Mac Attack: An Apple a day keeps viruses at bay

By Gregory Coan

For an IT guy, I have a pretty easy job. I’m part of a team of four, and I am the main Apple “guru.” While my compatriots spend their days cleaning viruses off staff PC’s and trying to figure out why the Microsoft email system isn’t functioning, I help students and staff produce videos, transform photos, edit artistic sound pieces – in short, I help people get things done.

The funniest part of my job is how many people come to me and ask, “I need to buy a new computer – should I get a PC or a Mac?” They never ask the other three guys. These people know what I will say, but they still need that external validation before spending the money. For a lot of people, buying a Mac is still viewed as a rebellious act. The act of switching goes against everything they’ve been brought up to believe, that only weird, creative people use Macs and only because they have to in order to survive in their esoteric careers.

So I ask these potential switchers, “Imagine you are buying a new car. Do you want to drive and enjoy the car all day, or spend countless hours working on it?” Indeed, you should buy a Mac, and here are the top reasons I give people in order to help them make the right decision.

Apple is a brand that stands out. As a company Apple has done a great job over the years building brand recognition, and as much as I sometimes hate the “i” in front of everything these days, the iPod has really changed the world as much as the Walkman did back in the 1980s. For Apple this was an extremely positive exercise in brand recognition. When I think about Microsoft’s public image, all that comes to mind is security flaws, virus attacks, and anti-trust battles. They are constantly managing damage control while Apple builds upon their momentum of innovation.

Walk into any crowded coffee shop and look at the laptops. You can easily distinguish, in a generic way, PC from Mac. But you immediately know the Apple users by the logos on their machines. The PC users are just a mess of different machines, probably struggling with their various wireless drivers trying to get on the Internet. If you own a Mac you can enjoy that cup of coffee, while the caffeine flowing through the PC users just adds to their discontent.

Don’t forget, Apple, unlike Microsoft, manufactures hardware. This means their operating system, currently called Leopard in version 10.5, runs smoothly on their machines. This is a great separation between the two worlds. PC vendors are not Microsoft, and while they can choose to sell computers with other operating systems, the profitable choice is to pre-install Windows. Each of these companies use different hardware parts in their machines and its up to them to make it work with Windows. Apple knows its hardware. This leads to the great old joke about the difference between “Plug-and-Play” and “Plug-and-Pray.” Personally, I don’t feel like installing a new driver every time I plug a USB device into my laptop. So I use a Mac. And it works.

Of course as consumers none of us really care about these problems. We want to buy a product and use that product, and perhaps be proud of owning that product. I’m a geek and the stuff underneath excites me. But using a Mac is even more exciting, and there is a lot of fun stuff to do with one right out of the box.

The Apple iLife suite is one of the greatest software packages ever. Apple even includes it free with most of their new computers. The suite includes iPhoto for digital images, iMovie for video, iDVD for making DVDs, and iWeb for creating web pages. This suite is so easy to use and targets the straight-out-of-the-box user, yet it is also a very powerful creative package. Its nice that Apple has recognized what people are actually doing with their lives these days. I don’t know too many people who don’t own a digital camera of some kind, want to make themselves visible on the web through social networking or on their own webpage, and want to share these images with others. iLife wraps this all up for you and even though I use professional applications on a daily basis for video and photo editing, I still use iLife for many things.

One fun idea I had was to setup my laptop as a time lapse camera to find out what my pets do during the day when I’m at work. I used iMovie in time lapse mode to take an image every thirty seconds during the day, and the application automatically made it into a Quicktime movie for me. When I returned home I was able to view the antics of my cat running about, often from the dog! I took the movie to work with me and showed my co-workers and I suggested they do the same so we could make a collection. One of the PC guys said “Well, I don’t have a camera on my computer.” Hmmm, what a shame, my MacBook came with one built in. Well, I’ll just have to collaborate with someone who has a Mac. He was busy cleaning a worm from his Windows registry anyhow (and on his third cup of coffee - not a good morning in the office!)

Now everyone needs help with their computers at some point, even me. I’ve found the Apple online community to be extremely helpful and friendly. Take a look through the support forums at Apples own website and I think you’ll be surprised at the level of peer-to-peer help that exists. And this is true of the myriad of other Mac specific sites across the ‘net. The best thing about a Mac is, over time, you can educate yourself to be a pretty informed Mac guru, whether its knowing the actual machine or a specific application workflow. Then you can pass your knowledge along. Unlike my Windows friends there are very few daily attacks or security issues to worry about in the Mac world, so all of us users can concentrate on what we want to do - live life in the digital age without having the technology consume us or add to our worries.

You can e-mail Gregory Coan at black.macleod@gmail.com.