I never really told the story of why I switched to Mac, so I'll tell it now.
I learned to type before I could write, on an IBM PC. Macs were out of the question, and they were never marketed to children anyway. My dad's rule was golden: Macs were too expensive, and too incompatible with his library of Windows software. Most importantly, nobody wanted to make a serious investment on me, then a seven year-old geek with no need for his own machine. I knew my dad's copy of Windows though, inside and out. I knew how to get my school papers done on it, and I knew how to crash it beyond recovery. I knew Windows could be fairly stable, if I turned it off every night and started it fresh in the morning.
Needless to say, I remained in the Windows world through grade school, and sadly into middle and high school. I went through three Windows machines in eight years, two Dells and an HP. The Windows world treated me well, but only because I was religious when it came to my machine's security. When I finally got to college, I noticed an interesting phenomena. FIU's main computer lab had about fifty Dell machines and two, lonely Macs. The Dells, with their lab-crippled copies of Windows XP, were in constant use by Windows fans, yet there was always a Mac available and happy to work with me. I started to use the Macs when the Dells were busy. Then I started using a Mac even when there was a Dell available. The operating system was easy to learn, and I soon felt comfortable using a one-button mouse.
I liked what I was seeing on the Apple platform. The colorful icons called out to me, and the elegance of the individual applications put any version of a similar Windows application to complete shame. I learned about the Dock, Sherlock, Safari and the iLife programs. Then I fired up Terminal and learned the whole magic show was being driven by a version of Unix, an operating system that basically runs the Internet. It came to the point where I abandoned the Dell in my bedroom, Mac OS X (Mack Oh-Es Ten) became my choice. Friends who knew me from my PC days were awed at my sudden change of heart. Fellow Mac fans took me in and were friendly with a newbie like myself. That spring, after a school year of using Lab Macs, I was ready to order my very own Mac. It took the help of a few veteran Mac users to push me over the edge, but I was an easy target. I chose a shimmering iBook G4 laptop, well suited for an FIU student like myself. Complete with a generous 60 gigabyte hard drive, 640 megabytes of RAM, a dazzling 12.1" screen, and wireless networking, I was set.
The switch was smooth and painless. My data copied over beautifully, and OS X's System Prefs were helpful in setting up the more obscure control options. Mac OS X retained support for all of my old Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations, digital photos, MP3s, email messages, address book entries and web bookmarks. For every program I used in Windows, I found a suitable alternative. More often than not, the Mac version of the program was far superior to the Windows variant in terms of usability and stability. Best of all, I was now living in a system with no need for virus protection, no adware and no email worms. Stability is amazing, I have yet to crash OS X. Once in awhile, a poorly-written application will crash, but the beautiful part about OS X is that one crashed application will not crash the entire system. Even better, recovering from a crash doesn't require rebooting, just Force Quit the error-prone application.
I have grown to love my iBook, and others around me love it, too. People who pass me in the library admire the shimmering white finish with its illuminated, beaming Apple logo and breathing sleep indicator- design characteristics only Apple products bring to the table.
I have never felt happier with a computer. I felt so strongly about Apple's products that I sent my Dell PC off to see the world on eBay this past summer. The Dell's replacement is a magnificent Power Mac G5 with Dual 1.8Ghz processors. Though it was the most expensive computer I've ever purchased, it has taken everything I loved about the iBook to a desktop level, right down to the eye-catching, wide-screen 20" Apple Cinema Display. Everybody should have the pleasure of Mac ownership. Now that Apple has released a desktop machine (the Mac mini) for the comfortable price of $499, the price excuse is LONG gone.
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