Every so often somebody asks me why I’m not using Apple computers. Particularly Mac users have a very annoying and often arrogant way of letting you know that their box is oh so superior, stable, better, prettier and whatnot. Just watch the recent Apple commercials and you know what I mean. Pure arrogance.
Well, I don’t like Apple Computers. I do have one but never use it.
Let me make this very clear: I think Apple Computers are overpriced, overrated pieces of home accent pieces. They look great, no doubt. But as somebody who actually uses computers to get work accomplished I have to say I’m not impressed by Apple.
IMHO, Apple’s reputation of stability and performance stems from pre-Windows XP times. Frankly, PC’s were notorious for stalling, freezing and varying in performance when running on Windows 98 and anything earlier. Apple, running on its own proprietary Operating System, enjoyed better system stability. Their OS featured more advanced user stuff as well so the choice was obvious – get Apple. But that was until about six years ago or so.
Some old-school professionals (particularly movie editors and compositors) still love their Apple boxes. Final Cut Pro, Apple’s own video editing software, is indeed a mighty fine product. But so is Avid, so is Adobe’s Premiere Pro, so is Sony’s Vegas – and all run on PC. I don’t know about you but personally I rather like having choices and not be forced to use one particular piece of software just because it’s the only one available for the computing platform.
I tested the oh-so hyped G5 boxes from Apple. And yes, they did great. A dual processor equipped machine can really do some fine things. But quite frankly, my current PC based boxes beat the shit out of any Mac G5 and at about half the cost. Oh, and I can run any program I need on it.
This brings me to my next annoyance with Apple: availability of software. Or the lack thereof.
The reason why PCs are claimed to crash more than Apple computers is that there are far, far more software titles available for PC than Mac. With a gazillion different pieces of software, some are bound to not work as well as others. And the first thing imperfect software causes problems with is the Operating System. Windows XP Professional itself is not less stable than say Apple’s Tiger OS (feel free to prove me wrong), but some software or products can screw any OS up. Since there’s more software for Windows-based Operating Systems there’s more of a chance of something going wrong. Makes sense?
It’s much simpler for Mac – there’s like ten software titles you can buy (okay, there are more but you get the point) so naturally most of them work very well with Mac. Some software titles are available for both Mac and PC but given the fact that significantly more people use PCs than Mac, some software creators put most of their efforts into developing the PC version.
And Apple computers are not as stable as many people seem to think. Personally I worked with several different Mac computers and all of them had massive stability problems. Virtually everybody I know who works on a Mac (not many, I admit) has problems. So where does this stability nonsense come from? Why do some people still think Macs never crash and PCs always do?
Old myths. Again, years back Apple computers might have been more stable than PCs but that was years ago.
Another thing I really hate: Quicktime.
Used to be great, sure. But Windows Media really buckled up and delivered stellar performance since about version 9. Matter of fact, I refuse to deliver our movies in Quicktime now: it’s slower to work with, quality isn’t better anymore and more consumers have Windows Media Players than Quicktime players. (And Flash players but that’s a different story…a love story actually. I love Flash and use it extensively now to deliver our movies. More on that later).
(And yes, I know Quicktime is not a codec, it’s a wrapper like AVI and can use different codecs. The most popular being H.264)
Oh, and Quicktime seems to cause issues on PCs. Go figure.
Finally: Mac fanatics. Frankly, people: Quit talking about how great Apple is and how everything else sucks. Quit attacking people like myself who opt to work on what we feel is now a more professional platform, the PC. I understand that many years ago Apple computers were the way to go but that has changed. A lot. You really are embarrassing yourselves. Realize that most of the world uses PCs and therefore most everything, from software to media players will be produced accordingly. The days I wasted just to please two Mac users by encoding video for Quicktime could have been better spent on making more good content. So from now on that’s that: no more Quicktime.
Thought of the day: I wish Apple would just go away. Actually I don’t. Instead, I wish they’d stop making computers and focus on making more sweet gadgets like iPods and expand their music store. I like iPods and the general idea of iTunes but won’t use either because their usage terms are too restricting for my taste.
Final notes: I’m not particularly a fan of Microsoft or any PC company. I just happen to prefer those products over Apple products. I do think Steve Jobs is a genius and admire his wisdom. Furthermore, I do feel Apple products are designed very well and look much better than most PC products. But I buy computers to work on them, not look at them.
