Switching to Apple - Part 1

I've been exposed to OS X for over a week now (counting the time that I spent with my dad's computer).  I've had four days of semi-intense exposure following the arrival of my 12" G4 Powerbook.  I guess in a way I've been preparing for this transition for a while.  I was never opposed to Apple computers.  In fact, my second computer (after the Radio Shack TRS-80, if you can count that as a computer) was an a Apple. 

Yes, I went into a store in 1984 after seeing magazine advertisements that suggested Apple had developed a revolutionary new computer.  I saw the Macintosh sitting on a desk in the store with some contraption to the left of the keyboard (i.e. the "mouse") and tinkered with it.  I fell in love immediately.  I gathered all my acorns and begged and borrowed and got the money to buy one.  I even bought the case for it so I could lug it around.  I used the hell out of that computer and learned a lot.

I learned for example that there were guys fooling with PC's and doing command line stuff and talking some serious tech trash about how the Macs were for wimps.  I didn't care.  I just wanted a computer that I could do word processing on.  Then I learned about spreadsheets and bought a copy of Excel and marvelled at the power of that program.  Every new program I encountered was easy to learn.  The interface for each new program resembled the ones that I had already learned.

Those were wonderful days, but they're gone now.  I still have my old Mac (which no longer works) in my garage.  Somehow I've never been able to part with it.

But I did part ways with Apple computers once my law firm started putting PCs on attorneys' desks and creating a network.  It was in the early 90s when some consultants came in and put in a bunch of wiring and gave us all IBM PCs and created a Novell network.  I had, by this time, acquired an Apple Powerbook laptop, which I used at work as much as I could (it would read Windows formatted disks and convert files to a format the PCs could read).  But eventually the juggling got to be too much, and I realized that I had to commit to learn Windows.

Over time I became a more savvy user.  And over time Windows became a more robust program.  And Microsoft became a legitimate contender in networking software.  And there was the whole antitrust lawsuit thing.  Bottom line: Microsoft kicked ass and is the dominant desktop operating system and networking system.

But there are still people out there using Apple computers.

And as I started getting more into using technology to enhance my law practice (i.e. scanning, using case management software) I started meeting more and more serious techies.  Virtually 99% of these people used Windows machines.  I started scoffing at the people who I encountered (which was rare) that used Apple computers for business applications.

How naive, I thought.  I didn't think that Apple computers were inferior, but I figured they had lost the war.  Why not just admit it and concede defeat?  These Apple users were like the Japanese in those remote Pacific islands that kept fighting after WWII ended because they refused to accept that their country had lost.

That's what I thought.

But then I started my weblog, which put me in touch with people around the country who were major techies.  People who didn't just use technology, but who also developed it and used their considerable brain power to figure out how technology might be used to improve our lives.  It was through Buzz Bruggeman that I discovered weblogs.  He also invited me to PopTech, which is a yearly gathering of tech illuminaries such as Bob Metcalf, Bill Joy, Jaron Lanier, Stephen Wolfram, Ray Kurzweil, as well as leading commentators on technology like John Perry Barlow and David Weinberger.

Around this time I had also discovered the joys of 802.11b, or Wi-Fi.  When I went to Poptech there were about 80 people who had computers that could handle the wireless connection that was being piped through the conference hall.  I noticed that the people who had Apple computers just quietly sat there and connected.  A few of the Windows users, myself included, would have to ask people what the name of the access point was so that we could connect.

It was was a nice way to meet people, but it was also a minor annoyance.  But then I started wondering: if this is a gathering of tech illuminaries why are there people with Apple computers here?  I was puzzled further by the fact that some of the people who had Apple laptops were people that I could see were major hacker types.  What was up with that?

My friend Buzz, who by the way sells amazing software that only runs on Windows, commented that he noticed that the Apple laptops seem to wake up more quickly after they have been put to sleep.  I started paying attention to this phenomenon during the course of the conference.  It was true.

Buzz also mentioned that he noticed that the battery life seemed to be better on the Apple laptops.  I started paying attention to see if that statement was true.  I couldn't really tell, and I figured it was probably one of those "it depends on the configuration and type of battery" things.  Still, I did notice that my Dell laptop seemed to only get about 2 hours of battery life.  That was a bummer.  Because it meant that after about an hour I would have to start worrying about where I was going to get juice.  Well, actually, I stopped worrying because I became accustomed to carrying around a large extension cord.

So I had a laptop with a wireless Internet connection . But I had to keep it plugged in because the battery life was poor.  But, hey, what was I going to do?  Switch to Apple?

Continued here

Last update: 7/18/2003; 2:44:35 PM.