[PCWorld]

Post your comments for 10 Things We Love About Apple here

[kennmsr]

Love those Get a Mac ads especially the ones from the UKMy favorites being "Naughty Step" and "Pie Chart" Love that British Humor.Japan also has some great variations but you must speak Japanese to get the full impact. Thanks to translations by Coal in Japan you can go to the English Subtitled mirror powered by PowerPage.org.amacinternationalads.html>Favorite Japanese versions are "Steps" & "Security"

[dwr50]

and now that they have added Complete My CD to itunes ,you can add those crappy cd filler tracks to your collection !

[vasic]

In the States, my personal favourite is 'Security' ("Mac has issued a salutation; cancel or allow?"). During my first encounter with Vista, some weeks ago, I was laughing out loud, thinking of this commercial every thirty seconds. Vista kept throwing up these dialogue boxes (Cancel or Allow) for every single minute thing I was trying to do. I could not believe how dead-on the commercial was.

The whole batch of "I'm a Mac/I'm a PC" ads is extremely effective. Majority of my PC-owning friends has seen them and find them extremely funny, since they can easily relate. Needless to say, many have made up their mind, as soon as the old Win box reaches reasonable end-of-life status (3-4 years max), they're getting a Mac.

[thoreau]

Every Apple product is heavily flawed in its first geneation. Battery problems, cracked Cubes, noisy G4s (wind tunnel), no eject button for the CD/DVD drive (my keyboard went bad), monitors purchased with G4 need adapter to work with G5, fingerprints on my ipod, running old apps need to boot up classic os (what windows app requires something like that?) Lots of glitz. Lots of hype. I happy to go home at the end of the day to my PC.

[chefmitch]

What I love about Apple, more than anything else, is that stuff just works. It really seems that the people who designed the hardware / software really thought about the User. Stuff just works the way you would expect.

Ever notice the difference in connecting to a security enabled wireless network on a Mac vs PC?

Mac - type in password & you're done.
PC - type in password TWICE. No big deal you say - typing in 10, 13 or even 26 letters / numbers twice is a pain in the butt and serves NO useful purpose. Are the Windows people afraid that a hacker will randomly type in your password and then be foiled because they couldn't randomly type it in a second time?!?

[dmills21]

ChefMitch....have you not heard of Copy and Paste? Control-C, Control-V.....good to go.

[chefmitch]

[quote name='dmills21']ChefMitch....have you not heard of Copy and Paste? Control-C, Control-V.....good to go.1. you're missing the point - why should the user have to put in the text twice2. copy from what?here's how it works: someone gives me a slip of paper with a 13 digit hexadecimal number. i could open notepad and type it once and then paste it twice but why should I have to.you can't use copy and paste in the connection screen because the password is not shown (asterisks or bullets are shown in place of actual password)

[vasic]

Previous poster is right; just open your Notepad, type in your password, then select password, then 'Edit', 'Copy' (or CtrlC), then close Notepad ('Do you want to save? No.'), then back to that wireless network screen, then paste once (here you have to know it's CtrlV, since there is no Edit menu), paste twice. Now wasn't that simple, totally intuitive and fast...As for reliability of Macs, they did say that Apple seems to be much better in producing reliable machines. I am sure there are plenty of people who purchased machines that were defective (although hairline cracks under the screws in the all-clear casing of Cube don't quite make it a defective machine; it's a subjective judgement, though), overall, Apple's reliability has been known to be much better than other hardware makers.At the end of the day, I'm relieved to leave all those PCs in the office and go to my Mac at home.

[dmills21]

Who says you need to open Notepad?? Type the Passcode in the first line, highlight Passcode, Control-C, tab to second line, Control-V. Takes all but 1 additional second.The reason behind this, my reason as I'm not a Microsoft programmer, is the same as when you signed up for your PC World account. You type in your password twice to ensure that you have typed it in correctly.Basically in PC vs Mac it is all relative. For example in the last posters comment about quality, Apple vs eMachines. Apple charges more for their hardware and so there is a higher profit margin and they can in turn spend more on QC. Where as eMachines has very little profit margin.....so of course you are going to have quality issues. Now if you take Apple vs say Alien PC or Falcon NW, it's a different story. And I can tell you that a lot of people will agree with me that Alien PC and Falcon NW will have an higher quality product then Apple anyday. On top of that, the price vs performance ratio will be much greater with Alien PC and Falcon NW.I'll state again, it is all relative. Comes down to personal preference and which company has done a better job of marketing(Brainwashing) the customer. And I have to tell you...Apple has some pretty good Head Shrinks over there, what with having all that extra time on their hands not announcing new products and just creating speculation.

[vasic]

I agree with the eMachines example. As for Alienware stuff, I'm not so sure they are that much better or reliable (overall) than Macs. Then again, their market share is probably much smaller than Apple's, which means their volume is smaller too.As for copying and pasting, I never liked nit-picking, but you simply cannot copy text from a hidden password field; you can verify this by typing a password anywhere there is a password field (browser, ftp client, Windows log-in, wireless settings screen), wherever the password characters are concealed (i.e. show up as asterisks). Then copy that password into a clear text field (or Notepad) and see what comes out. In other words, in order to do copy/paste, you need to use another programme (such as Notepad).Anyway, the original point remains. There were several usability studies done on all these OSs (from Win95 to Vista, from OS8 to OSX 10.4) and they have consistently confirmed that for any specific given task, it takes fewer mouse clicks, mouse hunts (moving a pointer to a specific small spot on the screen), keyboard clicks, on a Mac OS than on an equivalent (then-current) Windows version, to complete the task. Regardless of what it was (from simple things, such as navigating to a file, to complex, such as configuring Mail client, TCP/IP settings, file sharing, Wireless networking, etc). I believe it was done on some university in France and they periodically follow up with newer versions (Tiger, now Vista, soon Leopard). In other words, what anecdotal evidence suggests, and scientific study confirms, the design of Mac OS was always superior to that of Windows.

[HarveyDanger]

"Who knows where music might be if Steve Jobs had decided to spend his time making cartoons at Pixar rather than reinventing the consumer electronics industry?"In the exact same place it was before Steve Jobs? "OH NOES, WITHOUT HIM WE'D STILL HAVE TO BUY CDS." God forbid anyone actually listen to the work that musicians pour their time into.

[butlerwm]

Okay guys. I own five Macs (2 G4s, 1 G3, and 2 older PPCs) and five PCs (an HP laptop and for generic desktops of various speeds). Which I used depends on what room I happen to be in at the time and what tasks I want to tackle. I've been a IT tech for 20 years and service about 1500 PCs (with three other techs) in our school district. Mostly, we replace our PCs every five years (we have a 20% replacement cycle).As far as Macs outlasting PCs -- well, that's a myth. A five year old Mac, if it will run Tiger, runs it "dog" slow to the point you're wasting your time waiting for things to happen. The same thing's true with PCs. But at least with a PC, I can upgrade video and processor to keep it working for the full five years. Don't get me wrong. OS X has it all over Windows. But you gotta remember something, Microsoft doesn't make PCs (thank goodness). As such, every PC sold is made by somebody else.Good articles - both.

[ImaPhake]

Type in the passord twice???What are you Apple guys smoking this time -- signing on to my home's security-enabled wireless network is set to "automatic."During the setup phase was the only time I needed to type the password twice and then told it to automatically sign on with the pasword thereafter.You guys are like the people who complain about Windows Movie Maker importing a video file in clips, yet never took the time to uncheck the dialog box which enables/disables that feature each time you import video.In both cases, this is something that can be enabled or disabled by the user.Sheesh!

[chefmitch]

[quote name='ImaPhake']> > > > During the setup phase was the only time I needed to type the password twice and then told it to automatically sign on with the pasword thereafter.> > > > I was comparing the process of initially joining a wireless network. There was no mention of needing to continuously type in wireless passwords.This is one example that, to me, proves that Apple programmers are more effective than some of their competitors.Another example of how the little things make a big difference :Setting up routers. If you set up an Apple router and create a wireless password it is automatically used to connect to the network. No need to type it in even one additional time. Pretty slick!Setting up a non-Apple router means you need to type in the wireless password once in the router set up utility / browser and then 2 more times when connecting to the wireless network for the first time.It's like the difference between TiVo software and some of it's competitors. They both get the job done, but the TiVo has so many small little touches that it is the Gold Standard in it's category.You can tell when people really try and make something the best it can be.

[ImaPhake]

Okay -- I see what you're saying.Doesn't seem like much to gripe about though since it's only needed the very first time.Typing a password twice seems to be in every Web sign-up page these days, so it's not like this is a unique problem (if tha't what you want to call it).I don't mind losing the extra 4 seconds it took me to do that. :P

[chefmitch]

[quote name='ImaPhake']Okay -- I see what you're saying.> > > > Doesn't seem like much to gripe about though since it's only needed the very first time.> > Typing a password twice seems to be in every Web sign-up page these days, so it's not like this is a unique problem (if tha't what you want to call it).> > > > I don't mind losing the extra 4 seconds it took me to do that. :PMy goal was only to try and point out some of the little things that I found in OS X that just made me think "why doesn't everyone do it this way".I try not to get into the us vs. them / mac vs pc debate. If someone is interested I will happily let them know my preference but I don't feel the need to win by having someone else lose.For my tastes, I prefer the Mac platform, but I have nothing against PCs.BTW. I use both Macs and PCs. I own both Microsoft and Apple stock.

[Rndmacts]

For one thing it is inacurate and Vasic yes a new installation witll bring up the UAC in Vista, that is because most software installations think they need to have higher user rights than is really necessary. This usually disappears completely after a week as the system learns your habits. The Apple ad is referring to the firewall and is inaccurate because it only questions once about allowing applications access the internet. All good firewalls do the same thing, once trained most people can forget about it as they quietly go to work protecting you. Apple would never let users know about vulnerabilities if it wasn't that some of their programs like iTunes and Quicktime also operate on Windows and that those type of occurances would hurt a lot more people than Apple owners. The authors also have an error in their statement that no viruses and exploits were ever released into the wild, there have been several viruses but OSX is such a small target that not much damage was done. When you go after an OS where there are hundreds of millions of users versus one that only has a few million users, well you can see which one will make you notorious. Apple ads are innovative, they have taken all the Truth in Advertising rules and said that by tongue in cheek comparison we can deceive the public into believing their product is more hip and cool than the stodgy PC. But if I want to play games, I am going to need the ability to run Windows, if I am going to want to do the widest range of business applications, I am going to need Windows. I am not musical so I don't need Garageband, Windows movie maker is sufficient for my needs, Vista's media centre supplements my PVR which is superior to TiVo in the US and is offered directly from my cable company here in Canada. It even supports HDTV and so does my PC. So when I acquire Microsofts new Home Server, I will have all the components found in your Apple computer and still have a few dollars in the bank to buy a few more games.

[bofh2]

Ummm, this is PC word? I realize that we all want to be warm and fuzzy but come on. Get some BLs for crying out loud.

[Skunky]

Sorry... I don't like plastic anything... cars, phones, watches, nothing.... gotta have my metal... Aluminum, Titanium, Silver, Platinum..Polycarbonate is a stretch but I have learned to live with it.I wish Apple would make an aluminum keyboard to go with the Mac Pro