I'm a Mac now; thin and good looking, with a sense of style
You know that commercial? Where the older, funny-looking, dumpy guy says "I'm a PC" and the young, with-it, hip guy says "I'm a Mac"? Yeah, you know the one.

Well, after being a PC (including the dumpy, funny-looking part) for years, I've made the switch. I'm a Mac now. The thing is, it didn't work quite like I hoped. I'm not suddenly young nor slim nor hip. I didn't sprout great hair. And, yes, my fashion sense still sucks. But I've got this cool looking computer with some really nice features!

It is a fairly recent 20" iMac, bought barely used for a very good price. So maybe that is the problem? Maybe I need a cooler Mac? Well, in a couple of weeks that will be solved as well. Yup, you guessed it. I also ordered one of them new fangled, thin as a razor blade and twice as sharp, Macbook Air thingamebobs. If that don't make me into the Mac guy from the commercial, nothing will! And, if not, in comparison to my rotund figure the Macbook Air will look even thinner. So it is a win/win...

Why, you may be asking, am I doing this? Well, you see I was going to abandon Microsoft anyway. Yes, I've stuck with them since Win 3.1. Hell, they've put money in my pockets for years, both directly and simply by being the first choice for business. And for a long damn time the truth was that they really weren't any worse than the competition, no matter what anyone said. In fact they were pretty dang good and their developer tools were the best thing out there.

Then they shipped Vista.

Years late and features short, Microsoft Vista just doesn't float my boat. It's not that Vista is so bad (although it is pretty bad even for a V1 Microsoft product). It is more that the competition has improved so much. I decided last year to make the switch to something else and then spent the time since deciding what the else would be.

Ubuntu Linux looked pretty good. I installed it on a box and used it at home exclusively for a while. An Ubuntu desktop in conjunction with an Asus EEEPC or an Everex Cloudbook would be a good combination of power and portability for the things I do most. Sure, I would have to squint at a itsy-bitsy screen and type with a teeny-tiny little keyboard on the road. But my geek cred would be maxed out.

On the other hand I was also the proud and happy owner of an Apple iPhone and I've got to tell you, its combination of good design and right-on-target features have actually changed the way I live. Bizarre as it sounds, this jumped up cell phone is the best piece of new technology I've seen come along in a long, long time. (If you don't have one and aren't willing to go get one and live with it for a few months you will have to take my word for it. When it comes to 'disruptive technologies', the iPhone is a Klingon battlewagon. There are other cell phones out there with more features, but there are none to match the iPhone for sheer rightness to task.)

So the iPhone was dragging me towards an Apple solution. Enough so that I spent some time noodling on Macs with the latest version of OSX as well. And one thing stood out: The Mac shares the iPhone's quality of 'rightness to task' in many ways. Plus it is Unix under the hood; just pop up a terminal window and there it is, in all its command-line glory. Best of both worlds really. Given the fact you can run Windows alongside OSX, maybe even 'best of all worlds'.

Anita and I talked it through (yes, I said I've been thinking about this for a long time) and decided that our budget could handle the (rather significant) expense of a brand-new Macbook Pro to be my primary computer. So I was determined on my course. Then the rumors started flying. Something new in the Mac portable market was coming and Steve Jobs was going to announce it at MacWorld in January. So I decided to hold off for a few months because there was this one thing bothering me about the Macbook Pro: Macbooks (both standard and pro) are heavy beasts. They are no more portable than the IBM T60 my work provides, maybe even less given battery life considerations. I wanted something light for on the road.

So I waited and Jobs spoketh and the word he said was 'Air'. I actually ordered one that day. No, it isn't powerful enough or featureful enough to be my primary computer. But it is small and light and, best of all, it has a regular size screen and keyboard. This meant that the search was on for a Mac desktop as well but, given the price difference over what I was willing to pay for a maxed-out Macbook Pro, I could actually afford to have both a home and a road machine. As fate and Craigslist would have it, I found the aluminum beastie I am typing this on just days after ordering the Macbook Air. And for less gelt than I was prepared to fork over...

The die is cast and the choice is made and Mac it shall be henceforth. Oh, it isn't like I won't fool around on Apple when she isn't looking. I will keep a fast gaming box and a server or two in the house, running Windows XP and Linux. I won't scorn whatever computer my work wants me to use. But I've made the switch.

Today, I'm a Mac...