Great "Mac vs. PC" Story...

[Turkish]

So this new guy just started at the place where I work - he's actually my boss.

He took some pictures of our products this morning and went back to hook up his camera to his PC (I'm the only guy here with a Mac). I watched from behind as he fumbled trying to load drivers, get the computer to recognize the camera etc.

I went up to the front of the office to take a break and I heard him mutter "what the heck am I doing wrong?"

I said " Do you want a smart-ass answer or a reasonable one?"

He said "Doesn't matter."

I said "Well the answer to your 'What am I doing wrong' question is you are using a PC."

He then said "Look I realized long ago that there's no difference between Macs and PCs in this business (publishing)."

I said "Unless you actually want to get some work done."

*grin*

I took the camera over to my iMac, it mounted, I put the images into iPhoto and then dragged copies onto our server ... all in about two minutes.

He just stood there in silence.

Why do people fight it? Look I know Macs aren't perfect, but God, so much easier.

 

[dpaanlka]

Why do people fight it?

I ask myself this a lot.

 

[gkarris]

Pride...

That's what they have and have heavily invested in, so they're going to make it work...

 

[Turkish]

Pride...

That's what they have and have heavily invested in, so they're going to make it work...

I don't feel so bad about it ... I did offer him an out in the beginning.

 

[mkrishnan]

Is it really that complicated to get pictures off a camera in Windows? It didn't take me much work to figure it out.

 

[Scannall]

Is it really that complicated to get pictures off a camera in Windows? It didn't take me much work to figure it out.

It's pretty much hit or miss depending on your camera, software updates etc.

Sometimes it's really easy, other times near impossible.

 

[imac/cheese]

Great story!! So is he now planning to make the switch?

 

[jimN]

I've been using a mac for a while now but I've never encountered any problems mounting a camera on a pc, in fact you tend to encounter more problems using a mac. In this situation I would have been more likely to help him resolve the issue on his computer than 1. be a bit smug (we mac users are famous for it) and 2. make him dependent on me for further picture downloads.

 

[Gav]

Why do people fight it?

That made me chuckle.

Give in.

Give in to Lord Jobs.

Become one of us.

We will give you eternal life in Exchange® for your soul.



Exchange and all associated products/services are copyright Microsoft Corporation 2007, all rights reserved.

 

[plinden]

I love working on my Macs and how easy it is to get video and photos onto it and how OS X fits in with my workflow, and so on. Part of the reason I took a closer look at Macs was seeing the bestman at my wife's sister's wedding put together a slideshow of the wedding on his PB in the time it took me to track down the camera drivers I needed (never mind actually downloading and installing.) ... but ...

Try printing with a newly released or non-mainstream printer.

Try using a wireless N USB stick.

Try using a GPS device.

Yes, this is the fault of the hardware manufacturers not providing the necessary drivers, but it's the same issue as with PCs and cameras.

 

[Gav]

I love working on my Macs and how easy it is to get video and photos onto it and how OS X fits in with my workflow, and so on. Part of the reason I took a closer look at Macs was seeing the bestman at my wife's sister's wedding put together a slideshow of the wedding on his PB in the time it took me to track down the camera drivers I needed (never mind actually downloading and installing.) ... but ...

Try printing with a newly released or non-mainstream printer.

Try using a wireless N USB stick.

Try using a GPS device.

Yes, this is the fault of the hardware manufacturers not providing the necessary drivers, but it's the same issue as with PCs and cameras.

I agree. Its only because Cameras are very easy to interface with, because most of them just present themselves as external hard drives.

 

[ghall]

That made me chuckle.

Give in.

Give in to Lord Jobs.

Become one of us.

We will give you eternal life in Exchange® for your soul.



Exchange and all associated products/services are copyright Microsoft Corporation 2007, all rights reserved.

Resistance is futile.

 

[dpaanlka]

in fact you tend to encounter more problems using a mac

Yeah I bet....

 

[dsnort]

in fact you tend to encounter more problems using a mac.

Cannot agree with you on that. 15+ years on PC and I have never been able to hook a camera to one without first installing the drivers from a CD or downloading them from the net, about half the time requiring a reboot before the camera is recognised. And then it was never a straight forward proposition to get photo's to download. It was so frustrating the wife and I started just taking the camera card to Walgreens and getting a disk made.

In the last year and a half I have downloaded pics to my Mac from no less than 7 different makes and model of camera and 3 different vidcams, no fuss no muss just smile and hook'em up!

"There is a camera connected to the computer, would you like to import photo's?" Why, yes, yes I would!

 

[Scarlet Fever]

a mate of mine was doing a presentation for English at school. She couldn't get her document to open on the PC for some reason, and the teacher was just about to tell her to try doing it without the visual aids. I had my MacBook on me because i had just done my presentation (using Keynote), so i put the CD in, opened the document, pressed play, and it worked flawlessly.

the PC fanboys in the class were very quiet

 

[blue knight]

Another Mac vs. PC

I have had my MacBook for 2 weeks now. Took a bunch of pictures at my brother' birthday family. Came home and immediately started searching for my camera disk to load, when I realized I didn't need it. Plugged in my camera and there were all the pictures of my happy (drunk) relatives. How can you not love that ?

 

[SteveG4Cube]

I'm also the only Mac user in my office, and when I first got it I explained to my boss that I can be more productive on it, and he basically rolled his eyes and reluctantly agreed to let me get one. In the 4 years since, I've had countless encounters like this, and I'm now the official guy that everyone comes to with CDs to burn, pictures to open, PDFs to convert, DVD slideshows to make, .........

 

[MikeTheC]

You know, it's funny. For probably the rest of you, you're all (likely) sitting there thinking "Power to the Mac people!" or "Shows those Windowz-using idiots a thing or two!" or what have you.

Me, it just makes me all that much happier I'm out of the computer business. I don't have to put up with the idiots; I don't have to justify myself; I don't have to get into pointless, moronic conversations with people who either have half the I.Q. that I do or act like it; and I don't go around feeling like I'm the high-tech janitor who gets to clean up everyone elses' messes because they're too irresponsible to do it themselves.

The older I get, the more "**** and RTFM" I get. Dunno why, probably not the years but the mileage...

 

[djellison]

Is it really that complicated to get pictures off a camera in Windows?

No - it isn't. I love my Mac - I use it 99% of the time.

BUT

I just got a Casio Exilim digital camera. Great little thing. Took the memory card, whacked it into my PC - off came the pictures, the movies - great. Worked perfectly, first time, no drivers, no software to load, edited the movies - everything fine. I've had half a dozen digital cameras and never had to install any drivers for any of them on my PC to get the pictures off.

Same on my Mac - the photos came off fine, so did the movies - but even after getting some obscure Casio download, the movies still do not play reliably and nor can I edit them. It 'just works' just isn't true in this case. I have to go and find a PC to use the movies.

I won't be going back to having a PC as my day to day machine after 2 months with my Mac - but this smugness and presumption that PC's will always do everything worse than a Mac, particularly in this case, is unjustified and unhealthy.

Doug

 

[Mechcozmo]

I agree. Its only because Cameras are very easy to interface with, because most of them just present themselves as external hard drives.

Not true... a good deal present themselves as USB Cameras, which don't actually require drivers-- the computer can just suck pictures right off. Some will notice if that fails and will fall back into the "USB Mass Storage Device" mode, which is also no-driver, but for some reason, even more no-driver than the other method. I think it's called PTP but I don't remember...

I carry a card reader now. Makes life so much easier. Got USB? Got pictures. But Windows still thinks I should find a 2.0 port on a 1.1 only computer for faster speeds. I cheaped out, though; didn't buy the magic that lets me do such things.

 

[DoFoT9]

Great story!! So is he now planning to make the switch?

hahahaha tahts exactly what i was asking myself! if it were that easy i dont think that apple would be a minority! if that were the case all youd have to do is make all the drivers crap for windows, which they already are....so why arent we the majority!!!!

 

[darkcurse]

No - it isn't. I love my Mac - I use it 99% of the time.

BUT

I just got a Casio Exilim digital camera. Great little thing. Took the memory card, whacked it into my PC - off came the pictures, the movies - great. Worked perfectly, first time, no drivers, no software to load, edited the movies - everything fine. I've had half a dozen digital cameras and never had to install any drivers for any of them on my PC to get the pictures off.

Same on my Mac - the photos came off fine, so did the movies - but even after getting some obscure Casio download, the movies still do not play reliably and nor can I edit them. It 'just works' just isn't true in this case. I have to go and find a PC to use the movies.

I won't be going back to having a PC as my day to day machine after 2 months with my Mac - but this smugness and presumption that PC's will always do everything worse than a Mac, particularly in this case, is unjustified and unhealthy.

Doug

Considering that most digicam's out there use some obscure video codec which would ONLY work with their software which ONLY is available for windows it isn't really fair to blame Apple. Apple pride's itself on standards and as with the internet, anything built to a common standard will be better accessible on a Mac than your typical Windows computer. Just my 2 cents

 

[gnasher729]

I agree. Its only because Cameras are very easy to interface with, because most of them just present themselves as external hard drives.

I thought they present themselves as Image Aquisition Devices... (maybe they do both? ) Image Aquisition Devices include mostly cameras and scanners, and the programming interface is standardised, so you can easily write code that imports images from any scanner or camera.

 

[djellison]

Considering that most digicam's out there use some obscure video codec which would ONLY work with their software which ONLY is available for windows it isn't really fair to blame Apple.

Considering Casio provide a codec for OSX, and considering it will play with VLC Media player, it really IS fair to blame apple when it doesn't work with Quicktime or iMovie.

Anything built to common standards will, by the nature of the word 'common', work on either platform.

Doug

 

[Turkish]

Great story!! So is he now planning to make the switch?

Don't think that will be happening. He seems like a stubborn old codger.