I’ve occasionally had throughts about buying a laptop and, especially with WiFi proliferation, they’re becoming more and more useful. In particular, I started reconsidering Apple when those switch commercials came out. Mac die-hards, at least the ones I’ve talked to, tend to consider them cheesy, but I found them rather down-to-earth and unpretentious.
More than that, MetaFilter had a post back in June about some switch-logs (for lack of a better term) where regular users would write about their experiences switching from Windows to Mac.
Switch. Apple launches its first major ad campaign since “Think Different”. Rather than preaching to the converted, it's gunning for the other 90% — the unhappy Windows users. Can Apple double its marketshare to 10% as Steve Jobs is hoping? Does this represent a less smug, more aggressive Apple? Are you considering switching, or have you switched already?
Interestingly, I now realize that I’ve met Jish (linked to the word “switched” above) at SXSW, so that gives his account extra credability to me.
However, the PC-to-Mac Log at EdgeCurve.com is even more comprehensive. It chronicles one user’s Mac expereience from opening-the-box and onwards over two months. With that level of detail, I really got a feeling for what switching might be like (of course, in my case, it’d only end up as a somewhat-switch since I’d still have Linux and/or Windows on my desktop machine).
What finally sealed it for me was SXSW. At such a geek-friendly festival, I wasn’t particularly surprised to discover that the convention center had WiFi throughout. And, it wasn’t uncommon for attendees to bring along their laptops and browse the web and check their e-mail between or during panels.
What astounded me was the breadth of Mac users. Of attendees that had laptops, I estimated thatg about 9 out of 10 had a Mac. Jish, Leia, Ruaraidh, and even Ben and Mena Trott — all Macs. If I had a Real Web Job, I would have been tempted to borrow someone’s Powerbook, load apple.com/store, and order one right then and there.
PS: I considered titling this entry “Oh, my beloved Powerbook, how I love to lick your creamy center”, but it was too long and also a bit osbscure.
“Oh, my beloved Powerbook, how I love to lick your creamy center”
Aw, c’mon, now, that’s just obscene! ;-)
If you’d like to spend some time with the Mac OS X interface to get more familiar with it (gonna take some getting used to), you’re welcome to play around on my Mac all you like (at least while Julie isn’t on it…)
Cool :). I may just take you up on that offer. Do I just walk in and shake the mouse to wake it up, or is there more to it than that?
I usually turn the monitor off, so push the little button on the front of the monitor, then hit the space bar (faster than waiting for the mouse to catch on).
One more story for ya:
I’ve recently gotten my grubby little hands on an older PowerBook G3 series and I quite like it. I can’t stand only having 1 mouse button (why…oh why hasn’t apple rectified this deplorable situation) and it’s a bit heavier than my standard fare (i.e., my ancient NEC Versa 5080X – an ultra-modest 233 Pentium), but I like it.
Now, I’ll qualify my statements by saying that I got the thing almost for free (got for free but had to fix it up a bit) and I’ve had it running less than a week, but I’m pretty happy. It’s still running OS 9.2 so I can’t comment on OSX. I’d like to give it a try, but I doubt a 300 MHz G3 would really put a sspring in OSX’s step. However, once I get a bigger hard drive for it, I’ll be loading Yellow Dog Linux on it and trying to make it my main portable.
My main reasons for wanting to switch to this Apple?
The last reason I’m curious about this PowerBook is that I’m hoping for better hardware support. Apple’s uniformity of hardware makes for easy driver support. For example, I don’t have APM working fully on my NEC. I imagine this will be a non-issue under Yellow Dog.
I suppose, really, that I’m not switching to Mac for any uniquely-Mac reason…just that this PowerBook is better than my old computer that happens to be a PC. I’ll have to update my Laptops page once I get this G3 configured.