It Happened on the Way to DFW…
10:27 am, June 10th, 2009, Leigh McMullen
My real life, I’m a Mac moment.
So I’m siting on an airplane trying to leave DC yesterday, after three hours on the tarmac, and the flight attendants bringing us “Apple Juice” (really just Jack Daniels), even the most stone-faced folks with their noses in books will get chatty. He tells me where he works, they’re a client, I tell him where I work, and so on.
After take off, he sees me trying to watch Lonesome Dove on my ipod and mentions he has a splitter and did I want to watch a movie on his computer. Sure I say.
Well that’s when the fun starts, his computer takes like 10 minutes to boot, Windows had a hard-crash he says. then when the movie starts, it’s all stuttery and such,we try to watch for like 10 minutes, and finally I mention, hey, you wanna try mine? He says, sure, may as well…
I pull out the 17inch Macbook Pro, like it was the gold artifact in the briefcase in Pulp Fiction, his eyes go wide, I open the lid, it’s on instantly, I’ve got like half a dozen spreadsheets and documents open, it doesn’t matter, I pop the movie in, it starts right up, as a final floursih I produce my remote control, and set it next to him, “You Drive,” I said.
The punchline: My new friend, is a senior executive at Dell.
The Movie, Lakeview Terrace, not so awesome.
My I’m a Mac Moment, Priceless.
Sound off and share your “I’m a Mac Moments” in the comments, I’ll pull them together into a best of post later in the week!
Posted by Leigh McMullen in News | Comment on this article
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This just makes me smile
I don’t have any special “Mac moment”
But we watched South Park a few times on english class through projector using my MacBook Pro as a source, lot of fun
hl2run, on June 10th, 2009 at 11:09 am
nice!
deepkid, on June 10th, 2009 at 11:09 am
My “Mac Moment” was at Panera Bread. Some guy just passed by and said: “Wow.. someone thinks different.. and wireless…”… I said: “of course!”. He was sitting next to me with a huge and heavy looking Dell laptop with an USB mouse, power corde, USB Hard Drive and some other cables connected to his Blackberry. I had my new MacBook with a wireless mighty mouse and my iPhone on the table.
Ed, on June 10th, 2009 at 11:38 am
It’s a nice story. But to be fair, I wish you mentioned a little about his PC spec. it is only fair to compare a Year 2007 model mac with a 2007 PC, and a Core 2 Duo 2.8Ghz CPU with one of the same, otherwise, it is not so convincing. I use both Mac/PC at the office and at home; Yet I don’t have a sense that the PC is THAT bad, although the styling, easy-of-use, and attention to detail, are better on macs than PCs. Howard
Howard, on June 10th, 2009 at 11:40 am
I was sitting in a lecture hall waiting for the professor to show up and start class. As he did, he turned on the computer only to find that it was not going to work between the projector and the PC. So he called the OIT Department and 2 students came to try and remedy the problem. 10 minutes later and with no luck he said that we were going to have an oral quiz instead of lecture notes. I walked up with my macbook and my mini-dvi cable, plugged it in, opened the powerpoint, and handed him my remote. He lectured for 10 minutes, ended lecture, and talked to me for the rest of class about whether or not he should get a mac……he did, I got an A.
Jeff, on June 10th, 2009 at 12:18 pm
Haha, great story.
I don’t have one as I’m new to Mac, but I tell you, I am so proud to finally be one
Hopefully I will have my first moment tomorrow – my class has been set an assignment to make a presentation about the physical features of the USA using Windows Movie Maker; I of course used iMovie, incorporating the excellent globe feature. Can’t wait to blow all of their presentations out of the water
Meghann, on June 10th, 2009 at 12:44 pm
I get ‘mac moments’ every time I travel with my windows toting colleagues. I open my Mac, connect, do email, close and go to the bar and they’re still waiting for theirs to boot…
David Rusling, on June 10th, 2009 at 1:05 pm
Haha, great story.
I don’t have one as I’m new to Mac, but I tell you, I am so proud to finally be one
Hopefully, I will have my first moment tomorrow – my class has been set an assignment to make a presentation about the physical features of the USA using Windows Movie Maker; I of course used iMovie, incorporating the excellent globe feature. Can’t wait to blow all of their presentations out of the water
Meghann, on June 10th, 2009 at 1:17 pm
I think the main reason why PCs crash more than Macs is that employers get to configure them. I recently spent two years doing part-time studies, so I had occassion to own my own computer that was touched neither by the overly zealous tech folks nor by young offspring who say “yes” to every malicious screen saver that strikes their fancy.
I bought myself a PC tablet for school and dragged it around in a backpack for two years. It never crashed on me once. I rarely needed to restart the machine. I played movies while crunching through solver equations in excel (Numbers doesn’t have that toolset, btw) and generally had many apps open all the time. I also configured four different shared printers on two different networks, hooked into my Apple Airport Express, played with four different versions linux (just out of curiousity) and used some really excellent software that I can only seem to find poor substitutes for on Mac (OneNote, MindJet, Groove). Though I fully admit that, being a Vista machine, it took far too long to start, it woke from a sleep fast enough. Today, it’s running Win 7rc, and I’m very impressed with its improved visual appeal, lighter footprint and faster start times.
Meanwhile, just today my work PC crashed on me when all I did was close the lid and carry it from one room to another. The technocrats where I work have “hardened” these machines and cherry-picked their updates to the point where it’s a laptop that will essentially only function as a desktop. It’s ridiculous and it’s a thousand miles away from my experience with a windows machine that hasn’t been touched by technocrats.
I guess this is a long way of saying that you weren’t comparing one OS to another, you were comparing what I assume was a privately owned and managed computer to one that was corporately maintained. You could have swapped your mac for my pc and found the contrast equally striking.
Thommango, on June 10th, 2009 at 1:25 pm
@Howard – That’s a good point except that even my wife’s recently retired G3 Pismo laptop (nearly 10 years old) would do the same thing, without the remote that is.
Barry Wood, on June 10th, 2009 at 1:26 pm
@howard,
I didn’t take it apart, or ask to see his system specs but since he was a SENIOR EXECUTIVE at DDELL COMPUTER I assume his DELL LAPTOP was top of the line
Leigh McMullen, on June 10th, 2009 at 2:06 pm
@Leigh… yeah I was just going to say you’d think he’d have a top of the line…
jonk, on June 10th, 2009 at 4:50 pm
Some non-Macintosh computers have free-fall sensors. When on airplanes, these can activate, causing the hard drive to freeze up in order to protect its data.
Maybe his top-of-the-line Dell had a free-fall sensor, which your Macs don’t.
Joseph, on June 10th, 2009 at 5:38 pm
I had my second HP Pavilion tx1000 (the tablet) literally burn out its wireless card three days after my desktop PC crashed because the power went out while it was on sleep. After years of format c:\ I had had enough.
I was recently registering freshmen for college and walked into the large room full of nervous parents and students who wanted nothing to do with said parents. Our silly university will only allow us to buy Dells unless we can justify other brands (which I have done) so when the registration director tried to get on wireless in front of hundreds of people, no dice. The wireless wouldn’t work. So along comes the assistant with another Dell. The wireless worked but they couldn’t get the projector to find the signal. Third person, third Dell. Again, couldn’t find the signal. I had my Macbook 13 out and running and already helping my assigned students.
So I causally walk up to the front, hook up the projector (don’t know why I had my display adapter, but did) plugged it in and away we go. Director was concerned about the battery life and I just nodded. After muttering “this is great” I leaned over to the mic and said “and I’m a Mac”. Huge laughter and applause.
In a very short period of time I have become a total Mac freak after 20 years dealing with that other company’s crap.
thanx_al, on June 10th, 2009 at 5:49 pm
@Joseph: All Macintosh laptops (since the iBooks of 2005) ship with free-fall sensors which lock the hard drive heads if a fall is sensed. Presumably Leigh’s laptop didn’t sense a “free-fall” (which would have been a malfunction, as neither one of the laptops were falling…), seeing as how the movie played flawlessly. It seems that the Dell was simply malfunctioning on the plane, which is not exactly a rare occurrence for PC’s (as 99.9999% of CoM readers will undoubtedly know : P)
Mike, on June 10th, 2009 at 6:24 pm
@Joseph said “Maybe his top-of-the-line Dell had a free-fall sensor, which your Macs don’t.”
Yeah, Joseph, they do. In fact they have been standard on Mac laptops for several years. Keep trying though – I’m sure you’ll come up with a good explanation yet!
Icecastles, on June 10th, 2009 at 7:28 pm
I made the switch to Mac last year, in May. I haven’t looked back… well, work requires me to use a PC; and the stupid thing has shut down at least once a day in the first 8 daze at my new job.
Stoopid Windows, phooey.
Jeannette E. Spaghetti, on June 10th, 2009 at 8:40 pm
Re: Joseph
Actually, all modern MacBooks, Pros, and Airs have that same sensor.
Kevin, on June 10th, 2009 at 10:31 pm
@Joseph, Macs have had free-fall sensors for a few years now. My recent-gen MacBook Pro is actually pretty adamant about pausing the drive platters even at times I think it doesn’t need to (my hand will whack it accidentally, or I’ll just shift positions on the couch), but the video keeps playing just fine.
Sounds more like a Windows/Dell issue.
My Mac moment is every time I can do something while my friends on Windows look on in awe. And it happens a lot.
Victor Agreda Jr, on June 10th, 2009 at 10:56 pm
A top of the line Dell laptop functions great if well cared for. If your senior executive has his crash on him constantly and not able to play a video without stuttering, I think it is him, not the laptop. Makes you wonder if this is the reason Dell as a company is doing so bad.
bas, on June 11th, 2009 at 5:53 am
I got my old but still impressive 12″ G4 Powerbook with less than 1GHz processing speed and 640MB RAM in the Army camp last year. A couple of guys came by and stared at the glorious silver-finished keyboard.
-What are it’s specs? The guys asked.
I replied while they laughed at the specs. I told them to sit down next to me and let me show them a couple of things on OSX and the hardware. How did it end up? They offered me $500 to buy it.
I refused their offer of course. They should see my new Unibody MacBook Pro tho.
:-B
ikera, on June 11th, 2009 at 5:54 am
My “I’m a Mac” moment was about about a year ago. A PC-loving, Mac-disparaging friend was over at my house, and asked me to email him a file. Using keyboard shortcuts, I opened the folder, cursored down to the file, engaged Quicksilver, and in two keystrokes, the file was emailed.
My friend’s response? “What the f**k was that?”
It’s not just the hardware that make Macs better computers, it’s everything you can do with software.
eric, on June 11th, 2009 at 7:23 am
My moment was with someone trying to use Movie Maker and their video camera (flash based). I listened to him (he was one row up and on the other side of the isle on the plain) for about 45 minutes as he tried to get it to recognize his camera, which he had connected to it before and wasn’t recognizing it … again. Then he was angry and frustrated with the controls for editing video in Movie Maker.
I finally spoke up asking him if he had ever tried an Apple computer. Several comments were made about them being over rated, slow, etc, but he agreed to try my Mac laptop. I got him going with a guest account (for friends, etc., with limited rights so they can’t screw up my Mac).
He plugged in his video camera, I don’t remember what brand, and it recognized it right away and he clicked on import and it did. I then showed him how to Split clips and how to find Titles, Transitions, Themes, Media, etc., and he was having “so much fun” that he did all the editing and was happy with that. It took all of about 40 minutes for everything.
Too bad I can’t take it with me, he said.
Why not?
Because how am I going to get it?
I then showed him Share with all the different options. Then we Shared it to iDVD and created a theme and set it up the way he wanted and burned it to DVD. It took about 50 minutes to burn the DVD (which I’ve always thought was WAY to long) but he was ready to run to the nearest Apple store and buy a Mac.
Sabon, on June 11th, 2009 at 9:32 am
My “I’m a Mac Moment” really was the lightbulb that lit up for me regarding the fact that the iPhone isn’t actually phone. It’s a computer and a Mac to be specific.
My 14 year old daughter plays on competitive soccer team in No. Cal. Their team was playing in a State tournament in Sacramento. Towards the end of a hard fought game, their keeper dove to save a ball and went head first into the goal post. Nearly knocked herself out and moved the post about 12″. Nasty. All the parents immediately ran onto the field and about 6 of them whipped out their Blackberries to find the nearest hospital. In the time it took most of them to finally get their web browsers up, I had the directions to the nearest hospital routed on the map application, the address and the phone number for the emergency room, and for good meausure I took a picture of the goalies head and the distance the goal post moved (both of which were used in the end of year photo DVD that the team mom made). Everybody was just like “Man I gotta get one of those iPhones”.
I tried not to be too smug about it but it was hard.
Phil
PhillyC, on June 11th, 2009 at 10:56 am
Dumbest story story I’ve heard…I support Macs and Windows computers all day long and been doing so for the past 12 years. Both platforms have their issues and both platforms have their advantages and place in this world.
The sad part is, I think many Apple end users have their heads so far (_|_) that they don’t know where they are going. It’s real unfortunate.
My wife has a Windows Vista laptop and to date she has never had a crash. She never shuts it down. It all depends on how you take care of your machine.
I’ve seen Macs crash as much as a Windows computer.
There are dumb Mac and Windows users……
me, on June 11th, 2009 at 11:16 am
Mac Moment? At the fire department I work at, we now have an old iMac (G3/450) with OS X on it that lives on as a DVD -> Projector device. Why? We kept having problems getting Windows to spit out video to the projector. Or we could see the desktop just fine, but Windows Media Player would kick into DRM mode and not display the DVD content on the projector. It would display just fine on the screen, but Windows refused to mirror the DVD content. We could see the desktop and everything so the projector was working just fine. It’s Windows + DRM affecting legit users again. At one point we tried VLC which usually worked ok but has become more buggy in recent times.
The iMac has performed flawlessly every single time.
Bob, on June 11th, 2009 at 12:00 pm
Did a presentation in class, it was about promoting a product. Everyone had their toshiba, dell, hp. I brought my macbook pro. None of them had remote to go through slides from powerpoint (some had wireless mouse to go through slides). So i was the last to do the presentation. Place my mbp on table, apple glowing icon facing the class,plugged it in, turn on keynote ‘09, change slides with my apple remote, everyone clapped(btw i was the only one that got applause at, even the lecturer). Smiled and took my seat.
My very first Mac moment.
Jon, on June 11th, 2009 at 12:05 pm
That’s funny, ’cause i would LOVE to put MacOS X Server on my company issued Dell Precision T3400. I don’t know if peeps remember, but MacOS X started as NeXTStep, the OS that ran NeXT’s workstations while Steve Jobs was in exile. NeXT eventually gave up the ghost with respect to making hardware, but the still sold NeXTStep ‘486 for commodity PCs (though you did need a pretty beefy commodity PC to run it.) I still have the scars from installing it a couple hundred times on a couple hundred Unisys 486s.
But i guess my point is… though Apple’s current hardware business is in WAY better shape than NeXT’s was, Mr. Jobs has actually unbundled software from hardware, so it’s not outside the realm of possibility. And who knows what the future might bring? I’m told that Apple is getting the lion’s share of it’s profit from iPods, so maybe they would be more profitable by unbundling the OS and allowing their hardware to compete as high end systems. Where i work, we’re a Mac shop, and probably about 40% of the company dual boots into windows. Maybe 10% of the company uses windows on MBP’s exclusively.
Though i think it would be a travesty to put Windows 7 on an unsuspecting Mac Book Pro, it would be a small price to pay if it allowed me to put MacOS X on a Dell (and have it be supported.)
Meadhbh Hamrick, on June 11th, 2009 at 12:58 pm
Wow that’s amazing, someone who had a computer that didn’t perform as well as yours and you’re an apple owner, this couldn’t be bias at all. But I mean besides that his computer probably cost a tenth what yours cost and it is most likely that he didn’t have the correct drivers or no drivers installed at all if the picture was choppy. Load time doesn’t really matter to anyone who really uses a computer, unless you’re trying to use to defuse a bomb or something. So please come down off of your elitist, over priced high horse, you wouldn’t want to end up like Christopher Reeve.
Seth, on June 11th, 2009 at 3:02 pm
A Tech guy who writes articles for Cult of Mac has a fagbook that runs smoothly.
An Executive has a laptop that doesn’t work right.
Shocker? Ummmm, no.
Wayne B, on June 11th, 2009 at 4:09 pm
My Mac Moment…
I can’t tell you the year but I was working for Global Village back in their hey-day and traveling from SJC to ORD with a PowerBook 180 (can’t remember if it was a ‘c’ or not) in my possession. We took off and the guy across the aisle from me had a Compaq laptop with one of those snap-on trackballs that had a serial cable. It was the only way to get a trackball on the Edsel-esque Windows laptops of the day.
The guy fought with the thing. He couldn’t get the trackball to stay snapped on which, I suspect, was due to constant attaching/detaching. The serial cable was in knots a la most iPod earbud cables of today. The machine took forever to boot. The cable was hilarious — it was constantly in the way.
I bent down, unsheathed my PowerBook and opened it up to display an integrated trackball. The guy and I exchanged smiles… only one of us wasn’t really smiling.
Scott, on June 11th, 2009 at 5:00 pm
I’ve had a few.
I was one of the first at my uni (an engineering school) with an Intel Macbook. Other students would occasionally make that “Macs can’t right click” remark. To this my response was to tell them to pay attention, do a two finger click on the trackpad. After that I would scroll through a page using the trackpad.
Another at school is that more often than not professors and students can’t ever seem to get the projectors to work with their Windows based laptops, having to go through menus and changing settings to even try to get it to work. Yes, even hitting the designated key that all Windows laptops seem to have, never seems to work. So far I have, with the proper adaptor, saved lecturers from having to deal with uncooperative hardware.
Lately I’ve been learning Korean. So thanks to OSX I have been easily able to type emails up in Korean using the language options at our disposal. This has really impressed my friend who is teaching me. I’m sure it is certainly possible on Windows, but it isn’t as easy as on a Mac.
Haro!, on June 11th, 2009 at 5:52 pm
@Wayne b. your choice of the word “Fagbook” was charming. Perhaps you ought to follow my grandmothers advice, “tis better to be thought a bigoted asshole than to open your mouth and prove it.”
@seth you wrote: “it is most likely that he didn’t have the correct drivers or no drivers installed…” Thats kinda the point aint it? That his computer might not have the right drivers, or had a hard crash, or whatever, and my mac, just freekin worked, because you don’t have to worry about that stuff with apples.
@Haro! I tell you what my best it’s a mac moment came from showing off the stuff you mentioned (two finger scroll, right click, gestures, etc) to a friend WHO WAS A LIFE LONG MAC USER.
A college professor who was totally unaware that her mac could do those things, wild huh?
@ everyone: to be clear, this piece was a little diary entry more than anything else, just a funny thing that really happened that I thought was ironic and felt like sharing.
As I said the the bit, Dell computer is a client of my firm, they make great computers, they actually put a lot of time and energy into making sure that the Windows is as stable as possible on their installs, and if the movie didn’t play right it wasn’t the hardware that was the problem.
I didn’t want to start a flame war with this post, I just wanted to amuse my audience, and maybe collect some amusing stories from the group.
Leigh McMullen, on June 11th, 2009 at 8:33 pm
My very first Mac moment was actually an Apple Newton moment when I was in grad school. I was taking notes on the Newton in a class, and a guy sitting next to me asks, WTF is that and WTH are you doing with it? So, I told him it was a Newton and that I was taking notes on it. He then asks if I studied the notes on the Newton, and I told him, no, I plug it into my laser printer when I get home and print them out. He major freaked.
I’d still like Apple to come up with a replacement for the Newton. My iPhone is just too small. The Newton 110/120/130 series was perfect.
Hucbald, on June 13th, 2009 at 7:05 pm
Dell is failing cause of their stupid service plans. I have a dell and are pretty happy with it, especially because of its long warranty. However after an error that popped up, making it pretty obvious that the memory had failed, support decided to replace the hard drive which was unnecessary. The memory problem is still there but goes away after a smooth restart. I have had friends with Macs get totally wrecked and lose everything. I’ve had my dell wreck and lose everything. It happens, we lose data, we move on.
Evan, on June 15th, 2009 at 8:31 pm
@Seth whats a ‘driver’? Oh the things that PC users are always missing or need to install when they add some new piece of gear. Gee that takes me back.
Great story Leigh, man I would have been smiling all week!
Steve, on June 17th, 2009 at 1:32 am
MagSafe moment: a colleague ran past my desk, caught the power cable with her foot, and the magsafe connector came flying out. She freaked out. I smiled, and got back to typing. She kept freaking out, realising that she’d done something that should have destroyed my laptop, but not yet believing that it hadn’t. “It’s OK! Look! Magnetic!” Connect, disconnect. Connect, disconnect. “See?”
Pause. Silence.
“Wow.”
samu, on June 17th, 2009 at 6:49 am
My Mac moment was one week after purchasing my new (an first) MBP 17″ Uni this March. A few fellow workmates saw it and within ten days over six team members had their own.
In the words of one of my co-workers; “Apple should be in charge of all hardware design.” I think he is on to something.
I’m a Mac, a Switcher, and Fanboy for life. I will never buy another Windows PC again, I’ve owned HP, Dell and IBM.
I gave my wife my retired HP Dv7t, she waits patiently for my next upgrade so she can have my MBP!
Larry, on June 23rd, 2009 at 7:18 pm
You had me at Pulp Fiction…
Bill Black, on July 14th, 2009 at 5:02 pm
The comments that claim that Vista is uber-stable and never crashes are absolutely hilarious.
The best Windows OS I ever worked with was Win98 on the Dell desktop I used in college. Reasonably fast and never got in the way the way Vista did. Locked up maybe two or three times over four years. My Dell with Win 98 blew away the more expensive iMacs my friends used in college.
My midrange Dell Inspiron 1420 (which my new Macbook Pro 13″ is supplementing) crashed several times a month while doing mundane tasks like working with spreadsheets in Office ‘07. Nothing hardcore, just Excel formulas. I spent a lot of time getting rid of any bloatware and unneeded applications – to no avail.
To Dell’s credit, their hardware is very solid and I never had any hardware related issues with either of my Dells. I can’t say the same about the HP/Compaq laptop I owned beforehand, whose hard drive failed out of warranty but at a young age.
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