Bring on the MacBook

I’ve always sworn off Mac. To me those who own and love their Macs are like snobby people in clubs, not unlike those who surf. There’s an attitude an image that goes along with the hardware, a snobbery of ‘lesser people’. Sure the design looks cool and the build quality is fantastic but the MacVangelists are a little too much – especially as I’ve gotten half the processing power, memory and hard drive space of a competitively priced high end machine.

Yes a budget PC is going to give you problems while spending a ton on your Mac means you won’t have that problem. Well, the thing is I’ve never skimped on my PC hardware and hence never had hardware issues. I really do feel abused. I’ll suck it up.

So it is with a sense of sadness and a hint of feeling abused that I’ve had to purchase a MacBook. Walking into several Mac shops left me feeling highly peeved. The attitude, the ‘we sell Mac’ that I encountered really made me feel like putting an “s” in front and applying some “one hand clapping” methods. After shopping around I eventually settled for the MacBook silver, one step above entry level. I bought it from the nicest and most respectable salespeople. I actually went to a store other than the ones I’d looked at to find a decent salesperson!

Looking at their entry level machines I can’t help but feel the same sense of “I’m being schnied” as I get from looking at the entry level City Golf. It was like sensing that my bank account was about to get raped. I kid you not.

So why’d I go for a MacBook? I have to. I’m wanting to pick up some more typesetting work and have been told that the design industry in my country is dominated by Adobe and Mac. Allegedly there’s a major difference between how fonts are handled on Mac and how they’re handled on PC. Hence the need to have a Mac rather than a PC.

So I’m writing this post from the MacBook having just finished updating all my software. All the ‘it just works’ ends up sounding doubly like propoganda now that I’ve got it up and running. For instance, the email program is having problems navigating my smtp server for my email, the Adobe downloads are twice the size of their PC counterparts, the UAC annoying bugs me at every opportunity, I have to reboot after most of the updates, and the lack of a DEL key just puts me over the edge.

Maybe I’ll feel more convinced about the change once I’ve got the iPhone to go together with it. In the meantime I’m selling off my HP Laptop which is happily running Windows 7 RC and performing just beautifully on everything. It was half the price and does everything perfectly. Maybe the alleged 4.5 hours of battery life will make up for it.