Personaly I "need" it for Graphic Design - I dont want to start a huge PC vs Mac debate... but I am interested to know why other people buy them as I would not have brought it otherwise because I think their price is too expensive (as nice as they are and all).
Comments
my family, to avoid viruses and to stop asking me how to fix the pc
8)
Ok history/why
But the reason I bought a mac is simple. I loathe windows. I've never used an OS other then Mac OS then I've liked except maybe for some breeds of linux. But once OS X hit, nothing could even come close.
My dad does graphic design... it puts the food on the table.
Originally posted by Mount_my_floppy
Our (the family) first computer was an amiga...
oh, yes, shame Commodore went bust, I think that had they continued on, they would have had a loyal community of customers similar to Apple.
I hate windows, can't stand using it. Feel so out of place when i'm in windows, with a mac i feel at home.
I'm also in a multimedia program at school, so macs are used for a lot of stuff.
overall it came down to what i'm comfortable with though.
Besides, we all know the motto. Apple- Asian Abercrombie
Originally posted by Ichiban_jay
me? cause it looks good, is light, and I can start huge debates over it
LOL... when I went to pick up my G5 I was worried that somebody would try to steal it from me (on the way to my car) and run away with it ... but when I picked the box up I realised that that happening would be quite an unlikely event...
live different
OS different
Mac for life and is elegant
windows confusing and wastes my time
my first computer was a mac in 84 always excellent, reliable, and best design. never dissapointed with a mac. windows problems since day one.
a computer is a tool, if you spend more time maintaining the tool it loses it's usefullness
just because everyone has a tool doen't make it good, it's now just a commodity, also supporting windows supports mediocrity
no innovation the spark of technology helping people is lost to cheap and common
But seriously, it's all touched on above: the field I was in probably being THE biggest factor, at first. I didn't know, all I knew is that our school had Macs in its graphics/DTP lab and my first job upon moving to California was typesetting office forms...and they had a Mac. Who was I to go against the grain and try to get cute?
It never really crossed my mind that there was anything else, honestly.
Now, nearly 11 years later, I love them for all the reasons mentioned above. It just feels right. I use it, it doesn't use me. They're gorgeous. The OS is simply better (particularly X and ESPECIALLY Panther!). There's an undeniable aura attached to being "one of those Mac people"...anyone can own a $600 piece-of-crap PC running some Windows variant. I like the "whole widget" aspect of it all: the OS, the hardware and much of the software I use EVERY DAY all under the roof of one company. That's unique and the benefits show every time I sit down at one.
You can't beat that with any amount of GHz, MHz, bus speed or graphic card, I'm sorry. You just can't.
Even now, knowing what I know, if I weren't working in this particular field I'm in, I'd STILL buy and own Macs for my computer needs. Especially these days: OS X, the iApps, the sexy hardware, the "it just works" aspect of it all, etc.
I can't imagine myself using anything else, really. I wouldn't even want to. I'm 100% biased, and proud of it, and I would not budge from this choice. Ever.
Yeah, it's "just a tool", some might say. But holy crap, what a freakin' awesome tool it is! Everyone should be so lucky as to own one.
I just can't stand the feeling I get using PCs/Windows that if only they had given some thought to what they were doing, then using them wouldn't be such a frustrating experience. I always feel like they were designed to make life easier for the designers, instead of making life easier for me.
I used to say that if I wanted ease of use, I'd use a Mac; if I wanted power, I'd use unix; and if I wanted neither, I'd use Windows. Now, with OS X I don't even have to choose between power and ease of use: it's all in one handy package! I still miss some features of OS/2's WPS, and the snappyness of BeOS's interface, but Apple's making progress on both those counts. Anyway, as far as I'm concerned, the Mac is where the real action is in innovating the computing user-experience; I always like to be where the action is.
I'm finishing my dissertation in computer science (software engineering - theory and tools), and several side projects in UI and realtime imaging simply were not possible on Windows or Linux... but on MacOS X, they were simple.
The stability, power, ease of use and development tools were my reasons.
ultimately, they do everything I need to do, really well, Apple provides so many "whole widget" things, like the backlight keyboard, bluetooth, and firewire 800, really makes it worth it, they look great doing what they do, and I don't need to worry about virii or crazy random system errors all the time.
The hardware's better. What I mean by that is that it all works seamlessly together, it's more thoughtfully designed, it's more reliable. I don't demand all that much in the way of performance, and the fact that I can just set a Mac up and expect it to work from that point on is something I cherish. Especially after years of banging on Dells at work.
The operating system's better. This was true even with OS 9, which was a pleasure to use as long as you didn't push it the wrong way, and it's 10 times as true for OS X. It's thoughtful (that word again!), elegant, powerful, stable, and generally worry free. And it has a real command line to go with its best-in-class GUI. The Dock's "if you want it, click it" paradigm rules. There are patches, but not the deluge that makes Windows such an adventure. I'm anticipating a pleasant upgrade to Panther.
The software's better. This is not true in every conceivable category, of course, but it's true often enough, especially for what I need. Also, since menus and commands and UI are all more consistent on the Mac, all software is just that crucial little bit more easy to use. The more you multitask (and I frequently have a dozen applications running at once) the more grateful I am for this consistency. (This is not to say that everything is absolutely consistent, but that OS X is more consistent.)
All told, it's worth the extra expense to me. The same people who complain to me that Macs are too expensive also complain that their stuff is broken one way or another on a regular basis, and I just don't understand that. I'd go nuts if I couldn't leave troubleshooting mode behind at work. I'll cheerfully pay a little more to have something that makes my computing experience consistent and pleasant. There's a lot to be said for a tool that lets me concentrate on the work I want to do with it, rather than a tool that is constantly drawing attention to itself. I can use either, and in fact I use both on a daily basis, but I use the latter because I have to, and the former because I want to.