PC Magazine has been giving a lot of love to Macs lately. Deservedly so. It got some more recognition with their blog. The entry is appropriately called “Apple iMac: So Easy My Technophobic Wife Can Set It Up!”
My wife is many things—beautiful, intelligent, capable, and hard-working—but a techie she’s not. So when I proposed that we follow the lead of esteemed PC Maggers John Dvorak, Michael Miller, and Robyn Peterson and switch to a Mac, her first response was “will I know how to use it?”
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In the following non-slideshow, we’ll take you through the unboxing process right through to the moment Corinne first logged onto Facebook with the beautiful new machine. Elapsed time to Facebooking: 13.5 minutes!
It’s a great testament to the ease of a Mac for normal usage. As good as Macs are for geeks like me, the truth is that they’re the most practical machine for home users for ease of use, reliability, and lack of security issues (I’m not interested in a theoretical debate; the practical truth is it’s not a problem on Macs).
I’d like to welcome PC Magazine to the rest of us that have been preaching this for years.
What I really hate in these PC vs. Mac debates is that because the Mac is easy to use it must surely be a poorer computer because it's "been dumbed down". Supposedly, if you are a "true geek" (or whatever) then you should be using something more complicated. This, of course, is total nonsense. The beauty, and reason why the Mac is so easy to use, is that the computer doesn't get in the way of what you want to do. How this can be a bad thing is quite beyond me.
She had practice.
I'm a bit confused though. The wife's question was, "will I know how to use it?" All the blog entry covered was setting it up and getting to a website. Is that all she's going to do with it, just visit some websites?
And is it really that much more difficult to set up any other computer? All it adds is another power cord and the cable from the monitor, maybe an audio cable to a pair of speakers with maybe another power cord.
And as someone on the blog commented, an iMac is basically a non-portable laptop computer so how difficult could it be?
And again, where's the answer to her question on whether she would actually be able to use it?
As a Windows switcher, I've more often encountered cryptic bizarre hints with the Mac than I ever did with Windows. Like when I decided to install LAME to transcode AAC files for use by Tivo Desktop (after searching to find I could even use LAME to make AAC files playable on the Tivo box). Searching for a pre-compiled version of LAME so I didn't have to compile it myself. A trip into the Terminal to type commands I really didn't understand to install it. Then because of something funky with Intel Macs I had to create some sort of dummy text file that the Tivo Desktop program used so LAME would switch the bits so the AAC files would be processed properly or something. It was utterly confusing and beyond what I just said, I couldn't really tell you what I did but it did finally work.
With Windows, though, most of the time it's been a simple, "Here's the program. Enjoy!" On a Mac it seems often you're given files that you're supposed to know how to compile yourself or cryptic hints involving Terminal or editing configuration files in program packages. Hardly straight-forward stuff for new users.
George, the Mac has an MP3 encoder built-in. It's called iTunes.
If you want to install BSD software on your Mac then you're going to need to learn about the command line, but there is no requirement to do so. Think of the BSD layer as akin to the DOS underpinnings of Windows or the Registry. They're down there, but you shouldn't venture into them unless you know what you're doing.
Fletcher, I'm aware that iTunes can rip to mp3 format, but by the time I had bought a Tivo, I had already ripped 200+ CD's in AAC format. Thus, I went looking for something to allow the Tivo to play them.
I don't even know what "BSD software" is to be honest. My point was that most of the tricks for Windows involve either simply downloading a program or a quick trip into the Registry (very few ever involved DOS). On the other hand many Mac hints involve trips into the Terminal and even more cryptically once there into Terminal text editing. Like my attempt over the weekend to install Fink and MediaTomb to stream content to my PS3 (from a comment left on MacWorld). I got Fink installed but MediaTomb never worked out. Most likely, getting something equivalent in Windows would involve downloading a zip file, unzipping it and then running the included installer. Most Mac hints just feel like they were written for Mac experts by Mac experts and as a new user I'm a bit lost by it.
BTW, I work in IT for a living but have little familiarity with either Unix or Macs in general.