View Single Post
Luca
ಠ_ರೃ
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Minnesota
 
2015-12-08, 17:35

Quote:
Originally Posted by PB PM View Post
The sad part is that as Apple drops or dumbs down products (mostly software), that has made Apple hardware great to use, I feel that this is less true all the time. I honestly cannot think of a single piece of software that I use today that is exclusively available for Mac OSX. When I used Aperture, and older versions of iMovie even, I would never have thought about leaving Mac OS (I liked those apps that much!), but with the loss and dumbing down of software there is little to nothing keeping me back.


In some cases yes. In the future, unless Apple changes it's course hardware wise, my next desktop most likely will be a Windows box. Not because I like Windows better, I just don't happen to think it's any worse than modern OSX. The days of Windows 98/XP are far behind us, and it's really not as bad as it once was. I can also get the hardware I want/need without having to get a ridiculously overpriced workstation, aka a Mac Pro, or be stuck with an AIO (not that iMac screens are bad, but the exact opposite, a great usable monitor potentially stuck on an old machine). For now I'm just upgrading my iMac (SSD), and that will likely add another year or two of usability, but in the long run I just don't see buying a Mac as a good value for serious computing. The Apple computer I love for light computing and streaming to my media centre, the Mac Mini, is treated like an ugly step child, so even that is less appealing in the future as well.
I have to agree with this. I made the switch to Windows a while ago (2007) mostly for gaming reasons, but Windows has improved so much and OS X has stagnated in the same time to the point where I'm not even sure OS X can be considered "more intuitive" anymore. It's more of a personal preference, what you're used to thing now. When I use my parents' Macs, I don't know what I'm doing. A lot of stuff seems really odd to me but I just have to assume it's because I haven't used a Mac regularly in almost 10 years.

Everyone here is a savvy enough computer user that the whole "intuitive" argument falls flat anyway. Anyone here could pick up Windows 10 and get by just fine, and would probably get used to it immediately. Just as I could pick up OS X and become comfortable with it very soon. Most of the stuff that most people do is through a web browser anyway.

By all means, if you have parents, grandparents, or other tech-illiterate friends/family who are used to the Mac experience, keep recommending Macs to them. But that is Apple's target audience now. They have shunned true pro users and don't seem to care about "prosumer" users either.

I'm not doing video editing so maybe it's not comparable to your situation, but I built a Q8400 (Core 2 Quad) system in 2009 that I am still using. I've upgraded the RAM and graphics and added an SSD since then, but by and large it's the same machine, and it's still good. It was under $1,000 at the time. So when I see Mac fans espousing the benefit of longevity, I have to shake my head.

You can be an Apple user and still have a Windows PC. To continue to stick with Macintosh desktops seems ridiculous at this point; they're outrageously expensive for what you get. Even though I don't use either, I'll still defend iOS devices. I have an Android phone and while it's fine for me, I still think iOS has a meaningful advantage in usability. OS X, not so much.
  quote