Here's an excerpt from a blog I was pointed to

I can remember the day, back in 1994, when I abandoned the Mac for Windows. It was a gloomy, overcast day when I made that bittersweet decision — I was a Mac and Unix nerd all through college — but after my twelfth or thirteenth crash of the day, I had had enough. Photoshop, Netscape, Secure Shell and Word were just not meant to run more than one at a time on Mac OS 7. Had I stayed with Apple through that rough patch I’m sure I would have been slimmer, sexier and happier, but NT 3.51 only crashed twice a day, so my hand was forced. I ran out and bought a PC that very day.

Wow, here's someone who switched from Mac to Windows because real life experience proved it to be a more stable platform. Reading between the lines, it sounds like running Mac was just too expensive because of lost work.

I know, like the guy says, Mac is supposed to be cooler, shinier, and indicate that you have a better more peaceful life. And I know it's cool and fashionable to say things like the same code in Windows runs better on a Mac, even though a Mac is identical hardware (ATI GPU, Intel CPU) to a PC at 2.5x the cost.

Style over substance? It sounds to me like Mac is a lifestyle brand. You don't buy one because it's better in any measurable way (according to AJAX blogger, it's not better) but because it shows the world how much smarter you are than everyone else?

Fake Steve Jobs explains the real reason Mac has the popularity it does

That's why iPhone has taken off. Because it's beautiful. It's amazing. It works. It restores a sense of childlike wonder to people's lives.

It wasn't made by a consortium. It couldn't be created by a committee. It is the product of one vision, one man, one genius -- that would be me -- with, to be sure, a bit of help from a few other people who played minor roles.

John....
You're trolling there.

Wow, here's someone who switched from Mac to Windows because real life experience proved it to be a more stable platform. Reading between the lines, it sounds like running Mac was just too expensive because of lost work.

Yep, he did, but from macOS7 to windows nt 3.51
I remember macOS7. A brick to be sent down the ocean, in my opinion. Not a surprise he went away.

I won't enter the "that one is better" game, (obviously because linux rules them all! ;-) ), but the situation have changed today.
On every fronts.

Around that time, when I've ditched my amiga 2000 to buy a 286, nearly every geeks I knew named me "the fool".
I believed in that platform, and today, I'm proved right.
That don't stop me to have a few UAE disk images (Rick dangerous !!!), but the time changes, and I surely don't regret the evolution our computer world had in the mean time.

Yeah you know John has a sly streak I remember the iMac with OS8. The company I was working for at the time bought one for testing. It would have been nice except for that piece of **** hockey puck they called a mouse. Oh how I would like to have one now to make a video of me destroying it to put on You Tube

John, have you ever tried anything for any length of time besides what Bill Gates has marketed to everyone?

Um ... you're talking about a single person switching operating systems 13 years ago. It's a wonder so much of the software the guy was frustrated with still exists today.

I like Windows as a development platform, and it's usable as an operating system ... but one man's opinion half a generation ago really doesn't tell us anything about how reliable either system is. I get a sense you don't like Mac fanboyism, but you're doing exactly the same thing for Steve Balmer.

I think what John is getting at is whether owning a mac or apple product is more of a fashion (for lack of a better word) statement than a practical solution. To a certain degree I have to agree. If you look around everyone has their hands on an iPod and I know a guy who chose to get an iPhone over paying rent when it first came out. A lot of the non-techies I know honestly don't know the difference between an iPod and a cheaper alternative, all they know is everyone else has an iPod, and having moved to Southern California 3 years ago I've realized that counts for a lot down here.

Don't get me wrong, I think there are plenty of practical reasons to buy a mac or other apple product, but I think a lot of people end up with them because it is more 'in'.

By the way I have to agree that a lot has changed since OS7.

Originally Posted by tripy

John....
You're trolling there.

Not at all, or at least that's not what I'm intending.

I'm getting tired of the myth that Mac computers are magical boxes that the laws of physics and information science do not apply to. Us who are interested in computers beyond just using them to check email should know better than to perpetuate myths like Macs never crash, are superior in every way, and bestow upon their owners a sense of being superior people.

I can't even count how many times people have said identical binary code crashes within minutes or is so buggy as to be unusable when it's run on a Windows PC, but that the very same binary runs smoothly and makes people happier and younger when they run it on a Mac. People are fond of saying Windows itself runs smooth sailing on a Mac, which is the ultimate untruth, and smacks (un?)common sense in the face. People (that's plural) who say this are suggesting that the Windows codebase is actually quite flawless, but crippled by shoddy hardware. When it's run on a Mac, which is largely identical hardware aside from the code, well, that just doesn't make sense.

Some friends of mine swear IBM chip Macs were 2x faster than Intel chips of the same era and MHz rating. Then they swore the Intel Macs were 2x to 4x faster than the old PowerPC Macs. It's true because Steve Jobs said it's true, but that's saying 2+2=20. Those are a married couple with 3 masters degrees between the 2 of them. They also say the dirty secret of owning a Mac is that they have to defragment the hard disc. I thought it just magically produced happiness - what's this about needing routine maintenance?

I've tried OS X Panther with all this crazy hype, and I was underwhelmed and bitterly disappointed.