ZDNet's David Coursey Pimps Macs, iPods, & Mac OS X For Holidays

by , 2:10 PM EST, November 25th, 2002

David Coursey has gone from a sometime-Apple basher, to an open-minded Windows user, to a "I'm trying a Mac for a month" tester, to an all-out Apple pimp, all in a few months. Mr. Coursey, our new Favorite Mainstream Mac User of the Month, has published a column brazenly called "Why you should buy an Apple this Christmas," from his AnchorDesk pulpit. If that weren't enough, he opens the piece with a declaration of his intentions:

This column--the first in a series of holiday shopping guides--is a blatant attempt to get you into an Apple Store and convince you to maybe even buy something while you're there. It's not my first shopping guide of the year. I've got another one [in another piece].

In that other guide, I recommend no fewer than five Apple products: the 17-inch iMac with the built-in DVD burner ($1999, other models from $1199) as my "best buy" desktop; a 17-inch Apple flat panel ($999) as my best display (but only because we don't yet have a review of the much nicer 23-inch model, which costs $3499); the iBook portable ($999-$1849); the iPod MP3 player ($299-$499); and OS X 10.2, aka Jaguar ($129 as an upgrade, free with new hardware).

He doesn't stop there, however. The rest of the piece is full of encouragement for his readers to visit an Apple Store, reasons to Switch, and the suggestion that if a Mac is too expensive a present this year, that an iPod would do nicely too. He closes with some thoughts on Jaguar and Windows XP:

As for OS X 10.2, I still believe it's the most graceful OS I've ever encountered. It's not the OS Microsoft should publish, and a close comparison to Windows is probably unfair. Apple benefits greatly from its ability to control both the hardware and the operating system. It also benefits from its small market share, which means it has fewer problems making sure the OS is compatible with legacy systems. Microsoft, meanwhile, has to be all things to all users, and, while it never quite succeeds, Redmond does what it does very well. So, yes, I like Windows XP; I just don't admire it as much as OS X.

There is a lot more information in the full piece, and we encourage you to read it.

The Mac Observer Spin:

Wow, we are truly impressed with this column. He may not yet be ready for one of our "...because Windows sucks" shirts, but Mr. Coursey has truly joined the Mac community, and that's wonderful news.

As the editor of AnchorDesk, Mr. Coursey has a wide readership, the vast majority of whom are Windows users. The hard core Windows bigots who tuned in to AnchorDesk for years to hear Jesse Burst, and Mr. Coursey himself before Mac OS X, post anti-Mac troll-bait may not like reading this stuff, but there are many more mainstream tech readers who will likely have their attention turned to Apple because of this and other recent David Coursey columns.

From the TMO perspective, it's great being able to not be bringing you word of YAMBC (Yet Another Mac Bashing Column), and it's a trend that has been picking up steam throughout the last year. Oh, to be a fly on the wall in Mr. Coursey's compatriot John C. Dvorak's office.

Why you should buy an Apple this Christmas