Macs Still Don't Suck: IT Professionals Increasingly Prefer Apple

In the last couple years I have noticed an increase in IT departments being willing to purchase Macbooks instead of Windows laptops.  It turns out that there is evidence beyond anecdotal experience that, according to a 2015 article, Apple Macs are replacing PCs across enterprise at ‘unprecedented rate,'

It wasn't that long ago that people were writing articles informing us of all the reasons Why Mac Sucks, which impassioned others to counter that, no, actually Macs Don't Suck.  Not to be out-done by Apple, Microsoft invented Windows 8, and now the number of "Why Macs Suck" articles on the internet is totally eclipsed by "Why Windows 8 Sucks" articles.  Windows users and IT departments have so little trust in Microsoft that they regularly refuse to upgrade to newer versions of Microsoft's software, instead preferring to stay 2 or 3 major versions behind.

I have mostly used Windows, but recently got a Macbook Pro.  This prompted some of my colleagues to ask why I would want such a strange machine.  After all, it has a weird keyboard with the control key in the "wrong" place, and there is supposedly no right mouse button (or so they thought until I showed them otherwise).

Long-time Windows users are sometimes surprised and annoyed that Apple keyboards and mice and other things are slightly different from what they are used to.  However, Microsoft has for decades copied ideas from Apple, so it would be a bit silly to expect Apple to then turn around and blatantly copy Microsoft.  If Apple had copied what Microsoft did with Windows 8 it would have been a huge mistake.

It should also be noted that before Microsoft made Ctrl-C mean "copy" under MS-DOS it already meant "abort", and it still does mean that if you are typing at a command prompt within Windows.  Microsoft could have used Alt-C (the precedent set by the once popular WordStar word processor).  Then there would also not be this inconsistency between Windows and MacOS.  (On a side note, the Emacs editor did not introduce "Cua Mode" (to allow C-c, C-v, and C-x) until version 22.1.1 around 2007.)

I not only have experience with MacOS X and Windows, but also with Unix and Linux.  Depending upon who you talk to, MacOS X is either the best of both worlds (between Windows and Linux) or the worst of both.  There is certainly room for differing opinions, but I think the truth is somewhere in the middle.

Some people still think of MacOS X as Apple taking something that should be free and charging money for it (i.e. Linux).  However, MacOS X is not Linux, does not have Linux under the covers, and actually has nothing to do with Linux.  Both just happen to be related in some way to Unix, an OS that few people actually use anymore.

In fact, Linux is not even a complete OS.  Linux is merely a Unix-like OS kernel.  A Linux distribution (or "distro") is a combination the Linux kernel with a bunch of GNU software (licensed under the GPL).  Companies combine these things together, add their own enhancements and slap on their own branding (such as Red Hat Linux or Ubuntu Linux).

MacOS X is a complete operating system descended from NextOS, which pre-dates Linux, based on BSD (Berkley) Unix with its own kernel called XNU.  XNU is descended from the Mach kernel created at Carnegie Mellon University.  As with Linux distributions, MacOS X does ship with quite a lot of open source tools, and Apple does contribute code back to the open source community.

MacOS X also, of course, has a standard GUI, which has long been one of the best and most obvious features of the Mac.  Linux has no standard GUI.  Linux users have to choose from one of at least 8 different desktop GUI environments, which is great for people who like lots of options, but not so great for people who just want something that works.

Long-time Linux users may be annoyed that MacOS X doesn't have a command-line tool for installing open source software packages and their dependency like apt-get or yum.  There are some open source projects that try to fill that need.  The most popular seems to be Homebrew.  Homebrew is pretty good for installing many software packages ported from Unix or Linux to MacOS X.

Most Mac users will probably never mess with something like Homebrew.  They will get all their software from the App Store or distributed as disc image or installer.  However, as a developer there are things I need that are easier to install via Homebrew.  It can be slow, and it does not play well with competing package manager solutions, but it gets the job done.

The reason I recently made the switch from Windows, at least for my work laptop, is that the Dell laptop they had given me crashed constantly with sudden blue screen.  The IT Help Desk couldn't fix the problem, and I got tired of dealing with it and asked them to get me a Macbook instead.  After my new Macbook was ordered I figured out that my Dell problems were caused by a bad memory card, but the Macbook was already on its way.

I bought a Macbook for my wife several years ago, because I got tired of constantly fixing the problems she had with Windows, like viruses or the dreaded "blue screen of death" that occurred seemingly at random.  The Mac turned out to be a good choice for her.  I was happy that I didn't have to help her as often, and she was happy to have something that is easy to use and just works nearly all of the time.

In the years since I bought my wife's Macbook, I went through several less expensive Windows laptops.  I tried HP, Asus, and Toshiba and unfortunately had quality issues with all three.  The reason I kept buying them hoping the next one would be better is that, of course, I am cheap.  Actually, Apple computers only seem more expensive because they do not offer a low-end product made with cheap hardware.  If Apple wanted to sell low-end hardware, of course they could.  As they say, you get what you pay for.

Apple is primarily a hardware company, which is why they hired Microsoft to create Microsoft Word for the original Mac.  They do not have a business model like Microsoft's where they expect to make a lot of money from their software or like Google's where they try to make money by giving away free services and charging for advertising.  They make money by producing innovative products that their customers are willing to pay a premium for.

Anyway, once you get used to the differences in the GUI and the keyboard layout, a Mac can do basically everything a Windows PC, and you can even run a lot of Windows software in a virtual machine or with Wine (the Windows emulator).

But you shouldn't get a Mac because it can emulate a Windows PC, but because of the reliable and enjoyable user experience.  You will never see another "blue screen of death", you will not have to worry about your computer becoming infected with viruses (thanks to XProtect and the fact that most viruses target Windows, but if you want additional protection there are several free antivirus offerings), and you will never again feel that you should keep your operating systems 2 or 3 major releases behind the latest.