Those of you who know me in real life know I’m an Apple geek. I have an iPhone, iPad, two Apple computers (Mac Mini and MacBook Pro) and I really enjoy using each of them. All of that being said, I don’t consider myself a blind fanboy. You see, I grew up on Windows PCs. I broke them, I fixed them and I even custom-built them.
I was a PC.
I hated Apple back then. I had all the usual arguments against them. “They cost twice as much as a comparable PC.” “Of course they don’t crash as much as Windows PCs — they have limited hardware options to write drivers for” (that was an argument against them? silly me) “None of the good programs/games are compatible with Mac’s.” The list went on and on…
Somewhere along the line I got over my blind bias (I never really used a Mac until I was in College) and gave Apple a try in the computer lab at my school (to be honest these were the only computers I could ever find available). I was pleasantly surprised. Everything was clean, polished and it just worked. Had I been wrong about Macintosh’s (and consequently, Apple)?
I made the leap
When Apple switched over to Intel processors and announced Boot Camp I decided to make the leap. I needed a laptop for my studies at ASU anyway, so I decided to get a MacBook Pro. I figured worst case scenario, I could always boot it into Windows and run my essential programs from there. Thankfully I never really had to use Boot Camp (except for the occasional Windows only game). Everything I needed for my studies worked great in OSX.
So it started with the MacBook Pro. For my next Apple acquisition I bought a Mac Mini, when my desktop PC crashed. I made some tradeoffs with the Mac Mini, I’ll admit. But I’d grown used to everything just working as is with the MacBook Pro so I wanted to stick with Apple.
No tweaking. No registry. No viruses.
The tradeoff? An integrated (mobile) GPU. My newer games couldn’t run in maxed out graphical settings from that point forward. That one detail to me was worth the flexibility, stability and beauty of my Mac and OSX. Finally if anything does go wrong with your Apple then you’ve got a world class tech support team that can help. You can get free inspections at the Genius Bar if anything does go wrong. Can’t beat that. Other PC manufacturers will charge you $200 for phone support — 3 days after you bought a new computer from ’em.
That’s the Apple value proposition. They’re not always the most competitive on price (I’m looking at you Mac Pro) and they never seem to follow computing trends *cough*Blu Ray*cough* but they always just work, and they work really well.
I’m proud to say that I’ve graduated out of a suit and into a t-shirt and jeans. I’m a Mac, but I used to be a PC.