Canadian Mac Forums at ehMac banner

This Macbook is my first and last Mac, switching back

25K views 123 replies 59 participants last post by  screature 
#1 ·
Frankly, I've never really been that frustrated with computers until I decided to switch to Mac. I've used alot of PC's in pro and home settings and altough they do suck to use sometimes and are prone to viruses, I think they are relatively reliable if you know your way aroud.

Here's why I'm not liking my mac experience:

-Macs are ultra expensive. You can get a cadillac of a PC compared to the price of an entry level Mac.

-I'm taking a music analysis class at university so now I'm using a Mac for what it does best, right? music! However, 10 days before my final project is due, my hard drive just quits and I send it to inso (the mac resellers in Montréal) and spend 150 bucks to get my data back and it doesn't work. I was putting off buying an external HD (to back up) until the end of classes, but my barely 9 month old computer crapped out first. Oddly enough, in my same little class of barely 15 students, another girl's G4 will not turn on anymore and she has to submit her project today, but it will lack certain components she wasn't able to back up to a USB data key. At least my mac turned on. Her's might have a dead motherboard and is no longer under warranty.

-All my friends that have owned macs have had critical problems with the hardware. Most got their parts exchanged except one who's logic board failed a week after his warranty expired.

-The customer service people at Apple Canada are not very helpful and are really unkind. They tend to be really snappy over the phone and they are not well trained. My friend had just bought a new MBP and we couldn't figure out how to get exposé to work. We kept hitting the F9 key and a semi transparent square with an X kept appearing on the screen. Since the computer was days old we called apple care and they first had us reset the pram by holding down certain keys and rebooting 4 times, then they had us DO A FULL REINSTALL OF MAC OS X. It wasn't a big deal because she barely had any data since the Mac was so new. So about 2 hours later the os is reinstalled and still we can't use exposé so we call back and the person says "oh, you just have to hold down the function key and then press f9"! When you consider that Mac has 6 models of new laptops out (really only 2 models: Macbook and MPB) and they can't help you with a simple keyboard operation question... that's pretty hopeless.

-Apple champions bootcamp. It's on their TV adds, it's on any of their add campaigns at my university. Run windows on a Mac! It works! Better than on a PC! Yea. Mine worked until they added support for iSight. After that update, never again was I able to connect properly to the internet with airport. I fiddled with it for about three weeks and gave up. Every time a new update came by, I would reinstall my windows partition to see if I could connect but it was still really buggy and didn't work. Try calling apple about bootcamp, they won't even hear you out. They keep barking "NOT SUPPORTED, BETA SOFTWARE"! Yea, it is a beta release, so why do you wear it like a badge of honour if it barely even works and isn't supported?

-Every time I get a problem (like the one above), I have to go to these community forums. I use the Mac support forums and this forum. Out of all the questions I asked (many) I have almost never gotten a solution from a poster. Often, people won't even respond to your post! So your question just sits there. I had the Bootcamp discussion forums bookmarked in my browser and kept posting and checking for help but I kept getting nothing for over a month before I gave up.

-Mac's aren't compatible with much. Altough Apple again champions the fact that you can plug a food processor into your mac and it will work, a mac user knows this isn't the case. Your new camera doesn't work, your special mouse drivers come on a CD with EXEs on it etc. Every new product that doesn't have an apple logo on it is hours of fiddling and downloading and work arounds. Even my new Sony ericsson (a company that's supposed to be good with mac) required me to pay for a plugin so it would even speak to my mac. I found out AFTER I bought my phone that iSync has a list of compatible phones... there were only a handfull of phones from each company there, not a great selection.

-Mac doesn't have a great shareware community. Need to split a wav file in half? Need to make a fade out on the end of a song? PCs have a wealth of little shareware programs that will do just that. With a mac you need to buy this software and that software for 59.99 that has way to many features and that you only need once.

So there you have it. I'm going to use my Mac until the end of its warranty and I'm switching back. I'm not saying that PCs are better, it's just that I can't solve my problems on a Mac. I get the simplest problems, like trying to view videos outside of my browser and every time its a stalemate, since I'm not getting any answers from the forum community. Maybe I'm being unreasonable, but I first though that Apple was an alternative to the evil PC, now I'm beginning to think it's the other way around, with their often failing hardware, expensive price tag and questionable business practices.
 
See less See more
#2 · (Edited)
Sorry the drive failed.
Sorry you didn't have a backup.
Sorry that your friend's 3 year old (?) laptop broke down.
Sorry you haven't learned how to search for shareware.

I took the liberty of looking up your posts and most if not all of them were answered by community members within hours.

Of course, Windows machines never have failures, breakdowns, system software issues or compatibility problems, so I'm sure you'll be fine.
 
#5 ·
Sorry the drive failed.
Sorry you didn't have a backup.
Sorry you can't tell the difference between an Windows installer and a Mac installed on a hybrid third party hardware driver CD
Sorry you haven't learned how to search for shareware.

I took the liberty of looking up your posts and most if not all of them were answered by community members within hours.
See, that's the kind of snappiness I'm talking about. I'm not trying to attack anyone personally, I just feel like I've been hard done by. I don't see why you feel the need to disrespect me in your reply.

I do know the difference between a windows installer and a mac installer and a hybrid 3rd party hardware driver CD I can tell you that no such CD came with my sony ericson phone. It could only run on windows. I managed to download a plugin for only 2$ and get my phone to sync and work really well with iCal and my address book. In that isolated case it was fine but I find that more often than not, it takes great fiddling to get the most basic hardware to work, unless it came with an apple logo on it, which means you payed about twice the price for it.

I think I know how to search for shareware and have found some for my mac, most of it has been trial version software which is different from shareware. When it comes to anything relating to music editing/manipulating sound files, I haven't found any ressource for small programs so if you know of one, please share. Most of the stuff mac has to offer is very expensive professional grade software and just because I need to record a student of mine once doesn't mean I want to speend 1000$ on Logic pro.

P.S. Are you sure you don't work for Applecare phone support? If not, you should apply, you've got just the kind of attitude they are looking for ;) .
 
#3 ·
Sorry to hear about your bad experience...

Funny enough, I could read you post and replace "Mac" with "PC" almost everywhere, or even have worse cases on a PC.
Each story is unique, so one can't make general statistics with one experience.

So good luck for your switch back to PC, until you may realize there is no "angel" or "evil" side, but that all computers are beejacon

Don't forget to come back and tell us your story about switching back...
 
#10 ·
"Each story is unique, so one can't make general statistics with one experience."

Many if not all of my friends use macs. I'm basing my observations on my personal experience with my friends and colleagues and we've all had major hardware problems. It's possible that by a great coincidence, all the people I know that use Macs have problems and that everyone else doesn't, but you can't blame me for being somewhat skeptical. Here are some examples:

My friend Fred:
-Powerbook, screen died after 2-3 years, not covered by warranty.
-brand new Macbook 2Ghz. Caps and num lock must be ON for them to be off and vice versa. Mouse pad barely works and is real glitchy.

My friend mathieu:
Ipod photo fails. Returns iPod. Mac loses iPod. Replace with a next generation ipod video. Sweet!
Logic board dies on ibook only a few weeks after 1year warranty. Tough bananas. Gotta spend the 300$$$ or else!

My friend marc:
cd drive failed twice.

My friend phil:
battery malfunction. replaced, then logic board fails.

My colleague at school:
Powerbook won't turn on, lord only knows whats up with that computer.

me:
Hard drive failed, Superdrive replaced, mousepad button doesn't work properly.

PCs are in no way infailable. But, I've never heard of so many brand new PCs being returned. Sure, wear and tear, many of these macs were returned after months of usage.
 
#4 ·
I don't understand your post – are you looking to have people beg you to stay?

All of these machines are plastic and metal and software. PC or Mac, they break, don't work the way they should sometimes...

Factor in the software and Macs are no more expensive than Windows to own.

Sorry about your bad experiences.
 
#13 ·
You've got me there! :lmao:

The reason for my post I guess is because deep down I loathe Windows as an OS and really enjoy the beautiful Mac GUI. I don't really want to go back to PCs, I like the nice sleek look on my Macbook it's just that I've had so much trouble with it that my sense of logic is yelling at me that I made a bad choice.

You're at the car dealership and you see a Ford Taurus and a BMW. You figure you'll get the BM: stylish, european, more reliable. Its worth paying for reliability and quality. The ford taurus is ok, but is ugly and will probably break down.

You drive the BM out of the dealership and keep having problems. It's in the garage and some of the features you can't seem to figure out. You actually end up cancelling important conferences because your car's busted. You speak to other friends in your same business and they say "Yea, I had my BM in the shop just last week".

In that example, isn't it reasonable to say: Well, the ford Taurus will breakdown, but at least I can open up the hood and get it up and running. This BMW is great, but tends to quit when I need it the most.

I really don't want to switch back, I guess I'm just trying to rationalise how I spent the extra dough for a computer that's been unsatisfactory on many levels. Some things on Mac are so great and if you compare the qualities, I agree that Macs win over PCs. However, it's in comparing the faults that I'm getting the urge to switch back.
 
#6 ·
My wife, who is smarter than I in every other way, didn't get the FN key thing either. Course she hasn't had the benefit of using a lot of PC's in pro and home settings like you and I have that enables us to tackle this "simple keyboard operation".

I think you're giving up too quick.
 
#7 ·
It really sucks that your experience has been so bad. One of those things.

My experiences, and that of many friends and colleagues, have been pretty much the exact opposite of yours, with the possible exception of hardware failure. Hardware does just fail, for all computer makers. It has yet to happen to me, or my friends, but it may.

I hope you will be happy with your WIN machine. What matters is that you are able to be productive in an environment that suits your mentality.

I do believe your tale is somewhat out of the ordinary, but there you are. I would not dream of placing any sense of responsibility on the user.
 
#9 ·
Computers are just machines as my Mac using architect client says.

I switched back in July 2005 to replace a PC that's frustrated an advanced user like me over and over.

My ex switched early 2005 before I did and she won't go back to PCs except for work.

A friend of mine switched after she was impressed when her PC broke down so she borrowed my iBook to complete her school work on Sketchup which has a Mac version.

Unfortunately Macs aren't for everyone, we respect if it doesn't work for you. I only hope that you don't give Mac a bad rap from your bad experience.

By the way, just to clear one thing up, which camera and mouse did you have trouble connecting to your MacBook? As long as they follow industry standard there is no reason they shouldn't work in MacOS. Even a Logitech 8 button mouse will work without drivers just fine. Any standard digital camera should be recognized in MacOS no problem.

Final note, Garageband will do the trick in splitting your WAV file. Takes a few steps since it's not the intended purpose but it's free.
 
#16 ·
A popular site is Mac, Palm, and Windows Software Updates and Downloads - VersionTracker .

As everyone is saying... dont give up too soon on the mac. If you bought the macbook new 9 months ago it will be under warranty. I think in your post earlier you stated you had to pay to have the macbook fixed. It's my understanding any problems within 1 year are fixed at apples expense. Am I not correct??
 
#17 ·
Yea but they couldn't get my data back. They (inso) said that my only option was to send my drive to ontarioand pay upwards of 400$ for the recovery if I didn't want to void my waranty. Meanwhile my PC user friends are laughing at me because a) they've never heard of a HD suddenly failing mechanically and b) they can get the data off bad harddrives and they know many places in Montreal where they can get data recovery for much less than 400$.

When I called apple they said that they have 3 services I can use not just the one that was told to me by the ppl at INSO. However, the person on the phone couldn't tell me where these three apple sanctioned places were, and if there was anything in my province. Pretty hard to believe that a help desk person isn't given that info...
 
#18 ·
I can understand where you are coming from...I switched four months ago to Mac and still have a "love - hate" relationship with it. There is some things from the Windows world that I miss ( a simple piece of software to play music like WinAmp for example and not the iTunes that scrambled and mixed my Music Library and it now looks like Encyclopaedia Britannica) but hey...I am just a novice in the Mac world.
For what its worth, I like the symbiosis between hardware and software and will still continue to use it. There is some great stuff for Mac and so far I am enjoying it for the most part.

Good luck!:)
 
#19 ·
Alternative for music, and free: http://www.panic.com/audion/

Quote from site
"Hi! I'm a single app that bravely handles all your audio needs - I'm easy to use, but with gobs of advanced features ready to be discovered! I can play your Audio CDs, your MP3s, and your streaming network audio, I can encode, edit, mix, sort and manage, visualize and hypnotize. And now that I'm 3, I can broadcast, record, crossfade, and even hang with your iPod. Best of all, I've got that Panic design - light, simple, and powerful. It's sure nice to meet you!"
 
#21 ·
I switched at the beginning of December with a floor model MacBook 2.0 GHz rev1, and I have to say I love this thing. My only complaints so far are:

- It runs a little hot. That's not a big deal though as long as it's not damaging the internals.
- The trackpad is a bit buggy. I've found that the trackpad sometimes doesn't respond the way I want it to. A little annoying for a couple of seconds. If I just stop what I'm doing, make sure my fingers are dry and come back at it, the problem goes away.
- The hard drive is too small - I knew this was a true when I bought it. Just have to scrape together the bucks for an external drive for my music/movies/backup.
- The tactile response for right-click on the Mighty Mouse sucks. Not the MacBook's fault. But it was an open box for a BlueTooth mouse on the same day I bought the MacBook. Love the BT part of it. And I'm sure the next mouse from Apple will be better.

On the other hand, I adore the iLife applications and their integration (the free Yahoo! plugin for iPhoto is pretty much worth the price of admission by itself).
With Flip4Mac and Handbrake, there's really nothing I can't do, media-wise. (oh, and this forum has been a great resource)

And considering I had a retail XP SP2 and a retail Office XP Pro lying around, I was able to turn it into a perfect PC for my work (probably more stable than the HPs that IT gives out). And everything works perfectly on the XP side (except for tap-click on the trackpad - I'm sure that will come with BootCamp 1.0), Airport, video, iSight...

I can't say enough great things about my MacBook. I'm still in the honeymoon phase, I guess :) As it stands, I don't see me ever switching back. I just have to convince my wife that she can work with one button so we can go all Mac, all the time :)
 
#27 ·
And I'm sure the next mouse from Apple will be better.
Been reading this thread with a sigh, but this gave me a laugh. Dream on! (and I say this as a true Apple fanboy). I'll believe it when I see it. :lmao:

As for the OP, I also find it strange that so many of your Mac-using friends have had problems, but I know that lemons do get sold. Too bad you got stuck with one. I've had a HD die and it sucks, but it happens. I'm willing to bet you'll be a little more fastidious about your backups from now on, even when you buy that shiny new Dell (or whatever).

Oh, and a word of advice. Remember the experience of this thread if you ever get the urge to enter a church and start shouting "God sucks!" (and I use the metaphor on purpose and with a self-deprecating wink).
 
#22 ·
Sorry you feel that way but I had to reply to something you said in particular...

you say you never heard of a pc hard drive suddenly failing well, allow me to be the first then... :D just last week one of the internal drives on my son's PC failed along with 160gb of data on it... fortunately I had all the data backed up so no big deal but as someone else already said there is no difference between a drive on a PC and one on your Mac.

On the other hand, my 24' IMac has been performing flawlessly since we got it several months ago, and let me tell you I'm never going back... slowly going to replace the PC's in the house with Macs in the next little while...starting with my son's pc followed at some point by a macbook to replace my old laptop.

Regardless of what you end up doing, I wish you all the best, it's your decision after all and to each its own I suppose.

Cheers!
 
#23 ·
In all my years of using macs, new and used, I have never had ONE bad experience with hardware malfunction. I have used and personally owned over 30 + Macs in the last 10 years is that bad? nope. I am sorry to hear about your luck.

We now have a macbook CD 2 GHZ we bought last Sept and a CD Imac that we bought in Feb 2006. We have had ZERO problems with either and then run 24/7 a lot of the time. Cheers, Mark
 
#32 ·
lol That is truly funny :)

Figured I wasn't going to add my own post as everyone is doing such a great job responding already but after reading 3 pages into this and hearing from other Mac users I figured what the heck so here goes. . .

I owned my first Mac (which happened to be my first computer) many many years ago. Shamefully, I can't remember the name. It used those gigantic floppies and ran no actually OS. Being the stupid kid I was I experimented with the parts inside and fried the motherboard.

Mysteriously, a few years later, I again found my path crossed with a Mac when someone unloaded a Performa 5200 CD on me. I spent the next few short years learning about it. When it broke I used PCs occasionally over the next 7 years until I recently bought a new iMac :D (notice the smile). It is such a wonderful feeling to be back in the Mac environment. PCs often infuriated me as I was a constant target for "This Program Has Created An Illegal Operation And Will Shutdown". The only way I can explain the Mac experience is that "it is fun to use all on its own", which is more than I can say for owning a PC. Entirely my opinion, but it is one I will stick by. I've picked up a few video games but find myself content to spend my Mac time surfing with Safari, taking pictures in Photo Booth, utilizing iMove and iDVD as well as learning Tiger and the other apps included in iLife. I'm not going to claim you wont occasionally run into problems as I have actually had iMove and iDVD shut down on me before, but the experience of using a Mac is so much more rewarding in my opinion. If PC users are switching over to Mac expecting a perfect computer 100% of the time then you will be disappointed. No computer is perfect (but Macs still come pretty close!). ;)
 
#26 ·
I'm just going to come out and say that was a stupid post.
I use both Macs & PC's, and make some of my money fixing PC's.
PC' and Macs are made out of the same components. Same motherboard manufacturers, same hard drive makers, same LCD makers. Apple doesn't actually "make" anything. They don't make iPods and they won't make the iPhone. Some factory in China makes it for them. When they are done, they make some piece of crap for Dell or Gateway or Microsoft.
Hard drives die. Back up, back up, back up.
Everything I have is compatible with my Mac. My cameras, my phones, my printers, my scanners. If you don't know how to use something, don't complain.
Bootcamp is handy for people to run WIndows on an Intel Mac. It is beta, but works fine for me.

Whining on a board full of experienced computer experts is simply laughable.

BTW, I used to design stuff for the automotive industry. Calling a PC a Cadillac doesn't mean what it used to.
I wonder if Best Buy and Futureshop and Tiger Direct have piles of laptops and PC's in for repair? No, that seems crazy.

/owned Macs since 1985. My 512Ke still boots. I lost a 250 MB hard drive in the 90's, and a 250 G HD last year.
 
#28 ·
I don't post in the forums too much but something about this thread has compelled me to.

I've been an avid Mac user for a long time, expect for a brief period when I was using a Pentium 133mhz back in tha day. In the past few years I've had a number of Macs at home including a G3 iBook, G4 iBook, G4 Powerbook Al, G5 iMac, Mac Mini and an Upgraded Quicksilver. I've used eMacs, G5 Towers and Mac Pros at work. My current machine is a 2ghz Core2Duo Macbook with 2gb ram and a 100gb 7200rpm HD. This is easily the best computer I've ever used. It doesn't get hot when just surfing the net or doing regular tasks, the battery life lasts close to 4 hours with wifi on, it runs CS 3 incredibly fast and just about everything about it has exceeded my expectations. The one caveat is that the wifi is a bit wonky, but considering all the other pluses, its excusable.

It sucks that the guy who started this thread had his Mac crap out on him, but thems the breaks as they say. PCs crap out on people just as much as Macs do, and you could argue about price (software alone for the Mac makes it worth more IMO) or this or that, but some people like windows better and some like OS X better. It's as simple as that.
 
#30 ·
I generally don't try to evangelize people into buying a Mac... I will just use my Mac as normal, if people ask me for my opinions I'll give both the ups and downs (mostly ups lol), or perhaps like my friend who's PC broke down let them use my Mac to do productive work and actually see how good it is for themselves... I just wouldn't push it because if things go wrong, they get angry and they come to you demanding answers. Much like here I guess. Too much expectations? Maybe valid but I've never been let down by my Macs. Can't say the same for the PCs I've owned in my life.
 
#31 ·
Pat, also spend some time at:

Apple for a mountain of freeware / shareware / demos organized by category. Also lots of Widgets for Dashboard.

As noted earlier, VersionTracker is the place for finding software of all kinds.

twolf3232;543514, regarding your trackpad issue, under

System Preferences-->Keyboard & Mouse-->Trackpad

check to see if "Ignore Accidental Trackpad Input" is checked. This may be the issue for you, as it does take a moment for the OS to realize that you've stopped typing and want to use the mouse (would really like to see a sensitivity slider provided in this PrefPane, as I always have a problem with my palms brushing the trackpad while I type, but I find that turning on "Ignore Accidental Trackpad Input" is more of a bother due to the delay...)

The hard drive size.... ;) This is one unfortunate result of the major increase in digital camera use, movie making, etc. - stuff we never used to do on our computers. One nice thing about my MacBook: easy to swap in a new one, unlike pretty much any previous Apple portable (with the exception of the original Macintosh Portable! :D

And FWIW, as noted in another thread (or two), my MacBook is giving me a few problems too - but I took the risk of buying an early-build machine rather than wait for the kinks to be worked out. That said, I'd buy another MacBook in a second. 'Course, I may well be singing a different tune after talking to Apple Support.... (yeah, yeah, I haven't had time yet. I'll do it on Monday!)

M
 
#33 ·
Yea, I agree with you Macburrito that Macs can be more fun to use. I've found that certain programs (like Sibelius, a music editing software I use) sometimes are a little unstable and when you try certain commands they crash. Then again, those same programs might be as unstable on a PC if not worse. It's weird though, I can remember using Finale on PCs when I was at Florida State and never ever having them quit unexpectedly altought my roomate's copy of Finale does shut down unexpectedly sometimes on his iBook.

One thing that I love about my mac is that the OS basically never locks up. Never ever. Some programs occasionally lock up and can be force quit but I can count on the fingers of one hand the times that I had to force shutdown my Mac. The only sad part is that the last time my OS did lock up, my harddrive was dead when I rebooted. :-(
 
#35 ·
For what it's worth...

I like the different point of view of the original post.
I'm one who switched after 10 years of pc hell. I'm used to working on cars and electric motors so a pc with Windows just drove me crazy. All i wanted to do was use it to post resumes, browse and let the kids have some fun and do homework: I didn't want to trouble shoot all the time and all the usual bs, so I fell in love with Macs right away and have been (annoyingly it turns out) telling everyone about them since.
Well, turns out Macs, as I've been discovering, aren't the computer for everyone and are not quite perfect, which as a new owner, i was starting to imagine. So, I like to read the other point of view, to understand why not everyone isn't rushing out to buy a Mac. I've heard some anti Mac stories but most where about machines produced in the 90's, if i recall correctly and i thought it wouldn't apply today. As for me, I'm still a dyed in the wool convert to Macs. A few minor problems with my Imac G5 but still love it.
 
#36 ·
The Applecare reps are not all bad either, they replaced an ibook

logicboard free of charge for me and it was completely out of warranty.
I had agreed to pay $198.00 for labor and when I got it back 2 months later they waived the labor fees because of the long wait.

Sorry for your bad luck, and for the record the people on this forum have been very helpful for me when I made the switch a few months back; Thanks again,,,
 
#37 ·
-Macs are ultra expensive. You can get a cadillac of a PC compared to the price of an entry level Mac.
Built an equivalent PC and it will be just as expensive.
-I'm taking a music analysis class at university so now I'm using a Mac for what it does best, right? music! However, 10 days before my final project is due, my hard drive just quits and I send it to inso (the mac resellers in Montréal) and spend 150 bucks to get my data back and it doesn't work. I was putting off buying an external HD (to back up) until the end of classes, but my barely 9 month old computer crapped out first. Oddly enough, in my same little class of barely 15 students, another girl's G4 will not turn on anymore and she has to submit her project today, but it will lack certain components she wasn't able to back up to a USB data key. At least my mac turned on. Her's might have a dead motherboard and is no longer under warranty.
Sorry to be harsh, but both of you are idiots. If you have critical work on your HD, any HD, be it desktop, laptop, network, whatever, there are only three things that are ever going to save you: backup, backup backup. I've got a friend who is doing her masters in neurosciences, and she keeps her stuff on her laptop backed up in real time. She lugs her external USB drive with her everywhere and every time she saves her files, she saves them in two places. If you lost work because of hardware failures, and you didn't backup, that's your own fault.

All my friends that have owned macs have had critical problems with the hardware. Most got their parts exchanged except one who's logic board failed a week after his warranty expired.
I hear this a lot, but I've never personally had issues. Of course, I've never bought new hardware, so hardware I have has been "tried and tested" so to speak.
-The customer service people at Apple Canada are not very helpful and are really unkind. They tend to be really snappy over the phone and they are not well trained. My friend had just bought a new MBP and we couldn't figure out how to get exposé to work. We kept hitting the F9 key and a semi transparent square with an X kept appearing on the screen. Since the computer was days old we called apple care and they first had us reset the pram by holding down certain keys and rebooting 4 times, then they had us DO A FULL REINSTALL OF MAC OS X. It wasn't a big deal because she barely had any data since the Mac was so new. So about 2 hours later the os is reinstalled and still we can't use exposé so we call back and the person says "oh, you just have to hold down the function key and then press f9"! When you consider that Mac has 6 models of new laptops out (really only 2 models: Macbook and MPB) and they can't help you with a simple keyboard operation question... that's pretty hopeless.
No worse than three people trying to figure out why pressing "i" on their ThinkPad yields a "5" instead of an "i" because nobody knows how ThinkPads enable/disable the bloody "NumLock" setting. READ THE MANUAL.
-Mac's aren't compatible with much. Altough Apple again champions the fact that you can plug a food processor into your mac and it will work, a mac user knows this isn't the case. Your new camera doesn't work, your special mouse drivers come on a CD with EXEs on it etc. Every new product that doesn't have an apple logo on it is hours of fiddling and downloading and work arounds. Even my new Sony ericsson (a company that's supposed to be good with mac) required me to pay for a plugin so it would even speak to my mac. I found out AFTER I bought my phone that iSync has a list of compatible phones... there were only a handfull of phones from each company there, not a great selection.
Sony + Mac = Crap in my own experience. That might have changed, but after the MD fiasco with NetMD years ago, I've never expected anything from Sony to work well with my Mac. Mouse drivers are a download away, buy a product that says it is Mac compatible. Case in point: there are a slew of mouses out there from Logitech, but only a few are Mac compatible. If you buy something that doesn't explicitly state it is compatible with your hardware, you're on your own.

Re: iSync. If you didn't do your own research with iSync beforehand, that's your own fault.
-Mac doesn't have a great shareware community. Need to split a wav file in half? Need to make a fade out on the end of a song? PCs have a wealth of little shareware programs that will do just that. With a mac you need to buy this software and that software for 59.99 that has way to many features and that you only need once.
Learn to search.

I've deleted the parts that I either agreed with, or had no answer on. In short: I believe you are blaming your own inadequacies at problem solving, and being self-sufficient in searching for solutions, on the Mac. The answers are out there.

It's up to you to find them.
 
#40 ·
I've had bad experiences with my mac stuff too, but I just smile and think of how many worse things happened with PC.

For example, the motherboard cracked from heat, and then it would heat up, expand the case a bit, open the crack, and turn off.

It was also a power hog. 50 minutes battery with the screen low, and word open.
It blew out 2 power inverters that were rated much higher than it needed.

I had doubts about my mac for a while, but you realize it's not perfect, but it still blows the competition out of the water.
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top