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Why we went “all mac”

One of the exciting things about starting a company is the blank slate you have to set things up the way you want. The unfortunate thing is the lack of money you have at the time critical decisions are being made. It’s kind of like how most expensive sports cars are driven (slowly) by old bald guys or the wives of old bald guys. By the time you can afford the ideal, it’s too late to truly enjoy it.

Well, we toyed around with the idea of buying inexpensive linux laptops or even windows machines. We decided to go with Macbook Pros for the following reasons.

• Software costs - Apple’s OS X does more out of the box than Windows XP (or Vista). Many of the tools we use are either part of the package (Mail.app, iCal, Address book) or free (Firefox, Openoffice, AdiumX, Cyberduck, Vienna). We made a decisions to not use Microsoft Office. Overall, if we were to become an all-Microsoft company, the cost per employee would mean we would save a couple hundred on hardware, but spend a significant amount more on software.
• *nix underneath - Right now, 3/4 of us are working with linux / unix in some capacity and OS X is a better way to interface with those systems.
• Maintenance Costs - Right now, Im the sysadmin. In my experience, a Mac gets fewer (or no) viruses, does not fragment and requires little to no regular maintenance. Users find it more intuitive so they dont cry for help as much. Overall, the systems are less time consuming to maintain
• Pride - I’m a believer in the motto that your environment can either hurt or help your success. When staring at a computer for long periods of time, the machine should be something you enjoy using and enjoy looking at.

Every company is of course different. With the move of applications from the desktop, to the net, there is little tying us to any one platform. So far, the choice has been excellent. We also have Parallels Desktop in our back pocket in case anyone gets stuck and really needs windows.

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