15-year Windows vet tries Apple Mac: ‘My God! This is amazing!’

Thomas Hawk is a photographer and digital media enthusiast in the San Francisco Bay Area who writes, “Well I’ve been hiding a secret for the past two weeks. It’s something that I’ve felt conflicted and unsure of, something that I’ve felt ashamed of and proud of at the same time. Something that I’ve been trying to sort out before I actually wrote about it. Most people will probably say, ‘yeah, big deal.’ But for me it kind of is a big deal. I haven’t told very many people. I showed Robert Scoble last week but have been kind of hiding it otherwise.”

“A little over two weeks ago I walked into the Apple store in Palo Alto and bought myself a new MacBook Pro. Yes, the new sexy Intel dual core MacBook Pro. And I went home and after not using a Mac for over 15 years, put my Dell PC notebook literally in the bookshelf and have been using this new Mac as my primary computer for the past 2 weeks,” Hawk writes.

Hawk writes, “And what do I have to say about the experience after two weeks? My God! This is f***ing amazing! For the past 15 years I’ve pretty much been a diehard Microsoft PC guy. I’ve mocked the religious zealotry of the cult of Macintosh. I’ve derided the senseless brainwashing that Steve Jobs seems so elegant at.”

“I was very frustrated with my Dell PC for a number of reasons,” Hawk explains. “And all along the way it was my 18 year old tech mentor Kristopher Tate, who kept saying, dude, just get a Mac. Just get a Mac. They just work. And so I did. And I have to say that he’s right. It just works. It took about 48 hours of getting used to but once my little introductory awkward phase was over it just works so much better.”

“As tech saavy as I like to think of myself as I’ve had so many problems with my PCs over the years. If using a PC is being outside working digging ditches all day long in the hot sun, using my new Mac is like hanging out at the spa,” Hawk writes. “I’m not really giving up on my PCs yet. I still do have four of them at home and two at work. But I imagine that I’ll be spending 85% or more of my computing time on this slender sexy new MacBook Pro in the future.”

Hawk writes, “Call me a convert. Call me a traitor. Call me a heretic. Or call me a fanboy. Welcome me to the club or say it ain’t so Joe, but all I can say is that Kristopher is right. It just works. And it feels so great while it does that. It’s the best I’ve felt about using a computer in a long, long time.”

Full article here.

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42 Comments

  1. Read the hundreds of comments and it is far from just ‘another one’ down..

    Tipping point is coming…

    And the Emporor Microsoft is being exposed as having no clothes. No quality, no judgment, no innovation, no security, just mediocrity, and an ever shrinking band of admirers.

    Go Apple.

  2. fatal, you are so out of touch. Right-clicking is no longer an issue. Whether you want to use Sidetrack as an add-on, or the right-click functionality now built in, it’s such a NON-ISSUE.

    More importantly, who would call this guy a “traitor”? He talks about the “cult” of Mac, of Mac “zealotry” and being a “fanboy.” But those words could only matter if, in the dark side of the universe, people were passionately pro-Windoze, as opposed to anti-Mac. To whom would this person be a traitor?

  3. Someone with six PCs has a big investment in software and the related working files, however these might be in danger of corruption from virusses, etc.

    Fortunately, with Parallels on the Mac, there is a path for transition, especially because it works with varieties of Windows, not just XP SP2 as in Boot Camp.

    So the new converts can move their essential programs and files into the Mac environment, thus saving some of the investment in obsolescence. A true believer would see this transition as passing from purgatory to heaven.

    One wishes for Apple to Resolve to come out with a simple worksheet as part of the iWork package to show UNOHOO how to make software that’s simple enough to actually use. And there still is no Mac software to equal MacProject. iLife is nice, but these are two essential parts of the solution for the Mac to be adopted into the workplace. MacProject was really and truly nifty, and so was Resolve, around the time of OS 8. I still have my OS 8 shirt.

  4. It just goes to show you that the Windows user’s perception of the Mac and Apple’s customers is what’s askew. They think we love Apple’s products because Steve Jobs tells us we should. In truth, we love Steve Jobs because Apple’s products are so good. It’s a very important distinction.

  5. I considered myself tech-savvy but I came to the point where I realised that just because I can fix things or don’t particularly mind tinkering around, it doesn’t mean I should have to unless it’s for my own benefit. I didn’t want to have to maintain my system, I wanted to use it.

  6. >I didn’t want to have to maintain my system, I wanted to use it.

    Which reminds me of all the times guys would tout how much more they enjoy their WinTel and I would say, “let me ask you, have you ever pulled an engine?”

    Answer (most every time): “Well yeah, we just pulled my brother’s last weekend…why do you ask?”

    Because you’ll usually get the opposite answer from Mac users. We like to get where we’re going, not focus on working on the car.

  7. If you watch regularly Robert Scoble’s video podcasts you will notice that most of his guests use Mac Books for their product demos (although they also seem to prefer Firefox over Safari). Even Robert Scoble who was an icon at MS now recognizes that half of his computers are Macs. This should really start to worry Bill and his associates, it is clear that the empire is crumbling…

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