Ouch. It's been awhile since I blogged!
I can weigh the pros and cons of my new MacBook, but when I add them up, 2 + 2 = 5. There's something hard to quantify about the way the whole system works together, predictably and well. I guess with Wintel boxes, I tend to assume that commonplace interactions will not go well the first time. Whether it's hooking up a new printer, installing a new application, or even plugging in a new mouse, I don't expect it to work without plenty of tweaking and friction. Most likely this relates to the enormously broad array of legacy hardware and software that Windows must be compatible with.
I once got in a conversation with a former Microsoft employee about the long turnaround time on bugfixes for Office. He gave me a number of good reasons, including the many third-party add-ons the product supports, and the many platforms it runs on. Nevertheless, I instantly had to bite my tongue to keep from interrupting that I simply didn't care about any of those features. Clearly near-universal compatibility is important to Microsoft, but not to me, and probably not to any individual user. I wanted to respond that Microsoft needed to meet my individual needs faster, or I wouldn't want to stick around. Our different value systems meant we could barely understand each other's point.
Macs on OSX are unencumbered by decades of legacy code and hardware, and if I had to guess, that makes everything run just a little smoother. That's good enough for me.
Totally agree. It's not always easy to say why the Mac experience is better, but it does tend to be much smoother without all the fuss and muss.
Posted by: Kendall | February 23, 2008 at 07:39 PM