Comments on: Hi, I’m Richard, and I’m a Macoholic

By: isaac schmidt

isaac schmidt — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 01:05:48 +0000

If you have a problem with an Apple laptop, you can mail it in – they overnight you shipping materials, it gets picked up and dropped off usually 3-4 days later. That’s pretty good.

I’ve found Apple’s support to be some of the best-in-the-business – also, I manage Xserve’s for a few organizations. Some are covered by Apple care, others aren’t – but Apple’s techs have repeatedly helped me out over the phone, not charging for server-incident tickets even when the machine wasn’t covered. That’s amazing.

if you’re in a rural location, it’s possible that you’ll go through more difficulty to get a mac fixed than, but still, the support is generally fine.

By: Zing33

Zing33 — Sun, 03 Dec 2006 23:50:37 +0000

Support is always going to be tough. Apple have no competition here to support their propriety system. We have a number of Dell laptops and one blew a motherboard. The very next day a Dell tech came on site and on the desk next to me pulled it apart, found the fault and put it back together. He ordered the part and the very next day he returned. Pulled the Dell apart again and replaced the faulty part.

All at the desk next to mine.. All on-site and finished within 2 days a of logging the fault.

This support level is just one above their basic and far away from their top level.

The local Apple reseller says there is no way they can offer such fast support..

:-/

Perhaps in the ‘big cities’ Apple does better.

By: matt

matt — Sun, 03 Dec 2006 09:03:38 +0000

I, for one, use both Macs and Windows machines. Linux too, come to think of it. I’m a gamer, and so I need an upgradeable desktop. I don’t want to have to buy a whole new computer when all I really need is to drop a new processor and video card in. However, when I’m on the road, off at class, or what have you, I LOVE my Mac.

I’m extremely sorry for all the bad examples of Apple users out there. I use both and I have no bias either way. I really have no problems with Windows. I just have a problem with Bill Gates and the way he insists on doing business.

As a Mac user, I hope people don’t think we’re all like “the Mac guy” on the ads. It’s true that there are some Apple fanboy assholes out there. (Just go into any Apple store and they’re swarming with those stupid punks.) But not all of us Apple users are like that.

Actually, I don’t really like to categorize myself as a PC user or a Mac user. I’m a computer user…

By: wilt

wilt — Sat, 02 Dec 2006 20:38:30 +0000

I want to give an administrative/IT perspective, not a “my pc can do more than your mac” argument. (most people use a computer to check email and surf the net, any pc or mac can do that, I’m not arguing that point)
When making major purchasing decisions in a company, you occasionally want to meet up with the people you are doing business with. In my organization we had 6 or 7 mac guys fly in to convince us to get about 300 mac laptops. They were rude to us, telling us how inferior our current network infrastructure was, and how horrible PCs are, and all the virus problems we have with Windows. When we asked them what kind of a deal we could get on purchasing 300 computers, they gave us a $50 discount from the web price on each machine, and wouldn’t budge below that. (we are an educational institution btw).
When we asked Dell what they could do, they were very nice, and wanted to work with us any way they could, and even gave us a $300 discount off of the web price on each machine.
(apple went as low as $1,250, and Dell went as low as $800)
We ended up getting a few macs and mostly dells. Since then we have had a few problems with both (but mainly the macs). When we needed a hard drive replaced in a mac, they wanted 400 bucks to send it in, and get the drive replaced! Dell just sends us a hard drive, we take the screw out, slide the drive out, and put the new one in, and run the recovery cd and we’re done. We tried replacing the hard drive on the mac and it took a lot of work to get it the laptop apart and replace the hard drive.
We have had to send back 5 or 6 macs because they had this strange problem where the mobo wouldn’t work and it gave us a “you have to shut down your computer” screen and would lock up frequently.
When most consumers have a bad experience with a restaurants, hotel, retail store, they won’t go back. If the service is bad at Olive Garden, you won’t want to go back. If the hotel gives you a bad charge, you have a negative feeling and want to try something else. If a Best Buy salesman lies to you about your bigscreen TV purchase, that salesman sadly ruins best buy’s reputation. The salesman and purchasing experience, and maintenance experience with apple has forced me to strictly purchase from a PC manufacturer. Dell has been more than helpful, if we ever have a problem, new hardware is shipped to us immediately and we replace it, or their support is quick and helpful.
Maybe I had a one time bad experience, but that one time bad experience has resulted in one less customer from apple.

By: Kirk Badger

Kirk Badger — Sat, 02 Dec 2006 08:30:34 +0000

For Windows users to upgrade to Macintosh no problem.
For Mac users to have to learn Windows is similar to them from moving from an automatic transmission car to a manual transmission.
At least with the Mac the system is well chosen and thought out.
With Windows it was a hodge podge system development with conflicting rules and setups.

By: Sean Mac

Sean Mac — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 15:48:51 +0000

It is highly likely that at Macworld or soon after in like March, apple will release 10.5 and a VP slipped that it is going to have Windows support under the Mac OS hood,

i.e. you click on a Microsoft Access File in Mac OS X and seemlessly it opens using Windows in the background.

I would assume that this is mainly going to be for high end users as Windows would cripple most Macs as it uses an unreasonable about of resources.

I will accept that the above situation is only a rumour. It must also be said that if this does happen, I am unsure about how apple will protect its OS from the poor coding of Windows which in theory could lead to Virus threats.

I generally suspect that Mac users would deal with Viruses better though, as most of the problem with Windows users is that they are not wise to the fact that they need to maintain their system. In my experience in Britian, Macs seem to be more common in homes of better schooled people, I see very few blue collar workers (even rich ones) using the system, but see a lot more of them used by people in very senior positions in a career., e.g. Lawyers, Managers, Suppy Chain

By: Mantiz

Mantiz — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 02:52:11 +0000

@Collin Ruffenach
I seem to recall a threat from adobe when microsoft tried to build the same system(build-in pdf support)for vista.

But on topic, the reason i believe you don’t see many windows users preaching is because you don’t come across many mac users who:
Are not preaching to you about getting a mac,
or:
Have a mac for more than 2-3 years, so they will not switch for still some time.

“#1 thing you hate most about buying a car? Seeing the saleman coming right for you.”
This is i think the best analogy i have heard, if more mac-users would understand this and actaly talk about the actual benefits of osX/macs instead of preaching about the flaws of windows over and over again, it would make a great difference in apples appeal.

By: M.

M. — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 21:25:15 +0000

Ben (#54):

I thought the same thing — I switched to Macs about three years ago. I’m in tech support, and no one at my university knew anything about them, even though we have close to 200 Macs on campus. It’s fun to learn something new, so I bought a G5 tower & three years later ended up as the Mac tech here (although I still work on PCs too).

From what I’ve seen, there are three basic things you can’t do on a Mac:
1. Right click with the mouse. Solution: buy a third-party two-button USB mouse. Cheap is fine.
2. Run Microsoft Access. But if you want to create a database you can use FileMaker Pro.
3. Run certain Microsoft prodcuts, because MS stopped developing some items for Macs. You can’t get Windows Media Player any more, but you can use Flip4Mac file converter to play WMP files in Quicktime. You also can’t run Microsoft Money. My solution was to use the free copy of QuickBooks that came with OS 10.4.

Yes, I admit it, you may run into a few games that aren’t designed to run on Macs.

After my last PC died, I swore I was going to build a new one. Every three or four months I promise myself I’m going to buy parts & get started. But as time goes on & I continue using the Mac, I can’t see why I’d need a PC.

By: Wilf

Wilf — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 20:26:40 +0000

@JonnyBoy,

Yeah, it’s awful what’s happened to roughlydrafted.com on Digg, now that anyone who submits his articles are instantly banned, he’s going to have a much decreased readership. As you say, that’s what creates the Nazism, blocking everyone from reading Pro-Apple blogs beacuse a few don’t agree.

Anyway, back onto to the point of Apple, I’m young so can’t afford my own computer, so I’m still on a family PC, but as quite a geek myself and Apple supporter I recommended to my brother and sisters to go Mac; they did and they got a Mac Mini and MacBooks respectively. Not once have I had to help them, and that is a testament to their ease of use. I will be jumping on the bandwagon as soon as I can, just from comparing my sister sitting there quietly tapping on her MacBook, working perfectly, and me with Windows XP cursing out loud repeatedly over the most annoying thing.

Hmm, after reading all these 54 ish replies, I’ve just relised I have an exam tomorrow… Whoops…

By: ben

ben — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 19:59:08 +0000

Wow. Heated debate.

I’m not a Mac owner, but I am seriously considering the purchase of one next year. I’m just too scared that there will be something I can’t do on it that I can with my XP box. Once I get over that, I think I’ll be okay.

BTW, Ubuntu Linux is coming of age and is very easy to use currently. It is dual-booted with XP and is becoming my primary OS.