Kufalk Dot Com

Nope, not the fruit, but the shiny, sleek, high-powered, expensive computer components that simply WORK.

“Back in the day”, when personal computers became popular, the world rushed out to buy a PC, loaded with Microsoft DOS and Microsoft Windows.  Then they got home and suddenly had to learn about .bat files, .dll’s, drivers, scripts, etc.  It was a geek’s dream and the average person’s nightmare.  And the larger nightmare came to those who ’sort-of’ knew what they were doing and suddenly their families/friends/enemies all considered them their personal Tech Support (don’t be offended Mom & Dad, you know I’ll always take your calls & fix your stuff! =) ).

Since then, not much has changed.  Microsoft still dominates the computing world with broken products, running on hardware with an infinite number of configurations and components.  To think about it, I don’t know if people would have the problems they do if Microsoft controlled the hardware that their OS runs on like Apple does.  BUT then the purists wouldn’t be able to build their liquid cooled, neon-lighted, monster machines.  I digress.

The first thing you notice about anything Mac is that It looks COOL!

The hardware is absolutely beautiful.  From the sleek aluminum cased MacBook Pro’s, to the thin and vibrant iMac, all the way down to the Mighty Mouse and Airport Express; Mac has the coolest looking/feeling hardware you can wrap your paws around.  Not to mention the original click-wheel of the iPod and the brilliant touch-screen of the new iPod touch and iPhone lines.

The next thing you’ll notice about anything Mac is that It FUNCTIONS!

Probably the number 1 thing you’ll hear people saying about Mac products are that they just plain WORK.  They do everything effortlessly.  No more digging for drivers, failed software updates, frustrating configurations.  It just all seems to work by itself.  Case in point, and what got me to writing this piece.  Last week I was trying to install a reef-controller to our saltwater reef.  One of the bigger features is that you can control it via a web interface.  HOWEVER, it is a WIRED ethernet connection, not a wireless connection.  I don’t have any wired connection anywhere near the aquarium, so I needed to install a router near the aquarium which would wirelessly connect to my router downstairs (AKA WDS).  Sounds easy right?  Wrong.  After spending a day and a half on it, loading 3rd party firmware on my routers, etc, I was still no closer to where I wanted to be.  This seemed like a perfect time to try out the Apple Airport Extreme and Airport Express routers.  Sure enough, less than 10 minutes after plugging them in, everything was working fine.  Virtually no configuration, no effort and nowhere NEAR the nightmare I would have with other manufacturer hardware.

Oh, and the following morning, I was looking at the routers and they both stated that a new version of firmware was available.  ONE click and it was downloaded and installed.  ZERO effort, ZERO issues.

The iPhone is another example of this.  I’ve listened to a lot of people talk about how they can’t get an iPhone because they don’t understand “computer things”.  I have yet to find a phone that is easier to deal with.  Everything is right there.  No menus, nothing cryptic, it’s all there behind neat little icons that open with the slightest touch of the finger, and navigation is absolutely intuitive.

So why not?

With the benefits of a Mac (ease of use, beauty of design, lack of viruses/vulnerabilities) why are people slow to migrate?  I WAS one of these slow to migrate people.  I lived in the PC world.  Everything I did revolved around a Dell laptop that I knew how to fix with my eyes closed.  I was like a mechanic listening to an old motor, or a plumber to rattling pipes.  I could tell what was wrong and knew how to fix it.  Usually…  However, a Mac runs on Unix software (or a derivative of such), which is quite different from the DOS I’d known for so many years. It was fear of the unknown.  I didn’t know how to use a Mac, and more importantly, I didn’t know how to FIX a Mac.  It never crossed my mind that I could possibly own a computer that I wouldn’t routinely need to “fix”.

Then came the price tag.  Macs are generally more expensive for hardware specs that can be “less” than PC’s.  PC people are very wrapped up in processing power, RAM and disk space.  So when they see Macs that have less RAM, less storage space and less processing power, they freak out and think “my God! I can’t go backwards! It’ll never run! My PC runs so slow right now with 4GB of RAM, how can I ever get by with 2GB?!?”.  However, what they don’t realize is that a Mac and a PC are 2 VERY different animals.  It’s like comparing motors on a Ford F-350 diesel and a Yamaha YZF-R1 motorcycle.  You simply can’t do it.  Yes, they’re both motors but they are too different for a direct comparison.  In my experience, applications run lighter, faster and far more stable on a Mac than they do on a PC.  The Mac OSX just seems to manage all of it better.  So the general theory is that you don’t NEED as much in a Mac as you do in a PC.  The other thing to consider is that in all likelihood, the Mac you buy today will outlast 2 or 3 PCs bought at the same time.  The one I’m on now is almost 2 yrs old and I have not experienced the slightest hint of performance degradation like I have almost immediately after buying every PC I have ever owned.

Software is another area where people get very excited and ‘clingy’.  I was one of those people.  However, out of all the “can’t do without” apps that I thought I had on the PC, there has yet to be one that I could not find a Mac equivalent for which has been either free, or a fraction of the price of anything PC oriented.  In fact, Apple is smart enough that they offer most all of their applications with a “family-pack” option which holds 4 licenses and is STILL a fraction of what anything Microsoft costs.  One area which I do use a Microsoft application on my Mac is Office.  Microsoft makes a version of Office which runs on the Mac.  So I can have Word, PowerPoint and Excel on my Mac which are the main business applications I would use on the PC.  The ONLY piece of Microsoft software that I miss is (the now discontinued) MS Money, which is arguably one of the best personal accounting software packages available.  However, instead of a $100+ price tag, I replaced it with a $25 piece of software that is functional and is small enough that I have been able to work with the developers to get them to add certain pieces which I enjoyed in MS Money.  Try THAT with Microsoft!

A few functional examples of why I love my Macs:

One thing that I always wanted to do on my PC laptop for example, but never could, is to take it at the end of the day, close the screen with all apps up, go home, open it and have it function.  In theory and per Windows documentation this should be no problem.  However, in reality it was a huge problem.  Bringing the PC back up from hibernation took many minutes, and applications often times wouldn’t recover.   A Mac however, is an entirely different story.  The one I’m typing this on hasn’t been shut down in months.  Yet every day, I close the screen, unplug it and toss it in my backpack where it sits for a few hours, a night, a weekend, and opens up EXACTLY where I left off with no complaints.

Another area is a Mac OSX bundled application called “Time Machine”.  Time Machine automatically backs up my Macs in Weekly, Daily and hourly increments, any and all of which are easily accessible and restored.  What does this mean to me?  It means when I have a hard-drive crash (which inevitably everyone does), that within HOURS I’m back up and running EXACTLY where I was just minutes before the crash.  It also means that when I decide to upgrade my Mac (which inevitably everyone does) that I won’t suffer one slight bit of data loss and there will be virtually no setup required.

A third example is something pretty common and simple.  Replacing a phone.  I have an iPhone which had several hundred contacts loaded into it, 4 active email accounts, calendars with hundreds of appointments on them, reminders, alarms, hundreds of pics, a few thousand songs.  Now, I suppose this is more than the average person has on a motorola razr, but nonetheless, changing phones can be a huge pain in the ass.  In this case, I wanted to upgrade to the latest iPhone 3Gs.  I went at lunch, bought the new phone, brought it back, plugged it into my Mac and in less than an hour, everything was EXACTLY as it was on my old phone with no intervention on my behalf.

So in the end, I’m totally sold on Apple products (including their stock) and will continue to simplify my life with them.  And I don’t even feel bad for “taking for granted” that it’ll all do whatever I want it to without a lot of frustration and figuring out.  I’m not saying anyone is “bad” or “stupid” for using PC’s or Microsoft products, I’m simply saying that during your next “Blue Screen of Death”, “Fatal Exception Error”, “.DLL Error”, or “malware or virus attack/infection”; you think of me and this blog as you click “Send this error report to Microsoft”.

Love, Peace, Hair Grease

-Jeffy