The Mac Emperor Has No Clothes

On Windows 7:

Hard to tell what my long term reliability will be on the MBP. My previous laptop, which I used for 4 years before I bought my macbook pro had it's share of problems, in spite of being a $2200 higher end system for it's time. Motherboard, power supply, and battery. My Mac desktop is nearly 4 years old, and hasn't had any problems. My Windows desktops have generally been reliable, except for hard drives and memory in a few cases. Since the technology is the same for both Mac and WIndows, I would have to consider long term reliability a push. I've had more Windows problems, but I've run Windows much longer.

I guess the thing that makes me feel most comfortable about the Mac is the Unix underpinnings. I've used Unix or Unix like systems professionally for 21 years. I've only used capable Windows systems for 15 years (since NT 4). So, in OSX, I'm comfortable with dropping down to the command line and having a powerful command line. Windows has more powerful shells now, but the default one is still pretty limited.

You forgot to mention the undocumented error codes. THAT is a problem and a legitimate gripe.

Nothing is perfect but you have to admit, a Mac has 10x more street cred than any PC

Apple is a religeon - not a technology.

I purchased a MacBook Pro 15 several months ago and FINALLY found a way to make it semi-useful.
I wiped the disk of all things Mac and loaded Windows 8 Developer Preview.
I still need to use a USB keyboard to get a full set of keys, but at least it's no longer an aluminum paper weight :)

Here's an example of one of the things that *I think* is Mac only. Small niceties like this make a big difference.

Oh, and in case you can't see it (try clicking on the image), it's a dialog that intercepted my mistaken attempt to give a GIF file a JPG extension and asked me if this is something I really wanted to do.

The author seemed more knowledgeable in responding to comments than in writing more convincing details in article itself.
I am sure his intention was to gain the knowledge and that truly satisfied by other people's comments here!
Interesting way.. say Mac is bad with limited unconvincing facts and wait for community to educate you.
Standard of Information Week is in big ?

Larry, the question you asked is, "why is the Mac better?" and another way to put that is, "why is the Mac worth the $300 price premium?"
Speaking as the father of a satisfied Mac user (but, full disclosure with less personal experience), I can say this:

OS Features: Distinctive UI, that many find intuitive and useful. Pioneer in using multi-touch gestures, which provides leaps in productivity in certain areas.
Better integration with iPods and iPads. Not that PCs do this badly, but Macs do it better.
Better bundled SW: Time Machine, Spotlight, Expose/Mission Control,iPhoto are examples.

Quality of assembly and parts are superior to some Wintel boxes; some Wintel are equal to Apple.

Thunderbolt has potential; it may catch on, or it may have a limited impact as FireWire did.

Yes, my family member could use BootCamp to run an instance of Windows on her MacBookPro -- but only after shelling out additional $$ to purchase that Windows instance.

Is it worth the cost delta? Maybe; for many, shifting the OS ecosystem and reducing (but not 100% eliminating, one has to say) the exposure to malware is worth the small cost delta. $300 or $400 spread over a 3 or 4 year useful life of a box is a small cost delta, IMHO.

You can blame part of the NTFS issues on Microsoft. They kept such a tight hold on the format for so long that no one else ever got to utilize it correctly (iirc, it had to be completely reverse engineered to even get it usable on anything other than a Windows machine). BUT - it's an issues easily addressed by downloading MacFUSE from Google. Which makes interacting with NTFS volumes seamless on MacOS. Again, though, it's not an Apple issue, per se.

The keyboard issue is one that is completely subjective. You either like the Mac keyboard or you don't. Personally, I didn't think I would like it. It's what kept me from buying a MacBook for as long as I did. But I'm glad I did. And I love the keyboard on the MacBook. I only wish that it were backlit like the MacBook Pro (incidentally, the backlighting has nothing at all to do with the spacing of the keys on a Mac).

You're also missing some of the things the Mac brings to the table that a Windows machine doesn't. Primary for me is that it is basically a fully functional Unix machine with a fantastic UI. So I have all of the Unix tools I want at my fingertips but don't have to mess with them in day to day use. Windows is pretty terrible underneath the Explorer shell.

But what it comes down to for me is that MacOS tends to just stay out of my way (and even occasionally anticipates what I want to do) whereas with Windows, I'm always having to tinker with things JUST to make it do what it's supposed to do. In short, the Mac "just works." And I have a powerful Windows desktop machine, a Linux (OpenSuSE 11.4) machine that serves mostly as a server but does get some workstation use, and my MacBook. I spend 90% of my time on my MacBook. Because it's just that much more enjoyable an experience.

This is another point I'll agree on, parenthetical to the battery life point. My Windows notebook is slow to go to sleep and slow to come out. It does have 8GB RAM, but the Mac is in bed and snoring long before my Thinkpad has its jammies on.

I'm sure there's an app for that. Thank you for sharing.

"For one, the lack of an actual right-click feature is silly to me. "

The Magic Mouse supports a left and right click. Just turn it on in System Prefs.

"Secondly, the lack of a simple way to maximize a window is similarly frustrating."

This *was* a design philosophy of the Mac. Lion eliminates the Windows reluctance by adding the Windows-style full-screen.

"Third, the app switching is not as robust as it is in Windows"

Expose and Mission Control would disagree with that opinion.

"I think the source of the errors is that the external hard disk was formatted NTFS and there were some permissions set on files and, in at least one case, a file was encrypted with NTFS encryption."

Oh please. Plug a Mac-formatted hard drive into your Windows box and see what happens. Windows has zero support for NTFS. Mac has read support for NTFS. As to your specific error, can't say. I've never had a problem plugging in an NTFS-formatted thumb drive nor external hard drive - OS X always happily reads the volume.

As to your ThinkPad. I'm not sure why you compared a 15" Macbook to a 12" ThinkPad. (Actually I am. Haters gotta hate.) 13" MacBook Pro, 8GB/500GB with 3-year AppleCare is $1648. In other words, a hair under $150 LESS than your ThinkPad. It has 802.11n built-in. It has copper gigabit built in. It has Firewire, USB 2.0, and Thunderbolt built in. It has SDXC built in. Concerned over the 2.4GHz vs 2.6GHz? $1948 gets you the 2.8GHz i7 to your 2.6GHz i5, and 250GB more drive space, with the warranty.

"Have I mentioned that I hate the Mac keyboard?" Have I mentioned how I hate the red pointer stuck in home row? Haters gotta hate. Proof that you're a hater? The PCjr keyboard is nothing at all like the Macbook Pro keyboard Nothing. At. All.
http://www.apple.com/macbookpr...

"The way they make the backlighting visible is to put gigantic gaps between the keys. It is not a comfortable keyboard."

Sigh. The gap is no bigger than a standard desktop keyboard. It is entirely comfortable for exactly that reason. Except for the key travel, which is of course limited because, you know, IT'S A LAPTOP, the keyboard is otherwise the normal size of a desktop keyboard.

"I think I know Windows pretty well and I haven't seen anything important about OS X that it does better."

I don't have room here to address that. Topics I'd address are UNIX vs Windows internals. Bottlenecks and throughput in kernel threads and processes.

"Go tell me I'm wrong. Tell me exactly why the Mac is better. Personally, I think the emperor has no clothes."

Facts.
1. Time Machine - THIS ALONE is all that needs be said.
2. Longer battery life
3. Runs both Mac and Windows apps, with Windows either virtualized or as a full-blown operating system via Bootcamp
4. Multi-touch trackpad
5. Firewire
6. Thunderbolt
7. Native RW support for HPFS and ExFat and R support for NTFS
8. Hibernate and sleep modes work reliably
9. Integrated app functionality out of the box
10. Boot time
11. Expose & Mission Control
12. Target disk mode
13. Preview app
14. Installing apps and hardware requires fewer reboots
15. Tech support is not farmed out to other countries where English is an optional language
16. Back to Me works better than Remote Access
17. Spotlight
18. Third-party hardware support and drivers
19. Universal Access
20. When I power up a new Mac, I don't have tons of software that need an app like PC Decrapifier to clean up.
21. The integration between my Apple products is rock-solid reliable and consistent.
22. Joining wireless networks is easier.
23. Setting up network services (http, ftp, webdav, filesharing, etc,etc) is quicker and easier.

Look, if you want to be a Windows guy, be a Windows guy. Good on ya. But inflammatory commentary like this is just sad. And your lack of fact-checking makes me wonder how you got a job at Byte. And it makes me miss the Byte magazine I read in the 80s.

I also very RARELY have a need to reboot my Early 2011 MBP. I love this thing to death, actually. It needed a reboot after the EFI Firmware update that Apple pushed for it, but before that and the OS X 10.7.2 update, it was, I think the OSX 10.7.1 update that last rebooted the machine. I usually just close it and let it sleep...

My Windows Machines could never do this and come back as quickly (nearly instantly). Something almost always borks the resume and makes me reboot instead. There more here that needs to be explored...

The MacBook Pro 13" model A1278 shipped Feb 24 2011 with the following:
$1,199 for the 2.3GHz Intel Core i5 or
$1,499 for the 2.7GHz Core i7 (2415M, 2620M) ("Sandy Bridge")
Intel HD Graphics 3000 GPU
4 or 8Gb RAM

The Thinkpad x201 does not have Firewire 400 or 800 or Thunderbolt.

Thunderbolt is good for far more than just attaching big RAID arrays though anyone who does video editing, publishing or has a home media centre will salivate over.

Thunderbolt is the power of the PCIe bus combined with the plug & playability and bus power of Firewire or USB. It is capable of daisy-chaining monitors, supports break-out PCI card cases, allows external monitors to have built-in GPUs, webcams, speakers, hard disks etc all sharing the vast bandwidth of a single Thunderbolt cable. Think of everything your desktop PC could have all available over a single cable for your laptop - the ultimate docking station.

Just because you may not be a power user doesn't mean you can brush off the huge advantages, potential and future-proofing Thunderbolt provides.

However, let's actually compare the currently shipping 13" models from Lenovo and Apple's online stores for more of an apples to Apples comparison:

ThinkPad X1
- Core i5 2.5GHz
- 8GB RAM
- 320GB HDD (max)
- 13.3" LCD (1366x768)
- Intel HD Graphics 3000 GPU
- Bluetooth 3.0
- 2 x USB 2.0/eSATA
- 1 x USB 3.0
- MiniDisplayport
- Intel Centrino Wireless-N 1000
- Windows 7 Pro 64
- 1 year warranty
- 5.2 hr battery
- 21.3mm at thickest point
- 1.69kg
- NO DVD drive
= $2,310 currently on sale for $1,924

MacBook Pro 13"
- Core i7 2.8GHz
- 8GB RAM
- 750GB HDD (750GB option)
- 13.3" LED backlit LCD (1280x900)
- Intel HD Graphics 3000 GPU
- Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR
- 802.11n wifi
- 2 x USB 2.0
- 1 x Firewire 800
- 1 x Thunderbolt (MiniDisplayport compatible)
- Mac OS X Lion (64 bit)
- 1 year warranty
- 7 hr battery
- 24.1mm thick
- 2.04kg
- DVD burner
= $1,699

or maybe you want a thin and light minus the DVD:

MacBook Air 13"
- Core i7 1.8GHz
- 256GB SSD
- 4GB of RAM
- 13.3" LED backlit LCD (1440x900)
- Intel HD Graphics 3000 GPU
- 802.11n wifi
- Bluetooth 4.0
- 2 x USB 2.0
- 1 x Thunderbolt (MiniDisplayport compatible)
- Mac OS X Lion (64 bit)
- 1 year warranty
- 17mm at thickest point
- 7 hr battery
- 1.35kg
- NO DVD drive
= $1,699

Hard to get an exact match of configs, but as you can see Apple is very competitive when you actually compare computers of similar specs.

Dude, your writing skill is as poor as mine. Difference is, I'm not employed to write commentaries. I use Mac(s) and I'd marry one if it could cook and make sweet love.

Happy to oblige. What exactly did he say? He got a fail message on a large file transfer, as if that never, ever happens on Windows. He doesn't like the Apple keyboard, which is a matter of taste. And that's it! Then he wraps up with "Go tell me I'm wrong. Tell me exactly why the Mac is better." This is a column? It's not even a good whine. It's...nothing.

You haven't rebooted in over 3 months? When's the last time you ran Software Update?

In the last year or so the Windows desktop I'm on at the moment has only been rebooted for patches which required it. Windows 7 is no less stable than a Mac (unless you install crappy drivers on it, which would also hose a Mac).

I'm pretty sure my Thinkpad has firewire. It would be nice to have Thunderbolt, but who's ever going to daisy chain raid arrays to a notebook? More USB ports are a much more practical feature.

And according to the Wayback machine (http://web.archive.org/web/201... on February 15 of this year, more than a month after I bought my Thinkpad, the higher-end 13-inch Macbook Pro had this config:

Intel Core 2 Duo
4GB Memory
320GB hard drive
SD card slot
Built-in battery (10 hours)2
NVIDIA GeForce 320M graphics
$1,499.00

Try again.

Or you could use Expose or Mission Control which give you far greater and more powerful app and window switching.

Turn on Universal Access in the System Preferences on the Mac and you have complete keyboard control of *everything* in every program on the Mac including focus.

It gives you the combined features of JAWS and ZoomText on a PC (worth thousands of dollars on the PC) but compatible at the system level - fantastic for those with disabilities as well as able-bodied.

(I agree Outlook for Mac misses a lot the Windows version has - blame MS for that).

Yes, the time difference does make comparison a little more challenging. However, the only difference with the earlier MacBook Pro 13" from February this year is the CPU.

Every other spec is the same including the GPU which is 170% faster than the Thinkpad, the larger screen size, HDD, the slim form factor, the video-out options etc.

And yes, I said the Lenovo has 3 USB ports, but you're still ignoring the fact that the MBP has Firewire 800 and more importantly the gob-smackingly fast Thunderbolt.

What other PC laptop has an interface built-in that has over 4x more bandwidth than even 8Gbps fibre-channel (Thunderbolt is bi-directional & 2-channel so has 4 x 10Gbps bandwidth) allowing you to daisy-chain up to 6 amazingly fast RAID arrays, multiple monitors when you need to do serious heavy lifting?

As I say, your price comparison is seriously distorted.

I am one of those people who said to Larry to give it some more time. I switched from Windows to OS X about 3.5 years ago. The switch was painful. But about four months in, things started to get a lot easier. I found that drag and drop worked where I intuited it would (something that didn't happen on the current versions of Windows then... XP and Vista). In fact, it seems that no matter where you try to drag an object, something besides a bonk happens. It may not always be what you intended, but when you figure out what happened, it usually makes sense.

My favorite drag and drop by the way is from Skitch to, well anything,.. most mostly Outlook for Mac. The ability to do that eliminates some large number of keystrokes, greatly improving my productivity. There are more examples, but they're not worth going into because what I don't know (and in major fairness to Larry), is how far along Windows 7 has come in terms of addressing the shortcomings of it's predecessors.

It's the little nuanced stuff like drag and drop working everywhere that makes a big difference. But if the gap has been closed on that (not counting the dragging of a protected NTFS files), then I'd be the first one to say bravo.

Another little anecdotal story: I recently had a font problem on my mac. I'd pick one font for Powerpoint. But Zapf Dingbats would show up instead. It was driving me nuts. I called the same "excellent IT department" that Larry uses and they remoted into my Mac, fixed it, and told me to reboot when I get the chance. About 2 months later (yes, it was that long before I had to use powerpoint again), I opened up powerpoint and much to my dismay, Zapf Dingbats.

So, I called the most excellent IT department again. The tech remoted in and then over the phone said, uh, David, you haven't rebooted your computer in three months. I laughed out loud at that. But, to the words that Larry heard .. it just works... that's what I think of when I think of my Mac. I never have to reboot the thing. Meanwhile, the other Windows PCs in my house must be constantly rebooted. It appears to be the only solution when things go wrong.

I came to really love this "feature," especially since I don't like having to close browsers and apps down, having to save their states so that I can get back to where I was before.

But again, if this is a problem that Windows 7 has solved.. then the gap has clearly been narrowed if not closed.

Another thing I like about Macs is that they can run Windows in Parallels or VMware Fusion. You can have your cake and eat it too. Not so the other way around (at least not in a way that anybody really supports).

I'm looking forward to your "review" Larry six months in. It'll be interesting to see if your mind will have changed at all by that time.

@bazaarsoft. You should know that Gina Smith is no longer the editor at BYTE. Hasn't been for over a month.

Inside a multi-window app on Mac command-~ (that's tilde) switches between windows. I had to be told too. Why not Ctrl-Tab, which is sort of logical given Alt-Tab?