I joined the ranks of the Mac faithful back in March of this year. Bought the "middle" MacBook after being "tired" of Windows and buying into all the hype about how Macs "just work".
"Once you go Mac you never go back!"
Not exactly.
Apple botched my MacBook repair and I had to go without it for a month until they finally replaced it. I like how I was trying to call Apple at one point during that whole repair fiasco.. I called and AppleCare was CLOSED for the day. What? CLOSED? I thought Apple was supposed to have "the best" customer support. Yet it closes after 6PM Pacific? And its not open on the weekend? I'd call that "terrible" support. Especially after my system was scratched up, the optical drive (the original failure) was made worse, and the mouse button was broken while out for repair. I'm not the only one this has happened to either. Head over to macrumors and ask around.
Then I started realizing I had spent more than $1400 (after taxes) on a system without a dedicated GPU. Even Dell's XPS M1330 offers a dedicated GPU for only a few dollars more than what the MacBook cost. I realized I could have spent several hundred dollars less and gotten much more powerful hardware. For $100 less I could build a Dell Inspiron 1520 with a 256MB GeForce 8600M GT, 9 cell (4 hours of real world battery life) battery, C2D, etc. Infact, the HP I'm typing this on was only a little more than $900 and it came with a dedicated GeForce and 2GB of RAM.
OS X is nice. But its extremely overrated. It's certainly not problem free. iLife is okay, but every app that isn't iPhoto goes ignored for the most part. The lack of 3rd party software kills OS X. DVD Player, even in Leopard, is an absolute joke and the image quality is terrible, and the sound quality is even worse thanks to the lack of LFE decoding.
Every little useful utility for OS X costs money in some way. Theres absolutely no choice of firewalls that block outbound traffic. You basically have two choices of disc burning.. Apple's built-in software or Toast. Toast is awful, so you're left with OS X's very limited tools. Then you have other utilities that are "donation" based.. where you have the author of the software forcing people to "donate" amounts of $50 or more to download the software.
I've honestly considered wiping OS X off of my Mac and putting Vista on it. At least then I'd get it to be fully functional without having to pay out the ass (have a legitimate Vista Home Premium license I received for free).
Apple's recent business practices and build quality issues have had me thinking twice too. I'm someone who bought a lot of those iPod games for my 5.5G 80GB iPod. Apple gave absolutely NO indication of any kind that those games would not be compatible with future iPods. Steve Jobs didn't even mention anything to that nature when the new iPods were announced. In fact, he made a very clear point that the new iPod nanos would play iPod games because thats what customers wanted. Little did we know that we would be forced to purchase all of those games again if we wanted to play them on our new iPods. Which reminds me, I need to re-file my BBB complaint against Apple, since they refuse to allow me to upgrade to the newer ones or give me a refund. Let's not forget that the new iPod nanos are plagued with tilted screens. I'm on my 3rd one now, and even it has a titled screen. Ridiculous. The iPod touch and their screen issues. The new iMacs having condensation issues. And those of us who have iPhones were, until very recently, deliberately blocked from using our own sounds as ringtones. But I'm sure Apple will "fix" that soon enough.
I still have my MacBook and I use it regularly. But I'm happier with my HP. I put XP on it and it has been faster than my Mac ever is and I have not had a single issue at all. Not any kind of instability or anything.
Apple lost me as a customer. Their prices are outrageous, telling me I can't use my own sounds as a ringtone is bad.. but ripping me off on the iPod games (stealing $50 from me is as bad as stealing $5,000) is what pushed me over the line.
I'm on the edge of selling all of my Apple products (MacBook, 4 iPods, iPhone). I'd only sell my iPhone to someone who would unlock it and use it on T-Mobile though.
I'm done with Apple. I'll either sell my current Apple products or just keep them and not buy another one. I am tempted, however, to unlock my iPhone myself. I really don't like the fact that Apple is making $18 or so a month off me that way.
