A few weeks living with Apple Macs

[SecondsCount]

If I had it to do all over again I'd definitely stay with the iMac as the family machine but might look into a Samsung ultrabook dual booting Win7Pro 64bit/Ubuntu 12.04 instead of the MacBook Air as my laptop.

This is exactly why I run Kubuntu. People that say "I love Mac" typically aren't the type to dig deep into their computers. Perfect for them but I do some light developer work and other things that require me to dig deeper. My wife has Kubuntu installed on her computer as well. She can do all the stuff she did on her Win XP machine and it runs so much smoother and faster. As before with virus prone Windows, I am her IT guy, but a much happier one because it has been a problem free two years since I installed Kubuntu where with Windows it was every six months I was spending an entire evening trying to fix something.

I don't know what the numbers are today but a few years ago there were as many people running Linux desktops in the world as there are Mac desktop users.

My company issued laptop is running Windows 7 and while I find it to be an upgrade from XP, there are still many glitches that I find annoying. Crazy that a company can charge for software that doesn't really work that well. Unfortunately I run about 20 different pieces of native Windows software on it so I must stay with the OS.

[LittleLebowski]

Jody, I am very sure you just need to change how your phone mounts to get its storage visible to OS X. This is not an OS X thing.

[kmartphoto]

You do realize I'd already mentioned you in this thread, right?

ohh oops no

[jlw]

I switched to Mac three years ago, and I have been extremely happy with them. There is nothing PC based left in my personal inventory.

At one time, I had an issued Droid phone. As kmartphoto states, there is a setting in the phone itself that had to be changed to allow a computer to read it as a storage device regardless of it being a PC or Mac. It was something simple, but I don't remember exactly where it was in the setting options. I think it is under the options for the SD card.

[JodyH]

Typically with an android phone you have to tell the phone how you want it to mount. I haven't tried a Samsung but that is how it works on HTC & Motorola.

I root and flash Android devices for fun, I know my way around Android.
It mounts fine in Windows and Linux, OSX doesn't even recognize when it's plugged in.
Android utilizes MTP protocol, MTP isn't supported by OSX.
"Android File Transfer" allows Android and OSX to communicate but ATF doesn't run on OSX Mountain Lion (neither does Samsung KIES).
OSX Mountain Lion 10.8.2 and Android ICS 4.0.4/JB 4.1.1 do not currently communicate without going deep into Terminal or hacking Android apps.

[jlw]

I root and flash Android devices for fun, I know my way around Android.
It mounts fine in Windows and Linux, OSX doesn't even recognize when it's plugged in.
Android utilizes MTP protocol, MTP isn't supported by OSX.
"Android File Transfer" allows Android and OSX to communicate but ATF doesn't run on OSX Mountain Lion (neither does Samsung KIES).
OSX Mountain Lion 10.8.2 and Android ICS 4.0.4/JB 4.1.1 do not currently communicate without going deep into Terminal or hacking Android apps.

That's far beyond my level of technical expertise, but my Mac wasn't recognizing my Droid phone when plugged in, but once I changed a setting on the phone the Mac began to recognize it so that I could pull files off of it.

[MDS]

I've been a Unix guy for 20 years and I switched to Mac when I started a tech company in 2001. (Yes, my timing was off. ) I needed a machine that let me run Powerpoint and Word - the real thing, so I could interact with customers and vendors - and I also needed a machine that was real Unix under the hood so I could develop my software on it. There wasn't much in the way of virtualization back then, so I gambled on a Powerbook G4. Holy crap, was I happy!!! I'd spent a significant portion of my career just getting various Unix and Linux flavors to interoperate with a Windows world, and here was a real honest-to-God Unix that interoperated really well right out of the box!

I've been a Mac fan ever since. As my life and career have evolved, I don't get to spend much time developing systems software anymore, but my Macs let me dive in whenever I feel like it, while also supporting my main job of interacting with MS Exchange and MS Office. I keep a Linux and Windows VM around for the odd visio document or whatever, but I rarely fire them up. The best part is that my wife can use the same OS that I use for everything!

[MDS]

I root and flash Android devices for fun, I know my way around Android.
It mounts fine in Windows and Linux, OSX doesn't even recognize when it's plugged in.
Android utilizes MTP protocol, MTP isn't supported by OSX.
"Android File Transfer" allows Android and OSX to communicate but ATF doesn't run on OSX Mountain Lion (neither does Samsung KIES).
OSX Mountain Lion 10.8.2 and Android ICS 4.0.4/JB 4.1.1 do not currently communicate without going deep into Terminal or hacking Android apps.

Android phones don't do a standard USB mass storage thing? That's crazy!

[LittleLebowski]

Jody, I had this problem once with an Android phone and a Mac. Changing USB cables fixed it.

[TCinVA]

My biggest gripe with Apple in general is that they have a way they expect you to do things which works great for the low level user who doesn't know any better. Stray outside their pre-defined track and it's a pain in the butt...as seen with the Android phone issue. It used to be that their .x updates were great, but in the last year or so their updates alter the function of a whole lot of stuff in ways that are sub optimal...especially if you are managing multiple machines.

The hardware dependability is light years beyond what it used to be...of course, it used to be in the toilet so there was nowhere to go but up. That being said, my main machine at home is an issued 1st generation MacBook pro. The display had to be replaced in warranty (literally 6 days before the warranty ran out) and the B key is a little bit flaky, but other than that I still prefer it to the newer MBP that was supposed to replace it.

To me these things are all just tools I'm stuck using so I really don't have much in terms of preferences. I can do what I need to do on practically any platform be it Mac OS 7 (Yes...still have one of those alive that I have to deal with) to ESXi. Just as with gun companies I've seen ebbs and flows in the hardware and software. Used to be that Apple hardware was neat but flaky as hell while Dell hardware was unsexy but rock-solid reliable. Now I've got an iMac acting as a server that's never given a second's trouble and a 9 thousand dollar Dell blade that drops at least two drives in the array every couple of months this despite the fact that Every. Single. Part. has been replaced. Oh, and the warranty bought with the server doesn't include the hard drives. Dell informed us of that after the first two disks died. I don't usually use the F word when I'm dealing with vendors, but I used it quite a bit during that phone call. I wouldn't spend my personal money with Dell anymore. Just too many problems.