My story is quite the same but on the other side if you say so, I've
been a Mac user since 1985 and a mac owner since 1990.
And I have always chosen my macs because I have liked the look of the
machine and my user experience.
I have owned macs with Motorola 68000, 68030 and 68040, then PPC 601
and 603, G3, G4 and G5 and also Intel Core duo and Core 2 duo. I have
also owned a SUN Sparc IPX and a IBM RS/6000 (ppc) in the late 90-ies.
I still have a Powermac g4 (400 MHz) bought in June 2000 serving as
web and mail-server, (mac OS X 10.4 Server). It's actually down at the
moment because it needs a new battery and I have no time it right now...
I started using macs because I liked the user interface, and stayed
away from the IBM PC with Dos that that was available in my home. I
have mainly used the computers for programming (basic, Pascal,
assembler then C, C++, perl and when with Mac OS X Objective-C and
Java). Also a lot off application development i Filemaker. All this
combined with desktop publishing as that was my field 1996 to 2007.
Before 1997 I worked with IBM AS/400 and IBM Mainframe and stayed a
long way from IBM at home. I can still miss some OS/2 things though.
In the mid-90-ies I started looking more on unix and had a Mac runing
A/UX, Solaris on the SUN and AIX on the IBM RS/6000. I was just
starting to look at Linux when Mac OS X was announced.
Today I work with real-time software so I use a thinkpad for work, but
stays away from Windows at home. My PowerMac G5 bought in January 2005
is still more waiting for me then I'm on the machine. The three year
old Mac mini in the living-room serves the family need just fine. And
I'm selling my MacBook Pro from 2006 now. I don't need that now when I
have an iPad.
In the 90-ies viruses could be plague because allot of file sharing
was going on on 44MB syquest disks, but as long as you had the
shareware Disinfectant you where safe. I had a virus in 1991 that
caused some trouble but that is the only time I have had troubles with
virus.
If I had not experienced the mac in 1985 I would probably be a dos-
person but I was in luck. For word-processing I prefer LaTex.
/ JOhan
30 sep 2010 kl. 16.32 skrev Chuck Norcutt:
> I suspect that the average for Winders machines is over 3 years
> since 3
> years is a typical amortization schedule for businesses running
> Winders (which is most of them).
>
> Looking back on my own computer ownership running IBM PC-DOS, OS/2 and
> Windows, since 1982 I have owned one each of machines running 8088,
> 286,
> 386, 486, two machines with AMD processors whose model numbers I can't
> recall (K6 & K7 I think) and two Intel Core-2 Duo machines both
> presently still in use. Since one of these two was an additional
> machine rather than a replacement I have owned 7 different DOS, OS/2
> and
> Windows machines in the past 28 years with upgrades always spurred by
> performance improvements or the technology requirements of different
> software. That's an average life of four years. No machine has ever
> been completely replaced because of failure although I did upgrade one
> of the AMD powered motherboards due to a disk controller failure on
> one
> channel (not the boot drive channel). I also upgraded one of the AMD
> processors once for a speed increase but not due to failure. I have
> never had a hard drive failure although I thought I did before
> discovering that it was the controller.
>
> I think I replace hard drives for improved capacity (every 2-3 years)
> which is likely faster than they can fail. I had one video card
> failure
> which was due to dust accumulation in the cooling fan which stopped
> the
> fan and allowed the card to overheat. I have also added lots of
> memory
> modules over the years but never needed to replace a bad one. I can't
> recall any other hardware failures although, over 28 years, I might
> have
> forgotten something. But I think I'd remember anything traumatic.
>
> So I don't accept that well built PCs have inherently inferior
> longevity
> to Macs. Any machine I have replaced was done because there was
> something much better available at an affordable price. I suspect
> that
> many low cost PCs get replaced when minor problems crop up because its
> often cheaper to just replace the machine for something better than to
> pay the service costs for someone to diagnose and repair the problem
> (which is often virus related for folks who don't know how to protect
> themselves). They're the ones that should be running Macs or Linux.
> But they find Macs too expensive and Linux a mystery and unavailable
> to
> the uninitiated.
>
> As to bottlenecks between CPU and storage devices between IBM
> compatible
> machines and Macs that might have been true for early Macs running
> Motorola 68000 processors. As a cost saving measure, very early PCs
> depended on direct CPU involvement for all I/O operations. But that's
> been gone for a long, long time. Macs have for many years now used
> the
> same bus architectures (and processors) used by PCs. If you can't
> beat
> 'em on price and performance you might as well join 'em.
>
> Chuck Norcutt
>
>
> On 9/30/2010 1:11 AM, Chris Barker wrote:
>> No proof, Chuck, all aprocryphal, except that:
>>
>> - Most people with Macs keep their machines around 5 years (gleaned
>> from the fora and from 2 Mac lists as well as discussions on
>> LinkedIn). I understand the average for Winders machine is 2-3
>> years.
>>
>> - The architecture differences between "IBM compatible" machines and
>> Macs seemed to be that there were fewer bottlenecks between CPU and
>> storage devices.
>>
>> - There might well be malware for the Mac some time in the future but
>> they are less vulnerable, as I understand it because Unix is easier
>> to secure. But the main reason that there are so many viruses for
>> Winders is because it was simple to pass with the way Outlook Express
>> worked.
>>
>> We'll have to wait and see, though; I will keep a watch. You might
>> be the first to know if I have been over-confident (or reckless)
>> :-).
>>
>> Chris
>>
>> On 29 Sep 2010, at 21:09, Chuck Norcutt wrote:
>>
>>> Got any proof of that? I thought not. :-)
>>>
>>>
>>
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