[IP] more on Windows users switching to Macs
Begin forwarded message:
From: Warren Magnus <wmagnus@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: November 7, 2005 5:15:06 PM EST
To: dave@xxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [IP] more on Windows users switching to Macs
David:
I am writing as a heretic, I know. I am a Mac user who is straddling
the fence more all the time and looking seriously toward a Windows
based laptop. My office is currently populated exclusively by 3 G4
Powerbooks of various vintages and an older g3 Mac that is my mail
server running custom tweaked OSX. That said, I like OSX at it's
core. I live with a terminal window open almost all time taking in
all the Unixy goodness.
What has compelled me to write is that I can no longer stand the
contention that OSX is fast. It is NOT fast. Apple's wait cursor (the
Spinning Pizza of Death or SPoD) is a regular resident of the screen
of even the fastest Powerbook. I have custom tweaked the Window
server and killed the most notable memory and speed hogging apps,
which remarkably means doing without things many users rave about
such as Dashboard. Even with these tweaks, I find myself watching the
SPoD all to often while changing applications or even using apps such
as Photoshop (mind you, 1 GB should be plenty). Any app, even Apple's
own can SPoD without warning creating UI delays and painful
disruptions in productivity. This is, of course, to say nothing of
the UI lag created by totally unnecessary eye candy. If this isn't
fixed as Apple moves to Intel, this propensity to plod along will be
apparent when an XP machine and Mac sit side by side.
I have dutifully hidden for years the fact that a number of the
financial models that I rely on don't really work in Excel for OSX
without serious coaxing. Word for the Macintosh is visually pretty
but punishing to use. Web content that has any dependency on Windows
Media player is a crap shoot. And there is no sure fire way to reach
web sites that don't work in Firefox. IE for the Mac is broken and no
longer under development. Safari has many shortcomings as well. The
number of other apps that work halfway or simply don't exist at all
is pretty significant.
Don't get me wrong, I still love my Macs when they work like they are
supposed to, but all too often I find myself cursing the slowness. I
rebooted an ancient Powerbook running at 400 MHz into OS 9 (Apple's
last pre-Unix release) and it screamed when compared to OSX running
on the newest 1.5+ GHz hardware. No snazzy Unix core, no command
line, no whizzy metal or jelly windows, but it was fast. Something is
seriously wrong here and fast OSX isn't.
Choose it because you fear viri. Choose it to be hip. Choose it
because you want to stick it to the man. Choose for any reason you
like so long as you don't choose OSX because it's fast.
-Warren Magnus
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