Up until 2004 I was a hardcore Windows OS user. I built computers on the side (which I miss to some degree) and was pretty satisfied with XP. I had a Dell Inspiron and swore up an down on it. My wife was a life time Mac user and would always pick at me
I usually made fun of her cute little 12" she used - at this point 2 years old. I had owned my Dell for 1 year.
On that fateful one year point, I had purchased a DV camcorder and was making movies of our newborn. I was putting the finishing touches on my very first video. As some of you may know, when your learning a new program and new techniques, it takes a long time to actually edit something worthwhile to watch. I had been working on this particular video for about a week.
As I was adding one more new transition, I got the dreaded blue screen of death and my computer dieded. It died in a spectuacular way by taking my hard work and running it through the grinder and corrupting everything. I had been having problems with both hardware and software on and off ever since I had a PC and that was the straw that broke it's back. 10 minutes later I had a BTO G4 15" on it's way. 4 months later my Dell died due to hardware issues.
Currently I am running a 2011 15" SSD HR macbook pro and it runs both OS X and Win 7 quite well. Nothing like being in OS X and needing to be in windows and it takes less than 25 secs to be working in the windows enviroment. Hell it took a minute to boot windows in parallels on my last macbook pro but now I can bootcamp in half the time.
Little things make this machine shine where the other manufacturers fail at.
1. Bloatware - still exists. Why HP/Dell etc think they need to plaster their 3rd party apps all over the place before I even get the computer boggles my mind.
2. Expose' - brilliant idea. Combined with "Spaces" - multitasking is a snap in OS X. No convuluted button pushing to get to a window - No alt tab or any of that mess. Just mouse to a corner to open all windows, mouse to another corner to open spaces and blam choose the running program.
3. Installation - One stop drop and erase (for the most part). Some programs require "installation" but most just drop right in and to get rid of the program you just drag it to the trash. Simple. Some programs are sinister on how they install but you just have to pay attention to those. Rule of thumb - big ticket programs are like this.
4. Backlit keyboard on a laptop.
5. The laptop doesn't creak, crackle, pop or flex when moving it. Solidly built. Could use it as a blunt force weapon in an emergency.
6. Dual OS's -mac can run both and run both well. I like Win 7. Great job MS for finally catching up to some degree. Apple was there before but still good that you got there. Only niggle I have at this moment with Win 7 is that it appears my color pallet threw up all over my monitor. There is a balance with flashyness and usability. But it's a minor niggle.
7. Track pad - the holy grail of trackpads. I can only imagine the testing that went into that to make it work as well as they did. I love the mouse. Great for gaming. But when I am just working...the trackpad rules.
8. The wireless just f'in works. Apple got this right out of the gate. I hated dealing with my router vs. computer.
9. Remember the 12" Powerbook G4 I mentioned in the beginning of this mass of text? Ya it still works and is still performing other tasks. I can think of no other laptop I have owned lasting 8 years. It has a few dents on the lid but it still works. Now to get an ssd in there to make it scream
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I still have the following laptops and they all still work: 15" Powerbook, 12" Powerbook, 15" Core duo Macbook pro, 13" black Macbook, and the current workhorses: 15" i7 and 13" i5 2011s. Notice the trend of his and hers
