Be The Mac

Well, I finally bought my first computer from Apple - not counting my very nice iPod Touch. I got a MacBook which had an nice upgrade announced Tuesday. At $1300, it is "expensive" for a machine with such a small screen and 5400RPM hard drive and only 2GB of RAM. My big fear was really the screen and the keyboard. I have a friend and (now fellow) Mac owner who bought a new MacBook Pro before the new ones because he disliked the "chicklet" keyboard on the new ones.

Sometimes you know in just a few minutes when your inner voice was correct and you just made an extremely expensive MISTAKE.

Well that turned out to not be the case - all I can say is WOW! This is by far the best laptop I have ever used. Half is the hardware, half is the software. Previously I believed Apple should sell just OS-X but without support to allow non-Apple owners to use it. I have turned 180 degrees on the belief. By making the hardware and controlling the decisions of what to support Apple creates a competitive, superlative product. My work computer is a Dell Precision M70 - a $2500 machine 3 years ago - big, powerful, overall a good machine. I had an mailer from Dell that I threw away today because I don't see myself buying one anytime soon.

Part of the problem for Dell was *cough* Vista - jeez what a steaming pile that is. While I am sure Windows 7 (Vista 2) will be a lot better - why wait? Why take your chances? Unless you require a Windows specific application I can't see going with Windows until they become competitive. Windows is a decent OS, durable, workable like a new Chevy on a smooth road - it works fine in the beginning but things start to go wrong with age. Windows, like the Chevy, has problems down the road. How many times have you heard, "try re-installing Windows"? For me, the NTFS file system slows with time and de-fragmenting (over and over) doesn't help. Having used my Mac for 2 days, Vista lost what little pizazz it had. The Apple product designers and software engineers are laudably anal.

I just want to say WOW and nice job to Apple.