Monday, February 18, 2008

Of Macs and Men


My laptop died on Saturday. The fella at the Apple "Genius Bar" tells me it's my hard drive, I can't recover anything, and I'll be without laptop for about a week. It kinda felt like he was punching me in the stomach when I heard the news.

As far as gut checks go though, he was pretty cordial about the whole thing.

Fortunately, I only lost a few files that were "mission critical" for classes on Monday, and they were something that could be redone in a day. In that respect, I consider myself extremely lucky. I did lose quite a few files I would have rather held on to (like the original Photoshop files these comics y'all enjoy and my school work from the last year) - but all in all, things could have been worse.

On the bright side, I get a free upgrade to Leopard, whose features might come in handy. And from this tragedy I feel like a decent comic has been born, if I do say so myself.

Have a good week everybody. May your data stay undamaged and accessible to you in the coming months.

Thanks to Mr. Curry for letting me borrow his laptop in the interim.

10 comments:

enliv comics said...

yeah, sorry to hear about your laptop. but, like you said, this week's comic actually benefited from it, i think. the whole pencils thing had a very nice effect for the face with god moment.

Anonymous said...

I love the glass is half full attitude. Did you offer Jesus some of your dental floss sticks? http://www.toothclub.gov.hk/chi/01_inside/ocp_p_34.jpg

Minh said...

Aww Dan, why'd you go with a Mac? Aren't all the Adobe products available on Windows now as well? I just have a hard time seeing how they justify all the extra cost when they've got the same CPU and components inside. And WORSE service and reliability. I mean has anyone had an iPOD that didn't die on them? I've gone through two now (ok one was stolen) and am now giving the new Zune2 a shot.

D Wheezy said...

No I totally agree with you Minh - Full Sail included the Mac as part of my tuition, so I didn't really have a choice.

For the most part I've liked my Mac - but then again, I've never had a PC hard drive die on me.

In my opinion, most of the hardware is the same on all these guys, and with a few exceptions software is available for both platforms.

Plus I have, er had, Windows loaded up on it too.

D Wheezy said...

I'm also on my second IPod. C'est la vie.

Lance said...

Time to let one R.I.P. I'll pour out some henny for your laptop.

D Wheezy said...

Don't waste your henny just yet Lance! It's not technically dead... just getting fixed.

Although I guess you could pour some out for my data and files...

enliv comics said...

are macs really that unreliable? i thought the pro of getting a mac was that the OS hardly ever dies compared to windows. and for a graphic/media purpose, i thought macs were the way to go. in fact, i think they laugh at you if you own a windows based computer!

D Wheezy said...

I'm probably not the best person to talk to about this, and I'm sure there are plenty of forums out there dedicated to this very discussion.

In my experience the Apple hardware hasn't been any more reliable. Then again I know plenty of people who haven't had problems with their Macs. I also know people who haven't had problems with their non-Apple hardware...

On the software side, I think that the majority of graphic design type stuff out there, the major players anyway, is available on both platforms, so it shouldn't really matter anymore.

Admittedly I haven't used Vista much, but for the little I have used it I've had literally no problems other than it asking me for permission to do pretty much everything.

Mac OS X I use constantly and I've had it crash (blue screen type crash) only once that I can remember.

Just my two cents. I doubt it's indicative of the rest of the world.

Shabutie said...

The hardware definitely isn't superior, it definitely crashes just as often as a PC, but the difference is the perfect blend of the hardware together.

Windows' big downfall imo is having to support everything in the world thats out there, which means a lot of tequila playing with a lot of gin playing with a lot of beer, which if you've ever tried to mix together can be a hazardous to everything about you.

Mac on the other hand only supports a slim number of hardware pieces, while not as flexible, definitely adds to reliability imo.

In the end, it comes down to a lot of personal opinion. But I do know one thing about OS X, it definitely plays nicer with multimedia than Windows. Final Cut Pro, Avid, Logic Pro, all Mac only because they can take advantage of its stability and really drive it to full power.

I was always PC, building my own mostly, but my PC can't run OS X in a stable environment and OS X is a superior operating system imo. Vista can suck my balls.

I never thought to switch to a Mac until you could natively run Windows XP on it, now its a no brainer for me. Get an awesome pc for multimedia (I record music) and be able to play all my games and run my apps that are Windows only.

Vista is Microsoft's last ditch effort at an Operating System. I say in under 10 years, there will be no more Windows. They may release one more new version but people are tired of it. OS X isn't perfect either, but it will catch on and probably become the evil giant empire Microsoft is today. But truthfully, we see a world going to the web and OSes need to do less and less and will soon be very basic and minute.

Just my 2 cents