perfidy

Justin Long and John Hodgeman have invaded my brain, and I have decided that over the next several months I will be migrating my home IT infrastructure to the Mac platform. This is not without precedent - in the dark days before the new millennium, I once was a mac user. I had a pre-PowerPC Quadra, running OS 8. And I was happy. (That computer still works, by the way, as does my 91-vintage Mac laptop.) In the late nineties Windows, despite its manifest (and still lingering) flaws, was ever present and prospects for Apple looked grim. Buying another mac computer seemed at the time a very bad idea indeed. Compatibility with the Windows world was nonexistent, Macs were overpriced and underpowered, and as I launched my career in tech writing I needed to have a system that would allow me to run the same software I used at work.

So, I bought a PC – an HP pavilion as I recall. Over the last ten years, I've purchased and built several PCs. And I've also spent a lot of time managing and fixing those systems. Though at the time it didn’t seem so, the breaking point, the straw to my humpy back, was last fall. I spent two weekends doing slash-and-burn reinstalls of XP on my computer, my wife's computer and the laptop thanks to a particularly ah, virulent, virus infestation. My frustration with windows peaked about 11:00 pm on the second Saturday, while reinstalling for the third time a suite of anti-virus, anti-spyware and anti-badness software. I came to the painful realization that at my billable rate, I had just blown well north of $2000 of time getting my computers back to where they had been a fortnight earlier.

Pissed off, frustrated, tired and angry, I did what every man faced with this dilemma does. I bitched and moaned like a little girl and didn't do a damn thing.

Now, sometime earlier, I had bought myself a nice 30GB iPod – the one that came out right before the even nicer video iPod. This little device, as is well known, is a wonder of preternaturally slick design, easy to use interface and tight integration with an equally well designed iTunes software. I dig it. It holds all my Perry Como and Dean Martin music, with 30GB left over for files, photos, and even other music. For weeks after I got it, the wife and I marveled at how well thought out the iPod was, and wistfully remembered our old Quadra. But nothing clicked.

When we, by which I mean my wife, were pregnant with child #2, we got another iPod, a nano, so that she could conveniently and stylishly listen to her hypno-birthing CDs without lugging around an antediluvian Walkman-like cd player that would skip every time the baby kicked. Again, we were stunned to (near) speechlessness by the impressive design that condensed all the features of our (now seeming clunky and Godzilla-sized) older iPod into a form factor a quarter the size and an eighth the weight.

Wow, thought we, those Apple geeks really know their stuff.

Then, the life changing moment. Apple announced the imminent arrival of the iPhone. I posted on that here earlier, and there has been voluminous coverage elsewhere. I know, because I've read most of it. The iPhone is the iPod on crack, steroids and espresso. The multitouch interface is brilliant (even if, like with the original Mac, they didn't invent it – they did implement it.) It makes my up to that very moment cool Motorola Razr phone look like chipped flint on a stick. It occurred to me, as it must have to the design team at Apple two and a half years ago, that no one had ever really made any effort to design an efficient and clean interface for a phone.

Looking at the iPhone and marveling at the seamless design, it finally occurred to me that maybe, just maybe, there was actually an alternative to Windows.

So, I went to the local Apple store and played with an iMac. And I was impressed. I read up, and it's pretty clear that the new world of Mac is much different than the one I left behind a decade ago. All the basic concerns about switching are, on deeper analysis, not really reason to be concerned. As I see it, the main worries are compatibility, power and price.

On compatibility, you have three options. For things like office documents, you can just use the mac version, and the documents it makes work just fine on windows versions. For where you have need to run actual windows software, thanks to the recent shift to Intel chips in newer macs, you can either boot in XP (or Vista) and use them just like you always did. Or, you can run a virtual windows installation on software like Parallels, which will run your windows apps at almost native speed. You can copy and paste between the OSes, too. And with the newest version of Parallels, you can even run Windows apps straight from the dock, without having to futz around with the Windows window at all.

On price and performance, there's no longer an issue. Apple is using intel chips, so you can make a direct comparison – and the price difference between a 24" iMac and a comparably equipped model from, say, Dell, is minimal – less than a couple hundred. Comparing a mac to a entry level $200 mcComputer isn't really a valid comparison – though you can get a mac mini for $600. If you’re willing to fork out the cash for a high end PC, there’s no reason not to get a Mac, where you get the same performance – plus unparalleled Apple design. The iMac looks better than any other PC, flat out.

And on top of all that, you get OS X, which, after playing with it at the Apple store, I find to be as slick and well designed as the iPod and iPhone, which didn't really come as a surprise. OS X, both because of its design and its relatively small market share, is relatively immune from virus and malware attacks. Which means that my experience of last fall will not be repeated, and the $2000 worth of time can beused to justify the cost of a new Mac. At least, in my mind it can.

Surprisingly, though, the wifey is remarkably cool with this whole risky Mac conversion scheme. She’s even more frustrated than me with the flaws of Windows PCs, seeing as she doesn’t have my experience in fixing them. She has to wait for me to get things working again, and she certainly doesn’t get even the minimal enjoyment I get from fixing Windows cock-ups. So getting something that is beautifully designed, easy to use, and, as the Apple website says about ten thousand times, “Just Works™” is alright with her.

Rumor around the playground has it that the new version of OS X, Leopard, will be coming out in the spring, and that there may be a hardware refresh on the iMac line at about the same time. As soon as that happens, I think I'll be getting me a 24” iMac. In the meantime, maybe I can convince the home finance minister that the wireless router is going south, and we need a Mac Mini and an Airport. You know, just to start the migration.