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Walter Watts
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Me and My Mac
« on: 2007-07-25 23:11:08 » |
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PC Magazine
ARTICLE DATE: 07.25.07
Me and My Mac
By John C. Dvorak
Not too long ago, while beginning work on some projects for a company, I was asked whether I wanted a PC or a Mac—laptop or desktop—to use while in the office. Since the place was essentially a Macintosh shop, I requested an iMac (with a second screen so I didn't look like a complete schlub).
Oh horrors. Dvorak is using a Mac.
Hey, I figured since I'm known for ragging on the Mac all the time, I may as well speak from some experience, right? It's been a couple of months now, so I thought I'd report what I think about the platform from a user's perspective—specifically, from a PC user's perspective.
So here's what I think.
First of all, the machine is not half bad. It's very quiet, and it performs as well as the PC on general office applications. Generally speaking, the interface is slicker than the PC's, and you get the sense that the computer isn't about to start acting weird because of some virus, spyware, or endless Firefox loading procedure going on in the background and killing all the cycles of the computer. (Despite my reinstalling Firefox half a dozen times on my PC and running deep spyware and virus checkers, Firefox will, all too often, chew up all my cycles and kill my PC's performance. I then have to kill it and start over. Anyway, this doesn't seem to happen with the Mac.)
Other than that, I cannot see much of a difference between the Mac and PC. It's a computer. It runs the same old applications (more or less), and it gets the job done, albeit somewhat more elegantly. The processes for some things, such as burning CDs, seem convoluted to me. I'm not a fan of some of the navigational concepts. And I have one USB key that the Mac refuses to recognize for some unknown reason. But these are not deal-breakers.
Now that I'm thinking about it, perhaps I should rethink my use of the word "elegant" when I describe the machine and the way it functions. See, most people use this word because they love the often-gimmicky stuff, such as the bouncing icons and sweep-away window minimizing. It's all very interesting but superfluous.
Over the years, one of the things that most of us old-timers (gak) will tell you is that you often get a "feeling" for a machine that's more meaningful than what benchmark tests or performance numbers tell you. Some machines feel faster than others, for example. This is probably the best way to approach any analysis or comparison of the Mac versus the PC. In my opinion, I sense that the OS is more solid than Microsoft Windows, but I cannot say why exactly. I suspect that the modern underpinnings of the Unix kernel have something to do with it.
I have no plans to move to the Mac platform for my personal use. That said, I have noticed that I've been recommending the machine to friends and neighbors when they want to know what kind of system they should buy.
I can see why the Mac is gaining market share, because the rationale for using one is simple. Do you want to deal with the agony of antivirus, firewall, antispyware, and other touchy software subsystems, many of which do not work well? Or do you want to boot Microsoft Word and write a document and be done with it?
As someone who does recommend gear to people, I have to think to myself, "Should I recommend something that will come back to haunt me, or recommend a Mac with its higher price but lower hassle factor?" The answer is simple. I hate the idea of having to do customer service for people who cannot keep their systems clean, and that's most people.
I hate to say it, but the PC community talks a big game when it comes to security and protection. The reality is that they'll never really get a handle on the problem as long as the PC is the never-ending target of hackers. I'm certain the Mac will eventually be targeted, but when? It doesn't seem like it will be anytime soon.
The real potential killers of the PC platform are all the online apps that make it so we may not need much more than a smart terminal to get most of our work done. Recently, I noticed that one columnist (he's an old-timer, too) told his readers that he actually uses online apps, such as Google Docs, to write his column. Personally, I cannot see using these apps except in an emergency. I do use an online e-mail reader (Squirrel webmail) more than I use Thunderbird, and I'm not exactly sure why. Perhaps it's so I feel reassured that the mail is safe and not a sitting duck on my PC.
Anyway, the way I see it is that the differences between the Mac and the PC that really matter are minor. The big exception is the usability factor. And, in the end, that's probably what the majority of users care about.
Yes, it's a sad day for the Mac bashers.
Copyright (c) 2007 Ziff Davis Media Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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Walter Watts
Tulsa Network Solutions, Inc.
No one gets to see the Wizard! Not nobody! Not no how!
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the.bricoleur
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making sense of change
 
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Re:Me and My Mac
« Reply #1 on: 2007-07-26 05:47:02 » |
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Enjoyable article - but someone should tell him that Mac's are not more exspensive.
-iolo
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Hermit
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Prime example of a practically perfect person
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Re:Me and My Mac
« Reply #2 on: 2007-07-26 07:28:31 » |
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Neither should it be forgotten that while the Mac puts a kinder gentler face on BSD that much the same benefits are generally achieved by switching to Linux - at a significantly lower cost than a Mac or PC crawling under Whinedoze.
Hermit
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With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
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the.bricoleur
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Re:Me and My Mac
« Reply #3 on: 2007-07-26 11:29:00 » |
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Good point!
Buy an Intel Mac and run all three 
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Fritz
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Re:Me and My Mac
« Reply #4 on: 2008-12-13 19:50:42 » |
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[Fritz]Interesting twist on 'culture matters'; I guess pollution takes on many forms.
Source: ZDNet
Author: Jeremy Allison
Date: December 8th, 2008
[The opinions expressed here are mine alone, and not those of Google, Inc. my current employer.]
Recently I was able to visit the Ontario Linux Fest. I love shows like Ontario, as they’re run by amateurs, not by professional show companies. Don’t get me wrong; the professional shows have their place too, but I don’t tend to listen to the other speakers at those shows as I’ve heard most of them before. I’m sure they’ve all heard my talks as well, so instead we tend to hang out in the speaker rooms trying to get the wireless network to work, and swapping airline travel horror stories.
I do listen to the talks at smaller shows. Amateur shows are a labor of love, and it shows. The line up of speakers at the Ontario show was fascinating. One talk in particular caught my eye, by Ian Howard, called “Free and Open Source Software in Africa - Emerging Opportunities for Linux”. The slides from his talk are available here. The talk itself didn’t disappoint, and it was quite shocking, at least to me. It was a positive and upbeat talk about his experiences in Africa promoting Linux and Open Source software. But what he was really teaching us was an understanding of how Linux can fail in places like Africa.
Ian had gone to Africa as part of an organization called Geekcorps, dedicated to promoting IT use in developing nations. He worked on a range of projects in Mali, a West African nation which, like most African nations, is very undeveloped as far as IT is concerned.
Nigerian students power up their laptopsAt first glance, Free and Open Source software should be perfect for places like Mali. The local economy is poor, and average salaries make proprietary software an unimaginable expense for most people there. Yet the place is overrun with copies of Microsoft Windows. This is the toxic effect of what is called software “piracy” of course, although it bears little resemblance to what occurs off the coast of Somalia and is better called copyright infringement, as that’s what it really is. Copyright infringement doesn’t sound as threatening or scary as “piracy” though, does it ? The outcome of this rampant illegal software copying is that Windows is seen as “the first world standard” and any attempt to push a cheaper alternative is strongly resisted. They consider it trying to cheat local people out of getting the same quality of software that is used in the developed world, even though it’s a legal way of getting quality software for free.
Ian’s group first worked on a custom Linux distribution called “Kunnafonix”, designed for local radio stations. Local radio stations are an incredibly important communication tool in Africa, and most of them run on proprietary systems imported from the West, ill-suited for the temperature extremes and power requirements found in rural Africa. Kunnafonix was designed to be easy to use, install and repair, could be run as a live CD, and contained copies of the Wikipedia encyclopedia and the Audacity audio processing software. Many problems in operation could be fixed by doing a simple one-click reinstall to reset the system into a known good state.
However, installation of Kunnafonix was resisted by many of the local organizations they had to work with. The local “computer support person” resented a solution that was so easy to use that it undermined the power and prestige they received by being the person to consult when a Windows computer had problems. It’s amazing to see the myth that Linux is hard to use, install, and support still being propagated in much of the media here in the U.S., when in reality it is resented by Windows administrators due to its ease of use and lesser requirements for professional support.
More successful was their project to extend the Internet into communities by wireless networking, creating innovative ways to extend the range of wireless networks. In the wonderful talk “A New Way to look at Networking” Van Jacobson, one of the creators of the modern TCP protocol, said “the Internet reaches everywhere in the world, it’s just that sometimes the latencies are really, really high”. Everyone in the world has access to the Internet, it’s just sometimes they get to it by bicycling to the next village to view content that someone has delivered to them by burning it onto a CD-ROM. Extending wireless networking to remote villages can cut that latency to the point where Internet access can make a positive difference to people’s everyday lives. They can check the local commodity prices to discover if it’s worth it before undergoing a day long trip to the market for example. This time they were able to teach local technicians to make and repair the wireless network infrastructure they were creating, which made a great difference.
In a region with no software development experience, even Open Source software isn’t going to help bootstrap a computer support or software industry where there is nothing to start with. Even though you can see all of the source code inside a Linux distribution, without local expertise and knowledge to support and maintain it, it might as well be a closed source Windows installation. In fact, as knowledge of Windows is already widespread in such areas, even though it’s due to illicit software copying, Windows may be a better choice until you can break through the network effects keeping it dominant.
What shone though clearly in Ian’s talk was that unless you can partner with the local people, and most importantly help them make money with the new systems you’re trying to get them to use, then you’re just another well-meaning interloper, trying to sell them something that probably won’t work. Making money is the key. Without the opportunity of economic benefits, people in developing countries simply don’t have the time to learn about Free and Open Source software, no matter how much it seems to fit their needs from an external point of view.
Jon “Maddog” Hall’s keynote talk at the Ontario Linux Fest also made this point in a very powerful way. Jon is a wonderfully entertaining speaker, and not afraid of controversy. Showing a picture of a child in the African bush holding a “One Laptop per Child” laptop he said, “I don’t care about this kid.” The audience drew a shocked breath. “He’s screwed,” continued Jon. “Five hundred miles of bush behind him, five hundred miles of bush in front of him. There’s nothing I can do to help here”. Jon flipped the slide to show a Brazilian “favela”, or slum city, with an incredibly dense population, seeming to cling to the side of a nearby hill. He said, “This is where I can help. These kids have electricity. They can get a network connection. I can do something with Open Source and Free Software here”.
Jon isn’t a callous person. He’s just decided to focus his resources on somewhere he knows he can help today. It’s hard to find fault with him for that.
Ian aimed higher, and when you aim higher you have further to fall when you miss. He’s recently completed an MBA, and is concentrating more on the business side of things than the technical. I learned a very valuable lesson from his talk though. Something I, like many Free and Open Source software geeks, often forget whilst concentrating on the technical side of the software we love. Sometimes, technical excellence isn’t enough. Linux and Open Source software can fail badly in the real world not because of technical issues, but because of economic issues. We have to remember the lesson learned in the US election of 1992, and again in 2008. Sometimes, “It’s the economy, stupid !”
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Where there is the necessary technical skill to move mountains, there is no need for the faith that moves mountains -anon-
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