Why I like Macs - Y I ? ?

There are endless cool things about Apple’s products. One for example is that Apple was always the company using new technologies at first and by doing this achieving to be continuously innovative. It started with the very beginning of Apple: IBM thought about releasing computers for personal use, but meant computers were made to work with – noone would wanna have one in his home. Apple however brought out the “Apple I”, the first personal computer (cool slogan: “Byte into an Apple”). They were so successful with it that they released the “Apple II” and sold even more computers (altogether: two million devices). IBM got into panic and cooperated with the small company “Microsoft” (they were really small to that time), bringing out the IBM-PC and Microsoft its meteoric rise.

Then the mouse for example was used with “Apple Lisa” for the first time commercially. The desktop surface as you know it (with Trash/Recycle Bin and so on) was introduced by Apple. Microsoft copied it, was sued by Apple and had to pay a neat sum of money in an extrajudicial settlement. Drag&Drop, the Undo-function, the highlighting of text and objects, program-icons, the text-to-speech function,… all that (and even more) was introduced by Macintosh (see its Introduction in 1984 here). Some people to that time said that the Macintosh would just be an “expensive toy”. Uhm, what does some people today say about new apple products?

Another cool thing about Apple is that they constantly develop a product from its basic intention to its final shape and not the other way round. Take the iPhone for example: While cell-phone-companies were so into this standard-look of mobile phones (display above, keyboard below) and only changed some details from phone to phone, apple thought about what you need to do with your mobile phone and afterwards came up with this amazing as-simple-as-simple-can-be user interface. A Microsoft-guy one time said something like “The iPhone looks beautiful. But other phones do that, too!” Argh! He totally misses the point! This isn’t anything about conventional beauty like “Oh, look: Nice flowers”. It’s the beauty within simplicity and comfort. When you have an iPhone (I’ve got an iPod touch, that’s pretty much the same, that’s why I know what I’m talking about) everything feels so smooth – the scrolling, the zooming with two fingers, the opening of apps, the surfing with Safari and so on. “Windows mobile” isn’t able to match that.

As well as “Windows” isn’t able to match the feeling of “Mac OS”. Yep, we arrived at the Mac (or rather the old “Mac vs. Windows” fight): The smooth feeling you have with the iPhone you also have with Mac OS. I’ve been a Windows user for years, thinking it would be the best system on the market – you know it’s so prevalent and stuff, I thought it wouldn’t be if it wasn’t good. Then I had contact with Macians (enthusiastic Mac-users) and heard everywhere that Macs were so great, the iPod and iPhone also convinced me and after my PC was scrap, I bought a MacBook. The installation was probably the greatest first-time experience: While installing an internet connection on Windows had always been a horror, on the Mac I’ve finished it within five minutes. I only had to enter my WLAN password. If I had used the cable connection, I wouldn’t had to do anything at all, because the Mac finds the connection itself and installs it on its own. It’s all automated on a Mac, the user just has to enter the necessary data.
Apart from this, the cool thing is: Everything works! On Windows there were so many times when I wasn’t able to do anything – the Computer made strange noises and when I moved the mouse the cursor stood still. This doesn’t happen on a Mac: Even if a program is freezed, everything else works fine, because program and system are seperated from each other. When you see the hourglass on your Windows’ screen you don’t know if your PC is frozen or is just working very hard. On a Mac everything is animated, so if you see the waiting-cursor (a very coloured ball) spinning around its axis you know that only the program is frozen. When you use the Windows search to find something on your PC you can definitely have a cup of coffee till the search is finished. With “Spotlight” – Apple’s internal search engine – you find what you need while typing! … To come to the point: Mac OS is simpler, more comfortable and smooth, more efficient and far more user-friendly than Windows.

Actually I could fill another blog philosophising about “Why I like Macs”. But I think it’s enough now for this tyhtka-Post.

“tyhtka”? WTF!