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My First Mac

It's Everything I Need and More

Bernard Quinn - November 2002

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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