Of Macs and Men (and women)

Several major things have hit me recently causing me to feel uncomfortable in my current PC environment – <lj user="nicoletbn"> being a major cause of this. She linked me to the website <a href="http://www.randsinrepose.com"">Rands in Repose</a> where I read <a href="http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/cat_apple.html">a blog</a> about switching from PC to Mac. Typically the whole switching thing seemed pretty fake to me, simply more propaganda shoveled out by the <a href="http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=2002-07-12&res=l">Mac Elitists</a> throughout the web sphere. But something about this guy seemed very genuine and close to the heart; he reeked of being a hardcore PC guy.

I myself have been a PC chick since the dawn of time, programming BASIC on my old 9 MHz wonder machine with 640k ram and an EGA display. That progressed to the Pentium age, then Pentium II, then Athlon, and finally to P4 Mobile. I work for a multi-billion dollar game developer and publisher. My primary role involves disassembling PC’s, putting them together, and seeing if our games run on them. If you’ve bought a PCCD version of one of the products I’ve worked on and it doesn’t run, it can probably be blamed on me. Frankly, I know PC hardware inside and out. If it relates to gaming I probably know more than you and that guy next door.

<i>Why then would I even consider a Mac?</i>

Back in college was the only point in time when I could honestly say I had been “using” a Mac. By “using” I mean getting frustrated with and kicking repeatedly. These machines were pre-G3 PowerPC shitboxs running OS-I don’t care. Needless to say, this was the worse computer experience in my entire life.

<i>Why the hell would I even consider a Mac?</i>

I started becoming loosely interested in Macs again about the time the iBook clamshell units came out and quickly became the trendy new geek commodity. Sadly though I was a student living at home holding three jobs to pay tuition – so the Apple toys were a little out of my league. Macs were too much money and too much risk when a comparable PC counterpart could be had for far less and I’d at least know what the hell I was doing with it.

The fascination continued as different models released and I continually did the back and forth thing most PC enthusiasts do. I bashed Apple in-front of all my PC friends while downloading QuickTimes in private drooling over the latest stylish ad Apple released.

Then <lj user="nicoletbn"> came into my life... and she got Panther.

<lj user="nicoletbn"> is the only person I know closely that is either at my level of geekdom or higher. Her opinions matter to me and, since she grew up on Macs, her opinions usually come from a far different background than mine. When she all of a sudden takes her G4 out of the closet and spends more time on it than her PC, I start to take notice.

Then there’s that <a href="http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/cat_apple.html">Rands blog</a>. One major quote really hit me...

<i>I approached the senior architect as he was merrily typing away on his iBook. I sat next to him and nodded towards the translucent white box. He grinned; knowing exactly what I was asking, have reciting an answer I'm certain he constructed months ago.
"FreeBSD and the best windowing manager around."
I nodded, getting half of what he was saying. He continued, "FreeBSD, that's what the Darwin kernel is based on, is Unix and it's generally viewed as one of the more stable Unix implementations. Add the Macintosh window manager on top of that and you've got the power of Unix and the pleasure of the Macintosh."</i>

FreeBSD... I like FreeBSD. I like how stable it is. I like how all these really hardcore geeks use it. I don't like how hard it is to setup and use - Hence where the whole Apple thing comes in.

I've always had a certain admiration for Apple. I really respect companies that polish their products so well. Their products have always felt, more cohesive to me. To me that final polish is a very important step and it’s a sign of care in a product. It’s saying “yes this button is worth spending another day to work on just to get the shadow looking right” instead of scraping the idea and releasing something that doesn’t flow as well. Atmosphere, flow and style; three very important design elements to me.

In the PC world I always have this underlying feeling of a million different things from different people all held together with masking tape and post-it notes, somehow working, usually. Things are supposed to work together but they don’t have to. Some people polish their stuff but it’s usually ruined by others that don’t. It’s very hard to get a sense of unity on the PC platform and still manage to do the things you want. Note: Windows XP helped a lot to fix this up and I’m hoping Longhorn will improve the situation even more.

So here you have the polish of Apple, a candy shell if you will, and at the core one of the world’s most stable UNIX systems. I’m tempted.

So what the hell am I getting at here?

On Thursday I was approved for an Apple Loan. On Friday I called Apple, spec’d out a dual 1.8Ghz G5 and attached it to my account. All I need to do now is call back and say I want it. I gave myself the weekend to think it over but unless something drastic happens my mind is made up. On Monday I will place my order for my PowerMac and once it arrives, I will use it as my main computer at home.

It’s time for a change of pace. I’m sick of using a PC day in and day out. When I come home from work I want to play, have fun and enjoy my computing experience.