- Chapter 11: The Secret of Macintosh
- Okay, so it's easier. But how much easier?
- She says it better than I ever could
- Day-to-day living with a PC
- Unsolicited testimonials
- One last thing
She says it better than I ever could
The fact that the Macintosh is easier is really no big secret. That's been well documented over the years in independent study after boring independent study. It's how much easier, and more trouble-free the Macintosh is to use that makes all the difference.
Because the learning stage doesn't really take that long, before you know it, you're very comfortable with the Mac and how it operates. The other part of the "Secret of Macintosh" is that once you become accustomed to using a Mac, you'll find out that Macs are also so much easier to maintain. People are more productive on a Mac, get more work done, and spend more time creating and less time troubleshooting their machines, thanks to Apple's one-two punch of designing both the hardware and the system software.
But how tough are things really for PC users? One of my all-time favorite quotes comes from an article I read in April '98 issue of PC World magazine. It was from Cathryn Baskin, then PC World's Editor-in-Chief. She was lamenting a number of problems, including a horror story her friend experienced trying to install a game for her son on his PC. After detailing the problems her friend had encountered, she wrote, "PC hardware and software problems are so common that we've come to accept them as normal." She closes the article with the rhetorical question, "Who would tolerate these sorts of problems with cars, TVs, or telephones?" Obviously, the problems she speaks of are the norm on the PC platform, not the exception to the rule; but as she points out, PC users have learned to accept them as normal. Amazing, isn't it?
Have you noticed that you don't read articles in any of the Macintosh magazines about how often Macs crash, or nightmares of installations, endless incompatibility problems, or stories of how Mac experts spent days simply trying to get their system to work? Not that it's never happened. Mac problems do happen. It's just that they happen so infrequently that if a Mac magazine ran an article like that, its readers wouldn't be able to relate. That's because for the most part, those never-ending technical nightmares simply don't exist. That is part of what makes a Macintosh truly magic.