Anonymous Coward writes: Apple Computers are kind of strange. They're really designed for people who dont want to know much about computers. The problem with this, is that the learning curve is about the same. MacPeople are just generally satisfied at staying at the lower end of the curve.
My first real computer (I dont count the TRS80) was an Apple II. I wrote some bad programs in basic on it.
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I think that's a little bit of an over-generalization. There's probably a lot more Windows users (as opposed to Mac users) that are at the lower end of the curve. Macs rock the house for graphic design... something this site could use...
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Amen to that. Most generalizations about Mac are made by people who haven't touched a Mac since the Apple II. Macs are the best for design work because they are so intuative. Something Windoze just never caught on to. And with the release ofOS X Mac has fused the solid bedrock of BSD *nix with the incredable user experience of 'Aqua'. Hey, you can even run X windows and OS X simultaniously. I know XP is doing something similar by merging NT with '98, but windoze has always claimed a 'unified user experience', while OS X actually delivers it. How many of the mp3, photo, or video editing programs that windoze includes are worth using? You pay for OS X, but you get iMovie, iPhoto, and iTunes, programs people actually want to use! Does XP Pro ($300) come with perl installed? PHP? Apache? Maybe the newest installer for Red Hat 7.2 can have the average user up and running with a dial-up connection in less than 30 minutes. I don't know, I stopped trying with 6.2 because once I had OS X installed, I found I didn't care anymore. Linux is great, but the learning curve for beginners is sooo steep. OS X can get you started gently and then dig in as fast as you feel comfortable. Hey, I figure my time is worth at least $20 an hour. And having never spent more than 20-30 minutes to install a Mac OS, along with only having to install it ONCE, I have saved $$$$ over friends who have spent at least an hour installing the latest windoze product. And then re-installing it later when they screwed something up. I have only had to reinstall system software once in 12 years, and that was because I screwed up my hard drive. Other than that I have just upgraded when the time was right, and only had to pay for it when it was a major system release, i.e. OS 9 to OS X. I still think it is almost criminal that windoze releases a $100 'upgrade' like windoze ME and people actually pay for it. A $100 bug fix that causes more problems than it solved. I only have it cause I found it in a discount bin for $20 and my copy of 98 seemed SO buggy.
So, it would seem that Apple computers are strange because they have a great UI that lets you choose how much of the system you want to have to deal with. All or none or somewhere in between. Thus endeth the sermon. (AndyReilly) -"Have you used a Mac today?"
