I said I like Macs, but everything I like about Macs I like better about Linux. Once you get Linux up and running, nothing can stop it. I’m writing this on the Linux mail server I set up. Even when a strange document crashed the window manager for some reason, the machine never stopped sending and receiving mail for the whole company.

I know I’m late to the party here, but I must point out how dumb this is. Do not run X on your mail server. X is not only a big source of crashes and freezing, but also a nice big security hole, especially on linux where it can write to random memory willy-nilly.

And seriously, if you’d ever been in a big linux shop, you would reconsider your “nothing can stop it” comment. In the heyday of the “lets just break the entire VM subsystem” 2.6 era, places with big setups like render farms were having up to 25% of their linux boxes locking up each day. Now they don’t even have a stable branch anymore. Linux has never been a paragon of stability or security, its just not as bad as windows. That’s hardly an accomplishment.

@Tipa: I use (or rather interact with) Linux at work (we have one of those Beowulf dealies), but I don’t think I’d care to use it on a desktop/laptop.

@benro: Perhaps, although when I had my Dells I had never used a Mac, and so at the time I just thought that’s how computers had to be.

Perhaps your Dell machines have sensed your hostility towards them and engaged in self-destructive behavior.

On the other hand, I agree that Windows sucks, but I don’t have enough experience with the Mac OS to make a fair comparison.

(if *anything* good comes of this thread, PLEASE someone tell me how to stop those goddamned balloons from popping up)

You were baiting me weren’t you?

To Disable The Notification Area Balloon Tips

1. Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then press ENTER.
2. Navigate to the following subkey:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced
3. Right-click the right pane, create a new DWORD value, and then name it EnableBalloonTips.
4. Double-click this new entry, and then give it a hexadecimal value of 0.
5. Quit Registry Editor. Log off Windows, and then log back on.

I said I like Macs, but everything I like about Macs I like better about Linux. Once you get Linux up and running, nothing can stop it. I’m writing this on the Linux mail server I set up. Even when a strange document crashed the window manager for some reason, the machine never stopped sending and receiving mail for the whole company.

And this is a computer I built from spare parts. Net cost: Nothing. Why pay a premium for a Mac when you can get a computer that does every single thing a Mac can do for a fraction of the cost? Largely because the Mac and Linux share an awful lot of code.

If I didn’t play Windows-only games, I’d never use Windows. If someone plopped a Mac down in front of me, I’d probably use it if I could get rid of that archaic Finder and get a usable desktop on it. I do have a Mac actually, the one I let my daughter use when she was young, an SE/30.

I’d love to update that from System 7 to some nice Linux

1) Windows is terrible for people that just want to use their computer. Yes I know I can fix [whatever] by tweaking [whatever] registry entry or downloading [whatever] driver or [whatver] shareware, and I concede that XP is much more stable than 98, but for someone like me who would rather use my computer to do things, rather than constantly screwing around with whatever the OS is going to throw at me today, Macs make a lot of sense. I simply do not want to become an operating system expert. I know enough about OS X to run the apps I need to run, and I have rarely felt like I needed to delve further. That lets me spend more time doing things I’d rather do.

1.a) I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve had to re-install Windows. Enough times that the last time I did it, the OS made me phone home to Microsoft to authorize Windows. I have never had to reinstall OS X. (YMMV)

2) They just work. I’ve had 2 Dell laptops, and they all had to be sent back to Dell about every 6-10 months. My Powerbook, ~2 years old now, has never been in the shop, even after being thrown against a wall. You do pay a premium for that quality (probably too much) but almost every time my Dell was in the shop, it was at the worst possible time. I’ll gladly pay for reliability.

3) Because of 1) and 2), I am more productive. I do a lot of freelance editing, I run Microsoft Office on my Mac, and when I sit down to write, that’s what happens. Unless I’m distracted by shiny things. But even Apple can’t help me there. When I’m at work and trying to focus, there’s always some goddamned balloon popping up in the lower right corner to let me know that it’s just figured out how to make tea or some shit. Or an update wants to install. Or sometimes there’s just some kind of random error that pops up, and would I like to submit it to Microsoft?

(if *anything* good comes of this thread, PLEASE someone tell me how to stop those goddamned balloons from popping up)

Having said that, there’s plenty to criticize Apple about. (e.g. this post) They do charge too much, even for the reliability I talked about. They do make strange to bad decisions (the Dock in OSX, single-button mouse until only recently, etc), but I think that’s pretty typical of the industry. Apple gets more right than it does wrong. (you could say that about Microsoft too probably, but imho not about their OS.)

Buying a Mac because it’s fashionable is pretty lame, although I have to admit I bought my iPod Nano because it’s cute. There were many other cheaper mp3 players I could have chosen, but I got sucked in because iPods are fashionable and I am a sucker for fashion.

So dang, instead of posting today I guess I’ll just post this really long boring comment.

That is why it peeves me so much that the president of this company asked me to get and set up a MacBook Pro, a $2000 machine before accessories and software, when I could have set up a laptop that does everything she ever does with it for $800, which is what my widescreen HP Windows MCE laptop cost me. And it dual boots Windows and Linux and plays EQ2 and WoW just fine, but she probably doesn’t care much about that really.

It’s just financially stupid to buy a Mac if you’re not even going to use it to its full extent, and especially stupid to pay that much more for a Mac just because it’s a status item that all the fashionable people have.

But you don’t tell the president of the company that choosing a computer as a fashion statement is a stupid decision. Apple uses that as their business model.

Don’t get me started on their menu bar placement. That may have made sense back in the days of Finder and Switcher, but these days with huge screens and multiple windows, why make the user go all the way to the top of the screen to play with their menus? The menus should be near the work.

Anyway. I really do like Macs. I wouldn’t use one myself. Even when I worked for Apple I couldn’t afford one.