21 Responses to “Five reasons to detest Macs”

1. Ryan:
   November 18th, 2006
   

   Disclaimer: I don’t own a Mac, I never have, and I doubtfully ever will.

   Now.. let’s debunk this ridiculous post.

   1. Mac computers make normally nice people smug

   Operating a store which houses two separate businesses: one catering to PCs, one to Macs, I’ve found that we can spot the Apple users with about 95% certainty. “Smug” is not the obvious trait — it’s usually “weird”. Either way, what an argument against buying one!!! /sarcasm/

   2. Incorporating Intel processors is no big deal

   Actually, it is, because it means these machines can dual boot OS X, Windows, and any other x86 OS. With virtualization technology, ideally Apple users will be able to ALT-TAB (or such) between simultaneously running OSs in the near future.

   3. Macs are not as easy to use as Mac users think

   The user interfaces are different. In my experience, most things in OS X have been extra-simplified. ie: Setting up a wireless connection is often simpler than in XP, and (obviously) much simpler than in your various Linux flavors. But, this is a matter of opinion, not fact.

   4. Macs are not innovative

   Neither is Microsoft, they buy companies for innovation. Neither is Dell, they just push IEEE standards. Apple does the same. Their case engineering is neat — but I wouldn’t say innovative. OS X was neat, but not so much innovative. The point is, if you were to ignore any company that isn’t themselves innovative, you’d have little left to buy.

   5. Macs are not particularly good value or easy to maintain

   You’re onto something here — but you’re missing it. Macs tend to use quality hardware, ie: the PowerBook was ODM’d by ASUS — which engineers and manufactures very high quality notebooks (compared to other ODMs, a la Compal or Winstron). But, you can buy an ASUS branded notebook for a few hundred less than an Apple and get the same quality and functionality. Otherwise, in terms of parts, Apple uses the same standardized parts as all the major PC OEMs. Of course, Apple does some things their own way.. ie: the DC adapters for their notebooks are custom — but so are Dells.

   The point to be made here is that there is an abundance of competition in the PC world. This competition drives price down — excluding Geek Squad, which just leeches off stupidity. My point is, if you want a dying hard disk cloned and replaced to an external drive, your PC shop would charge you between $25-$50 and the cost of the drive (let’s say, Seagate 80 in a custom enclosure) for maybe $80. The Apple shop would charge you between $60-120 and the cost of the drive (which is waay more marked up, because most Apple users don’t realize they can buy the same Seagate drive from the PC shop) for maybe $160.

   Of course, some of the major PC OEMs will demand that you only take their machine to an authorized service center — which overcharges a la the authorized Apple service centers — but most people realize it isn’t necessary.

2. Jason Richards:
   November 20th, 2006
   

   The Mac is one of the best-engineered computers available. I don’t know what you’re on about Mr Cornelius. None of your points make any sense.

3. John Kasper:
   November 21st, 2006
   

   yea… that was a pretty lame arguement… and i’ve been a pc user all my life.

   seriously, it is just as stupid to hate a mac as it is a hate a pc. like you said, they’re all machines.

   “smug”? dude you just sound like a whiney little girl, i guess that is what smug meens

4. Chris:
   November 21st, 2006
   

   Cool post John. Hows this for smug: you spelled “means” wrong.
   By the way, good editorial that encapsulates what annoys me about Mac fanatics. He is spot on reguarding Mac’s adoption of Intell processors. Big deal for Mac fans… for people who have been using x86 procs for the last 10 years (because it has been abundantly clear for at least that long that Mac’s RISC processors are a joke), it was pretty funny to see all the fanfair surrounding it. (”You mean I can have an overpriced, modern art-deco computer that looks pretty next to my Starbuck’s Latte AND it will actually have the computational power to do what my PC using friends have been doing for years?? SIGN ME UP!”)

5. J-Bird:
   November 22nd, 2006
   

   Speaking from a network admin point:

   I worked on MACs when I was in elementary, middle, and highschool, they were lame back then, except for Oregon Train. That p3ned. There is something fundementaly wrong with a company ( MAC ) if they think that changing the color of the case your computer comes in is going to be a major selling point. My wife has 2 MACs, both intel based, a G5 and a mac book. I run 2 PCs, a rackmount 2.5 AMD 3000+ with 1.5 gigs of RAM, and an Alienware MJ-12 P4 3.8 with 3 gigs of RAM, both of which run circles around the Macbook, G5 and Macbook pro. Some people I know jumped on the ” I’m A Mac, I hate PC ” horse to find out, that OSX with the Intel chip, is much like an XP service pack: it is supposed to make it better, but it is alot worse. I have to weekly be on the phone with tech support asking for help on the MACs because the software is buggy, and doesn’t work with the Intel Based Macs and now the people that jumped on the MAC horse have fallen off and have their feet caught in the stirrups, and don’t have a gun to shoot the horse, now, they are running , via Parallels, XP PRO, in OSX. HMMMMMM

6. Simon:
   November 23rd, 2006
   

   James -
   Why is the JPG of an iMac that you have included with your rant so badly pixelated? Were you inspired by the impressively sharp Windows logo? Perhaps you converted to it to BMP and back to JPG because your years of experience on Windows led you to believe that BMP was a killer graphics format. Come on everyone, let’s take up a collection for James, so he buy himself a Mac and improve the visual impact of his posts…

7. Simon:
   November 23rd, 2006
   

   Chris -
   If you are going to criticize spelling – perhaps you should double-check your own posts. “Fanfair” is actually spelled “fanfare”. “Hows” is actually spelled “how’s” because it’s the contraction of “how is”. “Reguarding” is actually spelled “regarding”. “Intell” is actually spelled “Intel”. “PC using” should be hyphenated as “PC-using”. I could go on and critique the littany of punctuation errors in your post, but I suspect the whole exercise would be wasted on you. Your post is to my post, as a PC is to a Mac. Your post may have just as many words in it as mine, but is undone by a lack of attention to detail. Just like most of the PCs I’ve come across in my life…

8. Con:
   November 25th, 2006
   

   Good one Simon, well said.

9. Jack Goff:
   July 18th, 2007
   

   Never owned a mac. Probably wont.

   1. Mac computers make normally nice people smug

   – I’ve been in tech a long time and have found at least as many Windows admins, UNIX admins, Oracle admins, network admins etc etc etc that have been just as, or even more smug about their choices in computing technology. People who are going to be smug about their computing choice, like you, are going to find something to be smug about regardless of what they’re typing on. Think I’m full of shit? Try looking at a website that talks about Linux vs. Windows vs. UNIX web servers, or Windows vs. Mac vs. Linux gaming, or the faults of Mac people, Windows people, Linux people, or UNIX people.

   2. Incorporating Intel processors is no big deal

   When Apple finally started using Intel processors in Macs it was treated by the press and Mac aficionados though it was some kind of break through.

   – It was a change in direction that a large computing company had been going in for a few decades that required a complete operating system overhaul of the #2 desktop operating system in the world. Sorry if there’s periodically important news out there that you’re not interested in, but it was actually a big deal. The fact that you critisized it without trying to find out why people thought it was important is a pretty clear indicator of how much thought you put into your opinions on this matter, and explains the contents of this “article”.

   Get real, PCs are released every day with Intel processors. The real news is that Apple persisted for so long with a processor that had no future and that Apple continued to release hopelessly underpowered computers for so many years and was able to get away with it with slick marketing.

   – What’s interesting about this statement is that it beautifully illuminates the inescapable fact that you’ve truly got no idea what you’re talking about. The RISC architecture that was in the previous macs was superior in everythign except pumping up the number of calculations per second in the artificially inflated x86 benchmark tests, and the price. The reason they switched to intel stuff was because the good ones were just too expensive. That’s why you have companies who make hardware for mission critical applications that need lots of raw processing power, where PC based architecture is inadequate (Like Sun), they use the intel stuff for their budget computers and their SPARC stuff for the high end machines.

   3. Macs are not as easy to use as Mac users think

   – Macs are optimized to be easy to use for people who use their computer for home computing tasks and/or photo editing, music editing, etc. PCs are optimized to be easy for business related tasks.

   – How to connect to a no-security wireless network on a mac:
   – Click at the antenna drop-down box, select the network you want to connect to, which is amongst almost no other options.

   – How to connect to a no-security wireless network on a Windows XP PC:
   – Try to distinguish between the wireless network ICON in the system tray, and the other network icons if it’s there.
   – It’s more likely than not that you’ve got 3rd party software that seemed like it needed to be installed by your wireless adaptor prior to it working, so you’ll get the “Windows can not configure this wireless connection” message.
   – Try to distinguish which of other
   – … you get the point

   – And FYI, installing fonts on a mac is no less intuitive than installing them on a windows machine. It’s a one step process… drag it onto the system folder. Just because *you* don’t know how to do it, it doesn’t mean it’s hard.

   4. Macs are not innovative

   Actually, all Mac represents is the opportunistic commercialization of other people’s ideas.

   – Unless you were the first one to make a product, then that’s what being in the business of making something means. Audi wasn’t the first, and their designs are certainly based on the innovations of their predesessors, but they’re still better than the average car. Mac has many boring models, they’ve also got some computers that are very nicely designed. Just because you live in the suburbs and don’t mind putting a big old box beside your desk, someone living in an efficiency apartment in NYC might enjoy having a computer/flat LCD monitor combo that they can comfortably keep on a small table in the corner. The PC market had not addressed that need, it has now been addressed. Brilliant? Not necessarily. You can’t say that they have innovated though.

   5. Macs are not particularly good value or easy to maintain

   Yes, we all know that finally you can buy a reasonably powerful iMac for around the same price as a quality PC, but any concept of value is blown away when you factor in upgrade and maintenance costs.
   – Wrong again Jimmy! I do not know a single mac user that has had to go into the shop to pay for an OS reinstall. How about performance degrading spyware? Even if they started making mac spyware at double the rate that they make PC spyware, it would take a LOOONG time for them to catch up with the state of the art in PC scum. How about the fact that OSX users operate without root (Administrative) privs so it’s next to impossible to *unthinkingly* blow something away. 99% of the time when I’ve seen a mac user hit a root password prompt when trying to do something that requires special privs, the immediate reaction is to stop and think about it. You’re average windows user is so heavily bombarded with warnings, disclaimors, notifications, etc in their average usage session that 99% they don’t even look at what it says before they click ok to just get it off the screen and let them continue what they’re doing. Maybe about 5% of the home PCs I’ve seen that have been more than a year or two old haven’t been an absolute god forsaken mess. I’ve never encountered a mac that was a god-forsaken mess just from every day casual use.

   With PCs, parts are plentiful, and because of competition, prices are continually driven down. With Macs you usually have to go to a Mac dealer to buy parts and accessories, and it’s always just that little bit more expensive.
   – Well, mac peripherals are more expensive… but most hardware (hd, ram, etc) is all standard, even though compatibility often isn’t as good as it is with the standard stuff… The same is true for PCs. You will almost always have better luck, and it really is luck, with compatibility if you stick with the brand that the board was tested with. You get what you pay for, no matter what hardware you’re using.

   The other issue is that machines like the iMac are just not very upgradable. Even upgrading a hard disk in a Mac is a big drama (ever tried opening up an iMac?), while with PCs are much easier to work on.
   – Well firstly, if you’re talking about the ease of installing fonts, I’m willing to bet that you wouldn’t be doing your own hardware upgrades… That aside, although this used to be true, it is no longer. With the latest iMac, you don’t even have to remove the outer case to install a new RAM chip. That’s even easier than a nicely designed blade server case. Show me a PC that does that.

   When you buy a Mac you do so knowing that when you need a faster, better machine, you’re going to have a to buy a whole new computer.
   – ::buzzer:: wrong. If you have a user that is knowledgable enough to upgrade a PC, you have a user that’s knowledgable enough to upgrade a Mac.

   I know Mac users will say that when all things are considered, most PC users will do exactly the same thing, ie buy a new machine instead of upgrading an old machine. But at least with a PC you have a choice.
   – If you did talk to any mac users about this, they weren’t very smart.

   No doubt this article will upset a few turtle-neck-wearing, loft-apartment-living Mac users, but someone has to start telling the truth about the computer industry, and it looks like that someone is me.
   – Now Jimmy, let’s not start getting smug about using a PC (or living in the suburbs, and wearing neatly trimmed sweater necks) now…

   – I’m going to make it perfectly clear that I don’t own a mac, an iPod, an iPhone, or an iAnything. In fact, I haven’t bought a single thing from apple in my entire life. Their products don’t fit my needs. In my response, I’m not trying to defend apple specifically; the fact that I’m doing so is only incidental. Sometimes idiots just need to be put in their place. I know that you were hoping to generate a whole bunch of thoughtless mac fanboy flame responses just blindly countering your assertions without completely disassembling them to show what lack of thought and researhc you put into this article… sucks for you. It’s people like you who casually toss around your gut-feeling “facts” and the “common wisdom” without actually thinking about it that give things like blogs a bad name.

10. Davo:
    July 18th, 2007
    

    Perspective is easier to lose than money a wise friend once said. I started programming in the 6th grade on an Apple II, by 9th grade I had an IBM PCjr at home (128 wopping k of ram) and was hacking DOS as well as basic, skipping 3.11 altogether and buying a MAC LCII in the early nineties. Today I am a Database analyst, sitting right on the floor next to me is a fairly new, fairly jacked up Dell workstation (3gigs of ram etc..) AND a 7 year old Mac G4 that still wins hands down when it comes to anything media and is my ‘always there’ machine that can get me to the ‘net.

    Fully loaded this mac cost $7500 when it was new but value? that takes 7 years to realize.

    Perspective. Here’s what I tell my non-technical friends and family when seeking advice on chosing sides in this war (seeing that I am effectively Switzerland and might have an unbiased opinion):

    A PC is a piece of sheet metal, if you know what you are doing it can be almost anything, almost any tool you can think of, while the mac on the other had is a screwdriver, in a pinch you can use it as a hammer but never a wrench. It is what it is, its the bently of computers, beautiful, very well performing, very easy to use, very long lasting, VERY expensive, its not a volkswagen, never tried to be.

    The other way to look at it is that it was not made for ‘us’ it was made for ‘them’ the people who would never find this article, the people who do not think about computers at all, they do high end design work, make videos, movies, download 10,000 songs and have zero patience for troublshooting their IP stack issues. There are those of us who appreciate this elegance and really enjoy having a screw driver around the metal shop that we didnt have to make from scratch ourselves.

    I grew up with Apple and Microsoft, they were kids when I was a kid and now we have all grown up and I am grateful for what each of them has brought me, its hard to imagine a world without either of them, table lamp imac and windows ‘98 migrane edition and all….

11. JM:
    July 24th, 2007
    

    You can’t really be serious! Windows is the best argument for anything but Windows, especially Vista. The Vista solution is to hamstring absolutely everything, require enough processing power to cure cancer in minutes, and still take 10 minutes to boot. 20+ years of waiting for MS to get it is way too long. http://darkbrownhole.blogspot.com/2007/07/breaking-up-is-hard-to-do.html

12. MW:
    July 31st, 2007
    

    Macs are by far the most overhyped pieces of garbage currently in the computing world, kinda like their counterparts; the iPhone and the iPod. I have been using Macs to work on for the last 5 or 6 years, and been using PC’s at home for the last 8. PC’s have their problems, but we constantly have problems with the Macs reconnecting on the network, they have no customizaqble interface(Wait, my bad, I can have grey or blue), it’s next to impossible to figure out WHAT is causing it to slow down, I get all kinds of cryptic error messages, despite what the guy on the commercial says. You are limited as to any upgrade options, since these cases have a specific capacity, and the boards have limited connectivity.
    People who like Macs are the kind who weant everything done for them, they don’t want any control over their system, and they want to be told how to think.

    Pathetic.

13. Brian:
    July 31st, 2007
    

    1. Mac’s are beautifully designed.

    2. OS X is so much better than any windows version in so many ways I wont bother to mention them.

    3. If you can’t use a Mac, you are a retard.

    4. If I’m smug, then you’re a bitch.

14. John:
    August 4th, 2007
    

    James Cornelius are you Working at Microsoft??? Because you have no idea what you are talking about! I have both a pc and a mac. Been using them since 1999. During my experience I find that Mac OS X is the best operating system on the planet!!! The only drawback for Apple now is the gaming community, but that will improve over time. Now that Vista came out, I was very much disappointed to the quality of their product. They had a chance to beat Apple at their game and failed terribly…

    Oh wait did I mention another huge failure from microsoft, Internet Explorer 7. I actually liked the last internet explorer but this one keeps crashing on me all the time. Its really annoying! Apple’s Safari isn’t perfect either I would have to say but at least it doesn’t crash on me all the time! I wish someone can create a better browser because all browsers on the market are pathetic. I’m still on Windows XP and do not plan on upgrading to Vista EVER unless they give it to me for free. I will however be getting a brand new Apple desktop and an Apple laptop.

    PC is dead for me now especially with all the viruses. What is all these errors we have to send to Microsoft? Do they listen to the user? No they are a monopoly and have ignored us the customers. This is clearly evident with their latest release of Vista. Apple has finally leveled the game, and if I ever need to use Windows XP or Vista it will be available on my new Apple computers.

15. Pat:
    September 29th, 2007
    

    Having just bought a Mac and thinking it would be superior to my old reliable for me but seemingly bad mouthed by everyone else Dell pc with a Windows ME operating system, I’m not thrilled. Online surfing that was so mindlessly effortless (granted–at times–rudely interrupted) on my Dell is now real work with a Mac that really doesn’t seem comfortable going anywhere but to Apple maintained pages. The Apple version of Microsoft Office is not without its annoying hassles–certainly no one should think that the programs will work on a Mac as they did on a pc. I heard Macs were great with graphics but gee… they looked a whole lot better on my pc. I realize this is new to me and I am looking for some of the comforts my pc was offering but I would be willing to say that if everyone had time to experience both systems, virus fodder or not, the pc would win hands down. I know Apple people would argue but I think its a bit like saying that living in a box is just fine because you have nothing to compare it to. I hope my mind is pleasantly changed and I don’t regret investing in a Mac but right at this moment, I feel a little used and abused by misleading information coming from Apple devotees. It’s my own fault. I should have recalled–anything that sounds too good to be true usually is.

16. James:
    January 29th, 2008
    

    Wow…there were so many flaws in that guy’s original argument, however, they’ve all been pointed out now. So i’m just going to say that i’ve had a Mac Mini for 3 years now, never had it upgraded and it hasn’t slowed down since I bought it. Whereas a year into ownership of a PC and things such as turning it on/off take a lot longer than they used to.

    Installing any piece of hardware is usually instantaneous, with usually nothing other to do than plug in your product, e.g. monitor, printer, external hard drive or DVD drive. With PC’s even if you want to use a memory disk you have to install the bloody drivers for it! c’mon!

    ‘they have no customizaqble interface(Wait, my bad, I can have grey or blue)’

    - Is this really an issue at all, I mean seriously, anybody who would buy PC only because on a mac they couldn’t change the colour of the little buttons on the top of application windows should get…a…life!

    Macs all the way.

17. jason:
    May 20th, 2008
    

    dude ya your just mad cuz you afford a mac

18. stephen:
    October 19th, 2008
    

    wow ya that was a gay post there just computers man I use my Mac for video work and my PC for gaming they both have strong points and week points just like any machine u wouldn’t use a jeep in a drag race but u wouldn’t use a mustang offroading.

19. Eric:
    March 28th, 2009
    

    Haha. I’m a PC / Mac user.

    My 5 year-old iBook G4 performs better than any computer I’ve even used (better than both the 2008 Dell Insipron [Vista] and 2005 eMachines [XP]).
    What I find the most humerous is how Apple programs, such as iTunes or Safari, run better on Windows that Microsoft programs, such as Windows Media Player or Microsoft Internet Explorer. Or the fact that the startup time for Macs is fractional compared to that of both Vista and more so XP.

20. Daniel:
    June 6th, 2009
    

    Macs are and always will be much better then pc’s, let me explain. After owning an older mac for about 2 and a half years i have yet to get it fixed, heck i havent even had a problem. Now compare that to a pc which i had crash 2 weeks after i bought it. Macs weren’t engeneered with imminent failure in there software and hardware so they could milk us for our money long after we bought them. Get an apple and u will never need to get it repaired, ever.

21. myfoot:
    September 22nd, 2009
    

    i feel worst about microsoft.
    it bugs me madly with all its anoying popups and updates. constanst crashing and distractions

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