{"id":504,"date":"2012-09-05T13:43:58","date_gmt":"2012-09-05T20:43:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tabithahart.net\/?p=504"},"modified":"2012-09-17T14:30:44","modified_gmt":"2012-09-17T21:30:44","slug":"should-you-get-a-mac","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tabithahart.net\/?p=504","title":{"rendered":"Should you get a Mac?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.petridish.org\/projects\/intercultural-communication-and-pandemic-prevention\" target=\"_blank\">A colleague of mine is preparing to travel to the Congo to conduct fieldwork on the local design of messages for disease prevention and conservation<\/a>.\u00a0 Coincidentally, her trusted laptop (a PC) is on its last legs and she\u2019ll need to replace it before she begins her fieldwork.\u00a0 Working on a limited research budget means that whatever computer she purchases will be her primary machine for some years to come.\u00a0 It will also have to be durable and reliable enough to sustain intense fieldwork in places that are far removed from the next <a href=\"http:\/\/www.apple.com\/retail\/geniusbar\/\" target=\"_blank\">Genius Bar<\/a>. \u00a0Would now be a good time to switch over from a PC to a Mac?\u00a0 She posed this question to the trusted Technorati over at <a href=\"http:\/\/diaryproducts.net\/\" target=\"_blank\">DiaryProducts<\/a>\u00a0and this was their answer:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.apple.com\/macbookair\/\" target=\"_blank\">Macbook Air<\/a> is a very good and portable\u00a0machine.\u00a0 (A plus for ethnographers doing fieldwork that requires them to carry their machine with them.)\u00a0On the other hand, there are also decent\u00a0ultra-portable\u00a0PCs.<\/li>\n<li>If you get a Mac, there will be a learning curve. Some things on OSX are done in a way that makes a Windows user ask, &#8220;Why on earth did they do this?&#8221; Ultimately, a lot of thought went into the usability of the Mac apps and the OS, more thought than went into Windows, IMHO. But Mac is a cult and the attitude of the new convert should be to just go with the flow and not to question the guru.<\/li>\n<li>A Mac unfolds its full potential only with other Apple products. You&#8217;ll get the best experience if you stay inside the Apple ecosystem. You will end up paying more for Apple products than for comparable ones from other vendors, but you\u2019ll save time by not having to trouble-shoot interoperability issues. Time is money after all.<\/li>\n<li>Get <a href=\"http:\/\/www.apple.com\/support\/products\/\" target=\"_blank\">AppleCare<\/a> with your machine. Even though they&#8217;re well engineered, Apple products do break and AppleCare gives you peace of mind.<\/li>\n<li>The screen of an 11&#8243; Macbook Air is very small and is not suitable for prolonged work. Get an external display if you want to use it all day at home or the office, or get the 13&#8243; version.<\/li>\n<li>Don&#8217;t operate more than one computer.\u00a0 Get a single computer that serves all purposes fairly well. \u00a0(An important caution to ethnographers working in the field.) Transferring content\/data between machines is a constant pain, error prone and tedious.<\/li>\n<li>Finally, get an external drive (USB3, Firewire or Thunderbolt) for backups. <a href=\"http:\/\/support.apple.com\/kb\/HT1427\" target=\"_blank\">TimeMachine<\/a>, OS X&#8217;s built-in backup mechanism, does a very good job but it needs some sort of external storage, of course. Don&#8217;t go into the field without backup!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A colleague of mine is preparing to travel to the Congo to conduct fieldwork on the local design of messages for disease prevention and conservation.\u00a0 Coincidentally, her trusted laptop (a PC) is on its last legs and she\u2019ll need to replace it before she begins her fieldwork.\u00a0 Working on a limited research budget means that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[15],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tabithahart.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tabithahart.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tabithahart.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tabithahart.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tabithahart.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=504"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/tabithahart.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":510,"href":"https:\/\/tabithahart.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504\/revisions\/510"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tabithahart.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tabithahart.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tabithahart.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}