Mac vs. Vista: Who Treats Novices AND Techies with Respect?

Steve Borsch over at Connecting the Dots has a great article on switching his father over to a Mac from a PC after growing tired of removing spyware and adware from his father's computer.

My Dad + Macintosh = Ahhh...

If you're a PC user that helps out family and friends or is incredibly frustrated as you spend hours futzing with your Windows PC...listen up. If you're a Mac user, this is old news so feel free to take a quick nap.

My Dad loves the new Mac. I made the icons huge so he can see everything, it's easier to navigate, and the spyware and adware are now a complete non-issue. There's nothing that he cannot do on this computer and I *rarely* have to do any remote logging in to fix something. I've now discovered that one of my favorite utilities (Onyx) can "lock" the icons in the dock so the last little problem of him inadvertently dragging an application icon from the dock and having it disappear is soon to be another non-issue.

You're undoubtedly well aware of the religious wars between Mac and PC users and it's not my intention to fan the flames since I really don't care what anyone else is using. I just quietly revel in my delight with my own machines and choices. But damn...this one decision has saved me HOURS of time and his machine just runs...and runs....and runs.

This is an we've discussed before, and never seems to grow old. Personally, I'm convinced that my father wouldn't enjoy the web as much as he does today if he was running Windows rather than a Mac. The three things he uses his computer for are word processing, email, and surfing the web. Any computer can do those three tasks well. He's mastered those three tasks and thoroughly enjoys surfing the web, and communicating using email.

He'd view understanding how a computer works and what types of emails he should avoid opening as a complete waste of time. Ideally, a computer would be as simple as a refrigerator. Plug it in, set the temp, and you're done.

Vista's approach seems to be to provide warnings at every decision point to keep people from clicking on nasty stuff. This seems like a ridiculous interface to me since it adds a layer of confusion into the mix for computing novices while irritating the heck out of techies who have to work their way through a zillion safety messages they understood 10 years ago.

Is there a way to tell Vista that you're a techie grown-up who understands how the web works?

Could someone explain why you'd recommend a PC to a novice user?

It is complex, unwieldy and is as safe as tossing a brick through a window. Doubly so for new-to-pc users.

XP is certainly better for the hard-core gamer. However, everyone else, honestly, is better off with a Mac.

It can still run windows apps (via Parallels) and the hardware is beginning to make inroads into the corporate space, where being able to run legacy windows apps, on a Mac, with it's reduced IT support bill is becoming a viable option.

And no - one cannot turn UAC off without reverting security back to the same model as XP - and that's non-existent.

Even running as a 'user' rather than an 'administrator' won't stop a lot of malicious code.

The calculation is mindboggling simple: Windows, c. 100K viruses vs. OSX c. 0 viruses. No one with any amount of human empathy or conscience would recommend Windows for home use. Does anyone believe that Vista will bring the scorecard to even? Not to mention, as you have, spyware and adware.

I've used Vista a bit on a PC and in Parallels and my first impressions were that having to relearn things is annoying and all those warnings get my blood pressure up, but there are some cool things in there. Being able to resize a partitiion on the fly without using any 3rd party utility is very cool. On balance, I figured Vista's pretty good once you get past the relearning curve. But,

Right now as I type, I am configuring a brand-new Dell and I am so totally in hell. When Vista doesn't get it right, it is so freaking wrong. Dell didn't bother to update any of there documentation for Vista so a lot of things just don't work as the docs say they do. Some of the INCLUDED software isn't Vista compatible, and all sorts of stuff is f'ed up. I'm getting DEP errors on the side-bar, this is just unreal.

After this, there's no way I would volunteer for this crap. Only good thing I can say is I'm making boucoup money on this 'cause I charge by the hour. This really makes the Mac look that much better.

"Being able to resize a partitiion on the fly without using any 3rd party utility is very cool."

Useful on occasion, certainly. I'm not sure you could sell that as cool to the general populous older than 30. The coolest thing about Vista is that it has the potential to wake the slumbering sheep. Or should that be lemmings?!

I live by a fairly simple computing philosophy...
Always recommend Macs to your friends, and Windows to those you don't mind billing by the hour.

MICROSOFT SERIOUSLY SUCKS.... THEY'RE TRYING TO GO IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION, BUT APPLE IS ALWAYS 50 STEPS AHEAD BECAUSE WHATEVER MICROSOFT IS MAKING NOW, IT HAS ALREADY BEEN CREATED BY APPLE 3 YEARS BEFORE....EVERYTHING MICROSOFT MAKES HAS BEEN MANIPULATED FROM APPLE. HE SHOULD REALLY TRY MAKING SOMETHING RIGHT THIS TIME..

You made your father spend twice as much for less.
Question: How do some "people" get as much virus and "spyware" ? Are you retarded? There are popup blockers installed in every damn internet browser. The only way to get viruses is to open "mysterious" mail and actually download the attachments or if you download illegal copies of software from torrent sites or clients like limewire.

What You guys refer to as annoying warnings in Windows Vista is whats called User Account Controll (UAC). It prevents other programs to manipulate and controll your computer. This is a big reason why Windows is more safer and secure than Mac OS against hackers (this is prooved in tests and Im talking about manual hacking, not viruses wich is often not the dangerous type of attacking your pc). You physically have to move your mouse to confirm the change. This can be switched off at any time. Just Go to controll panel and search for UAC.

If You use a proper and fast antivirus program like Windows One Care, You dont have to worry about getting virus because it warns you before you even completed the download of the malicious software.
Even though you get infected, windows will make sure that the virus dont do the actual damage it was designed to do. Instead of stolen credit card numbers or password you sometimes get a freeze or a crash.

Windows is as easy to use in the ways that you dont have to keep a track of where you place your files, you use start search (intelligent search engine) that you find in the Vista start menu. You have the same search functionality in the controll panel. There are easy ways of getting help in vista without calling support, you find it in every windows program and menus.

Dont pay for air that is free, buy a pc.
Spend as much money on a pc and you can get:
better hardware, more software, access more free software, safer OS, be able to play all computergames, and you have additional money over for example 3 years professional pc support.

Very interesting responses from PN and Jens. I have a feeling that Steve doesn't regret the decision he made two years ago.

Vista's system-hogging requirements were a dealbreaker for me. Ever since it came out, I have been using Ubuntu. I love Ubuntu, which is easier to use than Windows in some ways, but requires tweaking, as well.

My wife has a Mac, and while I enjoy OS X, I cannot function without a forward delete and proper home and end keys. The software is good, the hardware keeps me away. (Plus, no Macbook is as sturdy as my unattractive ThinkPad.) But the Mac is great for her. She wants to do basic things and does not want to worry about system updates, virus and spyware cleaning, etc.

At the moment, I am using the Windows 7 Beta, and I love it. So far, this is the best operating system I have ever used. It is faster than Ubuntu, even on my four-year-old ThinkPad, the taskbar is perfectly-executed, and it stays out of my way while I get work done.

"I have a feeling that Steve doesn't regret the decision he made two years ago."
You have grown very wise, grasshopper.

How about this, Jen, for a quantified amount of time spent in support of my (now) 83 year old Dad who started computing at 73? Every two weeks or so I was either logging in remotely to his PC (with VNC) or driving over to his house. It wasn't just adware and spyware that was the problem, often he'd inadvertently modified some setting that required a lot more technical acumen to fix than he possessed (even the nomenclature of windows, minimize, task bar and so on were concepts he'd never learned, so walking him through any kind of fix was tough, even when I was guiding and coaching him remotely).

After replacing the PC with the Mac mini setup, I've spent maybe 10 hours in the LAST TWO+ YEARS updating and tweaking the Mac setup vs. 20 times or so PER YEAR with the PC (and each time was roughly an hour of time). So right there I've saved at least 30 hours of my time and the thing just runs and runs and runs.

I always find it amusing to engage in religious wars over computer OS'es, but I'm not a fanatical religious person about technology...but rather quite pragmatic. In fact, I've used and supported *both* PC's and Mac's for over two decades with family and friends, and nearly switched everything when XP came out and OS X was still in beta. Thank God I didn't.

My only lament about people starting out today in this economic climate with, for example, a laptop is the cheap prices of them vs. entry pricing on a Mac laptop (e.g., $600/PC or $999/Mac for *roughly* the same configuration). But the support costs are a killer. What if my Dad had had to call the Geek Squad and pay $100 per hour of time every time he'd had his PC hosed up, he'd have paid them $3,000 IN SUPPORT!

why is vista good and why is mac bad? why is mac good and why is vista bad? both of them got pros and cons in them, i have been using windows for half of my life so i cant switch to mac.

Khalid, I used Macs from around 13-23, then 10 years on Windows, then back to Macs as my primary computers. Switching back and forth isn't particularly difficult for most programs. In fact, most of the software people use is nearly identical on both platforms.

I think that Vista is better than Mac. Why? Because it's cheaper, its more "compatible" with things, and you can customize everything in it.

Comments

1. Posted by: Tim Walters on March 10, 2007 3:14 PM:

I would DEFINITELY recommend Vista to a few people I know and hate. For anyone I like or intend to help there is no way on earth I would let them get anything but a Mac.

Required fields marked with: *
Name*:

Email Address*:

URL:
Remember personal info?

Comments*:

HTML Tags you can use in your posts:
<b>Bold</b> = Bold
<i>Italicized</i> = Italicized
<a href="http://www.othersite.com">Link to Other Site</a> = Link to Other Site

Please keep comments on-topic. Contact authors or other commenters
directly for off-topic conversations.

Notify me of future comments via e-mail

Technology Evangelist Digest - Free Newsletter

Sign up for the free Technology Evangelist Digest to receive daily updates, editorials, and practical advice on emerging technology trends in hardware, software, webware, marketing and beyond.

Technology Evangelist Digest will keep you up to date on the technology trends that will help make you more productive and efficient both in business and your personal life.

Let's face it: If you made it to this line, you must have found something valuable on this page, right? Think about how cool it would be to have something free and interesting to read every day from Technology Evangelist by signing up today.

1. Fill in your email below,
2. Then click on the confirmation email you receive.
3. That's it. Your first Technology Evangelist Digest will arrive within 24 hours.