For those who know me – you know that I’m a die-hard Mac fanatic. In fact, most people that use Apple Computers tend to be fanatical about their computers. This does not mean that I can’t stand PC’s – I have three PC’s at home – two running windows and one running Linux. I run my Domaining business from two Macs – one desktop and one laptop and have always found Mac OS to be a great platform for Domaining. Multiple desktops is definitely one of my favorites as I can have one desktop for my browser, one that always has an excel spreadsheet with my domains, another with a text editor open to my latest HTML/CSS/PHP project, and a fourth desktop with my FTP client.
As you know I do video posts for my blog and have to say that iMovie is an incredible piece of software that is easy to use and generates high-quality movies quickly and easily. I’ve always loved the fact that Apple includes almost all the software you need pre-installed on the computer. The only additional software you really need to buy is Adobe Photoshop but you can also use GIMP if you want a free alternative.
The best thing about Mac OS is – stability! My background is in Computer Engineering (my graduate degree) so I definitely consider myself to be a power-user. My PC’s crash all the time and when I uninstall software I find lingering DLL’s that haunt my computer forever. Neither of my Macs crash – ever. It’s true – it has never happened. When you are working on many projects at once using multiple desktops and having stable software makes life easy. Yes – there are pieces of software that allow you to use multiple desktops on a PC but they aren’t as elegant or responsive as “Spaces” which is built-into Mac OS.
Mobile Me and TimeMachine are great for backing-up your data both on a hard disk and online. If my house burns to the ground tomorrow – or more likely an earthquake destroys it (I live in LA!) – all my data is backed-up online so I won’t lose a thing! Yes there are services out there like Mozy, but once again, the elegance and ease-of-use of MobileMe makes it unbelievably easy to backup and access your data from anywhere and sync it with a Mac, PC, iPhone, etc.
As a Linux geek at heart I also love that I can open a terminal window at any time and type-in Unix commands as well as run any Linux or Unix app natively in the OS. Yes – there are Unix-emulators you can run within windows but Mac OS is Unix with a window manager called Aqua sitting on top of it – thus you get all the reliability of Unix memory management combined with the ease-of-use that Apple is famous for. Like I said – I do have a Linux-box at home, but the Mac is far easier to interact with than Linux – especially when you just want things to work, flawlessly every day – Linux is great if you like tinkering though!
Now, Apple is probably only a few weeks away from releasing a tablet that will revolutionize the way we use computers, just like the iPod revolutionized the way we listened to music. I had a number of friends who were very anti-Apple when the iPod came-out. They resisted and bought competing devices initially – now they all have iPhones and iPod touches and many of them have gone Mac and never looked back. Apple is an innovative company, and Domaining is an innovative industry. If you don’t mind spending the extra money – in the end the reliability, ease-of-use, and great build-in features like Spaces and TimeMachine make the Mac a great platform for any Domaining business.
Share your comments – are you a Mac-lover or hater? Is Vista your dream OS or has Leopard won you over?
