Poll: Are You a Mac OSX or a Windows PC User?

by Ronen Halevy on Jul 24th, 2009 at 4:00 pm EST

With RIM’s recent announcement about BlackBerry Desktop Manager for Mac I started wondering how many people will care. My wife purchased a aluminum Macbook for me last year as a anniversary gift (much appreciated) and I have only plugged my BlackBerry into it once. It was a suitable replacement for my trusted Lenovo x61t until I tried upgrading my Bold’s OS once with Parallels and VMware Fusion. Parallels would not work and Fusion caused a kernel panic in the middle of the upgrade bricking my device and making more work that it was worth.

Until now I have always been using my desktop PC to connect my BlackBerry when I need to but I would love to be able to use my Mac. I am no diehard Mac lover (far from it) but the comparable Lenovo laptop I wanted (ThinkPad X200) cost more than the Macbook.

So I am curious. What is the reader breakdown between Mac and PC users…

PS: Before all the alternative OS users get on my case I did not mention Linux/UNIX/etc since I doubt RIM will ever support them but who knows… I use Linux quite often and OSX is essentially just a GUI for FreeBSD.

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This entry was posted on Friday, July 24th, 2009 and is filed under Polls.
Tags: BlackBerry Desktop, Mac, OSX, PC, Poll, Windows

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19 Comments to “Poll: Are You a Mac OSX or a Windows PC User?”

Posted by: Nikolaus Walch
July 24, 2009 at 4:02 pm EST

I think Ubuntu Linux has come a really long way and I’d really like to see RIM support a BlackBerry Desktop app/drivers for Ubuntu

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Posted by: hammer_gaidin
July 24, 2009 at 4:08 pm EST

I am a long term windows admin who has migrated to Linux over the past 5 years. I still have a windows machine setup for doing my blackberries however. I would love to see an official RIM desktop manager for Linux.

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Posted by: Jay
July 24, 2009 at 4:35 pm EST

The only time I’ve had problems upgrading my BlackBerrys in VMware Fusion 2 is if I navigated away from the Fusion window while doing it. If I stay inside the Fusion window it works flawlessly every single time. My BlackBerry is one of the main reasons I have Windows in a virtual machine on my Mac, so I’m looking forward to the Mac release.

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Posted by: Michael
July 24, 2009 at 5:33 pm EST

where’s the option for BOTH?

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- Posted by: don goose
  July 24, 2009 at 6:47 pm EST
  
  Exactly…I was thinking the same thing
  
  Reply
Posted by: Luis Merlos
July 24, 2009 at 5:54 pm EST

only reason I don’t like mac is because you can’t really do much to them upgrades or anything once you max out memory your sol, I like customizing mine etc..

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Posted by: Ron
July 24, 2009 at 6:20 pm EST

I’m split 50/50 because I have a Windows desktop & a Macbook. I don’t know if I’ll ever need to sync with the Macbook, bit it would be nice to have the option.

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Posted by: thomas
July 24, 2009 at 6:54 pm EST

Ronen, I am glad to hear you are a fellow ThinkPad/Lenovo-er. I believe that BlackBerry and ThinkPad go perfectly with each other. Simple design, pure functionality, what is better? Cheers to all the ThinkPad-ers!

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Posted by: Name (required)
July 24, 2009 at 8:19 pm EST

Mac 100%.
I run parallels 4 on my MBP and because 1 damn application doesn’t work on it, I have to use Vista on it to remote in to a POS Dell Latitude that I have running on the desk too.
If that POS app would work on BlackBerry, I would be gone forever.
And those of you who think Mac is too hard to use…its not…give it 30 days and you will never go back to a windows based PC.

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Posted by: Luciano
July 24, 2009 at 9:06 pm EST

I use Linux full time and I swear I almost don’t care at all if RIM will ever make a *nix Desktop Manager (which they certainly won’t). But I really think I should be allowed the basic right to synchronize my data with my Linux desktop. As a hobbyist developer, I can guarantee that such a thing is very feasible and simple. RIM could do it if they wanted. Instead, I have been forced to just simply give up on that kind of luxury. I have a “smartphone,” but my contacts and appointments are all over the place.

Never mind the convoluted solutions involving the likes of Funambol or the privacy-deprived ones involving Google. I want something straightforward and secure. Windows users have it, I should have it as well.

At least the old 4.2 Desktop Manager would let me import my desktop address book from a .csv file. But RIM even removed that in newer versions, so I have no hopes really.

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Posted by: David Dollman
July 25, 2009 at 4:28 am EST

I wish my PC worked as good as my BlackBerry 8320. I am seriously considering a Mac.

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Posted by: Benf
July 25, 2009 at 12:05 pm EST

Mac’s are nice machines but with there limited user base there are just too many programs and services that I use that dont support Mac or Linux,

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Posted by: Jan
July 25, 2009 at 5:24 pm EST

I like Macs but I use my BB with an Exchange server. And the best way to get all the benefits of BB and OTA syncing with Tasks and Notes is only with Outlook. I hate cable or shaky Bluetooth syncing.
Beside that, for me Outlook works much nicer than Entourage.

If only Google could sync Tasks and Notes to the BB… Maybe next year

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Posted by: wetherb67
July 25, 2009 at 5:32 pm EST

I’m currently dual-booting Win 7 and Ubuntu, simply because there are some mission critical apps that just won’t run on Ubuntu.

Gotta admit though that Win 7 is running pretty nice on my machine…

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Posted by: DaFD
July 25, 2009 at 6:09 pm EST

I thought I would care, but I’m on Tiger and I’m not planning to upgrade to Leopard yet so… no.

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Posted by: macBoy
July 25, 2009 at 8:23 pm EST

Add one more to the mac tally (life’s too short to enable bb js for a poll sorry)

When I first got my 8100 I tried to synch to my mac & all I can say is thk god it was new phone and no real data stored yet

Been synching with work pc all these yrs whgich makes sense – but stupid because I plan to leave there someday lol and now also have 8900 I have no intention of “frying”

Am buoyed by the announcement but also irked by the high bar – why x 10.5.5? Any 10.x shd be able to handle it

I was even able to bluetooth modem with my 8100 back then so wtf, you know?

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Posted by: macBoy
July 25, 2009 at 8:27 pm EST

Add one more to the mac tally (life’s too short to enable bb js for a poll sorry)

When I first got my 8100 I tried to synch to my mac & all I can say is thk god it was new phone and no real data stored yet

Been synching with work pc all these yrs which makes sense – but stupid because I plan to leave there someday lol and now also have 8900 I have no intention of “frying”

Am buoyed by the announcement but also irked by the high bar – why x 10.5.5? Any 10.x shd be able to handle it

I was even able to bluetooth modem with my 8100 back then so wtf, you know?

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Posted by: gms4175
July 26, 2009 at 4:03 am EST

I prefer Mac and use Windoze progs under Parallels where necessary, but for BDM I have to keep an old PC with XP just to run it – I can’t wait for the Mac BDM

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