It all started in Room 317, Bessey Hall, when Dr. Danielle DeVoss stressed for an entire class period the importance of being able to work "across platforms" in our half-Mac, half-PC lab. That was the day I touched my first Mac. From afar, it looked almost the same as any other computer: a monitor, a tower, a mouse ... how bad could it be? But as soon as I bypassed the Log In screen, I was thrown out of my comfort zone and into the foreign world of "i" -- iChat, iTunes, and what was up with the one-button mouse? And the blue smiling face taking the place of my Start Menu? And the where's the Internet? I quickly logged out, and started coming to class earlier and earlier, securing my PC and my sanity for the duration of our class.
My next Mac experience didn't happen until JRN200, at the end of my sophomore year. Class was once again held in a lab, only this time, all the computers were Macs. I was so appalled that I considered dropping the class entirely and expanding my mind with an "elective." I stuck it out, though, and eventually cracked the Mac code -- stumbling upon the Internet (a compass? really, Safari, you thought I'd figure that out on my own?), clunking through Finder, and begrudgingly familiarizing myself with the obviously sub par OSX system. Our acquaintance grew, but we were no where near friendship -- mostly because I didn't see the point in learning anything beyond the necessities, as PCs dominated the marketplace, and were used the in the majority of homes and businesses.
Little did I know, however, that my relationship with Macs was just at its beginning stages. Senior year rolled around much quicker than anyone anticipated, and my last semester of college I found myself in the midst of a Mac bombardment. With the release of the MacBookPro (which was all the craze with everyone in the PW major), a semester spent mastering InDesign in another all-Mac lab, my entire family family purchasing iPods, and every single emo blogger passing on the "What's On Your iTunes?" quiz ... there was no escaping it. I was trapped. And it didn't help that my Dell desktop was on the fritz. So for five weeks, I expended all the energy I could muster into iHating, iResisting, and the like. Until the day of my epiphany, when I realized that Macs weren't all that bad. In fact, it was infinitely easier to open heavier applications and toggle back and forth on a Mac than on a PC (see: the 2.16GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor and "performance-enhancing 4MB of shared L2 cache"). The graphic-based navigation was no longer confusing -- it was actually very intuitive and creative. The breaking point was learning of the MacBookPro's back-lit keyboard the same day that I read the horrendous reviews for Windows Vista. After bordering the line for the last three months of my college career, I officially switched sides.
My 13" white Macbook arrived on May 4, and hasn't left my side since. Here is the scoop, as far as I see it...
The mega-cool features:
--The "front row", which essentially transforms your laptop into an all-in-one stereo, DVD player, and image viewer, complete with a remote!
--Extreme wireless capabilities ... if there's a signal, my Macbook will find it. Apple's boasting of the easiest connections via AirPort are right on the money ... and apparently, there is an Internet sharing option? They have my curiosity...
--Performance in general: the sports car analogy is the best I've heard.
--Shapeshifter: making your Macbook 100% customizable, in ways I've never seen on a PC system.
--A built-in iSight camera ... while it encourages the narcissistic Myspace culture that my generation has been stuck on for years, it's also pretty damn cool. I have video and photo capabilities at my fingertips.
The still-getting-used-to features:
--In a period of three weeks, my Macbook has froze up four times, all of which happened while performing routine tasks (opening average sized docs, surfing the web, etc) ... all four times, my Mac-using friends had no explaination, and I'm still clueless.
--I'll be frank: I miss Internet Explorer in its truest form (I know, I know ... quiet the groans).
Overall score: Mac wins with +5, as compared to the PC's +2.
Now, don't get me wrong: I'm not a die-hard, my-computer-doesn't-need-Norton-because-it-can't-get-viruses Mac Person. I am, however, a very satisfied Macbook user who loves her iTunes, her graphics-driven menus, her handy mini cam, and her 2GB of RAM to make heavy apps run smoothly and seamlessly ... although I do frequent the Dell for the tabless IE and familiar Start menu. Hey, some things just never change.
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