Intuitive

I grew up on Windows, but it was the rocky Windows 98 era when I discovered Linux. Both operating systems have come very far since then, but the discovery of an alternative at a young age left me with a sense of empowerment. Daily blue screens meant that I had the freedom to use Linux, even if connecting to the Internet required editing some configuration files with this wacky vim thing. I eventually ended up with a college-issued laptop with XP, and a $9 Vista disk. (Student discount, not seedy black market.)

When I started a job doing Rails coding, though, I was issued a Mac. It took only a couple days to adjust to its differences: for the most part, it was just another UNIX system, so the “hard part” (setting up ssh keys, NFS mounts, etc.) took about 5 minutes. So I find myself pretty well-versed in the three major OSs, maintaining racks of Linux machines while coding on a Macintosh laptop, but having used Linux and most every flavor of Windows extensively.

But here’s why my next purchase will probably be a ludicrously-overpriced Mac: things just work. With the air conditioner running and another fan helping to steer the air conditioner to me, I have the speakers on my laptop cranked just to hear background music. I queued up a Youtube video, put headphones in my ears, and then plugged them into the laptop. I suddenly panicked, realizing that I was about to blow my eardrums out. But before I could lower the volume, I realized that I wasn’t about to blow my eardrums out. The Mac keeps a separate volume control for the headphones, which was still set from the last time I listened to headphones. This in and of itself isn’t a reason to buy a Mac, but I have a lot of these experiences, and it makes using a computer such a more pleasurable experience.

I do have some pet peeves. This hardware won’t see more than 2GB of RAM, and I’m furious about the restriction. The machine will take two 2GB DIMMs, but it won’t boot if there’s more than 2GB installed. That seems more like a deliberate limitation than a design handicap. The newer machines seem to have internal batteries, which makes user service hard. I want to encrypt the filesystem for security reasons, but the Mac doesn’t support that. But the benefits far outweigh the cons.

3 thoughts on “Intuitive

  1. I’m pretty sure Windows 7 has seperate volume control for different audio devices. I’ll have to find my head hones to make sure but I seem to remeber reading that.

    I used to manage a lab (not at BG) that was 70% Mac and 30% PC. The Macs seemed to require much more work than the PCs. Eventually that place replaced most of the Macs and support was less of an issue. Yes your milage may vary but the year and a half I worked there really turned me more off on Macs than anything else.

    Now I’m not saying that there aren’t things that need work on Windows. Or that Mac is all bad. Just that may experience with Macs has been more pain than pleasure.

  2. Was this before OS X? In my experience, Macs before OS X were total junk. I hated them. OS X was a totally new operating system, and seems to have radically reduced the problems with computers locking up or making that weird “bong!” sound over and over, etc. (Or, my favorite thing ever, getting in an infinite loop of quacking.)

  3. I have varying theories on why people enjoy Mac OSX so much. Nevertheless, Apple has a relatively limited set of hardware for sale at any given point in time, putting them in a great position to guarantee a very smooth experience.

    That said, I recently took a short road trip with three Macbook-toting geeks, and they seemed to have just as many issues as I.

    Some of my theories involve remote mind control.

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