May 9th, 2008
Why do Macs need so much fixing?
Last weekend, in the course of a column about Steve Ballmer, my colleague Larry Dignan tossed an offhand shout-out in my general direction:
When Ed Bott has a series on how to fix–or at least cope with Vista–you know this OS isn’t so hot. Why should this thing need so much fixing?
And the TalkBack section of my series on Fixing Vista (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3) has drawn the same sort of comments, usually from diehard ABMers.
To which I say, give me a freakin’ break. I’ve made an entire career out of helping people become more productive with Windows, which includes explaining how things work, how to customize system settings and features, and, yes, how to fix problems. And here’s a news flash: I have peers on the Apple side of the universe who make their living exactly the same way. In fact, maybe the real question should be, Why does the Mac OS need so much fixing? Consider the evidence:
MacFixIt.com is an enormously popular website that offers up a veritable gold mine of solutions to help people fix problems with the Mac OS. (It doesn’t always “just work”?) Ironically, it’s a CNET property. Yes, that’s right, the same company that owns ZDNet.
And speaking of three-part series on fixing computer operating systems… I was floored to find a 1500-word post called How to Fix the Finder 1: Faster, written by one of the most passionate Mac advocates around: It begins: “The Mac OS X Finder is at the top of everyone’s fix-it list. Here’s a look at what’s wrong with the Finder, and ideas for fixing it.” And that was just the first installment in (ahem) a three-part series that continued with the 1200-word part 2 (Smarter) and the 1600-word part 3 (Prettier). That’s 4300 words on how to fix just the file manager in the Mac OS.
A few months ago, MacWorld published a lengthy article called Fix Mac slowdowns. It’s filled with headings like “Web browsing is too slow” and “E-mail takes forever” and (my favorite) “Everything is too slow,” which includes this familiar advice:
If everything you do on your Mac seems to take much longer than it once did, look for several common system problems, as well as individual programs that are outdated or are simply using more than their fair share of your Mac’s resources.
There’s a site called TroubledMac.com that offers a $15 e-book called Fix a Troubled Mac: A Mac OS X Troubleshooting Guide. And I found a lengthy article called Fixing Mac Glitches and Sluggishness at a site called Lowendmac.com.
Maybe this is a trend. Just this week, ZDNet’s own Jason O’Grady, half of the Apple Core blogging team, wondered aloud if Mac OS 10.5.2 (Apple’s latest round of bug fixes for Leopard) is Apple’s own version of Vista:
I’ve heard many different complaints about Mac OS 10.5.2 since it was released, from my own Skype/podcasting problems to issues with just about everything else, including: printing, third-party wireless routers, software freezing and problems with Time Machine. The Apple discussion boards are littered with stories about all kinds of crawlers in 10.5.2 … Chuck Freedman from the PowerPage Podcast shares his problems with 10.5.2 on his MacBook Pro – he thinks it’s the buggiest software update in years. So much so, that his friend Dennis (updated to give proper credit) coined a new term for 10.5.2 – “Apple Vista.”
For the record, I think that’s a cheap shot at both Apple and Microsoft. Welcome to the 21st century, people. Personal computers are the most complicated products the average human will encounter intheir lifetime. Each one is made up of hundreds of internal and external parts chosen from millions of alternative sources, run by software that consists of millions of lines of code, and infinitely customizable.
The surprise is not that these complex products occasionally need fixing, but rather that they work so well, so often, for so many people.
(Oh, and I hope my Linux-loving readers won’t feel left out. For equal opportunity’s sake, I could have found ten times as many websites and articles for Linux users, not because Linux is more troublesome but because there are so many distros.)
Ed Bott is an award-winning technology writer with more than two decades' experience writing for mainstream media outlets and online publications. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
| 05/09/08
btw Linux next!