David Forster

Today my attention was brought (via Digg) to a Guardian Unlimited article by Charlie Brooker on the British “Get a Mac” Ads and why he hates Macs and Mac users.

Now, I am someone who’s been using, building and programming PCs for the last 14 years or so. Programming is my job and also to a certain degree my hobby. I used to harbour the same grudges against the Mac crowd as Mr. Brooker, always harping on about how Macs were only good for designer types who couldn’t understand real computers and could only use one mouse button. Then, 9 months ago, everything changed. After much deliberation (and convincing by my girlfriend), I bought one, and computing became fun again.

Here’s the truth: Nowadays, Macs and PCs are basically the same under the hood – you can even run Windows on them if you want to. When you buy a Mac you are also paying for OS X – and it’s this operating system that makes the difference. It will take a few weeks of getting used to, but eventually you will realise just how good it is, and why Mac users dub Windows as “Fisher Price” OS.

It’s difficult for me to list the ways in which OS X is better than Windows. Maybe because it’s so different that it’s genuinely hard to explain or perhaps it’s because sometimes I struggle to put my thoughts into words, or maybe it’s a little bit of both. Like I said, it will take you a couple of weeks of effort (In much the same way as it took a few weeks to get used to Windows 95 after using DOS for so many years) and it won’t be entirely painless, but it will be worth it if you can. Perhaps it’s time to for me to admit to myself that I have become a dreaded Apple ‘FanBoy’, that I am sleeping with the enemy. Well, I don’t care. Since buying my MacBook Pro I have converted my music library to iTunes, something that I always vowed I would never do, and also bought an iPod Nano. I would wholeheartedly recommend that anyone, be them a silver surfer or a ‘l33t h4xor’, wanting to buy a new PC think seriously about a Mac instead.