Persuasive Writing Assignment: Why a Mac is better than a PC
 

So, English is the only class where I have a B (89% or close to it), and if I want a new Mac for Xmas, I need to get straight A's. The english teacher assigned us a Persuasive Writing Paper, where we have to convince the reader, through all kinds of writing techniques, of your opinion. Most people in my class are doing simple things like why Pumping pie is bette than Apple pie, or why chewing gum in school should be allowed, or why homework should be banned. Since I live in an area where most students and teacher use PC's, I thought I should make my assignment titled "Why a Mac is better than a PC". We haven't gotten our grading rubric yet, and the project is due in about 2 weeks in think.
We're going to start it in class soon, but most of it will be done at home. For homework due Wednesday, I'm supposed to brainstorm over writing techniques and come up with a PRO's list for supporting ideas of our opinion, and a CON's list with things that the reader might argue about and disagree with the opinion.
So, I've got a pretty nice and big PRO's list, but my CON's list barely has 4 items... So I'm going to need help finding out 'bad' stuff about Mac's..
My PRO's list consists of 13 things I thought up in class, and some that I found on the Apple Website under the "Get a Mac" section.
My English teacher said her sister just bought a MacBook and that she likes. She also said she owns a Dell Desktop, but she would much rather have a Mac. (I guess she can't afford one;))
So here's my Mac Con's list. Feel free to disagree:p, give me ideas
Mac Cons
1. Costs more than the average PC
2. Not as many games as on a PC
3. Not as many Mac users out there as PC users (bad if you were looking for help or where on vacation in... Brazil and something happens to your Mac, and there's not going to be many people to help you there)
4. VERY addictive :D;) (I guess it's a bad thing, right..?)

So what are your ideas of things I should add to the CON's or PRO's list, or ideas for the Essay itself?
Please don't go too technical, as I'm going to have to present this to a bunch of 13 and 14 year olds with no idea what a real mac looks like. (there are Macs in my school, but only a few and they are Flower Power Mac's running 8.6, so that's the typical image of a Mac for them)

As a recent switchee from a PC, here's my CONS:
- Some software is behind the Windows versions (Skype, Yahoo Messenger)
- NetFlix online videos don't work
- Some older software that comes at a steeply reduced price for PC is still full price on the Mac
- Very limited backward capabilities (i.e. older software doesn't work on newer Macs, whereas my 15 year old PC software still works on Win XP today)
- Resizing windows is only possible in the bottom right corner

I think number one can be shown to not be true when compared to WinPC models with comparable hardware.

I'm not sure number four really counts as a pro or a con.

I would hardly consider that a con. On the Mac, when a window is in full screen mode (without a sidebar/drawer), a scrollbar will be accessible from the screen edge, making it faster and easier to acquire with the mouse, exploiting Fitts' Law much better than the Windows solution, which leaves a buffer between the scroll bar and the screen edge, terrible UI design. The resizing handle in the corner retains all the resizing functionality in less screen space. This is a good trade-off, since most people scroll far more than they resize.

Cons:

Spotlight icon in corner, wasting valuable screen real estate ( a HUGE mouse target) on a feature that requires text entry in the very next step.

Systems are not very customizable.

Apple's memory prices (although RAM is user replaceable)

Pros:

Some Mac only software is superior to Windows' options (e.g. Scrivener).

Feasible to run a Mac as a user instead of an administrator, offering real security advantages.

Menu bar at top edge of the screen instead of inside an application window, creating a larger mouse target, allowing (5x) faster accessibility by better exploiting Fitts' Law.

Here is a nice resource to better understand Fitts' Law.

The Apple user community has a long history of being very helpful to one another. And most of us have achieved civilization as well. ;)

I have a copy of Lode Runner that ran on the very first Macs in 1984. It runs fine on My Dual G5 under Classic. Last I checked, 23 was greater than 15.

Oh, and if we're talking backward compatibility, I'd love to see you get Windows 95, 98, NT, 2000, ME, XP, and Vista all running the same applications (say, Office) and sharing the files over a network. I know I can do it with every version of the Mac OS that came out in the same time period.

Civilization or civility? :)

"Classic"? You mean that environment that Apple forgot to include with my Intel iMac on Leopard ;) I don't have a long history with the Mac, but when I went through Mac Garden to try out some Abandonware games I frequently came across statements such as "this is only going to work on Mac OS 6, crashes on Mac OS 7". Not sure if the crashes that I am seeing are due to the wrong OS or SheepShaver. On WinXP I can still run my favorite DOS game from 1994 (my pride and joy, since I wrote it myself).

Those Windoses will actually network over TCP/IP with SMB and if you run an elderly Word (old enough for Win95) it might actually work ;) Not that I can imagine the same exercise to be any more elegant on the Mac (WordPerfect (on SheepShaver?) and some AppleTalk maybe?)

Anyhow, I hope I am not offending anybody here. Like I said, I just switched a couple of weeks ago, and these were my first impressions as a new Mac user (not a new computer user). I like my new iMac a lot, but don't put a halo on it.

First, you need to establish the purpose of the essay.

Is it to convince moderately intelligent, rational folks, or is to convince a typical "bunch of 13 and 14 year olds"? (No disrespect intended to you, specifically, but I think you know what I mean by "typical" in this case.)

If it's the former, you need primarily to provide objective and verifiable (and, if appropriate, quantifiable) comparative info demonstrating superiority in terms of functionality, performance, price, expandability, compatibility, etc., etc. Then you can provide subjective opinions, but these tend not to be persuasive to moderately intelligent people who think critically. In general, the persuasive power of this type of essay will depend on your ability to collate factual info and present it in a clear and well-organized manner.

If it's the latter, I would expect the subjective info to be of greater importance in the persuasion process. The comparative, factual info will likely have less influence because no matter how well you present it, will tend to cause loss of interest in the audience. The key here will be your "creative", rather than your expository writing/presentation skills. The major difficulty here will be that everyone has their own standards when it comes to subjective criteria, so that what you might view as a positive attribute, others may well think differently.

A couple of additional comments:

When you discuss "costs more/less", a previous poster made a point that you need to compare machines with equivalent h/w. Rather than just equivalent h/w, you should compare equivalent capability or equivalent utility machines. For example, compare a typical low end Mac with a typical low end PC in terms of price, features, performance, etc., then do the same with mid-range and high end machines.

If not done properly, comparisons involving numbers of users or numbers of programs are often completely devoid of any meaningful information. As an example, if the Mac had only 3 top-notch (subjective opinion) games available, while the PC had a thousand rinky-dink, simple-minded, boring games, most people would rate the Mac higher than the PC in terms of game availability. Or, perhaps a better example, remember that more people today drive Fiats than Lamborghinis or Ferraris or Rolls Royces.

1) If you just switched, you are about as likely to want to run Classic software as I am likely to want to run PC software of any vintage. That would be very close to zero.

2) I can't speak to specific claims without knowing more about them, but generally, if they said it needed System 6, it meant 6 or higher. If it crashed on 7, it probably needed 8 or higher, etc.

3) They may 'work' over tcp/ip, but getting Windows 95 and NT, just to name two, to work together on the same LAN is an exercise in futility.

4) I like my Mac a lot too, but it is not the reason I avoid Windows. Windows is everything an operating system should not be. It's slow, absurdly insecure, obnoxiously & condescendingly intrusive, difficult to the point that it scares most people away from computers, and it's not even compatible with itself (its other versions) let alone other operating systems. If there were no Mac, I'd use Linux. If there were no Linux, I'd use some other flavor of Unix. If I were to make a complete list of all operating systems I'd choose to use, Windows would appear at the bottom.

1) Unfortunately my taste in games is stuck in the past. I love Lemmings, Tropico, etc. The stuff that predates the 3D FPS era. That makes me a regular guest on abandonware sites and a sucker for backwards compatibility specifically for entertainment titles. For application software I definitely go with the latest and greatest.
2) My impression was that some (game) developers made assumptions about certain structures in memory or unpublished APIs, but that's probably speculation.
3) Must have been my lucky plug&play day back then. But it was only 2 machines in my living room talking to each other, not anything comparable to a corporate LAN.
4) I like Linux for my data center operations at work. For my desktop at home I care more about questions such as: Can it run a reasonably high number of popular games? Does it run my tax software? Does it run commercial media offerings (NetFlix Instant Watch, iTunes)? Is my digital camera plug&play? Does it run my TomTom GPS software? In that comparison I would actually rank Windows over Mac over Linux, but the overall smoothness of the Mac UI and Spotlight and the reduced need for a virus scanner got me :)

Games are for consoles.

If you get the right tax software, it does.

Netflix is a good idea poorly done. You can't blame the Mac OS or any other system for Neflix's poor choice of proprietary Windows Media Player.

Plug & play is a joke. Here's how plug and play is supposed to work, and how it generally works on a Mac: You plug it in and it works. No wizards, no please wait while Windows "installs" your new hardware and then have it ask for a disk. No hassles!

I don't know anything about Tom Tom. Here is some gps software. http://www.macupdate.com/search.php?...=gps&os=macosx

Both. We know the secret is to bang the rocks together. :D

The fewer games for the Mac can be seen as a plus...you're more likely to use the Mac for work, learning, productivity!

Mac users generally can fix software problems themselves (often using forums such as this one) whereas PC users more frequently resort to calling in and paying for professional help.

The thing is, its an english class, so dont be too technical, because in all likely hood the teacher wont understand more technical stuff

1) This is very subjective. You have to compare features and benefits versus price. Sure hardware spec wise I can build or buy a PC for a bit cheaper. However, that PC won't come with the bundled software, and/or all the built in features of a Mac. Things like FW800, ABGN WiFi, bluetooth, super drives, built in isight camera, etc.

2) Only applies to gamers, niche market, not every user is a gamer.

3) This I agree, there are a lot less Mac users out there, but its changing. I mean Apple made 15 billion already this year or something crazy like that.

4) Depends on personality IMO, some people have better self control. I quit smoking cold turkey, and occasionally have a cigar or cigarette when out drinking. I can control my habits by my will. Some people have more addictive personalities and can not control it. So, results vary.

Also, OS 8.6 or any classic OS for that matter is not a good representation of the Mac or of OS X. The classic OS sucked compared to what Mac OS is today. There is no comparison, its like comparing Apples to Oranges. In my opinion the Classic OSes were lame, unintuitive and not very good all around. I was working for an AASP around circa OS 8.6. Before that I didn't ever really deal with macs. I didn't fully like the Mac platform until about OS X 10.2. That is when Apple caught my eye, and that is when the OS started to take off. 10.4 is by far their best release so far, and 10.5 is shaping up to be even better. I am just waiting to learn the full ins and outs of 10.5 and of course a few updates.

Con: One button mouse.

Talk about subjective! Most PC users don't use the second button. Many have no idea what it's for. Of course, the switchers generally know more about computers, so that second button is important to them.

It absolutely does suck compared to OS X, but compared to what it was competing with at the time, it was excellent. System 7 was 32 bit, and it's main competition was the laughable 16-bit (64KB of RAM, swapped ten times to get to 640 KB, with an extra kludge to get you to 1 MB.) Windows 3.1.

no right click support, both your responses = non intuitive OS. I right click in OS X all the time, and if I don't have my mouse with my laptop, I ctrl click all the time.

64bit is out now and is barely even used, nor is 64bit architecture. That is hardly a selling point unless the market fully supports it. 64bit may be the future, but it is still some years off before it becomes the next standard.

Classic Mac OSes sucked, they were slow, and back then when you upgraded, you had to upgrade everything. The interface was non customizable and ugly. OS X is not that customizable compared to some, but at least it doesn't look like crap anymore.

What are you talking about? A second mouse button is not intuitive, and you don't count as an average user.

64 bit is a completely separate issue from 16 vs 32 bit. I had 32 bit on my Mac IIci in 1989. That's what allowed me to use a fax modem back then, when it was impossible to do on a PC because the average fax won't fit in 64KB of memory!

Upgrade everything? That same Mac IIci could go up to 128 MB of RAM, at a time when getting a PC up to 1 MB was a major undertaking. In 1990, I added a video card to it that among other things, let me watch cable TV on it! I watched much of the first Gulf war on my Mac!

Customizable? I can't remember all the themes I had on that Mac!

Ugly? What do you think Windows 95 was based on? Drag the task bar to the top of the screen and now you've got an ugly version of Mac that will still give you problems trying to upgrade!

Slow? My father in-law has a G5 450 mhz iMac 576MB RAM, with 10.4.11 and 9.2 on it. OS 9 is faster for many things.

While the two button mouse has proven to be more popular, I don't think it has proven to be a superior design compared to one button + modifier keys.

Personally, I'm glad my MacBook has only one hardware button on the trackpad. Two buttons would introduce limitations in hand positions when tracking.

Didn't you find it inconvenient to ctrl click? That was a major annoyance for me when i switched. Even though i loved the look of the apple mighty mouse, it was impractical, even if i made it a 2 button mouse it was uncomfortable to use in casual web browsing, and dont get me started on that mouse wheel...

I'm thinking this was a joke to show the civility and sense of humor of the Mac community.

I'm glad I didn't make it.

Oh boy...
 

Ok.. This is getting a wee bit off topic, but anyways, appreciate the help guys (and girls¿?):D

So, first off, this is going to presented to an 8th grade english class, who barely have an idea of what a Mac is, including the teacher. The purpose of the essay is to convince someone why they should use a mac rather than a PC. Talking about in technical terms won't help, as most of them barely know how to use Power Point in school...

The whole point of a CONS list wouldn't be to show the reader what's bad about the Mac. That would defy the whole purpose of Persuasive Writing. It's supposed to persuade them to use a Mac, not to make them stick to PC's.
The CONS list is supposed to list the things that the reader might argue with against using a Mac. Since the reader has no idea about what a Mac is, and whatever he or she has heard comes from YouTube or the TV, or whatever website. The purpose of the CONS list it to take the arguments that the reader might use against and incorporate my arguments on it into the paper. For example if I though the reader were to argue that a Mac costs more than a PC, then I would probably compare prices and specs and prove him wrong through my essay. Im supposed to include them all in the essay, so that the reader won't have anything to argue against using a Mac... That was the whole purpose of it...

Con 1: no low-end option.

Even the Mac Mini requires additional outlay of monitor (or TV connector), keyboard and mouse.

Your argument: low-end computers will require upgrading earlier, and be useable for a shorter length of time. Therefore, over the life of a higher-value (and higher-spec, better built) machine it might actually be more expensive to start off with a cheaper low-end machine. Then there's the issue of setting up the new machine so it's like your old one, transferring your files, etc.

Then there's the resale value of Macs. A lot higher => cost over lifetime is less.

FWIW, my PowerBook G4 is coming up for being 4yrs old, and the only thing (and I mean only thing) it struggles with is playback of Hi-Def video. I'd hate to think what a four-year old Dell would be doing right now! Probably leaking battery acid into the local landfill site. And my PowerBook is also easily capable of running Leopard, should I so wish. Yes, it was ridiculously expensive when I bought it, but I've not had a single regret. Not one. Ever.


Con 2: Fewer design choices (with PCs, you get a much wider range of looks).

Not a bad thing because: Macs are so well designed! There is nothing better than a sleek aluminium laptop. So elegant.


Con 3: For an equivalent price, Mac laptops will typically have smaller screens.

Bad argument because: a laptop is so much more than just screen size. Yes, screen real estate is very important, but so many other factors should be considered.


Con 4: Mac-formatted hard drives cannot be read by out-of-the-box PCs. They need something like MacDrive.

Counter-argument: This is really a con for Windows PCs. They are less capable of communicating with other-OS devices as well as Macs.


Hope these help. :)


EDIT: It is now impossible to do more with a Windows PC than a Mac, since you can run Windows natively (via Bootcamp) on new Macs! That should stop any arguments about lack of software/games/etc. (provided the Mac hardware is capable of running the stuff, of course). Or you could use Parallels and run Windows from within OS X.

No, its not a joke! Honestly, Im surprised that people are defending it!

Wow....just...wow. :confused:

sorry I need right click, always have always will. It is so useful.

Absolutely. I depend hugely on contextual pop-up menus.

Con: Not as many craptastic models from which to choose.

for the record, mac has had a right click for a while. The mighty mouse has a right click. I have never liked Apple mice though, I always preferred microsoft or logitec mice.

I think something like that's perfect, reminds me of my Steve Jobs presentation i did 2 years ago, wasnt too technical, but what technical stuff i did have was easy to understand and i got full marks :) ( I think i still have it lying around if you'd want it)

Refuted "Mac Cons"
1. Costs more than the average PC
They are actually quite similar because of quality of parts and chosen components. Think also in terms of resale value of a Mac over a common PC. That too must be factored as well as overall design quality and workmanship of the chassis.

2. Not as many games as on a PC
Actually, there are more games when you factor both Boot Camp and the Mac OS together. Remember, there are several games for the Mac that the PC will not play, but games for the PC can work on an Intel Mac quite well.

3. Not as many Mac users out there as PC users.
The same was said regarding the early Japanese car vs. American. They did not factor in that Japanese cars rarely needed repairs except common maintenance.

4. VERY addictive (I guess it's a bad thing, right..?)
All computer fun is addictive. It's computer frustration that cures the addiction, and PCs are quite the cure.

Macs are much better than PCs first of all because they can run both Windows and Mac OS (VMware, Parallels, Boot Camp, Crossover etc.) and PC is limited to running Windows (well, and Linux, which also can comfortably reside in your Parallels partition)

I like the last part...

So, first, Thanks to everyone for your help:D
Ok, so the paper was actually due yesterday, but I forgot to do it then, so I turned it in today, a day late, which means I get taken 5% off...:o
I used the Get a Mac section on the Apple website to get most of my info, and of course this forum, a few blogs and some of my own knowledge..;)
Also, my paper was already 2 pages long so I didn't really add many cons, and there were a whole bunch of stuff I could have talked about..:)
Some of the stuff in the essay are not 100% accurate, and I wrote them just to get the essay over with, so please don't go too hard on me for it..:o
I attached the essay to this post.. Hope you enjoy it :rolleyes::D

Sorry to say this, but this is a huge fanboy misconception. There is no difference between the apple parts manufactured in Asian and Mexico versus the Asus motherboards manufactured in Asia and Mexico. They all use the same components. They all cost around the same to make component wise. Now design aspect I will give you. Obviously, how something appeals to eye can be a selling point for some. For others its minimalistic design or functionality, or all of the above or whatever floats your boat. These are in my mind preferences and not deal breakers or facts on why one system is better than any other. When I am work I could care less of what my system looks like I just want it to work and do what I tell it to. There is one difference between Apple and the rest, and that is Apple designs everything (they do not manufacture anything). They design the hardware and the OS. So, there may be better quality control but its a locked product with way less third party support. There is a pro and a con to this.

While true, why would you spend 3,000 dollars on a Mac Pro and game on it? When you can build a top of the line gaming rig from scratch for under 1500. iMacs are non upgradeable and have mediocre video cards. This goes back to personal preference. Gaming is a niche market and only represents a percentage of computer users. While the gaming user base is rather large, it does not represent every user out there. Apple has made some very minimal effort getting games on their platform. Hopefully this will change.

In retrospect I can go down to any car parts store in the US, and pick up a generic American part for a fraction of what the import part costs. I replaced my distributor on my Nissan last year, it was $500 for a rebuilt one. Also, american cars in general are easy to work on. My Jeep I had in college, every part had like two bolts and it popped in and out. I was easily able to change out parts myself. My Nissan looks very confusing. My volkswagen I had a few years ago, good god man, that thing just scared me when I popped the hood. I always had to get it worked on by a specialty mechanic. It always cost me at least $1k everytime I got it fixed. Half of it was in labor hours almost always. Want to replace the water pump? You better pull the engine or go from the inside and remove the dash and the firewall. No thanks. This can be directly related to a Mac, they are harder to work on and more expensive to fix.

I think this depends on the person, and the degree of the addiction. I admit I am addicted to the internet, but I do not let it affect my daily life. I pry myself from it when I know I have been on it too long, and I always enjoy going out for a drink.

Really, the best persuasion is self discovery. Give someone a Mac for a few weeks, teach them a few things here and there and give them pointers and support. If and when they get to the point where they get used to it, they will switch. I can't tell you how many users/people I know that have tried to switch to Linux, only to go back to windows with in a month. I mean people complain about authenticating to install software. You have to realize your average user is very average. You should take the time to give basic tutorials and to keep it simple so its easy to understand and take in what you are explaining. You over complicate it and they will forget it in 5 minutes. Trust me, I know this from experience.

When I got out of college I worked for an electronics distributor for a while. They sold chips to small engineering firms working on designs and some for small scale production. I remember one engineer telling me that the prices for our resistors were too high (they were less than $0.005 a piece!) and that he could get them for less elsewhere. I forget how much he could get them for, but I remember that it was below our cost. I told him that at the price he was buying them, it was likely that many would be defective. He told me that I was right, but that they wouldn't fail until the 90 day warranty expired on the gizmo they were making, and if it failed after that, then the customer would have to buy another.

There is a difference in parts, just as there is a difference in the company you buy from.

Not sure how old you are and while that may have held true over 20 years ago its not anymore. With out corporate expansion into the third world has worked, all components are made in Asia and Mexico, and in Africa for pretty much everything in the world. They are all made from the same materials and by the same like 4 or 5 major companies that actually produce electronic parts. Almost everything you see is made by hitachi or LG or their subsidiaries. The design however is what makes it different. Each piece is engineered specifically and the manufacturers are given the specs of the electronic devices by sony, apple, ibm, etc, and they make them. The manufacturer buys components from the same companies.

Everything is outsourced to third world and only a hand full of companies actually produce parts, everything else is just assembly of those parts.

Assuming you can build your own box. Many people cannot.

What about parts built in India? Apple needs to maintain a reputation for their product because it has their name on it. Others such as Dell need to do the same. But many people buy computers where the name is meaningless, but the price is cheap. Would you say that all hard drives are the same now?

I was not referring to what they look like, thought that is a factor. I was referring to how well air flows through the unit. How will accumulated dust effect this air flow. Flow factor. Fan redundancy. Sturdiness of the chassis. Ease of access for upgrade. For laptops, innovative features. Screen quality. etc.

Yup, there are only a few HD companies left, and only a few that make components. Hitachi now owns all IP of IBMs hard drives, maxtor and segate are the same company, and western digital also owns a few of them (can't remember off hand).

As far as I know, no components are being built in India, only tech support is being out sourced, and even Apple is guilty of this. They don't outsource it to India at least, but they still out source it, and support is now done through web based ichat instead of over the phone. I still hit dead walls getting transferred between departments at Apple. However, they are probably the least of the evils when it comes to support.

Notice how Apple can only clearly claim, designed by Apple in California, they can not say made in CA, because Apple doesn't manufacture anything. They produce specs and design for a third party to manufacture their product. LG makes a lot of Apple parts, their logos are silk screened on their circuit boards.

You think LG has a wide variety of components? I doubt it, they probably take the most cost effective. Remember, if Apple machines were so perfect would they have had those recalls in the past years? Apple is just like any other giant computer company, they want to make money, they want you to buy their products, they make it so you constantly have to upgrade. Next year when we roll out new machines, I will be forced to add Leopard support for all my clients because newer hardware will not run Tiger. This is how Apple does business. Its not like Apple is this super great awesomely cool computer company that does what is best, they are just like everyone else. They want to sell their product. Their approach is different in some aspects but their ultimate goal is just like every other consumer electronic company. They release so many models of the ipod to keep you buying it. People do, and that is there choice. I am not bashing it, I am simply pointing it out from an attempt at a non-biased point of view.

Now there are many benefits from running the mac platform but most of the ones mentioned here just seem to be biased opinions. However, that is what persuasion is all about. Convincing your audience your point. If I were to sit here and list all the technical advantages of running each platform, people would most likely find it boring, unless I took the effort to write in a manner where it was simple and interesting, which is very hard to do.

So my advice is do some of the following when writing your persuasive paper:

1) Speak to your audience in a way that will keep them interested, use wit or a joke or something. I can't tell you how dull technical reading can be sometimes.

2) KISS - Keep It Simple Stupid - a motto which I love. Keep it simple, don't over complicate things. That way your point is easily understood.

3) give real life examples. Benchmarks, advertisements, etc don't ever really reflect real world performance and output. Actually use the system and show the benefits that you get from just using it.

4) Try to base your arguments on facts you can back up. I am sick and tired of hearing OS X is bullet proof, it never crashes, it is immune to viruses, etc. Just search this forum for crash logs, you'll find plenty.

#EDIT#
To your comments on design of air flow, that is not exclusive to Apple and in fact I would probably thank the video game community for that. They are always pushing their systems to the limit to get the best performance game wise. As for building your own, sure no everyone can do it, however if you want to drop 1500 on a gaming rig, I was including the cost of labor for someone to build it for you. I mean you can really build a very decent gaming rig for 1000 dollars. All you need is quad core processor, 3 gigs of RAM, decent motherboard and a good video card. Everything else is pretty subjective and you can buy generic parts and get by pretty much the same as high end. A lot of that stuff is marketing jazz by things like benchmarks that do not reflect real world performances.

That's not true. My SE/30 with System 6 can boot dramatically faster than a Windows PC, in fact, it boots faster than a PC can wake from sleep. It even opens a document faster than a 'modern' PC. Come visit and see it by yourself... :)

.

Yes, it's tempting to think of the old Mac OS as being slow because the hardware they ran on is slow by today's standards. They got branded as being slow by guys who were used to booting into DOS, which booted fast because it really didn't do much!

The old Mac systems aren't nearly as stable as OS X and they don't have the same capabilities, but on the same hardware they are faster for the things that they do. You can really see it on older hardware that can run both. The early iMacs for example. ;)

Sure it was fast until you loaded like 4 extensions on your system or any third party extensions then boot time tripled. Or, if you had several desktop items it dramatically reduced your boot time.

Classic OS in my opinion sucked. I started using Macs around OS 8.1, but since I work IT, I was supporting as low as version 6 at that point in time.

I'm sure you're good at your job, but during those days, the absolute last person who should touch a Mac was an IT person who mainly supported PCs. I would rather have had my mother (who can't turn a computer on!) try to fix/maintain or do anything technical with one. I supported them back then, and I knew I was in for trouble if a client told me that their company's IT guy had tried to do something with their Mac. The first thing I'd have to do was figure out what the IT guy screwed up, then I'd take care of the original problem. It isn't that they couldn't have figured it out. It's that 1) they didn't care to, they just wanted to get back to their PC work, and 2) they assumed everything was a PC.

I was fully apple certified with in one year of using Macs, which in all honesty is one of the harder entry level computer certs. It was definitely harder than my HP, Gateway, A+, and even MCP certs. Apple has as very strange and particular way of handling their technology. I also had a mentor. One of my first IT bosses was a Mac wizard. In fact, right after our mac IT guy quit and I started supporting the Macs, the first thing he did was rebuild a Performa 6400 CDS power mac running OS 8.6 with me. It had a bad ADB port and the first thing we did was take a scrap logic board which was bad, take the port off of it, and resolder the ADB port onto the working machine with the bad part. I still have that computer in storage in my parents basement. Its not like I was walking around aimlessly in the dark, I was being taught hands on by an existing mac guru, my old boss. Of course he had managerial responsibilities so it was in his best interest to train his techs. This was back circa 1999

The first thing I did back then, to see what the user did is boot with no extensions. 9 times out of 10 the user had way to many extensions running at start up which caused super long boot times and lack of system performance. Or some user decided to create a RAM disk, which was retarded to let users do that, and wondered why their machine ran slow because half their ram was allocated to a RAM disk.

I like how OS X handles and manages things for the average user that they should not tinker with. The classic OS left too many open loop holes like what I mentioned which created a lot of help desk tickets.

But really, had you ever experienced working with System 6 installed in an early Compact Mac?

In my experience, System 6, written in assembly code instead of the high level C, is sleek and fast even when loading extensions. Before the release of Mac OS X , I considered it to be the best Macintosh operating system ever written, way ahead of its time, and probably the "nicest" operating system ever made. And yes, compared with what you could use and do at the time, it was very stable system and very, very fast...

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So if a PowerMac 8500 had a full complement of 512MB or even 1 GB of RAM, and the OS wouldn't give any more than 100MB to an application like Photoshop, you think it wouldn't be a good idea to use some of the extra RAM as a high speed disk to speed things up?

I don't even think the OS could address anything over 512 mb of RAM, maybe not anything even over 256 at that point in time. I don't think the OS was able to address that much more memory until OS 8.6.

No, Sao, I never extensively used OS 6, and had no desire to at the time. When I got into using macs OS 6 was already way old and obsolete and it ran slow to that day and age's standards.

System 7 was 32 bit clean, meaning it could in theory go up to 4 GB of RAM. Unfortunately, the classic OSes, including 9, could only provide any single application with 100 MB of RAM, so if you maxed out the RAM the only way to take advantage was to run several large programs at once, which few people needed to do, or use a RAM drive as a swap disk. If you did it correctly, you got a good speed boost.

yeah and windows could address 2TB of memory in 2000, but there was no way in hell hardware supported that yet.

This is getting off topic.

I posted ways to constructively and effectively convince someone to switch to the Mac. Whether or not the classic OSes did this or did that is completely 100% irrelevant because of we are talking about modern day OSes and systems here.

The only point of reference to the classic systems is for those who tried Mac years ago and did not like it for the same reasons I did. OS X is like a billion times better than Classic Mac OS. I listed many reasons why I thought it was better. So, those who are skeptic because of past experiences need to throw those out the window because classic OS is a thing of the past and is not extinct.

We're talking RAM here, not hard drive space.

I agree that OS X is much better than the classic Mac OS, and much better than any version of Windows, but that's because of stability, security, and capabilities, not speed. You can dislike the classic versions if you like, but it's incorrect to say they were/are slow. Boot up OS 9 (not the fastest of the old OS versions!) and open some files in it, then boot up OS X and open the same files. OS 9 will likely win, and the time difference will be greater on older hardware.

OK, that was a bad example not sure why i was thinking HD space...

4GB of RAM is what it should have said, yet 32bit hardware has a three gig limit. Again this is relevant to what? I am still comparing the old ways of Classic OS to the new OS to convince people who tried Mac a long time ago and hated classic OS for the same reasons I did. Just because an OS had the potential to do something back then does not even mean it got close to reaching it. Classic OS was crap compared to what OS X is now. That is the main point that the original poster should use for their persuasive paper they are writing. A lot of people I know write things off on one or two bad previous experiences. How do you change their minds? people who tried classic OS and hated it, and won't touch a mac because they hated mac 10 years ago.