After years of owning IBM and IBM-compatible computers, I'm thinking
of making the switch to a Mac.  I'm not looking for answers as to why
I should, but why I SHOULDN'T.  I don't need websites.  A subjective
but knowledgable opinion is fine.  I understand that there's some
software that isn't available for Mac's, but are those programs
anything I would ever want?

Here's what I would want to do:  obsessively use the internet. 
e-mail.  word processing.  Eventually desktop edit with Final Cut Pro
(thus, it has to be Mac, doesn't it?)  Maybe burn CD's and DVD's (even
though I don't know how.) I don't do games, I don't do programming.

Talk me out of buying a Mac.  I don't know any IBM users who have made
the switch.  Do they regret it?  And God knows you can't ask Mac users
to be critical about Macs because they're too busy gushing, if you
know what I mean and I think we all do.

Note: Answer must be user-friendly. I am not a techie at all, even
though I've owned a computer since 1979.  (A Northstar with Electric
Pencil for word processing, for any oldtimers here.)

Hello.

I currently use both PCs and Macs, so I feel that I can offer you some
insight on this question.

There are basically three reasons not to get a Mac: cost, performance,
and compatibility.

(1) Cost. 
Macs simply cost more than comparably equipped PCs.  You're adding
20-25% to the cost of your purchase by going with a Mac.  And it's not
just the computer itself. Virtually everything is more expensive in
the Mac world. You need a new keyboard? Prepare to spend at least $30.
See MacConnection:
http://www.macconnection.com/scripts/searchresults.asp?SR=1&ER=10&TR=0&ST=AS&plattype=M&MarketID=101&Features=141345&sortval=Price
Meanwhile, over in the PC world, they're literally giving away
keyboards. I'm not kidding. Once you're in the Mac camp, you might
start noticing all the good buys that aren't compatible with your
equipment.  There are very few freebies in the Mac world, whereas it's
seems like practically everything is available "free after rebate" for
the PCs. Maybe I'm exaggerating a little, but not by much.

(2) Performance.
Macs are not particularly speedy.  The Mac's PowerPC processor simply
has not kept pace with Intel and AMD.  Apple talks about a "Megahertz
Myth," which asserts that their computers are really faster than PCs
with higher clock speeds.
http://www.apple.com/g4/myth/ 
However, the reality is that Macs do have something of speed
disadvantage, and it is apparent if you're working with top-of-the
line versions of both systems.  Apple's new operating system hasn't
help much in this regard.  Mac OS X is very elegant and user-friendly,
but it's no speed demon. It slows down when I have a lot of programs
open at once. Now, the same can be said, I'm sure, of Windows or any
other operating system, but I suspect that the problem is worse for OS
X. On one of my older Macs, I use Apple's OS 9, and I'm continually
reminded how much snappier it was compared with OS X.

3) Compatibility.
As you've indicated, considerably less software is available for the
Mac than the PC. In all honesty, though, if you just want software for
surfing the Web, e-mail, word processing and burning CDs and DVDs,
you'll be just fine with a Mac. Mac and PC versions of word processing
programs such as Microsoft Word are virtually identical.
  Once in a while, though, you'll come across something that you want
to run on a Mac, but can't because it's PC-only.  These usually aren't
major things.  Small utility programs are often in this category. For
example, a few days ago, I was looking for some sort of utility that
would tell me the type of dye used on some CD-R discs that I had.  The
company that sold the discs is out of business, but I had hope to find
out the dye type so I could try to buy some similar discs from another
manufacturer.  Well, I located a PC utility that would scan a disc and
tell me the dye type, but I couldn't find a Mac version.  Now, when
this sort of thing happens, you can always turn to a superb product
called VirtualPC that will allow to run PC software on your Mac. 
While this product does the trick for occasional use, it is somewhat
slow and is not an ideal solution if you plan to use a lot of PC
software on a daily basis. Additionally, VirtualPC costs a couple
hundred bucks if you need a copy of Windows to go along with it.
http://www.connectix.com/products/vpc6m.html

Now, I know that you only wanted reasons not to get a Mac, so I won't
bother to go into any of the Mac's great virtues (ease of use, fewer
bugs, state-of-the-art audio & video, etc.). Nonetheless, I must
disagree with Missy's comment below concerning RAM. That may have been
true of Macs a decade ago, but I've personally added RAM to four
different Macs built over the course of the last six years (PowerBook,
iMac, PowerMac, and an older Mac clone). I haven't found the process
any more difficult or challenging than adding RAM to PCs.

Finally, I should mention one other reason not to buy a Mac:
addiction. Macs are so much fun to use that you might find yourself
spending more time at your computer.  :-)

I hope this helps. If you have any other questions or need any more
information, please use the "request clarification" feature. Thanks.

---

Clarification of Answer by juggler-ga on 28 May 2003 19:32 PDT

Sorry for the typo in the paragraph about cost. 

It should have read:

"... whereas it seems ..."

---

Request for Answer Clarification by cryptica-ga on 29 May 2003 15:13 PDT

Great answer, Juggler.  Before I close this down, one last question. 
My mother went to buy a new Mac last month to replace her old one and
the salesman pretty much refused to sell her one.  He told her that
the new models will be out within six months, with some amazing new
things and he urged her to wait.  What are your thoughts?  If I get
one, should I hold off 'til the new models arrive?

Thanks to everyone else for their thoughts.  If you're reading this,
BETHC, you are sooo on the money -- and you said it with such style. 
JOURNALIST -- you said you weren't thrilled with the Mac for
word-processing, but you didn't say why.  Were you using Word?   
MACAONGHUS -- I wouldn't be burning music CD's or movie DVD's from the
net or anything illegal.  I'd want to make CD's from old family
cassettes and interviews I've conducted, etc.  And DVD's from the
Final Cut Pro output of whatever I would edit --I believe you can do
that?

For everyone else, thank you so much for input.  Whether or not I can
upgrade RAM isn't really of concern to me.  I'm one of those people
that is so technically inept, that when something needs replacing or
upgrading, I cave in and get a new one. Yes! When the ice cube tray is
empty I buy a new refrigerator!

---

Clarification of Answer by juggler-ga on 29 May 2003 15:58 PDT

Hi Cryptica,

Rumors are indeed circulating of major revisions in the Mac product
line in late June.

See:
MacRumors.com May 7, 2003:
http://www.macrumors.com/pages/2003/05/20030507134805.shtml

"Will This Be the Summer of Mac?" on BusinessWeek.com
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/may2003/tc20030521_2871_tc056.htm

"This Will Be The Summer Of Mac," on MacObserver.com
http://www.macobserver.com/article/2003/05/21.6.shtml

Thus, there's a possibility of Macs with faster processors and other
key features such as built-in USB 2.0 coming very soon.  USB 2.0 is a
high speed interface for connecting computers to peripherals such as
scanners and digital cameras. http://www.usb.org/home

Thus, it might make sense to hold off for a couple months if you don't
need a new computer right away. By July or so, new Macs will likely be
available. Additionally, if history is any guide, lower prices should
be in effect on current and discontinued models.

I hope this helps.  Thanks.

---

Request for Answer Clarification by cryptica-ga on 02 Jan 2004 11:50 PST

Hey, Juggler --
Thought you'd like to know that I did it --10 days ago I finally  took
the plunge.  After a lot of consultation with friends and colleagues
and a lot of hand-holding,  ended up with the G4 iMac with the 20"
screen and Panther 10.3.2.

It's gorgeous and over-whelming.  I will soon be posting many a
qestion here in the future.

And of course, what did someone give me the day afater I bought it,
but a little keychain digital camera that came with the warning,  "Not
compatible with Mac."  Day 1 and already I felt I had made a big
mistake.

The hardest part is getting used to the equivalent Windows commands
and keys and right now, all I want to do is smash this baby to
smithereens.

HOWEVER. . . last night, I had a good 1/2 hour roll of smoothly
roaming around via Safari and Sherlock and discovering
.....STICKIES!!!!     Forget everything else -- stickies could make me
a true convert!

Thanks to you and everyone else for all your help.   I think.   And Happy 2004.

---

Clarification of Answer by juggler-ga on 02 Jan 2004 12:53 PST

Hello Cryptica,

Nice to hear from you!

Congratulations on your new iMac.  Wow, a 20" screen!  That must be
great for viewing DVDs, web browsing, etc.

Best wishes for 2004!
-juggler

Thank you, Juggler, you covered it all.  And how appropriate that my
question was answered by you -- as I "juggle" the choice of Mac or
IBM.

Geez, cryptica, I could probably carry on for hours about why you
should stick with a PC...I don't know that any of them would suit YOUR
needs.  So I'm going to post a comment.

For my money, the best reason to stay away from a Mac is that you
can't tinker with the stupid things.  Wanna switch out your hard
drive?  Add more RAM?  Put in the most bleeding edge vid card you can
find?  Mod the case?

Forget it.  Can't be done with a Mac.

Nice computers if you're a professional graphics artist, but totally
the wrong way to go if you like configuring and maintaining your own
rig.

--Missy

With computers, it's always cheaper and easier and less frustrating to
go with flow. Internet Explorer isn't the best browser, but I use it.
Linux is more stable, but I use Windows.

I am in total agreement with Missy.  I worked on a Mac at my last
newspaper gig and they were **wonderful** for graphics but I did not
care for them for word processing.  'Course, I'm a PC gal to begin
with...

Oh, Cryptica, just think of all of the things that you’ll miss if you
buy a Mac.

You’ll miss the heart-stopping thrill of fear every time you open an
attachment and eagerly anticipate the latest virus.

You’ll miss the opportunity to help out a really great guy like Bill
Gates. Who will put his kids through college if you abandon him so
callously?

You’ll miss that pretty blue color that shows up regularly on your
computer screen.

You’ll miss the challenge of decoding error messages that resemble
Vehicle Identification Numbers.

You’ll miss that special relationship that you have with your
technical support guy.

You’ll miss having another chance to rewrite that letter or script
when your computer crashes and takes your document with it.

You’ll miss all those satisfying, contemplative hours spent with your
computer trying to make that new piece of hardware work.

You’ll miss all those cute little colon/backslash thingies.

Why would you want a Mac with  software like iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie
and  iDVD that integrate flawlessly? Sexy things like iPod. Digital
cameras and digital camcorders that work right out of the box.

My estimable colleagues have given you all kinds of reasons to stay
with your PC. Running with the herd is cheaper and easier than using
the best. Happy hours and days tinkering, configuring, maintaining,
bleeding......

You would miss all that stuff, wouldn’t you Cryptica????


Beth

Truthfully, I'm still pining for the heyday of the Amiga 2000. I loved
that machine.

And, by golly, I would get a Mac if I could afford one. There's room
for diversity on my desk. ;-)

While Missy's comments might help to talk you out of buying a mac,
they would do so by being completely misinformed (at best).

It is absolutely no more difficult to upgrade hard drives, RAM, etc...
in a Mac than it is in a PC.  I can't imagine why you would think it
would be.  Some older Macs had memory that was, in some cases, more
expensive, but it's all there.

However, you've stated that you're not a ``techie,'' and you don't
play games, so the misinformation is overall irrelevant.

I'm a techie as they say.  I do a lot of software development in lots
of programming languages.  I've recently (well, last year or so)
switched over to using a mac about 90% of the time (I have to use
Linux some at work, but I talked them into getting me a Mac laptop I
use most of the time).

I've used Final Cut Pro and have purchased Final Cut Express for
personal use.  You are not going to find anything like that anywhere
else (unless it, too, leverages the Quicktime API which is the reason
FCE is a 12MB install).

Any Mac you get with a DVD burner will come with iDVD which is
insanely easy.  They should all also have iMovie which is by no means
Final Cut, but is a pretty powerful NLE and can get you going right
out of the box...

I still consider myself a new Mac user, but within just a few months
of using my first OS X based Mac, I finally got what all those Mac
zealots were talking about.  I got a computer that did everything I
could think of doing, and did it easily, correctly, intuitively, and
consistently.

I strongly recommend Macs to anyone looking to buy a computer unless
they give me a very good reason why it won't work for them.  Although
I've never heard such a reason (arguably the games thing, but I think
it's ridiculous to pay thousands of dollars for a home video game
system), I've had plenty of people suffer through PC purchases who
ended up calling me asking for help.  I've had exactly one person who
actually got a Mac call up and ask for help.  By the time we got the
message, they'd figured out that it was doing what they'd asked it and
got it doing what they actually wanted.

if youre going to burn cds and dvds, illegal as it may be you will
want to use a program called kazaa, which is not available for the
apple. other similar programs are but the choice of songs and movies
on them is limited.

also if you get an apple you'll have fewer friends who can give you
technical support. you can call apple etc but most people's first of
call are their friends/colleagues.

and although it isnt supposed to happen, and apple fans will deny it,
it does occur that files written by an apple are sometimes unreadable
by windows. whether this is apple's or windows' fault doesnt matter -
theyre still unreadable.

As for VirtualPC, the program that pretends its windows - it is indeed
a great product but is actually quite slow to use - you dont want to
be doing graphics stuff in it.

Okay, I'm chimimg in again to add that the newspaper had a revolving
door policy with UPS who was always either picking up a
non-functioning Mac or returning one freshly repaired.  There were
certain upgrades that could be done in-house but many required sending
the computer away to fix-me camp.

However, those MACs have the *best* graphics capabilities.

Although I am not a MAC fan at all, I must say that Missy-ga's comment
about them is completely incorrect.

Thanks, Cryptica, for the compliment. Hope to see you come over from
the Dark Side real soon.

You will love Final Cut Pro, as one of the commenters has also opined.
I have used both iMovie and Final Cut Express, and am now in great
demand on the family birthday and reunion circuit. How well do you
interact with two-year olds wearing cake and ice cream?

Best of luck,

Beth

Bethc--
No 2-year-olds in my circle (except for a few co-workers who act like some)!
I have a vision of your clear lucite Mac covered with jelly stained fingerprints.

Cryptica:
Thank you for the tip.
-juggler

I know that im probably a bit slow to add my comment but i had a
friend that was raving about buying his new mac for months.

As soon as he bought it I heard nothing from him, obviously he moved
into the depths of the mac world. Anyway after about three weeks he
sold it and bought a fully equipped $2000 (au that is) pc. He was the
happiest guy alive raving about how 'lag-free' it was in comparrison
to the mac and how there were no compatibility issues. Also the ease
of locating pirated software, so i can only presume that macs are not
the holy grail of computing they are made out to be.

Later

Hello -

Having used both for a while now, I can tell you that OS 9 is
basically a 20 year old operating system with a few upgrades. 
"Crashintosh" is often heard -- the suckers crash all the time, and
there's no easy way out of an OS 9 crash.  Especially if you're
running a lot of extensions, and like to run a lot of apps at the same
time.  I run OS 9 because up until recently, Pro Tools did run on OS
X.

My limited knowledge and experience with OS X tells me that these
problems are really a thing of the past.  OS X is built upon a proven
OS -- UNIX -- which is known to be quite stable, especially in the
area of multitasking.

Apple is the inventer of the personal computer, and they make
excellent products.  The G4 is an awesome machine, and you can get a
lot of computing out of an older generation one, which is what I run.

I can't wait to upgrade to OS X.  If graphics and multimedia work are
what you're doing, the Mac is the standard.  For more business
oriented work, go with a PC.

OK good short story time:

The first time I shut down a mac, realized I forgot to take my floppy
disk out, and for some ungodly reason needed to boot the computer back
up to get it out because the silly, silly hunk of trash was too
avant-garde and uppity to have a simple eject button.  That's when I
knew I was an anything-but-a-mac user.

All these answers are helpful, thanks.  I guess I'll wait to see the
reviews of the new Macs coming out soon and see if some of the Mac
criticisms have been addressed.

I have had a Mac for almost a year now and I can truthfully say I only
use my Dell 2Ghz when I absolutley HAVE TO. I wanted to try "the other
side" and so I bought a 1999 model iMac with a 500 Mhz G3 processor
and 128 MB RAM (upgraded to 384MB now, which was, very easy - all i
had to do was open a door put the ram in, close the door and done - I
also put a new HDD in the thing which took a little more un-earthing
of the little critter but was not all that hard AT ALL) I use Final
Cut and Photoshop, both of which run very well for the "dated"
machine. My 2Ghz P4 Dell is faster but hey, when you go mac you never
go back and besides the Dell is newer so it is almost expected to be
faster. As for the rumors being flung around here... If you havaen't
heard Apple introduced the world's fastest Desktop using an IBM chip @
64 bits. Although some people have debated the benchmarks, I've done
my research and Apple's G5 is the fastest desktop in the world - for
now. Also revealed is the awaited 10.3 OS which I have to say after
testing a beta is simply amazing and I hope Microsoft catches up with
it in Longhorn becuase IT DOES have catching up to do! 10.3 "Panther"
will be out by the end of this year. Some sites have posted timelines
on when other Macs will presumeably be updated (Google it or
macrumors.com) A 15" laptop revision may be next. Keep checking the
Apple website and sorry that my comment didn't help you against your
purchase as I am biased and also I apologize for the "Techy" lingo and
any spelling mistakes along the way as I typed this up very quickly.

Thanks for the input, Sparkplug.  I haven't bought anything yet,
'cause I've been watching those Apple announcements, too.   But good
news: this just in:    Somebody at my office is leaving and I'm
getting his Mac set up to learn Final Cut Pro.  And somebody to train
me.  So. . . I'll have a Mac AND a Dell Desktop and will be able to do
side by side comparisons in a few weeks, so I can experiment for free,
without having to buy anything, and THEN decide which system I want at
home.

I'm afraid I can't talk you out of buying a Mac, but I can at least do
something.  The new Power Mac G5 is the world's fastest computer. 
Disagree with me PC weenies?  Take a look at this website:
http://www.applelust.com/oped/amc/archives/amc030718.shtml .  You know
you're wrong when you claim that Veritest cheated.  For goodness sakes
look at their clients.  It includes Dell and Microsoft.
Macs that you buy from Apple are now resonably upgradeable.  Add hard
drives, RAM, maybe a new PCI card.  You say that you can't mod a Mac? 
Tell me, has any PC user done something like this:
http://www.riscx.com/pyramac/ ?
Virtual PC is an EMULATOR, nothing more.  Of course it's going to be
slow.
I've been a Mac and PC user for almost my entire short life.  I've
been a multi-platform developer since the mid to late 1990's.  If I
had to choose between Windows and Mac OS X 10.3, it'll be OS X hands
down.
Oh, and did I mention that my Power Mac G4 has dual 1.42ghz G4
processors with 2 megs of L3 cache per processor, 2 gigs of ram, four
160gb hard drives, a DVD burner, a CD burner, an nvidia geforce4
titanium dual-display w/128mb ddr sdram video card, a modem, 802.11b
card, a SCSI port, a Fibre Channel PCI card, a 2.52tb
(yah...terabyte...) RAID and dual 23" displays?  Not to mention a sexy
little iPod and a 17" PowerBook and tons of pro apps to go with that? 
All that was under $9k.  You call that lame?  You call that stupid?  A
comparable PC with similar accessories and software would have cost
upwards of $15k alone for the desktop.

Me?

I'm still using the Apple II.

Get a load of that Visicalc ... Wow!