The Non-Switch

This summer I simplified my work environment by doing something I’ve wanted to do for years — use one computer for everything, specifically a Mac.  This meant getting a portable powerful enough to handle the variety of tasks I’m called on to do.  That meant a Macbook Pro.

Now don’t get me wrong.  I’m not a Mac snob or fanatic.  I’ve done most of my design work over the past ten years on Windows-based machines and I was quite happy with the XP-based Sony Vaio I’ve used for much of the past 4 years.  But with the monstrosity known as Windows Vista looming (my wife’s laptop runs this and I do not like it, too many network and peripheral issues) and a desire to work on a powerful computer that “just works”, I happily saved up my pennies and ordered my new laptop.

Now I’m Mac-only and quite happy about it.

But its not really a switch.  I bought my iBook G3 in 2003 as a portable alternative to my desktop set-up intending it to be an entertainment machine.  E-books, web surfing,  portable DVD player, journaling… that sort of thing, but I ended up using it to code our websites.  It became a workhorse and it was really very hard to replace.  I honestly was sad about it and dragged my heels for almost a full year before reconciling to the fact that it just did not have the power to handle video well.

But the iBook was not the first Apple computer I used with regularity.  In fact, I first learned how to code on an Apple IIe in high school.  I still remember taking that skinny textbook on “computing” home with me after our first class, devouring it in one sitting and returning to school the next day knowing more than the poor instructor who got stuck teaching bored seniors how to use these new-fangled doodads.  Of course,  I spent more time that year writing programs to manage our class “Killer” tournament than attempting to create something productive (this would not bode well for my future as a programmer) but I do remember my introduction to personal computers fondly.

Two decades would pass before I could afford a Mac of my very own, but in that time, thanks to the Penn State computer lab system and an old girlfriend who also liked Macs, I had access to the spectrum of personal computers released by Apple throughout the 1980’s and into the early 1990’s.  Then, around the time of the first conference we ran for NCDD, a kind hearted soul in California donated the Powerbook so we could make sure the websites we were creating was compatible with OS 8 & 9 Macs.  It came in really handy.

So now I’m Mac-only once again, moving my new laptop to whatever corner of the house I feel like working in at the moment, and loving it.  Mac OS X is so accessible, so easy to use (and the latest Windows “so the opposite”) I’m confident I picked the right time to settle into a new computing routine.