So it’s no secret that I adore Macs, but I have harbored a secret, nay furtive, shame in never having owned one (for a variety of reasons, all practical, technical, or otherwise boring).
Since the age of 6 I have been in enduring, dependable relationships with various PCs: Dell computers (laptops of the Inspiron and Latitude varieties), IBM machines (before this era of Lenovo), and even some typewriters (three years of proper QWERTY typing instruction). All of my PCs were great but unattractive loves in their own ways — I coveted typing away on the unassuming plastic contraptions while the earnest, utilitarian Windows screens glowed back at me. I first surfed the Internet on a PC. I applied to college on a PC. I got my first job fixing PCs. I have loved and lost on PCs.
I started with DOS and Windows 3.1 and terrible bitmappy resolutions, then Windows 95 and the debacle that was Windows ME, and then extended worship at the altar of XP (no Vista for me). I taught myself the ins-and-outs of the Windows OS workings from registry editing to resource hacking to minute efficiency tweaks, making Windows computing a deep if uncreative part of my soul. Anyone who knows me knows that I’m never far from typing on something, and for as long as I’ve been a computer user, that platform has been PC. I have been passionate about my Windows machines even as their unlovely interfaces have numbly resisted my digital affections.
But today, that reluctant, one-way relationship with second-tier technology changed…monumentally! It’s silly to attribute the evolution of one’s life to a material purchase, but computers are like living parts of myself, so I feel justified in proclaiming this with both joy and gravity: I got my first Mac today!
I had been in the market for about a year but sat on my hands, dutifully quieting my desires and awaiting a notebook line refresh. Ensuring that I wouldn’t waste a step when making this jump, I closely monitored the product life cycle on MacRumors and followed our own overzealous coverage on Gizmodo. When rumors of the October 14 keynote sprang up, it was clear that this would be Judgment Day. And so it was! Steve’s Keynote unveiled paradigm-shifting new build processes and stunning new products. After 4 or 5 visits to the Apple store this week to review the goods (I am the furthest thing from an impulse buyer) I emerged today with a gleaming, aluminum, ‘brick era’ MacBook Pro.
Leaking dollars and dangling a receipt with far too many digits, I trotted home, clutching my new Apple-branded cardboard treasure box. Breathless, I opened up the designy packaging and pulled forth my promising new paramour. Love at first site. My eyes even bugged out.
And when that startup chime rang for the first time as the MacBook Pro booted itself, I felt like Wall-E in the eponymous film: a junked up digital jalopy being revived, comforted, nurtured by the promise of a new, sexier technological future.
And so it has begun! My MacBook Pro hasn’t left my hands since its arrival (rather like a Messiah or other positive apocalypse!) into my life. Experientially it is seamless, elegant, intuitive, and instant even as I bumble around its beauty, trying to catch up on years of miseducation.
I’m looking forward to the digital part of my existence being informed by design and quality and fluidity, as so much of the rest of my life is. Feels like a destiny, a certainty, a completion, even, that was too long delayed.
I know most of you are already on this train — I’m embarrassed and thrilled to finally be joining you.