New Mac Owner
A few days ago my new MacBook Pro was delivered. I was surprised that it came all the way from Shanghai China. Even so, it took less time to deliver than Dell here in the states. I almost bought it from my local Apple Store, until I learned they charge more to install the extra memory and bigger hard drive.
In any event, when I unpacked the laptop it struck me how the packaging was unencumbered with the superfluous. The laptop itself is close to a work of art. That's one of the main reasons I like Apple; their sense of style. It's thin, sleek, somewhat lightweight and designed with an almost Zen–like minimalism. A first–class piece of hardware; probably one of the best laptops you can get.
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It's almost the complete antithesis of my prior Dell laptop. I cannot speak enough on how I hated that Dell. It was huge, heavy and bulky. The keyboard and CD tray were very flimsy and cheap. Its ultra–high resolution display was ahead of XP's time. You would have to bump up the DPI to 120 to see anything. And that would, of course, mess the entire UI up (forms, images, etc.). Nowadays, though, Vista (and soon Mac OS X) properly supports resolution independence.
After unpacking and powering up the laptop, you are introduced to the brief setup wizard, which is very polished and professional looking. A few short and painless steps later Mac OS X is fully operational.
I have to say though, after using Vista since mid–November and XP for several years, Mac OS X is somewhat confusing and initially overwhelming. I'm not familiar with how things work or where things are located. For instance, it took me a while to realize that clicking the red “x” button on a window does not actually close it. You have to use the application's menu to do that. But I am getting used to it now. There are still certain things in Mac OS which make me cry out “Why did Apple do this?!” but you could probably say the same thing about some of Microsoft's stuff too. Neither Mac OS or Vista is perfect. I'm trying to take an agnostic approach to them. I'll use them both.
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Why Mac?
I ordered it the last week of December in an effort to generate a last minute business expense before the new year. And besides, I wanted to get a new laptop for the times when a client wants me to work on–site.
My friends Todd and Greg have been signing praises of Apple for a long time. Though I have been idly following Apple out of curiosity for a while. But it was really Greg who sold me on the Mac Book Pro. He would use it on–site, at a mutual client of ours, running Windows XP via virtualization (Parallels). It seemed like he had the best of both worlds.
Eventually I want to develop software for the Mac as well. It's still that burgeoning niche market where you have the potential to make some money. Almost virgin territory in some product arenas.
My History with Apple
I'm a new Mac Book Pro owner however I'm no stranger to Apple. In fact, my first (family) computer, back in the 80's, was an Apple IIe; complete with a dual disk drive, and color tilt monitor. I was in the 5th or 6th grade, and the computer lab on base was composed entirely of Apple IIes as well. That's where I was introduced to my first programming language: Logo.