So, I’ve been using computers since I was 7. Wrote my first computer program when I was 8 [1984]. (It didn’t do much but change the screen color in basic, but it was written by me.)
I used macs back when they were monocrome uni-boxes and only had one network game that we would sneak onto the computers in the highschool lab to play. We wrote our computer assignements in pascal. (I had been using Turbo Pascal @ home on PC side so I used command my teacher didn’t know (cuz they weren’t in his book) and he tried to fail me for it. — After I entered the source code in the mac’s pascal and showed him that it worked, he gave me a passing grade. But he never talked to me much after that.)
Fast forward to now. 15+ years as an application programmer, IT manager, database designer, web app creator, GIS app development, blah blah blah, and now internet marketer. I used windows mostly. (I had to pick something in the late 90’s and it was either Windows or Linux/Unix side (mostly Unix at the time)). So where was I… oh yes.
So about a year+ ago I buy a pair of macs. (No way I was going to get Vista) A Macbook pro for me and later a MacBook Air for my wife. (She still loves hers except when it doesn’t work then she throws a fit till I tell her to reboot it. Then she huffs, reboots it and it works again for a while.)
Ok, after several months of relearning everything on a mac (Hint: Going from Windows to Linux is WAY easier than Windows to Mac) I am kinda happy with it. Pretty slick UI. But how do I make it hibernate? Oh there is a known problem with MacBook Pro’s regarding sleep mode. But there are some cool command line utilities to kinda fix it by forcing it to hibernate no matter what. Grrr. Fine. (May as well be using linux w/ all the command line tweaking I ended up doing — I have no problem w/ command line tweaking and all that, it just seems weird to have to resort to it so much on a mac, aren’t these things supposed to be user friendly?)
You know my first warning should have been when they tried to sell me an extra warranty plan. That should have been a redflag.
For the price of this “premium” macbook pro I could have gotten a windows laptop, and a desktop with 6 monitors. I am kicking my self about it.
In about a year, the left internal fan has died (but first it made horrible, horrible sounds for about a month), the hibernate issue has NEVER been fixed, since a mac update broke it a few months after I bought the thing. I realized I spent 90% of my day inside VMWare inside Mac OSX anyways since there is hardly any of the software I need/ want on the mac. So now I boot in windows 99% of the time. The only reason I still keep the mac around is to code on the iphone. Oh yeah, but even that is an issue because no matter what, it will *not* update the Mac OS with the latest auto patch. I need to wipe the system and reinstall. Boy good thing I got a mac so I wouldnt have to deal with all these stupid little issues that I used to deal with in windows.
Oh yeah, on top of that it would crash randomly and grey screen of death on my just as much as windows 2000 used to do to me. (And don’t even get me started on the lack of a killer IDE….)
Ok, rant almost over. Long story short. Mac is fine ONLY if you stick with just the Mac software (the stuff Apple makes) 3rd party apps tends to cause problems. [WTF firefox why u so slow on a mac?!]
But. If you JUST install Microsoft software on a windows machine u can say the same thing about stability. Oh yeah, duh, games. I don’t really play games like I used to anymore, but srsly. Games.
So… Don’t get a mac just cuz everyone else is doing it. I bet if I had just bought my wife a nice fujitsu laptop (dont get a dell) she would be just as happy with it. (Except she *does* like iPhoto — so that iLife stuff is cool if your into that kinda stuff)
But the bottom line is: Macs freeze, crash randomly and have update issues (and even get worms) just like the Windows machines. Let this be a fair warning to you that you will have plenty of problems with a mac over the same time period as you would with a windows machine (or Linux), but you get to pay a lot more for the pain.
Hmm I suppose I could just get a Mac Mini for my iphone dev stuff. Anyone want to by a used 15inch (non-shiny screen) macbook pro w/ 4gigs ram. I think I can use the cash for something that would fit me better… (I’m booting into windows all day anyways)
Update: Somebody posted this to ycombinator (apparently there are plenty of people there who have had somewhat similar experiences http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=594576 — and there are some people who’s macs crap gold every morning, they are lucky )
Tags: Uncategorized by John Hasson
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