Apple
Geek P0rn: New Apple Setup!
Man, I loves me some geek p0rn. Anyway, let’s get on with it.
When I was sixteen a friend at school taught me how to build PCs and I took great joy in building my own rigs using the best components I could get at the time. The only thing I didn’t like in my computers was Windows. It was bloated, slow, ugly, and I had crashes, malware and viruses to deal with constantly (even with the appropriate anti-virus software installed – perhaps I was surfing too many dodgy websites).
I tried Linux for a short period of time, which was lightning-fast in comparison, but then I had to contend with a complete lack of support from major application developers, and the amount of time required for installing, customizing and tweaking the OS was an issue as well. It was a brilliant idea in principle, but I lacked the desire to spend that much time playing around with my operating system.
I kept an eye on Apple, but even early in 2000, Apple’s OS9 lacked essential support from major application developers that I needed in order to be persuaded to switch. Then in 2002 Apple made a bold move in switching to the Unix platform as the base for its new operating system: OS X. They managed to garner support from all of the major application developers, and even Microsoft joined in, creating its own department dedicated to developing the Office suite of applications for Mac.
In 2004, just before I moved to London, I bought my first Mac – a 15” Powerbook G4 – and I haven’t looked back since. The OS was beautiful, fast, incredibly well-made, stable, easy to use and had everything I needed. Best of all I no longer needed to think about viruses or malware – perfect! The fact that the Powerbook itself looked beautiful as well didn’t hurt either.
My second Mac was a 17” Macbook Pro which I got in January 2007 and for the last two and a half years it has been my tool for work, communication, presentations, as well as my major source for entertainment including music, TV shows, movies and games.
Sanj and I have spent the last year and a half debating what new computers we should invest in when we next upgraded and it ultimately came down to two choices: Should we go Mac and get 17” Macbook Pros and Apple Cinema Displays? Or should we go PC, get great LED displays, very powerful desktop computers and buy ourselves separate laptops as well for the same price as the Apple setup?
After a couple of post-meeting visits to the Regent Street Apple store in Soho, and a bit more prodding from me, Sanj started coming round to the idea of switching to Mac. We decided to go ahead with the caveat that if they were hard to use or caused any problems for him, I would never be allowed to make any hardware choices in the company again. Haha – sounds good to me!
We ordered two 17” Macbook Pros, two 24” Cinema Displays, two Wacom Bamboo Tablets, and two Rain Design mStands, as well as a few other extras individually.
The packages arrived from China and were left sitting next to us in our offices upstairs while we focused on finishing two projects. We finally found the time to open them up and get everything set up and installed a few days later and we are both very happy people indeed: as with all Apple products it was fast and simple and, aside from a few questions as he’s getting used to the OS-X way of doing things, Sanj is loving his new Apple experience so far.
We were very dubious about the gloss on the 24” Cinema Displays that under certain light seemed unbearably reflective. We only ordered them after checking with Apple that we could return them within 14 days with no questions asked if we were unhappy with the results. However, the gloss has not been an issue for us so far at all. The performance of the screens is astounding with incredible bright colour reproduction, very high contrast ratios and a fantastic viewing angle. The design is also stunning and with the in-built magsafe connectors we can power our Macbooks straight from the displays and leave our other Macbook power adapters at home. We’ll see what we think after we’ve been using them for a couple of months.
