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And the best part of owning a Mac is the games! If you don't use Windows on your Mac, you'll be amazed at how much of your time playing games diminishes. Unless, of course, you're playing World of Warcraft.

You're saying that to someone whose entire history of computer gaming took place on Macs.

[smartass]Oh, and no need for the dare. By posting on this forum and having my post read by you, mission accomplished.[/smartass]

pottymouth wrote:

setta wrote:

...I've read about the possibility to put windows on it. Do you think is it necessary? http://www.apple.com/getamac/windows.html

I don't use a Mac for the hardware. I use a Mac to not run Windows. I can do everything (and I mean everything) I need to do with OS X, yet it's not bass ackwards and needlessly difficult like Windows.

I hated all computers until I used a Mac. Now I'm the biggest geek I know. If Windows doesn't work the way you'd like it to, you owe it to yourself to try an alternative.

QFT (Quoted for truth)

To me it always seems like Windows is constantly getting in my way purposely. (too bad it doesn't get in the way of spyware etc) The mac doesn't, it just lets me do what I want without a fight.

yeah, with the Mac you'll have a system that's not always getting in your way, the system is relatively consistent throughout so you don't have to learn one menu-bar system for eMail, one for web browsing, and one for the Office Suite, so the learning curve is shallower. Not to mention the System Preferences is more intuitively laid out, and you an be free to explore, but keep to the stuff that doesn't need passwords until you get used to the system and know what you're doing.

NAG wrote:

Yeah, the mac os is hardly derived from Windows. If anything OS X is the son of NeXT.

Who's the gay uncle?

NAG wrote:

Yeah, it is kind of like Windows is congratulating itself for noticing you plugged in a USB device. As if it working is a special event.

Years ago my brother had an XP PC.

One day I unplugged everything, keyboard, mouse and printer, to do some troubleshooting. And when I plugged everything USB back in, keyboard and printer, I put them in the opposite ports than they were in before.

XP yells at me (About the keyboard) that it didn't recognize the device plugged in. I yelled back (But it couldn't hear me, or was ignoring me) "What do you mean? It's your smurfing keyboard! You were just using it!"

After a few minutes of swears and the like I switched the ports back. XP said "New device found! Yay! It's my keyboard! I missed you!" and was back to working... "normal".

I thought to myself, "Windows can't be that stupid can it?" Why would the OS be written to need drivers for every USB port? Why would it require you to plug each device into the same port every time? MS fixed this bug a while ago I would hope. But I'll never get over it.


OS X has never ever done this to me. It has always recognized the devices, and most without drivers. OS X is a pleasant OS to use. I switched in 2000. Before it was the "in" thing to do. Before the iPod. When Apple was just slowly making its name for itself. My switch came with many friends mocking me. But I knew myself that my choice was right. I was using an OS that "just worked". No viruses. No spyware. And this was OS 9. 6 months later OS X came out and I continued my love. Eventually my friends either stopped mocking me all that much, or better yet, CONVERTED THEMSELVES. My closest friend switched in 2002 when the iMac G4's came out. Now he owns 5 Macs. Two iMacs and two PowerBooks and a Mac mini. And he converted friends of his own. (I myself own an iMac G3, iMac G4, iBook G3, Mac mini G4 and MacBook Intel.

Switching to the Mac was the best thing I ever did. I don't miss Windows. If anything, I miss OS X when I have to use Windows.


Fortunately PC users these days aren't as rabid against the Mac as they were 7 years ago. Thanks to the iPod and Apple's newfound rising popularity. People are finally realizing Apple isn't the braindead dying computer company their parents programmed into their heads. No more do I hear "You use a MAC? What are you an idiot?" It's more "Yeah, I heard about those." or "Yeah, I still prefer Windows, but Mac's are cool." or the best "I love my Mac too." (My sisters best friend said this one. I should have proposed right then and there.)

Blandford Fly wrote:

Mac is nothing but problem.   My marriage got wrecked when I came home to find wife in bed with 12" of Mac.   I say to her, 'why Mac?', 'why not Bill or Bob?'

She say to me that Mac reliable responsive and meets her needs like no other.

So we now divorced.   Good riddance to her and lousy Mac.

dvpierce wrote:

Jasoco wrote:

I thought to myself, "Windows can't be that stupid can it?" Why would the OS be written to need drivers for every USB port? Why would it require you to plug each device into the same port every time? MS fixed this bug a while ago I would hope. But I'll never get over it.

It's not a bug - a USB device in a different hardware port has a different hardware address and the driver needs reconfiguring. XP is just less transparent about it than OS X.

When I configured my dad's cell phone to work with his old XP laptop (he got it as a hand me down, he's a mac guy from way back, but the music software is Windows-only) I remembered to plug it into and reconfigure the driver for each of the ports on the laptop. Then the machine "remembers."

and to get it to work, you have to do that with all the ports?
what about those systems with 8+ ports (that are never used)?

FutureDreamz wrote:

dvpierce wrote:

Jasoco wrote:

I thought to myself, "Windows can't be that stupid can it?" Why would the OS be written to need drivers for every USB port? Why would it require you to plug each device into the same port every time? MS fixed this bug a while ago I would hope. But I'll never get over it.

It's not a bug - a USB device in a different hardware port has a different hardware address and the driver needs reconfiguring. XP is just less transparent about it than OS X.

When I configured my dad's cell phone to work with his old XP laptop (he got it as a hand me down, he's a mac guy from way back, but the music software is Windows-only) I remembered to plug it into and reconfigure the driver for each of the ports on the laptop. Then the machine "remembers."

and to get it to work, you have to do that with all the ports?
what about those systems with 8+ ports (that are never used)?

Or you can use the same port every time. If you have the driver installed right, it doesn't take but an extra 10-20 seconds per port; otherwise, it will just do that later, when you really, really dont want to sit and wait for 10-20 seconds for it to work.

The problem with my dad's phone is that, with the SD card installed, it reports a different hardware ID to PnP. If that particular USB port hasn't already been used with the phone sans SD card, the machine will flip out because it can't find the "right" driver. Stupid Motorola.

No computer or electronic device is ever totally trouble free. If you live in the real world you come to realize that everything has its ups and downs. However, when you average out all the positives and negative experiences, the net result is that overall the Mac is easier to setup (don't get me started on Windows drivers issues) and maintain.

Last edited by adamjg (2008-01-25 7:24 pm)

Jasoco wrote:

Either way it's a boneheaded 1980's way of doing stuff. USB ports are supposed to all be the same. Why.. WHY would Microsoft think it's a good idea to configure each port independently?

It's... stupid. Period.

First of all, it's not all Windows, it's USB. If the USB ports all had the same physical address, your computer couldn't tell which one was a keyboard and which one was a thumb drive.

Windows just has - always has, always will - a messy approach to drivers.

Does Vista (Or even the latest XP) do this?

XP does, of course. Dunno about Vista but I'd assume it does something similar. How much feedback it gives you in the process is another question. A lot, like XP, or none, like OS X.

It's not that OS X isn't doing what XP does, it's that it isn't telling you.

I mean, not everyone is going to plug their device into the same port every time. Some casual user is going to be confused to hell about that. "What do you mean you don't recognize the MP3 player I've used on this machine a million times?!"

Under most circumstance, they autoconfigure just fine - it's just the first time takes a little longer than the repeats. You'd never notice unless it failed.

Often, if a device doesn't configure properly the first time, you can make it work by unplugging/reattaching, or rebooting the computer.

In the case of my dad's phone, the fault lies with Motorola.