Mac is clearly a superior platform, with hardware so reliable, that PC users everywhere are buying Macs just to run PC software on them! Heads up: Apple has a back to school special running through Sept. 15 that allows students & teachers to save big!

Polling our college students at church, the majority are now migrating towards Mac. OCU, Abilene, and Freed are becoming Mac environments, with free Mac laptops to incoming freshmen. As this generation embraces the innovative ease of Macs, what do you think they will prfer as adults? Pretty smart, Apple. (could the church learn from such ... "train up a child in the way he should go"...

Great point, Lee. If we don't become aggressively concerned with the situation of our young people, we stand to lose so much.

BTW, how is your mission work going with Mexico trips? How often do you visit? How about Cuba? I appreciate what you are doing at Mayfair.

- KL

O Great One... everything is awesome in Mexico! Check out our new Baja Missions website, all designed, built, and hosted on a Mac: (production time - app. 3-4 hours)

http://www.bajamissions.us

FYI
I lead 4 or 5 teams a year to Mexico, planting churches and providing humanitarian relief to poverty stricken agricultural communities, about 3 hours south of San Diego. We establish/build churches (13 so far) then look for US COC churches to pass them off to - these US churches oversee/sponsor/support the new church, and we move on to another village that has no church. The fields are truly white there!

Cuba is still an annual event for me, but we hope to be ready to ramp up the work there when the doors open more in the future. For now, we bring all of the Cuba preachers together for the annual Cuba Preachers Conference in Havana - over 300 men, all preaching in a communist country where religion is "minimized", and house churches make up app. 95% of the churches.

And man, , do the latinos love to sing! (and follow my Powerpoint/Keynote presentations, all done on my Macbook! :)

Viruses? Not a problem for Macs... yet.

As a Unix type, I like the fact that OS X is based on BSD Unix. While I have not switched to Mac, due, I suppose, to my Scottish ancestry balking at paying the price premium, I do not think it would be a mistake at all to go in that direction.

However, do not fall for the false meme that Macs are immune to viruses; it's simply not true: http://antivirus.about.com/od/macintoshresource/Macintosh_Viruses_and_Mac_Virus_Resources.htm .

It *is* true that there are many fewer viruses targeting Macs, because they're somewhat harder to make, and because it's a smaller target. Nevertheless, you still need to be sensible in the websites you visit, the software you download, and the email attachments you open.

@leemilan, I think you've been drinking Steve Job's koolaid. ;-)

Keith,

I converted to Mac after shopping for a new notebook computer last Christmas. It really gives you a different view of the Mac commercials, which were previously kind of irritating. Now I chuckle when I see them and wonder why I waited so long.

Randy

I am hard-core PC girl all the way. In college, I was forced to use Macs for certain projects, and I never got through a project without the machine crashing at least 4 times. It always froze. It refused to let me log in quite often (and others could not log in). We never had to call tech support for PC problems...because there weren't any! But the Macs were so unreliable that we actually cancelled classes because we couldn't use the machines. PC is obviously the superior make here.

Some of us who are mac converts can come across a little opinionated don't you think?

After several years of coaxing by my son Tim, I made the switch in July 2006 and have not looked back. There was a little learning curve and I had some mild PC withdrawal symptoms at first, but am happy to report that these soon pass! I had been running MS Office for Mac until recently but am now in the process of trying to move toward Pages, Numbers, and Keynote. I have been using Powerpoint for Mac presentations of Paperless Hymnal slides with a few title slides without incident for 2 years on our church's PC that ran our projector. We have had repeated issues with the reliability of that box and XP interrupting our services, so about a month ago I declared that we WERE going to switch to a Mac to run our presentations. For about $1000, I was able to buy a used G5 with 1.8 dual processors (not Intel) and a gig of memory, put Leopard on it, add another 2 gig of memory (just to be safe & quick!), an internal backup drive, another video card so we could easily support 2 monitors and use the presenter/preview mode on our pulpit monitor, MSOffice for Mac as well as iWork to get Keynote. Works great! The only open issue is that everyone except me uses a PC including our minister, David Parks. He is quite good with his presentations in terms of transitions, animations, etc. We cannot reliably import his PC PP presentations into Keynote and maintain his functionality. Therefore, although I would already prefer to create on Keynote and present on Keynote for better reliability (avoiding Microsoft), we are still using Powerpoint to present. If anyone has suggestions, I would love to hear from you. mwcorder@gmail.com I hope that making a Mac available for my associates to use at church will encourage them to step out and take the plunge. Isn't it amazing how Mac users become Mac evangelists. If we are too successful though, the day may come that we DO have to consider viruses. So think twice before you enlist a convert!

I speak as both an older woman and a former Apple employee -1979 to 1991. I have had an Apple Computer product on my desk, both at work and at home, since 1981. They have long believed in capturing the hearts of children by placing the early Apple // in schools back in the early 1980's. I have used a PC in a work environment when my husband and I moved from the Bay Area after his retirement, and I would never consider owning one. The ease of use and reliability of the Macs are superb. I now use a slim screen iMac and could not be more pleased with its performance.

JoAnn Glock

Oh, Keith, do you really want to start religious arguments on your blog? (heehee)

I love Macs. I like PCs well enough, because I am a consultant who fixes computers, and PCs have more problems.

While Macs are not technically immune to viruses, I'd say they're functionally much, much safer. Some viruses have been written that target Macs, but they just don't get very far. In 23 years of using Macs, I've never had any Mac-specific viruses get onto any of my systems -- macro viruses came via MS Word, but those were pretty innocuous.

These days, though, spyware and adware are a bigger problem than viruses. There have been very few destructive viruses come through over the past five or so years, but I can't get through a week without having two or three spyware cleanups to do. Has anyone seen any spyware crop up on Macs? I haven't even heard of it happening.

Everyone should use the system that lets them be more productive. Creative types often find that Macs work better for them. Gamers should stick with Windows systems.

True geeks want one of everything!

Last night on the plane flight home, I sat next to a Microsoft sales rep. I told her I could not speak to her because I'm a mac person (ha ha). We discussed some of these very things. She pointed out that many people don't like the premium price on Apple products.

On Sunday, I was handed a CD with some photos from our Overland Park workshop, but my computer would not read the disk. It may be a CD -R versus a CD +R issue? I just wish we could all get along. :)

- KL

I bought a MacBook Pro in January, 2007. Far more stable than any of a dozen PC laptops or desktops I have had since 1988. I bought a Mac Mini last summer and an iMac 24 3 months ago. No comparison.

I like the commercials too.

You should clue Allen in on the Mac's also. I keep hoping EasyWorship will come around also.

If you want to send me an email about who gave you the photos from OP I will try to get you another set and put them on my iDisk public folder for you to download.

johnnysewell at mac dot com

I've been Mac and PC for 15 years. I'm a systems administrator/prepress manager for a printing company. I've heard all the debates. No need to argue, they're just tools used to complete a job. Pick one you like and hammer away. PCs are more prevalent as are the programs for them and so too are the viruses! Macs are generally easier, more graphic oriented, but have fewer programs to choose from and less subject to viruses. I have both at work and at home. At work we have more computers than employees and believe me it's a P.I.C.N.I.C. most of the time. Problem In Chair Not In Computer!

I LOVE using technology. I'm an "early adopter" as well. (Being an early adopter can back-fire as I embrace new technologies before they are fully bug-free.) However, I have little patience when things don't work or they require a steep learning curve. - KL

Come on Keith surely you don’t expect the latest and greatest to be bug free! That’s why we in the computing world call it the “bleeding“ edge of technology. As far as steep learning curves chalk that one up to the software marketing departments. Being in the printing/imaging business for 40 years, computers since the Texas Instruments TI99A, and Macs since 1992, I’ve been on a steep learning curve all of my adult life. Literally millions of dollars have passed through my hands to technology vendors. The best advice I can offer anyone on software and computers is to find the equipment and software that allows you to easily do what you want to do and don’t worry about constantly keeping up, that is if you don’t have to. Do your research, ask around, but avoid the fanatics and the hype. If there is someone knowledgeable about a particular hardware or software and they are willing to teach you then that is your best bet. As far as software the more you want to do requires a equal amount of learning. It’s easy to get caught up in the techno hype and for it to become something akin to a religious following. That said, we must keep learning and adopting technology to make our lives easier, not harder. I apologize for what might appear as bragging about my experience, but I often feel the need to qualify myself in order to make my point.