Why Buy a Mac?

As you can tell, I'm a Mac fanboy. No, I'm not some mind-numb salivating Steve Jobs' clone, but I have come to appreciate the high quality of the hardware and the OS and the fact that Apple controls them both. The advantage to that? When you have problems you don't have some guy in India who works for Microsoft and some guy in India who works for Dell or HP or whomever pointing fingers at each other.

Is the Mac or OS X perfect? Of course not. It's a machine and an OS that are developed by people and made by people and people are fallible. I'm going to do several fresh articles on why I think the Mac is superior. In this first one I'll concentrate on the hardware.

Apple not only makes some of the most visually pleasing hardware, but some of the most robust as well. When the PC vendor we were using at my work went belly-up we were looking for a good replacement. While we debated the relative positive and negatives of current vendors, we decided to make an investment in Mac Mini's. I couldn't use OS X because we are a Windows shop, but I invested in the hardware anyway. I bought about 20-25 Mac Mini's over time and have not been disappointed in one of them. They pretty much run 24X7 and have been flawless. We loaded Windows on them and away we went. We eventually went with a Wintel vendor for our PCs because the Mini's were a little under powered and under ported for some of our needs. But I do not regret that investment and we still buy them when we have a need for a really small computer. We have also started buying MacBook Pros for some of our laptop users for the same reason; quality hardware.

Are they more expensive than something I could buy from most Wintel vendors? Sure, but, as they say, you get what you pay for. My current laptop vendor of choice is having issues with their mouse buttons around the trackpad and the cases just aren't as sturdy. I'm betting I'd never have that kind of QC issue with a Mac.

My oldest son is using a four year old MacBook Pro that we bought him when he started college. He's been hard on it, but it's kept up. We did fall prey to some graphics bug that Apple fixed for free, but other than that, it's been solid. He's still using it and it was his primary machine, running Final Cut Studio that he used to create a movie for his College capstone. I use a Mac Pro at work and have two iMacs at home and have never been disappointed in them.

Apple also has some of the most attractive hardware from a design perspective. One only has to look at any Mac product or iPhone or iPad to see the high level placed on design. Of course, on the one hand the design may not speak to how it works or how it holds up, but in Apple's case it does. Not only do their devices look nice, they are incredibly robust and functional.

If you've never looked at a Mac or other Apple device, I'd urge you to do so. If you are fortunate enough to live near an Apple store go check them out.