The lack of choice or why I use a Mac

The main purpose of owning a car is to get from A to B in a reasonable amount of time and at any given time of the day. So any car that fulfills this purpose would just be fine. However, if you want to own a great car that should also provide you with a desired level of convenience while driving or with the abilitiy to drive fast (if you for instance live in Germany and can enjoy the non-existing speed limit on parts of the Autobahn), then you might choose between an Audi, BMW or Porsche (ok as a German I’m a bit biased). At least there is a pool of great brands to choose the most suitable model from. Similiar in terms of cameras. You might prefer the products of Canon or Nikon or whatever but at least you have a choice.

When it comes to computers — after 15 years of using them daily both during my studies and my professional career — I know realized that there is NO choice. Although there are dozens of respectable manufacturers, yet at the end of the day, it’s the operating system that one has to worry about the most: it has to be reliable and it should behave in a way you expect it to given that it plays nicely with the hardware it sits on. Nowadays, there are only three main platforms to choose from (in alphabetical order): Linux, Mac OS X and Windows. I work with all of those operating system on a daily basis, Linux and Windows mostly at work while at home I usually switch to using my MacBook.

Now, I try to avoid sounding like an Apple fanboy but frankly Macs are the only computers I would choose to work with (if I had the choice). And in order to take a non-fanboy approach to explain this, I will list reasons for why I wouldn’t choose neither Linux or Windows (if I could).

There are only two reasons I can accept when someone claims they have to work with Windows: specific software needs or restrictive policies at work. Especially if you are interested in gaming (which I’m not) than you have a good reason to use a Windows machine (or get an Xbox or Wii or whatever). In my experience, I would not voluntarily choose to work with a Windows based machine (either desktop, server or laptop) because they just fail too often — do we really need to discuss this? I really don’t want to work with a tool (and most often a computer is a tool to get a certain task done) that fails on a regular basis and declines in performance over time (ever noticed that your Windows machine is booting slower and slower over the months?).

How about Linux then? Or rather Ubuntu which these days seems to be the only Linux distribution that delivers a decent user experience. Well, I’m using it on a daily basis and most of the time, I’m happy with it. For a server machine, it is perfect and I would not complain here (when it comes to servers, one could use Debian or other Unix derivates like FreeBSD, too). On a desktop machine, it is almost ideal. Only almost because multimedia support can still be a pain to configure and to get working (adding software sources, etc.). Considering laptops, unfortunately, Linux still fails too often for me. After having used Linux on laptops for almost 10 years now, there too many things that don’t work properly. Hibernation and presenting with a projector are just two prominent examples. Support for wireless internet got better the last few years though. But again, I don’t want to spend my time in configuring a tool, I just want it to function properly.

When it comes to the MacBook I am using at home, I really don’t have any complaints. Hibernation works always, the wireless connects in less than one second and everything else is working as expected (after you get used to it when switching from a PC). Sounds like a fanboy statement, I know. But this is my experience over the last years. That’s why my choice of a laptop would always be a MacBook. Really, MacBooks just work as advertised and I am willing to pay the Apple tax to get a tool that I can rely on. Or to work with the one causing the least amount of issues.