After being a Mac-only household for roughly 2 years now, I had an interesting experience last night that convinced me that I’m going to stay this way indefinitely. Before I get into the details let me give you some background information about me.
First Computer: A Dandy Tandy
My first experience using a personal computer was an Apple IIe in my best friend’s dining room. I was hooked and wanted one of my own. I endlessly begged (like a spoiled brat) my dad to get a computer for the family me. After months of torment, he broke down and bought the family a Tandy PC from the nearby Radio Shack. It didn’t have the OS that I had become familiar with at my friend’s house, but I wasn’t complaining. I had a computer, and loved every second of it.
At that time, Apple’s share in the marketplace was exponentially insignificant. As the years passed, my family, now familiar with the quirks of Windows, continued to buy new personal computers with Windows preloaded on them. I even remember myself mocking my best friend at the lunch table for being the only one there with an Apple PC at home. In short, I drank Microsoft’s kool-aid and was loving it.
The Mac Strikes Back
In high school, my other best friend and I were the co-founders of the NASA Cooperative Satellite Learning Project (CSLP) club for our school district. As members of this organization we helped refurbish the school’s planetarium, increase student interest in the subject, and raise funds for our organization. Through our involvement, the organization went from an after-school club to an official high school class that occurred several times a day.
Our fundraising helped us to secure several brand new Apple computers for the classes. While using the Apple seemed so foreign to me and my Windows-based methodology, I loved it. It felt friendlier, and I was reminded of the Apple IIe that I used to play on for hours at my friend’s house years ago.
In college, I was the only guy on the floor with two computers, a Sony VAIO desktop and laptop, and I could troubleshoot a Windows 95/98/ME problem with the best of them. I even played around with Ubuntu for quite a while at this time too. When I wasn’t in class, or running my first start-up, I would work in the campus computer labs. Basically, this meant playing around on the Apple G3 computer that was theret. Every time I sat in front of it I was intrigued. It was a refreshing break from the monotony of the Windows environment that I had grown up on.
After college, I spent the next 3 years working for a local Fortune 500 company troubleshooting Windows problems. That was enough to make me jump ship. I bought my first Apple computer used from Duquesne University, and that my friends, is all she wrote. Shortly thereafter, my Windows PC was decommissioned and Apple computers staked their claim in my home. Thanks to applications like VMWare Fusion I’ll never buy a machine running Windows for myself again.
Now that you know a bit about me, and that I’m not just an ignorant Mac Fan Boy, it’s time for me to tell you why I’m never going back…
Unofficial Tech Support
My dad will always use Windows PCs. He’s comfortable, and I’m OK with that. Unfortunately, that means that I’ll always have to support Windows as well.
Recently, I ordered a top-of-the-line Windows Vista PC for him from Dell. He wanted the best of the best and he got it. Everything on the computer was working fine, that is, until yesterday.
The computer would not connect to the Internet. My MacBook Pro and my brother’s Mac Mini (yeah, I convinced him to switch) were online without any problems, but the Vista machine refused to connect. Unfortunately, after spending an hour and a half troubleshooting the problem I broke down and called Dell technical support. The technician, half a world away, was very polite and helped us to restore the Vista machine to working order by removing the latest updates installed by Microsoft. He told us that we were one of many people calling in with the same problem and that Microsoft had not properly tested the update before deployment.
I was infuriated; when Apple releases updates I get features, but when Microsoft releases updates I have to look around to find out what’s broke. All of these issues combined with today’s memorable Apple marketing campaigns have me curious about the future market share of Windows computers.
I’m Rob Schultz, and I’m a Mac Addict.
My parent’s computer stopped connecting to the internet over the weekend as well. I had no idea it was a Microsoft issue. Luckily, Tom knew that doing a system restore can fix just about any bug on windows, so he did it, and it worked. (I’m not sure how he knows about that, but it works!)
I find myself using my Dell less and less, also.
ROFL
I’m a Mac addict as well - for pretty much those same reasons.
PCs just do not work…
and I LOVED that ending comic…..
I’m glad to see that there are fellow Mac Addicts out there! It just feels right. ^__^
I’ve gotta say I love my Mac. I recently started a new job in January (web design/development) and they asked me what I needed for the job. Of course I said a Mac, but low and behold I’m working on a P.O.S. HP machine and the guy with more seniority got the Mac! AAAGGGH!
“I was infuriated; when Apple releases updates I get features, but when Microsoft releases updates I have to look around to find out what’s broke.”
Ugh, so true. Long live usability.
Its an amazing thing when after I have had my MacBook Pro for over 2 years, I still realize periodically that I have my dream computer.
Im a web designer and considering I spend so many hours a day on my mac, having it work so well all the time keeps me sane. It amuses me that I have relegated Windows to merely testing their P.O.S. browser.
Loved the comic! But not entirely a true story. Im running OS X Leopard on a MacBook Pro, remember the 7.4 QuickTime update? I couldn’t render anything out of After Effects for 3 weeks. Face it, computers will fail you sometimes.
The difference is, sometimes means twice a week in the Microsoft language.
Still, my Mac is the best thing I ever bought.
I’m converted - oh, I’m also sick of PCs and can’t do anything with video, audio, or multimedia on ‘em… sooo…getting my Mac soon :)
Ironically the first program that crashed on my mac was Microsoft Office and I was faced with the once familiar “send error report to Microsoft?” popup. Now if only I didn’t have to use Windows at all I’d be be able to get rid od my PC. Our tax programs in Canada only run on Windows.
Vista PC’s do work well though. I don’t know if it’s my bad luck on this, but I recently brought my MacBook Pro, and when I clicked on the dashboard for the first time, it crashed. So I didn’t use that. About 1 week later, Safari kept “quitting unexpectedly”, and then after getting that to work again, when I went to restart it, it got as far as the Mac OSX loading screen, then shot up with some lines of code, and said I needed to hold down the power button to shutdown my macbook pro. This became very frustrating, and has put me off macs for some time. Back to my none-crashable Vista PC!
Hicham: Why don’t you take that completely fabricated story, roll it into your joint and smoke it? Freakin fanboy…
Hey, i just turned 13… and im a mac addict. i grew up on macs, my mom and artist and my dad just hating pc’s. I absolutely love everything about macs, a few years ago, i devoted my life to computers. I now have over 100 computers, about 50 of them macs, and none of the others run windows. I hate microsoft, and i know why :P but yeah, i do like this article, id like to talk to you too! in my experience, mac is the way to go. I love them, i was the second person in the us to buy os x leopard and i have almost every model ever made in my vast collection… i consider myself a true mac fan. I have many mac shirts stickers and etc also, and i love to see a fellow mac lover :) email me mesaynaysayer@gmail.com thanks bud :)
also, anyone that wants to call me a fag, i know more about MS than you can shake a stick at. piss off.
I bought a MacBook over a year ago.
The OS X is a very good and stable system.
However, the hard drive crashed at 8 months and that’s something that has never happened to me with any pc I have ever purchased.
Now, the monitor is going out at 15 months.
I guess I am lucky because I paid $300 for the extended warranty. Otherwise when the hard drive crashed shortly after I bought this $2200 laptop, I would have had nothing.
Overall, the OS X is good, however Apple has not impressed me with quality built products. I may as well bought a cheap HP, saved a $1000 bucks, and probably been as well off!
I’m a recent convert to the cult of Mac. But that isn’t to say that Apples are perfect either. An airport firmware update on my macbook broke wifi on my laptop until I upgraded to leopard. Now it’s fine though. I couldn’t be happier with it. Especially since I was subjected today to setting up a Vista machine. What a bloated slow piece of junk that is!
–Justin
http://www.justinflood.com
I’m a mac fan and a P.C. user. I have a beautiful 15 inch macbook pro that I absolutely love, and I also have a desktop P.C. that I built myself from scratch. I must say, using a P.C. is handy at times, but my Mac can handle pretty much anything my P.C. can’t. One suggestion for your dad’s P.C., though, upgrade to Windows XP. It’s so much faster, it’s nearly as pretty, and it doesn’t have nearly as many bugs anymore.
ha, it seems like all you ever hear about is the bad macs :P
Of me having about 50 macs under steady use over about 5 years, i only had 1 crash, nothing else has ever happened, but it could be because macs love me :P
Whoa. My name is Rob Schultz as well and I’m also a Mac addict. Surreal, reading your article and then coming across your/my name.
Macs (and Rob Schultz’) are awesome!
I’m a convert of about a year now but I have to say that Macs have their issues too. I have a 15-inch Macbook Pro and to date I’ve had the motherboard and superdrive die on me. I’ve had it crash several times for absolutely no reason. My work 24″ iMac acts very strangely too. Yet I still love it! I work with Vista at work also and I absolutely hate it. I have to use third-party software to unzip files faster than a few KB/sec, and server connection speeds rarely go over a few KB/sec. System crashes are a common occurence on this thing (dual core 3ghz machine with 3GB of RAM). Downgrade (upgrade?) to XP if you can!
your final reason for loving a mac does not convince me to become a mac fan. I own a sony vaio that runs XP and a eMac running os X. MY XP has never had a problem with updates, receiving information or internet problems. My eMac on the other hand has had problems that would shut most macfans up. 3rd party applications on my mac suck, firefox takes about 2 minutes to start up, surprisingly my mac crashes more than my laptop does, and the last software update I made with a mac was in the summer 2007 because the last time it tried to update the software I had to lug the whole thing to an Apple store in order to get it fixed cause I couldn’t fix the problem myself. Keep in mind that the eMac does not have handles. Just so you know macs are not great.
[...] March 6, 2008 I wrote a post entitled Why I’m A Mac Addict. For a little over a month this post was fairly dormant with a comment posted here or there, but [...]
Thanks for all of the colorful commentary guys! I’d love to see more of this around here.
Justin Flood I had a similar problem when I upgraded to Leopard. I couldn’t see all of the available WiFi networks in my Apartment complex. I was still able to connect to my network, but it was annoying. Thankfully an update made everything A-OK again.
The Joshua: Have you tried VMWare Fusion on you MBPro? Read my write up here. It’s a great program and might help you to ditch that PC of yours!
I’m very familiar with XP having supported it in the past, but I wanted to try out the “new features” of Vista…my dad calls it a plague on his machine!
The Other Rob Schultz Whoa! That’s pretty strange. Welcome. Come back often. I’m glad to see that we think alike!
Jordan Unfortunately, Macs are just as susceptible to the same hardware ailments that a PC is, but I’ll be damned if the OS just doesn’t make it all better! ;)
Leo Z. I’m not trying to convince anyone to make the switch, but there is always room for one more!
Upgrade your PC to Vista and your Mac to Leopard and then we’ll talk. :)
[...] in May 7th, 2008 by Dizzle in Apple cult, apple fanbois/fangrls Check out the blog article from TrueBlueTitan: After being a Mac-only household for roughly 2 years now, I had an interesting experience last [...]
That comic is priceless
I am a mac addict and have been for 5+ years, however my girlfriend is not, she has a dell laptop which has only ever been a pain in the backside, every week the blue screen of death appears, i’ve tried everything bar replacing core components restoring, formatting, upgrading ram & processors, playing with the BIOS caching etc I look at all the online guides, spoken to dell technicians and nothing works. This means i only get to use my mac for half the week the other half am staring at the blue screen of death every hour trying to resolve the issues with the P.O.S that is windows XP. I look at the new macbook pro and think can i warrant buying myself a new laptop on that i can use all the time!
Jack,
I know the feeling. I gave my girlfriend my old Dell 600m and it’s not uncommon for us to be working side-by-side on our laptops and have her grunt in frustration “My stupid computer! Is your Internet working?” and 9 times out of 10 I’m happily plugging away online.
Mac’s aren’t impervious to hardware issues; you’ll never hear me say that. After all it is a computer. But my experience is that they’re far more infrequent.
Nice example of how perfectly ignorant and stuck up mac users are. The only reason Mac has any market share at all is not because it’s a superior product, but because they manage to point out the flaws that all computers have and over market them. Good job sh*t train website, thanks for reminding us all that marketing is all you really need to be successful without being of any value.
First, thanks for taking the time to reply. After all, user interaction is the reason I have this site.
Second, I’m pretty sure that if you re-read my article you will see that I’m not ignorant. I haven’t been a Mac user all my life, and at certain points I even supported Windows for a very large company. In my opinion I have enough experiences with both Operating Systems to draw my conclusion.
I agree that their marketing has done a wonderful job at vaulting their popularity, but it’s not the sole reason for their popularity. What has your experience with Apple’s products been like?
There’s nothing wrong with Dell computers for the most part. I love their precision laptops and work stations. It’s the operating system that sucks. OS X is great. It’s a solid operating system. That’s not what makes a Mac though. You can run OS X on crap hardware and it’s still a crap machine. Apple spends lots of money to put top of the line hardware into the Mac. Then they throw a solid OS on top of that and encase it all in a sleek aluminum case. That’s what make a Mac great. Take any good laptop and remove windows. Throw ubuntu or some other flavor of linux on it. Believe me you’ll stick with that machine for a long time. That’s basically the concept behind Mac and OS X.
People (the Microsoft marketing department) say Macs (any of them) are too expensive. I say you get what you pay for. If you buy a cheap computer don’t be surprised if it’s crap with or without windows.