Bambi’s Mail Bag: OS X Problems, Mac Utilities.

For example, Tera did an extensive interview with Art Nelson regarding his CPA firm in Washington. It’s all Mac (mostly).

Did I detect a hint of sarcasm from reader “asmac?”

“That’s fantastic! A 100% Mac network (except of course for the business critical stuff) with five whole users. Do the other big accounting firms know about it? Is this the start of something?”

I don’t know how Tera puts up with it.

From the land down under comes a note from another bean counter who knows his nose from his toes. Reader “moneycounter” seems to have summed up the Nelson experience:

“Thanks for your interesting article about the Mac Accounting firm. I’m an MYOB consultant of 11 years standing in Australia. Unlike America, MYOB pretty much owns the market here.

About 20% of my clients use the Mac, while the remainder use windows PC’s.  As a rule, my Mac clients like there computers, while the PC users think of their computers as the enemy. 

I’ve had quite a few PC clients in tears as their computers crash, lose or corrupt data, but never a Mac user.”

And that’s the way it is today.

Of course, Macs and OS X are not perfect, just preferred. Mac reader “cspheres” found Tera’s article on Mac OS X problems and what to do about them, well, in agreement with us.

“Long live SuperDuper! Best program ever to roll back in minutes from an OS X Software Update gone bad. If you don’t have it, get it.  You won’t be disappointed!” 

“SuperDuper! online support also sets a high standard of excellence for others to follow. I can’t imagine running any Apple OS X System without SuperDuper! ever again.”

Mac reader “dawoodi” seemed to agree that Intel’s conceptual competition for the Mac mini is a concept that’s new to the Wintel platform. “Originality.”

“Ah - but this is true to the form of many years. If you refer to other columns (“Misinformation in a Microsoft World” [or Wintel World] - this is totally consistent. It is clearly a tactic to give support to the Misinformation Campaign.”

“Now they can point at the picture of the plastic box and say “Look! Wintel was there first! Apple stole our idea again!”

Of course, the Mac mini is doomed because it doesn’t have a “clock” on the front panel like the Intel concept mini; a point not lost on this sharp eyed Mac user:

“It’s not just air inside, it’s HOT air! Why does anytime someone thinks “component”  that they add a useless clock display. I have a VCR, DVD, AV-amp, CD changer with blinking clocks display (why can’t they make LED clocks with chips that keep time for ten years on a coin cell? instead of blinking clocks that reset on even the most modest power blackout.).”

I’m sure some have, but I’ve never replaced a battery (the small one) in a Mac. It just works. Our office, of course, has a Sony Vaio that we’re certain will last for a few more years. First, EVERY FREAKIN’ PART HAS BEEN REPLACED one, two, sometimes three times.

Now we keep it off and only turn it on to get updates from Microsoft.