Mark Pilgrim, Tim Bray and others are blogging recently about switching away from the Macintosh. I've been thinking of replacing my old G4, so information about Mac alternatives is of particular interest to me right now. But after reading what they've written and investigating the alternatives a little, I doubt that I'll be switching any time soon.

Mark and Tim's core complaints about their Macs appear to be that Apple's apps and data formats are closed source and proprietary respectively. This results in an inability to fix little bugs and problems in the programs, and uncertainty about whether data generated today will be readable a few years down the road when the data formats have been changed. While I occasionally run into a feature I'd like to change, at this point, I'm happy enough with what Apple is offering that I'm not really concerned about the closed source apps. And I don't generate much important data in proprietary Apple formats, so they're not much of a concern either.

My biggest criteria for deciding what my next computer will be are (not necessarily in order):

  1. Price
  2. Performance
  3. Security
  4. Usability (of the OS and available apps)
  5. Dual monitor and tablet support

Price and Performance: Since I'm thinking my next computer will be a laptop, I'll discuss price and performance from that perspective. Currently, Apple's cheapest laptop costs $1099. Yes, you can get a PC laptop for less than half that, but only if you're willing to settle for performance at about the level of a Pentium M 370. A (very) quick search for PC laptops with Core Duo processers like the $1099 MacBook suggests that you'll pay almost as much for a comparable PC these days. (For $1099, you can get a bigger screen--with the same resolution--and a DVD burner rather than just a DVD reader, but I don't know that I want a bigger screen--I'd rather keep the computer small).

Reader Comment:
Antone Roundy said:
Update: I've switched to Thunderbird. Yesterday, I downloaded the source code, and fixed the problem mentioned above, and today I moved all my mail over from Mail.app (see http://antone.geckotribe.com/alpha-gecko/2007/04/20/transition-from-mailapp-to...
(join the conversation below)

Security: Obviously, security is better on MacOS than on Windows. (Whether that's because the OS is inherently more secure or just not as popular a target is beyond the scope of this entry). Installing Linux would address that problem sufficiently.

Usability: I installed Ubuntu on a desktop PC I bought recently, and was impressed by how far desktop Linux has come since I last checked. It's still not quite up to the MacOS level, but it might be a viable alternative. Windows XP is a definite step up from my previous PC which ran Windows 95--I don't but PCs often! But it's still not MacOS either. I'll talk more about third party apps later.

Dual monitor and tablet support: I don't know what the state of tablet support is on Linux these days so I'll presume they're supported and leave it at that. And I don't know how prevelant dual monitor support is on PC laptops. I do know that if I replaced by Mac desktop with a MacBook, I could plug in one of my monitors when working at my desk and have a dual monitor system. If a PC laptop running Linux can't do that, that'll be a definite deal breaker. I'm not going back to a single monitor. If the MacMini supported dual monitors, I probably wouldn't be writing this, because I'd probably have bought one already.

Getting back to third party apps--the apps that I use most often are:

  1. Every day: Mail.app, Mozilla (not Firefox--I prefer the older brother), NetNewsWire, Code Warrior, FileMaker Pro, Yummy FTP
  2. Often: iTunes, QuickTime player
  3. Sometimes: Toast, iMovie, Preview, OpenOffice, the Gimp, xRes, Photoshop, Illustrator

Any OS replacement would have to offer replacements for those. My thoughts on options I'm aware of for some o the most important:

Mail.app: Thunderbird has one big problem. For security and personal preference reasons, I use a two-paned mail view--folders down one side, subjects/senders/dates, etc. down the other--and have messages open in a separate window. When I delete an open message in Mail.app, the message window goes away. When the same is done in Thunderbird, the next message gets displayed in that window. Ugh! I suppose I could download the source and fix that, but short of that, Thunderbird is too unweildy to me (I have to close the message window and delete the message from the list view).

Code Warrior: Probably not a problem--I'm sure I can find another programmer's editor.

FileMaker Pro: I only have two databases that I use regularly. With a little work, I could convert them to mySQL and create front ends for them.

NetNewsWire: I haven't searched exhaustively, but I've never seen a feed reader that even pretends to rival NetNewsWire. I recently checked out the trial version of FeedDemon, and it comes close to pretending to being a rival, but it's definitely not on the same level. I won't even name a third place contender--everything else I've ever tried was pretty pathetic. Until I build a feed reader into Chordata (yes, it's coming...I have no idea when), I'd have a really hard time dropping the MacOS, even if for this reason only.

In summary, I don't see a significant price advantage to buying a PC laptop, but I do see a moderate to severe usability hit. That combined with some areas of uncertainty are enough to prevent me from switching away from MacOS anytime soon.