Since last summer I’ve been slowly interested in all things Apple because the more I think about it, the more I realize that their products really satisfies my needs and it does it in a way that simplifies my life. I’m also not really looking forward to using Vista, but that’s only part of the reason. I decided to write about my new fanaticism (as my dad calls it) as a way to understand more rationally why I decided to switch when Leopard comes out.
My first contact with Macs was in College, I was under shock that a computer could have a single button mouse but once the teacher showed us how to connect to the server and how to display the contextual menu everything was fine and clear and really easy to use and I had no trouble adapting to this new OS. Sadly, the computers were very cranky G3 that were running far too many high-tech softwares. They had software crashes (”L’application a quitté inopinément” is now a running joke among my TIM friends) and it became hell to see how often we could have them display the reboot OS error message written in 12+ languages. The computers were also used by students who hid their homework video source files maliciously all over the hard drive so as to not loose them. In retrospect, I can see that it was a fatal association. If only the computers were ghosted (is that a verb?) the way the PCs were. I’m guessing the IT guys weren’t too handy with anything other than Windows.
Then at my job I have a sort of dual desk shaped like a boomerang with a PC at one end and a Mac at the other. I’ve seen first hand how stable Macs can be in normal settings and how little maintenance I need to do compared to its neighbour. And saying it’s a normal setting is really not realistic. The mac runs hacked software that was installed before I arrived there and for it to run normally, the clock as to be set at a pre-1970 date! Yet it still works almost perfectly. And for me that’s really where it solves it : it works.
As for the disadvantages of owning I Mac, I find that most of them don’t apply much to me. I know I won’t be able to upgrade every single detail of my machine. But looking back, I never did before. I don’t even know what a motherboard looks like. Besides, I will be getting a laptop. It’s pretty hard to upgrade a laptop at home because of how everything is so snug. I also know that there will be few computer games that will run… but that is why I bought my playstation. I want to play on my console so that my computer can offer me less distractions when I work. Besides, Mac runs TONS of video games if I ever change my mind, including Diablo II the bane of my university existence. All of the softwares I use are platform compatible so that shouldn’t be a problem either. The price is a bit steep but I’m aiming for good specs that should age well. That is also something I noticed about the macs I saw around me : they work perfectly fine longer than equivalent PCs. And finally, it looks pretty dammit. It is a factor even if it’s not at the top of the list. I like things that work well primarily. If they also happen to look good, they totally win over something that also works yet looks ordinary.
EDIT : I forgot another disadvantage : the difficulty of finding hacks for very expensive softwares that I use such as Photoshop, Flash or Maya… Well I found the Student licensing program at university which lets me have the whole Creative Suite/Studio whatever for around 400$ which can then be updated for cheap when the new version comes out. It’s been a year now that I stopped downloading illegally and I really like it. I end up with only music I really like and I never have to search for super foreign codecs and players which keeps my computer faster. As for software I only update when my classes require me to (maya 7.5… thanks Lorien & Guillaume!) and you have to admit that nothing has dramatically changed in photoshop for a few years now. The only software I won’t be getting is Maya, because I plan on never using it again in my whole life, and if I do need to, it will still be on my old PC.
Finally, I’m impatiently waiting for the latest version of the operating system to come out. In the last years, a new version came out every year and now it will have been almost 2 years. It smells like major overhaul. It smells like it will be worth the wait. It also smells like Steve Jobs has a big surprise in his pocket. Leopard could actually be a fully fashioned OS XI and not some small upgrade. They managed to surprise the world with the iPhone, maybe leopard will also bring a lot of surprises. That would explain the deep mysteries shrouding the new apps. And seeing how most macs now come with a camera by default.. it makes me have insane dreams of waving my hands in front of the screen and the motion detecting would be used as an input to navigate just like the mouse. This is 2014 right? ;)