Switching… Again
Scoble said Russel’s thinking of switching back. I just finished switching last night.
You see, I love OS X, and I think it’s a better operating system than Windows XP. It has a better permissions model, way cleaner UI (mostly), better looks, and better UNIX interop. But… I switched away from Apple, back to Windows. Why? The short answer is I outgrew how Apple allowed me to use their product.
The Long Answer (and contributing minor reasons in no particular order)
- I need ink. I can’t take the kinds of notes I do from my scanned textbooks and classes without my tablet. I’m not going to carry two laptops, a bunch of books, or notebooks. My faster and prettier Powerbook can’t compete with this kind of functionality.
- Picasa, video games, poker software, ad infinitum runs on Windows. OS X is too narrow of a platform for developers to try and target, and consequently too frustratingly small of a sandbox to work in. It’s a sad but true reality.
- My personal backup setup is on a Windows machine. Why? It’s easy as hell to setup, and I have no idea how to automate backup easily on OS X.
- I want to own my media again. Xbox 360 integration, Yahoo Music Unlimited!, Windows Media Connect, Orb, my Windows Mobile phone all give me way more options to listen to my music away from home. What do I have from Apple? My iPod and the draconian iTunes. I can use that on Windows if I really want it.
- It’s cheaper to run Windows. Yahoo Music Unlimited! kills iTunes Music Store in the value department. Also, the sum cost of OS X releases is waaaay more than the comparitive Windows costs. I’ll pay few hundred bucks and be just fine for five years, thank you.
Your mileage may vary, but for this here guy, it’s no contest.
Update: Magnus Nystedt and a commentor made some good observations on my previous post. First off, these are my opinions, I guess I didn’t state that clearly. Anyone looking for a “superior” platform will find themselves frustrated as these platforms are simply tools. Other OS’s are great at respective things, but they aren’t things I value and that’s why I switched. Use the right tool for you.
Magnus didn’t really like that I thought OS X is too narrow a platform. What I meant to say is… OS X is too narrow of a platform for a majority of developers to target. In many cases, the cost of development or cost of porting for OS X isn’t worth it because of the relatively small userbase when compared to Windows. That is a sad reality. I was in no way saying that OS X has an inferior platform for devs, just that the possible rewards for much software is less in the Apple world.
Lastly, yes, with Yahoo Music Unlimited! I only rent the music for a while, and don’t “own” it. It’s the first service to actually deliver as the “celestial jukebox”. I have more options than I do with the iTunes Music Store music, and that’s well worth the montly fee. The end result is that I consume a metric crapload of more music per month per dollar from Yahoo than I ever did from iTunes.
intodimensions.com » Blog Archive » Switching… Said,
September 26, 2005 @ 2:32 am
[...] There’s been some people writing about switching from Mac to Windows lately. Russell Beattie listed a number of reasons why he’s considering switching to Windows, and Tor Bjornrud says he’s already switched. Most of the reasons they give for switching (or considering switching) are subjective and personal reasons. I’m not disputing that they feel like they do, but if you read their resons remember they are for the most part not absolute and objective. Tor writes, for example, that “OS X is too narrow of a platform for developers to try and target, and consequently too frustratingly small of a sandbox to work in. It’s a sad but true reality.” If you look at the wealth of small/independent OS X developers and the high-class software they develop, I don’t think you can say it’s as easy as a “true reality.” Russell writes that he dislikes iPhoto, “don’t like Mail or Safari”, “don’t use iMovie”, “hate the Dock”, Expose is “nuts”, and Dashboard is “pretty useless”. Those might be his views, and that’s fair enough, but they are certainly not everyones. [...]
Win32Dev Said,
September 26, 2005 @ 4:36 am
Except of course that with Yahoo Music Unlimited you don’t actually own your media — you perpetually rent it from Yahoo. Napster’s similar, but they do offer a choice to own outright (IIRC).
That said, I do think OSX is overrated, and Windows receives many more knocks than it deserves. Welcome back!
dmiessler.com » Someone Switching From OS X to Windows Said,
September 26, 2005 @ 5:10 am
[...] So this guy is switching back from Mac to PC. He actually has some good points, actually, and as with all purely personal decisions there isn’t really a wrong answer. [...]
Danny Ayers, Raw Blog : » Hardware Said,
September 26, 2005 @ 5:53 am
[...] Typically I’ve just encountered posts talking of “switching back” – Russell Beattie, Tor Bjornrud stitched together by Scoble. Some of the points might put me off if I was looking for a do-everything machine, but I couldn’t see any showstoppers for my purposes. The MS vs. Apple points don’t work for me, my alternative would be some kind of cheap generic Intel thing with Ubuntu, WinXP holds no attractions. [...]
me Said,
September 26, 2005 @ 11:04 am
Wow. You have no idea how to automate backups on a Mac? There are a bunch of apps that do that very well and they are very easy to find. You could not have tried very hard. Thats true of apps in general on the Mac. Anyone who says there aren’t enough apps for the Mac didn’t look. Comparing Picassa to iPhoto? What a joke. Your going wiht Microsoft and a sub based service and say your going to “own your media”? Puh-lease. You don’t have a single good point here and have no credibility as a result.
tor Said,
September 26, 2005 @ 2:21 pm
Dear “me”.
First off, I’d take you a lot more seriously if you weren’t an AC. Nonetheless, I’ll bite your bait.
1. I have yet to find any good, easy, incremental *free* mature software for the Mac that’s easy to use. I could have written a script to use rsync, but that’s not what I’d call easy. I’m all ears as to what app does a good job of it, and an explanation about how easy it was to find. Compare it to the 10 minutes it takes to setup an automated incremental backup in Windows XP…
2. I prefer Picasa. Better tag support, better original image integrity, and better auto-find support.
3. What’s your alternative to Yahoo! Music? You say it’s a joke but you don’t back anything up at all. It’s a plain and simple fact that for the type of use I do day in and out with my music iTunes doesn’t even hold a candle to the value.
Joe Said,
September 26, 2005 @ 4:32 pm
Hmm. Have you found a good method for exporting your old mail from os x mail to outlook?
Seems os x mail doesn’t play well with others even entourage.
Any advice would be appreciated.
Krishna Said,
September 26, 2005 @ 4:45 pm
Have you looked at SuperDuper on the Mac side, for back-ups? It doesn’t do automated back-ups (yet), but makes the process of backing up so much easier. Give it a whirl.
Josh Evitt's Blog Said,
September 26, 2005 @ 9:20 pm
Links – 09/26/05
William Reading Said,
September 26, 2005 @ 10:51 pm
Well, both platforms have their uses, though I might point out these things:
1) Mac OS X does have handwriting recognition. In fact, it’s even called Ink :-). You just plug in a tablet and you’re good to go. Granted, it’s not integrated, but I suppose it depends on how you take notes.
2) There are a fair amount of games ported over to Mac OS X, but if you really want to run games, then I’ll give that Windows seems to be better for that. I personally don’t find myself playing games/online poker, etc.
3) It’s actually pretty easy. There’s an application called Backup.app that lets you do it. (http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/apple/backup.html)
4) My Windows Mobile phone (SMT5600) plays AAC audio just fine. If you don’t mind paying for it, The Missing Sync will also synchronize music from iTunes directly to it as well. If you don’t like that, you can always mount the media from the phone or drag and drop onto it using OBEX file push, etc.
5) Mac OS X is also on much faster release cycles. If you do a retail price comparison for how much Windows XP Pro vs. Mac OS X 10.4 runs, it’s almost the same. I’ll agree that there doesn’t seem to be a subscription service equivalent to Yahoo’s on the Mac, but I personally don’t like subscription DRM’d music myself. It seems like too much of a tease.
That said, I keep a Windows Box around for a few things like that, though I generally bring the Powerbook around with me just because it’s lightweight, has good battery life and I like the formfactor.
tor Said,
September 26, 2005 @ 11:41 pm
Joe, sorry. I decided long ago to use nothing but IMAP for all of my mail so that I can use any client anywhere and not worry about a thing.
Krishna, just took a look at Super Duper. First off it’s not free, which throws it off my list, and secondly it, as you say, doesn’t automate. Those are show stoppers for me.
William, thanks for taking the time to respond. Sadly, Backup doesn’t serve my needs at all since the Apple site you directed me to says it needs a .Mac account which I won’t pay for. Ink if it requires an acessory is totally not going to work for me. The games I want to play aren’t ported to OS X.
Thanks for the tip of the Audiovox phone though. I just read on the box it supported WMA and MP3 and that was it. Though, I won’t pay for sync software and it also looks like OBEX will be too slow. A cursory search said it was designed for IrDA and Bluetooth, which are way too slow to transfer a gig of music every morning.
As for the music service, I understand it works for a lot of people. Just not me. The way I use it, I get way more bang for the same dollar. I’m going to have to slighly disagree with you on the value of the OS X release cycle. I know it’s faster and there are improvements, but in sum I don’t think they’re worth the extra money, which incedentally *is* more than a comparable one time $300 Windows license. Then again, for many people, these features are worth the difference. They might be in the future to me, but in my experience they haven’t been. Thankfully, my employer subsidised my previous upgrades.
Take care.
Manzi Said,
September 27, 2005 @ 5:24 am
Welcome back to the bandwagon of excitement!
Har’s Site » Blog Archive » Switched Back? Said,
September 27, 2005 @ 4:22 pm
[...] Here’s a post from someone who switched back to Windows. Another one here. I don’t hear these stories very often, so it’s interesting to hear the reasons. Magnus links to these posts and points out the subjective nature of the complaints. Yeah, it amazes me how different people are. My experience using Macs has been just the opposite. The Macs I use never crash. I leave my iMac running 24/7; run all manner of software. No problems. My experience with Windows…well…my corporate laptop running Win2k occassionally crashes (BSOD) before I can login, and that’s just the beginning. [...]
Bob Said,
April 28, 2006 @ 2:52 pm
I would switch to mac if I had some money but since the windows sector is so big there is a much variety of software.
Die-hard Mac fans say its not the quantity but the quality i.e. it does not matter if there is a big variety, as long as the limited set of choices are quality software.
However, in the real world a big variety DOES breed quality – it opens up competition and comparisons, which helps improve software efficiently at lower costs (for example the amonut of quality freeware available to windows compared to mac).
This brings to another point, no matter which way you look at it, there IS a premium that you have to pay for a mac. I reckon for macs to really get more convertors they will have to change their business model and allow MUCH more freedom of licences for their software. That’s my 2 cents.