Well. Time Machine actually does protect you well. You buy a new MAc, connect Time Machine and you can recover your complete system with a mouse click.
With the Promise R6 (connected to my Mac via very fast Thunderbolt) I’d simply buy a new R6 and put in the disks. Of course you can always destroy anything, but it is very unlikely to happen.
But i have a couple of loose 1 TB disks and I manually copy all photos onto these (i use naked disks in a simple dock) .. And the most important photos (family) I have on two other disks.
Now, if the house burns down it’s all lost. But maybe it happens when I’m sleeping, so i won’t need any photos.
Windows has one advantage over Mac OS in that you can selectively uninstall updates.
The update that tries to push Windows 10 on you has number 3035583. If you uninstall that update, you won’t be bothered by any more pop-up windows suggesting you install Windows 10 or any automatic downloads. Unfortunately, the Windows updater might try to reinstall the update at a later time, but you can tell the updater to permanently hide that update.
I have a totally independent NAS (Synology RAID1) that eats, keeps and feeds data to wherever I need it (PC, ipads, smartTV, …). I back it up every now and then with a detachable disk stored elsewhere. Works fine.
On the Win10 upgrade: the upgrade totally crashed my Win8.1 PC. I had to reinstall everything. It costed me days of work and family quarrels. I wont upgrade anymore.
The dedktop PC is used less and less though. At home everyone now BYOD…
And that’s fine!
Most of all a Mac is an operating system that works better and has a much nicer and more intuitive UI. It is more stable too.
http://www.marco.org/2015/01/04/apple-lost-functional-high-ground
http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/mac-experts-weigh-in-os-x-quality-is-declining
http://www.forbes.com/sites/anthonykosner/2014/12/22/declining-apple-software-quality-imperils-future-growth-and-retention/
To me that’s only opinions, in a sea of opinions … If you Google for it your will always find a supportive website, for really anything …
My personal experience is that it gets better all the time. More complex, yes, but better too.
My great grandfather had two newspapers before WWI. My father told me that his favourite motto was: “Not necessarily is everything you will read in a newspaper a lie” ;-)
What is the definition of an “Operating System” and for that matter “better”? Do you use it only for email, internet surfing and looking at pictures of your children on Facebook? An OS is the intersection between cloud infrastructure and cloud services. For example, Cortana (and Siri to a lesser extent) are productivity improvements getting better every month through machine learning running on hundreds of thousands of servers spread across 100 datacenters distributed world-wide. The OS is just a dumb presentation layer. The value is in the services driving the OS. For example, iCloud improves the OS experience through time machine, which b.t.w runs in Microsoft datacenters. The OS that can best unify hardware, productivity and cloud infrastructure is best positioned for the future. For example, Apple doesn’t have the machine learning capabilities to improve Siri at the same rate as Cortana, since Apple has almost no datacenter compute power. Windows 10 leverages the intersection deeply within the OS, at the moment like second to none, and that’s the future.
If you like Mac, and it works for you, great, go for it. Nothing wrong this choice. I use an Apple product myself, the iPad Mini, and like it for ForeFlight.
That’s what always happens in discussions like that. Apple enthusiasts are characterized by other (serious) computer people of “only looking at children’s pictures” on their MAC.
Here’s what I do with my 2 iMacs and 1 MacBook Pro:
- all the usual office stuff and internet
- graphics design with Illustrator and PhotoShop 7
- professionally edit hi-res photos with PS 7 and Nikon Capture
- edit movies
- play guitar and record 24 tracks
- plan flights, IFR and VFR
- various Flight Simulator and Flight Training SW
- watch TV (DVB-T)
… and much more
And it all works, always.
“Better” means that I can much better concentrate on CONTENT and on my various jobs using the Mac because the user interface is much friendlier and because there’s much less special knowledge required to set up the system. BACKUPS are a good example. when I first saw that ON-OFF switch in Time Machine I thought they’re kidding, becasue back then (no idea what it’s like now) nothing like that existed for Windows.
Another important factor for me is that the computers and the UI are not ugly. And while I’m aware that many engineers will ever accept that argument – t’s one of the most important features of an Apple Computer. I am around that stuff all day, and I prefer to be surrounded with beautiful things.
An OS is the intersection between cloud infrastructure and cloud services
Gosh I am obviously stuck in the 20th century. I prefer RS485 
Can you arrange for us to get faster internet here? 448kbits/sec right now, so any enhanced participation in “cloud infrastructure and cloud services” is of necessity limited. Totally crippled, in fact.
But then I never worked in Marketing. I always regarding an operating system as being like this
I have about 110 apps on my PC – just counted them.
Peter wrote:
Can you arrange for us to get faster internet here? 448kbits/sec right now, so any enhanced participation in “cloud infrastructure and cloud services” is of necessity limited. Totally crippled, in fact.
I have 30 Mbps up and down, yet I’m not buying the cloud hype, either. Your mileage may vary, but to me it’s substantially cheaper to do things locally than in a cloud, and even the most secure Internet cloud compromises your privacy in some way. The only bulletproof reason to use cloud storage is to have an off-site backup in the event of a sitewide disaster. As to cloud services, again, I just don’t need them.
Lucius wrote:
For example, Cortana (and Siri to a lesser extent) are productivity improvements getting better every month through machine learning running on hundreds of thousands of servers spread across 100 datacenters distributed world-wide.
To me, they are productivity impairments. It takes me less time to type e.g. EDDK into my favourite METAR/TAF page than say “Hey Cortana, what’s the METAR and TAF for Echo Delta Delta Kilo”, and the web search requests I’m making in my other career will hardly ever be recognised correctly when spoken – in fact, even when I type them, Google often asks me if I meant something different. Actually, I have yet to see someone use Siri, Cortana or Google digital assistant for any purposes beyond pure entertainment.
The only bulletproof reason to use cloud storage is to have an off-site backup in the event of a sitewide disaster. As to cloud services, again, I just don’t need them.
Well, you could need it if you, like me, had three different offices in two countries. I have all my projects in the Dropbox and I averythiung is completely seamless … the same data everywhere. I have not used a USB stick or a CD in 5 years and I hope i can avoid it for the rest of my life too.
Siri: I use Siri all the time, for navigation, sending sms in the car, finding places.
