It’s the details, dummy!
It’s a computerized, digital, connected world… and yet, we still accept mediocrity in our computing systems. Yes, I’m talking about the one, the only, crappy Operating System that exists on a lot of systems, mostly about 91.7% of the worlds personal computers, in fact, according to current market share statistics. And… this is a sad commentary on how much the masses accept such mediocrity. I have to admit, I gave up on the us versus them operating systems wars along time ago. However, truth be told, I never really completely gave up my bigotry for, yes, dare I say, the Macintosh operating system.
My disgust and frustration with Windoze came rushing back to me in spades over the past few months. You see, with my old position, I was able to use what ever system I wanted, which meant that I decided to purchase my own MacBook Pro so I could control what I installed and did with my system. Then, I went on a 6 month sabbatical from any corporate environment and back again most recently. Well, not so much true corporate life per se, but I went back to work for a great company. And… you guessed it, their standard issue for Systems Engineers is, yep, a Windows Laptop. IBM errr… Lenovo T61 running Windows XP Professional to be more exact.
That’s when it all began to unravel. Sure, I’ve always copped to the adage, “they’re just tools, use what works for you”, but I think I’m beginning to go back to my elitist attitude of “what rubbish”. Over the course of the past 3 years, I’ve not had to deal with Windows other than manage a server infrastructure, install enterprise solutions and trouble-shoot issues in that environment. However, I always retreated back to my trusted, reliable, all-encompassing MacBook, where I just got shit done, sans any Windows dependencies.
Now, it’s all changed and I have to beg, conjole and wish with all my might to stay productive. In a nut-shell, here’s a few items that Windoze users just have to “deal” with and yes, I’m going to say it with my nose in the air, Mac users just don’t have to deal with such crap. We just get things done.
Fist, I’ve used a laptop as my primary work tool for so long, I don’t recall my last desktop model or even what I did on it. Just about everyone uses a laptop now because of their flexibility and modern speed.
It’s all in the details, dummies!!!
- Expectation: To be able to work up to the point of having to jump on a jet, go to a meeting, leave the office, or any other activity that requires “sleeping” er… putting your laptop in “stand-by”, so it’s right there where you left it and ready to go the next time you need it.
Reality: Not so much on the ole Winoze OS. “stand-by” is hit or miss and usually, 4 out of 10 tries, its a hit. I actually tracked this over a recent trip to St Louis and yes, 60% of the time, the freakin thing wouldn’t wake up, wouldn’t connect to a network, operate with any stability or other “normal” expectation. Usually, had to reboot and it would be ok. So, stand-by is something I just don’t bother with any more. Full shut-down and reboot. Each process stealing 5 minutes of my productive life and over the course of a week, that equates to several hours.
Mac: slam the lid, put in bag, leave. Open lid, start working. Every time. The end. - Expectation: Plug in any USB device, say, a wireless mouse. That’s it, just plug it in and work.
Reality: again, hit-miss. Fortunatey, it’s mostly a hit, but not without some anxiety involved, knowing little yellow pop up bubbles would bug me and/or tell me it’s ready, but on occasion, it’d have trouble and a “replug” would ensue.
Mac: yep, plug it in and go. No boinks, beeps, yellow bubbles or otherwise. Done. No fuss, no muss. - Expectation: get your software updates and have it all go smoothly.
Reality: well, you guessed it, not always with good results. Mostly, it’s okay, but they all mostly break-stuff. In 3 months, I’ve had several patches and hot-fixes popup, get installed and I’ve had to reload my printer drivers and other dependancies. Some, I don’t find out about until I need them, which usually means, lost productivity going to the web site, downloading the software, installing it, rebooting, getting al kinds of annoying windoids on the update blah, blah, blah…
Mac: in 3 years, I’ve had 1 serious incident, which royally pissed me off, but after redownloading the install/update an NOT going through the auto-update, it fixed itself. Besides that, I typically have little to no issue with their updates and they’re infrequent. - Expectation: take a good screen grab/shot anywhere, anytime of anything.
Reality: well, you of can do this, but it just takes the entire screen, sends it to the paste buffer, then what? Well, you could also send it straight to a printer wasting paper and not very useful. Oh, once on the paste buffer, you have to open some paint program, paste it in the window, crop it, sorta, then save it… and remember to save it as a JPEG or GIF rather than the default BMP (huge unusable file) and then your ready to go. Whew… now to take another shot for that presentation. Oh, screw it, I’ll go buy Snaggit for $39 bucks.
Mac: Command shift 3 – JPEG of entire screen on desktop for use where ever. Command shift 4, gives you a cursor to specify an area of the screen and then a JPEG is sitting on your desktop ready to go. Free. Done. Going onto getting work done. - Expectation: To be able to print or generate a PDF from any application, bar none.
Reality: Yeah, riiight. You have to go download a freebie that only works with office, buy Acrobat Pro, if you happen to have Snaggit or something, you can print to Snaggit, then save as a PDF. DOH.
Mac: Yep, you’re figuring it out, print anything anywhere and get a print-to-PDF option, which, you can actually send to a printer, or have it save to your desktop somehwere. Oh, and it’s free, built in, just works. - Expectation: light weight and easy to use keyboard. After years and years of ergonomic studies, you’d think that Wintel boxes would figure out how to make powerful laptops lighter and more ergonomic.
Reality: guess again. The T61 still has clunky, chunky keys, is about 2 inches thick, has clunky lid buttons, on/off buttons, locks and all kinds of other minuturized desktop features that just looks like they put a desktop into a vise and squeezed. No ingenuity.
Mac: completely redesign years ago. Is less than 1 inch thick, light keyboard, illuminating keys and of course, the screen is probably one of the best around. - Expectation: In this world of virtualization and heterogeneous environments, you’d think you could run a lot on an Intel box. Well, there are some hacks out there and of course VM Ware and other virtualization tools have helped the cause, but…
Reality: so, so on Windows and it’s very slow for the most part. I have a VMWare demo I run of a Win2003 server runnign MSSQL, SQL Reporting and IIS that takes nearly 5 minutes to load and restore to usefulness. Same for any
Mac: VMWare has a product called Fusion that’s workstation for the Mac. Same demo as above takes about 30 seconds to load and go. Even snap-shots only take about 1 minute compared to the Windows Workstation version that takes about 10 minutes some times. - Expectation: drive fragmentation should be non-existant. You’d think.
Reality: Lots of fragmentation on a well used laptop. Slows down, memory gets slow, everything just slows down… oh, yeah, gotta go defrag. Soooooo 80′s.
Mac: One word. Journaling. Nuff said.
Done… i could go on, but this is enough to show that productivity on a Wintel system just isn’t that great. The time savings and other cost reducing affects of using a MacBook or any Apple product is just staggering and seems to only be recognized by a few. Oh well.
Everyone can pick on Apple and the Macintosh all they want, but the reality is, they put so much thought into the details that many things become so ubiquitous that you don’t even notice how productive and stable the system is until you’re forced to dink what 91.7% of the world deals with daily. And the cost of ownership doesn’t even start to compute. Most WIndoze users/purchasers are being penny-wise and pound-foolish. But, of course, if Win products weren’t around, we’d all be more productive, IT would be run by about 5 guys and they’d just sit around playing Texas Holdem or “hoping” for a breakage. So, I guess all-in-all, Windoze is a good thing, right?
This is why I drive a Mercedes, it’s all in the details, dummy.
I should have taken my laptop in a long time ago??? What was I thinking???
