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..

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.

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