A former Windows PC snob tells his tale of being seduced over to the Mac side. Though, as a gamer, he still needs and loves his Windows PC, he found space in his life for a powerbook, and opened up a door into a different way of using computers.Earlier this year I asked a friend of mine what kind of computer he had at home. When he sheepishly told me that he had a G4, I laughed out loud and teased him about having a "Fisher Price Toy." He shot back with, "Mac OS X is Unix, you know." As a matter of fact, I hadn't known. I thought he was kidding at first, but then when I saw he was serious I stopped laughing. At that point, my outlook on the computer world changed.
In 1995 I was a straight Microsoft/Intel guy. I pointed and laughed at stores selling the latest model Mac. There I was, slapping my knee, cracking jokes about their silly-looking girly colors and underpowered CPU's made by a company that makes cell phones. I laughed every time someone mentioned AppleTalk and told them to use what the world was using, TCP/IP. I essentially ignored the whole Mac culture, because at that time I was only around people who were playing Quake and running Windows. I remember the purchase lines for Windows 95 when it first came out. I was reading Boot Magazine for years and I was considered serious PC geek. You can imagine how strange I felt when I started to look at the Mac differently. It's like seeing a girl you made fun of in school and now she is hot 10 years later. Before that time, the only Apple I ever used was my Aunt's Apple 2e and her 16MHZ Mac. I had to say; it was impressively fast at that speed running a GUI, when Windows needed something more powerful to run the same thing. The problem was she had only essential programs to use on it. No games, and none of my familiar apps. When Steve Jobs wasn't running Apple, the company seemed to disappear from public view, watched by only true Mac Addicts.
So let's fast forward to 2000 when I saw the first iPod. This is the best little gadget that Apple has ever made. My CD's are safe from damage and I can carry tons of songs everywhere I go. Now that I have one, I don't know how I could've lived without it. I'm in a cover band and I can bring up any song we need to learn without lugging all my CD's. My softening up towards Apple had begun.
Things started getting stranger when Apple began selling their products at CompUSA and I remember staring at their new PowerBooks and thinking, "If I ever get a laptop, I'd like one like that". I didn't like PC notebooks, because they used too much power and I never liked the designs from the PC companies. They seemed like large, clumsy pieces of plastic to me. The looks of the PowerBook are striking with a pure metallic look and a slot drive for a CD-ROM\CD-RW. When my conversion began, I found that I really liked the new OS. It didn't look or feel like an old Mac. The cool genie effect to minimize windows and to my delight it used all the same key commands I learned at my Aunt's house years prior.
I recently took up a study on Mac platforms to take my AppleCare Technician exam. When I mentioned this to my PC friends, they would tell me I'm wasting my money. "No one cares about a dying platform", they said. It doesn't look like it's dying to me. Apple's financial health in 2004 has risen to one of the most profitable in about 7 years. The reason I wanted to try this was for universities and schools that still use Macs for art and design classes. I felt if I got Mac under my belt I would be useful in repairing them. In truth, I've gotten some good job interviews for my Mac knowledge on my resume. If there is potential of earning a living with that knowledge, it's certainly a good idea to learn it. I'm doing the same thing in the Linux Dept just in case the world might go with Linux instead of Windows. So learning about Apple products certainly couldn't hurt. Little did I know that I would grow to enjoy working on the platform. I even applied for a job at Apple. No, I really wanted to. (Maybe I can get discounts) So far I've sold Macs to a dozen people and I haven't received any angry phone calls. People have told me they enjoy their quality and top-notch customer service. When you call Apple you don't get routed to some know-nothing cubicle drone in a far-off land. You get people that know the system inside and out. The OS and the hardware were built in the same place. That is something customers appreciate.
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