The Apple Purchase

I wrote this up as a reaction to a recent discussion regarding how Apple is growing tremendously in PC sales lately. Here are my thoughts.

My most recent laptop purchase was a Mac (for my spouse for college). Major factors influencing my decision:

1. Fewer “tech support” calls from my wife. This has been a BIG win for me. Since purchasing the computer in December, she’s only had to ask me for help about a dozen times. Compare this to much more frequent requests on the PC, and I’m happy. It “just works” for her.
2. Great battery life.
3. Very light.
4. Nice screen (a bit small-ish, but very viewable from many angles).
5. Runs UNIX under the hood, and all the usual UNIX tools are there, though the filesystem layout is a little bit weird. I’m a UNIX geek, so I dig the operating system.
6. Very fast. Once we upgraded to 2GB of RAM, this little box task-swaps better than anything I’ve owned… including a quad-processor, 2GHz, 16GB of RAM Windows-based beast that I ran at work for a while.
7. Very attractive. My Dell Inspiron 9300 looks like a big, boxy hunk of plastic next to the sleek MacBook.
8. After-the-sale support is important to me because I see so many failures on a daily basis in my job. Once you include the 3-year service agreement, a similarly-configured Intel-based Dell and Intel-based Apple are very close in price… in my case, within $20 of each other for a nearly-identical configuration.

That last bit, IMHO, is a huge part of what’s fueling their current market penetration. As long as it was more expensive than the competition — mostly Dell — it was the domain of enthusiasts. At an equal price point (or lower, in some cases), it’s a very competitive platform.

Anyway, after getting the new Mac, I fell in love with some features of it:

• The power cord. Why on earth doesn’t anybody else use this type of magnetic lock to handle power cords? I’ve seen way too many laptops fail the same way: someone trips over the power cord, and then it yanks against the circuit board inside and you can’t charge your laptop anymore. It’s a problem on my current Dell, worked around by doing gyrations with maneuvering the plug until it stays.
• Nothing bulky hanging off anywhere, and no strange shapes where the display meets the chassis. It’s smooth and slides easily into a bag.
• Magnetic-locking screen catch. I have owned a half-dozen laptops, and the screen catch always ends up breaking after 2-4 years. I’m a hard user, I know, but using those same rare-earth magnets to hold the screen closed is superb innovation.
• Very positive-action keyboard that doesn’t seem prone to failure.
• Intuitive mousing on the keypad. Hold + drag == scroll.
• Trivially easy to work on and do most upgrades. Memory replacement, for instance, involves no tools. That’s cool.

I agree they need to streamline the file-sharing to Windows bit. Right now, you have to go into your configuration screen and read the IP address and full UNC path to the share, then type it in on the other computer… ugh. I know Samba can join a domain and show up in the browse list… why can’t my Mac?

A few other annoyances, but for a work PC, I’d pick a Mac again next time. For my games, though… that’s a tough sell.

–Matt B.