Switching
More like straight out desertion
In my last post I indicated I would soon be looking into purchasing a Mac for the first time in 9 years.
Well 2 months ago I finally decided on a White MacBook 13" 2.0ghz with 1Gb of RAM and an 80Gb HDD which could only be found strangely enough from Myer (the department store). I did in-fact try to purchase a machine (any machine) from a genuine AppleStore - but as I found out - it appears AppleStores in Perth stock everything EXCEPT for Apple hardware.
Guided by the Twitters of Nick Cowie, Drew and Vicki, I grabbed my new machine and headed home.
Unpacked by my 5 y.o son (Rose and I have lost all rights to unpacking cool gadgets now) it was soon setup on the kitchen table surround by all the members of the family oooh-ing and ahhh-ing.
Setup was painless, and it immediatly prompted me that updates were available which I proceeded to install, and then restart.
And it all went down hill from there
Waiting.
Waiting.
Waiting.
Nothing. Just the Apple logo. 20 minutes later - just the Apple logo. It was dead.
I confirmed my first bit of FUD about the mac. It IS just a PC. It's just as frustrating as a PC.
So the choice was return it as DOA or try and reinstall the OS. I chose the later, and what seems like several decades later, the install was complete (seriously Vista is soooo much better in that respect).
So take 2. Reboot, update, restart - and luckily - everything was fine.
Migrating
So next step was install my favorite apps - or Mac equivalents and then copy my docs across.
I used a 1 gig USB key to copy across a few docs that were not stored on the server, keepass files, bits and pieces - and then shutdown my Vista PC.
That was it. I think the next time I booted the Vista laptop was at least 4 weeks later to reformat it.
Will I switch back? Doubtful. Very very doubtful. Can I do things on my Mac that I can't on my PC? No. Is the Mac faster? No.
There is nothing I can really pin it down to. I CAN be just as productive on the PC. I just don't want to. Vista looks great, but I just want to use OS X.
Can I explain why? Not really - the Mac just FEELS right.