Shortly after Apple made the announcement about its latest shakeup, I surfed over to the Ziff-Davis Net to check out what people were saying on-line in the community discussion groups and discovered a whole range of comments from Great! to It's the End! to the expected PC-centric visitor taking the opportunity to question why we even need the Mac. This question comes up so often that it screams for people in the Mac community to give some rational response beyond It's Neat! Here's the visitor's query, and my response...

I've been in the PC realm since the late 70's - I saw little in Apple that enticed me then and, frankly, there is nothing about an Apple machine that interests me now. . . Not trying to be mean, but what can an Apple do that a good PC can't??

You know, I've also been in the PC thick since the 70s, and the industry owes a lot to Apple. I still have buried under a sheet a worthless, first generation Radio Shack TRS-80 Model 1. It was fun for a few months, but the aggravation of using it caused me to back away, $3800 down the drain!

Then in 1984 a computer company finally came out with a product that an ordinary mortal could use. I bought this first generation Mac with its creator's signatures embossed on its innards for $2300 and have never regretted it. PCs might be better today than they were then were it not for Apple's developing the first commercially viable graphical interface, but I seriously doubt they'd be as far along to usability nirvana as they are without the Mac's involvement.

You have to remember, Windows was Microsoft's reaction to the Mac, not its initiative. Microsoft OWNED DOS. Every PC sold had to pay them for the right to use it. It had NO incentive to change that until an insightful Bill Gates realized that, properly managed, the Mac could steal away some of those royalty dollars. So Windows was born. Not until Windows 95 has anything even close to the usability of the Mac existed on the DOS/Wintel platform. And Mac loyalist that I am, after using Windows 95 for over a year at work, I will freely admit that there are features of it that I like, and they include all the latest buzzwords, preemptive this, multi that.

But you know something? I still can't remember where to find all the pieces of an application when something goes wrong in Windows. When my Mac application gets corrupted, I simply copy a new version into the folder. With Windows, miss an obscure .dll or other component buried in some illogically named folder and you may end up trashing your whole system during the diagnostic.

One of my biggest gripes back in the 80's was that Apple was too greedy. Their up front purchase price guaranteed that a PC/DOS-centric world would compare the initial purchase prices and announce the Mac too expensive. Life cycle support costs were never considered, and they declared the Mac's interface bells and whistles not worth the cost. But Bill Gates knew better and worked on building them into Windows. Now Windows has the bells and whistles, but requires a huge staff of specialists to install, maintain, diagnose, and repair the complex mishmash of code. I'm off to a Windows 95 Registry class next week at a cost of over $1000 just to learn how Windows keeps track of all its pieces.

So what's a small business or an ordinary user to do who can't afford to hire or maintain a staff of technology priests to keep their systems working?

The Mac provides a largely consistent, easily remembered user interface that ordinary people can easily learn to maintain, diagnose, and repair with only a few phone calls to any local user group. That's why, after 13 years of Mac use, I don't expect to ever switch over to a Windows PC at home. I value my personal time too much. When I jump onto my Mac, I want to get something done, or play around, and if something goes wrong, and it does on an annoyingly regular basis, fixing it or finding a work around is not only possible, but likely. When Windows 95 bites the dust, your best bet is to reinstall the whole operating system, or even to reformat your hard disk first, or grab your checkbook, because the chances of a non-computer type finding and fixing the problem are slim. I've found some crashes so difficult to diagnose with Windows that the only cost effective solution was to start over from scratch.

Yes, there's not much you can't do on a Windows 95 PC today that the Mac offers, including video editing and professional publishing. But it's almost always more difficult with Windows, and the output is always a big questionmark. If you're contented with Windows and have the skills to keep it operational, fine, stick with it.

But for everyday folks, and the Mac's legions are filled with them, Apple has given them a gateway into a world already too technical for most people.

And for the educational system with its entry-level school children and technically-challenged teachers who support their computers, there is no better platfrom.

And for small businesses who can't afford the support costs that maintaining a Windows environment entails...

And for business people who like to be in control of their technology and not dependent on getting the attention of the Information Systems Help Desk to get their PC fixed before that rapidly approaching suspense project is due...

And for anyone who gets a thrill out of using technology but is a bit intimidated by it...

There's a whole world of users who want to enjoy using their computer, and that computer's the Macintosh...

Enough said...

- Dave Marsh