Those who know me, know I am an Apple fan boy. I was a Mac guy from 1994 to 1998 and have been ‘back’ since 2006. Eight years on, Apple is a key part of my life in terms of delivering seamless entertainment, information and ‘office’ services.
Why do I rave about their gear? It just works, it is seamless, it is innovative, it looks nice, it is affordable, it is safe and it ‘does the job’ in a much more user friendly way.
I can get why people like Windows and Chrome. I use to like to ‘stick my head under the hood’ and muck around. These days, I yearn for simplicity and quality in the experience. I get that with all Apple products. When I buy their things, I know I am getting something awesome.
This week, I got an email from a friend saying she was wanting to buy a laptop and she asked why she should switch to Apple. I sent her the following. I thought others might find this handy too.
Why a Mac?
1. It just works – this is the catch-cry of Apple products. In reality, it does just work. There’s not the level of mucking around that you have with Windows machines… with drivers, product registration keys, complicated control panels, etc.
2. Windows and its machines are built to do everything (for pro use) and thus are usually heavier and don’t have the battery life of a MacBook.
3. Macs and other parts of the ecosystem talk to each other and get along really well. Your Mac will play nicely with your iPhone, iPad and Apple TV. Play nicely in this case means that all of your data will sync up. iCloud syncs all of your mail, contacts, calendar, notes, to dos and some files across all of your devices (Mac, iPhone, iPad) in the background. If you use Apple’s Pages, Numbers and Keynote and save your files to iCloud, they ‘magically’, appear on your iPhone and iPad. It also syncs your music across all devices.
4. Macs have a thing called Time Machine, which when set up with a ‘Time Capsule’ backs up your files as you go. If you Mac crashes for whatever reason or you accidentally delete a file, you can retrieve it quickly and easily.
5. Beyond a few basics, you don’t have to worry about viruses, malware and intrusions.
6. There’s great Mac software available for every task in the Apple App Store (like the iPhone/iPad app store). Software is relatively cheap, threat free and nice to use.
7. Everything you can do on a Windows PC, you can do on a Mac. Apple has some great ‘Office’ software in Pages (Word), Numbers (Excel) and Keynote (Powerpoint). Apple’s email, calendar, notes, tasks and contact book are much nicer than Outlook. If you want Microsoft Office, you can rent it for A$120 a year (this is what I do for when I need it).More: http://office.microsoft.com/en-au/office365home/ . It also works nicely with Google services such as Mail and Docs.
8. Apple has a great photo management and manipulation program called iPhoto. It comes standard with your Mac. It comes with some other great built in software.
9. The MacBook Air is energy efficient: http://www.apple.com/au/macbook-air/environment.html
10. They’re good value for money. Yes, they’re a bit more expensive than a Windows machine but you get a much more user friendly operating system, well designed hardware and less hassle with software, peripherals and security.
I am sure there are many more reasons but this will do for now.
ENDS
Andrew Woodward 