I'm a Web developer and have been using various computers for
over a decade. My road to the Mac began with my first home
computer, an Atari ST -
a great machine with a simple GUI, some good software, and a huge
amount of available games, which was priority number 1 at the age
of 11. This machine served me well for the next five years, with an
upgrade to a whopping 1 MB of RAM and a new disk drive.
As the platform began to falter though, my beloved ST just
refused to start one day, and rather than pay the expensive repair
costs, I snapped up an Amiga
500 cheaply. That worked nicely for games and word
processing for two years, until I got to my software development
course in college and decided I needed to "upgrade" to a PC.
So I got a Gateway 133 MHz desktop that ran well enough for the
first year, but it became more of a wrestling match after that.
Simple tasks such as installing a game, for example, would often
force me to reinstall my graphics card drivers afterwards - not to
mention the amount of times I had to reinstall Windows. It seemed
that all that had resulted from my "upgrade" had been a lot of
hassle.
How I missed the ease and reliability of my old ST or Amiga.
I had never given the Mac platform much thought. Apple didn't do
a whole lot of advertising in Ireland. All I really knew was that
it was used mainly in publishing and design, and it had very little
software and games.
After I got my first job in a Web agency, I came into contact
with a Mac for the first time, an indigo iMac. I was pleasantly
surprised - not just with the good looking hardware design, but
also with the attractive OS 8.5, which reminded me of some of the
better features of the old GEM GUI on my Atari.
Still, I remained aloof. We developers had to use Dell boxes
with Windows NT 4, and I never really considered the Mac OS as a
serious developer's OS.
All that changed when I read about Mac OS X for the first
time. I had heard about the upcoming Windows XP, and I didn't like
what was hearing. I was in the market for a notebook for general
use and decided to take the plunge. I went online to the Irish Apple Store and
bought myself an iBook 600
with a combo drive.
This was a year ago. I must report that I don't know if I'll
ever get another Mac again, simply because I don't know if I'll
need one. This little baby does everything I need. Chimera is probably the
best browser I've ever used. iTunes and iPhoto make my life easier
and more fun. I've learnt something of the world of Unix - without
sacrificing the ease of use of a great GUI.
And games: well more seem to be coming out all the time, but Age
of Empires 2 and Civilization 3 are keeping me busy enough at the
moment.
My iBook does everything I need it to and more. It looks great,
and I'm having fun using a computer for the first time in years.
Don't think about switching - just do it. I can't possibly see how
you could regret it. Oh, and yes, you can use a 2 button mouse -
and the right button does work!
Share the story of your first Mac experience by emailing with "My First Mac" as your subject.
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