Apple
I really do like this MacBook…
Go ahead and ask me wh I enjoy my school. My answer will be as positive as it is biased. I went in a while ago, asking about my classes and the like.
“So, how is your laptop?” the disability assistant asked.
“Its falling apart” I answered.
“Want a new one?”
I would write my response, but decided to spend more time explaining that doing so would be an ironic waste of time, as the answer would be horribly obvious.
Okay, fine, I said yes. After much delaying, I did finally get my not-as-alluminum-as-thought MacBook. Aluminum looks better than plastic, but plastic looks better than nothing at all.
When I first accidentally (I had my Twitter account synced with my Facebook status at the time) told me FB friends that I was getting a MacBook, I was greeted with less than gratious greetings. But screw that.
I am a nerd, I am a geek and I am a loser, everyone knows this. I spend a lot of time on my computer, more than I spend not on my computer. I know what I want and I know how to do it. In my past few years on my HP Pavillion dv1000 with Windows XP SP2 on it, I came to realize that of the things I use my computer for, I have not seen any particular exclusivity on the PC. Namely; I don’t play PC games, and of the ones I am looking forward to (StarCraft II and Diablo III) they are all going to be on the Mac. That was when I chose to articulate and ponder the option of a Mac I was given on that fateful day after class.
Over the past while, I have become more interested in Micro-blogging services, and on one (Pownce) I met a friend, referred to as either !leahbasskitten, @leahbasskitten or just plain Leah. She is a Mac fanatic, and it was from her that I got a closer look at OSX.
So I have decided to compare the programs I use on Windows and their Mac countperparts, hopefully convincing my friends that this was not just a blind choice.
Skitch – this is a great little program, letting you take snapshots of a desktp or even the included webcam, caption it and upload to a Skitch server. This program intruiged me because for the initial same reason I was using the clunky imageshack.us progam on Windows. Imageshack let me upload either a desktop or a program window. Skitch lets me clip any portion of anything I want, and then caption it and then upload it.
Adrium – after giving up on the, although useful Digsby social-network-IM-service-micro-blogging program, I reverted back to Pidgin, something I also used when in Linux. Neither are as nice as Disbgy, but niehter take 500mb of RAM. Adrium is 90% Pidgin, or rather, Pidgin is 90% Adrim. They even have the same icon. Adrium just does what the plugins I installed wer supposed to, but didn’t do well. Ie: Facebook IM.
Quicksilver – when I showeod my friend the program I still adore, Colibri, she noted it was exactly like Quicksilver. Up until the day I installed it, Quicksilver was never anything more than the bastard child of Magneto and the bastard brother of the Scarlet Witch. It runs just like Colibri, but admittedly (which] is odd in the case of a MACOSX comparison) doesn’t look at good as the Windows one.
I am also at a bus stop right now and an old Chinaman just sat down, he is about 55+ and is wearing a toque with a skull and crossbones made out of glitter.
Finder – this would be the Mac version of Windows Explorer. It is actually less a Mac thing, and more just a standard UNIX thing. For thosoe using Vista, UNIX is whats different between Explorer in XP and Vista. I just like it, I got used to it with Linux, but still cant admit favour in either direction.
Widgets – Mac did em, then Google did em, then Yahoo and Vista did em. In noo particular order. Much as with the MP3 player, I am not sure if Mac invented the idea of Widgets (or its various names), but they did it best. Now, the iPod is a strange case, because the popularity of the system has squeezed out any sellability from any other companies variation thereof. But I digress, Widgets are just better done, and this is entirely due to the fact they are put straight into the OS, and not outside of it.
ecto - Be it well or not, I have been blogging for a while, and in doing so, have tried a few (dozen^pi). Windows Live Writer was seen by most tech-heads as the flat out best blogging software out there, as well by I. After a bit of research, I fell upon etco, a blogging program that has even more supported platforms, a nicer layout.
This is what I was trying to say on this posts intro; I really dont do much more than (not doing my) homework, blogging, Internetz, stealing music and stealing movies that aren’t even in theaters yet. There are many, but particularly emeek77 on YouTube, are convinced the apparent vast superiority of the Apple computers, even in gaming, apparently. I admit this, and I really don’t give a crap. The aforementioned are a list of programs I use every day, both in XP and on OSX, and that is generally all that I use it for. Its cleaner, its neater, the keyboard feels great. On of the smallest but favorite features is the MagSafe connector; it holds the power cord with a magnet (thus the Mag part of the name) so it will pop out if someone steps on it. But really, the main reason I love this thing is that, without spending much time on OSX prior, the GUI is layed out the way I would anyways. It is just damn pretty.
OSXP?
Windows Vista has 18 thousand different versions, all will poorly placed changes. An example would be the Photo thinger in Enterprise (I think). And from what I have heard, there are three major groups developing Windows. There is the core group, they develop the kernel and the things around it, and then Windows and Windows Server. The latter two are based off of the first.
There is a new Windows every 4 years, generally, and an update every 2. Wherein Mac has smaller updates every year. There are two major consumers using Windows, company and personal. As Mac does not have a company version and I cannot use it as an example. But generally, as someone who helped in my school with computers, companies do not want a vast amount of smaller updates. Wherein the personal side, in this internetz age, we are used to frequent updates.
Businesses want a secure OS that works. Plain and simple. They do not want updates all the time that can fuck up a system. They are not as concerned about pretty OS effects, they would find more use with a very stripped down version of an OS.
Mac has these nice, frequent and small updates. Would that not be very nice with Windows? Not only updates you go and buy for, downloads and updates and more personal things. I know Windows Update does this, security and the like… I guess a better example would be the XP SP3 update, although I have not used it, it has the new Vista Aero theme. The OS would be updated more frequently, but less disruptive. And not having the big bang with new Windows OSs.
A really cool way I can think of would be if you could buy a stripped down Windows and instead of buying different versions, why not just let you buy small packs for updating. So instead of paying for a feature in a certain version, you could buy the ‘Media’ packet, and the ‘Gaming’ packet and stuff of that nature.
And everyone needs to adapt the package downloading that Linux does. Let the OS check the internetz if there are updates and let you download them all together. It would be so much nicer and safer if you were told when there were updates (I mean for smaller programs, not just Nortons and shit) and not have to go around and checking the internetz.
INTERNETZ WITH A Z
iCatalyst
You know what is more annoying than those Apple commercials? Neither do I. I know what they are doing, and I know that they are doing it well, but I still am hell-annoyed by them. They talk more about how superior the Mac is to the PC, and the plethora of problems the PC has and completely leave out any information regarding the product of which they are advertising. But then again, they do not even need to. The culture of the Apple iPod is unsupported superiority. I am serious here, the link was right there in the last sentence.
The Mac is in a very powerful situation. Every aspect of North American culture these days leans towards how something looks, as opposed to how it performs. I am not bashing the Mac here, what I mean to say is that part of the reason kids are buying Mac’s these days is just because it looks cool and is trendy. Yes, they do have some performance benefits over the Windows OS, but they are not bothering to find even that. They have a permanent grasp on the trend-whore-teenagers right now. 
Microsoft and Apple are two very different companies, and they are competing for the same market. Apple is, more than anything, a hardware company. Any bit of hardware attached to their OSX is attached specifically for it. This is why OSX has such great compatibility, compared to the issues with Windows (especially Vista). As a Linux/ Windows user, I know a few dozen plethora’s of things no user on the Mac has even thought of doing. Most of these are pointless, but that is not the point. A majority of the hardware for the Mac is made by the same company who make PC parts - they have no reason to advertise against either side. Microsoft cannot really advertise against it because Windows’ success depends a lot on the hardware, that they have no say over.
So why the title? Thing is, the major demographic for any technology are the teenagers. Teenagers and their parents that buy this stuff. The Apple logo has become so big that is inspires/ forces companies to follow suit, the timeline goes a little something… like… this…
010 Steve Jobs gives a Macworld Keynote, shows off new iPod/ Apple computer
020 the select percentage of Apple fanboys buy the new device, no matter how minimal the change
030 increase in demand for the feature
040 companies start to mimic feature, end up doing it better than Apple
GOTO 010
… but it’s like that, and that’s the way it is…
You may not think this to be something positive. But is is, even if you are not a fan of Apple or its iPod or it’s Macintosh computer. Apple to computers is what Starbucks is to coffee, it may not be the best, but it made it more popular. That popularity gave other, smaller businesses, more customers. You may hate Apple, but it would be terribly ignorant to think that it had nothing to do with the evolution of the MP3 player.
Apple is in the middle of a giant, touch screen snowball. Their marketing team knows this and Steve Jobs most definitely knows this as well. Will this snowball end? Possibly. Will it turn into a bloody giant snow man and take over the world? Yes, in negative 400 days. And even still, Apple is seen as the sweet little brother to Windows. But secretly, Windows is sleeping with Apple’s older, less attractive but more experienced older sister, UNIX…