If you caught yesterday's article about Mac's alleged invincibility, you'll know I took the less than popular position that they too are vulnerable to viruses and crashes. And as much as people may like the product, that's not an opinion, it is a recognized fact. But, as I said in that article, Mac's are far less likely to get a compatible virus or to crash. Some people took yesterday's article as an attack on the cult of Mac. So to balance things out, I wanted to write today about the real reasons you should buy a Mac. I'm not talking about "they just work" or "they're magical". I mean real, empirical evidence that Mac's are great investments.
Mac's aren't cheap; but that hefty price tag does buy you certain luxuries. First of all, Apple packs their products with the best available hardware. A quick look at the current offerings show the least powerful processor offered in the Mac line is a dual-core Intel Core i5. This is an incredibly advanced processor and is by no means standard issue on all Windows machines. The minimum amount of RAM available is 2GB, which is highly sufficient for most applications today. The graphics processor has a minimum of 256 MB of memory, making it more than able to handle most games and websites.
But, almost everyone I know that bought a Mac didn't do it because of the tech specs. These alone are not a reason to pay double the price. The true beauty of a Mac is how the hardware and software play together.
I want to walk through a hypothetical situation with you all. Pretend you're throwing a party and are trying to plan a menu for your guests. Some of them are children, so you have to include something they'll eat. Some are elderly, and their tastes need to be accommodated. Some are vegetarian, some are vegan, some are on strict diets, and to round the group out, some will only eat bologna. This menu would be a nightmare to put together. It would require an intense amount of planning and even if you plan out every minute detail, you're still likely to get it wrong. That is what Windows has to do. They write an operating system that has to work on dozens of different types of machines. To accommodate that, they must write the OS to the lowest standards. To continue the analogy from earlier, Mac is like writing a menu for a group of same aged people of similar taste that eat exactly the same things. Apple can write it's OS for one type of machine. Apple controls every step of the product line, they build the machines themselves. They don't have to guess what Acer, or HP, or Toshiba or Compaq or any other makers are going to be doing with their hardware.
This is a key reason for Mac's legendary stability. Part of Windows stability issues stem from trying to cast an exceedingly wide net to cover all of the possible computer configurations. Apple knows exactly what size their net should be. So they are more easily able to predict execution paths and available resources. Apple makes their products so they greatly exceed the bare minimum. This is how they are able to be so stable. Apple makes it's products so they can beat their requirements handily. So, at any given moment, a Mac has significantly more resources available to it than needed.
Part of the allure of Mac is the exclusive software. Many of the greatest Windows programs seem to get ported over to Apple, Word, Excel, and the rest of the office suite. But Apple software doesn't go the other way as readily; iTunes being a notable exception. So to get your hands on GarageBand, iLife, Aperture or Final Cut Pro, you'll need a Mac. Also, iCloud is coming, and it seems like a game changer as far as cloud storage goes.
