The Diary Of A Mac Convert
Fed up of a Windows world full of crashes, adware, spyware, virus and gradual slowdown resulting in having to reformat every 6 months just to get a reasonably fast system, i had enough. I had a look around for alternatives, i used Linux for a year or more exclusively, which i was happy with. My PC was aging fast however and it became apparent i was in need of a hardware upgrade, here i faced my first dilemma, do i build a new desktop or go for the ease of portability and use of a laptop.
In the end the lure of portability and small form factor won out and i decided that a laptop would suit my needs best, i wouldn't need to play games on the laptop as i have consoles that i do (what limited) gaming on. My next task was to scout out a laptop that would fully suit my needs, now Linux has flakey laptop support so i would need to deeply research what i was going to buy if i were going to stick with Linux, or i could go back to the world of windows full of crashes and instability.
I had an iPod touch which i couldn't sync with Linux at the time as i was unsupported, i now felt like i wanted something that just 'worked', i no longer wanted to spent ages tinkering with my system, i now wanted something where i could be productive straight away without a lot of manual setting up and editing needed on my part. I loved my Ipod, its design, is ease of use, its functionality, this lead me onto looking into what computers Apple offered, I read a lot of reviews about Apples computers and often with marvelous write ups, my mind was now made up, i was going to make the switch to the land of Mac's.
I settled on a MacBook seems as they hadn't long been updated and offered fairly good value for money not to mention how stylish they looked. Now the decision was which model MacBook should i buy, i did some research and found out that the middle ranged MacBook was considered the best value with its extra cpu speed, extra hd space and built in dvd burner.
I placed my order on the 21st of December which was unfortunately too late for delivery before Christmas. By he time christmas was over i was itching to get my hands on my new MacBook and give it a whirl, i logged on to Apples tracking and it said estimated delivery date 27th December, i thought great! 27th came and went with no delivery, the next day came and i was now more excited than i was on Christmas day, it had arrived!
It had arrived in stylish minimalist packaging which i what i have come to expect from Apple, i quickly unpacked it all and marveled in its beauty and small form factor, it was a sight to behold, a much more attractive piece of kit compared to any laptop that i had seen before.
i turned it on an heard the opening greeting 'da-naaaaaaa', it then took less than 2 minutes to set it up with the setup wizard, that included getting connected to my wireless network. I was a little nervous as i had read about a few problems that some people were having with the wireless networking, connections dropping out constantly or just not working at all, luckily i have not experienced a single drop in connection yet throughout my extensive use of my MacBook.
I was now sat at the desktop of MacOSX, a foreign place for me to be in. First thing i did was launch Safari and check to see if my network was working properly it was. When i launched Safari it was not filling my whole screen, i pressed what i thought was the maximise button but it still didn't seem to stretch to fill he whole screen, so i dragged it manually to fill the whole screen, i later found out that the button is not a maxmise button but rather a best fit button. It took a bit of getting used to the Mac way of things, like the window toolbar not actually attached to the window but instead up the top of the screen at all times. Installing and uninstalling software was also a different, but easier experience than that of on Windows. I then setup iTunes and my music library and synced my iPod touch to it (which was A LOT quicker in Mac than on Windows), i then began to explore all the different applications that came preloaded with my Mac. iPhoto seems a very nice piece of software, i have already imported a lot of photos into it and organised them with ease, i then tried out iMovie and PhotoBooth both of which were excellent well polished pieces of software.
If one thing i would say about my Mac experience so far is that MacOSX and its applications are very well polished, look brilliant and provide excellent functionality with ease of use, i think the best sentence to describe my experience so far is 'it just works'. An operating system should not get in the way of you doing something (Windows) instead it should help you do what it is you need to do with minimal fuss, this is what MacOSX has given me and for that i can't praise it enough, i no longer have to deal with my computer hanging and not being responsive while doing things, i no longer have to worry about program crashes (let lone full computer crashes), i no longer have to concern myself with regularly having to run virus, adware and spyware scans just to maintain a clean system.
As a result i am a complete Mac convert and my next computer whenever i decide to upgrade will also be a Mac to replace this MacBook which i am currently in love with.
Thank you for reading.
Scott
in closing, thank you for the information on these forums as i read them extensively both before and after i got my MacBook.
