the 'new' mac

[John Coloccia]

Nobody hacks the OS anymore. They hack the apps. A few minutes ago I read about a huge PDF file reader hole on the iPhones. I wonder what's lurking in Safari, Garage Band, iPhoto, iTunes, Mail etc that no one has bothered looking at yet.

[Scott Shepherd]

What some of you keep missing is that all that are complaining about Mac's are power users of the PC. You're talking about internal details of how computers work. 99% of what was typed by some of you, the average user has no idea what you are talking about. If you want to compare things on that level, then great. You can make your own conclusions.

However, 99% of the public doesn't care about those details. Here's the things that some of you are missing when people say Mac's are easy to use....

Plug a digital camera into a Mac, it automatically opens up iphoto and says "Do you want to import your photos now?".

Plus a digital camera into a PC and you get the graphic attached below. Many people have no idea what that means. Most people don't understand files and folders as simple as that may be, but how many times have you PC gurus been called when someone can't find their file because they don't know where they saved it? So plugging a digital camera in, and seeing this dialog box is not what SHOULD happen. Now, you'll say "Well, if you go into the file associations and set blah blah blah up, then when you plug the camera in, it will open blah blah blah".

That's exactly the point. With the Mac, you don't have to know, with the PC, you HAVE to know just to use it. It's really that type of stuff that people are talking about when they say it's more friendly to use. It might be hard for some of you to step back to the point when you knew nothing about computers and see that some of the things MS makes you know or understand just to use it daily, the Mac doesn't make you know or understand it. You just use it, you don't have to "learn" it.

Some of you work with Mac's and say they are horrible, well, I'm sure we can go to an Apple forum and find people that use it in enterprise applications that have great success with it. Your own personal experience doesn't statistically blanket across millions of computers automatically. 3 people in this thread said they have had and see problems with them. Okay, how people have and see problems with PC's? Don't everyone raise their hands at once.

It's nothing to do with hardware, what people are trying to convey is that they just seem intuitive to use. Plug a camera in, it opens the photo application. Plug a video camera in, it opens the movie making program, plug a mp3 player in, it opens the music program. You have to admit that makes it intuitive, instead of asking me "Do you want to open this with Roxio, file manager, burn to a DVD, burn a CD, etc.".

That's all anyone's saying. It's intuitive, which is a refreshing change to many.

[Phil Thien]

That's all anyone's saying. It's intuitive, which is a refreshing change to many.

Intuitive?

How about uninstalling an applicaton?

You can just drag an icon to the can. But that doesn't get all of it. Your really should right-click the icon, click on "Show Package Contents" yada yada yada. That is intuitive?

Here is an article on the many ways of uninstalling apps on Mac:

http://guides.macrumors.com/Uninstal...ns_in_Mac_OS_X

Again, I have four Macs. I use them frequently. I bought a Mac for my daughter leaving for college. Not a basher.

Just keeping it real.

[Scott Shepherd]

Most people don't uninstall applications either. Most people aren't downloading and installing applications all the time.

[Bryan Morgan]

I suspect that OSX has huge, gaping security flaws that have yet to be exploited due to lack of interest.

They are currently (supposedly) #1 right now for the most security flaws.

Finally, Apple has fantastic customer support.

This is true. Their support has been great the few times I've needed to call them. No better than hp, Dell, or IBM, which are also good. Light years beyond Acer and some other brands though.

[Bryan Morgan]

Mac will not have the same problems windows does. the security model for the os is completely different, making it much harder to exploit. osx is based on freebsd, which is much more robust than anything in the microsoft universe.

Will it get hacked? of course. as much as windows? of course not.

Windows finer grained security blows any *nix out of the water (at least without addons/patches). I hate admitting this, honestly.

[Bryan Morgan]

Nobody hacks the OS anymore. They hack the apps. A few minutes ago I read about a huge PDF file reader hole on the iPhones. I wonder what's lurking in Safari, Garage Band, iPhoto, iTunes, Mail etc that no one has bothered looking at yet.

PDFs are a major security problem these days, regardless of platform. Its only going to get worse since Adobe keeps getting further and further away from the original idea of a PDF and now they are becoming multimedia documents that actually run code.

[Eric DeSilva]

Apple has fantastic customer support. Before my father calls me, he calls Apple tech support. 9 times out of 10, they walk him through whatever issues he's having. Try calling Microsoft for help on how to resize your Windows or how to get shortcuts on your desktop. For some people, the premium they pay is worth the attention to detail with the interface and a higher standard of support.

In all my years of dealing with both Apple and Windows computers, I've only recently had to call tech support--due to an issue with an upgrade from XP to Win 7. Even though it was arguable that I'd actually ended up purchasing the wrong upgrade product, a 20 min. call to MS tech support was all that it took to get me up, running, and validated. I also got a trouble ticket number that he assured me would work in the event I ever needed to do a reinstall.

I was expecting a much worse experience. I was very pleasantly surprised.

[Phil Thien]

Most people aren't downloading and installing applications all the time.

LOL, I have more examples if you want them.

Ever see this?

According to Computerworld and several other sources, a bug in Mac OS X Snow Leopard has the potential to delete all personal data from a Macintosh. CNET says that Apple has acknowledged the problem and is working on a fix. CNET also reports that “Snow Leopard has been plagued with bugs since its release, including problems with the Finder hanging or crashing, incompatibility with certain apps, and the AirPort connection dropping.”

I have. Twice.

The only reason I'm being somewhat militant about this is that some people that use Windows machines really believe the grass is greener on the Mac side.

Googling "mac problem" shows 85 million hits.

Googling "windows problem" shows 146 million.

Now, Mac has 5% market share. There are 10-15 times as many Windows machines out there.

That Google math isn't adding-up in Mac's favor.

[Neal Clayton]

but they're 'magical' because the ads say so?

[Scott Shepherd]

Phil, I certainly hope you don't use google hits for any statistical data.

You could say "mac problems" and it would bring up hits for anything that said "no problems with my mac" or "terrible problems with my mac".

Google hits are a horrific way to measure anything.

If you want to debate windows problems vs. Mac problems, that's a different thread. I never said Mac's don't have problems, I said they are intuitive for lay people to use. I'm not sure how you can argue against that.

[paul cottingham]

Windows finer grained security blows any *nix out of the water (at least without addons/patches). I hate admitting this, honestly.

I'm not talking about fine grainedness (is that even a word?) I'm talking abouy user level apps running as a priveleged user- something that unix avoids. OS level exploits usually exploit the security model, not how finely you've tuned permissions. And windows security model sucks. not to put too fine a point on it.

[Phil Thien]

Phil, I certainly hope you don't use google hits for any statistical data.

I do all the time.

It is great for making very raw comparisons.

You could say "mac problems" and it would bring up hits for anything that said "no problems with my mac" or "terrible problems with my mac".

But the same is true for Windows.

Here, let's refine by searching for a phrase...

"I hate my mac" returns 813,000 hits.
"I hate windows" returns 320,000 hits.
"I hate my dell" returns 123,000 hits.

Google hits are a horrific way to measure anything.

If you want to debate windows problems vs. Mac problems, that's a different thread. I never said Mac's don't have problems, I said they are intuitive for lay people to use. I'm not sure how you can argue against that.

I thought by you saying the Mac was intuitive that you were implying that Windows isn't.

It was just my point that there are more similarities than differences between the two.

[Bryan Morgan]

Plug a digital camera into a Mac, it automatically opens up iphoto and says "Do you want to import your photos now?".

Hmm, just plugged an Epson 10000XL scanner into a Mac pro and guess what happened? Nothing. Installed the appropriate software and drivers and guess what happened? Nothing. The scanner works fine on a PC, we have a few of them actually. Supposed to work fine on a Mac and works fine on this same machine with 10.4, but not 10.5.8. Yeah, Macs just work.....

I'll beat it into submission one way or another

[Bryan Morgan]

LOL, I have more examples if you want them.

Ever see this?

According to Computerworld and several other sources, a bug in Mac OS X Snow Leopard has the potential to delete all personal data from a Macintosh. CNET says that Apple has acknowledged the problem and is working on a fix. CNET also reports that “Snow Leopard has been plagued with bugs since its release, including problems with the Finder hanging or crashing, incompatibility with certain apps, and the AirPort connection dropping.”

We had a brand new factory fresh Mac Pro with 10.6 that wouldn't reboot or shut down. It would just show you a light blue screen and then dump you back at the desktop. Luckily our reinstall fixed it. We've had Macs lose data but many more Windows boxes just outright destroy user profiles.