Interestingly, I went to the store today to buy my wife a new Mac ibook, one of those nice white ones with the 1 gig of RAM and an 80 gig hard drive. Looks much like the 3/4 year old one she has now, but much better.
The computer guy in the store showed me the machine and told me all about it's features. As I was about to do the deal I said, "My wife is familiar with the Mac and the OS she has, will she have any problem with the new OS?" "No problem," he said. "She'll love it."
Then, as my eye lit over to where the Windows machines were I said, "What about a Windows machine? If I'm buying a new machine, would it be better to switch her to Windows?" I expected him to say, no way.
Instead he looked around and said in a quiet voice, "I don't like to tell this to many customers. Apple people would go bananas. But the fact is, as far as I'm concerned, these machines are overpriced for what you get and the supposed advantage of the Mac OS just isn't there anymore. You get your wife a machine with the new Windows softwear, she'll figure it out in no time and it's far more stable and she'll be able to do more."
I looked amazed. He shrugged his shoulders and said, "The world has moved. Apple people don't want to admit it. They'll go to their graves defending Apple and they're good laptops, but they aren't as good as the Windows machines and you pay a lot more."
I left the store without buying her a new laptop to think about this.
I don't want to get into a tussle with Apple fans. I don't have a clue when it comes to computers. But this guy impressed me and so I pass along what he said. Make of it what you will.
