Apple’s new Switch ad campaign has caught the interest of The Miami Herald’s resident “Ms. Computer,” Peggy Rogers, who takes note in a new article entitled Apple determined to upstage rival. So much so, in fact, that Rogers, a self-professed “Mac novice and 12-year Windows vet” decided to give a Mac a try.
Rogers uses most of her review to tell Windows users about the basic Mac experience than many of us take for granted — the mechanics of the flat-panel iMac she tested out, what the Mac comes with and what it lacks compared to the average Windows PC, and so on. But she comes up with a few solid comparisons, too.
Rogers prefers Mac OS X’s Dock to the Windows XP Taskbar — because, she said, it shows applications that are both open and closed. On the software included with her iMac, Rogers said “Mac’s few sparse utilities can’t compare with Windows’ 2000 and XP set,” but she also noted that some will argue that the Mac needs less because of its solid UNIX underpinnings and core architectural features.
Mac users ultimately have fewer applications to choose from, said Rogers, and will have a smaller base of friends and colleagues upon which to draw computer knowledge. But Rogers also said that Macs “are increasingly compatible” with their Windows counterparts. As to the expense of buying software to do what your Windows PC already does, Rogers noted that Windows upgrades often require users to buy new versions of programs they already use.
And, in fact, Rogers had an easier time getting her three-year-old Hewlett-Packard inkjet printer working with OS X than she did with Windows XP, so the Mac gets the nod there.
“If you happen to live near an Apple retail store, techs promise to help you. There will be pain involved, but also joy of release for Microsoft dissidents,” she concluded.