If I may, I would like to take a moment to voice my frustration. Not with anything particularly important. But frustration nonetheless.

Usually, I’m a big fan of competition between business. It usually leads to lower prices and better products and I’m all about that. (Come on wireless providers, someone take the plunge into affordable wireless PC connections!). But sometimes, companies that compliment each other well and together offer something great, do something stupid. Like trying to deliver the whole package themselves.

See, like people, companies are often good at one thing, while being weaker at something else. Hence wonderfully symbiotic business relationships. But, when those companies decide they want to compete with each other, rather than work together, I, the customer, lose!

Who else could I be talking about besides Apple Computers and Google.

 

I’m a huge fan of both of these companies. Apple does the whole personal computers and handheld devices really, really well. And Google does pretty much everything internet really, really well. Maps, docs, calendars, wave, voice? Hello! It’s freakin’ amazing. Google’s integration on the iPhone couldn’t be any more convenient. Google is even Safari’s default search engine. Of course, because that’s the search engine we all use and love.

But now, Google has gone and done something stupid. They decided they wanted to make their own browser (Chrome, which is pretty great), and their own OS (also Chrome, which is kind of a joke), their own mobile OS (Android, which the jury is still out on) and now their own branded handset which goes head to head with the iPhone (the Nexus One). By the way, did you know that Google doesn’t have call centers ready to answer people’s questions about their products? Yeah, even the $500 Nexus One handset. And of course, now customer service satisfaction is at a dismal low. Probably because it doesn’t exist.

(Interestingly enough, you know who does have call centers and one of the highest customer service rankings anywhere? Apple Computers.)

Of course, Google couldn’t just stick with what it was actually good at. Instead, they had to move into this whole new realm of physical devices and thereby forcing Apple to make other plans. (Possibly even with Microsoft!)

Now, Apple has bought a maps related company. Presumably in anticipation of edging Google Maps off their devices in the future. And, there’s even talk of replacing Google as the default search with Bing. Bing! Are you freaking kidding me? I know, it sounds crazy, but that’s what the rumor sites are saying. That steaming pile of crap they call a search engine is not what I want to use. I want to use GOOGLE!

And seriously, Apple, are you going to send thousands of camera equipped vans all over the world to give us street views for your maps application? No! Of course not! You’re product isn’t widely adopted enough!

Ugh!

So, Apple—please don’t be afraid of Google. Continue to embrace what they do well and give us what we want. Integration with Google and it’s horde of amazing products.

Google—Your web stuff is awesome. But your whole cloud computing, netbook, ChromeOS thing isn’t going to work out unless you also plan to give everyone dedicated, 100% internet. I spend too much time away from a wifi hotspot. ChromOS, useless. Stick to what you do well and don’t run my mobile computing experience into the ground by making other great companies choose lesser solutions.

Microsoft—Just start over completely.

In Conclusion

Competition isn’t always good.

This rant has been brought to you by my frustrations with the unfolding situation between Apple and Google. Now that it’s out of my system, hopefully it won’t come up again any time soon.

Let me take a brief detour from the type of thing I normally write about here to talk about something else. Before I start, I will say that I don’t write as a pro-Mac user (although I am one), I write as an anti-Microsoft user. In other words, Mac or not, I don’t care. My agenda is not for Mac, it’s against Microsoft. That’s it.

Microsoft is a terrible company, making mediocre products, continuing to exist solely because of it’s size—and the user ends up suffering for it.

With the exception of the xBox 360, Microsoft has never made a truly top-notch product. Most have been passable, but always playing catch up to competitors technology. But because of it’s visibility and novice user’s lack of operating system options in the PC marketplace, no one realizes it.

Did people stick with Windows XP for ten years because it was the best? Definitely not. It’s just all that was really available. Meanwhile, developers for Linux suits and Mac OS were continually putting out enhancements to its software to improve user experience. Of course, Linux is filling a smaller, lesser known market. It was happening nonetheless.

So how come in a competition based economy, the inferior product Microsoft makes is able to stand? I submit that it’s about 80% size.

Think of it like the thick-headed quarterback on a small town high-school football team. Even though he’s dumb and for all intents and purposes shouldn’t be passing his classes, he is because he’s the quarterback.

With its usual line of products, Windows should’ve fallen behind and off the map a long time ago. But because if the size of the company and its resources, it isn’t able to fail. Meaning Microsoft never really has to work to develop a truly great product because it’s never really in danger of losing to another business. Instead, they can wait three or four years, take good ideas off other companies, implement them with dazzling mediocrity  and the media will praise them for their innovation.

In this way, it becomes virtually impossible for the novice to average user to get a really great product unless they’re able to pay premium prices for a Mac—which, as much as I love them, is simply out of some people’s price range. This shouldn’t have to be the case. And, if there were real competition, it probably wouldn’t be.

So, come on people, let’s do ourselves a favor and let Microsoft die.

I know that it’s been a few days since I’ve written anything of any real consequence. I suppose I just have quite a few posts like these to work out of my system.

Yesterday, I was watching television at a friend’s house. A commercial for PC’s kept coming on. The concept was simple: a computer shopper would be given the challenge to find a good computer for under $1500. If they could find it, they’d be given the money to buy the computer.

Here’s the commercial:

This commercial got me thinking. It’s interesting that a company as huge and powerful as Microsoft is going through all this trouble to deliberately combat this tiny little competitor called Apple Computers. It’s a bit curious. Apple must really have them nervous.

Well, in light of all this, I thought I’d share my top five reasons I love my Mac way more than I ever loved my PC—and why you would too.

There are no secrets. I spent a pretty penny on my Mac. It’s a maxed out 15” , unibody, Macbook Pro, on which I spent about $1900. My old PC was a Toshiba laptop which came from Best Buy and cost about $1600 at the time. Among the most impressive machines at the sales floor.

So, here we go.

1. Consistency: why should time change anything?

I’ve had my Mac now for about six months. With very little deliberate preventative action, it’s running just about as smooth and clean today as it did the day it showed up in the mail. I can count on two hands the number of times I’ve had to restart my Mac and I’ve never actually turned it off.

By the time I got to six months on my PC, I’d already had to restore it to factory defaults and sent it away for repair.

2. I don’t see anything I don’t need to see.

I was PC user all my life. I grew up learning to use them and I worked as a tech for an internet service provider for several years. I’ve also built more personal computers than I can remember. I know a lot more than most about what my computer is doing and why.

So, when my PC would feed me dialogue after dialogue of questions about permissions, or firewalls, or error codes, or warnings, or whatever, I knew the language and it was okay. I dismissed them and moved on. But not everyone is so fortunate. My mother, for example, is quickly overwhelmed by them—usually driving her away from the machine altogether.

My Mac doesn’t show me what I don’t need to see. 95% of the dialogues I was seeing weren’t crucial enough to interrupt my work. And the 5% that are crucial enough, can be written in plain, human language, that anyone can understand.

My Mac won’t annoy me, and it won’t scare off the novice user.

3. Windows actually runs better on my Mac.

VirtualBox by Sun Microsystems is free software that will allow you to run Windows inside your Mac. I mean inside. It runs Windows as if it were an actual program inside MacOS. You can even flip between applications as if they were running on the same system. It’s pretty remarkable.

But, what’s even more remarkable is that Windows running inside my MacOS system is actually running a lot faster than it ever did on it’s own dedicated machine. And my non-windows applications running in MacOS barely suffer. I can still use Photoshop and surf the net and listen to music without a hiccup.

4. The hardware.

By Apple’s own admission, their really a hardware company (which unfortunately could be their Achilles heel eventually). And, it just so happens that their innovations are simply brilliant. Little things go a very long way.

For example, the power adapter is magnetic. Get it close enough to the power port and it sucks itself into the right place. Not to mention it saves you the worry of the machine getting pulled off a table when someone trips on the wire. Or how about the wire itself? It’s made of soft rubber that doesn’t remember it’s shape so it’s not as messy.

Or the track-pad. It’s nice and big and the whole things a button. There’s a camera built into every screen, standard. And I’m not worried about breaking the CD drive when I use it as a cup holder.

The hardware couldn’t seem less technical or less threatening. There’s no mysterious buttons or switches. (My Toshiba had at least three).

5. It’s designed for me!

I read an article today discussing the upcoming Windows 7, which I think Microsoft better get right or else they’ll be in real hot water. Here’s a quick excerpt from the article.

“Windows’ dominance relies heavily on third-party software developers who keep churning out compelling new programs. To give those developers as many options as possible for reaching PC users, through the years, Windows spawned confusingly redundant features…”

This is exactly the ideology that makes the Windows experience so comparatively poor (although, with nothing to compare it to, most people don’t even know).

If I hired someone to build a house for me, I would want them to build it so that I will enjoy living in it. I want rooms that make sense to me the way that I live. The last thing I want is for the developer to be thinking about all the possible things IKEA might want to manufacture.

Microsoft has apparently been thinking about IKEA, Apple has been thinking about me.

The Mac system is smooth, comfortable, intuitive and natural. Most PC users when switching, have a little trouble getting used to the new system. Not because it’s actually hard, but because they’re thinking too hard.

6. The bundled software.

When I bought my Toshiba, It had so much crap on it, I can’t believe it. I mean, seriously, there were easily a dozen programs starting up. None of them were particularly well designed and all of them were eventually uninstalled. To this day, I’m not even sure what some of them did.

This is the experience of a whole lot of people buying new PC’s. There’s just so much crap you didn’t ask for and almost all of it sucks. (Best Buy offered to remove it for me, but it would cost $60. Really?)

This experience tainted my expectations of my Mac. I thought that bundled software had to be junk. Not so on the Mac. iMovie, iPhoto, iDVD, Garage Band, so on and so forth—this really is world class software. It’s powerful and really easy to use.

Where most bundled software just slows things down and confuses users, the Mac bundled software is, in itself, a reason to love the computer even more.

7. Third-Party software is usually better, too.

I used to worry that if I switched to a Mac I’d have trouble finding software to do all the stuff I wanted to do, because it’s no secret, there aren’t as many people developing for Mac as their are for PC.

But, you know what I learned? Where there might be 10 programs available on PC—usually one one of them is actually any good. On the Mac, there might only be one program available, but it’s usually great. With only two exceptions (out of dozens) this has been my consistent experience.

There are applications and widgets for almost everything you could ever want to do and they’re usually as intuitive and easy to use as the MacOS system itself.

8. The workflow.

Whether you’re a professional or not, when you use a computer you have a workflow. Always, there’s no way around it. Where Windows feels like manipulating a machine, MacOS feels like an organic interaction.

For example, people complain that some Macintosh screens are too small. If you were operating Windows, you’d be absolutely right. But not so with a Mac. Your screen may only have 13 inches to work with, but MacOS gives you as many desktop spaces as you want and switching between them doesn’t even require clicking. It’s as easy as a flip of the wrist. Before you know it, you won’t even realize the screen is 13 only inches.

Or, take this for example, in Windows, if you want to open a program you navigate a menu and find it. Or if you want to modify your desktop image or sound preferences, you go through the control panel and find the right dialogue and have to remember to press “apply”.

On a Mac, you don’t even touch your mouse. Anything and everything you want is as simple as press Command+Space (they’re right next to each other) and typing the first few letters. And, with free software like QuickSilver, it’s even easier.

the Workflow doesn’t stop there, either. I just don’t have the time or ambition to go into all of them.

In Conclusion

It’s all about the experience. And it’s not even necessarily that Mac is that great (although it is excellent)—It’s more that Windows is that bad and it’s not healthy to stay in such abusive relationships.

I’m not married to Mac. If Windows 7 came out and it really was a huge leap in software development that left Mac in the dust, I’d have no reservations about going back to Windows. But, this hasn’t been Microsoft’s character in over a decade. I don’t see why it’d be different now.

Mac is indeed trendy. And, it’s definitely an aesthetic statement. But, it also happens to be the best computing environment available right now and probably for some time to come. With more-than capable Notebooks selling at $1000 and family desktop computers at just $600 Mac really is the best choice, even for most budget computer shoppers.

It’s unfortunate though really, most PC users won’t realize the huge benefits of a Mac until they’ve actually switched over. A quick demo at Best Buy is only going to confuse and frighten them because it takes more time than that to forget the abuse suffered at the hands of Microsoft Windows and learn to trust again.

But take it from me, it’s worth the leap. Life is better on a Mac.