The new Macs are cool.
The first computer I owned was a Mac. All my friends pretty much laughed at me, but it got me through college just fine. After college, I used my Mac as a business tool (contact management, word processing, and the like) and it continued to serve me well.
Then all my friends got into playing Doom.
Well, the consensus was that I needed to get a PC. So, I shopped around. I finally decided on an IBM Aptiva with a 90 megahertz Pentium processor. It was awesome for the time. And very expensive. But I was thrilled. So much software, so many games, so much to do and learn. I pretty much became a mouse potato within a month. Programming for the Web. Databases. FPS games. Clean presentation of full motion CD-ROM materials. Then I had to get more, better, faster.
I buy a new PC (or two) every year. It's like an addiction. I'm not trying to keep up with friends, I just want new stuff so I can eek out ten-milliseconds-faster performance of my games and video. So I'm in Pentium 4 1.4+ gigahertz heaven, right? No need to get a 2.4 at this point, right?
In comes the Mac. We bought an iBook for my mom this year and I've teaching her how to use it. It's a little clumsy at first, if you are used to Windows, but it's easy and fast to learn. So now I'm falling in love with Mac OS X and all the features. So now I want a new Mac to go alongside my PCs. They are as expensive as my first PC, but perhaps that will not stop me. Who knows. My wife will be less than thrilled... unless she gets one too.
I'll have to keep thinking on it for now. And I'll have to be envious of my mom and the colleagues who have the new Macs until I get one. My PC rooted friends may think I'm straying from the path, but adding another solid machine to the electro-menagerie in my home office will add more color and flair, not detract from the current residents. Besides, I think they are cool.
Posted by MEK at October 23, 2002 04:55 PM