Mac Mark

I am not a Mac fanboy.

I converted to Apple as my primary machine of choice about 2 years ago and it was a long drawn out decision mostly tied to the pricing issue.  I was on the verge of picking up an HP notebook but then the machine I had chosen was reportedly experiencing massive hard drive failures out of production.

One big deciding factor was my Dad who had bought one for home and reported very positively on his experience.  He mentioned that he was even converting to Macs at work also and that's when I knew it was more than just a novelty to him -- my Dad's gadget fandom is becoming stuff of family legend.

I do agree that they are expensive, compared to what one can get out of a similarly featured PC laptop (even with a larger screen) but in my opinion they are worth it.  For over two years, I am getting the same consistently functional experience with my Macbook and I think consistency wins for me.

The classic Mac ads where the PC is John Hodgman and the Mac is Justin Long are kind of indicative of the sort of douchey fanboy crap that most PC people hate.  Yes, they look cool...but no you don't look cool because of your Mac.  It's about image and here is where the comedy really starts in the ads.

Anyone watching television lately has seen the "I'm a PC and Windows 7 was my idea" ads that Microsoft has rolled out like the subtle steamroller that they are.  Does anyone else read the subtext of the ad?  Microsoft ain't taking the fall for this one; it was all your fault if your operating system has a meltdown.  No, it couldn't possibly be the fact that you consider your new software as a constant work in progress...

Yes Macs have "proprietary" software and the iEverything is a wee bit tiresome to some, but I prefer that type of uniform propriety over the PCs license-o-rama.  Look at your average brand new laptop computer of any kind (Sony, Toshiba, Acer, HP, Dell et cetera) and you'll find a bunch of "partnered" icons already set up on your desktop.  You'll be offered trials for programs and websites all trying to reel you into their clutches.  A Macbook has a little hokey "Welcome to your better life" intro video and then you have an elegantly almost blank slate for you to fill in as you please.

I am a mark for Apple, I fully admit it, but I'm a pragmatist who was converted and there is a big difference.  It really is based on your sense of preference, and aptitude with a computer.  I can navigate around a PC environment as I have decades of experience doing so, but I found that I could get more out of my computing life by switching over.

Apple might be the smaller of the two computing giants, but they are usually the one coming out earlier with the better and more calculated risks.  The iPhone and the smaller sized Macbook (in my opinion) changed the whole market in a few ways, leading to the advent of "net books", tablet PCs and the touchscreen phone bonanza that we see now.  The iPod changed the way we listen to and buy music in 2002, and it took until almost 2007 for Microsoft's Zune to "compete".