more on Windows users switching to Macs

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Warren Magnus <wmagnus () samespace com>
Date: November 7, 2005 5:15:06 PM EST
To: dave () farber net
Subject: Re: [IP] more on Windows users switching to Macs

David:

I am writing as a heretic, I know. I am a Mac user who is straddling  
the fence more all the time and looking seriously toward a Windows  
based laptop. My office is currently populated exclusively by 3 G4  
Powerbooks of various vintages and an older g3 Mac that is my mail  
server running custom tweaked OSX. That said, I like OSX at it's  
core. I live with a terminal window open almost all time taking in  
all the Unixy goodness.

What has compelled me to write is that I can no longer stand the  
contention that OSX is fast. It is NOT fast. Apple's wait cursor (the  
Spinning Pizza of Death or SPoD) is a regular resident of the screen  
of even the fastest Powerbook. I have custom tweaked the Window  
server and killed the most notable memory and speed hogging apps,  
which remarkably means doing without things many users rave about  
such as Dashboard. Even with these tweaks, I find myself watching the  
SPoD all to often while changing applications or even using apps such  
as Photoshop (mind you, 1 GB should be plenty). Any app, even Apple's  
own can SPoD without warning creating UI delays and painful  
disruptions in productivity. This is, of course, to say nothing of  
the UI lag created by totally unnecessary eye candy. If this isn't  
fixed as Apple moves to Intel, this propensity to plod along will be  
apparent when an XP machine and Mac sit side by side.

I have dutifully hidden for years the fact that a number of the  
financial models that I rely on don't really work in Excel for OSX  
without serious coaxing. Word for the Macintosh is visually pretty  
but punishing to use. Web content that has any dependency on Windows  
Media player is a crap shoot. And there is no sure fire way to reach  
web sites that don't work in Firefox. IE for the Mac is broken and no  
longer under development. Safari has many shortcomings as well. The  
number of other apps that work halfway or simply don't exist at all  
is pretty significant.

Don't get me wrong, I still love my Macs when they work like they are  
supposed to, but all too often I find myself cursing the slowness. I  
rebooted an ancient Powerbook running at 400 MHz into OS 9 (Apple's  
last pre-Unix release) and it screamed when compared to OSX running  
on the newest 1.5+ GHz hardware. No snazzy Unix core, no command  
line, no whizzy metal or jelly windows, but it was fast. Something is  
seriously wrong here and fast OSX isn't.

Choose it because you fear viri. Choose it to be hip. Choose it  
because you want to stick it to the man. Choose for any reason you  
like so long as you don't choose OSX because it's fast.

-Warren Magnus



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