Right.
I manage a computer store which sells PCs, Macs and all related accessories. I'm fed up with people wittering on like incompetent fools about how damn proud they are of their brilliant new Macs.
"I just bought myself a Macbook. I got really fed up with PCs and viruses, so I went to Mac, because they don't get viruses..."
... Oh don't they? Well if you believe this, then there are a few other things you should know about your beloved Mac.
1. Cost.
Macs come in all shapes an sizes... Well... Some shapes and sizes.
There's the Macbook, Macbook Pro, iMac, Mac Mini, Mac Pro... and that's it.
With PCs there are so many different possible combinations of hardware, manufacturer and aesthetics, it's impossible to list them here, but we will doubtless cover that later on...
Let's do a typical comparison. Let's take the top-of-the-tree iMac. It will set you back a pretty hefty £2,969. The specs are as follows:
Intel Quad-Core i7 3.4GHz (2600)
16GB DDR3 RAM
2TB HDD with 256GB Solid State HDD
ATI Radeon 6970 2GB GDDR5 Graphics
An equivalent specification PC, including 27inch screen, keyboard and mouse, is £1,611. A stroke over HALF what you would pay for one of those fashion accessories they call computers.
Not only that, but when you're done, you can put OSX on it, so you have a PC and Mac rolled into one, vastly cheaper package.
It doesn't stop there I'm afraid. Ohh no...
Let's talk briefly about accessories - The MacBook/MacBook Pro are of course laptops, and as such, need a laptop charger.
Generic laptop chargers for PCs are around £15-30 dependant on age and model...
Today, I sold a Macbook charger for £70. Yes, that's significantly more than double the price of one for a laptop. And let's not forget batteries...
Typical laptop batteries range from £40-£60. MacBook batteries are around £100.
One more thing - When you come to order spare parts because your Mac has broken (I know it's difficult for a Mac user to understand the concept), spare parts can be double the price of their equivalent PC counterparts. And it's not like those shiny new Apple components are gold-plated, either...
2. Form/Function
As many in design, and some outside of design will know, form and function are two factors that never match each other in abundance. Things are either functional, and look nice, or look great but don't do much.
For something to be called 'Art', it has to serve no purpose other than to be. Essentially, it has to be completely useless.
Which is why when Mac owners tell me their machines are works of art, I don't correct them.
Here is a graph showing the correlation of form and function in accordance with good and bad design principles;
As you can see, the closer to the top left of the graph a given product is, the worse it is overall. Conversely, the further to the top right it is, the better the product is overall.
Macs sit in the top left pink zone. All form with the function being considered only as an afterthought at ten to five on a Friday afternoon.
Let's start from the top - Booting. Mac users are of this warped perception that their machines boot quicker than their Windows machine used to. There are two reasons for this;
1. The Mac they bought is newer, and an upgrade to the PC they had previously, otherwise it's pointless
2. PC boots into something known as a 'verbose' screen - This is where you can see all the white writing that makes no sense. I like this fact because being an IT engineer, it makes sense to me, and I can see that everything is working as it should. Macs go from blank screen straight to what is known as a 'splash' screen - This is the beige screen with the apple logo on. It will sit here happily while it's loading in much the same way in much the same time frame that a PC does, hiding the verbose screen, giving people the impression that it is booting faster.
It's crafty, I'll give them that...
Once you're in there, it starts going a little wrong.
People say Macs intuitive to use, and they're just not. Perhaps they mean thoroughly annoying and illogical when they say 'intuitive'...
There's a history to this 'change for the sake of change' attitude that Apple has, and it began in 1986 with the creation of the Macintosh Mouse.
It had one button, and like Porsche putting their engines in the boot of their cars, it's a mistake they have stubbornly stuck with, justifying it any way they can.
"Macs are so simple to use, they only need one mouse button" says one of my Apple-enthused friends.
"No, it's just that the people who BUY Macs are so simple, they can only comprehend one button" I respond.
So with a Windows system, when you need to view the options on a particular icon, program or... if you get bored, just use the mouse to right-click whatever it is. On a Mac, you need two hands - one to press and hold the command key, and the other to click the one massive mouse button. Two arms to do the job of one finger? Idiocy.
It (again) doesn't cease there - Some Apple genius decided to take the eject button from the CD drive and incorporate it into the keyboard. At the same time, they did away with CD trays all together and put a slot drive in because both these modifications make the machine look neater and tidier.
Nice work.
Let's put a hypothetical situation into play here...
I'm working away and I think "Hey... I really want some music...", so I grab the nearest Phil Collins CD on my rack and crack it on. Suddenly, My Mac shuts down for reasons I don't know, and there's no Phil Collins.
"Not to worry" I say to myself, "I'll get the CD out and put it onto my old CD walkman - it still has some batteries left so may as well play out this power outage with it." - a perfectly sound proposition (excuse the pun). It's at this point I'd eject the CD normally by pressing the button, but for some reason, the Mac won't boot up again, and pressing the eject button isn't working. Great job, Apple.
On the standard laptop optical drive, there is a small hole which, when poked, will eject the tray, regardless of the power or boot situation - It's purely mechanical and nothing electrical about it, which is fabulous in situations like these... Oh wait.
My Mac CD drive doesn't have a tray... so it doesn't have this switch... so my CD is stuck in there... for as long as it takes to get it to boot.
Thanks, Apple! But there is more, of course...
In order to fix an Apple a lot of the time, you need to repair or reinstall the operating system, or OS, commonly referred to as OSX. This, on a PC, is a relatively simple affair as all that is required is for one to pop a CD into the optical drive and then boot from the CD. Simple.
If the CD drive isn't working or has a CD stuck in it for some reason, then never fear - you can always plug a USB optical drive in and boot from that. All is not lost...
... Macs don't support booting from USB optical drives.
So if you have a Mac with a CD stuck in the drive, and you need to reinstall the OS, you're Fuc...
Moving on.
Because of Apple's relentless concern for aesthetics, there is very limited cooling on most Mac models of any nature - This is because slats and vents look ugly, and fans are noisy. Marry this to the well-known fact that computer components heat up rather a lot, and the two factors get on like Miss America trying to play Soduko.
Rather than thinking before doing and addressing this issue, Apple decided to then bolt a screen to a computer and call it the iMac. Screens, particularly high-power 27inch LCD screens, pump out VAST amounts of heat, and in conjunction with the already piping hot innards of a computer, suddenly reliability suffers.
"But none of the above matters really, because Macs don't GO wrong" you might be thinking...
3. Reliability
Macs go wrong as much as anything else.
Mac owners won't tell you this, or allow themselves to believe it, but they do.
In fact, when they go wrong, it's usually quite serious.
Let's start with the basic ones: The spinning beachball of death.
Yes, Windows users have the blue screen of death, but rather than being outright honest with people and tell them that the computer has had a pretty major problem, the Mac will sit there joyfully displaying the spinning beachball of death, giving you false hope that everything will be ok in just a few moments...
Apple's customer support quotes the following:
"Sometimes when your Mac is hard at work, your pointer may temporarily turn into a colorful spinning disc, which generally indicates that a task is in progress."
Further up the Apple tree (see what I did there?) with their engineers, they quote the following:
"The spinning wait cursor is displayed automatically by the window server when an application cannot handle all of the events it receives. If an application does not respond for about 2 to 4 seconds, the spinning wait cursor appears."
So one of them says it appears when your Mac is working hard, and the other says it appears when you're Mac is not working at all...?
You'd think working for the same company they'd be clear in themselves as to what it means.
Something in Apple's 'spinning beachball of death' troubleshooting page caught my attention...
CAUSE: Insufficient CPU, RAM, or free disk space for your type of work.
SOLUTIONS: If you cannot resolve the problem by adding RAM, freeing up disk-space or buying a new Mac with a more powerful CPU, then run fewer applications concurrently. In particular, quit unnecessary applications when not in use and open fewer applications.
The solution for when your Mac isn't working, is to buy another one.
Yep. You've just spent a grand on your nice shiny Mac, and when things get a little too tough, it's time to shell out another grand for a new one.
When you bear in mind that the computer industry moves on quicker than Liz Taylor, what's the point in putting out such a stupid amount of money for a machine that's going to be obsolete in the next ten minutes?
Something else caught my eye, but first I shall play you a little video:
Now please allow me to consult Apple customer support's question and answer section:
PROBLEM: System has hung/frozen. This may be due to a hung system process.
SOLUTION: Attempt to restart or shut down your Mac.
Great work, Apple. You've just proven one of your oh-so brilliant USP's in one of your cocky, biased advertisements to be a complete load of shit.
Another of their 'Get A Mac' ad campaign videos showed 'PC' with a virus, warning 'Mac' not to come near him at the risk of catching it. 'Mac' claims that there's no danger of that...
Oh how wrong could he be?
Firstly, this is a quote from a Mac website, Macnn.com:
"Most Mac users take security too lightly. In fact, most are quite proud of the fact that they don't run any security at all..."
So even from the offset, the likelihood is high. People are of the opinion that because they have a Mac, they're suddenly shielded from this hideous world of viruses... Not so. If anything, using your lack of anti-virus software as a trophy is even more encouragement for virus-makers to churn something out...
Here's an extract from the following article:
"Apple users, your days of worry-free web surfing could be numbered. A Mac internet security and privacy software maker has discovered what is believed to be the first professionally crafted in-the-wild malware targeting the Mac operating system."
The article is dated November 2007. Not exactly breaking news.
So yes. Don't believe those Apple commercials, or you may find yourself in a spot of trouble.
Let's talk about the nitty-gritty shall we? When Macs break down, their spare parts are VERY expensive (as I've mentioned previously), their warranty is practically non-existent, and their free phone support stops after three months.
Yes, that's correct - There is no warranty to speak of... They do something else called AppleCare plan.
AppleCare plan is a three-year customer support program that covers your machine for breakdown and technical assistance.
Sounds nice and reassuring. How much is it?
Well, to take out a CarePlan on a Macbook Pro, it's £203. Yep - that extra three pounds is critical...
That's nearly as much as a whole PC! Just to look after your MacBook Pro that will never break anyway (apparrently). And considering you get that kind of service as standard with a PC within the first year of it's life, it suddenly doesn't seem like such a good deal.
So at this point you probably think "never mind - I'll try and fix it myself". This is not going to happen.
If you went and bought a Macbook Pro UniBody (the ones that boast that they're made of one piece of aluminium), even the most basic procedures suddenly become a complete ball-ache. Verging on the impossible for the amateur engineer.
Also, even if you manage to get somewhere towards doing it, you'll suddenly find a device/part that is attached with a TORX screw, which of course needs a special torx screwdriver, and it's not something you might find in a Christmas cracker, meaning you can't progress any further anyway.
4. Upgrading and Compatibility.
Let's talk about upgrading your Mac...
It's not possible. Cannot be done.
If you bought a Mac of any sort, THAT IS IT until you buy a whole new one. PCs, as I've already mentioned, are infinitely customisable. You can make it mega-fast AND look good, which is one thing Mac users always claim to have regardless of anything else.
"Atleast my computer looks nice..."
... well thanks to customisable cases and accessories, mine can look better.
That's that section out the way, let's move onto compatibility...
Macs are compatible with... very little. Macs don't do games aside 'breakout', they don't do very much in the way of software outside the beret-wearing, scalf-donning, paintbrush chewing sector such as Adobe Première and Photoshop, and to be honest, there's nothing a Mac can do besides make a photo album, load photos into iPhoto to look at photos, photo editing with Photoshop, making a video with iMovie and FinalCut pro, making a more advanced movie with Adobe Première... organising more photos in iLife... erm... listen to and buy music on iTunes... umm...
... I think that's it.
Oh no wait! Thanks to some crumbs falling from the PC dominance table, Macs can run MS Office! YEAH!
So yeah. Not very compatible or fun. Particularly amusing considering the 'Get A Mac' advertisement campaign (see earlier video), where the Mac is meant to be some up-to-date cool casual person, while the PC is supposed to be a boring, stuffy, tight-collared businessman. May I remind you which of the two machines can't run most games. And it gets worse for Mac...
People constantly try and justify to me that Macs are just better at visual, creative things than a PC, such as photoshopping and movie-editing. Unfortunately this is not true...
Let's suppose a new version of Adobe Première hits the shelves, boasting 1080HD editing abilities never seen before (this is hypothetical - I'm aware this is already possible).
Both PC and Mac get a version and are happily working well until...
ADOBE PREMIÈRE 3D!
PC has no problem sorting that out - grabs a new 3D-capable graphics card and off it goes!
Mac has a small problem... It can't upgrade, so you're stuck until you can afford a whole new one...
Can I remind all that there are NO MACS that currently support 3D display technology, so even if you could afford it, there's nothing out there you can actually buy to solve the problem.
So yeah. Anything Mac can do, PC can do. And often, PC does it better.
People constantly claim PCs break and don't work. The people who claim this would never consider for a moment that it's THEM that's the problem - That'd be ridiculous.
PCs need a tiny bit of intelligence to use and get around. That's all. They're a thinking person's tool;
System Requirements:
1 brain cell or greater.
Commons Sense V2.0 or above
Macs are for point-and-shoot computing. Can't handle more than one mouse button? Perfect. You want to browse the net and you want to do it now? Go on then... off you go... go play... oh no wait there are no games for you...
So yes. The argument will rage on, but for what? I think I've summed it all up here pretty well.
If anyone has anything that I have not considered here, please post it as a comment. I'll try and address it.
In the mean time; iFags - I don't care about how apparently brilliant your new Mac is. I couldn't care less. I can build one exactly the same for half the money. And yes it can run OSX if I wanted. It won't go wrong because I'm not a vegetable, and I am my own warranty service. It can edit movies, and what's more, in about 3 years time, it won't be obsolete - I'll just get new components.
Macs are not great. If anything, people wittering on about them is them trying to highlight and justify making 'the leap', showing they don't follow the rat race, showing their individuality, which is what all iFags do, so they're not really as unique as they thought, are they?
