Free of charge trumps convenience these days.
I've taken some ribbing on Twitter in regards to my choice of computer systems. So I thought I'd take a moment and try to explain why I exclusively use Apple products.
I used my first Apple sometime in the late seventies. At that time I was also exposed to various other "personal computers", such as the TRS-80, the Commodore64, the Atari 400/800, and others lost to the sands of time. The Apple didn't distinguish itself from that field frankly, it was just another of the same cloth. Despite teaching myself various code, enjoying some text based adventures, and hacking into places I shouldn't have been (if you've seen WarGames, that was me at one point.), computers had very little to do with design, art, or anything else I was truly interested in.
All of which changed the day I first pulled a Macintosh from its box. Since that day in late 1984 I have been a loyal Mac user. I have personally been responsible for purchasing hundreds and hundreds of Macs over the years, including the dark years between Jobs and Mac Clones. I was a Photoshop Beta tester and served as an Adobe advisor for several years. I've met and worked with Steve Wozniak and he once helped me get 500 iPod Nano's a couple weeks before release. I installed and worked with one of the very first Mac based Digital Video Editing systems, the Media100. I've attended Mac World, I was at the very first AdTech Conference as well.
I could go on. A few years ago when I owned my own agency, we had about 40 Mac Workstations all running off of Mac servers. On my bookcase, right now, are 6 generations of Mac laptops - all of which still run just fine. I currently have two main workstations, a MacPro quad tower and this iMac. The MacPro is now located in my new offices, the iMac stays in my home office. There are also several other Macs running in my home, but they are smaller "family" computers for my kids to use.
Since 1984 I've listened to hundreds of people, many of whom I respected, tell me to switch to more mainline PCs. This was especially difficult to ignore in those dark years when it looked like Apple might very well fall apart, or just become a software company. I did once break down and purchase a PC, it lasted four hours before I returned it. I've never made that mistake again.
I've watched as the "best" changed hands over and over again. As people flitted from one platform to another. I make no judgements. In fact, for many people, the PC is certainly the better platform. But I am not "many people". For me, for what I expect from my computer, the Mac is the only choice.
I can't explain that. It has never been about speed, performance, chips, boards, or whatever else you choose to compare. My computer is my partner in the creative process, my hands, my brain, my paintbrush. And so much more. I can't explain it. But I know that Windows sucks the soul out of me. And I know the Mac OS does not.
As far as Eve goes, I only play it because it works on a Mac. I started playing when that happened. And I'll stop when it doesn't.
My computer is fixed. I'm back in the saddle again.
Comments
If fact, Google how Jobs got mad at Adobe and forced a change in OSX to disable hardware acceleration for their products. Just because he could.
Then, I picked up a client who worked exclusively on Macs. He asked me if I was PC or Mac, and I said PC (it didn't matter for that particular job), but I'd always wanted to give Macs a try.
A few months later, I picked up a 24inch iMac, my first Mac.
I have to admit, I turned it on, and then sat there looking at it thinking "I have no idea what to do with it now".
I still had my regular PC, so I carried on performing most of my work on the PC.
Slowely, I started building up the software packages on the iMac to match those that I had on the PC, and slowly, the ratio of work done on the PC to work done on the Mac started changing.
The more I used the Mac, the more I enjoyed it, and the less I enjoyed having to do things on the PC. Installing applications is a good example. On the Mac, for most installations a window pops up with an icon for the new program, and an icon for the Applications folder. Drag the new progam icon onto the Applications folder icon and that was it. Program installed.
It took a full year before I ended up switching completely to the Mac, only using the PC for clients that absolutely required it (like working in MS Access, or creating VBA scripts in Excel), and to be honest, I really, genuinely despised the time I had to spend working on a PC. It was difficult, time consuming and full of unpredictable behaviour and un-intuitive workarounds.
I now exclusively own Macs. There is not a single non-apple computer in the house.
They all work amazingly well, and almost completely trouble free. Nothing crashes, everything talks to everything else, and I run windows on a virtual machine on my Retina Macbook Pro when I work with PC reliant clients.
Each new release of Windows now just confuses me even more as I struggle to work out how to do simple tasks, or struggle to understand the HCI design choices made in the OS.
So, as someone that has extensively used both PC's and Macs, in my mind there is just no comparison.
Yeah, maybe Macs cost a little more (although all indications show the new Mac pro is very competitively priced compared to equally specced PC's), but you get so much more for your money.
My first 2007 iMac is still running, as is my first macbook from later that year. Obviously they're both slow now, but they both look pretty close to new. I've never had a PC last that long, even with upgrades.