Having now got to grips with iTunes, I only have one question.

How come Led Zeppelin's Stairway To Heaven and Green Day's American Idiot keep popping up so often when my iBook's rigged for Party Shuffle mode??? And The Toy Dolls Nellie The Elephant (one for the Brits there...).

Cheers

Keith

Posted by Keith Rickaby at January 22, 2006 2:11 PM

Having now got to grips with iTunes, I only have one question.

How come Led Zeppelin's Stairway To Heaven and Green Day's American Idiot keep popping up so often when my iBook's rigged for Party Shuffle mode??? And The Toy Dolls Nellie The Elephant (one for the Brits there...).

Cheers

Keith

Posted by Keith Rickaby at January 22, 2006 2:11 PM