Hello Scott, You will probably get a lot of varying opinions on this topic so you will have to decide which ones you will take seriously or not. Having said this let me first tell you that ever since I switched to using a Mac more than 3 years ago I have become probably one of the biggest Apple fan boys that there is, so my thoughts on this subject are going to have a strong Apple bias to them.
If you are wanting a computing environment that is very stable compared to what you are currently getting on the Windows platform then in my opinion you would be very happy with a Mac. The instability of my Windows computer is exactly what helped me to make the decision to make the switch over 3 years ago. I used to have to restart my Windows computer several times a day and now that I am on a Mac I hardly ever need to reboot. You will notice that I said "hardly." I have had to restart my Mac once in a while due to lost speech or something, but as I stated with the use the word hardly this does not happen with any regularity. Now having said all of this let me give you a little word of caution about switching platforms. I teach blind people who make this switch how to use their Macs for a company called Fedora Outlier, LLC and one the biggest mistakes that people make is thinking that switching from a Windows computer over to a Mac computer is going to be easy. It isn't as easy as one might think. After all you are going to have to learn how to use a totally different operating system and a new and different screen reader. Now having said this if you are determined to learn the new platform and you do it correctly by this I mean that you don't try and learn everything in one day you can definitely learn how to use a Mac very quickly. One more thing. In response to your question as to whether or not a Mac is more stable than a Windows computer. Remember earlier when I said that when I was still using a Windows computer I would have to restart the computer several times a day, well with my current Mac which is 2012 Mac Book Pro with 4 Gigabytes of ram I haven't had to restart it in about 2 weeks. My Mac is on 24 hours a day. During the day when I am working I am actually using it, and at night the Mac will just sleep, but it hasn't been turned off in at least 2 weeks now and VoiceOver is running flawlessly . I hope that all of this helps you with your decision and if you need anything else please just ask. Have a great day, Scott Rumery On Apr 1, 2014, at 11:44 AM, Scott Duck <scottduck1...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hi Everyone, > > As I said previously, I am thinking about getting a Mac and the main reason > is that I am tired of the increasing instability of the PC environment. My > first question is, is this really different on a Mac? > > I am using JAWS 15 with Windows 8. Both are not all that stable. I have > been a JAWS user for 17 years and I have noticed a definite progressive > increase in instability with the last few releases. JAWS crashes frequently > and, even if it doesn't crash, it often stops talking when errors occur with > other applications. Then, there's Windows 8. I don't mind the Windows 8 > interface but several times per week, I will have a problem that requires me > to restart my computer. I did not have that nearly as much with Windows 7. > Also, it isn't unusual for me to install a program which will, either > directly or through add ins, make Windows and/or JAWS more unstable. I then > have to decide rather the additional functionality is worth the increased > instability. I'm just tired of all the crashes and reboots and having to use > three or four screen readers because I have to run one when another one > crashes. > > By contrast, my iPhone and iPad, while not perfect, are certainly more > stable. VoiceOver seldom just stops working. Of course, every single app is > not accessible and they do not all work correctly but any problems with an > app are almost always confined only to that app. When an app crashes, it > usually does not also cause VoiceOver or the device to crash. Is this also > true of the Mac? > > I have certainly used technology enough to know that none of it is perfect. > However, I would like something that is better than the PC, when it comes to > stability. Over all, in your experience, is the Mac more stable? > > Thanks, > Scott Duck > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "MacVisionaries" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email tomacvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To post to this group, send email to macvisionaries@googlegroups.com. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacVisionaries" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to macvisionaries@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
