Sometimes it’s hard to convince PC users of the benefits of Apple computers and Mac OS X.
Since their computers are hardly personal, and just tools, and essentially lacking style and personality, they don’t understand, can’t grasp, cannot fit in their brains the concept of an interface that has been obsessively designed to fit, to function, to form an environment that accepts and welcomes people.
Maybe the iPhone will solve this problem. Check out what this Time reviewer says:
The user interface is crammed with smart little touches — every moment of user interaction has been quietly stage-managed and orchestrated, with such overwhelming attention to detail that when the history of digital interface design is written, whoever managed this project at Apple will be hailed as a Michelangelo, and the iPhone his or her Sistine Chapel (Steve Jobs can be Pope in this scenario). If you’re not a reviewer, chances are you won’t even bother to look at the manual. Translucent, jewel-like, artfully phrased dialogue boxes come and go on cue. Window borders bounce and flex just slightly to cue the user where and how you’re supposed to drop and drag and scroll them. When you switch the phone to “airplane mode” (no electronic transmissions, for use on planes) a tasteful little orange airplane slides into the menu bar, then zooms away when you switch out again. (This was so pleasurable that I repeatedly entered airplane mode while using the iPhone, even though I wasn’t actually on an airplane.) As soon as my phone realized it belonged to someone with a nonsense-name like Lev, it started correcting typos like “Leb” and “Lec” to match.
That’s the zen of Apple taken to a whole new level.
Nice find this one.
Often I find PC people comparing a bare-bone Dell to a Mac, and find out that the former is cheaper. But then they have to buy all sorts of software to get their machine to do what they want, spend hours fixing problems, more hours figuring out how to work their machines, more hours finding the right places to download driver updates.
I often wonder whether the real reason that Microsoft has become so big in the corporate world is the fact that IT departments (the guys deciding on which machines are bought) would be downsized if all computers would just plain simply work.
iPhone Initial Reviews…
Well, I spent what little time on Saturday I had free reading iPhone reviews, watching the ‘first unboxing’ videos, usage……
[rant]
Not long ago I bought a PC laptop to add to my (hitherto Mac-only) office setup.
It’s not too bad, in many respects. I’ve installed Vista – which has lifted all the best features of OSX anyway – and the interface is OK in terms of smoothness. It’s not *as* smooth as Aqua, and nowhere near as intuitive. But it works OK.
What I can’t be doing with is all the stuff I’d forgotten from my PC-owning days and which are now back with a vengeance. Why does stuff crash and freeze so much? How come one in three start-ups don’t, well, start up? Why do I have to spend time fiddling around with firewall settings and antivirus updates? Why is the damn thing so proud of ‘new features’ that have been standard on Macs since about 1982?
Macs are just easier to use, more intuitive, cooler and more reliable.
[/rant]