For all the tablets, smart phones, touch screens and other technological marvels that infiltrate our daily lives, personal computing still comes down to one simple question:
Are you Mac … or PC?
Apple and Microsoft remain the industry titans, and each has upgrades to its main operating system on the brink of release. Windows 8 is slated for debut this fall, Microsoft recently announced. Meanwhile, Apple just this week launched Mountain Lion, the $20 upgrade to its own operating system.
But the question has moved beyond a person’s preferred navigation of technology and now lives firmly in our popular culture. A series of Apple-produced TVs ads, co-starring Justin Long, started it. Microsoft responded with its own spots, proudly proclaiming, “I’m a PC.” The Pantsless Knights turned the question into a rap song and video, while the Onion delights in skewering the Macintosh culture.
So what about you? Are you Mac … or PC? (Full disclosure: Patchers use Macs on the job.) Vote in our poll and tell us in the comments.
There are some situations where Windows is still a requirement, especially in proprietary business systems and financial/accounting, but for most everything else and certainly for anything creative, Mac is the way to go IMHO. As to status symbols, I could care less.
Also almost none of the computer skills that you pick up while using a mac will ever convert into computer knowledge that you can use at your job. Aside from printing companies and graphics design jobs I can think of no business that has their employees working on Macs. They're just too expensive and won't run much of the software that businesses run on.
Ah, you mean most MAC users tend to be Democrats who expect the government to give them one because they are entitled to have one, paid for by the people who use PCs. :-)
************** Incorrect. There's plenty of custom designed "internally focused" business related programs built for the PC platform that won't run on a Mac. Why even make such a ridiculous statement? Frankly, in a business environment, whether you're networking a couple dozen or a couple hundred computers, why would you want to do it with a bunch of Macs when you can accomplish exactly the same thing on PCs for a lot less - even if that was a realistic option?
Sure it can, albeit not so smoothly, and provided you run the Mac's "parallels" Windows emulator, in which case you still have to install a version of windows, an antivirus program, etc. In that case what you have is a really expensive piece of hardware that's trying to pretend it's a PC and two operating systems to maintain instead of one. You will also have a much more limited pool of potential employees to choose from provided they need to know how to operate the machine, or else you will have to fund a much higher learning curve as your employees learn to do everything a computer all over again.
It took under 4 hours to render the video, and properly convert it. The most hilarious thing about this. My PC costs a quarter of what the Mac costs.
I got my Mac when a virus totally screwed me up on a severe deadline. My client said, "If my book hits the bestseller list, I'll buy you any computer you like." And she did...that's how I switched to Mac. NEVER AGAIN!
The reality is that most folks also don't want to deal with your cheap, "custom-built" PC and all the issues and technical skills needed to build it. People have been building cheap PCs for decades now, even in their garages. The mishmash of parts may be cheaper, but the user experience, lifespan, and resale does not compare with Macs, or even with better quality PCs. The key advantage Macs have, IMHO, is the clean and tight integration of software and hardware to create a great and intuitive user experience. I don't care how cheap or fast your PC is, it can't duplicate that aspect of Mac computing. It is probably the biggest reason why I sit in front of a Mac every day instead of a PC, and why I would happily pay more for it.
If you read the above article, you should also note that a. the hackers did not really break into the Mac operating system. Instead they managed to get a hold of passwords that gave them access to areas by which they could make trouble. This is a breakdown of a person's individual security habits, and a breach of Amazon and Apple's customer service, etc., not a breakdown of the OS. b. no viruses were even involved. And the entire incident would have been avoided if the user had been smarter about use of passwords, linked accounts, backing up data, etc.