Christopher Dawson discusses his Anti-Mac bias!
Christoper Dawson, one of ZDnet's educational bloggers, wrote last night about his Anti-Mac bias. Much like Mr. Dawson, I've faced the stigma of being "the wrong expert" when my friends ask me about what Laptop or desktop they should consider buying, and I rarely have Mac's on the list.
Dawson points out that while Mac's are great at what they do, it's often overpowered for the average user. When looking at the starving college student or simply us overworked and underpaid s.o.b.'s, the economics simply don't make sense. A high school or college student looking for a computer to write his homework on needs a word processor that can print. A $600 dollar laptop can handle that. Granted many people don't want to hear this; to you I have to say be honest with yourselves and whoever you might be asking to by you the device. If all you want is something to write papers, then say it. If you are wanting something to write papers, make movies and do all kinds of other activities, then say it.
For those that talk about needing Mac to work on creative challenges that Windows and Linux don't fill; I am afraid I can't really buy that argument. Especially not for the low end. Mr. Dawson points to a specific example of a friend who deals a lot with digital photography for work. Due to various issues, including her work environment she ended up going with a much cheaper PC based solution to adequately fill her needs when her old Mac was no longer up to the challenge. I am not too sure I buy it for the upper end either. Application like Cinelerra and Maya are available free for Linux, and have for-gone Mac for Linux shops that are cheaper to develop and operate.
Finally for those that like to remind me, that Mac is now simply a very advanced GUI running on top of BSD, I'll say that it's a very crippled version of BSD. When trying to trouble shoot network issues with a friends Mac in Terminal, I ended up frustrated in about 10 minutes of trying get the commands to work with the switches I am used to. I ended up booting off a copy of OliveBSD that I happened to have on the top of the pile of CD's on my desk and booting off that to get back various switches to the networking tools missing from Tiger.
In short if you are willing to use the Mac, say that you are getting it because you want a Mac. If you are a starving student you won't win any points crying that you don't have enough money to by that 17" Macbook that you need to write up your composition class assignment. Know what you are getting your PC for and play to it.
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