Sense, Nonsense, and Not-Sense

I worked a small university helpdesk in 1997-1999. Most of our time was helping people get online via dialup, so things like telling people what their login name was, the phone number to dial, and tons of browsing the Microsoft knowledge base (which back then was actually really damn good and not flooded with MVPs saying "reinstall windows"). We had four desks with phones, three of which had Windows 98 workstations and one had a Powermac 7200-ish running MacOS. There was one guy who knew the Mac stuff, and the minority of users who needed his help would call in during his shifts.

It didn't take long to notice that while we would often get the same Windows users again and again -- because every update to Windows itself, Internet Explorer 4.x, or TCP/IP could randomly break things -- the Mac users were one-and-done. Setup their PPP with phone, username, password, and it worked Every. Time. Thereafter. I soon learned the high points of the Mac and started taking that desk, because it led to longer periods between calls for me to do my homework. :-)

The Mac fans of the late 90's were right. Despite its smaller pool of applications and lack of "true" multitasking and protected memory, it was a better system overall than the Windows 9x ecosystem. I never had the money then to buy them, but ever since 2006 with the first Mac Mini we have been a Mac+Linux home.