A lot of Mac switchers who drank the Jobs Koolaid tend to have a several-months interval before reflecting on the before-after horseplay. I intended to do it after three months, meaning I'd have to sign on to the Magical Mystery Tour on octboer 10th, but at that point I lacked the spine to blog, plus I was busy.
So it goes: I've been a Switcher for nearly four months now, and the effects are disturbing.
It should go without no introduction that I have never been much of an Apple fanboy. I loathed the machines during my stay at the academy of arts, I stayed around for the funeral around, give or take, 1997 right before Steve jobs took control of the complicated clown car accident that was Apple Computer Inc. at the time. Then I kept a lopsided, skeptical eye at what it has become right now.
I planned to jumped ship after the switch to Intel architecture, which gradually gave us Boot Camp, better bangs per buck and the promise of one hell of a hardware & software combo. I waited a while, since ATI hardware has lost my fancy after tanking 9700 Pro cards (right outside the warranty), weird X1600 performance and the fact that Linux and ATI never really managed to play in a non-volatile way.
Because yes, I went into that Mac store with black-shirted morons for a laptop that had enough GPU horsepower to suit me, and run three different Operating Systems -including Linux. I could get a laptop with a more dinky feel with two out of three for a fraction of the price, but I really wanted the unholy trinity and a laptop that looked like the designers actually gave a damn about how their product would turn out to be.
Take note that I do call the Store employees morons because honestly, when you talk to the regular Macstore employee, it would appear that the most important asset to the job is being able to fit your ham-sized neck through an L-sized Apple shirt. I've never heard such horseshit about such a limited line of hardware. One would think they could memorize at least a few facts about the few types of keyboards, mice and computers in the goddamn store. No such luck. I was baffled at the utter lack of information they could sling at me.
The first knee-jerk reaction was to install the Boot Camp beta and make sure Windows was there. Two weeks later, save for Corel Draw X3, I had all but dropped Windows. Most of the stuff can be done through Parallels and only for demos I tend to drop back to Boot Camp. It's astonishing how much I enjoy the OS X part of my laptop.
A stern object lesson in how much Windows lacks elegance you take for granted in OS X was the switching between being on the road (just the laptop) and returning home. I have a desk with a Dell 24" display and a bunch of devices, including a simple usb hub, mouse and keyboard. OS X just goes on to business and introduces me with the display and the added usb mayhem as if it's yesterday evening. Windows lets me do the "I'm installing stuff" dance again and forces me to spend time to reconfigure my displays to operate properly. Just because I was naive enough to use my laptop on the road. I can think of better things to do when coming home.
A lot of the other stuff pleases me too, but this sticks out like a sore thumb. Linux and OSX have absolutely no trouble with my dynamic setup. The only things that stop me from using Windows are my unholy love for Corel Draw, Picasa not being OSX native yet and the bizarre joy I get from using Jeskola Buzz.
Other than that, this is a platform I thoroughly enjoy handing a kidney, arm and limb for. Let's see if the novelty wears off.
Labels: apple, computers, rants, zealots
