My Mac

My Mac's ScreenWell, as you know, I’ve had my iPhone for quite awhile and I absolutely adore it. What I didn’t know was that it was going to be my “feeder drug” into the world of OSX Leopard and a MacBook. Up until November of last year, I’d always been a Windows user with a liberal sprinkling of Linux here and there - I had 2 hard drives for my Dell XPS laptop, one with XP and one with Ubuntu Linux. For the most part, I’d been using Linux for day to day stuff and using XP when I wanted a gaming fix. That all changed.

I can’t claim to be a total Apple newbie since I used them extensively while in high school back in the ’80’s, but I’d had a long dry spell until I picked up an iPhone. I won’t rehash my experiences with the iPhone since you can read that elsewhere here in my blog, but using the iPhone and completely enjoying the experience got me looking for more. iPhone uses a slightly modified version of OSX Leopard, the operating system used in modern Macs...that led me to where I am today, equipped with a black Intel-equipped MacBook.

I picked up my MacBook in November of ’07. It has a 2.2 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo processor and 2 gigs of ram running OSX 10.5.2. Now, I’m not going to step through my unboxing experiences and all of that like others might; let’s cut to the chase eh? Let’s just say that my affection for my MacBook is now equal to that of my iPhone! It’s absurdly easy to use and INTERESTING...whereas my Windows laptop is somewhat dull and unexciting. I guess you could say that I’m completely tied to my MacBook now, lol.

Was it hard to get used to after using Windows? No, not really....pretty easy actually. Sure, there are a lot of things that work differently in OSX when compared to XP, but it is really not too hard to figure it out. Perhaps my extensive use of Linux tempered me a bit, but I had very little trouble learning how to do stuff right away. A typical Windows user might get thrown by “mounting” disks and installing/uninstalling programs, but once you have a basic grasp of things, you’ll find it’s easier to get to work and be productive in some fashion than it is on a Windows machine. Out of the box, the Mac is useful whereas a PC might need a number of extra application installs to get to a usable point. That’s my opinion of course...maybe you’re one of those who live for Wordpad...anyway...

To date, I’ve experienced no operating system crashes....none! My XP machine at work tends to crash at least once a week. Now I have had application crashes on my Mac, but unlike many apps in Windows, they don’t pull the whole operating system with them and require a reboot...you just shut the app down and re-open it...that’s it. The other thing that I’ve found extremely valuable is the Time Machine backup solution that’s built in. It will quietly backup the Mac without getting in your way or slowing things down. I have my Time Machine backing up to a USB drive on my local network...it just can’t get any easier than that.

But I can’t live without Windows you say? I can and have for many months now. One biggie people talk about is MS Office...well, it does exist for the Mac you know, so scratch that. I’ve been using the iWork office suite, handling MS Office docs and spreadsheets without too much trouble. But you know, if you’re really desperate, you can always use another built-in feature of the Mac...BootCamp. BootCamp allows you to dual boot your Mac between OSX and Windows, simply choose your poison when you start your Mac up. There’s a few reports on the net claiming that XP actually runs faster on Mac hardware than it does on PC hardware..funny stuff. Anyway, if you don’t want to be stuck dual booting, you can always use a virtual machine program like VMWare Fusion or Parallels to run Windows WITHIN OSX. I have VMWare on my Mac and it runs XP as fast as my old Dell laptop ran it...problem is that I just don’t need it since I do everything natively in OSX now.

The other thing I hear is “Well, there’s no program to do this or that in OSX!”. Truth is, there probably is. A lot of the big name software folks do write applications for the Mac, such as Quicken. I actually considered Quicken, but chose Moneydance instead and haven’t looked back. You might have to do a little Googling and some footwork to chase down some special app for some particular purpose, but the reality is that most typical PC users will find that OSX has everything you need already built-in. Internet browsing, email, chat, photo, movie, music, and video management are all built in to name a small few.

Lastly, I’d like to say that I find my Mac exciting to use! Yep, that’s right. It’s amazing how much stuff is actually ON my Mac by default. Seems like I learn of a new “cool” thing on a daily basis. I can’t say that about Windows...perhaps because I’ve used it for years or because Windows truly is a dry experience when you first load it up...I don’t know, lol. Seems like one is more inclined to find something creative to do with a Mac since everything’s there, waiting to be used....you just have to click the icon and see what happens! This website probably wouldn’t have sprung up had it not been for me playing around with iWeb one boring night, lol. I didn’t really need yet another website as I barely keep up with the other ones, but hey, it’s just too easy from a Mac...what can I say, heh heh.

If you’re on the fence or even thinking about getting a Mac, do! I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised with what you find...