hummeri7582

I switched six years ago. Funny story, actually. I interviewed for a job where computer use is a big part of it. For the previous ten years, I had been working with Windows. On my first day on the new job, they showed me to my desk where the IT guys had just installed a brand new, High-end workstation. It was a Mac. Through all of the interview process, they never mentioned that they were a Mac shop! So I went home and bought one online that night, along with a few books to teach me how to program with it. I've been very happy with the switch. Some observations: 1) They are terribly expensive. However, the one I bought six years ago is still running fine and is still usable. I've upgraded it as far as it will go. I never had a PC laptop that lasted as long and aged as gracefully. My opinion in that regard is that Macs are more money up front, but over the course of their use, the expense really is a wash. 2) The learning curve was pretty flat. WIthin a day or so, I was moving around and doing things just as well as I was on PC. For keyboard shortcuts, they're almost all the same, only substituting "Command" for "CTRL." e.g.: On a PC, Copy is CTRL+C, paste is CTRL+V. On a Mac, it's Command+C and Command+V respectively. I'd say that 90% of the keyboard commands are thusly similar. 3) They are not immune to viruses, at all. That said, I' have never had one on any of my machines, but that is not because they can't get them. Fact is, PCs get more viruses, Malware and other such things because more people are writing them for that platform. As Macs become a larger portion of the market share, expect people to begin writing viruses for them, too. IN fact, there was one a month or so ago. 4) I don't give mush credibility to the "PCs are more upgradable" thing. Macs use Intel processors, Nvidia and ATI video cards, etc. Same things as PCs. Most PCs you buy from computer stores have integrated video, sound, etc just like Macs, so they are no more upgradable than a Mac. Unless you're building your own computers from components (Which I used to do back in the day), it's somewhat of a moot issue. On my Macbook, I have upgraded memory, Hard drives, and processors myself all with generic stuff I bought from the computer store. On my Mac Pro (Apple's high end workstation) most of the components are modular, so they can be swapped out. With my Mac Pro, I've upgraded video cards, RAID Controllers, RAM and Processors. The Mac Pro is very, very upgradable. It's also Apple's most expensive computer. 5) Mac Software can crash. However, it's a lot less likely to bring the OS down with it. I've had some crappy software on the Mac that crashed a lot, but the OS remained stable. In six years of Mac use, I've had a Kernel Panic (the equivalent of the Blue Screen of Death) maybe twice or three times. I think I had that happen with Windows more often, but not so much that it is really worth mentioning. 6) I can run Windows either in a virtualization system (like Parallels) or I can boot the machine straight into Windows (Or linux, for that fact). I have used both virtualization and direct booting and it works flawlessly. One issue with virtualization is that it is resource intensive. You're basically running two OSes, plus your software on one machine simultaneously. If you're using Windows software that is processor intensive, you'll be happier direct booting into Windows. Recently, I upgraded. I gave the old Macbook I bought six years ago to a family member going to college and bought myself a new MacBook Pro, Quad core Intel i7 processors, two video cards (one low power intel card on the board for everyday graphics, a second AMD/ATI Radeon for higher-end graphics) lots of RAM and Solid-state hard drive. I'm pretty much sold on Mac. I like it. But I can afford it. If I could not afford it, I would get a Windows machine and I'd probably be just as happy with it. In the end, it comes down to preferences, and how well you take care of it. Installing junky, crappily-written software on any computer will cause problems, no matter the OS. This is my experience. For my wife, it's totally different -- Macs are the only choice. She's a genetic researcher, and most of the genetics software she uses is written for the Mac, or for Unix/Linux, and Mac OS X is UNIX at it's heart so it can run Unix software natively. As to why so much of the genetics software is Mac-centric, it's an accident of fate: the first guy at a university who thought of using personal computers for genetics work way back in the late 70s and early 80s programmed it for the computer he had -- an Apple II. In 1984, he upgraded to a Mac, and re-wrote his software for that. He was a pioneer in computer applications for genetics, and many of the people who learned to write that software learned it from him. Of course, they learned it on Mac, too. So, to this day, much of that software is written for Mac. Old habits die hard. PCs have made inroads in that sector, but that notwithstanding, she and most of her colleagues have Macs on their desks.

Can you get sued? Yes. In many cases, people will sue even though they have no idea if they can prove the case. Here are some interesting statistics: Of all the lawsuits filed in the United States, about 50% of them are dismissed before even proceeding to the trial phase. Of the ones not dismissed, about 70% are settled out of court. Of the 30% that actually go to court, the plaintiff loses about 70% of the time. In medical malpractice cases, the plaintiff loses more like 90% of the time. Of the 30% who go to court and win, 95% of them only win an average of $30,000-$50,000. The famous McDonalds Hot coffee lawsuit? HUGE outlier. Seriously. In the legal world, getting a case like that all the way though the system and collecting that much money is the equivalent of winning the powerball jackpot. It's pretty much a once-in-a-lifetime type deal, if you're lucky. Oh, and the award in that case was found to be excessive by the appeals court, so they didn't actually get the $14 Million. So the long-and-short of it is yes you can be sued. The question is, will they win, and how much will the legal bills be? In most states in the US, there are several types of product liability. Strict liability means that all a plaintiff has to prove is that something happened -- they don't have to prove negligence or mens rea (guilty mind) to win. An example of this would be buying a house and having it fall down on your head the first time there is a 15 mile per hour wind. In this case, the fact that the structure failed is a res ispa loquitur indication of liability since it is a reasonable expectation that a house not fall down in a fifteen mile per hour wind. Res ipsa loquitur means in Latin "the thing speaks for itself." Here, the fact that the house fell down in such a way speaks for itself, and no need to prove intent or specific actions caused the incident. Houses just should not fall down like that. But most cases are not this clear-cut. The ones that are, every lawyer in town will be chomping at the bit to get in on. Breach of Warranty: this is pretty self explanatory. If I buy a new car and find out the engine is missing when I pick it up, this is a breach of warranty. In Common Law, there is a reasonable expectation that an item purchased retail will be fit for the intended purpose of the item, and most states have codified this with the Uniform Commercial Code. A car without an engine is unfit for the intended purpose, so this is a breach of warranty. To clear up one misconception about breach of warranty, this is a separate issue from the 3 year, 36,000 mile warranty the car maker gives me. For instance, If I bought the car, towed it home and never drove it for four years and then went out to drive it for the first time after four years only to discover the engine was never installed, the manufacturer cannot deny liability just because my three year warranty expired -- in this case, the vehicle was never fit for use to begin with, and that warranty is irrelevant. Negligence: what most people think of. Making a product that is clearly defective or dangerous. To prove this, generally you must show several things: 1) That the defendant had a duty of care. In other words, That you have a duty to the buyer to not provide dangerous products. An example of this would be a skydiving company. The skydiving company has a duty of care to take every possible precaution to make sure a customer's parachute will open. However, skydiving is inherently dangerous, so there is only so far that duty of care can go in that case. If the parachute is properly packed, and the customer is properly trained to use it, but passes out on the way down and does not open it, that's not the skydiving company's problem: they met their duty of care by ensuring the parachute would work as intended. 2) If the person has a duty of care, that they breached it. So, we've established that the parachute company has a duty of care to take every precaution to make sure the parachute opened. Now we have to prove that they did not meet that duty of care. 3) Such breach was the cause in fact of the plaintiff's injury -- that is, it was an actual cause. "But for the parachute not opening, you would not have plummeted into the ground at 100 mph." 4) That the breech proximately caused the injury. The parachute did not open. This was the cause of the accident. It was the cause of the injury. 5) The plaintiff suffered actual, quantifiable injury. So I think you need to evaluate your idea in those terms. Do you have a duty of care? I'd guess yes, you do, especially since you know this item may interfere with the proper function of seat belts, and since case law extends duty of care to all foreseeable injury. So, since you knew this item might interfere with the seat belt, then yes, selling it might be a breach of your duty of care. Was this breach an actual cause of the injury? This is where it gets complicated. Can you honestly say "but for this device interfering with the seat belt, the person would not have been injured?" You said yourself that anyone who has had this surgery and is not yet fully healed would be in bad trouble in any car crash. Did the breach proximately cause the injury? Again, it's hard to say. Did your device cause the injury, or was it the fact they were driving in that condition cause the injury? Would they have been injured even if they did not have this surgery? And as to the last question: did the plaintiff suffer actual quantifiable injury? Maybe. Or maybe they should not have been driving in that condition? Hard to say. My advice to you would be to contact competent counsel in your state. Also, incorporate. It costs about $300 to incorporate in Delaware, and you don't have to live in DE to incorporate there. There are registered agents who will provide you a local address in DE for your corporation for a small fee every year (incorporating cheaply is one of Delaware's cottage industries -- a great number of US corporations are incorporated in Delaware, even ones that don't have a single office, factory or employee in that state. Yes, you can get sued. Whether they will win is the question.