“Last month, I told you about my purchase of a tricked-out iMac that I bought to replace my previously pretty-darn-powerful PC. My goal (which is now working) was to have four screens on the thing, and make it as fast as I could, within my office budget,” David Gewirtz writes for ZDNet. “In the previous article of this series, I showed you the business case for why I bought the iMac instead of a Mac Pro. I could save roughly $1,200 and the extra oomph the Mac Pro provided wasn’t in areas I’d be making use of during my normal workflow.”
“My goal in this article is to help you understand the business case behind this purchase, and why I’d decided a PC wasn’t the best option for me. The single key factor in this decision was I wanted to have a hybrid system,” Gewirtz writes. “I wanted to be able to drag and drop between Windows applications and Mac applications. I wanted to do a graphics operation in a Mac application, select the object, and without any intermediate conversion, drag it into a PC application and work on it from there. This is a direct reflection of the sort of work I do, and I reasoned that I might be able to save 10-30 percent from the time it takes to complete projects if I had this capability. That’s huge.”
“That single capability: to drag-and-drop from a Windows app to a Mac app, and vice versa, all on one screen, without any intermediate fiddling, is why I wanted a Mac. I could run Fusion or Parallels goes further by making Microsoft’s unloved operating system marginally more usable,” Harrison writes. “Even before the sticking plaster of v8.1, Parallels and get that capability. In day-to-day use, Parallels goes further by making Microsoft’s unloved operating system marginally more usable,” Harrison writes. “Even before the sticking plaster of v8.1, Parallels does it somewhat more smoothly, so that’s what I chose,” Gewirtz writes. “In this case, both against PCs and against the new Mac Pro, the iMac turned out to be the best option, both in terms of performance and capabilities, and in terms of price. Also, it should be noted that Windows, running virtualized in Parallels, benchmarks at 13 percent faster on this iMac than it did, running native, on my 18-month-old super-fast Sager [notebook PC].”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Longtime MacDailyNews readers read it here, eight and a half years ago:
Let’s face it, Windows-only users have no idea what they’re missing and most are not inclined to do a several hundred dollar “test” to see if they really like Mac OS X and the Mac platform. Imagine if they could feel “safe” in buying a Mac that can run their Windows that also happens to let them run Mac OS X. And we all know what happens once someone really gives Mac OS X a try — Windows quickly falls by the wayside.
That’s why these Intel-based Macs will help expand Mac market share, if average people can be made to understand that the machines can run both Windows and Mac operating systems natively.
For most people, Macs will become the “2 for the price of 1″ computer. Even for the nearly illiterate personal computer buyers, with a little Apple-supplied education via marketing, it would make little sense to buy a limited Windows-only machine from the box assemblers like Dell, Gateway, etc. Give them their “Windows Insecurity Blanket” upfront and they’ll throw it away themselves after they realize how tattered and threadbare it is in comparison it to Apple’s Mac OS X.
The only question left would be: now how do we get them to boot into Mac OS X instead of Windows? The best answer for Apple would be to have the machines always boot up into Mac OS X and allow a “Virtual-PC-like” way to run Windows and Windows apps (but, natively, with no emulation speed hit, thanks to the Intel processor).
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Maybe he could benefit from the open source Synergy app, which allows for Windows/Mac/Linux sharing of mouse and keyboard by dragging across screens —and now allows for simple drag/drop of files across monitors…
I said it once; I’ll say it again. A Mac with Parallels, Windows, Snow Leopard, and a Blu-ray writer can do pretty much anything.
Too bad Apple isn’t on-board with the latter two items.
Add in Sheepshaver and MacOS 9 to complete the setup.
I was thinking the same thing, as well as Rosetta support to run Starcraft. 😉
I never had understood the dumping of Rosetta. Seeing as Apple lost interest in it, I’m surprised that the company who wrote it didn’t update it for Lion, etc. Oh well.
(BTW: There were a bunch of us who tried to hack Rosetta to work in Lion, but no one succeeded).
Meanwhile, Sheepshaver has some limitations, but it’s terrific once you get it going. I use it with Mac OS 8.6, probably my favorite version of Mac OS. I have it tricked out with appearance modules and sound sets. Sorry Steve Jobs!
I think I still have an “I brake for 8” bumper sticker somewhere.
When I first switched to a Mac, I maintained Windows in a Boot Camp partition to ease the transition thinking that I could not do without Windows apps (programs). However, after booting into the Boot Camp partition a few times and having to confront Windows, it felt that it was time to forcibly migrate all of my Windows apps to OS X, even if I had to make the purchase again, e.g. MS Office, just to rid myself of having to face Windows again.
The app environment in OS X is quite mature now. You can find Mac equivalents quite easily. Dumping Windows altogether isn’t that hard any more. I counsel those who switch to a Mac to familiarise themselves as quickly as possible with OS X and get rid of Windows as quickly as possible. It’s not worth the while of the user to boot into Windows and have to confront turd every time you see Windows on your screen.
Wow, you actually sound sane!
Well said BLN. The best post that I have seen from you. You could grow on me if this continues. I did the exact same thing 4 years ago and have never looked back
There are about a million apps that run on Windows that don’t run on Mac. Yes, about 900,000 of them are crap but, if you need to run one of the other 100,000, you need Windows. There is no getting around it.
Try reading the article.
Exactly why I told my mom to try out an iMac. She could still run some microsoft windows stuff and yet get the OSX experience. She deleted Fusion when MS killed MSN messenger. The last reason to keep running Windows was removed by Microsoft itself.
Took the writer awhile. Been running Windows native since 2006.
MDN’s 2005 take just gets more true with time. As good as OS X was back then (Tiger was a rock-solid OS), it’s light years better still now.
——RM
First, I switched to the Mac, but in the good old PowerPC days. I found it so easy, but did install MS office to provide some familiarity.
Then I got an intel based Mac, which I shared with my wife. She wasn’t as comfortable with the switch, so asked if it could run Windows. Boot camp and an old unused windows XP disk and she was ok.
Then she started trying OS X and gradually stopped using Windows.
Next she bought her own MacBook Pro (then iPhone and iPad).
Then came along iCloud, iMessage, and iWork over iCloud.
We are now on newer ios devices so have iWork for iOS and transitioning to iWork on the MacBooks. MS Messenger has already been deleted and we will soon be deleting the rest of the MS bloatware soon.
We will never return to the dark side again, and my fingers are crossed that my employer will either switch to Mac/iOS or BYOD soon.
I see the tide turning as many in our extended family are switching away from Windows / Office.
I think the correct Word is ‘justice’!
Being stuck in Windows IS the limit.
I remember reading that MDN Take at the time must admit I didn’t fully believe that would be a superior experience in reality, so glad that it has.
I have used nothing but Apple computers since 1979.
Nothing comes close.
It’s okay, buy that external Blue ray Writer and use it on your mac anyways. It works with Toast and Blu-Ray player perfectly.
You don’t need Apple to give you that option. I’m using an LG Blue ray writer and I’m very happy with it for writing or playing blue ray video’s.
Why do I have to hang external drives off of my elegant Mac? That’s bullcrap.
Don’t see a reason to work in Windows, in my case anywho ….. but if I did, such as is required with QuickBooks Pro, I would run via Parallels or similar ….
Why even bother with a windows machine when the IMAX offers so much value and appeal …. Simply put there isn’t a better looking machine and it runs fast and very efficient …. Why settle for less when the best, really costs less? (In the long run)
What timing! On Monday I helped a longtime PC using friend shop for and buy his first Mac, an iMac. While we wait for David Pogue’s Mavericks books to come out, I went over to a bookstore today to pick out the best two book on the shelf to help him convert from a *gag* Windows box to his new Mavericks iMac. 😀
Thanks Janni. I wish I could have added info for the U.S as well.LikeLiked by 1 person