Jinx wrote:
>>ok I think we should label this thread [OT] already but anyway...
>>Macs are good machines, but I hate all the hype about them

Heh heh... how many years of hype have we heard about "Longhorn" being 
the next best thing since sliced bread?  ;-)  Goes with the territory.

[snippage...]

> expensive, and always have been, for my needs. Although I'm still
> not sure what you can do on a Mac that you can't do on a PC for
> half the price

I think the #1 reason I talked my wife and my family (mom) into buying 
them was not for what they could *do*... every computer can surf, send 
e-mail, do all that... it's that you pay for the completely working and 
TESTED integration that Apple does by maintaining closed hardware and 
for the severe effort they put into making computers easy to use for 
non-technical folks.

My wife goes to the store, pays about 2x whatever I pay for my 
software/hardware/etc for her Mac and NEVER EVER EVER has driver issues, 
problems making anything work, etc.  She just plugs in whatever new 
thing she bought, sticks in a CD/DVD (if even necessary -- OSX gets 
updates of new Apple software before she even buys the hardware in most 
cases) follows on-screen instructions for NORMAL non-techie people, and 
she's done... it works.

Once in a great while (like tonight) she'll ask me how to do something 
like, "How do I e-mail my Voice Memos from my iPod to someone?"  A few 
minutes of showing her where the menu items are to do what she wants (or 
better yet, the Apple-Key combination) and the "tech support" session is 
over.

My mom's the same way -- everything she does just works.  In heavy 
contrast to their previous "fleet" of machines on Windows... and ALL the 
different versions of Windows at that.  I used to spend two or three 
sessions a year either logged into their machines remotely via VNC 
(which I set up just for the purpose along with a dynamic DNS provider) 
or there at their house patching, and running anti-spyware and what-not. 
  They just don't have that problem on Mac.

Example from this weekend... I went up there and my stepfather asked 
"How do I use the office printer from the wireless laptop?"  I spent an 
hour fighting with the old office machine (a resonably speedy Pentium 
III, and a good HP printer... both excellent hardware crippled by the OS 
they're running on the machine) to try to get it to share the printer...

Oh wait... this is Windows 98 without the CAB files loaded onto the 
drive... and every time you touch anything in the network configuration 
it wants the Win98 CD... oh when I turn on Windows Networking client the 
stupid machine now wants a username and password every time you boot it, 
that'll be confusing for them, oh no - they can't find their 98 CD they 
lost years ago and I didn't bring my copy, let's hope networking still 
even works after this forced reboot when I plainly hit CANCEL!  Hmm, 
every time I try to print anything other than the test page the printer 
driver throws an error... well, I'd reload it, but HP doesn't have the 
driver for this particular printer and Win98 available on their website 
anymore.

This list just goes on and on and on.

Their Windows machines now badly need reloaded, they've lost a number of 
their original CD's, and it's looking like I'll fall into the usual trap 
of just suggesting they "upgrade".  They don't really need the upgrades, 
but it's going to ultimately be easier to reload all their machines with 
XP because I know things generally work on it.  For the oldest and 
slowest of their machines they'll be stuck without XP and who knows what 
we'll do with those... perhaps Linux?  Heh.  They can't get reasonable 
security patches for the old slow Pentium I laptop and all they really 
use it for is surfing, which of course is probably the most dangerous 
thing they could be doing with an unpatched copy of Windows.

Contrarily... on the mac... you plug in an Apple compatible printer to 
one machine, and if you want to share it you turn it on in the 
correctly-named "Sharing" button in the System Configuration menu. 
Other machines can see it, find it and use it via Rendesvous or TCP/IP 
instantly.  If you want to secure it, you can.  It asks you.

And I watch family and friends who are non-technical DO this stuff, with 
no problems at all.

There's no "There is no printer driver for this printer installed on the 
server, would you like me to ACT like I'm going to be helpful and find 
it on the Internet when I don't have a database of that information and 
I couldn't find my A** from a hole in the ground?" messages from the OS.

There's no "Please insert the driver disk you lost a decade ago" 
messages.  (Yeah I know they should be more careful, but they're not... 
and they want the "family techie" to FIX IT.)

And this type of good non-confusing stuff for newbies is there 
throughout the OS -- it's religion almost at Apple, I think.

Want to set up a wireless network?  Buy an Airport, pop in the CD, 
follow some directions in plain English and you're done.

Find out later that your wireless doesn't cover your house adequately 
and you want to extend it a bit?  Buy another Airport, it's 
auto-detected, click on "Turn my second airport into a wireless 
extender" or something similarly simple, and you're done.

Audio conference with a pal across country?  Oh that was built into the 
chat client long ago, and yes it works through NAT so there's no 
explaining port-forwarding to Grandma.  Feel like getting sassy and 
doing it with Video?  Plug in an iSight on both ends, and you're done... 
video conference.

Want to back up your data to a network drive?  $100 a year and you can 
drag and drop between your hard disk and your .Mac account's iDisk. 
Want to share your Calendar to the web?  Same thing... .Mac and one 
click "Share Calendar to .Mac".  Want to sync a Palm device with that 
too?  Just as easy -- iSync handles both.  Oh yeah, the calendar will 
also sync into your iPod for quick viewing on-the-go.

I mean, it's just that easy.  There's absolutely nothing simpler than 
adding software/hardware to a Mac and Apple's suite of "stuff" just 
keeps getting bigger.  Video editing?  Sure... plug your DV camera in 
and start iMovie up automatically to dump into the machine.  Multi-track 
recordings?  GarageBand works great.  Plug in your digital camera and 
iPhoto launches and imports the photos.  Yes, XP eventually had that 
one... but it was a year or more AFTER my Macs did it, and I never had 
to load a manufacturer's software package -- I just had to use an 
approved camera on Apple's list.

It's brain-dead simple computing for the masses, that's where Apple's 
making a killing, but they know the masses don't buy "computers marketed 
to dumb people" (i.e. Microsoft Bob anyone?) so they don't market that 
way -- they market their computers as "hip" and "fun", but rarely do 
they say how EASY they are to use for the average person.

I *never* have to do tech support for my family's Macs.  And when I get 
on one, I can pop up a tcsh shell and really get to work... perl, bash, 
apache, java, whatever... it's all there waiting for me in the command line.

 From having seen a friend's XServe and XRaid his company purchased, 
those little beasts are as point-and-click friendly as the desktop 
counterparts.  Want to resync the RAID 5 array after putting in a new 
disk?  Okay... click on the disk and click "format and resync".  The 
servers also make previously "hard" administrative tasks pretty darn 
easy.  Now I know most admins that figure out the XServe usually delve 
into the command line and ignore the GUI, but any small business manager 
can run an XServe without more than one evening reviewing the docs.

And there's commercial software support for Macs unlike things I like, 
such as Linux.  I can buy a copy of Quicken or Quickbooks or TurboTax. 
And they all operate pretty easily if not as perfectly integrated as 
Apple's stuff.

Anywhoo... that's some of why I use 'em.  But I'm on the dual-boot 
WinTel/Gentoo Linux laptop right now, 'cause I'm a geek who can deal 
with anything!  (GRIN)

Nate
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