Apple: Why a Mac user is switching to Windows

Apple’s recent attitude and behavior toward its Mac computers has not created confidence among Mac users. The Mac has more or less become a third wheel behind the iPhone and iPad, and the company’s heart has clearly not been in improving its Macs.

The Mac Pro, for example, has not been updated since 2013. The Mac mini has also been languishing, and even the venerable iMac is in need of a hardware refresh.

The end result of this is that Mac users have been left wondering if Apple even cares much about the Mac at this point, given how the iPhone is now the company’s big money maker.

One writer at PCWorld has finally decided to dump his Mac and take the plunge into Windows PCs. He shared his thoughts in the first article of a series on why he is leaving the Mac behind.

Seamus Bellamy reports for PCWorld:

My beef with Apple is the lack of polish I’ve been seeing in the software over the past few years (don’t get me started on the state of iTunes), and the amount of trouble I’ve had personally with the hardware since investing $2,700 for my current laptop. My workflow has been plagued by graphical glitches, slowdowns, and occasional refusal on the part of my ports to recognize external storage media. At times, my MacBook Pro has outright refused to boot. Heck, I couldn’t get it to format an SD card if my life depended on it. Reinstalling MacOS has done nothing to sort out these issues, nor has restoring my system from a Time Machine backup.

Having paid extra for AppleCare, I’ve taken in my MacBook Pro several times to be serviced. A few months ago, an Apple tech replaced the entire bottom half of my computer with a new one—it cost less than hunting down an issue with the laptop’s logic board, I was told. And yet, the thing still refuses to fulfill Apple’s promise of ‘it just works.’

The experience has left me frustrated enough to be willing to step into the unknown and see how the other side lives. It’s a sentiment echoed by a lot of folks online of late, amid concerns that Apple, as a company, has lost its way.

Apple once catered to creatives—hardcore power users in film and music production, desktop publishing, and other artistic endeavors. They valued the company’s hardware for its performance and ease of use. But the last update to the company’s iconic Mac Pro desktop was years ago. The company’s MacBook Pro laptop line saw years of underwhelming incremental updates before being given a serious overhaul a few months ago.

More at PCWorld

I can understand where Seamus is coming from here, I used to be a big fan of Apple’s Mac computers. But when my current iMac has run its course, I’ll be looking at building or buying a non-Apple computer for the first time in many years.

For me Apple’s computers have become too expensive and provide too little in return for the price. I can build or buy a computer with much more power for a heck of a lot less money than what Apple charges. I’m sick of Apple including sub-par mobile GPUs in the iMac so they can shave another millimeter of thickness off and claim it’s an amazing innovation.

I’m also tired of wondering when or even if Apple will deign to update the Mac. Say what you will about other computer vendors, you usually don’t have to worry that they will go years between hardware updates. Apple, on the other hand, has made it clear that concerned Mac users can go pound sand in terms of knowing when to expect Mac updates.

It’s really a mark of Apple’s arrogance that they think they can blow off Mac users like this and expect us to blindly stick around, waiting to pay premium prices for sub-par hardware as long as it has an Apple logo on it.

So I don’t blame Seamus at all for wanting to get off the Mac train. He is one of many of us who are just flat out sick and tired of Apple’s attitude toward the Mac and its users. Some of us have had enough and we simply aren’t willing to sit around and hope that Apple is doing something significant to improve the Mac’s hardware and software.

The really dangerous thing for Apple though is that once somebody dumps their Mac, it becomes much easier to also get rid of their iPad and iPhone. It’s the halo effect in reverse, once you dump one Apple product, it gets easier and easier to dump the rest of them too.

But is anybody listening at Apple? I doubt it. The company just came off a record quarter thanks to iPhone sales, and Apple’s stock is flying high as I write this post. Everything is golden for the guys in Cupertino and there’s nothing to worry about, right? What could go wrong given how much money Apple has and how well they are doing right now?

The danger to Apple is out there, quietly beginning in the background. Mac users abandoning the platform are a harbinger of things to come and are like the “falling of small stones that starts an avalanche” (to quote a certain wizard in the second Lord of the Rings film).

When the avalanche finally hits Apple, it’s going to be very ugly indeed.

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