Mac For A Month – 5) Are Apple Products Posh?

I haven’t put anything here for a long time, I’ve been in hospital recovering from serious Mac syndrome!

I’m on my last week on the Mac Mini, it’s been a learning curve for me and not only a technical one; I’ve also gained more skill in handling pressure better. It’s been challenging to cope with all my tasks using the Mac. It’s my opinion that Macs are not at all good for an IT service desk engineer.

Still the biggest issue, which I’ve mentioned before, is LogMeIn. It’s something we use all day – it’s our main program and I can’t use it without forcing myself to think positively that I’ll be back on my Windows machine soon.

I’ve always said that I’m coloured with Windows experience, but not only that, Lucidica is as well. A little example is that I need to export my calendar to an Excel format every week – something that is not possible with Outlook on the Mac.

There was one funny comment from my colleague (the only Mac fan-boy in the company) when he was helping me finding a proper calendar I could view.  We went to the Dashboard and there was a weather forecast, calculator, clock and a calendar, but it took the Mac about 3-4 seconds to display the data. I complained and  his reaction was:

“Yeah… I mean, you do have the entry-level Mac“

WHAT?! I replied:

“It’s the most expensive desktop computer in this office! It has an i5 CPU and 4GB of RAM… Do you mean I need an i7, 8GB of RAM and a computer worth £1000 to display the clock faster?!”  🙂

But what are Macs useful for? Who uses the Mac Mini and who’s willing to pay £500 for this thing?
I’ve always looked at Mac as some sort of arty-farty wannabe type of thing and after using it for a month I can’t help but think that’s true. Apple products are very good looking, extremely expensive and less useful for most average users. Isn’t this a typical posh thing? I think Apple did this on purpose… who buys a boring normal two button mouse for £40 when you can buy very comfortable 4-5 button mouse for the same price?

Still, I’ve been thinking about what positive things I can say about the Mac Mini. I looked at it on my desk and in fairness, it is very small, neat, fits easily on any desk and is nearly silent… But then the devil on my shoulder pops up and demands “Why do you need a nice looking quiet computer with no DVD drive on your desk, you can see masses of cables hanging out of the back and your desk looks like nuclear test site.”

I can’t escape it… I see no use in a Mac at all and I can’t find a reason to buy one.  We have at least one client who has iMacs in their nice-looking shops around London; they are in the till and it really looks good. But if  you have take a peek at the monitor and you’ll see it’s running Windows 7.

I have 4 days left of my Mac journey, I’m not sure if there’s any need for me to post another blog about my experience, I’ve made up my mind…

Maybe I’ll end this with a video clip where I take the Mac Mini outside and set it on fire.