“Hardly a week goes by that I don’t hear from a friend or colleague with a monumental Windows problem,” Paul Andrews writes for The Seattle Times. “I tell them I’m glad to help, on one condition: Next time they buy a computer, they agree to consider a Macintosh. A year ago, after a particularly trying week of spyware, adware, viral attacks, lock-ups and reboots, I changed my primary computer to a Mac. I’ve dabbled with Macs since the late 1980s but never felt a need to change from Windows.”
“For the first couple of months after the switch, while I transferred e-mail and contacts to Mac programs, I was firing up Windows almost daily. Gradually, though, I found fewer reasons to go back. It was a snap to export text and data files to the Mac, then convert them to Mac applications. And programs such as iTunes, iMovie, Safari and iPhoto, which came with the Powerbook, were easy to learn and use,” Andrews writes. “The exception was e-mail and contacts. There are ways to get the data from Windows to a Mac, but they’re cumbersome and not always successful. Gradually, though, the important correspondents and contacts got into the Mac mail and address-book programs simply through daily use.”
Andrews writes, “When I made the switch, I thought I was a relative rarity. After all, we’re constantly reminded of the Windows desktop monopoly and how little market share Apple has. But what I found surprised me. A lot of techies I know, including some former Microsofties, have switched. Among holdouts, I kept hearing their next computer would be a Mac… [“Just Say No To Microsoft” author Tony Bove] likes to tell Windows sufferers, ‘It’s not your fault. But it is your problem.'”
Full article here.
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Betcha Gates’ and Uncle Fester’s heads nearly popped off this morning when they cracked open their copies of The Seattle Times to this one. No chair is safe in Redmond today. If you wish to avoid f-bombs, Redmonites, just pop in your iPod earbuds.
The last person we personally helped to switch from Windows to Mac told us, to paraphrase, “It was literally obscene what I was doing to myself with Windows. Like strapping on 20-pound ankle weights to run a marathon when there is no such race requirement. This Mac is like pure magic in comparison. Half the time, I kick myself for being so stupid as to subject myself to Windows for 10 years. The other half the time, I congratulate myself for being so smart for switching to Apple Mac. Thank you for convincing me. Thank you, thank you, thank you!” This type of reaction is routine for Windows to Mac switchers that we meet.
Microsoft, for some reason, doesn’t want to make it easy for you to get your information out of Outlook, so you can switch to Mac. (See related article: BBC News analyst: Microsoft Outlook needlessly complicates migration to Apple Mac – June 08, 2005) Little Machines’ US$10 “Outlook2Mac” has worked for us in the past for moving Windows Outlook email, contacts, and calendar appointments from Windows PCs to Macs. More info here.
By the way, regarding Bove’s use of the term “Windows sufferers,” way to go! We believe our own SteveJack coined this term using it, along with “Wintel sufferers,” at least as early as 1998 via online BBS discussions to quickly contrast with “Mac users.” If you know of any earlier usage, please let us know.
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Related MacDailyNews articles:
Tech writer: Windows PCs highly vulnerable to zombie hijacking; get an Apple Mac instead – November 06, 2005
Windows switchers, now’s your chance: Apple Mac mini with Mac OS X Tiger for $379 – November 03, 2005
Computer columnist: anti-virus software purely optional for Apple Macs, not so for Windows – November 01, 2005
Microsoft apologists and why Apple’s Mac OS X has zero viruses – October 24, 2005
$500 bounty offered for proof of first Apple Mac OS X virus – September 27, 2005
Symantec: 10,866 new Microsoft Windows virus and worm variants in first half 2005 – September 19, 2005
Hackers already targeting viruses for Microsoft’s Windows Vista – August 04, 2005
16-percent of computer users are unaffected by viruses, malware because they use Apple Macs – June 15, 2005
ZDNet: How many Mac OS X users affected by the last 100 viruses? None, zero, not one, not ever – August 18, 2005
Intel CEO Otellini: If you want security now, buy a Macintosh instead of a Wintel PC – May 25, 2005
97,467 Microsoft Windows viruses vs. zero for Apple Mac’s OS X – April 05, 2005
Millions of Windows PC’s hijacked by hackers, turned into zombies; Macintosh unaffected – September 08, 2004
Defending Windows over Mac a sign of mental illness – December 21, 2003
Microsoft Windows: How Do You Want To Crash Today?
I keep reading these testimonials to the ease of use and beauty of the Mac on these threads. Does anyone know if they also appear on Windows sites? All this preaching to the choir is like a mutual admiration society backslapping lunch date. But does it bring any converts to the light side?
Good stuff..
And for the record, I won’t be bitter when Apple hits 10% marketshare.. I’ll still enjoy using a computer that I can trust.
Obviously, it’s appearing in The Seattle Times. Also, MacDailyNews is in Google News. Search Google News for “Windows” and this article’s headline will pop up right about now.
ron, I’m not sure about Windows site, but they are appearing in Newspapers, where there are a lot of people who use Windows machines, particularly people who don’t necessarily care about the technical details – they just want it to work. If these people will start to read and hear good things about the Mac, then they might start considering it on their own in the future….
So. Why HAS it take so long? We all knew this all along. Better late than never.
“Emporer Gates… the Apple Jedi are countering our every move. What is your bidding?”
SFX: Varooosshhh (with a wave of the Emporers hand and a blinding flash of light Darth Balmers beautiful long golden curly hair is suddenly gone, replaced by a glistening greasy dome of highly reflective bare flesh)
“Do not fail me Darth Balmer… or next time I’ll take it off from the neck up! Now GO and bring me SJ-1’s head on a platter”
“But Emporer Gates, the Apple rebellion has anticipated and countered our every move. Since they ditched Internet Explorer we’ve lost our secret passage into Oh Ess Ten”.
SFX: amidst a loud booming crackle Darth Balmer drops to his knees gasping and clutching his neck, while his long slime covered tongue twitches and flails wildly in the air.
“FOOL! We still have hidden powers buried deep in the Office suite for Macintosh. Those innocent unsuspecting Apple users will squirm and scream for Windows when we unleash our most powerful secret weapon. Their puny market share is no match FOR THE DARK SIDE! Moo ha ha ha …. ha ha ha ha ha….”
Darth Ballmer slithers out of the room on his belly. Whhooosh-froomp. The thick steel door slides shut behind him.
Is this the end? Will the evil Emporer Gates and his apprentice, Darth Balmer squelch the voice of the rebellion? Will spyware, bots and virus control the galaxy?
Good stuff!. Unfortunately, a lot of the web apps and intranets are still being coded with ActiveX plug ins or other MS Explorer for Windows only elements.
Darth Ballmer
I sense the good in you. It’s not too late to join the rebellion. Buy a Mac. Buy a Mac. Buy a……
“I will SJ-1, I will”
I for one would like to see the continuing saga of the “Darth Balmer Chronicles” on MDN….
I especially enjoy the “Oh Ess Ten…”
Hmm, if Darth Vader is the mBallmer, then who is Jabba the Hutt?
Yoesh flog gorsh my-yeck!
I don’t want you to change the characters, but you might find the resemblance below interesting. From the Star Wars Character Databank:
A loathsome slug of a gangster, Jabba the Hutt was the preeminent kingpin of crime in the Outer Rim Territories. Basing his operations out of Tatooine, the Hutt had his pudgy fingers in a number of lucrative and unsavory rackets — slavery, gunrunning, spice-smuggling, extortion and more.
Jabba’s physical appearance was as repulsive as his decadence. A hefty Hutt, Jabba resembled a worm-like slug, with a legless, tapered body coated in slime. A wide, drooling toothless grin split his flat face, and two yellow-red reptilian eyes stared covetously from his immense head. Jabba surrounded himself with the shiftless dregs of society, ensuring his protection with a screen of henchmen and hired guns. He lived in an opulent if sand-scarred palace out in the Tatooine deserts.
Jabba’s depravity was legendary. He kept himself entertained by torturing and humiliating his subjects. He kept scantily-clad slave girls chained to his throne for his amusement.
Great article! I am going to send it to my friends. I switched a few years ago, glad I did.
Donna
Sounds like a good description of Mr “Jabba the” Allen.
“Microsoft Windows: How Do You Want To Crash Today?”
you know, i undertsand macdailynews. it’s totally slanted and anti-M$. that’s part of the reason i like it here.
however, i work on an XP machine, and it doesn’t crash. i do get a BSOD when i try to eject my ipod from itunes. go figure. but credit where credit is due: windows isn’t as unstable as it used to be. not at all.
i love my powerbook and my XP machine works for what it needs to do.
I have an older Dell desktop that I have reloaded Windows 5 times in the last 5 years. I have a brand new Shuttle PC with WindowsXP only 6 months old and it needs the OS reloaded. My daughter has had two HP/Compaq laptops that have had WindowsXP reloaded 4 times in the last year. I just reloaded her Compaq laptop again this weekend (it took about 12 hours to re-install and get working) and now it is crashing again. I have a 5 year old G4 tower and have been running OSX since Panther and it has never crashed. Even in my own family I have tried to enlighten them but they refuse to see the light.
Ominous voice:
It’s your fault. It’s your problem. There is nothing you can do about it. Your job is to make me richer. Now get back to work, lowly scum.
(pay no attention to the man behind the curtain)
daveo, I love your honest opinion about how windows works for you, but for the majority of illterate computer users who just want to chat & check their emails, it is not so for them not in the very least!! I recently was called to help out an 82 yr old lady and she didn’t understand why windows would never get an internet connection or why it kept restarting and freezing. she couldn’t afford a new computer so guess what we had to reinstall windows on top of that the current windows installation was corrupt(Windows ME) so it prevented the upgrade process meaning a hard drive format which lost all her information! it was really disturbing because she had all her documents as on it. for a private real estate agent( yes i know you might find it shocking that an 82 yr old is still working, I did too and she still drives!! quite scary) that made my stomach twirl.
By the way, this is a story about what happened to my mom…
Once upon a time a mother owned a windows computer, even though her son (ME) told her to switch to Mac as he did. 2 years later, their house was struck by lightning, and the windows computer broke down slowly and painfully…
The insurance company promised to pay for the computer that died and when she came to buy a new computer, she bought, you guessed it………………….
A F%#KING WINDOWS!!!!
her computer still runs slower than mine, although she has a 512 GB and dual proccessor, yet i have an iMac…..
O, and nice star wars thing but you forgot to add the coming of Vista as “Jabba the Hut”…. the worst and slowest piece of S**t in the world…
~Caleb
I’m forced to use Windows on Dell at work. The machines rarely crash, but then they have the boxes so tightly locked down with only ‘approved SOE’ software able to be used. In other words, the list of software titles available to us is so short and restrictive, it makes a mockery of the one supposed superiority of Windows – the wealth and diversity of software available for the platform.
And while they rarely crash, the do exhibit daily screwy behaviour and the whole counter-intuitive user experience is frustrating beyond belief. Not to mention how these brand spanking new 3.4GHz P4s are slower, or should I say less responsive, than my 2nd hand 2×450 GBE PMG4 at home.
We’re not even allowed to use Firefox because it hasn’t (and won’t) go through the exhaustive and expensive testing process to make sure it won’t cause system or network instability. Why should this even be necessary for software?
With our existing crapola IBM designed rail reservation system, TravelLink, most likely being replaced with the browser based Orion, the one real excuse left keeping us with Windows will vanish.
You people are so ungrateful.
You forget that we at Microsoft invented the personal computer, and that we developed Apple’s first OS and all it’s productivity apps.
I have made the world a better place. That’s only ever been my objective. To put a PC in every home in the world, all running Windows. To teach every illiterate person in the world to say “Control, alt, delete” and to introduce them to sports by teaching them to play shot-put and soccer with their beige boxes when they won’t restart.
I am a very humanitarian person. Of the 10 trillion dollars I make every year, from ordinary folk, my wife and I donate at least 1 million dollars to charity. Which is exactly 0.00000000001%. How many people say they are as generous or give so much?
Trust me. You need to. Don’t be fooled by these me-too copycats like Apple. Most apps in the whole world don’t even run on an Apple. With my heavy handed, standover tactics, I have personally guaranteed it. Despite that, it’s so easy to tell if you’re using a Mac or a PC – you’re PC apps have to go through an overly complicated installation and registration process and effectively work as malware, clogging up the system. And for god’s sake don’t even bother trying to uninstall them. Why should you want to do that? I can always patch things up when they go disastrously wrong, you just will have to be patient and wait a few months. Of course, you’ll encounter no such problems if you have a Mac.
In the Microsoft ecosystem, you’ll get lot’s of “support”. You know, installing things, connecting things, removing spyware, malware and viruses, replacing a hard drive that just melted down, generally making it work. With Apple, and I know this will shock you, you don’t get ANY of this support at all!!! It’ll just work.
I have a vision for a better world, with Windows on every PC, in every home on the planet. A more collaborative, global village where every home PC can become a zombie server for anybody wanting to distribute free spam or porn to billions of unwanting recipients, thereby clogging up the internet and bringing e-commerce to a grinding halt.
Join me and my vision. Where else would you want to go today?
Actually, the “Windows sufferers” bit is Paul Andrews’ wonderful prose. My contribution, “it’s not your fault, but it is your problem” is from the 12-step program model pioneered by Alcoholics Anonymous (A.A.) in the 1930s — the most widely used and successful approach for dealing with addictive behaviors. One chapter of my book (Just Say No to Microsoft — see my Get Off Microsoft site and blog) provides all 12 steps. Here’s step 1: “It is not your fault, but it is your problem. Admit you are powerless over your addiction — and that your computer system and software have become unmanageable.”
Indeed. Douglas Adams, author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, said it much better in his essay on Windows 95:
Even the best designed systems can be a nightmare to upgrade, but whatever things Microsoft may be famous for — the wealth of its founder, the icy grip he exerts on what is arguably the most important industry on this planet — good systems design is not, as it happens, one of them.
The last time I visited my mother, my aunt who needed a computer was also visiting. She had not taken my previous advice to get a Mac; now she was perplexed by this new Windows computer. “It was all set up for me to check email and browse the Web,” she said like a champ, “but I don’t know the first thing about doing anything else.”
“Good luck with that,” I said.
I use a Win/Linux dual boot at home (you need windows for games) and Windows at work and anybody who knows what they are doing who has problems with
> spyware, adware, viral attacks, lock-ups and reboots,
on a Windows machine is an incompetent tool.
Firewall from Zonealarm, AVG antivirus, Firefox, OpenOffice, Thunderbird email, Adaware and you wont have problem even if you surf the pr0n sites.
All the people whose systems I was force to reinstall
havent had a problem in over 18months. That a computer knowledgeable guy claims otherwise is very fishy.
If you are a newbie with limited use (like parents), then instead of plunking a farking mint on a new mac, go to Kubuntu Linux. (kde is easier than Gnome)
In the past year, I installed it on about a dozen computers for retired people and over half never used a cpu before and they had no problems learning.
Half of them also use P3’s and even one P2 so maybe money isnt a problem for you but it is for other people.
All those people have learned how to email, save files, write letters, surf the web, listen to music, burn cd’s, instant messaging and a few of the basic things that most users do.
3 of them even started playing with Gimp so they could add text to their pictures before printing.
This isnt a debate on the merits of different OS but more a question of price.
Why the hell would they want to pay the Mac premium when they can buy a tower and laptop for the same price?
And yes, we have Macs at work as well. Beautiful machines, crafted like an italian sports car.
Would I pay for it?
No.
For a newbie: IF they had the money, otherwise Linux du jour on an second hand computer will do for the majority of users.
>For a newbie: IF they had the money, otherwise Linux du jour on an second hand computer will do for the majority of users.
Hey genius, you think there’s no second hand mac?
Or that you couldn’t toss Linux on it if you’re so inclined?