So, apparently our good friends at ***soft are talking about an "Apple Tax" that Mac users have to "pay" when using Apple products. OK, time to set the record straight!
Let's talk about this tax for a second. First of all, comparing an Apple laptop to any PC laptop is like comparing a BMW 3-series to a Chevy Cobalt. My Macbook Pro is made of a solid piece of aluminum, while your average PC is made of plastic. While my LED display is gleaming bright whites, and black blacks, your LCD is showing yellowish whites and greyish blacks. While my OS X is running smoothly, quickly, efficiently (and virus free), your ***ta (and XP for that matter) is clunking along, hogging resources, nagging you, crashing programs, and making you ***'s bitch. Enjoy that.
I am a serious computer user. I am online 12+ hours a day. That's not a lie, either. If I am going to get to work, I need a serious computer to meet my demands. I don't want to download updates to software and hardware all the time. I don't want to hack my registry. I don't want to remove stuff from my win.ini file just to get more stability. I just want to wake my computer up and go to work. My time is worth a lot of money, and every minute I spend optimizing my computer is a minute not spent working on my websites and business. That time adds up. Every reset, every update. All wastes my precious time. If I save just a few hours a month, my Apple tax has been paid back in time.
So, in response to ***soft's BS about an Apple Tax, let's talk about a ***soft tax.
- Wasted time updating hardware/software
- The necessity of anti-virus software
- Wasted time downloading anti-virus software updates
- Wasted time clicking OK or Cancel when ***ta nags you
- The blue screen and application crashes. Don't pretend it doesn't happen.
- Wasted time Rebooting/Reseting. (My iBook G4 has been on for over a year, asleep when I'm not using it)
- Unintuitive software that is clunky and wastes time
- Steve Ballmer
- Funky, confusing interface
- Too many steps in setting up simple things (like a printer or wireless network)
- OK, OK. I know. Windows has more games.
So, there you have it. The ***soft tax.
This post is not coming from some Mac fanboy who likes to wait in front of Apple stores for 48 hours to get the latest iPhone. In fact, I don't even have an iPhone. I am an avid computer user, and have been since I was about 8. I used PCs for over 17 years before making the switch to Mac. I even tried to dissuade people from getting Macs for years. I believed what I told people too, and I was right for quite awhile. The problems faced by PC users were not much of an issue until two things happened: Apple released OS X, and ***soft released ***dows Me. At that point, it was no longer worth owning a PC unless you were a gamer or didn't want to spend the $$$ on an Apple. ***dows Me was buggy, sloppy, and worthless. You could run 98 (or even 95) with no consequences. There was no real reason to upgrade, and pretty much everyone I knew at the time stuck with 98, 95 or 2000, unless they got a new system with Me installed on it. ***soft released XP very soon after that, and it was a huge step forward from Me.
However, Steve Jobs had come back to Apple after his failure NeXT project was purchased by Apple. The technologies developed while at NeXT would form the basis for OS X, and is what finally pushed the Mac OS light years beyond what was happening with Windows. The interface was light, beautiful, and intuitive. Subsequent versions of OS X further refined the look and usability of the Mac platform, while adding useful features that allow you to get more done with less hassle.
What happened with Me is happening with ***ta...again. The OS is trying too hard to do too many things. What people really want is a transparent operating system that allows them to use their applications easily and intuitively. Vista is not that. It draws too much attention to itself. It is a jack of all trades, master of none. I admit, the A*** interface is neat, but I don't care about that. I just want to get to work, and not have stuff get choppy because my explorer window has to fade in and out every time I open it.
Take it from me, a very savvy computer user, ***soft is fighting a losing battle in terms of usability and convenience. The Apple Tax. Well, I guess I get what I pay for.
Leave a Reply