The nail side of the thumb

I had a different title for this post, but without a picture to make the quote effective, I scrapped it in favor of just posting this ramble sans pic. Yes, my Canon SD10 does not seem to have survived our recent trip to Moab, it no longer functions, and on top of that it ate the pic I had for this post. How sad is that? I should really get on the ball and get a camera to take pictures with besides my cell phone.

To those of you who don’t relate in the least to computers and geekdom, feel free to pass this entry over. The essence of the entry is that Sloanie is now a bonafide Apple whore. Yep, it’s true. Nearly a full-fledged Mac advocate. Marianne is just amazed when she hears comments from me about “I don’t know why anyone would buy a PC” or comment on how I want people to use Macs rather than PCs. “I’m just baffled at this complete turnaround”. she says. I don’t know how well written this is, I wrote it a week ago or so, but if you’re severely bored… read on. Even this lengthy wordy rambling post doesn’t fully explain why I’m such a fan.

Not too long ago I browsed through all my old blog entries. I realized I had on several occasions blogged about Apple, Macs, iPods, and so on, frequently making the inevitable comparisons to their counterparts in the PC and/or electronics world (iPod vs. Sony, PC vs. Mac, etc). And though there was an interest in Apple that was visible from the mere fact that I was blogging about it, usually the conclusions of such blog entries were to mock Apple or express some degree of dissatisfaction or disapproval.

A couple week my first Mac arrived at my house. When I say my first Mac, I mean the first one I’ve paid for with my own money and will use for personal use, not one that I use simply because my job requires it. So yes, this is a conversion story of sorts. It had to be documented, because for a computer geek, someone born and raised in the PC world, it is a momentous thing. They say it’s a cult, I can kind of understand why now (and yes, Mar likes to refer to it as such).

I admit it. I’ve become a fan. Comments I’ve made in the past were true from the perspective I spoke from. Apple has been working on me for quite some time, me coming from being raised in a PC world. I was happy building custome machines and installing Windows on them. I hated Mac OS 8 and OS 9, I thought they were ugly and unintuitive (which they were for a Windows user, of course). OS X came out, based on Unix, with a lot of potential for power. And it looked pretty, too– no more ugly OS. But I wasn’t sold. Early versions of OS X were as stable or less stable in my opinion than Windows XP. The whole “security” issue didn’t mean much to me either, as I was always a careful browser anyways (I still don’t care for Firefox).

So I had to use OS 9 for a year at work, and I got used to it. It wasn’t so bad. Then came the G5 and OS X Panther. Ooh, shiny, pretty new G5. But with 2 processors and very little memory, it might as well have been my old OS 9 box (even at 1gb it’s still starved for memory, having only 512 per processor). Then things started to change in 2005. Apple introduced OS X Tiger, a nice step up, I feel handicapped when I have to use Panther at school. Then in June they announced they’d be transitioning to Intel-based processors. This was huge. I don’t typically buy Intel (It’d have been cool if they went with AMD), but either way, it meant it was quite possible that one would be able to run both Windows and OS X on the same machine.

On a side note, I’ve heard it asked over and over by Mac purists, zealots, and even just honest people that don’t get it– “why would you want to run Windows on a Mac?” As if OS X was the ultimate OS. Though I prefer OS X for most things, the fact is that Windows has a lot greater support and inevitably more software available on it, especially software not available on the Mac platform. For people like me, it primarily means one thing: games.

In any case, after that announcement last June, I decided I wouldn’t mind buying a Mac with Intel processor if it meant I could use Windows as well. Feels like cheating almost– I get the best of both worlds.

I also decided last summer just to get a degree in graphic design, since I was already half-way there and I’d have to back-track a bit to get a degree in any of the other majors I had done stints in. Previously I had felt like I could do design work as well on a PC as a Mac. To an extent that might be true, but in 2 of 3 locations I was working I was using Macs, and though the basic file formats translate just fine, fonts do not, and as I got into some more serious design classes, it became an issue. There are a handful of other issues as well where OS X just seems better suited to that kind of work.

Then there’s the overall experience, the intangibles that you can’t put a place specific monetary value on. I recognized this first with the iPod… the ease of use and software integration are just great. Take the Airport Express for example. Usually when you buy a peripheral for a PC, especially one where networking is involved, there’s going to be a certain amount of fussing and setup to get it working right, and usually there are glitches or problems. With the Airport, I plugged it into the wall, ran the setup utility, it recognized it and let me set it up, and I was good to go. Now every computer that has iTunes recognizes that Airport Express and can send music to it. There’s automatically a little option at the bottom of iTunes to do so. Slick. So the bottom line here is that Apple actually makes a great product and very cool toys, and on top of that, their software has matured to a point that I can not only be satisfied using a Mac but excited about it. Out of the box, a Mac just comes with so much better software than a Windows PC does, especially for managing photos, music (perhaps this is just my opinion), editing video, creating DVDs, web pages, etc. They’re not professional grade, but they are excellent consumer grade products that allow people to be creative and do a lot of things easily and neatly. I think Microsoft is playing catch-up here (and granted there are some good programs you can get free on PC to do some of these things, but there’s no seamless integration, it’s just not as convenient as they don’t all work together seamlessly and don’t come preinstalled). And if anyone asked me to recommend them a computer I’d send them to get an Apple, I think they’re just that much easier to use and maintain, not to mention less prone to spyware and other crap that PCs have problems with. Like I say, I can avoid those myself but I often get asked to help other PC users deal with their problems because they don’t know how to avoid that crap.

So January 2006, Apple announces their first Intel products, one of them being an updated Powerbook called a “MacBook Pro” (ok so the name is a little lame at first, but oh well). I pulled the trigger. Dollar for dollar the machine is competitive if not a better value than similar hardware manufactured by other companies. Throw in the fact that I can’t get student discounts on those other brands and it’s a no-brainer 😉

And yes, they have figured out how to get Windows onto an Intel Mac, it’s only a matter of time as to getting all the bugs sorted out before I go ahead and do that with my Mac. Granted I’ll be using OS X most of the time, but there may be occassion now and then to boot into Windows 😉 I do feel like I’m cheating, like I’m switching teams without having to pay any penalties. But to be honest, until now Apple just hasn’t been compelling enough. Right now I’d buy one even if it wouldn’t run Windows, this is just a perk.

So there, I got it out of my system– I’ve moved over to the dark side, if you will. I’m an Apple whore.