I'm a big fan of Apple's new Mac Mini. It looks great. It's elegantly small. And I can seriously recommend it to my friends whose PCs are saddled with adware, spyware, and viruses, which pretty much includes all my neighbors with Windows PCs (and me too, now). Chuck points out that there are some, potentially interesting uses for the Mac Mini other than recruiting Windows users to the Mac camp, but right now I want to focus on switching.
You see, it just seems to me that the time is right for Apple to make a push into the mass-market. First, and bear with me a bit here, let me review some common reasons to go Windows rather than Mac:
I'm sure there's more reasons that I'm missing. But no matter. The Mac Mini certainly answers objection #1. Not only can you get a Mac for $500, it'll look a whole lot cooler than any Windows PC (that I've seen) for the same price.
But here's my real point: All the reasons to stay with Windows pale in the light of one fact. And that fact is:
Your Windows PC won't work!
Ok, I'm perhaps pushing a point too far here, but let's consider my neighbors:
Neighbor #1 has two PCs. One is completely nonfunctional due to adware and spyware. He just shoves the box in a corner and doesn't use it. He manages to limp along with his other PC. Periodically I try and help him remove various malware. We never can get it all off, and his kids, whatever it is they do, seem to bring it all back again soon enough. I installed Firefox for him, which has been a great help, but still he has an infested and dysfunctional PC.
Neighbor #2 also has two PCs. The parents recently told me that their daughter's PC had stopped working because of viruses and malware. They were planning to reload it. I don't know whether they have yet.
Neither of neighbor #1 or #2 have a lot of money to spend on PCs, and I don't think they are likely to spend $500 on a new Windows PC, which they'll perceive as delivering more of the same problems they experience now. But a Mac, that's different. This new machine will at least get their attention.
No doubt from being careful, I've mostly managed over the past several years to avoid problems with malware and viruses. Lately though, I've been reminded of just how fragile Windows can be. During the holidays, the neighbor kids came over to my house wanting to use the Internet. I guess their PCs weren't working too well. In a fit of insanity, I let them do something I never do, should never have done: I let them use my office PCs. In less than an hour and a half of just browsing, they managed to infest both with viruses and other malware. I spent all the next day and evening recovering, and still I haven't quite gotten all the cruft out.
Apparently, all it took to kill my two Windows boxes was two kids browsing to the wrong websites. Wow! No wonder none of my friends can keep anything running.
In the process of fixing things, I installed Windows XP Service Pack 2. (OK, I should have done that months ago.) That messed up Visio. My version of Visio, which I bought just prior to Microsoft's acquisition of that company, used to start up, display a dialog telling me it was incompatible with my version of Windows, and then it'd run just fine. (Go figure). Now, it displays the dialog and quits. I can't help but wonder if Microsoft hasn't coded in some sort of artificial limitation. Maybe. Maybe not. But I do wonder.
Btw, Firefox has been a great help to me. If you don't have it, if you are still using Internet Explorer (IE), run, don't walk, but run to Mozilla.org and install Firefox. Just do it. Trust me. The one piece of adware I have yet to clean out will pop up advertising windows almost constantly whenever I run IE. That's what finally got me off the dime to install Firefox myself. I've not only found Firefox easier to use than IE, but, heh, it doesn't seem to be compatible with that one piece of adware.
To add more grief to my life, the old Windows box that my family uses just up and died a few days ago. It begins to boot, displays a blue-screen telling me that it cannot boot, and then, after a minute or so, it reboots. Trying the "last known good configuration" did no good. Maybe it's a hardware glitch of some sort, but with Windows I'm certainly not left in a good position to fix anything. The only solution I can think of at the moment is to rebuild the box from scratch, which is a long day's work and then some, and I've been through it before and don't want to go there again..
I'm not even going try and fix the family PC. It's a six-year old budget-box that I've long regretted buying, because it's got an Intel slow-video solution. I was ignorant of that issue when I bought the box, but I soon learned, the hard way, that you want a separate video card (or chip). No, I'm not going to fix that box. I'm going to replace it, and with a Mac (maybe not a Mini). It's down now to a question of which Mac to buy and how to reshuffle my remaining, Windows PCs. (naturally, I wish I could replace both my office and family PCs all at once, but that isn't going to happen.)
There's this concept of a tipping point where a seemingly small thing can initiate great changes, and I wonder whether we aren't reaching something like that in the world of home computers. All the time I read about viruses and malware and of successful attacks against Windows systems. I see people who live with malware, because they don't know they've got it, or, if they do know they've got it, they don't know how to get rid of it. I see people who are so frustrated with their dysfunctional PCs that they just shove them into a corner and forget about them. Windows PCs are just difficult for many to keep running. If Apple's going to try and go after the masses, this would seem like an opportune time. I wish them success.
Jonathan Gennick is an O'Reilly Media, Inc. editor specializing in database and programming titles.
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