I had some bad experiences with the early Macintosh machines, cumulating in losing a good portion of a seminar thesis on a Mac running the ironically named System 7 “The Rock”. I then foreswore Macs despite the fact that at the time it was the only platform that was available at the school that Mathematica was licensed to run on, and so I had to revert to a combination of MathCad, Maple, and MATLAB. For years after that I used Windows in its various incarnations from 3.1 through XP for desktop service, griping about how unstable, poorly performing, bug-ridden, and fundamentally security-flawed it was; going to an SGI machine running IRIX was a relief despite its manifest limitations as a general productivity machine; I even got to the point of running MS Office on an O2 or Indy via WINE, which was at least as stable and almost as fast despite the emulation layer.
And then I discovered OSX. I remember when it first came out as a “Unix-like” OS with an OPENSTEP-like framework. I remembered NeXT as being an interesting but ultimately overpriced and fundamentally useless attempt at making a Unix-like desktop machine and was interested but somewhat suspicious of this new evolution, especially given how radically it diverged from MacOS 9 and how much that could backfire by alienating existing Macophiles, despite promises that OSX would fully support MacOS 9-based applications (I assumed, wrongly, that it supported them by a simple emulation layer, whereas Carbon is a full API that provides reasonably robust support direct to the app from the OS). The initial reports of OSX 10.1 were not that favorable; the interface was given high marks, but to call the performance sluggish would have been charitable at best. Then 10.2 came out with vastly improved performance.
I finally started looking for a laptop machine to replace my faltering four-year-old Sager, on which I ran Windows 2K and various forms of Linux (generally Red Hat or Slackware) and wanted something that could natively run Linux scripts and Python, so I took at look at the PowerBook G4, which had just recently been upgraded and was running OSX 10.3. It seemed to do everything I needed, and given the price comparison for similar hardware it was actually in between the cost of a comparable Dell and Sony machines. So I bought it and have since become critically enthusiastic about Macs in general, to the point that my next machine was a MacBook Pro running 10.6.
I still have that PowerBook (now running 10.5, the highest OS it can run) and in fact am typing from it at this moment. It is a little slow to load some webpages, and I occasionally get the spinning color wheel for a score of seconds or so, but aside from that it is fully functional despite no small amount of abuse (as evidenced by dents on the cover and back) and serves just fine as a rough-and-ready travel machine, loaner productivity device for visitors, and is fine for running Python code that isn’t too numerically intensive. I still play movies on it from time to time, although the screen isn’t as bright or clear as the newer MacBook. I also have an older PPC MacMini that operates as a ghetto data server, and have considered buying a MacPro for high end desktop work and number crunching, though right now I have no problem getting along with just the laptops.
The design and construction of the equipment itself is, from a hardware standpoint, where Macs really shine. In the past five years or so I’ve had three laptops from work, plus handled and configured others, from three or four different vendors, and none of them has come close to the natural ergonomics, durability, and reliability of the Macs. In the case of the laptops I had, by the time I got to end-of-cycle (~2 ans) the keys would be starting to be rubbed clean, the touchpad marginally functional or non-functional, the handrest peeling, cover plates warped or coming off, ports coming loose, et cetera, and all of this on machines that mostly just remained on my desk or travelled in hard cases. The PowerBook and MacBook, on the other hand, get taken all over the place, in softcases or sleeves (and occasionally commando), have both been subject to a handful of unfortunate drops or bangs, and are still in fully functional if far from pristine.
Complaints? I have a few: while the computing hardware (when first released) is pretty comparable in price to that offered by PC vendors of the same quality, the peripherals like the AirPort and large LCD screens are grossly overpriced to a point of absurdity. The release cycle is slow, which means you don’t generally get the same cutting edge hardware that has been available in the PC world for months; there is still no integrated Blu-Ray player on the Mac, and the OS ostensibly doesn’t support external players. The practice of locking down some aspects of the proprietary parts of the OS is kind of annoying (although no worse than Microsoft), especially since DarwinOS is open and accessible. The hardware itself is not infallible; aside from a few occurrences of overheating the processor when operating in the field without air conditioning, I’ve never had a failure, but Apple buys the hard drives and memory off the shelf like everyone else, and while I think they do a pretty good job of vetting vendors for low quality protects and inadequate testing, they can and will fail on the same bathtub curve as any comparable electronics. The biggest limitation is the dearth of software available for the Mac, though that seems to be primarily in the gaming and CAD worlds; nearly all of the software I use can either be ported or run directly on the Mac, and the ability to just pop open a terminal and start writing Python, running Linux apps, or playing with system configuration settings without having to run an emulator or deal with the severally crippled command line access provided by Windows outweighs (for me) the limited availability of commercial or entertainment software.
Stranger
