Well, it's been 15 years since Apple's transition from PowerPC to Intel went into full swing, very similar to today's Apple transition from Intel to their own ARM-based silicon chips. So I thought I'd go into archive.org's Wayback Machine (eat your heart out, Mr. Peabody!) and look at Apple's old switching-related page from 15 years ago (originally "Why switch?", then "Get a Mac," later "Why You'll Love a Mac.")
It's surprising how much different they were back then, and they promoted the "fun" factor of Macs over the business/work usage of computers, as seen in their "Mac vs. PC" commercials they began running at that time. But there's still many similarities to today's Macs in that list, and I will compare them...
1. "It just works." That's still all too true, as they generally do seem to require less user troubleshooting than Windows PCs do. And from my experience in cross-platform computer usage, Macs do seem to require less configuration and maintenance than Windows machines.
2. "You can make amazing stuff." Yep, you pretty much still can make neat stuff with a Mac right out of the box. Except for DVDs and websites, due to iDVD and iWeb being discontinued, but you can still make photo books, slideshows, calendars, greeting cards and podcasts with Photos, songs and podcasts with GarageBand, music CDs with Apple Music, and music videos and documentaries and other video projects with iMovie. (Apple has pretty much discontinued iLife as a suite, and now only offers GarageBand and iMovie as free downloads on the Mac App Store if you don't have those apps already installed on your Mac.) And the iWork suite is also now included as standard with new Macs, so you can use those to make documents, spreadsheets and such!
3. "Designs that turn heads." This is still true, as today's Macs and the new models to be coming out soon still have very appealing designs that look good no matter what environment they're in. A computer lab full of those new 24" M1 iMacs, for example, would be nice to look at when just entering the room!
4. "114,000 Viruses? Not on a Mac." Sure, Macs are still less vulnerable to viruses than Windows PCs are, but I believe there are more Mac viruses and malware out there now than there were in 2006. But from my experience, they can often be easier to remove than Windows viruses and such (I've only gotten two of them during my time using Macs and was able to get rid of them with minimal fuss.)
5. "Next year’s OS today." This one may not apply as much, as Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger did have features among its' release in 2005 that Microsoft was planning to implement into Windows Vista for its' 2007 release. But at least with MacOS 11 Big Sur, Apple brought back Widgets, including the News one that I believe uses an RSS feed.
6. "The latest Intel chips." Not anymore! Apple's own ARM-based silicon chip Macs have been shown to outperform their Intel predecessors, in the same fashion as those Intel Core (2) Duo chips performing faster and cooler than the PowerPC G4 and G5 processors did (this is one reason why Apple switched to Intel back then, because the G5 processor was too big and hot to efficiently use in a PowerBook laptop.) And with Apple already working on a higher-end Apple Silicon chip, we can expect the newer ARM-based higher-end Macs to also outperform THEIR Intel predecessors!
7. "Instant video chats." Still applicable. Back then, this was achieved with iChat AV, but nowadays you use FaceTime to do it, and because FaceTime also works on iPhones and iPads, you can do such video chats with people on all those different devices!
8. "More fun with photos." Again this is still true, but nowadays you do all of this on the Photos app bundled with the Mac OS, which is more or less a newer version of iPhoto with more editing and sharing features added, along with the handy iCloud photo library syncing. And you can still make nice slideshows, photo books, calendars and greeting cards right from the app!
9. "One-click websites." Not anymore! iWeb was discontinued, with the last updated version being in 2009, and being 32-bit only it won't work on the newest Macs. (In fact, with iLife '11, iWeb was NOT updated at all!) But this could be because many people don't make non-business websites anymore, and for those that do, many web services offer easy web-based site creation right from the browser. Nowadays many people instead mostly use social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, and even several businesses do so too!
10. "Amazing podcasts." GarageBand 3 came with a dedicated podcasting mode, and while the latest versions of GarageBand no longer have this mode you can still make nice podcasts on it.
11. "Rock star tunemaking." Still pretty much the same, what with GarageBand being preloaded on all new Macs.
12. "Hollywood-style movies." Again, also pretty much the same, as iMovie is still easy to use and has a lot of nice features for people just starting out in editing or even prosumers that just want to quickly whip a small project together! You can even now work with a second video track of sorts, if you want to use graphic overlays or picture-in-picture or simple chromakey effects (iMovie HD required third-party plugins for those.) But you can't make DVDs anymore or post the video easily onto a website (due to iDVD and iWeb being discontinued), but you can export the finished project into a file easily compatible with YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook, etc.
13. "No hunting for drivers." Once again, this is still applicable. With most peripherals and devices Macs still quickly and easily recognize them when connected. Even on my work iMac I was able to easily get my Dymo label printer easily set up on the Mac OS, though I did need to download the compatible label-printing software in order to use it, but as Apple likes to say, it just works! Same with the barcode scanner I use to scan Chromebooks that we want a school district to remove enterprise enrollment from; first time I used it I easily plugged it into my iMac via USB and was able to immediately begin scanning into the Google Documents spreadsheet we used for managed Chromebooks!
14. "Awesome out of the box." Macs have been like this for a long time now that they're still famous for this. They're easy to get started using among getting one, and you can use the aforementioned apps that once made up the iLife suite (Music/TV, Photos, iMovie and GarageBand) and iWork suite (Pages, Numbers, Keynote), and with the latter this is especially cool because back in 2006 Macs did not come with iWork; you had to buy it separately (though it would come with a trial version of iWork you could install, if you want, along with a trial version of Microsoft Office for Mac.)
And the same page also has a side list that debunks all the old Mac rumors: "All those reasons you never bought a Mac? Not true anymore." Many of them still do apply...
1. "Know iTunes? You know the Mac." This is still true, although while iTunes still exists as is for Windows, on the newer Mac OS versions iTunes was split into three separate apps: Music, TV and Podcasts, in order to be consistent with iOS, and that brings ANOTHER factor in: those who are familiar with iPhones and iPads would also quickly adjust to using a Mac.
2. "You can take it with you." This has not changed at all, as it's been applicable since the early years of Mac OS X. File extensions popular with Windows for images, audio and video files, documents and such are often still standard on Macs. (I still remember being pleasantly surprised in 2009 when I got my eMac desktop that .WAV files work on Macs just as good as they do on PCs, even working great in Apple's audio and video-editing applications! I still often export short audio clips I edit/create on the Mac in .WAV for cross-platform usage.)
3. "Yes, Macs run Microsoft Office." They have been able to for a long time and they still do today, even better than ever! Because I've used the Office suite all my life, I still use it on Macs, and when I was attending college for my computer tech degree and took those Microsoft Word, Excel and Powerpoint classes I was able to easily do my projects on the Mac versions; in many cases even starting a project in class on one of the lab PCs, saving it to my college OneDrive account, and then finishing the project at home on my Mac!
4. "No, Macs aren’t slow." This talked about how the then-new Intel Macs were a lot faster than their PowerPC predecessors, and in many cases could be even faster than equivalent Windows machines. And now, as I already mentioned, the new Apple Silicon Macs are even faster than their Intel predecessors!
5. "No, you don’t have to buy new stuff." This talks about how your existing peripherals and devices and such, like keyboards, mice, printers and cameras work just as well with Macs as they do with PCs. And it's still all too true, maybe even more so than today. I've even used an early 2000s Apple Pro Keyboard with a much newer Mac and it still works pretty well. But if your printer or camera is that old then you'd need to upgrade to a new model anyways.
6. "Yes, you can even run Windows." This one is trickier. With the Apple Silicon systems, you can't use Boot Camp anymore if you want to natively run Windows, as that was only an Intel thing. But you can still virtualize the ARM version of Windows 10 in software like the newest Parallels Desktop or UTM, and with the latter you can emulate a x86 system for running an older version of Windows on, but it's usually somewhat slower than when doing it via virtualization on an Intel Mac. (Of course on my M1 MacBook Air, I just have a Windows XP virtual machine on UTM for running some older PC games, so this doesn't affect me too much.)
Just thought this was worth sharing, and making for a pretty neat then-and-now comparison with Macs, especially with the Intel-to-ARM transition.
It's surprising how much different they were back then, and they promoted the "fun" factor of Macs over the business/work usage of computers, as seen in their "Mac vs. PC" commercials they began running at that time. But there's still many similarities to today's Macs in that list, and I will compare them...
1. "It just works." That's still all too true, as they generally do seem to require less user troubleshooting than Windows PCs do. And from my experience in cross-platform computer usage, Macs do seem to require less configuration and maintenance than Windows machines.
2. "You can make amazing stuff." Yep, you pretty much still can make neat stuff with a Mac right out of the box. Except for DVDs and websites, due to iDVD and iWeb being discontinued, but you can still make photo books, slideshows, calendars, greeting cards and podcasts with Photos, songs and podcasts with GarageBand, music CDs with Apple Music, and music videos and documentaries and other video projects with iMovie. (Apple has pretty much discontinued iLife as a suite, and now only offers GarageBand and iMovie as free downloads on the Mac App Store if you don't have those apps already installed on your Mac.) And the iWork suite is also now included as standard with new Macs, so you can use those to make documents, spreadsheets and such!
3. "Designs that turn heads." This is still true, as today's Macs and the new models to be coming out soon still have very appealing designs that look good no matter what environment they're in. A computer lab full of those new 24" M1 iMacs, for example, would be nice to look at when just entering the room!
4. "114,000 Viruses? Not on a Mac." Sure, Macs are still less vulnerable to viruses than Windows PCs are, but I believe there are more Mac viruses and malware out there now than there were in 2006. But from my experience, they can often be easier to remove than Windows viruses and such (I've only gotten two of them during my time using Macs and was able to get rid of them with minimal fuss.)
5. "Next year’s OS today." This one may not apply as much, as Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger did have features among its' release in 2005 that Microsoft was planning to implement into Windows Vista for its' 2007 release. But at least with MacOS 11 Big Sur, Apple brought back Widgets, including the News one that I believe uses an RSS feed.
6. "The latest Intel chips." Not anymore! Apple's own ARM-based silicon chip Macs have been shown to outperform their Intel predecessors, in the same fashion as those Intel Core (2) Duo chips performing faster and cooler than the PowerPC G4 and G5 processors did (this is one reason why Apple switched to Intel back then, because the G5 processor was too big and hot to efficiently use in a PowerBook laptop.) And with Apple already working on a higher-end Apple Silicon chip, we can expect the newer ARM-based higher-end Macs to also outperform THEIR Intel predecessors!
7. "Instant video chats." Still applicable. Back then, this was achieved with iChat AV, but nowadays you use FaceTime to do it, and because FaceTime also works on iPhones and iPads, you can do such video chats with people on all those different devices!
8. "More fun with photos." Again this is still true, but nowadays you do all of this on the Photos app bundled with the Mac OS, which is more or less a newer version of iPhoto with more editing and sharing features added, along with the handy iCloud photo library syncing. And you can still make nice slideshows, photo books, calendars and greeting cards right from the app!
9. "One-click websites." Not anymore! iWeb was discontinued, with the last updated version being in 2009, and being 32-bit only it won't work on the newest Macs. (In fact, with iLife '11, iWeb was NOT updated at all!) But this could be because many people don't make non-business websites anymore, and for those that do, many web services offer easy web-based site creation right from the browser. Nowadays many people instead mostly use social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, and even several businesses do so too!
10. "Amazing podcasts." GarageBand 3 came with a dedicated podcasting mode, and while the latest versions of GarageBand no longer have this mode you can still make nice podcasts on it.
11. "Rock star tunemaking." Still pretty much the same, what with GarageBand being preloaded on all new Macs.
12. "Hollywood-style movies." Again, also pretty much the same, as iMovie is still easy to use and has a lot of nice features for people just starting out in editing or even prosumers that just want to quickly whip a small project together! You can even now work with a second video track of sorts, if you want to use graphic overlays or picture-in-picture or simple chromakey effects (iMovie HD required third-party plugins for those.) But you can't make DVDs anymore or post the video easily onto a website (due to iDVD and iWeb being discontinued), but you can export the finished project into a file easily compatible with YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook, etc.
13. "No hunting for drivers." Once again, this is still applicable. With most peripherals and devices Macs still quickly and easily recognize them when connected. Even on my work iMac I was able to easily get my Dymo label printer easily set up on the Mac OS, though I did need to download the compatible label-printing software in order to use it, but as Apple likes to say, it just works! Same with the barcode scanner I use to scan Chromebooks that we want a school district to remove enterprise enrollment from; first time I used it I easily plugged it into my iMac via USB and was able to immediately begin scanning into the Google Documents spreadsheet we used for managed Chromebooks!
14. "Awesome out of the box." Macs have been like this for a long time now that they're still famous for this. They're easy to get started using among getting one, and you can use the aforementioned apps that once made up the iLife suite (Music/TV, Photos, iMovie and GarageBand) and iWork suite (Pages, Numbers, Keynote), and with the latter this is especially cool because back in 2006 Macs did not come with iWork; you had to buy it separately (though it would come with a trial version of iWork you could install, if you want, along with a trial version of Microsoft Office for Mac.)
And the same page also has a side list that debunks all the old Mac rumors: "All those reasons you never bought a Mac? Not true anymore." Many of them still do apply...
1. "Know iTunes? You know the Mac." This is still true, although while iTunes still exists as is for Windows, on the newer Mac OS versions iTunes was split into three separate apps: Music, TV and Podcasts, in order to be consistent with iOS, and that brings ANOTHER factor in: those who are familiar with iPhones and iPads would also quickly adjust to using a Mac.
2. "You can take it with you." This has not changed at all, as it's been applicable since the early years of Mac OS X. File extensions popular with Windows for images, audio and video files, documents and such are often still standard on Macs. (I still remember being pleasantly surprised in 2009 when I got my eMac desktop that .WAV files work on Macs just as good as they do on PCs, even working great in Apple's audio and video-editing applications! I still often export short audio clips I edit/create on the Mac in .WAV for cross-platform usage.)
3. "Yes, Macs run Microsoft Office." They have been able to for a long time and they still do today, even better than ever! Because I've used the Office suite all my life, I still use it on Macs, and when I was attending college for my computer tech degree and took those Microsoft Word, Excel and Powerpoint classes I was able to easily do my projects on the Mac versions; in many cases even starting a project in class on one of the lab PCs, saving it to my college OneDrive account, and then finishing the project at home on my Mac!
4. "No, Macs aren’t slow." This talked about how the then-new Intel Macs were a lot faster than their PowerPC predecessors, and in many cases could be even faster than equivalent Windows machines. And now, as I already mentioned, the new Apple Silicon Macs are even faster than their Intel predecessors!
5. "No, you don’t have to buy new stuff." This talks about how your existing peripherals and devices and such, like keyboards, mice, printers and cameras work just as well with Macs as they do with PCs. And it's still all too true, maybe even more so than today. I've even used an early 2000s Apple Pro Keyboard with a much newer Mac and it still works pretty well. But if your printer or camera is that old then you'd need to upgrade to a new model anyways.
6. "Yes, you can even run Windows." This one is trickier. With the Apple Silicon systems, you can't use Boot Camp anymore if you want to natively run Windows, as that was only an Intel thing. But you can still virtualize the ARM version of Windows 10 in software like the newest Parallels Desktop or UTM, and with the latter you can emulate a x86 system for running an older version of Windows on, but it's usually somewhat slower than when doing it via virtualization on an Intel Mac. (Of course on my M1 MacBook Air, I just have a Windows XP virtual machine on UTM for running some older PC games, so this doesn't affect me too much.)
Just thought this was worth sharing, and making for a pretty neat then-and-now comparison with Macs, especially with the Intel-to-ARM transition.
