What made you decide to switch?

SoundsGood · Mar 11, 2007

BoA said:
if you're not counting those OLD Tandys...

Gotta love those TRS-80s!

jacefox · Mar 11, 2007

The reasons I switched:

1. Windows - too many probs.
2. Wanna spend time with my 2 yr old son - Windows wouldn't let me do that as much because it kept crashing or causing some problem that would eventually lead me to FDISK the hard drive and reload everything.

3. Always wanted a Mac. Never could get one as college I go to use nothing but PC's. At least their not Dell's. Custom builds from a local PC shop.
4. Price tag compromised with my budget - couldn't afford a 2k notebook - but a Macbook - I love it!

Got a Macbook and have never been happier. Now saving $$$ to get my wife one - she's in graphics design and a lot of graphic design companies now requiring person to know OS X where I live.

Mac&Cheese · Mar 12, 2007

Upgrade to Windows Vista (don't get me started). Horrible customer service by Microsoft and their non-English speaking representatives.

Great online chat with Apple sales to help me choose a Mac (they have command of the English languag).

Discount through school.

Willem · Mar 12, 2007

I got a small iBook about a year ago to test drive the Mac platform and liked what I saw. I now have a MacBook Pro and I'm not looking back.

Windows is dead to me.

zeroz52 · Mar 12, 2007

punkr0x0r said:
1. OS X
2. Suits my needs better (photoshop, 3d animation, flash, Final Cut, etc)
3. iLife
4. Asthetics
5. Safari
6. No Virus/Spyware
7. All of the "cool" freeware available
8. The feel of OS X
9. Dock/Menu Bar
10. How dragging/dropping works more efficiently/better than in Windows
11. Something different
12. I spend more time using my computer than tinkering/fixing it.
13. The eye candy.

I will be getting a Macbook very soon and this pretty much sums up why. Especially:
12. I spend more time using my computer than tinkering/fixing it.
I'm lookin forward to this as I have become the IT department for my entire family and the last thing I want to do is have to fix/reformat/scan/rebuild my own comp. :black:

Tak · Mar 13, 2007

Taken from my live Journal.

=========================

I was a Microsoft user "and pc tech" since Dos 3 until three months ago. I bought a used Power Book G4 for curiosity's sake, thats all it took.

I now own three Macs, and all are online. Still no viruses, still no adware, and the only thing I've gotten to crash is the godawful java plug in for Firefox, an since it works fine in Safari, its hardly Apple's fault.

Sometimes its hard Not to be smug, I went to some geek gatherings recently and got all kinds of hassling for going to the "dark side" and I'm still trying to figure out, The Dark side of what? Computers thats don't freeze on me? Computers that are not choked in extra pointless terminate and stay resident processes?

And best of all no daily 40 minute security regimen to keep my computer clean, just because I had it online, to only have re-os every six months when the registry starts to go senile.

I don't know where the idea that if your computer is actually friendly and easy to use, then you must be an idiot got started. Its pure geek, big D*ckism. I'm heartily sick of fixing other peoples broken windows boxes. And that means anyone who does not know what a reg editor is. Or people who download "spyware removers" from pop up windows.

Most of my friends who still have tech jobs, "my tech job went to India sadly" have switched, and I suspect Apples demographic is about to take a sharp spike in the "people who know how a computer works" demographic.

If its any consolation, iTunes is still a bloated pos. But right now the "smug" people are the people with Windows based PCs, the ones who can't stand the idea that viruses, crashes, malware, pop ups and bloatware are a way of life, and that anybody who's computer is NOT an infected mess has to be a lying zombie for Steve Jobs, or a Mac "Fanboy". During the days of "Mac Crash" I'd have bought that, but now, no. I've seen it and it won't wash.

The only people offended by the I'm a Mac, I'm a PC ads, are the ones who KNOW how bad Windows is actually getting and don't want to admit it, for them its just a bit too close to home.

I'd like to thank Microsoft for Vista, Media player 11, and the Zune. "Can you say wakeup call?" Without the release of these three fine products, I would not be on a MacBook Pro today.

gtg622r · Mar 13, 2007

The reasons I switched are basic, and some have already been used:
-Needed a laptop for school
-Aesthetically pleasing to the eye
-Wanted to try something new
-Didn't want to mess with Windows Vista
-Liked the reputation

musicforme · Mar 21, 2007

I don't own a Mac yet, but below is why I plan on buying one hopefully in the next four or five months.

1) I first owned a PC in 1991 after selling my Commodore Amiga 500. From that time until 2006 I actively built and configured my own PCs. I used to really enjoy taking apart a PC and upgrading the components. Whether it was figuring out DOS 4.1 all the way through Windows Server 2003, I've had my hands in a Microsoft operating system. I'm a MCSE+Internet on Windows NT 4.0 and a MCSE on Windows 2000 and work on a team that supports approx 300 Wintel servers in a web hosting environment for a large financial company.

2) My wife works in the administration of a local school district and once used the old school iMacs when she was a special education teacher seven years ago. She still helps teachers with their Macs, so her comfort level with a Mac is already high and not opposed to switching from a home Windows machine. She gets frustrated with having to figure out how to make things work on the home PC.

3) As I mentioned in #1, I work with Windows on a daily basis and see how one must stay up to date with security patches to stay protected (our compliance team demands and tracks it). The amount of time it takes to keep everything patched for the latest high impact patches has really worn me down. After working with Server 2003 and seeing how Microsoft "improved" its security from a desktop perspective, I don't even want to touch Vista. The reviews I've read of Vista only confirmed what I expected.

4) My home PC is just over four years old now and is in need of a hardware refresh. While it performed well over the past four years, my wife and I recently had our first child and I'm starting to dabble with video editing. It became painfully clear that my current PC is inadequate when it took 10 minutes to render a 1 minute uncompressed .avi clip to a WMV9 file. I'm not looking forward to the render its going to take on the compilation of clips I'm currently working on.

5) I need to gain experience with the Unix OS. We're slowly moving to a more Unix based web infrastructure at work and I've looked at the various flavors of Linux out of curiosity. By having a iMac as my main pc, I'll have more opportunities to experiment with the file permissions, processes, and Apache from a command line. It is my understanding that the Mac OS is derived from BSD Unix which should be close enough to Solaris and Red Hat we use at work.

6) I used to do Mac support back in 1992 on the old Quadras and Powerbooks. I only worked in that job for about 3 months before I was laid-off. My Mac experience back then was nill, but I quickly picked it up and was able to do desktop support for a joint venture between Nortel and Motorola.

All this being said, I'm really looking forward to owning a Mac in the not too distant future.

ChiGirlInTexas · Mar 23, 2007

PC User Since 1984 -- Now a Macbook Pro Owner!

I'm so excited to be a Mac owner, I can hardly believe I'm writing this! I have been in the Information Technology world since 1979, and bought my first PC back in 1984--an IBM clone that ran DOS and had 2 floppy drives...I thought I was so cool! It cost $1400 and didn't even have a hard drive! Oh you young people, you didn't have to suffer through what we did!

Anyway, I won't bore you with all the years in between. The only other thing I'll say is, several years ago, I used IBM's OS/2 at work and really liked it. But IBM was stingy with their marketing....and Bill Gates was just so smart...and the rest is history. Windows NT was OK, but I've been the victim of Windows 95, Windows Me, Windows 98, etc. and Internet Explorer hangs on me more times than I can say. The thought of moving to Vista after reading the reviews was more than I could bear.

I must admit the commercials for Mac with the cute young man and the dorky guy were pretty effective for me, especially promoting no viruses. My new Mac is pretty sexy....

I hope the learning curve isn't too steep for an old fogey like me (I'm 49) but I do tend to learn pretty quickly and I'm pretty interested and pretty motivated. I love the machine and am very impressed with it. Even the packaging is appealing. It worked straight out of the box, and I've not had any problems with it that I haven't been able to figure out. The screen is gorgeous, typing is comfortable, startup/shutdown quick, and most everything seems to be intuitive. What's not to like? Yes, it was a bit expensive, but I looked at it as a long-term investment, and the Mac was more of a Lexus as opposed to a Chevy. I hope to get a lot more miles out of this baby with fewer breakdowns over the the long haul...

Looking forward to lots of conversations with you all!

ChiGirl

dakineyj · Mar 23, 2007

For me it was the mounds of home movies that were dumped in my lap. I was getting more and more into making movies. My Alienware went through 5 DVD's before a good one came out....

dtravis7 · Mar 23, 2007

I really never switched. As a youngster I got to mess with first a Lisa then a Plus later. Loved the way they worked but never could afford the prices. Over the years Macs got lower and lower in cost and I got more $$$ and got sick of all the home made Windows boxes I built and Linux lacking for me in so many ways, I got my first used Mac. Never looked back. I finally had what I had always wanted but could not afford.

I still use PC's for my line of work (Computer and Network tech) and for some games, but Macs for everything else.

If I had to pick one reason though I would single out Mac OSX.

I thought Devilboys answer was great also! :spook:

Beatles4Life · Mar 23, 2007

I grew up on Windows computers, but I really only used them for typing papers for school. Unfortunately, even with that limited exposure, I still found that every time I would sit down in front of our family computer (a Dell) to type something, it always seemed to crash on me.

When I was a senior in high school, I got my first real exposure to Macs. In my yearbook class, we had a bunch of iMacs in various colors that we used for making all of the yearbook pages. The green iMac was the "server" computer, and it amazed me that all of the other computers in the yearbook room were connected to this green iMac. Even though the iMacs were constantly crashing on us (this was probably because they weren't in very good shape to begin with), I still enjoyed using them and found that they were much easier to use than our clunky Dell at home with XP.

When I went off to college, my parents got me a Power Mac G4 as a graduation present. I promptly named him Ian Iachimoe. At the time I didn't know very much about Macs, but I was amazed to discover that once I had plugged all of Ian's cords into their proper sockets, he just worked.

Now I am a senior in college and I still have Ian Iachimoe the Power Mac G4. I also have an iBook G4 named Madamoiselle Kitty, and I love them both to bits. They're wonderful machines, and they've been so good to me, which makes me happy, especially right now while I'm writing my thesis. :flower:

ibookclamman300 · Mar 23, 2007

using my uncles 17" powerbook g4 last summer to edit a roadtrip video. It convinced me to switch, and i was mostly using final cut hd and not much else.

iKitten · Mar 24, 2007

fragged3d said:
How would this effect a users experience? Well first when a program is installed in windows it scatters all these little files and associates itself with certain dll files. This effects a users experience when he/she wants rid of the program, the program is never fully gone and if the wrong dll's are trashed when you uninstall it creates problems elsewhere on the computer. The next thing is the fact that it fragments a hard drive and leaves a digital trail. When you do this a bunch of time you will notice the awefull slowdown associated from windows. When I install a program on my MB it doesn't take forever and when I'm finished with it I drag one file to the trash and I'm ridden of it. So OS X is more organized than Windows!

<R>

Bless you a ton, fragged3d! You've thoroughly described what I couldn't have explained but what has nearly reduced my to tears as I waited for the XP search dog to go looking through my entire hard drive for a file!
I've wanted a new notebook because my Thinkpad is five years old, hasn't enough hard drive space, can't play dvds, can't burn cds (I don't want to waste money on a drive for it!), and I want to record and compose a lot of music. Was considering the Panasonic Toughbook - sweet little machine - before a friend suggested I look at the MacBook. I haven't gotten the Mac yet (saving up) but I can't imagine paying $800-1,000 more for the Toughbook when it comes with fewer amenities than the low end MacBook! Not to mention, Vista???

veritas · Mar 26, 2007

i always liked em. but my parents never wanted to buy one cuz they are pricey. i finnaly got a good payin job and saved up for one. also because of video editing my other 2 pcs read the camera 2 times and i was never able to import footage ever again.

.

TheThirdMan · Mar 26, 2007

Reliability, lower maintenance time, faster, more productive, more efficient.

MaDDoG · Mar 27, 2007

Jbyrd said:
1. The new intel based macs (its sort of like having two computers for the price of one).
2. Asthetics- Even as a PC user I thought that Apple had a great design department.
3. Reputation- Macs have a good reputation of usability, reliability, and security.
4. The PC vs. Mac ads
5. Service. I am moving to Argentina at the end of the month and I liked the fact that there are at least two Apple resellers in Buenos Aires.

Pretty much the same as Jbyrd.....except I'm not moving to Argentina that I know of.
Add to that viruses, spyware, spam, trojans etc, regular break downs, and .....ctrl alt delete

FireEyedBoy · Mar 27, 2007

I've been a PC user since I was very little, and ever since then I have spent a large share of my life on the computer. My family got an old box with DOS on it and I spent tons of time trying to make stuff work and play little games my parents bought for me--coloring book games, 8-bit spelling games and Commander Keen (woohoo!). Once the first family on our block got Windows 95 running, it was the beginning of the end.

I got "my" first PC from my stepdad when his business was getting rid of some old computers, so it was a peice of junk computer with Windows NT that I, as an energetic 10-year-old, would get very frustrated with--NT was not meant to play games, chat, or surf the internet--or at least I sure had trouble with it. I upgraded my PC situation a few more times before finally buying my own computer about three and a half years ago--a Dell desktop for about $1500 Canadian.

To be perfectly honest, my Dell has served me well. It wasn't until recently that I began to have issues with it--viruses and spyware finally snuck in about six months ago and no matter how hard I try, my computer has been running slower and slower ever since. Even doing simple tasks becomes a chore alot of the time when things run so sluggishly. So, in the last couple months, I have been looking at options for a new computer. I have wanted a laptop for years and years--since the laptop computer was first introduced to the market--so I was definately going to go down that road.

I will admit that the thing that first got me even inspecting the offchance of getting a Mac computer was the Get A Mac ads here in North America--I found them amusing, and I genuinely wanted to find out more. In addition, a couple writers of the blogs I read have posted photos/written about their Mac computers, so it's been something that has interested me for a long time. After some inspection of the Apple product line, and with careful deliberation, I have decided to pick myself up a 2.0 GHz C2D White Macbook in the next few weeks. Money is the only thing that is holding me from buying one this very instant, but I have just started a new job, so some new money needs to come in over the next few paycheques.

Needless to say, I am ridiculously excited. I have been lurking around Mac-Forums.com and reading a host of Apple blogs for the last month or so trying to take in as much information as I can before my purchase. Of course, once the day comes (I suspect it will be around the middle to the end of April) , there will be questions aplenty and pictures galore.

Thanks everyone for being such a helpful group of folks. I work at Staples (an office supply store that sells computers and alot of home stuff as well) and whenever anyone is curious to explore further into the Mac world than I can show them at the store, the first place I refer them to is Mac-Forums.com, cause you guys are so great.

mikeyman · Mar 27, 2007

1. I liked the design
2. Intel processors, superceeded my pc
3. Fed up of virus's and spyware
4. Wanted to try something new
5. I thought it would help me with my graphic design work
6. I liked my uncles mac ^_^
7. No more windows aka. NO MORE RUBISH OS
8. Didnt want to use linux
9. Reliable, built well
10. Its a mac

mac = sexy, fast, easy to use, virus free, innovative, error free *mainly*, cheaper OS, beautiful design.

Also It goes well with my ipod

knightlie · Mar 27, 2007

The constant stream of problems I had with Windows XP, culminating it it just deciding it wasn't going to start up any more, was so bad that I was just constantly getting angry with it. I don't like being angry, so I ordered an Intel iMac within a week of it being launched and immediately relegated the PC to games. Since then I've had no mysterious crashes, annoying delays (Windows takes 20 seconds to move a file to the trash???), and no stupid, irritating pop-up balloons telling me something I just don't need to know.

I've just got a MacBook to use for Java development and studying and it's just about the coolest thing I've ever seen. Nice keyboard, multi-touch trackpad, great screen, and I can swap virtual desktops by tilting it from side to side. Computing doesn't get any better than this...