This is clearly a religious topic, so please open your mind while reading…yeah, good luck with that.
My whole team (5 designers) use Macs. They all have MacBook Pro laptops. The tools we use are:
- MS PowerPoint for storyboarding designs
- MS Outlook for corporate email
- Adobe CS5
- Chrome/Firefox
- Jira (Bug Tracker)
- Wiki
- Google Docs
- MS Excel (rarely)
I truthfully have no idea why they use a Mac. I am the only one who doesn’t.
Hardware
My Samsung Series 9 is lighter, sexier and faster than their MacBooks. It has a solid state hard drive, lots of ram and a fast processor. It doesn’t get hot. It’s much lighter and truthfully, no one with a brain can say the MacBook Pro is sexier. The series 9 is gorgeous. It looks unique and is super strong. No scratched or dents even though I drop it often. The only complaint I have is that the AC plug is cooler on the Mac, with it’s neat magnetic design.
PowerPoint, Excel, Outlook
There is no comparison; these are BETTER on Windows. Seriously, Outlook on the Mac is way behind. PowerPoint is much easier and more powerful on the PC. I know some Mac users who run a virtual machine just so they can use the Windows version of MS Office. Many plugins like SFDC for Outlook only work on the Windows, so basically the Mac versions are second-class citizens.
Adobe CS5
This is the same on both platforms. Both work just fine. I am excited to see CS6. I think it comes out next month.
Everything in a Browser
Who cares? They both work exactly the same. I could be using Linux. It doesn’t matter. Chrome is chrome. Firefox is Firefox. Oh but wait…What if you need to use Outlook Web Access? Or if you want to use Microsoft Dynamics. OWA works MUCH better with Internet Explorer and Dynamics is ONLY supported using IE. You might say that is a mistake for them, but it is the way it is. You can’t use IE on the Mac. Personally, I hardly ever use IE, EXCEPT for when I am trying Dynamics or using OWA. This is the thing, I need it once in a while.
Summary
I actually bought a Mac Mini for the house. Specifically, I wanted to use Garage Band. However, for work, there really is no reason I can see to use a Mac. The PC is wildly superior for the programs I use. Windows 7 works great. It works with everything. I just don’t understand why the rest of my team sees it the other way. I think they are succumbing to peer pressure from the engineering team.
Engineering
They all switched. For them, I think this makes sense. They are running PHP and mySQL. This runs faster on the Mac. So for them, logical. For the design team…I don’t get it.
Comments
Feel free to comment, HOWEVER, please don’t say, “I use this other software and that’s why I use Mac.” We don’t use that software. All I am saying is that if you use the software I listed above, there is very little incentive to use Mac.
Leave a Reply to mr. quackCancel reply