Friday, June 26, 2009

To PC or to Mac ... That is the Question


Our current computer is dying a slow, ugly death.

We're researching.
We're talking.
We're looking at the budget.


I am trying to decide if my crush on Mac is justified or not. I just love Apple commercials. Love them. And their choice of music? Sends me into some sort of otherworldly, hypnotic state that reduces me to muttering, "Want ... one ...."

I've been known to simply stop what I'm doing during an iPhone commerical, just to stare dreamily at the TV and envision an iPhone and me running through a spring meadow together. That music leaves me brainwashed into thinking that the universe will melt away and leave me alone in perfect happiness, if only I marry dish out a lot of money for an iPhone ....

Am I just a hapless victim of clever manipulation? (That's exactly why I hate advertising, of course -- I admire the talent behind a really well-done commercial, but I abhor it for knowing how to get to me.)

Or are my friends (and you know who you are ... you've already told me, "Get the Mac!") right?

If you have an opinion, I'd love to hear it.

(And, uh, Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates? You might need to have those Apple guys be your Cyrano de Bergerac ... that's all I'm gonna say.)

17 comments:

Charlotte (WaltzingM) said...

My husband is a PC guy at work and a Mac guy at home. He makes his living working with PC's but will tell everyone he meets who is considering a new computer, "Get a Mac!" That's my 2 cents.

Pam Barnhill said...

New blog reader here. Just picked up your book and can't wait to start it. I second the vote for a Mac. I used them for many years and they are awesome. Am using PCs right now at home, but gonna save my funds so the next machine is a Mac.

Beth said...

We've been an 'all-Mac' family for a while now and I've never looked back. Never going back either, for that matter.

linda68701 said...

I think you should get a Mac. You've already seen ours in action!

cindy kay said...

Years ago, before we had a single computer, I read an article written for homeschoolers about which computer to get, and it said that if you want ease of use, get a Mac. So when the time came, we got a Mac. And so did our son, and our other son, and our daughter. And I personally have had a Mac laptop for three years, and I still love it.

My other son has a PC which is pieced together from several old PC's that were given to him and he likes it fine--but he's saving up for a Macbook!

Some one told me that having a PC is like having a car where you have to know how to take apart the carburetor in order to drive it, and having a Mac is like just putting the key in the ingnition and driving off.

Sarah N. said...

We're an all mac family. My husband has been a mac evangelist for a looong time. I wrote my masters thesis in 1998 on a mac laptop that was almost 10 years old and it still worked perfectly fine. I've had a few different macs since then and I love them all. I completely agree with mom huebert about pcs being like cars you need to know how to take apart. Get a mac! :)

turtlemama said...

I'm a technophobe. Was so, so sick and tired of calling my hubby at work to get him to talk me through the ails of my PC, "Turn it off and on 3 times, hit the F9 button, smack it firmly in the right upper quadrant and then blow." or something to that effect. It was ridiculous. I could take it no more. We had a neighbor across the street and our mutual friend from the Bonny Glen preaching night and day about the miracle of the Apple. My hubby, the engineer, as part of his job actually problem solves situations with PC's, but his love for me prevailed. We got a Mac and never looked back. Took it out of the box, and I could use it instantly. It's like it knows what I want before I even try to do it. My husband LOVES that it is virtually virus-proof and that everything comes in it instead of lots of added wires and things to load. He has grown to be a Mac lover and wants to get a Mac-book (is that what they're called?) for our next computer. We have had very, very few problems with things not translating from pc systems to ours which was a concern. We are not a big computer game family, so I can't speak to that.

Absolutely, go Mac. And, it looks so cool. (The only thing I own that does :)

Amanda & Brian said...

Get a Mac. It's that easy. I was a PC person and I got my Mac. Now I'm never going back.

Erin said...

Go for a PC. Macs are showy and easy to use... but if you want non-flashy and already know how to use one, go for a PC. They are less expensive and just as good as long as you know how to use them.

Resist the advertising!! It's all part of the flashy, catchy, "Look how trendy and wonderful this is!" I hate advertising too... but maybe I am the only one who is sick of hearing "i" this and "i" that. Advertising likes to make products say, "It's all about ME." Blah.

Sarah Reinhard said...

I've had my Mac almost two years and have never looked back.

Yeah, the ads are cool.

But the reality of the Mac is even better. Seriously.

But you have to discern for yourself. :)

KC said...

We are getting macbooks this summer for several reasons. One is that macs are better for photos which I take a lot of. Second, Skype works better on a Mac and with dh deploying we need Skype to work.

cFahey said...

Total cost of ownership is actually less for a Mac, primarily because it just works. Additionally, I'm a switcher and I'll never go back. The Mac makes my computer time much more efficient than it ever has been on Windows.

Anonymous said...

Another vote for a Mac! We just went all Mac, though we have one brand new laptop PC that we just inherited. I realized how right we were when we got the Mac, when I got on the PC and tried to play a game that we used to play on our old PC and the computer promply froze. I thought, ok, I will try again. It froze again. Ok, one more time... started to play got it going and then it simply closed up on me.

Yeah. Mac. All the way!

One thing t remember as well when you buy a PC it is loaded with a lot of extras you don't need. Which eats up a ton of memory. So you won't even need a Mac with as much memory, because there won't be all those ads and junk on there that you don't need or want.

Warren said...

Hi Charlotte,

I'm the same way. I write software for Windows all day at work, and when I get home, the last thing I want to do is deal with "Windows Update has found 175 new updates and needs to reboot 75 times", or "Your anti-virus software auto-updater needs to update the auto-updater updater thingy".

Or, "Windows Genuine Advantage has decided that you are a nasty sneaky thief! Thief thief thief!".

Buy a Mac. Unless you like pain. In which case, buy a PC. You get a lot of pain, for not much money.

Warren

Warren said...

In the interest of honesty, I have to disagree with the person who said "Skype works better on a mac".

It would be more accurate to say that the skype program on Mac is older, and has fewer features. Some of the new features are only on the PC. However, I actually do like the Mac version (older and simpler) somewhat bettered. The latest PC version of skype is cluttered up with features I don't use.

But I imagine that if you were used to the new PC Skype, and moved to mac, you'd wonder what happened to it.

I use iChat between myself and fellow Mac users, and it is much better than Skype, for audio quality, preventing nasty "feedback", and video quality is usually better.

However, Skype is great for talking between Mac and PC users, as it's the only audio/video chat software I know of that is (a) free, and (b) works flawlessly on both PCs and Macs.

Warren

Karen said...

I vote for Mac. We used them at the daily newspaper where I wrote and I loved them. No problems. No crashes or weird messages. My husband is in film and will say Mac over PC for anything visual (photos, family video, etc.). We sold our iMac the other year as my husband hopes to upgrade to a better Mac but we have a PC until we can afford that. He laments the lack of a Mac (how's that rhyme?) here almost daily. But we haven't won a lottery yet. When we can, we're buying a Mac. Bye-bye PC!

Connie's Daughter said...

Get the Mac! It'll be worth it! I'd even put my TV money into a Mac. Costs more, yes. But I think it is built better and the Mac operating system is way above that of PC's. And, as a homeschooler, I think you can get an education discount. Plus right now they have a promo for a free iPod. If you buy from the online store, you can customize your Mac, too, getting the size hd you want, the graphics card you want, etc..