PCs entered my life in the early 90s, but mainly in college and at my friend's place (his dad was a journalist). In '94 I acquired my first PC, so I could play Red Alert. The gaming addiction took over and I got involved with networking games, but just a couple of weekends were wasted on games and alcohol. We would transport all our gear to a mate's apartment, connect all the PCs with coaxial cables and attempt to configure a small network. It took time and worked most of the time. We played all kinds of games, none of the bought, but shared - to the anger of many game developers I'm sure. If you were tired, then you simply slept on the floor or a sofa, didn't matter, and continued the game when you woke up again. Totally antisocial behavior, despite being in the same room as 12 of your mates. You could smell and hear them, but the only conversation was hurling abuse at each other for getting killed. Girls just don't understand the bonding that takes place at such events.
So, for many years I've been using PC and these have evolved to become these powerful units that could run a small country. The graphics cards are nowadays standard at 256MB, has probably even changed to 512MB, and the games are mind blowing - try compare the Vic20 game cards with Command & Conquer 4 or Modern Warfare.
Despite trying, I never really got hooked on the game consoles and the games, the controlles were just too different for me, when you are used to mouse and keyboard. Well, I had the Wii of course, but that keeps you fit, right?
So, when a friend of mine persuaded me to get a Mac a few years ago, you can understand my skepticism. Why the hell would I get a Mac? They are only for designers and you can only get the "Sim City" game - wow, great!!! But, I tried it anyway, I needed something for music and iTunes is a great application for managing the music - and for abusing the credit card when buying music online.
So, I bought a MAC for my wife. I couldn't been seen with a Mac among my friends, could I? Well, after unpacking the beast and connecting the one cable, it only took me 10 minutes to have it configured and surf the web. This completely blew my mind and perception of Mac. How simple could it be. I no longer had to spend 40 minutes installed a fecking HP printer. I connected the same printer to the Mac, it detected it and asked me what I wanted to print.
Everything is so much easier and faster on the Mac. What took me ages on a Windows PC, only takes me a few minutes on the Mac. As an example, we had for years tried to setup a family web site, using the PC and FrontPage, but that was almost an impossible task. Now, with iWeb we had a web site up and running within a few hours. The longest bit was to find the least embarrassing pictures to publish of us. You can even get some of the cool newly released games for the Intel based Mac, iMac.
Today, 2 years after my first affair with a Mac, I've turned my back on the previous long-term relationship I had with PC. I feel guilty some times, but only for 3-4 minutes. Now, I still have a Windows computer, but that is only to play Windows only based games. It is turned on twice a month, and each time it needs to download 50-60 Microsoft updates, and probably reboot 3 times, before I can play my game.
I should really be selling Mac for a living. Friends, family and colleagues have been convinced to buy Mac. Even my parents have bought themselves a Mac and are delighted. My dad, who never in his life managed to power on a Texas calculator, can start a Skype connection with us to see his grand kids.
So, now we are a Mac house; iMac, Mac Mini, Mac Air, iPod, iPhone, AppleTV, Base stations and MAC email addresses. Steve Jobs, if you need somebody to test your latest invention, call me. Would I recommend a Mac? What do you think?
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