2004-2006: I see several friends of mine carrying around these really slick devices called iPods. One of them even lets me play with it. I’m amazed at how easy to use it was. I begin to see the value of carrying your entire music collection in the palm of your hand.
mid 2007: I buy a competing mp3 player (SanDisk Sansa), thinking, “oh this has to be just as good.” It wasn’t. Apple releases the iPhone. I have jealous thoughts, and bought a phone I thought was better. It wasn’t.
late 2007: I ask my parents for an iPod for Christmas. My Dad buys me a Zune, thinking, “oh this has to be better.” I remember him saying, verbatim, “I just can’t see myself ever buying anything made by Apple.”
early 2008: I give the Zune a good, honest try, for several weeks. I actually like the interface on the device, but didn’t like the Zune software. The thing crashes multiple times. One time it crashed so bad, a hard reset wouldn’t even phase it. The advice I got from MS support was to let the battery drain completely, until it turns itself off due to battery power loss. Then charge completely, and turn it on. Fed up, I trade it in for an 80 GB iPod Classic.
mid 2008: iPhone 3G comes out: bigger, better, faster, cheaper. Now I’m convinced my next phone will either be an iPhone or an Android phone. I might have gone the Android route, but Apple beat everyone to the “App Store” concept, which really sold me on the iPhone.
early 2009: my iPod Classic is still going strong, having never crashed, not once. The battery still lasts for 12 hours of continuous playback, at least. Sprint changes their administrative fee, releasing me from my 2-year contract. I change cellular service providers, buying the iPhone 3G. I decide I want to become an iPhone developer. I look into downloading the iPhone SDK, and find out it is only available for Macs. Apple, in their infinite wisdom, decided to limit the iPhone development community to those owning one of their computers. At first glance, this seemed rude, inconsiderate, and mean. I wanted to buy a Pystar system out of spite, just to get back at Apple. ”That’ll teach ‘em.”
I spoke to the people I knew that were Mac users. They all were convinced that Apple products just work better, more intuitively, and can really do anything any PC can do, and more. I was awed by the amount of software that Mac OS X comes with, all for free. A video editor?? A music studio?? These types of products aren’t simply given away. And then it dawned on me, this is why Apple can charge so much for their hardware. The software included is more than worth the price difference. I decide to save my money, enough to buy a Mac.
My PC, two years old, breaks down. I think the hard disk (or SATA) controller decided to die on me. It was probably a long time coming, as I’ve had quite a lot of hard disk problems in the past year. But my computer breaking was all the excuse I needed. I drove to Best Buy and bought a MacBook, liking the idea that it could serve as a desktop replacement, and a portable.
Do I miss the windows button, the start menu, the task bar, the task list, the control panel, the delete/backspace distinction? Maybe a little, but only because I’m like a computer newbie again, trying to learn all the Mac equivalents.
For those of you that have helped me, I thank you. I’m sure I’ll be calling you again soon.
2 Comments
Apple is cool and all but I still want to punch Jobs in the throat.
A media player designed by the same people that created the “blue screen of death” and you expected a different result. Ha Ha.
You can always use the Zune as a back up device for your Windows virus collection.
Mac Rules!