Well… I’m finding myself in the awkward position of having to defend Macs after YEARS of inherent dislike and PC support. Many of my friends have been trying to discourage me from getting anything Apple or Mac related which is exactly what I would have done a few months ago if someone told me they were going to buy a Mac. But after NCSS and my experience with newer Apple hardware and Snow Leopard, I can’t really think of anything to hold against Macs aside from price.
I’ve decided that I just can’t hold view and that perhaps I should buy what suits my requirements. I still dislike the iPhone OS and probably would go Android over iOS due to the limitations (that have been somewhat fixed in iOS 4 – multitasking, folders etc) but I personally think that a MacBook would work for me.
So I should probably try and explain it a bit I guess.
To do this, we go into my past as a primary school student in Year 3 (when I started getting interested in computers). My experience for the next 3 years would be Mac OS 9.. yes, that POS (opinions may vary here) that would freeze or crash everytime you sat down too hard near it. I became very familiar with the little triangle restart button on the iMacs and pressing that stupid Force Quit combination key – Command+Option+Shift+Esc, who the HELL came up with that combination! Virtually impossible to do! As well, I got used to Mac software which at the time was a really basic iMovie, iTunes, and Netscape Navigator (shudder).
At the end of Year 6, the school upgraded to Mac OS X 10.something which came with a shiny new UI and the DOCK! Ohh… was that impressive, afraid my experiences with the early OS X was not all the brilliant either, classic mode (shudder). Moving onto high school, I was in a 100% Windows environment and never really had to deal with Macs again, I believe that around this time, I upgraded to Windows XP from that bag of sick called Windows ME.
This Windows environment and my initial horrible experience with Mac OS 9 put me off Macs for aggesss. I did try the Mac life briefly in Year 9 when I borrowed my friends iBook G4 with OS X Tiger on it however I found two problems:
- It was PPC based which I did not like
- Tiger was crap
So Apple decide to release computer with Intel chips but by this stage I was going to be getting my own computer soon and I still had a really bad Mac after taste in my mouth after all those years. I got me a really good PC for the money (Quad core, 4GB RAM, 24″ LCD).
So along I tramp to NCSS where a significant majority of people there are MacBooks (James Curran!) and I got to use that 15″ MBP for a fair while. Snow Leopard and the hardware have moved on significantly since I last tried Macs was my final conclusion. I was in Sydney for a while after that and wandered down to the Apple shop and had a play with the smaller 13″ MBP. Apple release the newer 13″ MBP’s and it’s near tax time for my parents… things just seemed to add up I guess.
My reasoning for a MacBook!
PS: The only thing I liked about OS 9 was nanosaur and the fact that it was easily hacked and I locked the teachers out 🙂