Tag Archives: Mac

Switch to MacBook Air from ASUS Zen Book

The Zenbook is a great machine, slim and light with a 1920X1080 display with a matte finish, all aluminum construction, an Ivy Bridge dual core processor, 4 gigs of ram and oodles of sex appeal. So why ditch it? For the most quotidian of reasons and for some that are a little more highbrow.

The drab mundane truth of the matter is that Mac’s appear to excell in three unexciting areas. No windows laptops I have ever held in my hands, no matter the price (and I’ve always bought expensive laptops), the maker or the heft of the machine have come close to Mac standards in these areas. They are as follows:

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Change

Change is coming for me. Not big change, not some metaphysical realization that shakes my world and makes me run off and join a commune, just the garden variety sort. I’m changing operating systems.

After years of being a user of Windows and Linux I’m switching to Mac across the board. I have avoided Apple because of the expense, the squirrelly interface design decisions, and the lack of freedom (with Apple it’s their way or the highway). But I’m tired of futzing with computers. I just want them to do what I want them to do.

So I’m turning in my Windows laptop for a Mac, my Android tablet for an iPad (this post is being written on that iPad), and my Android phone for an iPhone. There are sure to be issues and adventures, outside the Apple walled garden their products are not as well supported, and I’ll try and chronicle them here, mostly for my own benefit.

First up will be iPad vs TF700 Transformer Infinity.

Firefox Plus Windows is the Safest Browsing Combo

In an interview with ZDNet, Charlie Miller (winner of CanSecWest’s Pwn2Own contest) said,”For all the browsers on operating systems, the hardest target is Firefox on Windows.”  He notes also that,”It’s more about the operating system than the (target) program.  Firefox on Mac is pretty easy too.  The underlying OS doesn’t have anti-exploit stuff built into it.”

He says throughout the interview that OSX is extremely easy to crack.  Just interesting.

Why I Won't Switch to Mac, Yet

There is a lot to like about Mac hardware and OSX. I like the slim, clean lines of the Mac Book Pro. They appear powerful, rugged and sleek and make everything else look clunky by comparison. OSX, with its BSD underpinnings and ability to run X11 and *nix apps has a lot of appeal to me. But I won’t switch.

Why? Because Apple thinks they know better than me how I want to work and, at the end of the day, it still won’t run my core business applications. If Apple would allow me to configure the GUI the way I want it (a la KDE), I’d probably switch in a heart beat.

On the other hand. If Dell (or Sony or whoever) made something comparable to the Mac Book Pro in thinness, weight and sleekness, I might never leave Windows.