Every time I encounter this challenge in person, I’m so overwhelmed by the magnitude of my possible reply that I end up being totally inarticulate. I typically begin with Mac OS features whose benefits are pretty intangible, and which only become obvious after you have to live without them. As wonderful and essential as these are, they are things unlikely to resonate with a Windows user who’s just asked you to give him some practical benefit he or she would gain by using a Mac. Things like

• Clearer, crisper, resizable, 3-D icons
• 3-D window shading
• Superior navigation options, like the numerous ways you can customize the Finder and the Dock
• Much more readable text, due to the system’s advanced graphics engine
• The menubar, which is much more useful and customizable than the Windows taskbar
• Drag and drop, which is an integral Mac feature that too many Windows users just won’t get until they try it
• Colored folder labels, which again don’t become essential until you’ve grown to rely on them
• Spring-loaded folders
• Eye candy like the Dock poofs and genie animations
• The services menu, which for all its power is still a mystery to many Mac users, and whose benefits are not immediately obvious

Mind you, these are all near the top of my list of reasons why the Mac OS is superior to Windows, but they’ve never shown much power for persuasion in a discussion with a Windows user.

So, I’ve decided to start documenting specific, unambiguous, practical tasks that you can only do with a Mac. Perhaps one or two of these will impress that smug Windows user you know enough to take a Mac for a test drive…

I’m starting with one of my favorite features from Apple’s latest operating system–Mac OS X 10.4, “Tiger”: PDF print/workflow services. Now, for heaven’s sake, don’t call it that when you talk to your Windows friend, but that’s the technical name for it. These services were actually enabled in Panther, but you had to configure them manually. They were such a hidden feature that only the truly geeky would seek them out and make use of them.

Essentially, with PDF services, you can combine multiple steps of handling a PDF file into one quick action. By default, Tiger comes with several new, built-in PDF services, which you access from the print menu.

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It’s hard for me to see choosing Apple over Microsoft as striking some great blow for populism just because Apple is a smaller company… In my mind, choosing Apple is substituting one greedy corporation for another.

It’s a sad commentary on my peers when I hear them voice opinions like this. What it means is that they think Microsoft’s behavior is the norm, and that all companies would behave like Microsoft if they could. This is the same cynical view that destroyed our faith in politicians after Richard Nixon’s crimes. For some reason, rather than understanding that Nixon was a political outlier, we adopted the view that all politicians would behave like Nixon if they could. And many people appear to be making the same mistake with Microsoft.

Good grief, to a man from Mars this looks like mass insanity. Microsoft is no more the norm than Richard Nixon was. But what they have in common is substantial:

• A total disregard for the truth
• A willingness to engage in dirty tricks against enemies
• Corrupt management from the top down
• A paranoia about–and intolerance of–deviations from any standards they have set for the world.

If you’re a Microsoft fan who’s just wandered into this article, you’ll no doubt think this is pure hyperbole. And though nothing I can say is likely to convince you otherwise, I do intend to try.

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Apple recently refreshed both the PowerMac and iMac desktop lines. The PowerMac upgrade was nice, but nothing spectacular.

Today’s iMac upgrade, however, was a doozy! Very much worth taking notice of, so I did.

I’ve revisited the “High End Consumer Desktop” specs and pricing to see what impact Apple’s new line has on that shootout. You can read the details, but very briefly, the gap widened a little in Apple’s favor, though not as spectacularly as the new specs would suggest, thanks to a couple of key “free upgrades” at the Dell store.

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