A bold statement? I would say so, especially given the fact that there are so many people that absolutely adore their Apple-made computers. Well, I actually don't hate it, but I haven't been nearly as happy as I thought I would.

Let me back up. I bought a Mac Powerbook G4 about two years ago on advice from a good friend (who will remain nameless, at least for the moment). I had never owned a Mac previously, but grew up a developer so I had quite a bit of experience on Unix machines. Other than that, my primary computers have all been Windows-based PCs or laptops. My so-called friend had also never really used a Mac either, but had just purchased one and loved it. He convinced me that I needed one too.

With that, I purchased my first Mac. He gave me an overview of all of the cool features of my new machine. There were quite a few (even before the new version of the operating system - Panther - was released). I was impressed and excited to be exploring a new way of computing. I was creating and burning home video DVDs, playing around with my digital photos in iPhoto, trying a new browser (Safari), and even a new Mail program.

The first stumbling block is that many of the buttons on applications are in non-intuitive places and not marked clearly. Take the address book for example. A very basic application for storing your contacts. I am very used to bringing up a contact and changing the information as it is shown right in the window. It took me literally 10 minutes to figure out that I needed to press an "Edit" button at the bottom of the window to edit the contact. It was not intuitive as the button is small at the bottom of the screen.

Another minor annoyance is the Mail program. If I sort my mail by author, I'm used to being able to scroll to the last name of the author by typing the letter that begins their name. This is the behavior in the Address book, but not in Mail. Again, a minor annoyance, but one nonetheless.

One of the biggest touting factors about the Mac was it's suite of media editing tools. I used iDVD quite extensively to create videos for my family. I have to say that I wasn't all that impressed. Again, maybe it's just me, but the controls were just not intuitive to use or locate. I spent a countless amount of time trying to figure out some of the simplest tasks. My experience wasn't much better than Windows Moviemaker, in fact I would say they were fairly comparable.

Let's move on to my real issues with Mac starting with software availability. I have been very disappointed with the support for standard software packages for products on Macs. Software tends to come out a full year after the Windows release, if at all. Take the Slingbox software for example that allows me to watch my home TV from my laptop. Alas, while the Windows version was released in July 2005, it is May 2006 and still no sign of the Mac release.

Lastly, my truly biggest issue and the real reason I am going back to a Windows laptop is compatability issues with Windows machines. My wife and I need a scheduler that syncs our calendar with our Treo 650 cell phones and computers. We have chosen Outlook to do this. I was thinking this wouldn't be too difficult. After trying about 10 different ways to sync my Mac with my Windows Outlook on my PC and my cell phone, I gave up. Not going to happen. Either it just didn't work or it was too painful to even make it worthwhile.

I have a few PCs in my house and I need to connect to them. Try as I might, I couldn't get my PCs to connect to my Mac although I can do the vice versa. Also, my Mac could connect to my PC, but not to the printer that was connected to it. Lastly, I could rarely connect my Mac to my wireless access point in my kitchen (periodically it would work), while I never had a problem with my PCs.

So, that's that. Time to buy a new laptop - going back to Windows. I'll let you know how it goes. Hopefully I won't have any regrets, but I'm sure I won't (except maybe from all of you Mac lovers out there who are going to slam me :-)