If you read through the articles posted on this blog you may notice a bias towards Apple computers. Why? Because they just work. Overall, they are just easier to use and maintain. I have been using Microsoft products since the mid 1980's with MS-DOS, then Windows-386, Windows 3.x, '95, '98, NT, Me, 2000, 2003, and XP. I was a technical support specialist for Sony Electronics and Yankee Candle, as well as, for a small computer store and as a freelance consultant. At home I do not want to have to fool with blue screens of death, freezing up, trojans, viruses, worms and so forth. A Mac is not perfect, but it is much more pleasurable to use than a Windows PC from the user interface, to the performance.
One of the long standing complaints about Macs was that there was not as much software available for them as there is for Windows. This is still true, but much less so than in the past. When Apple moved to the OS X operating system, which is based on BSD Unix (known for it's security) they opened the door to many more developers and porting applications from the open source Linux world, plus easier development of applications in general on the Mac platform. It helps that Apple gives away the Xcode programming tools for free, where as, a programmer has to purchase Visual Studio from Microsoft.
This brings me to free stuff for your Mac. There are numerous excellent free and open source applications for the Mac. In addition to programs, you can also find free photos and music. Check out FreeMacBlog.com and it's sister sites: FreeMacWare, FreeMacUnix, FreeMacMusic and FreeMacPhotos. This site offers a wealth of free applications, plus articles on how to better use your Mac, especially in regards to photos and the underlying Unix applications. Apple itself also features an extensive nicely organized catalog of Mac OS X applications on their web site.
For for those of you that are tempted, but just could not imagine giving up Windows, you can now run Windows within your Mac using a program called Parallels. See the photo above. Many Mac retailers are offering Mac and Windows bundles.
Here's the first of my bare bones audio podcast or audio versions of my blog articles. Nothing fancy, otherwise I would not be able to do it on a regular basis.