I am a diehard Mac user, since the 128K Mac. Yet I'm typing this on a spanking brand new Dell XPS M1530. I need a PC for the Educational Gaming Commons. I was using Mac's BootCamp for PC show and tells, but now PSU mandated security software will kill BootCamp - thus the new machine. After our tech support folks finished with it, I spent less than two hours installing my various "must have" apps, preferences, etc.
What I discovered doing this is that I'm living in the cloud far more than I realized, and the main apps I use are the same on both the Mac and PC:
I wonder if Apple is scared? They should be, in this area. The "ease of use" factor that use to make Macs far superior to the PC is rapidly vanishing. Many mainstream apps look and feel nearly the same on both platforms. More and more work is being done in the cloud.
In the future, will most folks care what platform they use?
(Yes my Mac-addicted colleagues, I've now set myself up for a barrage of rationales why I'm wrong about the Mac. Fire away!)
What I discovered doing this is that I'm living in the cloud far more than I realized, and the main apps I use are the same on both the Mac and PC:
- Many things I do are via a web browser. I use Firefox with various extensions - all available on multiple platforms. FF looks the same on both platforms.
- My email client is Thunderbird, and I use PSU's iMAP service - basically it keeps all my mail in the cloud, so I can move from machine to machine easily. TBird looks the same on both platforms.
- I do use Microsoft Office, and the interface differences between the Mac and PC versions are, shall we say, a bit frustrating. But I could use OpenOffice if I wanted to!
- I don't do much multimedia any more, so platform-specific tools here don't matter to me.
- Photoshop, Illustrator, etc. look the same on both platforms.
I wonder if Apple is scared? They should be, in this area. The "ease of use" factor that use to make Macs far superior to the PC is rapidly vanishing. Many mainstream apps look and feel nearly the same on both platforms. More and more work is being done in the cloud.
In the future, will most folks care what platform they use?
(Yes my Mac-addicted colleagues, I've now set myself up for a barrage of rationales why I'm wrong about the Mac. Fire away!)
Actually I think Mac has BENEFITED from the new convergence. People who've heard about the benefits of Mac (e.g. iMovie, lack of viruses) are less afraid to switch.
And the foreign language gurus who switched to PC in the 90s are switching back to Mac... because it's worth it again.
My .02 €
You couldn't get me to give up my Mac for a Windows machine. No matter the fact that I live in a browser or not (I do for the most part) I just can't see myself dealing with what I perceive to be the pain and suffering of the Windows world. Maybe sometime in the future I'll feel differently, but at the moment the overall experience still matters way too much for me.