My wife and other daughter now want to get a Mac to replace our Windows PC.

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Readers' thoughts: Serendipities of Mac ownership and some shared responsibilites

   My daughter's iBook arrived Friday. I rushed home from work so I could play with it as much as I could. Wow, simply a thing of beauty. You're right; as soon as you get past the differences in operating systems, it does seem easy.
   Here is one little neat advantage I already found. My youngest daughter's cheerleading team went to Disney the last two years. Two years ago, one of the coaches put all their photos on a CD. My PC would not recognize the JPG files on the CD (sometimes even locking up, trying to read it!). As an experiment, I put the CD in the iBook, and wouldn't you know it, iPhoto opened them right up! So here we have a CD burned on a Windows PC that wouldn't work on another Windows PC, but was just fine on a modern Mac.
   I talked to my daughter at college yesterday. Once again all the computer guys had to go around the dorms and tell everybody to shut off their computers and not hook up to the Internet because of the virus. When they saw my daughter was using an iBook, they told her she didn't have to -- because she had "one of the cool ones".
   And yes, my wife and other daughter now want to get a Mac to replace our Windows PC.

   I get more discouraged by the software manufacturers who don't get it, who give us unprotected systems or software that takes over our computers and changes things to its liking.
   Part of the question is the philosophy of an operating system. Just what is it supposed to be, to include? Apple has raised the bar pretty high, and Microsoft's case about whether Internet Explorer is an integral part of the operating system complicates things.
   Years ago, few would argue that a browser must be included in an OS; now people take it for granted that it will be. Now we ask the same questions about things like firewalls.
   People should be able to buy and run a computer expecting it to work properly and safely without having to make too many modifications or additions. Today, someone who buys an XP machine must find or buy and install a firewall, a script blocker and a virus checker at minimum. They must also constantly check for updates. There are other things to manage, such as popup windows, cookies, and general hard disk maintenance.
   Furthermore, they must educate themselves about those fake pass-it-on urban legend e-mails, learn something about e-mail etiquette and learn to handle the spam and worms that they'll inevitably receive in their inbox.
   Is this normal? Should people have to do this, be expected to do all this? No one should ever expect to buy and use a computer without having to do some self-education, but they shouldn't have to do so much to merely protect themselves and their identity.