Main Area and Open Discussion > Living Room

The worst thing about Macs

<< < (15/17) > >>

nontroppo:
And as a little background:

I didn't choose to buy a Macbook. My previous Acer was having Windows lockup issues that a fresh disk image was not clearly solving. My boss was curious about Macs because for Education, workstations are better specced, better built and lower priced than the Dell's we normally buy. So he took me, the most computer-literate and real Windows specialist in my Department, and offered to buy me a new laptop. The caveat was *I* was a guinea pig, the laptop would be a Mac. So when I took up the laptop, I was really an experiment to see if we could do our scientific analysis, writing and collaboration with this alien platform. I didn't *choose* it at all  :deal:. My first two weeks were with very mixed feelings — WTF is that menu-bar doing there all the time, why don't apps close when you close their windows, why have hide AND minimise, WTH doesn't enter work in dialogs click the default button. I missed foobar and hated iTunes with a passion. I *really* missed FARR  :(, and thought the dock clunky. I *was* amazed when I saw ligatures in my text, found expose genuinely useful and loved how things "flow". But bootcamp and XP saw substantial use still. Maybe I'm just more flexible, but soon things got more intuitive, my Windows-metaphors were less intrusive, and then fairly rapidly things clicked into place. There are sets of small details in OS X that just kept me amazed; little details that showed some designer 1000s miles away had thought about how this was built. Then I started really using quicksilver. I spent more and more time in OS X, not deliberately, it just happened. The macbook was running all our legacy software with no problems. After discussing this, the first Mac Pro was bought.

After a month or so, the senior London Dell representative came and tried to persuade us to buy a new batch of workstations. Apart from being pretty ignorant about computers, he was amazed watching the Mac Pro running XP and OS X unified. he promised us a further 40% in addition to the educational price, which did undercut Apple. After some more cogitation, and Dells attempt to back-peddle on price slightly, more Mac Pros were purchased. We haven't looked back since.

Ralf Maximus:
Nontroppo, thank you for documenting your experiences.  It's the most *useful* thing I've read on the subject, and I thank you for helping me form a new perspective.  I find myself wanting to experiment with a Mac for the first time.

Darwin:
Yes - I agree with Ralf's comment above. Very interesting to read how you entered the Mac world, nontroppo. Thank you for sharing that.

PS I'm an avowed Peruvian tree-shrew FANATIC! Please don't get me started on their all-round superiority to the garden variety wild Southeast Asian species! I mean, who wants to travel all the way to Southeast Asia to watch these mouse sized lesser primates in the natural environments? Puh-leeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeze! It's a zoo in Peru all the way for me  :P

nontroppo:
Ralf: as long as it doesn't detract from your future as a successful thoughtful satirist and comedian of World reknown  8)

Darwin: bah! We know very well Peruvian tree-shrews are no more than Uruguayan street-rats wearing lipstick…  :harhar:

Darwin:
Darwin: bah! We know very well Peruvian tree-shrews are no more than Uruguayan street-rats wearing lipstick… 
--- End quote ---

Cross-dressing rats! I love it!

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page