Microsoft Security Essentials: Not sure what you have against this. I happily suggest it for all my friends and family when they ask for anti virus. Its free, and effective, and doesn't cause headaches (ala Norton, etc).
It's too tiring keeping up with antivirus offerings, and constantly needing to clean up after their messes.
I'd recommend Linux, to be honest, because it's a cheaper alternative. But because there's still no good way of using it without needing to open Terminal at some point - the Mac is, I suppose, a good compromise.
There are quite a number of things that they'd like to do that isn't clearly expressed - or even easily findable! - though Ubuntu's GUI. They will struggle with it for a bit.
Plus: even if we set that aside, there will be certain bits of hardware you'll want to use that would require opening the Terminal to configure/install.
Because my objective is to minimize my time spent on helping my friends/relatives with their computers, Ubuntu simply isn't a good enough alternative to Windows. You merely trade the time spent on making the computer virus-proof with time spent teaching them where to find things (which is funny, because most of the time I'm finding things for the first time myself, seeing as I prefer the Terminal).
As opposed to the Mac - I send them away to buy one, and they never come back to me for help.
PS: Why the downvotes? I expressed a justified assertion, backed up with some evidence, and people react to the fact that I'm dissing Linux? Tsk, HN, I expected more of you.
There are quite a number of things that they'd like to do that isn't clearly expressed - or even easily findable! - though OSX's GUI. They will struggle with it for a bit.
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Really, it's just a learning curve and it's the same for any new OS.
Most non-technical people don't have the habit of figuring out what to do. They have the habit of doing what they're used to. For most, if you change even the smallest thing in their interface it can be catastrophic. (My mom often calls me for things like not being able to use internet at all anymore because the bookmarks bar is gone because someone accidentally hit ctrl+b or something).
I think the whole "Apple just works" thing is majorly overblown. Every time I have to use an OSX laptop I cringe because I have to look for stuff in the weirdest places and it takes me so long to figure out how to do things that I often just give up (if I'm using an OSX laptop it's usually because I don't have much time and just bummed the first laptop that was around). I can't imagine my mom magically finding everything intuitively if I can''t.
Also, you say you backed your assertion up with evidence. What evidence? I see none at all. The plural of anecdote is not data. (I'm not saying I'm providing evidence either, I'm simply providing a counter-example to your anecdote.)
Note too that I said some evidence.
>I think the whole "Apple just works" thing is majorly overblown.
I suppose the simplest way to prove this is to consider the alternative: of what other operating system, taking into account everything that a non-technical user needs, can this be said to be true? Perhaps it is not true of all our current operating systems, but if it is more preposterous to claim that Windows or Linux 'just works', then Apple takes the cake and my point is justified.
Whether it is overblown or not is not my concern - it is currently the best that we have, and I have to make do. Perhaps iPad-like devices would prove to be better, but that future is still two-three years away.
Anecdotal evidence seems to support this: I wince whenever I see the Macs my friends and family use - the desktop is cluttered beyond repair, the dock is stretched across the screen, and they don't know how to use various core features (expose, frontrow, etc). But they don't complain, and they don't ask me for as much help as they did before, and this is the only metric that matters to me.
I'm happy, they're happy. What's not to like?
Change your mindset from hacker to 'non-technical relative or friend', and that problem goes away.
"There will be certain bits of hardware you'll want to use that will not work with you new system." is how they would phrase it, and oftentimes, it does not really bother them at all.
Even if it would bother them, getting a Mac likely would not help, as it would get them the same results for some of their old hardware.
The best synopsis I heard (I can't remember who said it, nobody famous) was that "The hardest part about learning Linux is UNlearning whatever else you know first."
I think that correctly asserts that yeah, you won't find things in the "Control Panel", and you won't be able to "Win+R" for a run dialog, etc. Otherwise, I personally have had nothing but positive feedback from my less technical friends that I've turned on to Ubuntu, except for the usual complaints, or when they have to give up foo application because it doesn't exist (Photoshop, World of Warcraft, whatever.)
Some years ago there was a project set up to fix those Linux hardware issues, and they effectively didn't do any work, because they couldn't find reasonable hardware that wasn't supported by Linux.
I have a (crappy) scanner that has no working drivers for any Windows beyond 98 and Mac OS beyond version 9, but it works just fine under Ubuntu/Linux. I haven't seen any mainstream, reasonable hardware that doesn't work under Linux for a long time. Really, from my perspective, hardware support under Linux is significantly better than under any other operating system.
Where it indeed gets spotty is the software to use the features of the hardware. E.g. Xsane rhymes a lot with insane, the various photo organiser tools are of varying quality, to say the least, and so on. Ubuntu is making progress, but there still are a lot of use cases where the GNU/Linux/Ubuntu desktop doesn't provide good alternatives.