Why are there so many Mac users here?

[KSagal]

I find my company issued Blackberry to be an adequate tool.

I find my company issued Dell Laptop Latitude to be an adequate tool.

I find my own Toshiba laptop computer to be an adequate tool…

I also find it interesting how so many people with Apple computers are not just fans of the technology that they bought, but are pretty fanatic about it…

Not unlike many of us posters here, about the segways… There has a air about certain products that is just not there for other products… Apple has it, Segway has it…

I wonder, can you have that air and still have mass appeal?

I know that Macs are good computers, but they are also much more expensive than any sort of PC counterpart, by any scale… Now, some will justify this as they are superior technology, but are they really? What is their job?

I suspect that the vast majority of all personal computer users do not need them… We want them. We can write letters, but it is easier, and more fun to write emails… We can balance our checkbooks (or not) but it is more fun to have ********** do it. (or whatever the mac equivalent is)

My computers, and I use them in work and other places, are simple communication devices… They can be replaced, but are quick and efficient at their jobs, so there is no need to walk away from them…

Now don’t get me wrong, I am not anti technology or any of the sort. I am just trying to keep things in perspective…

PC computers do not garner the fierce loyalty or adoration that Macs do, but they outsell macs by a huge margin…

Other forms of conveyance do not garner the automatic smile and loyalty (which you need in an environment where you often have to defend the use of it) Segways do…

My question is that can something that becomes the norm, and becomes the choice of the majority as the smart way to go, still get so much adoration? I think not…

[budsiskos]

pc's are generally the cheaper more average joe choice. they do what you tell them and get the work done.

but macs on the other hand truly are superior. they are virtually virus proof, have roughly a 30 second boot time, and generally have far more user friendly programing than your everyday pc.

but to be honest, macs are aimed at a different goal than pc's are. pc's are for office work and records while macs are for more artistic and creative things like architecture and computer graphics and such.
the only reason windows got the huge gamer rep is because pc's have more users simply because there cheaper and therefor will have more gamers.

but most people will agree that once you try a mac, youll never go bac.
i suppose this is similar to how anyone who tries a segway is instantly addicted becouse it is such a natural way to move

[wwhopper]

Apple products are very similar to Segway products in those ways. They are desgined to be functional usable and look good all in one package.

Which may also explain why so many of our favorite Segway employees are now working for Apple!

[C3RS]

Mac...it's for cheaters...
Is for those who do not want to learn and be guided

They pay for expensive power MAC while the MAC does not use it (which encode videos?)

This is my opinion.

Because when I put a person to a MAC, it is as bad (see above) as I let him to a Windows (Linux, too harsh).

I speak from absolute beginners who do not know what "select" or "Edit" and then where are their file on the C (or MacOS).

the only thing that attract them is that there is no virus.
agree, I did not need to pay 1300 € for it ... I have a good antivirus and set to 35 € / year.

It's like the DSG gearbox on car (robotised 7 gearbox)...it's too expensive and so fragile that a manual gearbox after 80 000 kms.

but we have a choice here ...

[C3RS]

Originally Posted by wwhopper

Apple products are very similar to Segway products in those ways.

I am not at all agree with that ... Apple has always been competition, PCs.
Without competition, we can not do this kind of shortcut.
Apple has also monitored the progress of Windows, and vice versa.

[Gihgehls]

Originally Posted by budsiskos

but to be honest, macs are aimed at a different goal than pc's are. pc's are for office work and records while macs are for more artistic and creative things like architecture and computer graphics and such.

Redded for FALSE. I can see that marketing has penetrated your mind. I work for a video game developer, a company I would say is pretty centered around creativity, and we don't have any macs in the office. Actually, I take that back, the audio department uses them because Digidesign's 64 bit Vista drivers are crap-town. My point, though, is that it is inaccurate to say that Macs or PC's are "for" doing anything. They are just computers, they are "for" running code. That's it. Now, I love OSX, its the most successful desktop unix OS around, but to say that one intel-based machine is better at doing things than another intel-based machine is just wrong.

OSX is definitely better than Windows, but I wouldn't say a mac is better than a PC. There's really no difference except that a PC has fewer restrictions on what it can do. Hackintoshes are generally fantastic computers. I can build a machine that will dual boot OSX or Win7 and I can put 128 gigs of ram in it. Let's see a mac pro do that.

Originally Posted by budsiskos

the only reason windows got the huge gamer rep is because pc's have more users simply because there cheaper and therefor will have more gamers.

False again. The reason gaming is better on PC's is because you can change the video card whenever you want to. Try changing the video card on your iMac.

[jgbackes]

1st let's add some facts to the mix...

Macintosh computers are not always more expensive then "name brand" PCs with the same features. You have to compare solid metal computers against the same. Apple does make plastic laptops, but the are VERY feature rich.

Bargain basement CPUs will alway be cheaper. Why does an HP cost more than an Acer or a WinBook?

Macintosh computers generally do run faster than other computers running the same MHz/GHz CPUs. To explain this we have to look at how bargain basement PCs are made. They use the Intel reference designs. I remember once talking to an Intel rep that was so surprised that Apples didn't use the reference design but instead tweeked and twiddled the very last cycle out of the CPU.

Now let's get to the fun part... Hook up a printer to a Windows machine. I did this yesterday (again) so I know of what I speak.

Mac via USB. Hook up the printer choose add printer. It finds the HP-460 and is ready to print.

Windows via USB. Hook up the printer choose add printer. Choose have disk. Find the disk, put it into the CD Rom drive. Print.

Network Printer...

Mac: Choose Add Printer. Click on the printer name, click OK. Print

Windows: Choose Add Printer. Choose Local Printer (even though it's on the network). Create a "virtual port". Print out a self test page on the printer to get the IP address. Enter the IP address of the printer in the virtual port field. Print.

How about hooking an Video Projector to a laptop...

Mac -> connect the projector. Watch the powerpoint

PC -> connect the projector. Hit function F5, try F7, hrm... Try F5 again. Close the lid on your laptop. Open it up. Watch the powerpoint.

It's the hundreds of little things that the Mac (and OSX) just get right.

Apple builds great products because they are willing to take risks and fail, and there have been some SPECTACULAR failures. The Apple ///, the Lisa, the Cube. But there have been far more successful products.

There is a place in the world for different opinions. Which is better a BMW or a Ford? I'll take the BMW, most people buy the Ford. BMW would love to have Apple's share of the market in any of these markets Laptops, Phones, and MP3 players.

[KSagal]

Many of these posts are proving my point. Those who use macs are emotionally invested in doing so to a greater degree than those who use PCs...

Yet PCs, of all stripe, cheap, expensive, and everywhere in between, do traditionally outsell Macs...

I do not doubt that surely some people, maybe many people, feel that Macs are great or even greater computers, but that is not enough to make them accepted by the masses...

The BMW example is a good one, but is while most may agree that a BMW is better than a Ford, is it enough better to justify the cost? And is a BMW better really better than a Mercedes? Or a Lexus? How about a Lincoln? The answers get fuzzier the more you ask, and the market, to some degree, supports all those choices...

My question goes to where is the balance point? Where is the success benchmark? Do we need to have what % of the market? What is the market? I think that segways have the entire EPAMD market... That's 100% market share...

But... what should the market be? What is the abandonment rate? By that, what is the percentage or other measurement of the folks that used to, but no longer do it...

I have heard claims of those who say that if you go to Macs, they don't go back to PCs... Is this true? I don't know, and I don't know how to check...

How many have bought segways and loved them, and no longer do? I don't know. Are all used segways either upgrades or stolen? I would have to guess not...

At what total sales number with the blush be off this rose?

[Bob.Kerns]

As someone who HAS gone from the Mac to the PC, been glad he did, and is contemplating going back...

And as someone who has gone from Palm OS to Windows Mobile to Windows Pocket PC to iPhone, and regretted only the first move...

There was a time when Apple was truly laggard. Think the Scully era. The Macintosh was stuck with insane memory limitations, no preemptive multitasking, and if you tried to give it any features at all via add-on software, you paid the price in total unreliability.

That is not the Macintosh of today. It took a long while. I really don't know what sustained them -- their users were rabid and nuts to stick with them during the darker era. Mostly, hatred for Microsoft, I suspect.

The Mac presentation software, just a few years back, would crash and corrupt your work when you tried to do bigger jobs with it. No more -- their software generally just works.

Their one-button-mouse still makes the UI harder than it needs to be -- but they've worked around its limitations admirably.

I've had a Mac at my desk at work for I think about 9 months now.

I have rebooted it twice.

And only one of those two times was actually necessary.

My PC, I reboot every couple of days minimum to restore performance. And often at random points after dock/undock cycles just to get the second monitor working again.

My iPhone (also running OSX), I boot perhaps once every two weeks.

My Windows Mobile stuff, I'd reboot daily -- and often because they crashed on incoming calls.

PalmOS was more predictable, but it suffered from the same issues as the early MacOS systems.

I don't mean to focus just on reliability here. It's more a focus on "it just works", in terms of getting the basics right.

So even though, until a couple weeks ago, the iPhone had no copy-and-paste -- an APALLING gap -- I was still happy to live with that major failing, than the things that were wrong before I traded.

But here's the thing. I don't run an OS to run an OS. I run an OS to get things done. And to do that, I run software.

So the Mac is behind there. There are still lots of software packages that are not available except on the PC.

The iPhone, on the other hand, is WAY, WAY out in front. There may be more PalmOS packages, but they don't get nearly the traction, and they're for a less feature-rich platform. Android and Palm have a lot of catching up to do.

The bottom line is, people like the Mac for different reasons, but I think the general theme you'll find is that people like the Mac because they can get their work done without a lot of extraneous aggravation.

Now, as a developer, I can say that Apple gives developers plenty of aggravation. And that may be part of why they have less software.

But Apple's iron control of all manner of things -- from Java to your hardware choices to UI -- does serve to make for a much more stable platform than Windows.

Microsoft has a horrible problem with drivers, because they, by comparison, exercise so little control over their hardware and software ecosystem. They've tightened things up, and it's gotten better, but I think it's also created a lot of Mac users.

But the random fandom, that does have me puzzled.

[budsiskos]

another issue is that most pc users are probably a little intimidated by the macs os and how it runs rather differently than a pc's.

since pc's were at one time better than macs they gained a larger following but now that macs are equal if not better, they fear the transition and so decide to stick with the familiar os