Kim and Tam are amused by the Cult of Apple. It’s all rather amusing to me since I was a part of the cult before it was cool. Started in 1992 with a Mac IIsi and System 7. I had used the Classic Mac with System 5 and System 6, but never owned one. System 7 was considerably better than Windows 3.1. I was more functional and sure crashed a lot less. Windows 95 wouldn’t come out for another few years, and even when it did, it sucked too.
Apple lagged behind for a while with System 8 and 9, at least in terms of essential features like protected memory and preemptive multi-tasking. Apple caught up when it bought NeXT and reengineered NeXTStep to be MacOS X, which is a truly wonderfully engineered operating system.
I was a Linux user from the dark days of System 8 and 9 up until recently, when I purchased the MacBook Pro. Trendy or not, they are still putting out the best desktop operating system on the market today. It’s really just NeXTStep with better eye candy and a more Macintosh-like look and feel, but NeXTStep was way ahead of it’s time years ago, and I think has come of age rather nicely as MacOS X.
So don’t buy a Mac because it’s trendy. Buy it because it’s a legitimately excellent product. I spent 10 minutes using a laptop with Vista on it before I wanted to throw it out a window. Even Linux is less obnoxious as a desktop operating system than Windows is becoming.
I grew up with an Apple II in the house in the late 70s.
I have three Mac notebooks (190, 520c, Key Lime iBook) and five desktops (Color Classic, LCII, IISi, Performa 636CD, TAM).
iBorgs still amuse me.
(I’m typing this on a P4 2.2 running *blech* WinXP. My other Wintel box is an old Celeron running Win98. I wish more games ran with Win98.)
I used to have an Apple II+ in the early 80s. It was pretty much out of date by then, but I sure had a lot of fun with it.
My parents apparently had an Apple II[something] in the 80s, but I can’t quite remember using it. Of course, most schools around the time used some form of Apple computer, so I used various types for a while until the late 90s, when Windows started being pushed into schools.
Now that I think about it, my parents had dozens of computers over the years, from generic beige IBM and HP boxes (with “Turbo” buttons), to various laptops (including a Toshiba running DOS), and, of course, a Commodore 64.
I have an iBook, now. One of the best features, in my opinion, is the keyboard. I’ve used other laptops with cramped or confusing keyboard layouts, but the this one has a very nice feeling to it. I still have a Windows desktop to do other things.