Recounting his first few days of living for a month as a Mac user, ZDNet AnchorDesk executive editor (and Microsoft loyalist) David Coursey jokingly confessed that he’s “made up [his] mind to switch careers,” thanks Apple’s demonstration of their software.
It may sound par for course for the average Macintosh user by now, but for the PC-centric editor, it was a major revelation. Coursey explained that when Apple demonstrated its professional video editing application Final Cut Pro to him on a PowerBook G4, he was struck by the software’s simplicity of use and the way it worked with off-the-shelf Mac hardware. “The same machine I use for writing this column is displaying really great video,” said Coursey, “and we’re rearranging it about as simply as Word lets me fix a badly structured sentence.”
Coursey said that Apple depends on the creative tingle generated in users by the way Apple’s applications and hardware work together. “Because while Windows is good at many things, if what you do is create something visual — be it digital photography, Web pages, magazines, television, film, or anything else — the Mac is your platform.”
Coursey’s adoption of the Macintosh and Mac OS X isn’t totally without flaws — he said that the operating system still has some weaknesses that he anticipates are “about six months away” from being filled. He also said that there’s a dearth of compelling applications to make users give Mac OS X a go, although he likes Microsoft Office v.X. Office, he said, looks different on Mac OS X and Windows, but works the same. As a result, his writing productivity hasn’t suffered since making the switch.
Complimenting Apple on how easy his systems were to set up, Coursey commented, “Apple has pretty much perfected what the industry calls the ‘out-of-box experience’ — what you experience when you first open the box and power up the machine.”
In fact, Coursey said that while PC makers had improved in that area, “Apple is the master.”
Despite a few bumps in the road during his first few days, Coursey wrote, “Overall, the experience is a positive one. I’m having a good time and learning things — including my real calling in life.”