I’m not sure if it’s the medication or the Sprite, but I’m finally starting to like my Mac. For those of you who don’t know the story, sit right back and you’ll hear a tale, a tale a fateful switch.
I guess you could say I’m one of those “pre-Switch” switchers, though if I hadn’t bought the Mac before those idiotic commercials started, I would still be typing on a PC right now. Six months ago, I decided it was time to change. I felt like I was moving into a more graphic frame of mind, with my photography and all, and I had always found Macs interesting.
I had very limited experience with the Macintosh, since I’ve used a PC for about eleven years. Ahhh… Windows 3.1…. Once I moved to California, the whole Apple clique thing started to become clear to me. Back home in west Texas at the time, there wasn’t much of anything going on relating to computers, so I hadn’t experienced the whole cultural computer rift between Macs and PCs.
Despite many of the flaky people drawn to Macs, I was always quite intrigued. I’m not one of those die-hard Microsoft haters, but I do have my opinions on their specific products. I fought tooth and nail against using MSIE up until a couple of years ago. Never ran ’98 or ME, skipped straight from ’95 to 2000 and I kept XP far from my doorstep. A Mac seemed like the next logical step, right?
So back in May I made the leap. Got me a big honkin’ desktop and an iPod. Then I realized that there were programs I used on the PC that I needed. A lot of programs. Hey whaddaya know? I forgot all about the compatibility thing. At least half of my usual software wasn’t made for the Mac. I was intent on using OSX, so that meant I couldn’t use my printer or scanner. Crap. Oh, and that new D60 camera I just got? It doesn’t support OSX either. Maybe early next year, they’re telling us.
That was just the start of it all. Inconsistent network connections, weird new commands to learn and everything put in strange place. In one of those Switch commercials, a guy mentions how horrible the Blue Screen of Death is and how the Mac doesn’t do that. He’s right – the Mac has kernal panics. Mine had lots of ’em.
Then I hear that there’s an upgrade in the works. In fact, it’s going to be released soon. Ooooo – here it is! Jaguar! And all I have to do is pay $129 for it. Excuse me? I’ve had this crappy OS for a couple of months and you tell me I have to pay another $129 to make it work? Oh, and not only that, but you’ve doubled the iPod size and are selling it for the same price I bought my dinky 10 gig at. the same 10 gig iPod I have to keep deleting music off of so I can put on new songs. Lovely.
So I was angry for quite awhile. I’m still quite miffed at times actually. I still haven’t upgraded the OS, mainly because I can be stubborn at really idiotic times. I’m finally starting to figure it all out, though. Thanks to the Screen Savers and David Pogue’s Mac OS X: The Missing Manual, I’m starting to figure out how to make it do more things I want it to. Endless screaming and thrashing about have helped some as well.
Here I am – a Mac User. I don’t know how long it’ll take me to really become one of them. I like to think I’m a little more open-minded than that. Sure, Microsoft products suck, but so do Apple’s. Okay, maybe I’m a little more cynical than open-minded. Regardless, they’re both just big faceless corporations out to make a buck off of us, so what does it matter anyways, right?