For the past year I’ve been diligently trying to give Macs a fair shake. I used a Powerbook up until Nov of last year then switched to a MacBook Pro. My wife uses a Powerbook and my kids use one as well (that’s 3 Mac laptops in my house). In a year of regular usage, Macs have never stopped baffling me with their ridiculous layout/storage system or driving me crazy with them treating me like I’m a little kid trying to play on a computer. Having to settle for whatever software there was that actually worked on a Mac instead of choosing between full featured Windows programs has driven me near to throwing the Mac as far and as hard as I could.
Sure, there are some cute little features about the the Powerbook/MacBook Pro that I like – I’ll miss being able to scroll with 2 fingers on the touch pad. The thing is, the ONLY things I actually like about the Mac are hardware based, not OS based. I despise OS x. The choice for me is OS based, not hardware based. Robert Scoble suggested last week that I use boot camp and just always load the MBP to Windows – not a bad idea, except that the hardware itself has given me all kinds of problems. The keys on the keyboard are constantly falling off! My kids Powerbook is actually missing the left shift key, the Z and X key. The D key falls off it all the time. Even when you’re running in windows, the function keys do whatever Mac wants to do – f5 changes the volume instead of refreshing. f4 lowers the volume instead of dropping a combo box. And if all that weren’t bad enough, THERE’S NO RIGHT CLICK BUTTON!!! So, using the hardware for a windows machine really seems pointless – besides being pretty, having light-up keys and scrolling on the touch pad, there is no use for the hardware.
Windows may have its problems, but I can make it do whatever I want it to do – I’m not stuck with what the Mac engineers thought was a good idea. I have a huge choice in software, I can store my files wherever I want and if I’m so inclined, I can go delete the system files for the OS. I’ll take a few random blue screens over being completely frustrated every time I use the laptop – besides, the Mac crashes just about as often as a Windows box.
On top of everything else – I’m a .Net developer! I have to be using windows somewhere so I can work. I’ve been doing that in Parrallels on the MacBook Pro which is slow and takes up a huge amount of the hard drive.
So, it is with GREAT zeal that I kick Macintosh OUT of my life and once again, fully embrace Toshiba as my hardware of choice. Happy, Happy Me.
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Hugh
March 9, 2007 at 9:51 am (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Personally, I don’t understand why a .net developer would be using a Mac in the first place. That’s like using a Zune to share music.
Thom Allen
April 4, 2007 at 8:29 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Yes Phil… all of your conclusions are true, however, I have the iMac with 3GB of ram and a 250GB hard drive. Booting to Windows instead of Parallels is sooo much faster than trying to run in the Mac OS context.
So far so good. Not sure I would have the same experience on a MacBook Pro though. From your notes it doesn’t look like it.
Jeff M
October 15, 2007 at 3:05 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
You’re a little light on the details…
“Macs have never stopped baffling me with their ridiculous layout/storage system.”
I wouldn’t call Applications going into a folder called “Applications”, preference files into a folder called “Preferences”, browser plug-ins into a folder called “Browser Plug-Ins”, system preference panes into a folder called “Preference Panes”, and application support data into folders named “Application Support” ridiculous at all.
I also fail to see how a single file system tree any more ridiculous than disk volumes recieving arbitrary drive letters (C:\, D:\, E:\ versus “/Volumes/Portable Disk”, “/Volumes/USB Drive”, /Volumes/WebDisk, etc…)
“Having to settle for whatever software there was that actually worked on a Mac instead of choosing between full featured Windows programs.”
What software are you talking about?
All of the major players work just as good if not better on a Mac than on Windows. Apache, Firefox, Thunderbird, MySQL, PHP, Ruby, Python, Perl, gcc, OpenSSL, etc…
“… treating me like I’m a little kid trying to play on a computer.”
Did you try Quicksilver? It’s pure bliss. Or opening up Terminal.app? The unix shell puts command.com to shame.
“THERE’S NO RIGHT CLICK BUTTON!!!”
Sure there is. Just plug in a multi-button mouse or turn on two finger tapping to right-click.
geochick
November 28, 2007 at 10:00 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Thanks for your sobering post. I switched to a Mac 2 years ago and haven’t looked back since. I don’t think Macs are for everyone.
You have to have a bit of patience to get used to the differences. I used to think that there were little programs out there for the Mac but have found tons of them that I wish I could use on the PC at work. What helped me out was more than a few blogs and some of the nice community of folks that I’ve met online. I haven’t had any hardware issues thuough but can understand how that woud cause a headache. Sorry to hear about your wow but switching can be fun for many of us.
Chris Knudsen on life, business, and entrepreneurship » Using iTunes to build a nuclear weapon. Wait, what?
March 9, 2007 at 8:39 am (UTC -7) Link to this comment
[...] Phil Burns has blogged about his horribly frustrating year working on Mac notebooks. Phil, thanks for jumping up and yelling ”the emperor has no clothes!” Here’s an excerpt: “The keys on the keyboard are constantly falling off! My kids Powerbook is actually missing the left shift key, the Z and X key. The D key falls off it all the time. Even when you’re running in windows, the function keys do whatever Mac wants to do – f5 changes the volume instead of refreshing. f4 lowers the volume instead of dropping a combo box. And if all that weren’t bad enough, THERE’S NO RIGHT CLICK BUTTON!!! So, using the hardware for a windows machine really seems pointless – besides being pretty, having light-up keys and scrolling on the touch pad, there is no use for the hardware. [...]
Sean Roylance » Buy a laptop you can be proud of
March 9, 2007 at 11:07 am (UTC -7) Link to this comment
[...] Chris Knudsen and Phil Burns recently blogged about how Macs are overrated. I couldn’t agree with them more. I recently bought a new laptop, and I can’t be happier that it isn’t a Mac. [...]
A mile in my Birks » I couldn’t choose just one.
April 6, 2007 at 2:30 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
[...] are funnier when you understand that He Who Worships at the Feet of Microsoft has put Vista on all of the kids computers. Computers that I can’t for the life of me figure [...]
Phil801 - Geek Blog » The whi-Phone
July 31, 2007 at 10:22 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
[...] MacBook Pro I forced myself to use a MacBook Pro for several months, I HATED it. A few months ago, I kicked it to the curb. Other than pretty pretty, I find NOTHING useful about Macs whatsoever. (yeah, some of that bleeds [...]