A Real Mac To PC Switcher Ready To Dump The Mac

by , 2:30 PM EDT, June 19th, 2003

He's mad, and he's just not going to take it any more. Dale Tournemille is a Canadian journalist who says he is leaving the Mac platform after 10 years as a "faithful Mac user and firm believer that it was indeed 'insanely great.'" The reason, according to a rant posted at Mssr. Tournemille's Web site (hosted by .Mac), is that Macs are slow and overpriced, and did we mention he isn't going to take it any more? From his announcement, titled "Confessions of a soon-to-be ex-Mac user:"

Apple has, for some time, managed to pull the hood over the eyes of its users, but it can no longer afford to lob the megahertz myth at the public when you can buy a 3 Ghz Pentium 4-based Dell PC for the same price as a 1 Ghz iMac. Sorry Apple, but the megahertz myth is a myth.

Then there's the whole messy compatibility issue.

I wholeheartedly agree that the Mac is -- in theory -- the most compatible computer on the planet. I can pop a Windows floppy disk into my iMac and happily see the little icon sprout onto my desktop. Same goes for a Unix disk. Heck, I can even run Windows software if such a dire emergency should arise.

Problem is, Apple has utterly failed to make significant headway into corporate America and as a result users are opting to buy a computer that runs the same operating system as their computer at work. Worst still, many Web sites, including the popular finance site Morningstar.com, career site Flipdog.com, electronics maker JVC.ca, or the Canadian news site globeandmail.com, cater only to Windows users.

There's more at Dale Tournemille's .Mac site. Thanks to the several people that wrote to us about this. MacNN may have been the originator of the first link to the editorial.

We tested the four sites mentioned as being exclusively for Windows. Of the four, the Globe and Mail Web site, the Morningstar.com site, and the Canadian JVC site all came up just fine in Safari. We were able to navigate throughout all three sites, as well. Flipdog.com gave a big notice on the home page that it requires a version of Netscape that is between 4.0.7 and 4.7.9, but deeper pages with forms didn't work in either Camino or Safari.

The Mac Observer Spin:

The irony is, or will be, that this piece was published today, June 19th. The keynote for the WWDC will be on Monday, June 23rd. We have little doubt that Mssr. Tournemille will regret that timing, but we could be wrong.

In the meanwhile, we support his decision to leave. He sounds really tense, and even though most of his editorial is based on fuzzy logic and erroneous facts -- when was the last time you found a site that didn't work on a Mac. browser? Flipdog.com was the first for us in some time -- if he's not happy with his Mac, he should go join the lemmings. That's a simple issue.

When Apple was pushing the MHz Myth, Macs were faster than their PC counterparts. Today, while the MHz Myth is still true (MHz for MHz, a G4 outperforms a P4), Intel has successfully thrown enough transistors at their processors to make up for the MHz Myth, at least on the desktop side. We'll still take a G4 laptop over Intel's mobile offerings any day.

Indeed, Wintel machines do indeed have more horsepower than do most Mac, at least for now. For those for whom horsepower is paramount, go with Wintel, or Linux on Intel, or AMD. For those for whom speed is measured by more than horsepower, the Mac will continue to remain the better choice. Obviously that is massively subjective, and your mileage will certainly vary.

As for cost, that too is a subjective issue, and suffice it say that we think Tournemille is mostly wrong, especially on the portable side. Again, there are those for whom the horsepower and cost are a double blow that can't be dealt with, but we think Apple is about to deal with some of these issues soon. In the meanwhile, we'll be here holding the door when Mssr. Tournemille is ready to come back.