Do mac users get it tough ?

Hi everyone !

For one of my computer class in college I have to write an essay about anything computer-related. Being one of the only mac users in the whole school (around 4500 students) I've decided to write my essay about mac/apple so people with little or no knowledge about the subject could learn a bit (the essays will be presented in-class after the teacher corrected them). When I talk to people around me about mac, they all have the same answer: "Yeah, it looks cool but nothing is compatible with that !"... which is totally wrong. Being a switcher myself (loving my iBook since 4 months now) I know that I can accomplish all the tasks I did on windows & linux on my mac.

Recently on Inside Mac Radio (very cool podcast, for those who didn't know about it already) I've heard that a very popular web system used by alot of multi-nationals (ie. American Express) does not support mac, and that some companies even refuse to hire mac users. It made me think that maybe being a mac user is hard afterall...

That's what I will write my essay on. "Do mac users get it tough?". I would like if anyone could give his/her opinion on the subject and maybe share personnal stories that could help me to write my text. It would be very appreciated ! Ps: English is not my first language so sorry for the mistakes neye:

Regards,
- Alex

I would call it Do Mac Users Have It Tough or Why Don't Mac Users get Respect?

It can be difficult on the odd occasion but to be honest, I rarely find problems, the fact I can share mostly all documents I used, such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, graphics, and other bits and pieces between the two it's pretty easy.

I remember at University when we did group presentations. Everyone would have a PC Laptop or use the PC Laptop set up, of course my presentation was done in Keynote... Plugged in the PowerBook and everyone was like, erm - what the devil is that. :flower: And it worked just fine and my presentation didn't look the worse for being on the Mac.

Some websites can indeed be a pain to access, I remember at work at the AppleCentre that the finance company we used (Clydesdale Bank) that it would only work on IE on PC.

I think in such instances like that it's Mac users getting a rough deal because the eejit who designed the latter service didn't even consider doing things in a compatible manner to the standards that are out there.

However, it does depend how esoteric your needs are. Personally I only have Macs and owned a Dell laptop for a brief 2 years. Glad to see the back of it. It was dull and boring. I just simply don't need a PC.

My HTML/PHP stuff is compatible on whatever, I develop using Cocoa, XCode and Objective C for the Mac so I'm not fussed about code portability, and my work in Word, Photoshop and potentially Painter are all PC Compatible.

The only thing I don't have is MS Access... Yes I know it's not the greatest thing ever, but the system I designed for a business actually makes use of Access at its best, shows what good programming and knowledge of access' quirks can produce, this link is the source code to a payments system for example...

http://sunshinesista.plus.com/~Vicky/payment_sys.txt

So for supporting that company, Access native on the Mac would be nice, but that said - it's the only reason VirtualPC inhabits my PC!

But overall, I think it's PC users who get the rough deal :flower:

Vicky

Although, we might sometimes have it hard, but that's just because we live in a PC world and only that.

While more things might be compatible with PCs, but so are all viruses, worms, trojans, spyware -- you name it. Think about how much time Windows users spend updating all those spyware and virus scanners, and then scan their computers, which takes a good amount of time. Now if you compare what mac user has to do to protect themselves, I'm guessing that the most of us don't even have a virus scan installed on our macs nor do need spyware scanners either. Our downtime, when using macs is minimal -- maintenance doesn't get in the way like it does for windows users.

While there might be more software for PC's than for mac, just look at mac software compared to windows' software. In the PC world, software is quantity over quality; however, with mac, it's quality over quantity. If you look at Microsoft Office 2004 for the mac and Microsoft Office for windows, the mac version is way better than the one for windows.

So one could say being small, is a big advantage.

Well, I'm, in the design field, and i can tell you that someone who has a mac feels prestigious. My design class is equipped with the latest G5 and 20'' display only and they still have some pc because most of the students are familiar with pc when they enter school.

But it's quite sad that most students refuse to learn on the G5 and will rather do their work back home on their pc. They just admire the nice screen but don't learn anything about the cool features of the OS.

I guess that being in the design field is different from those who do programming etc. But honestly, a designer who does not know how to use a mac is a loser. Most of the time, when you apply for a designer job, you'll require to know both Mac & PC.

Btw, most of the printing firms use Mac for print productions. This is the standard. As well as i know in Singapore.

Hope that helps... =)

Thanks for the answers everyone ! I will start the writing tonight If anyone else has comments feel free to post them

I think the hardest part is when you end up in a group of folks and the conversation turns to computers. Many people act very...shall we say "odd" when they learn you a Mac user. It's like telling them that you have Leprosy or something. You even get the odd "Why in the **** do you bother with a Mac" or things of that nature. It is amazing how much bigotry there is out there against Mac users and Apple itself. Many lifelong PC users feel the need to tell you how dumb you are for using a Mac and will lecture on how superior the PC is. Heck, my own brother still does it, but my sister in law (his wife) is a Mac user too.

Scott Kelby has whole chapters dedicated to this in his book Macintosh: The Naked Truth.

It's not just Mac users...anyone who doesn't fall into the Windows mainstream can expect to have some difficulty from time to time. Linux users most notably.

If you're writing an essay or giving a presentation, try to keep it light. Pissing people off by ranting about how stoopid Windows users can be will reflect badly on you and the Mac. Maybe talk about how easy it is to be ignorant about systems other than Windows, rather than trying to correct every misconception that anyone ever had.

That's what forums are for. :mac:

yea go for constructive critisism rather then a big long rant. Also you have to mention linux in there to balance the mix up.

baggss: thanks for the link !
inflexion: I will write a bit about linux, I mostly want to learn new stuff to people who see computers as PC/Windows..

Thanks alot !