Low End Mac Reader Specials

TypeStyler For Mac OS X is Now Shipping! Download The Free Fully Functional 60 Day Tryout at www.typestyler.com

OWC: Get the Right Memory / Ram for your Mac. Top Quality, Competitive Prices, Lifetime Warranty. Expert Support and Video Installation Guidies too! 4.0GB Matched Sets from $87.99, Options up to 32GB. Click here

Poker Mac Don't install Parallels to play poker online! Poker Mac will show you how to download and install a native Mac poker application such as Full Tilt Poker Mac.

Laptop Hardware Provided by TechRestore - Overnight Mac & iPod Repairs.

Compare products like desktop computers, apple laptops, apple macs, and LCD Monitors side by side! All the information and reviews to make the best purchasing decision for new mobile phones, sat nav systems, or MP3 players. The Ciao online shopping community makes searching products easy for you.

Miscellaneous Ramblings

What's So Great About a Mac? Plenty!

Charles Moore - 2008.09.25 - Tip Jar

Popularity: LEMLEMLEMLEM

del.icio.us Bookmark in del.icio.us

In an editorial posted this week, the University of Denver Clarion's Alex Gallegos asks rhetorically: "What's So Great About a Mac? Alex says he's becoming increasingly "annoyed at the number of people who seem to have become enamored with the Macintosh operating system," further explaining that his annoyance is kindled by most of the arguments he hears about why Macs are superior to Windows machine are, he alleges, "based on an almost complete lack of knowledge about how computers actually work."

Some of these ignorami, he concedes, are "former Windows users who encountered one Blue Screen of Death too many," while others have been convinced into believing that Macs are the simpler yet more powerful cousins to the Intel market," and others think having a Mac is downright cool.

"I just don't buy this argument," he says.

Well fine, everyone is entitled to an opinion, but with due respect I just don't buy Gallegos' argument.

Real Men Don't Use GUIs

He starts off with a variation of a dismissive trope that reaches back to the "real men don't use mice" canard from the era when Macs had mice and PCs didn't (and didn't have Windows either), calling the Mac GUI a "Fischer (sic) Price" interface, while PC users "can indulge in customization, meddling and fiddling to an extent that would shock a Mac user's socks off."

Well, if "customization, meddling and fiddling" are what floats your boat, they're abundantly available in OS X as close as starting up the Terminal and interfacing with the OS's Unix underpinnings - and on a more sophisticated level than anything that's possible with Vista. Hold onto your socks!

But most non-geek real-world users would rather just get on with their day.

It's the Software, Stupid

As for Macs being "better artistic machines" - another timeworn (albeit true) rubric, Gallego says: "What people don't quite seem to understand is that these are questions of software, not the operating system. Software is software."

Yes, and software has to operate in the context of an operating system, and the context provided by OS X is far more satisfying for graphics work than Windows, not to mention that the software itself is often better. Where are Windows versions of Pixelmator or ToyViewer or GraphicConverter?

Even cross-platform graphics apps look and work better on the Mac - just look at Photoshop Elements.

Malware Doesn't Matter

Gallegos dismisses the relentless malware siege Windows users have to contend with by arguing: "Just because you don't get viruses, doesn't mean that nobody can write one. It's not an impossibility by any means."

No, it's not, but the operative reality is that no one has; there's never been a destructive OS X virus in the wild. As one commentator quipped: "Viruses: Mac OS X - three; Windows - eleventy-zillion."

I'm not saying it couldn't happen, but I've been working with Macs on the Internet many hours a day for over a decade, and I've never bothered with antivirus software, firewalls, or any of the anti-malware tedium and ennui that is obligatory in the Windows orbit. I never felt the need to.

It is difficult to persuade ordinary computer users who have only used Windows that - at least up to now - viruses have been a non-issue for Mac users.

As Why Are There No Viruses for Mac OS X? on Switch to a Mac put it this week:

With today's cyber-threats and focus on computer security, it's no surprise that many people are ditching their Windows PCs for Macs running OS X . . . The requirement to protect Windows installations from viruses, spyware and malware, have prompted many to make the switch....

It's well known that there are no known viruses for the Mac OS X operating system despite it being on the market for over seven years. As of this writing, Mac OS X is virus-free. There have been some attempted exploits in the past but those relied on social engineering....

If they had noticed it, Windows fanboys like Gallegos would have had an "aha!" moment earlier this this year when an Apple Web page encouraged Mac users to install virus and security software on Macs, but the page is no longer linked from Apple's Website (you can still view it in the Internet Archive.

Macs Are For Lazy Folk

As the summary shot in his broadside of Windows-acolyte conventional wisdom bromides, Gallegos casts Macs as having "a very specific set of uses for a very specific niche of users - namely people who aren't really comfortable with computers and want things to be as simple and easy as possible without having to go find appropriate software for themselves."

This guy really needs to get out more - perhaps to a software developers' convention or other geek-fest venue where he could count the high proportion of users running Macs these days.

Why I Use a Mac

Windows is one of the reasons I use a Mac: the clumsy and obtuse angularities, the general clunkiness of PC hardware, the malware plague, and the irritation of having to deal with Microsoft DRM issues.

On top of that, a lot of the software I find "appropriate" to my work as a professional tech journalist is not available on the PC, but that's just poor ignorant "not really comfortable with computers" me. LEM

Charles Moore has been a freelance journalist since 1987 and began writing for Mac websites in May 1998. His The Road Warrior column is a regular feature on MacOpinion, and he is a news editor and columnist at Applelinks.com. If you find his articles helpful, please consider making a donation to his tip jar.

Recent Miscellaneous Ramblings

Links for the Day

Recent Content on Low End Mac

Recent Deals

About LEM | Support | Usage | Privacy | Contacts

Miscellaneous Ramblings ©1999-2009 by Charles W. Moore. Entire Low End Mac website copyright ©1997-2009 by Cobweb Publishing, Inc., unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved. Advice presented in good faith, but what works for one may not work for all. Please report errors to .
  LINKS: We allow and encourage links to any public page as long as the linked page does not appear within a frame that prevents bookmarking it.
  Access our RSS news feed at http://lowendmac.com/feed.xml.
  Email may be published at our discretion; email addresses will not be published without permission, and we will encrypt them in hopes of avoiding spammers. If you prefer your message not be published, mark it "not for publication." Letters may be edited for length, context, and to match house style.
  PRIVACY: We don't collect personal information unless you explicitly provide it. For more details, see our Terms of Use.
  Low End Mac is an independent publication and has not been authorized, sponsored, or otherwise approved by Apple Inc. Apple, the Apple logo, Macintosh, iBook, iMac, eMac, iPod, iPhone, PowerBook, MacBook, MagSafe, Mac Pro, Apple TV, and AirPort are registered trademarks of Apple Inc. Additional company and product names may be trademarks or registered trademarks and are hereby acknowledged.

Custom Search

Amazon.com

Navigation

Used Mac Dealers
Apple History
Video Cards
Email Lists

Favorite Sites

MacSurfer
MacMinute
MacInTouch
MyAppleMenu
InfoMac
Macs Only!
The Mac Observer
Accelerate Your Mac
RetroMacCast
PB Central
MacWindows
The Vintage Mac
   Museum
DealMac
DealsOnTheWeb
Mac2Sell
ramseeker
Mac Driver Museum
JAG's House
System 6 Heaven
System 7 Today
the pickle's Low-End
   Mac FAQ
Abandonware
   Petition
Mac vs. PC Info

Affiliates

The Apple Store
Mac Connection
B&H
MacMall
TechRestore
ExperCom
Crucial Memory
batteries.com

Advertise

All of our advertising is handled by BackBeat Media. For price quotes and advertising information, please contact at BackBeat Media (646-546-5194). This number is for advertising only.

Open Link

Problems viewing this page with Internet Explorer 5.5 or 6? It works fine in other browsers, including IE 7. We recommend Firefox for those using Windows, as it is standards based and more secure than IE 6 (and earlier). More LEM visitors use Firefox than any other browser.