I Want an Apple Mac

An update from my brother:

Pat,

I hope all is well with you.

I haven't checked your website for quite a while and just saw the discussion about changing over to the Mac.  I did this a few years ago and love it. It is the easiest PC I have ever owned.

It is the family computer and seems to meet all of our needs.
We have the Microsoft Office package so we can use excel, word and powerpoint.
The new Macs, let you toggle back and forth between Windows or OSX.

I use it mostly for managing music and photos and for creating DVDs for all the sports teams.
They turn out awesome.

They are more expensive, but you'll soon forget about the price when the dang thing works
almost flawlessly all the time.

Timothy D. Sullivan
 

I am really frustrated with computing and software.  Especially Microsoft's Operating System and Internet Explorer.  I have talked with 3 people who recently dumped their Windows Computers in favor of a Macintosh.  All three had a 1 to 2 week frustrating transition but now absolutely love their Mac.

I have been using Windows since the 3.0 version back in about '91 as I recall.  It never has been very stable but it used to be adequate.  Since ACT! and SalesLogix ran on Windows, I never had the luxury of considering changing to a Mac.  But now, I don't use ACT! anymore, I can consider switching to a Mac and likely I will.

I use three different Windows computers.  A Dell desktop at work, a Compaq laptop and a Dell desktop at home.  All three have serious problems.   My work computer is the most stable but still occasionally simply goes out to lunch.  My home desktop is the next least stable.  My laptop is miserable.  It crashes all the time. 

IE regularly stops working, especially when I am trying to open a file like a PDF or Word/Excel doc.  This is especially true when I am running Microsoft's Outlook Web Access(OWA).  OWA regularly simply stops working on both my computers at home.  It sits there and won't open a message or start a new one.  It often can't find email addresses that actually are in the contact list.

For many months I have refused to switch to version 7 of IE.  Every time I decide to try it on any of the 3, the new version simply will not run.  On my laptop, IE 7 cannot find my wireless network.  Ever! It comes up and says, "Can't find network."  There is a button that says something like "Have IE try to find the network?"  After a few minutes, it asks me if I have a hard wired connection or a wireless network.  I tell it wireless and it goes off for awhile again. It then asks for the name of the network.  It really is not very smart is it?  I give it the name. It goes off for another bit and then comes up telling me to check port 388, 452,112 (not the real numbers) or such nonsense.  I have spent hours trying to figure out how to check these ports.  The system says all the ports are working.  I then cuss at the computer

I then wonder if Firefox can find access to the internet.  I click on it and about 2 seconds later, there is my Yahoo home page.  Firefox works and IE 7 cannot even find a network!  Thank God the "Restore" function works so I can at least go back to something that works partially.

I can hear you ask, "so why not have Firefox be your default browser?"  Well, it is.  However, OWA only works well inside IE.  I am certain MS programmers made that so.  OWA inside Firefox works very differently and I don't care for it.  No big surprise, when a URL is clicked inside OWA, it totally ignores my default setting and opens the URL inside another IE window.  Often that does not work.

On my home desktop whenever I have to reboot (the three finger salute) it brings up an install routine where it wants to load some kind of weird application.  It gets in a loop where it simply keeps trying to install even though I hit the cancel button.  The only way I have figured out how to get around this is to bring up the Windows Task manager and then close that install routine a few times.  It then eventually goes away.  I suspect it really is still there causing some instability.

The net of my frustration is that computing should have gotten a LOT easier.  Instead it has become so much more complex and unstable. There are so many system programs running even before I launch an application that I actually want to use.  A single bug can shut down the whole thing. 

I think I know computing better than many people.  I often wonder how people who don't have a clue make this stuff work.  Maybe that is why there are Geek mobiles from Best Buy driving all over to fix people's computers!  MS has created a whole new industry fixing the stuff they make.

MS Vista is far worse I am told.  I have refused to use that since I would need a new computer to even run it.  Rather than do that it will be a new Mac that I buy.  The good news is the browser is becoming the operating system.  In the future, likely we will be running most everything inside a browser.  I have tried Safari for Windows and it is slick but has its own problems apparently.  I say apparently because its problems could well be caused by Microsoft's Operating System.  Microsoft has been known to make certain pieces of competitive software simply not work very well.  Maybe they sabotaged Safari?

I don't have first hand experience with the MAC and I may find out it has similar problems, but the people I know who have switched claim it almost NEVER happens.  We will see when I switch.

A side note to see if my evolutionist buddies are reading this.  MS engineers are not stupid people!  They are very intelligent designers of software.  But the more complex their stuff gets, the harder it is for them to keep it working without simply dying.  Our bodies contain thousands of extremely complex systems that have to work intricately together and rarely breakdown, though we all do eventually die, actually by design.  Either the Intelligent Designer/Creator is incomprehensibly smart or natural selection and random mutation are incredibly efficient and actually intelligent in some unknown way.  To create us and our world was/is the most amazing, awe inspiring accomplishment.  If it was done randomly (which you know I don't believe is possible) it is even more awe inspiring!