Why you should consider switching to a Mac Now.

Chris Pirillo (TechTV veteran and vidcaster) has obviously been doing some rather deep thinking recently. In fact, he managed to come up with 50 reasons to switch from Windows to a Mac - and he has switched - after years of personal commitment to the Windows platform.

His detailed article can be found at chris.pirillo.com - 50 Reasons to Switch from Microsoft Windows to Apple’s Mac OS X. It is very well written and I think, pretty honest and unbiased. And obviously, I certainly agree with virtually all 50 reasons he came up with, but here are the 3 that stand out for me:

2. Excellent power management in OS X. When I close the lid to my MacBook Pro, it falls asleep. When I open the lid to my MacBook Pro, it wakes up. Imagine that! Seems to be the case 99% of the time, and it happens quickly.

5. VMware Fusion makes it possible to have every operating system at my fingertips (as well as every app that runs on ‘em, FTW). Performance and stability is a reality, not a dream. More importantly, with USB 2.0 support in VMware Fusion, I have near complete compatibility with any external hardware. Parallels is also there, which should keep competition lively.

12. My iPhone is not going away anytime soon. Would I switch for better compatibility with a communications device? Not necessarily, but if the future of OS X is in the present of the iPhone… they’re going to gain consumer market share at blinding speed.

There are plenty of others that are really up there for me too. However, I highly recommend you read through Chris’ article yourself and see which ones stand out for you.

Let’s face it - Vista is not what most of us want to be using, and Microsoft unfortunately does not appear to be about to fix it or replace it quickly. Harry Hurt’s article in the NYTimes “Sending an S O S for a PC Exorcist” is definitely not an uncommon experience. After a recent similar episode trying to configure a Vista Laptop for one of my own customers, I am now seriously considering charging a higher rate if customers want me to work with Vista…

So, you choices are:

- Endure the difficulties of Vista (apparently even with SP1 nothing much has changed).
- Stay with XP (SP3 is coming) and keep adding more bolt-ons as the OS continues to age.
- Explore a Linux alternative that you can live with (Ubuntu is actually pretty good).
- Take the plunge and move to a Mac with OSX Leopard.

I’m with John C. Dvorak on this one - “I advise everybody to buy a Macintosh because Apple products are the easiest to use.” (Quoted from NYTimes article referenced above.)