I've been looking into switching to a Mac for the past couple of months. Most of my research has been online but that will only go so far. With that in mind, I made a trip to the Apple Store to check out MacBook Pros in their natural habitat.
I poked around on a 15 inch MBP for about thirty minutes to see what it was like. Leopard seemed to be able to keep up with all the standard things and even performed reasonably well with Safari, iTunes, PhotoShop, and iWork running simultaneously on different virtual desktops. I continued to poke around and discovered a shell prompt, which was really exciting. It looks just like a FreeBSD prompt so that should provide some additional flexibility.
The presence of the shell prompt was especially comforting considering the reports of the OS X firewall is not configured well by default and that it doesn't perform as expected when it runs. I would be able to configure PF or whatever BSD firewall lurks beneath the Leopard eye candy.
Just after I finished poking around with the shell prompt and sales guys approached me and asked if I had any questions. I asked him if there was any difference between a Windows machine and an Apple machine when using Adobe Photoshop. The immediate answer was "Of course there is. All the artsy people use Macs." After reminding him that wasn't my question, he conceded that there wasn't much difference between the two platforms. However he did point out that Macs are more secure than Windows machines.
I countered that Macs are not more secure, but rather are just more ignored than Windows machines. Essentially the hackers get more bang for their buck with Windows exploits and that Macs just were not worth their time. However, as Mac's market share increases that will change and they will be hacked more.
Imagine telling a born again Southern Baptist that reports of Jesus walking on water might have been exaggerated slightly to improve his public image. That is about how this Apple sales guy responded to the notion that Macs were not more secure than Windows, but rather not worth the effort. It was an interesting experience.
At the end of the day, my estimation of the situation is that Macs are not better or worse than Windows machines they are just different. Some people say that Macs are more expensive than Windows machines. On the surface that is true, but as far as I can tell that extra cash gets you software that you would have to purchase separately on a Windows machine. Specifically, I'm talking about iLife. To purchase comparable software for a Windows machine you would probably spend somewhere around $400 to $500 dollars. That and iWork is $85 dollars as compared to MS Office Basic, which runs around $250.
That and Macs are just pretty. I thik that the minimalist style is awesome. Using two fingers to scroll on the touchpad is a great idea. The more I look at them, the more I like them.
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This past week has been pretty crazy and I haven't had much chance to blog this week but this article has lingered with me. The Reuters Photography blog has some really spectacular photos and stories. It's an inside look at photojournalism in the big leagues. Usually, it's the articles about Iraq or Afghanistan that grab my attention, but this one did too. In this article Fabrizio Bensch documents the process of harvesting organs from a donor. 
