Travelled to the Apple Store in Regent Street yesterday and quite honestly, I was unimpressed. The store itself was beautifully designed, with spotlights and glass all over the place. But the actual experience left a lot to be desired. For a start, the computers on display were all being occupied by students replying to their Hotmail. This isn't what I as a potentially paying customer. There were plenty of computers - I'd come specifically to examine the laptops, particularly the iBook. The second major problem was the sheer number of people versus the number of available staff. The Genius Bar upstairs, which should have been a haven for question-asking, complete Apple no-brains, was again full queuing, rather patient looking people. I didn't have the patience, and left after five minutes of fruitless waiting.
I use a combination of PCs, mainly Dells, both at work and home. The exception is a clapped out Fujitsu-Siemens which is languishing in a corner of the bedroom-cum-office. This piece of kit should be really put outside on the nearest skip, but alas, we can't bear to part with it, our faithful RAM equipped friend.
We have a reasonably old Dell laptop, which I'm typing this on now, while half-watching "The Bill". The thing is, I want a laptop which can double up as my main desktop computer as Lynn and me both need access for our various nefarious out-of-work hobbies. My writing, and her HTLM-ing and other computer related stuff beyond my not-caring brain. So although this laptop is fine for a bit of word processing and some netta the netting, I'd like a machine with primarily more storage and more processing grunt than the average laptop.
There lies the promise of the Mac. A machine whose spec I've looked at on the Apple site and have salivated over. I like the fact that it comes with Voiceover, a magnification and speech package, as part of the operating system. I use Zoom text Xtra as a magnification tool, and would dearly love Microsoft to bite the bullet and include a mag-screen reader as part of Windows, but the won't. Their reason being that they don't wish to squash the little companies who make the various PC options - JAWS, Magic, Supernova et al. This argument is patent bollocks. Did it stop them "killing" Netscape? No. The various innovative companies the giant M has swallowed didn't seem to figure in their pathetic argument. Apple include their access tech as part of the OS-X operating system, Tiger. This is why I'm interested - a copy of Zoomtext costs £500 or so for the all-singing-all-dancing version. The cost of basic spec Mini Mac is £309. Work it out for yourself.
However, two things have put me off buying a Mac laptop, though I confess the Mini is still calling:
1) The Apple experience should have been a pleasure, and wasn't. In the end I looked at the laptop Mac in PCWorld, Stepney Green. And this leads to fundamental reason no. 2.
2) I *hate* that frigging keyboard. Flat, lifeless and utter pants. I thought the Dell keyboard I'm currently banging on was so-so, but this is a complete joy to use in comparison.
2 comments:
Hi Adam,
I'm also partially sighted and I switched to the Mac about 2 years ago. At the moment I have a 17" PowerBook, which was the first to come out (it is getting oldish, although it still is my main computer). At home I also have now a Mac mini with a 23" Apple Cinema Display, which still disrupts my hormonal balance whenever I look at it :-)
I do not know 'Zoom text Xtra', so I cannot compare it to the screen magnification utility that comes bundled as part of Mac OS X. But I can tell you that although Windows 2000 and Windows XP do come with a screen magnification utility (a bit hidden, but they have it), it is rubbish compared to the one Mac OS X has.
Regarding Voiceover, I haven't tested it properly because my eyesight is still good enough to rely solely on occasional screen magnification. Maybe I'll have to end up using it in the future. I hope not. But it is good to know that 1) it comes with the operating system, so you don't have to pay a lot for it like Windows users have to; and 2) it is not a third party product and it's fully integrated into the operating system, so it just works... now and in future versions of the OS.
I think the reason Microsoft doesn't include a screen reader/navigation utility in Windows does not involve Ethics :-). They just don't care because there are third party products available. That was in fact the case with Apple. The only reason they developed Voiceover was because the only third party utility that was available for the Mac, got discontinued; and Apple was then forced to develop its Voiceover technology. Why? Simple. As you know, Apple has always had a big market in Education (in the USA at least), so if they wanted to keep making contracts with public schools, there had to be a screen reader available. The Government required it. And so, they had to do it themselves.
And the Apple Store... yes, there seems to be a bit of a consensus regarding user experience and staff friendliness, even though I haven't had any real issues the few times I went there. But yes, some people point out that the great user experience, and staff general willingness and friendliness at US stores, all come from the fact that they hire people so enthusiastic about Macs that they 1) know Macs and everything Mac-related; and 2) they genuinely want to work at an Apple Store. But maybe I'm just exaggerating what I've read.
I forgot about the keyboard...
Perhaps you're right about the iBook keyboard. I haven't used it. But I do know about my PowerBook, and its keyboard is utter and complete bliss. It feels better than any other laptop keyboard I have tried, including PCs and earlier PowerBooks such as the Titanium G4 and G3 Lombard, etc. And its illumination feature is just gorgeous. As I said, I cannot compare it to the iBook, but I suspect from your comments that it is a crappy keyboard as well.
Have a closer look at the 17" PowerBook. For a partially sighted person, its 17" screen is a must. I know it's pricey. My excuse has always been that since I'm partially sighted and I can't drive, I have really a lot of money (figuratively speaking) at my disposal, which otherwise would most certainly end up being spent on buying cars (over the years, that is), petrol, insurance, other taxes, parking, etc. See my point?
:-)
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