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A friend and I were having a hall way conversation this morning. I purchased a second laptop, a PC to supplement my Macbook Pro, and after getting it all set up and using it this weekend, I came to a realization. With a few exceptions, I could care less if I am using a Mac or a PC.

At home I have several of each and move fluidly between using them. I don’t have to adjust to different shortcuts, I don’t bang and curse either because it does something differently, I just use them.

There are a two things that come to mind that determine which type of computer I choose to use explicitly. If I am blogging, I will be using a PC, Windows Live Writer is just that good. If I am writing and recording music, I’ll be using a Mac, Logic Studio is just that good. Outside of those two activities, I just don’t care.

When I picked up a new laptop this weekend, before I ever turned it on, I stuck a Windows 7 RC DVD in it, and the first time I used it, it was a squeaky clean install of Windows 7 with no crap ware and it was beautiful to my OCD sensibilities.

It’s a Tool Man

There are several things I use a laptop for. Writing, communicating, research and a little web site maintenance. The thing is, I can do pretty much all of that stuff on either, and it doesn’t effect my experience or efficiency by choosing one over the other. When I set up a new machine, Mac or PC, I install what I need to get by:

Of course I install other software, and do other things, but when it comes to what I need to do, that covers most of it. So if I can do it both, and I don’t get a reduced experience on either, who cares?

Forget about which case you like better, throw away the crash/virus spin nonsense that the media loves to exaggerate, they are both reliable and usable platforms, it doesn’t matter what you use, as long as you use it.

Parting Note

If you are a die hard Mac user, check out Windows 7, if you can take of your Steve Jobs colored glasses for a few minutes, you might be surprised how good it actually is.

If you have seen Apple’s recent crop of ads to counter Microsoft’s Laptop Hunter Ads, you will find two themes: Apple Genius’ are amazing at technical support, and Windows computers just don’t operate without crashing and constantly catch viruses. Of course these are just marketing gimmicks, just like the Laptop Hunter ads were also, but I think it’s fair to take a few minutes to talk about something we often forget, reality.

Watered Down Geniuses

When you walk up to the Apple Genius Bar, the cool cats in the brightly colored shirts give off quite the air of style and chic, but does that translate to great technical support? Before I relay some of my own personal experiences, how about a reality check. On average, Apple Geniuses make about $25,000 a year, that translates to about $12 an hour. Now this is just mean, but if you stand behind a bar for 40 hours a week for $12 an hour, how smart are you really? The reality is that the average age that I see is around maybe 20?

A great place to start is reading “A day in the life of an Apple Genius” from Maclife. There are some great tid bits in this article like:

• Probably 70% of the stuff we see is physically damaged by the customer
• People should not use extensive mods to their OS, it always causes problems

The basic rundown is this. A Candidate gets screened by a round of troubleshooting questions. If he answers most of those correctly, he gets a two week training session in Cupertino that results in three certifications. The source for Maclife’s article admits the tests aren’t particularly hard. After testing, the candidate gets some real world retail training. That’s where they learn the ticketing system and such. In these two weeks they are well versed in AppleCare policies, entering information into the support database as well as general Apple policies. Finally the genius does a couple weeks training in a real store and bam, they stamp genius on his or her head and he may stand at the alter in an Apple Store. Excuse my cynicism here, but 6 weeks does not a genius make. Malcolm Gladwell posited in Outliers, that it took 10,000 hours to become an expert at anything. Apparently it only takes 240 hours to become an expert at all things Apple, and that’s assuming that they were absorbing for a solid 8 hours per day over these 6 weeks.

I want to be clear, I am not saying that you shouldn’t go to a Genius Bar to get your Mac Fixed, I just did. But I will say that had I not did 10 minutes of due diligence on Google before going in, my repair would have cost me $1,000 vs. free. The Genius was not aware that there was an issue with nVidia chips that was nearing class-action status and because of this Apple had extended the warranty on machines with the issue to two years. Seems like something you would hope they knew, right?

The time before I went to get an Airport Extreme card installed in my Mac Pro, only to have them accidentally disable Bluetooth in the process.

The point is, don’t expect them to be all knowing and never make mistakes, they are Apple’s Geek Squad, no different.

For a more amusing read, check out the MacLife article’s source’s blog, Ungenius.

Viruses Smiruses

I encourage you to first think back and tell me the last time you or someone you know got a virus on their PC. I know it does happen, but I also know it is much less common than the general perception is. I can’t remember catching one myself since “I love you” in 2000. It was a nasty bugger, but it was proliferated across the network because at the time people pretty much opened anything that came in an email attachment without ever looking at it. I like to think people are a bit smarter now.

Also software is better. Despite the hordes of Apple and Linux aficionados that will quote the countless thousands you will have to spend to hopefully be protected, I have been using AVG Free edition from Download.com for years. I would say that more often I hear of virus hoaxes than actual viruses.

Probably the only companies happier than Apple that Viruses DO exist, are anti-virus software makers themselves. It’s become a tremendously profitable industry spawning not only software sales but ridiculously expensive subscriptions. I personally have no problem installing Windows XP, Vista or 7 on a new machine and connecting it to the internet with no Virus protection software. 99% of not being affected by viruses is using your computer responsibly.

The point is that the Apple commercials are hyperbole, Viruses and OS Crashes are nowhere near as common as they would like you to think. As a parting note, Apple’s DO get viruses too. You can only expect them to rise with popularity. The most common, and true, argument is that Windows machines have more viruses because 90% of people use Windows computers, if you are trying to cause damage, you go after the larger target. OS X won’t find safety in it’s small numbers forever.

Now That’s Good TV

It is. The commercials are absolutely brilliant from a marketing perspective and have done wonders to create FUD (Fear Uncertainty and Doubt) about Windows Vista, PCs and pretty much anything that isn’t Mac. The laptop hunter commercials are great too, and now Apple is attaching those as well. Enjoy the commercials, but I sincerely hope that you don’t use them to make purchasing decisions.

Smashing magazine inspired this post. They listed 13 applications to make your life easier, but I really didn’t think any of them were that useful. Here is my list to help you trick out your new Mac.

1. QuickSilver: I love this application. It’s a launcher on steroids and is probably the application I miss the most when I am using Windows. I can call up any file or application with just a few keystrokes. I don’t mean Ctrl-Alt-T-Left Big Toe and Nose, I mean Ctrl-Space and start typing the name of it. It’s a wonderful tool and I recommend not only installing it, but giving it a good effort, it might seem awkward at first, but within a week you will never know how you lived without it. Download
2. Growl: Growl is your swiss army knife notification engine. You can style your notifications to display when, where and how you like, and tons of applications support it. It’s an essential add-in to Firefox and Adium. Download
3. Cyberduck: Cyberduck is my FTP client of choice on Mac. It’s probably not a lot of good to a mainstream user who has little need to FTP, but if you are a webmaster, you will love it. Download
4. Adium: Chat people, iChat is cool but serious un-equipped to communicate with your mass of PC friends. Adium supports it all, it’s infinitely skinnable and in a few years of my use, very stable. If you want to chat on MSN, Yahoo, GTalk, AOL, Facebook, MySpace, ICQ, and many more at once, this is the tool for you. Download
5. Live Mesh: Forget .Mac or .Me or whatever they are calling it these days. If you just want to keep files in sync across a few machines, both Mac and PC as well as Windows Mobile, Mesh is incredibly valuable. I run it on every computer I own and use it at least once a day. Files in your mesh are located on all computers set up to syncronize and also in your free space on the web. Never wish you had that file again and save tons of wear and tear on your thumb drives. Download
6. Text Wrangler: This is kind of like Cyberduck, your general user won’t need it, but if you ever touch HTML, CSS, PHP, Javascript, etc. It’s a great color coding text editor. Download
7. VLC: Let’s face it, not everything runs in Quicktime, even if it did, who would want to? VLC is your one player to show just about anything. This one of the first apps I install on a new Mac. Download
8. Handbrake: Like to watch your DVDs when you travel but wish it was easier to get them on your iPhone, iPod, Zune, PSP, etc.? Handbrake will rip DVDs to just about any format you could need. Download
9. Firefox: Safari is fine, but I just love Firefox, especially since I can mirror the setup on my PC and keep everything in sync with FoxMarks. Download
10. Spaces*: Yea, this is a cheat, it comes with OS X, but that makes it free right? If you are not using multiple monitors on your Mac, you should be using Spaces, enable it and see what it’s all about. Download

Give some of these a try and let me know what you think? If I missed some, add them in the comments below!

Read this article before you read mine, the spin cycle is out of control! Leigh McMullen has hit the fanboy All-Star team. My points of contention? I will never understand why the Mac die hards continue to fight against the notion that Macs are more expensive, they are. It’s just a fact. You can’t argue value this way. Let me break them down:

“In short utterly failing to recognize that premium brands don’t suffer the same wild swings as commodity players. Don’t believe me? 2008 was Ferrari’s best sales year ever. Don’t trust me on that –Google it.”

Excuse the pun, but this isn’t exactly an Apples to Apples comparison, the contention is that a premium brand will suffer in a poor economy. Less than 1% of the US population could afford a Ferrari, it’s not exactly a brand that has customers that are extremely sensitive to the economy. We are talking a $200,000-$500,000 car. That means a Ferrari starts just short of the price of the median price of a house in the US. Is Cult of Mac seriously so Apple blind that they would compare Macs to Ferraris? Ok, next point…

Does Dell offer in store support, migration assistance and training? Not just in a few big cities but even in places like Des Moines? They don’t, not at any price.

Apple has 211 retail stores in the US. If you figure out what cities they are in, and the populations, it’s all of the sudden a much less impressive number.

I will be completely nice and forget the fact that these “geniuses”, which are pretty much smug versions of the same idiots you get at Best Buy, are busy talking about iPhones, iPods and Apple TVs too.

If you are a computer buyer in the US, how much help are the Apple Stores to you? If you live in Alaska, Arkansas, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, Vermont, West Virginia or Wyoming you are out of luck. That’s 10 million people in case you are wondering.

So people in lesser populated states are stuck with phone support and mail order purchases, I get that financially, but all of those states have plenty of places to buy PCs, even Mom and Pop shops that support them too. (And yes, I know Best Buy sells and supports Apple computers too. But if they were good enough for you cultists, we wouldn’t be having this argument about why the Apple Store is the linchpin of the Apple value proposition.)

Think about these Apple Store statistics for a moment:

• 20% of all Apple Store are in California
• 50% of all Apple Stores are in 5 States (CA, FL, NJ, NY, and TX)
• For states with stores, the average population per store is 1,371,261. That’s right, 1.3 million people per store.

Contrast that to the likes of Best Buy, which operates 1,400 stores in every state in the US, even Alaska. I will take on anyone who contends that the Apple Genius Bar guys are really anything more than glorified Geek Squad.

Now let’s say that you do live in an Apple Store area, how much help are they then? Here are a few experiences I have had in an Apple Store:

• It took almost two hours to buy two iPhones. Only to have the Apple Store clerk argue about which phone number I had to use since the account is in my wife’s name. Obviously Dawn has to use the phone on the primary number? Why may I ask? (We didn’t of course)
• On a current generation (at the time) Mac Pro Dual Quad Xeon, I was told I had to go home and get the serial number of the computer for them to be able to tell me what kind of Airport Extreme card I needed. Even though it’s the exact model on the showroom floor AND you would think since all of my Apple products are registered, they could look it up. Not to mention then having to carry an 80lbs computer 2 miles to get into the mall to get it installed, they wouldn’t sell me the part either.
• As soon as the new models come out the showroom is purged of all accessories for your model, I wanted a hardshell case for my Macbook Pro, less than a month after the unibodies shipped, all cases in the store are for the new one, that goes for iPhones too.

OK, enough about Apple Stores, let’s move to my next point.

His big argument in favor of the Dell: It has HDMI. Which would be awesome, except I watch streaming TV on my laptop, I don’t watch laptop on my TV.

Ah, so since Leigh doesn’t use it, nobody does. I disable the ambient light display on my Macbook Pro, does that mean that it’s as pointless? In an earlier part of the story Leigh lists backlit keys, ambient light sensor and accelerometer as reasons the Macbook Pro is superior, then chides PCs for offering something as “useless” as HDMI? I love my backlit keys on this Macbook Pro, but I could care less about the other two.

The HP in question isn’t even a particularly good video gaming machine. Lets see what an HP made of similar components would cost shall we?

All Macs are notoriously terrible gaming machines, even when you install Windows on them because they all come with pitiful video cards, and the entry price for one with upgradable video? $2799. Meanwhile great PC gaming rigs can be had under $800.

This was of course the most egregious example of machine comparisons. Most of the time El Jeffe chose to just slightly spin the story. For example in evaluating the iMac versus the Dell, he equated the 2 machines as being “comparable” –in spite of the Mac being 33% faster!

Come on now Cult of Mac, don’t play the numbers game you always accuse other people off. a 33% faster CPU clock speed does NOT equate to a 33% faster computer. Especially when the iMac mentioned comes out of the box with half the RAM. Load up Photoshop on both and show me how that clock speed difference results in identical performance gains.

eSata – All Macs are all SATA all the time, eSata is just a card away

That’s interesting, and how exactly do I put this card in a Mac Mini, iMac, Macbook or Macbook Pro? The only computer with expandability starts at $2799. I would hardly make a blanket statement like that.

TV Tuners – Seriously? I only mention this because it’s the second time he’s brought it up, apparently it’s a big deal to the His Honor, but I’ve gotten my TV over cable since the 1980’s and since the 1990’s even that’s being supplanted by this thing called the Internet. Check it out Rog. One thing is for sure, I am absolutely not walking around the friggin airport with a set of rabbit ear antenna on my laptop.

Hmm, I have four in my computer, My dad has one, in team at work over half of us have them in our home PCs. Why? Windows Media Center, my home is filled with Xbox 360s that deliver DVR’d content around the house from my computer’s tuners. Again, apparently if Leigh doesn’t use them, nobody should.

All of this is forgetting for a moment that Apple was the first to bring you a Graphical User Interface, Firewire, Wireless networking, and continues to innovate things like multi touch, face recognition, streaming media – LOOK ROGER—NO RABBIT EARS!

So the key here is first to sell? Firewire, yea, Apple worked it out with Sony and co, but WiFi was available as an add in card for PCs before it was ever in a Mac. And Streaming Media? Really? Apple did that first? You might want to let Real Media and some of those guys know that, I am sure they would disagree.

Yes, lets. I’ll start now, with my working copy of OS X, and you can start whenever your vaporware Windows 7 ships. Let’s measure who has the highest productivity.

HAHA! Vaporware? I am running it on three computers right now, you might want to look up the definition of vaporware. Might I also mention that it’s rock solid, but then again so was Vista SP2 despite the media reputation…

Let me clue you into a secret “Jack”, we here in the cult, don’t really want you on our side. The proliferation of iPhones into the hands of Toothless Appalachian Hillbillies has reaffirmed to me at least that if anything we need to make these goddamned computers even more expensive. We need to get Jon Ive to design a Mac made out of virgin tears, and first kisses, for the explicit purposes of keeping it out the hands of the unwashed masses.

Ah, yes, that is the bullshit Apple Cult smugness I have grown to know and love. It doesn’t take long for the Mac to end up being deified and lifted to a place beyond the reach of us poor average computer users. Where does that leave me? I love both.

If you read the likes of Gizmodo, EnGadget, MacRumors, etc., the new Microsoft commercial is leaving a serious wake. People on both sides are in a tizzy and it’s pretty entertaining.

Laptop Hunters #1 – Lauren

I thought I would put out the flames for a minute and look at this in a very pragmatic way. I am in an interesting place because I actually think for the most part, Apple laptops are a pretty fair price for what you get. The problem comes in when you evaluate what you get against what you need. If we were to build a scenario for this particular young woman, her usage needs might look something like this:

• Use Microsoft Office for Word, Excel and Outlook.
• Browse the Web
• Use an IM Client
• iTunes/Zune to manage a MP3 player
• Manage some photos

Wow, when you take out gaming, editing video and high end graphics work, the needs of your average computer user look pretty pathetic. So based on this particular user, let’s do a reasonable comparison of the PC that Lauren chose against the standard $999 Macbook.

*90% of users do not have gigabit Ethernet or N capable wireless networks.
**The display is really scenario dependant, I called the 17” a win because the user was wanting that, but I wouldn’t consider the 13” a disadvantage to most users.

Now for a second, let’s compare the MacOS/Vista debate. The fact is that more than 90% of the world runs Windows. It’s pretty hard to make a reasonable no fan boy argument that it doesn’t work or isn’t usable. The world runs on Windows, it’s just a reality. Vista SP1 is perfectly stable and reliable, I run it on several machines every day (along with 3 Macs so don’t go there.) So taking that at face value, in this case you are paying $300 more for a machine that is likely slower giving the anemic RAM and can hold half as much data.

For our core user, it breaks down like this:

• She can use Office on both although the Windows version is much more feature rich. To be fair Office is more expensive than iWork, but you get much more and it’s an industry standard. Big win for PC here.
• On either platform she has the option of Safari or Firefox, but IE is Windows only. Odds are she isn’t using anything that requires IE. Wash in most cases.
• IM client wise it’s a wash, with the exception if iChat, all the clients are cross platform. Keep in mind that it’s an 90% Windows world so most of your friends aren’t using iChat anyway. Wash in most cases.
• If you are using an iPod (which you probably are but should really check out the Zune, I just traded my 160GB iPod Classic for my second Zune!) then it really doesn’t matter. If you want subscription based music you better go PC. Wash in most cases.
• Managing photos has lots of options, lots of people will use Photoshop elements, Google Picasa, etc. Windows Live Gallery is a fantastic product and iPhoto is amazing. I would give the technical win in this category to Mac because iPhoto is so good, but in reality the scenario is just as valid on Windows Live Gallery. Wash in most cases.

So what does this all mean? It sounds like it all hinges on how important her Office needs are. If she is your average user making some simple spreadsheets and Word documents, then you can’t go wrong either way. If you need advanced Office work you might want to go PC. I am betting for Lauren it’s a Wash there too. Given that, we still have $300 bucks sitting out there.

Now I will recap a conversation I had with my dad this week. He is considering getting a laptop to replace his aging PC. Want to know what his budget is? He wants to spend around $500. That’s where things get more complicated. $1,000 is NOT the average personal computer budget anymore. Wal Mart sells perfectly “capable” laptops for $389. You can get net books for a few hundred dollars. I hate to bring up the word recession, but if there was a time where price mattered it’s now. It’s time the Apple Fan boys quit saying “but it has an aluminum case!” because nobody really cares.

UPDATE: My dad did buy a new PC, he decided to go with a desktop. He got an LX series Gateway desktop, 2.66Ghz Quad Core Intel, 8GB Ram, 640GB HD, Vista Premium 64, 1GB GT120 nVidia video, TV Tuner, 15-n-1 card reader, Remote..$779. That’s $179 more than the cheapest Mac you can buy.

The whole argument is silly. We bloggers, blog commenters, and flamers are all pretty tech savvy users. Of course we are going to want more from our computer than a $500 machine offers. We all pitched in to get my mother a $500 Dell for Christmas a couple years ago. She still loves it, uses it every day and it works just fine. Interesting…

(FYI, I wrote this on a PC sitting right beside an equally powerful iMac that I use most of the time. Why? Because I would die without Windows Live Writer. I would consider that proof that it’s the scenario that matters, not the machine.)