My friend John Scalzi got hit by adware on his PC, and the comments on his post hosted yet another Mac vs. PC argument, to which I couldn’t help but contribute. I might as well throw it in here, though I’m sure you all are tired of my broken record by now.
Apologies for continuing the Mac/PC thread, but count me on the Mac side.
I’m a heavy user, I use all sorts of software I download off the web (though mainly VersionTracker, which checks for viruses itself). I’ve never had a virus on my Mac. In 20 years. Never. Never had spyware or adware. And I’ve NEVER NEEDED VIRUS PROTECTION SOFTWARE. Beyond this, I still have data I created 20 years ago because I’ve never had my Mac totally crash and die so I couldn’t retrieve the data. This is worth tens of thousands of dollars to me. I consider all data on Windows to be disposable unless I have a recent backup, because who knows what evil is coming down the line tomorrow.
Purchase price of a Mac is nearly identical to that of an identical Windows PC. I built a PC recently, a Shuttle (for work); it cost around $1000. I can get an iBook for around $1000 with equivalent performance, in a laptop with an OS that doesn’t suck. A high-end PC or Mac is around $2000.
I don’t even use Windows XP at work — I’m still stuck on W2K, because XP isn’t a technical improvement, and the OS itself spies on me. They don’t trust that I didn’t steal it! Outlook is the single most offensive program I have to deal with daily, and it’s a massive unprotected target for viruses. Did you know that a lot of the email we get comes from hijacked Outlook machines?
Apple does a better job considering user needs than Microsoft. The OS, the browser, the email program — what I use the most — are all better at filtering spam and malware on MacOS. I honestly believe that Microsoft doesn’t give a damn about anything but making money; Apple is working to make quality products and hoping the money will follow, someday. No doubt a worse business strategy. Sure, someday someone could write a virus for Mac — I’d think it’d be fairly easy. But I trust Apple to come up with a solution quickly, that I would trust to download and install the day it came out.
The biggest difference to me is that I get to actually use my Mac for productive work, and I don’t have to spend time dicking with it. I know there are a lot of computer folks whose raison d’être is messing with cards and IRQs and DLLs and shareware. I just want to use my computer to get work done.
Aside from rants like this, I’ve given up on trying to “convert” people. And at the same time I refuse to help people with Windows problems, because I know how bad they can get and I tend to take it personally that there’s no way to really fix them. “Don’t know, it’s Windows. There’s always something wrong. Good luck.”
(I’ve been saying this since 1984, more or less. Doesn’t make it less true.)