December 09 2011
A Mac Finally Come and Gots Me
It happened. I didn’t expect it to happen anytime soon. But it did. They got me. They stalked me for years and now they got me.
I officially own a Mac.
I’ve been resisting having one in my home for like a decade. I’m a PC guy! I’m a Toshiba friggin 10lb laptop guy! I’m a Velocity Micro Desktop PC guy! I’m a Duke Nukem guy! Not a pure white girlie girl Mac mindless convert!
But a friend of mine who works in tech somehow got his hands (he won’t tell me how) on a nice MacBook 4.1 refurb– and he sent it to me as a super friggin nice gift! In the box like as new! I was poking around with it all night figuring stuff out. New toy. It’s weird. It’s so white.
I’ve never spent any real amount of time on a Mac so I’m learning how everything works. The interface is kind of annoyingly cutesty. But I guess eventually like a maczombie I’ll learn that it’s ‘better’ — even though I find that hard to believe.
I can already feel the ties to my PC world are fraying. And I secretly already accept the fact that most likely the next big computer I buy– will be Apple. How could I not go all-in? What am I supposed to do? I have an iPad and an iPhone– and they’re both great! (although iTunes is a fkin disaster– can you please stop erasing my apps just bc you’re jailbroken! gimme a break!)
So yah. New MacBook. Feels weird. Feels good! Feels off. Feels fresh! Feels fem. Feels like a betrayal of sorts. 🙁
Because I’m working on a script these days, sometimes I head out of the apartment to write stuff in different places — and I’m surrounded by Macs. Everyone in hipster Brooklyn has a Mac. So when I pop open my hunking old PC laptop (and the windows xp startup music greets everyone) people look at me as if I’m the foreign exchange student in class. Like I just drove up in a Yugo sporting and stepped out of it wearing Nikre sneakers. (I feel snickering).
I knew Mac would come for me one day. I resisted for years– and now it’s here. I didn’t even have to buy one! The universe delivered one to my door. The Force. And I’m of course very psyched.
Sorry PC peeps. I know it’s hard holding on and holding out– and I feel like a traitor to the greater good.
But man, those keys sure are quiet– they have those delicate springs… and she sure turns on fast. And I like the magnetic plug.
ok bye!
tOdd
PS. Sidestory: When I was a little kid I had my dad buy one single share of Apple stock in 1983. I think it was at 17. I had an Apple II. Sold the share after it went up like five points.
PPS. Coolio FunLinks today has a link to the Apple spaceship… >>
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… and the Zombie apocalypse progresses.
They are totally sneaky there at Apple. They make like, really cool shit, and so when you get say, an iPad, like I did, it’s about 7 minutes before you’re saying “I suppose I should get an iPhone too, because all this needless stuff I have on my iPad would be totally cool to have on my phone too.” Then the next thing you know you’re crying for two days because Steve Jobs died. Not that I did that, but I’m sure someone did. Probably his family. And maybe Justin Long.
This feels like when Anakin Skywalker was lost to the dark side and became Darth Vader. The force was not strong enough within you. Or better yet, when Captian Jean Luc Picard was taken over by the Borg…RESISTANCE IS FUTILE, PREPARE TO BE ASSIMILATED!
Welcome to the fold tOdd!!!!
Just wait till you want to take a movie or other large file from your pc to the mac. macs don’t read ntfs file system. (they do but it’s a crazy work around or you have to dual boot). so, if you think you can use an external hard drive to move large files between the two think again.
Todd, post up article “Dear PC,”
WHY? Send it back….! Avoid apple like the plague! But defintiely do own the stock! I’ve made a ton on apple stock. and I’ve not bought a single apple product. PC/Droid phone all the way!
Having trouble managing windows. Seems all messy. And where’s the Maximize for stuff like Word?
drag bottom right corner to size. maximizing sucks on mac.
That’s going to make things a lot esaeir from here on out.
And sometimes when I open stuff it doesn’t seem to open. Just sits there — then I find out it’s open underneath? Why not come forward when I click on the dock icon?
forget it. i get it. i get the feeling there’s gonna be alot of that… 🙁
Maximize is the green button in the top-left corner, although some programs are meant to not really take up the whole screen at once.
There’s an awkward introductory period of a month or two, where you’re learning the differences between OSX and Windows. Once you get through that, you’ll be golden.
Enjoy your trip to the Apple ecosystem. It’s very shiny and all – but there’s no way back.
I’ll stick to my PC, Amazon Cloud, Amazon MP3, Roku, Kindle Fire, Android phone, Google TV world, thank you very much. Not nearly as pretty, but I’m not married to any of those brands either.
Windows 7 Phone & Windows 8 Tablet do look awesome as well. I might give it a try.
I totally understand the transformation from PC to Apple; for me it happened 7 years ago. Nothing like having a fewer complications in one’s life!
I’d use a mac too if it was free.
Gross. You obviously have money to waste now.
I want my 2 dollar donation back.
Tried using a friend’s MacBook Pro. Didn’t go too well. Perhaps if I was using a mouse, it would have been easier. But the gestures on the touchpad seem to be different than on a Windows PC. Also, things don’t behave the same. Have to learn how to use a computer all over again.
I stay clear of her MacBook now.
Funny, she seems to have problems using it too.
Good luck Todd.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Another sheep locked in for life! OH the money! The money! I just gotta masturbate on all the money!
oh todd, I don’t think we’ve lost you completely… I can understand the laptop business but there’s nothing quite like a pc desktop… solid, sturdy and able to replace your own video card.
I have to laugh at people like you that get all dramatic over your computer. It shows the power of marketing and the relative stupidity of people.
I started on an Apple long before they narrowed down the flavor to just Macintosh and along the way I have used just about every computer available including Unix, Xenix, IBM 34, everything ever made by Commodore, dozens of PCs and at least a dozen forms of Macs. I was using these things before most of you were born or out of diapers and on a daily basis I push these things more than you latte-sipping little girls could ever imagine. They are nothing but tools and I could care less about the douchebag spokesman of the season that is being paid cash by the bushel basket to convince you that the only way you can be cool is if your laptop has customizable exterior panels or has a twirly wheel instead of an hourglass.
I can tell you with 100% certainty that there is no appreciable difference between a Mac and a PC. There are minor this-and-thats on how you get around the operating systems but they both do the same things and in the same amount of time. I do it all the time so if you disagree with me, you don’t know what you are talking about and it is time for you to sit down and shut up.
Being of the curly-haired ovine variety, you do not want a Mac because it will increase your productivity (it won’t) or because it is the superior choice (it isn’t). You want a Mac because a room full of people that refer to themselves as ‘creatives’ (creative is not a fucking NOUN!) sit around ‘ideating’ at a combined billable rate of a few thousand dollars per hour. They think of ways to get you, the ovine, to desire a product. Last week they were convincing people that the best way to go horseback riding on the beach was to use tampons. This week they are working on ways of getting millions of you to line up around the block in anticipation for the newest phone, now with reception all the time.
If you have ever felt that people were snickering like you pulled up in a Yugo when you pulled out your laptop, you don’t need a Mac. You need a shrink to help you with some serious self-esteem issues. Your need for a Mac is so you can feel you are now as cool as all the people on TV that use one. Cool by association. It is that drive that will cause you to buy a Mac (or any other trendy BS) and basic psychology will dictate that although you will tell yourself you made the purchase because the product was cool, the reality is because you bought the product your ego requires it to be viewed as cool.
You want to be successful and creative? Stop concerning yourself with what the unemployed hacks that hang out at Starbucks think and stop spending so much time worrying about your tools. Do you think Ernest Hemingway worried about what people thought about his pen? Did Samuel Clemens spend his day wondering if we could write a better story if he had a different typewriter?
Now I am sure a lot of you have your panties all in a bundle to that I can only laugh. I would love to stay around and laugh at each one of you individually but I have computers to torture and large amounts of cash to make.
Whoa, lighten up.
Nice rant, Attitude!
At the risk of you labelling me an ovine, I agree with pretty much everything you said….Perhaps with a little less venom, but I am in agreeance, nontheless.
I will add that there are times where I despair for the species, most often when I see how easily many people are led by the nose through the rampant and omnipresent marketing machinery we are subjected to every day. I really don’t think I’m imagining that the world is noticeably worse off now than, say, 25 years back or more. To be sure, there were problems with media led, non sensical frenzies (remember moms beating eachother sensless for a cabbage patch doll?), but I think the constant bombardment or media hyped advertising, thought policing, and general BS is beyond even Orwell could come up with in his juiciest wet dream.
I do feel that we are living in a matrix like construct, put together to keep the average joe running on a hamster wheel, going nowhere but providing the power for others to run the world.
Oh, well. Gotta run out and buy an iPhone 4s, for reasons that were implanted rather than understood. But hey, it supports the new i-Gina app, so now we can all consumate the carnal relationship we have all seemed to develop with fad technology!
The hardware of Mac’s are all PC based. It’s just what you put on for an OS. You can take any PC and load the MAC OS for way cheaper. Same experience since it’s all Intel based. PC rules and MAC just rides the coat tails. I own an Ipad too BTW.
Got get a quad core AMD laptop. Throw in 16GB of RAM and a SATA III SSD then load MAC OS X Lion. Gets you a better MacBook Pro for less than $900. Mu hu ha ha ha ha ha!
*Lowers and shakes head back in forth *
Say it ain’t so Joe………….Say it ain’t so.
I’ve just added your name to the list of American Icons that have disappointed me in life.