As of last week, I once again own real Apple hardware: a Macintosh Server G4 (Power Mac G4) that will be up and running OpenBSD/macppc this weekend as my router, and a 13.3″ MacBook Pro that will serve as my daily travel computer.
Why the sudden return to Cupertino’s finest? Back over two decades ago when I first was playing with computers, I was using my family’s Apple //c, and my dad had a Laser 128 (//c clone) at work, so my roots as an Apple fan are very very very deeply seated. I’ve also been toying with the “Hackintosh” movement off and on ever since Apple converted to Intel processors. So overall, it’s a final return to my original roots.
To be honest, back when I graduated high school and was deciding if I wanted to invest in a more up to date laptop (I had at the time a blazing 100MHz TI Extensa), I actually did consider the dual-USB G3 iBook, but the fact that it was a PowerPC chip and the original versions of Mac OS X were kind of slow on G3s made me lean more towards a regular Windows notebook. I did give thought to them yet again later on when I started to see a need for another laptop, but once again, the lack of an Intel processor and the ability to run Windows for the few games I played held me back.
The big thing that pushed me back towards Apple more was the porting of iTunes to Windows. I had long said that if Apple ever ported OS X to x86 and sold it to be installed on generally available hardware, I would switch to it and never look back. Well, they never did that precisely, but iTunes was a start and got me to pick an iPod over other hard drive-based MP3 players, though I had been eyeing an iPod for a while anyway, even looking at the solutions people had to make HFS-formatted ones be usable with Windows.
I suppose it was inevitable that I wandered down to the Apple Store and actually dropped the coin for a Mac of some sort. I came very very close to picking up a Mac Mini a couple of years ago but decided against it. I still may pick one up at some point, but that remains to be seen. I’ve honestly found OS X to be a very plastic yet attractive OS. Booting my MBP into Windows really shows the difference between OS X and XP in terms of interface design.
From my point of view as an “advanced” computer user, the UNIX core to Mac OS X is really what attracted me and numerous others to it. I read story after story of UNIX sysadmins switching to Mac OS X because it offered a very well done “desktop UNIX” environment. In the long run, that in combination with the Intel shift and Boot Camp served as the impetus to more seriously look at picking up a Mac for a daily use machine.
My final look at Apple before I picked this machine up was in late 2007 when I was going back to university and needed a more up to date laptop to carry back and forth. I was between a black MacBook and the Dell Vostro 1400 I eventually picked up. Why did I pick the Dell? Simply put, it had a modern video card in it instead of Intel GMA950 integrated. Had the MacBook had a more powerful video card, I probably would have picked it up. Consequently, now that MacBooks are using the nVidia 9400M chipset that offers very respectable performance for an integrated card, the choice to move was certainly more apparent.
All in all, moving to Apple after a very long hiatus was a very good move on my part. The new MacBooks have ridiculously long battery life, LED backlit screens, and are less than an inch thick. I must admit that having superlative battery life in a full-fledged notebook instead of an underpowered netbook is awesome.
Of course, after all this is said and done, having the say command spout profanity and other fun things makes it all worth it.
Perhaps my next desktop computer will be a Mac Pro? Who knows what the future holds.