“There are lots of reasons that people don’t want to switch from Windows to Macintosh,” Web entrepreneur David Alison blogs. “I assume the most common reason is simply because Windows works for the people that are using it. The old adage ‘If it ain’t broke don’t fix it’ tends to apply here. These people are not upgrading to Vista either, they’re staying with Windows XP or even Windows 98 and are just fine.”
MacDailyNews Note: Earlier this year, after 17 years of Windows (retch), Alison finally made his move to Macintosh. Better late than never, right? After his first three months, Alison went “from curious about Macs to a newbie user to a switcher that promotes Macs to strangers.” In other words, the usual.
Alison continues, “There are however an increasing number of people that are moving to Macs now – many of them people like me that hated Macs at one time. I believe there are lots of reasons for this, not the least of which is that people that are running Windows XP are faced with an upgrade to Vista as their next logical step and feel that maybe it’s okay to consider a Mac since they have to go through a full operating system refresh anyway.”
“One of the reasons I was not interested in Macs for a very long time was that I clung to many facts about the Mac that I felt eliminated it from contention. Well, as with many things in life it turns out the facts that I knew about the Mac were either hopelessly outdated or simply myths,” Alison writes. “What I wanted to do was tell you the ones that I was aware of and often cited when I dismissed Macs in the past.”
Allison’s list of common Mac myths:
• Mac’s only use a single mouse button
• There are not that many applications for Macs
• Macs are closed machines that cannot be expanded
• Macs don’t work well with Windows machines on a network
• Macs are more expensive
• Macs can’t run my Windows software
• Macs are mouse centered machines. You constantly have to grab the mouse.
Full article (a good one for anyone you know who’s on the fence about switching to Mac) explaining each item on the list here.
Read also Alison’s, “Why I bailed out on Windows and switched to Macintosh,” here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “RadDoc” for the heads up.]
Amazing that these myths still persist.
Last year, I got every person who mentioned to me that they were in the market for a computer to get a Mac, and every single one of them has thanked me.
• Macs are mouse centered machines. You constantly have to grab the mouse.
funny, i have heard the opposite comments from the windows herd… they don’t like apple cause “you have to do everything with the keyboard.”
i dunno, i find the mouse quite counter-productive and love all my keyboard shortcuts.
peace
Window’s peer pressure goes away instantly as soon as you walk into an Apple Store and/or see iChat with three people and/or Time Machine recovery in action, etc., etc., etc.
Blue Dream – “Hear Hear!” You are so right!
At least two of these “myths” are only feebly contested, and are obviously included only because if you’re going to write (yet another) mac-myths-dispelled piece, you get more grief for ignoring the REAL problems than you do for halfheartedly trying to pooh-pooh them as unimportant. Specifically:
There are not that many applications for Macs
Still true except for a few large sw developers. Alison himself concedes:
The number of Mac titles for business software, especially in the vertical markets for small businesses, is much smaller
“Vertical markets for small businesses” covers just about anyone who wants to use a computer application to get their job done.
Macs are closed machines that cannot be expanded
Still true, as there is no desktop option below the $4,000 Mac Pro No “consumer” mac is expandable/upgradeable beyond RAM & HD.
I sued to hate mac’s but mainly because I was brainwashed as a child. I started out with DOS then of course every windows OS up to XP. I learned animation and 3D design in high school on windows. But going to college my uncle told me to get a mac and so did the school so I got the G5 dual 2.5 when it came out in august 04. At first I held back the drool staring at it for a while. I had my mac and pc hooked up to a KVM switch so I could still render with a couple programs not on a mac. And everything else I did on my mac. Been 4 years now and after 6 months I canned the PC, but I’d still like to get a mac pro to run windows for the 2 apps I know inside out. Otherwise I wish I switched to a mac a long time ago, got my dad to get a mac now hoping my mom will switch over too someday and my bro in law and sister who are designers on windows (shudders)
“Macs are closed machines that cannot be expanded.”
Alas, there’s too much truth to that so-called myth. And it continues to be one of the very few things about the PC side that causes some envy (another being the ability to use nice machines such as the new Thinkpad x300).
Fortunately, my sources tell me there’s a real possibility of the “X Mac” / “headless MAc” box that so many have longed for. Final decision not yet made but there is a prototype under consideration.
@ PC Apologist:
Actually, Apple’s $2300 Quad Core Mac Pro is the least expensive, expandable Mac.
Still, what’s to expand. They’re fast and have all the ports you’ll ever need. I have had many Macs and, other than a PCMCIA Firewire card I put in a Wallstreet Powerbook some years back, I don’t recall needing any internal upgrades. All my machines have been great for video editing.
Macs DO cost more! You can get any of quite a few PCs ready to ‘run’ out of the box (sort of, all the parts are there) for under $500 while few of us can get a ready-to-run Mac for less than twice that price!
Oh … you want to talk “comparable machines”? Well, that’s a different story. And unimportant if you can be happy with a $449 PC to check your email with. That’s like arguing about a “closed machine … if a $1,200 iMac does everything you want, why would you care if it’s “closed”? No … don’t answer that. Then we’d have to laugh at you.
Who keeps perpetuating these myths?
I bet it’s our good friend ZUNE TANG!
When will Apple have such market penetration that every single switcher with a blog is no longer highlighted as newsworthy?
@PC apologist,
Not much software for the Mac? How about every single piece of software out there for Mac, Winblows, and Linux?
Say it after me: “The Macintosh platform runs MORE SOFTWARE THAN WINDOZE! It runs every piece of software on the planet!”
Lesson over.
I still laugh at dorks like PC apologist when they talk about a lack of Mac software. For one thing, a Mac is the only computer on the planet that will run OS X, Windows, and Linux natively and even simultaneously if you want to.
Secondly, quantity does not equal quality. But quality has obviously never been something that a PC apologist would care anything about anyway.
• Macs are more expensive
That’s one’s not a myth, but reality!!!
I love this “Windows has all the software you need, much more than for Mac” argument by idiots like PC Apologist.
Why do I want to have to choose from 500 different applications to do one task? I want ONE – one excellent one at that.
And on Mac that is tha case, there is just so much less CRAPWARE. Windows users can keep all that rubbish.
And Macs are closed systems?? I have upgraded memory, hard drives et al on many Macs. Only geeky teenage hobbyists want to do more with their ha’penny Win PC’s…
None of those ridiculous myths have any truth in them..
And I don’t use Windows because of that stupid “File Manager” and “Program Manager” that they have…
@DLMeyer:
The problem is the difficulty in replacing, and sometimes complete inability to replace, internal components that break or have become obsolete or no longer serve your needs. Think video cards. And optical drives. Or something else that craps out after the warranty is done, like motherboards.
The first of the “Leno chin” iMacs seemed to mark a new direction for Apple in this regard, allowing easy access to the innards (one could replace just about anything without special skills or tools, though of course some components, such as the motherboard, couldn’t be purchsed from third-party vendors). Then of course Apple closed the darn thing up tight.
I don’t object in principle to the existense of closed systems such as the current iMac. I’d just like to see an open option at a price that works for more consumers. And I’d also like to see it really open — open to the point where just about every component (inc. the motherboard!) can be bought from at least a couple of third party suppliers.
It’s about repairing your Mac yourself — not having to send it somewhere. It’s about improving your Mac yourself — not having to buy a new one. It’s about making your Mac work better (or at all) with software that didn’t exist when you bought the Mac but you now want to use (think video RAM limitations). This shouldn’t be too much to ask.
Anyway, like I said, I understand that a more open Mac may well be on the horizon. (Remember, I was right upteen months ago when I told y’all that the Mini would be upgraded, not discontinued).
A lot of the mouse/keyboard thing is because 99% of Winkers have one window filling the screen. They can’t drag and drop other than within the same document, it’s an alien concept to them, there’s nowhere to drag too. Whilst I drag from the Finder in to Transmit to FTP or drag from a browser my desktop to grab an image they mostly type in addresses or go through series of menus. Some have learned copy and paste, those are the more advanced users and that’s why they are fixated on two buttons, select with the left button, copy with the right.
When Winkers see me doing simple stuff for a few minutes they are amazed at how much gets done so quickly. It’s a dilemma, some of them may become competitors, can’t promote Mac to them.
“Oh … you want to talk “comparable machines”? Well, that’s a different story. And unimportant if you can be happy with a $449 PC to check your email with”
hell if all i want is to check email, get a touch and get a music player and browser too!
or wait, how much is the mini?
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Mac+
“• Macs are more expensive
That’s one’s not a myth, but reality!!!”
and again i point to the greatest slashdot post in history, where someone sets out to show just that, and finds that they can’t get their Dell to have the same options as the comparable mac unless they spend $200 more.
if that is all the argument you have, please don’t bother to post….
“It’s about repairing your Mac yourself — not having to send it somewhere. It’s about improving your Mac yourself — not having to buy a new one”
the 53 geeks who do those things on a regular basis all run linux. maybe you should try it too.
….me, i like having a computer i don’t have to tinker with. ya know, one that works? kathxbai.
@ PC Apologist:
You’re incorrect about the number of applications. OS X has a LOT of software running on it. Just because Windows has more software doesn’t mean it has better software. I’ve seen the freeware and shareware apps for Windows. They leave a LOT to be desired.
Mac, as a platform, can run OS X, Windows, Linux (natively). While running OS X, you’re also running a fully-certified Unix as well. You CANNOT make any similar claims about Windows, as much as you’d like to try.
MDN, once again you are way off on this one. The headline should read:
Windows to MAC dork cannot grasp reality
Big deal. So some little coward who doesn’t have the fortitude or smarts to grasp everything that’s awesome about Windows now has an overpriced, mouse button and game challenged toy for pretentious people who can’t do REAL WORLD computing tasks. Whatever.
Your potential. Our passion.™
Macs can run all Mac, Linux, AND Windows software (and Unix too, if you want to get Terminal with it). How, pray tell, is that less?
mac pro isn’t $4000 to start btw. secondly you get a lot for the money with the mac pro. I’d buy one now but a new car is much more important than a new computer. With windows PC’s you get cheap stuff and that is why they cost so little. You build a dell or IBM box with the same specs as a mac pro and you will end up spending around the same price if not more. As you may not have seen when the mac pro came out they compared and the mac pro came out $1000 less than the dell box. btw Dell hahah good luck to you. Anyways, windows users are usually cheap and being there is a large selection of cheap computers they stick to them. The average pc owner gets a new computer once a year while mac users tend to keep theirs for 2 or 3 before upgrading to something new. I used to hate mac and think they cost way too much till I realised apple could make a cheaper laptop. Just downgrade alot of the specs and there ya go. The best part is apple doesn’t load you up with a thousand choices where one model has a little more ram and bigger drive then this one has glossy screen or this one has a bigger screen and bigger drive etc. they offer 3 models when it comes to laptops and each can be further customized to your liking. I’m sick of whiney pc users complain about lack of options when they dont realise the reason the mac cost more is because it has all the options on it and then you can add more.
oh well just my $0.02
windows fanboys flame on!