“I’ve been in denial for a while, but it hit me so hard yesterday that I finally have to admit it: I’m an Apple fanboy,” Mike Elgan reports for Cult of Mac. “Once you hear my story, you’ll agree that if it can happen to me, it can happen to anyone.”
“During the 1990s, the only time I saw a Mac was whenever I [as managing editor] ventured into the design and production ghetto of our editorial offices. That’s right: Windows Magazine was designed and laid out on Macs,” Elgan reports. “Besides that, I was deep, deep in the world of Windows. I wrote a monthly opinion column, as well as reviews and “how-to” articles about Windows. During my time at Windows Magazine, I probably wrote maybe 1,000 “tips” for tweaking, optimizing and surviving Windows. My talks and panel participation at trade shows was all about Windows. Bill Gates even quoted me in one of his books. I was about as much of a ‘Windows guy’ as you could get.”
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Elgan reports, “Then [yesterday] it hit me: I’m not only an Apple fanboy, I’m a pathetically devoted one. I’ve got the latest iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, iMac and now I’m fricken wearing an iPod wristwatch? Wow… If Apple can turn the editor of Windows Magazine into a fanboy, no one is safe.”
Find out how Elgan finally saw the light in the full article – and don’t skip the comments – here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Dow C.,” “Jax44,” “Lava_Head_UK,” “Opportun,” “Guillermo Y.,” and “Arline M.” for the heads up.]
MacDailyNews Take: Do we wear iPod nano wristwatches? Only on the rare occasions when we actually wear wristwatches. (FYI: We use the TikTok to strap our nanos to our wrists.)
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😉
Gave up the watch in college. I’d rather not know how late I’m running. I’ll pull out my iPhone if I really want to know, but no watch for me for many years.
Hahaha! He’s pathetic!
The comments at the end of the article are too good – full of Winblows defenders who saw the light a year or two ago. Getting an iPhone seems to be the common denominator. Still reading them and waiting for the Winblows flamers to come out in full force…..
[pun intended]
You’re right, it’s the comments that added the needed framing to the story.
Apple products… “we will assimilate you”.
It all makes sense now, the inspiration for Apple’s 5th avenue store was the Borgs mother ship. Resistance is futile!
Great article. Read the whole thing top to bottom twice.
The guy is right about one thing, it def sneaks up on you coming from the windows side.
I don’t see myself as ‘picking a side’ because really I can’t stand that limiting mentality. I like to use computers to do things and I’ll always pick the one that I feel best fits the task I’m tackling.
For me the real introduction to the modern Mac OS happened when my wife gave me a Mac Mini as an anniversary gift. I looked at the box and blinked wondering how she came to pick this interesting gift. She said “You have been playing with Unix a lot lately so I thought I’d get you this. I know its a mac, but its a full Unix OS below the GUI” (yes I married a GEEK THANK GOD)
I remember playing with the thing for 3 days and then sitting back and thinking to myself… man.. something just feels ‘off’ about this machine. It dawned on me that in 3 days of use I had seen no error messages, no security warnings, no “Is it OK to scan your machine for viruses and malware now?” or any other annoying popups, floating bubbles etc. etc.
It hit me that the OS was just… elegant…
I still use Windows PCs (typing on one right now) and I love Linux for various jobs however the computer I look forward to using when I get home, and the one I will actually sit down to use ‘just for fun’ is my Mac.
Great machine and a great OS.
Thanks Apple!
I came into the Mac fold from a very unusual background. I had never owned a computer growing up. It wasn’t until the year 2000 at the age of 28 that I decided to give in and buy my first one. I say give in because I had always hated using computers and said that I had bad computer karma. What a good friend of my made me realize was that I didn’t hate using computers – I hated using Windows computers. I bought my Cube in September 2000 and the rest is history.
That is an awesome story. 🙂
I know some people who really flipped the cube some sh*t for the form factor and lack of upgrade potential but I always thought it was a very cool looking machine.
It made me think of the NeXT cube, but like a modern take on it.
Eh, sorry.
Elgan – just because you finally saw the light, doesn’t mean I value your opinion after all these years. I have no interest in supporting you, regardless of your new found discovery. Your recto-cranial inversion style/reputation will last longer than you think. On a sobering note; welcome to the new world. You’ll note it’s not flat.
Wow.
Did you read this part of his article?
“man, the insanely insane hardcore fringe is really something special.”
I think you fit the bill buddy! HAHAHAHA…
Haha wow JMK… way to be a jerk… 🙁
Seriously, the trolling doesn’t help your cause *at all*
People like you make me sick to consider myself an apple fan.
I think that jmk is simply referring to the fact that Elgan has penned some infamous and ridiculous anti-Apple diatribes over the years. His credibility is very thin.
See: http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/columns/executive_tech/article.php/3703216
Or:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/136949/is_apple_the_new_microsoft.html
the comments on his post are 95% positive. of course it is a Mac site … if he posted the article on the Windows Magazine site, it would probably be his last.
Except for GooneyGooGoo who has obviously never used any Apple products ever. What an A$$HAT.
Wow… those comments are fantastic 🙂 People were actually having civil discussions about why the switched to mac, and what was keeping them away from it until they tried a .
😀 Epic win for apple.
Yeah, I switched, too. Well, sort of…
I had an IBM PC and a Princeton 12′ amber display all specced out. Went to Computerland (remember them?) ready to buy. The salesguy asked if I’d seen a Macintosh and pointed one out.
He walked away to check stock and came back 10 minutes later.
I bought the Mac.
512K with dual 400K floppies and an ImageWriter.
That was in January of 1985 and as close as I EVER got to buying a PC.
As a fairly recent Windows convert I can attest to the way Apple sneaks up on you. It’s beyond subconscious thought – how the magic happens is almost mythic. Like a drug you take the first hit, then before you know it you’ve graduated to full blown addiction. The all encompassing effect is insidious because of how the pieces fit together to form a whole. You’re drawn by stealth into the Apple universe.
My first impression of a Mac was when I was given a tutorial by an advanced Mac expert at an Apple store, an expert beyond Genius grade, who showed me in literally the first few minutes how seamlessly all the parts of OS X worked together to reinforce the whole structure. He started by giving examples of working with Pages, an everyday word processor, that was somehow elevated to a page layout creation enabler. The difference between Pages and MS Word was stark. Where Word was a utilitarian program that was used to write documents, Pages was something you could use to tell a story. It was like using a can opener to open a can of Campbell’s soup and drinking in all the goodness. In Word I had been using a penknife to prize open the can which only allowed me to drain a small part of the soup that was contained within it.
But it wasn’t until the advent of the Intel Macs that a Windows holdout like me begin to see the value proposition. Macs could be used for heavy lifting and not just for the creation of pretty graphics that most of my Mac using friends were predominantly using it for. But you have to remember that Macs do not live in their own world although it felt like that to me. Mobile devices didn’t talk to the Mac – there was no way to synchronize them as most of the manufacturers like Palm and HP (running Windows Mobile 6) did not have a bridge to the Mac.
When Apple began to expand the devices within its universe, switching over to a Mac began to look like an idea that wasn’t consigned to the loony bin – it made commercial and technical sense to break out of the Windows world. I suspect most Windows sufferers are like me – you don’t want to drink from a water fountain that might run dry at any time because water was defined as being Windows driven. And so with the expansion of the Apple universe and the parity of Mac Intel hardware to their Windows equivalents, more and more people are breaking out of their chains and discovering that they can have relief from the Windows Stockholm Syndrome.
“I can attest to the way Apple sneaks up on you. It’s beyond subconscious thought – how the magic happens is almost mythic. Like a drug you take the first hit, then before you know it you’ve graduated to full blown addiction.”
Once you bite, you’re bitten.
(Should be Apple’s tagline)
Truth hurts !!!
But it is enlightening to acknowledge one’s mistake !
I was DOS/Windows from my first computer in 1991, through 2001. By then, I was just beyond frustrated at how my computers never seemed to work the way I wanted them to. Meanwhile, my friend the Mac nut was always deliriously happy about his computer. Something wasn’t right. Bought a Mac in August of 2001 and haven’t looked back since.
——RM
So, the lack of a Nano wristwatch means I’m not a fanboy?
Sorry, I prefer the simplicity and elegance of my Citizen solar-powered watch. IMO, it’s actually a more Mac-like approach to watches than an iPod Nano on a strap.
I’m waiting for the Nano to be able to do FaceTime or Skype video calls. Then I can use it as a full blown Dick Tracy watch!
Yeah! 😉
That *would* be cool.
“I’m on the trail of Pruneface, Chief!”
It didn’t sneak up on me… I too was forced into and started with a DOS and then later Windows world. As soon as I discovered discovered Intel Macs could run Parallels and let me make the transition, I was on my way. Today, only a few of my programs require Windoze and I’m working on those! Of course, there’s still the programs required for work…
As I posted over at the source article:
“Third, I had encountered so many hardcore fanboy [Windows] haters in my career….”
Yeah, these are the tards that give Apple fanbois a bad name. As a decrepit old soldier from the Computer Warz I can tell you that we of the ‘in crowd’ did our best to stop such people from spilling outside the pro-Apple areas of the Internet. From our POV, all we wanted to eviscerate were the anti-Apple trolls/haters who came to Apple centric areas to misery monger and lie. Only the idiots ventured over to Windows centric parts of the net to perform reprisals. That behavior justifiably is condemned and flamed by Windows fanbois with Apple fanbois compliments.
Meanwhile, as a crusty old Mac expert, I still work with Windows boxes, am on the board of the local Windows user group and give shareware presentations there every month. It’s a great group and none of us really care who has what computer as long as we all help one another to learn and put our technology to work.
Oh hallelujah! Praise be to Jobs. Another convert. Soon all the enlightened will be taken up in the Cupertino Mothership to worship the the omniscient Steves.