I'm a self-employed IT guy. I support Macs and PCs in PC and Mac
environments. I've used Macs since 1984 and was a Mac bigot until
about 1996. That year I was told to learn PC or get another job.
This made me very sad, but I liked getting a paycheck, so I learned
PC.
When I learned PC, I learned how much I knew about Mac - and
exactly what I loved and what hated about it.
They say you don't really know English until you learn Latin.
Well, I didn't really know Mac until I learned PC.
Even though I had been playing with ResEdit since forever,
learning Windows allowed me to put all the Mac knowledge I had
acquired in all my years of playing into context. (My Macs usually
said, "Welcome, Jamie" instead of "Welcome to Macintosh" - if you
know what I'm talking about, you understand my Mac adulation.)
My first real PC experience was with Windows NT 3.51 and NT 4.0,
which I slogged through getting my MCSE. That was a real chore and
no easy feat. But along the way I picked up some neat info. Things
like the 7 OSI
layers of networking, what "true" multitasking operating
systems were, why virtual memory wasn't just an evil thing that
slowed down your computer, and how different drive formats had
their pros and cons (and not all were limited to 31 character
filenames).
Each time I learned a new fact, I realized I already knew it.
Things were all new to me - and yet not new. As I learned how NT
handled network host name resolution, I learned what made AppleTalk
so great. I also learned what made AppleTalk so infuriating when
things didn't work they way you expected them to.
Troubleshooting Support
...I couldn't learn more about how Macs
worked.
The more I learned, the more frustrated I became. Not because
Macs didn't work like PCs, but because I couldn't learn more about
how Macs worked. Here's what I mean. Compare Microsoft's knowledge
base and technical library to Apple's. If I need to know how XP
handles user authentication, I can read all about it. The
information about Active Directory, SIDs, SAMs, and user tokens is
available for all to read. It's not exciting reading, but it
exists.
In comparison, Apple's tendency is to put software out there,
provide some very fluffy help files, and that's it. Apple doesn't
provide detailed documentation about operating system modules or
how OS X handles multiple network cards. Well, some of that
information is available - certainly more than there used to be -
but providing access isn't Apple's style. And what is out there is
written for developers, as if they're the only people who need to
know how to fix boot loaders!
My job is to make people's computers work for them. When it
comes to Windows, I've got great resources to learn how things are
supposed to work which lets me figure out what's wrong when things
don't do what they should. With Apple, I feel like I'm being told
that I shouldn't need to know these things; it should just
work.
I agree, it should just work, but sometimes it doesn't. And when
people call me in a panic, I need a better answer than "reformat
your hard drive and reinstall the system."
Why are we still dealing with corrupted hard drives after 20
years? With NTFS on Windows, I can count on one hand how many times
I've lost data due to a corrupted hard drive. And I don't think I
can recall a single instance when I've had to reformat an NTFS
formatted hard drive to resolve directory corruption.
How many times have you had to do that on a Mac, even with Mac
OS Extended (Journaled)? Let me make that question easier: How many
times have you had to do that on a Mac this year?
I want Apple to realize that they need to provide training and
certification and detailed OS architecture information for us
support folks. I'm tired of rebuilding the desktop, verifying
permissions, and archiving and reinstalling my OS.
Be like Microsoft. Offer real solutions for real problems.
Share your perspective on the Mac by emailing with "My Turn" as your subject.
