Here’s a Mac FAQ if You’re Looking to Buy a Computer
When I write my computer buyers’ guides, I typically focus on Windows computers, not the Apple Macintosh. That’s because I assumed that buying a Mac required little guidance: It’s sold by only one company and comes in only a few models.
But in recent weeks, I’ve been bombarded by reader emails asking for Mac-buying advice. So, here’s a quick guide — a sort of Mac FAQ — to shopping for a Macintosh. As with my Windows guides, this is aimed at average, mainstream users doing typical tasks, not techies or businesses or hobbyists.
Q. Who should consider a Mac?
A. Pretty much every average consumer using a computer should at least look at the Mac. It combines gorgeous hardware with an operating system I consider superior to Windows, with better built-in software. It can even run Windows programs if you buy and install a copy of Windows. And unless you do that, you won’t be vulnerable to the vast array of viruses and spyware that threaten Windows users. Only a handful, so far, have been written to run on the Mac operating system, OS X.
Q. Who shouldn’t consider the Mac?
A. People who spend much of their time playing cutting-edge games should stick to Windows computers, because there are far fewer games written for OS X. Apple doesn’t offer hardware tuned for serious gaming. People looking for the lowest-price PCs should also avoid the Mac, because Apple’s cheapest model, the Mac Mini, costs $599.
Another group that should shun Apple’s computers are people who depend for support on corporate IT departments that are either ignorant about, or hostile to, the Mac. Finally, if you know and like Windows, and expect mainly to use Windows programs, stick with a Windows PC.
Q. Can I run Microsoft Office on a Mac?
A. Yes. Microsoft makes a Mac version of Office, which uses the same file formats that Word, Excel and PowerPoint for Windows have used for years. A new version of Office for the Mac is due in January and it will handle the new file formats Microsoft introduced this year. But the Mac version of Office omits Outlook. It has a similar program called Entourage, but Entourage can’t use Outlook data files. If you want a Mac but must have Outlook, you will have to install Windows.
Q. Can I use all my Windows files on a Mac?
A. Out of the box, Macs can handle all the common file types Windows machines create, including text files, pictures, songs and Adobe PDF files. The Mac even comes with a simple word processor that can open Microsoft Word files.
However, some specialized Windows programs create files that the Mac can’t handle out of the box. And the Mac version of Quicken has a difficult time properly handling Windows Quicken files. If you are a Quicken fan, install Windows and run the Windows version.
Q. Can I mix Macs and Windows on the same home network?
A. Macs can plug and play with most brand-name wired and wireless routers, and can share Internet connections with Windows PCs.
Q. How are Macs at Web surfing?
A. Fine. Apple’s built-in Safari browser is very good and the Mac version of Firefox is essentially identical to the Windows version. However, Macs lack an up-to-date version of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, so you will have to install Windows if you need IE.
Q. Can Macs run standard peripheral hardware?
A. Macs can run nearly all keyboards, mice and printers that use USB connections, even ones that don’t explicitly say they run on Macs.
Q. What desktops does Apple offer for consumers?
A. Apple’s main consumer desktop is the one-piece iMac, which I regard as the best consumer desktop on the market. It comes in four models, with built-in 20-inch or 24-inch, flat-panel screens at starting prices ranging from $1,199 to $2,299.
Q. How about Mac laptops?
A. There are two. The entry-level MacBook has a 13-inch screen and a starting price of $1,099. The high-end MacBook Pro comes with either a 15-inch or 17-inch screen and starts at $1,999. Apple currently doesn’t offer a smaller laptop for road warriors, but there are persistent rumors that it will do so soon.
Q. What minimum specs should I look for on a Mac?
A. All Macs come with at least one gigabyte of memory — twice the minimum required for the new version of OS X, called Leopard. If you can, get two gigabytes. Apple charges a lot for extra memory, but you can buy it for less at stores and online providers.
Macs use the same dual-core Intel processors and graphics systems as many mainstream Windows computers; and, as with Windows, I wouldn’t pay extra for greater processor speed.
The iMac comes with at least a 250-gigabyte hard disk, and Mac laptop hard disks start at 80 gigabytes. Mainstream Windows desktops typically start with larger hard disks. But Apple offers much larger disks as options, which you should consider if you store a lot of photos, music and video files.
Email me at mossberg@wsj.com. Find all my columns and videos online free at the new All Things Digital Web site, http://walt.allthingsd.com.
Comments
“Apple charges a lot for extra memory, but you can buy it for less at stores and online providers.”
Wrong!
“Apple charges an obscene amount for extra memory, but you can buy it online or a local retailer and install it in 10 minutes.”
Posted by Dave Barnes at November 15th, 2007 at 11:20 amTimely, excellent post. Thank you.
Posted by Mark Forstneger at November 15th, 2007 at 12:09 pmI recently set up a Mac Mini for use as my wife’s desktop machine. If you already have an LCD monitor you are happy with, as I did, it can be a good value. I did open it up (not for the technically inept) and boost the RAM to 2GB, and attach a large Firewire drive.
With Boot Camp built into Leopard, it makes a nice little Vista machine.
And it is little, and quiet. That’s one thing people don’t appreciate, consumer Macs are quiet. Steve wouldn’t have it any other way.
Posted by Glenn Howes at November 15th, 2007 at 2:08 pmIn recent years, several specialized programs have come out with Mac versions. For instance, a Mac version of Stata, a widely used statistics program, is available and is identical to the PC version. The output files are interchangeable.
I switched from PC to an iMac this month, and I only had to buy three programs: Adobe CS3 for Mac, Office 2004 for Mac, and Stata 10 for Mac. Not bad overall, and no need for a Windows partition.
As Glenn said, it is very quiet, but I suggest that people in an office environment think about the glare issue on the new screens. I thought my eyes would adjust, but I ended up buying a matte screen protector sheet. You can get one for 30 dollars, pre-cut for the iMac, from PhotoDon or other suppliers, though.
Overall, a great buy. Leopard is fantastic compared to XP or Vista (a Vista crash prompted my purchase).
Posted by Stephen Long at November 15th, 2007 at 7:38 pmOS X is soooo superior to Windows…..
That’s why Leopard OS X 10.5.1 has already been released to fix bugs less than a month after primary release…
One of my big problems with Leopard on my mini, can not reconnect to wireless networ after reboot/resume, was supposed to be fixed with this 10.5.1 release. Guess what? I still have to enter my wireless encyption key every time it reboots/resumes.
Apple does make some beautiful, yet overpriced, hardware. But I don’t think they’re anywhere near supperior…
Hopefully they’ll get this wireless network issue resolved in 10.5.2. I reckon that’ll be out in two weeks.
Posted by David Hansen at November 15th, 2007 at 9:57 pm“That’s why Leopard OS X 10.5.1 has already been released to fix bugs less than a month after primary release…”
Not to put too fine a point on it, but there were numerous security patches out for Vista the day it was released … and a set no more than every four weeks since.
The 10.5.1 patch set primarily focused on the firewall, which was working as designed but the design was stupid (interestingly enough, in some of the same ways that the XPSP1 firewall was stupid). It only took them a couple of weeks to fix it; IIRC Microsoft took more than a year And even in the state as-shipped it was only a problem for new network services added by the user that ran as root.
If you want to talk about Mac OS screw-ups the really big one in Leopard is if you have an admin account with 8 or more characters in its password that was created prior to OS X 10.2.something. The account is disabled on upgrade, and fixing it is not very straightforward unless you have the “how to” script in front of you (took me almost an hour to devise a way to do it, although I rarely try to do admin things by hand on the Mac).
Other than the firewall security bugaboo OS X has been pretty much a dream to work with. No malware to speak of (I once got to spend 14 hours cleaning out a relative’s Windows PC, and we got one bit of malware in-house even though we’re pretty careful). Upgrades are, with the exception of the Leopard admin issue, very slick. And until you try it you just can’t believe how good the Migration tool is when you get a new Mac. Wire the two together, push a button, and half and hour or so later you have your old configuration, en toto, running on your new, faster, better hardware. None of this ten-hours-of-reinstalling-your-apps nonsense.
Nothing is perfect, and anyone who tells you the Mac experience is perfect is lying. If you lived through the 90s Mac experience you will recall all kinds of nastiness.
But since OS X it has been remarkably good (then again, they leveraged almost thirty years of OS development when they switched to a UNIX base). I’ve had the occasional pretty weird problem over the years, and I do get called on occasion to help fix friends’ and relatives’ Mac issues. But we’re talking about an average of less than one a year amongst the whole network of these machines I work on. Windows requires significant messing-around every three to six months PER PC.
I eventually decided that it was too time-consuming to fix problems as they came up (and often the only “fix” was a reinstall anyway) and bought Acronis’ cloning software. If the PC is messed up we plug it in and replace the disk with the backed-up image. That is pretty easy but cost me $100ish for the tool and still has to be done far too often for my tastes. To date I have never, not even once, had to do that to a Mac.
In fact, I have had only two serious problems with Macs since I started using them again in 2001. I already mentioned the Leopard issue. The other was a failed laptop hard drive. You would not believe how hard it is to replace the hard drive on a 2002-era 12″ PowerBook. It’s insane.
Back to Leopard, there is really only one reason to upgrade from Tiger: Time Machine. It works unbelievably well, and is by far the easiest such tool I have ever seen. Incremental backups happen every 10 minutes and other than a little drive noise I don’t even notice them. It’s crazy good, but of course it took some very unusual filesystem design to do the job; everyone else has to do a sweep of the whole filesystem, Apple’s design allows them to only ever visit directories that have had files change in them. That is the biggest improvement in OS design since the journaled filesystem, now some 20 years old.
There are some things that you simply cannot do without Windows, which is why we have two Windows PCs at home. They mostly see use as gaming machines, though; for real work we all use the Macs, and for server duties it’s Linux, Linux, and more Linux (incredible bang-for-the-buck).
YMMV, I suppose, but he’s right that most consumers would have a much better experience with a Mac than a Windows box, with the exception of the dearth of cutting-edge games. It works better. A lot better.
Posted by Jim Frost at November 18th, 2007 at 11:16 amTime Machine has worked great so far - nice backup software that works!
The other new feature I use all of the time is Spaces - I develop .NET apps in a Windows 2003 Virtual Machine and have that run full screen in a Spaces window. That way I do not have to resize, fumble around with too many windows on the main desktop.
Posted by Mark Thibault at November 25th, 2007 at 6:04 pmI’ve been a PC user since the DOS days, but in large part because of the constant push from Walt here I’m considering buying a MacBook Pro.
However, I just discovered today that Entourage doesn’t sync tasks with Microsoft Exchange servers. As a disciple of Getting Things Done, this is a deal-breaker for me. I need to work with tasks on my BlackBerry, and I’m not willing to physically sync what should sync over the air through Exchange.
I know Microsoft’s Mac unit is coming out with a new Office suite - one that doesn’t include the awesome new toolbars in their PC version, which also frustrates me - but I’ve heard that the new version of Entourage STILL won’t sync tasks with Exchange.
Is Microsoft trying to discourage serious business customers from switching to Mac? If so, isn’t this an anti-trust issue? If my BlackBerry can sync tasks with Exchange, why can’t one of Microsoft’s own products?!
As a last resort, how well could I run Outlook on a MacBook Pro using VMware? Is it even worth switching if that’s how I have to run my system?
Posted by Jeff Bridges at November 28th, 2007 at 11:32 pm