Why do you own a Mac?

by Chris Howard Oct 26, 2005

Nearly 22 years ago, like the rest of the world, I first heard of the Mac and, like many, I was immediately smitten.

At the time I had a computer. Well, we called them computers but young folks today would probably try to stifle a laugh. I had a Spectravideo SV-328 with 80KB RAM and dual floppy drives - 5 & 1/4” of course. With the hefty RAM and those floppies, this computer gave me bragging rights. I don’t know how much the mark-up from US to Australia was back then, but after I’d added a printer and screen (a TV), it cost me nearly AUD$2000. I was 19 and at the time my annual salary was about AUD$10,000. My mum nearly had a hernia and said it was a waste of money. And why not - would you spend one-fifth of your annual salary on a computer? In my last job my total salary package would, applying the same math, have enabled me to get a PowerMac with dual dual-core 2.5GHz PowerPC CPU, 8GB RAM, dual 500GB HDD, 16x SuperDrive DoubleLayer DVD burner, NVidia GeForce 6600 with 256MB SDRAM, Bluetooth, AirPort Extreme, wireless keyboard and mouse, and two Apple 20” flat panel Apple Cinema Displays. Are you salivating? Well I was over my Spectravideo and it’s character based screen and keyboard driven interface. (Stop laughing!)

And then Steve let the Mac out of the bag. You can watch the video of that momentous day if you look for the videoIt’s great to be out of that bag on that site. Anyone not around then possibly can’t appreciate the significance of that event.

Sure I’d seen write ups in computer magazines of the Lisa. And sure I was mighty impressed with it’s GUI interface. But it was very expensive - more than my annual salary, so GUI’s were obviously just for the very wealthy corporations. Us mere mortals would stick to our character based micro computers. Although the term “personal computer” had already been around a few years, it wasn’t in common usage. And, because the term was hijacked by the DOS world, it was never really applied to the Mac despite it being the most personal computer of all.

And that’s why I was smitten. It had such a powerful sense of personal-ness. It could be my computer - my friend. It could talk to me! It had an intimacy about it. You could pick it up and carry it around - easily and effortlessly. And what’s more, it was almost affordable. But alas I never could. It was still a bit too expensive and it was hard to justify spending almost as much on a computer as I had my first car.

So for many many years I watched the Mac world with envy.

But for all my wants and desires, I never seemed to get a good enough reason to change. And it was getting harder as I invested more in Windows applications. But then one day, I decided I could. I began to work on my wife, but I needed one final “justification”.

Why do you own a Mac?
There’s many reason why people switch to Macs, or continue to use them, but they can placed in three simple categories:

The Hardware: This includes the design, the build quality, the machine specifications

The Software: iLife, iTunes Music Store, iWork, Pro tools, developer tools and so on.

The Operating System:Under this are usability, absence of malware and other security issues, reliability, stability, low maintenance

Apple’s website, on their page dedicated to switching, gives ten reasons to consider, and which all fit in one of those areas (you’ll have to read the spiels for each on their website to see why I’ve categorized them as I have):

  • It just works (OS)
  • Picture-perfect photos (SW)
  • Home movies in HD (SW)
  • Join the party (OS)
  • It does Windows (OS)
  • As easy as iPod (OS)
  • It’s a musical instrument (SW)
  • Online streamlined (OS)
  • It loves road trips (OS)
  • It’s beautiful (HW)

It’s an interesting list when you read it, dominated by reasons related to the operating system. I guess maybe for Windows users plagued with both real and mythical issues of which many do revolve around the operating system, switching is an OS centric decision.

Why do I own a Mac?
But me, I switched for software. That was my “justification”. iMovie to be specific. I had always wanted a Mac for the other reasons - especially for their stability and industrial design (I still swoon over the iMac G4) - but when I was convincing my wife - and myself - I said “The best apps for integration with the digital video camera that I just happened to buy, are on a Mac.” Mind you it was still another year before I ended up getting one.

In a sense, people buy PCs just because. There’s no real decision involved in continuing to buy Windows PCs. Folks buying Windows computers don’t go shopping thinking “Ooooh maybe I should really be buying a Mac.” We hope one day they will, but for now they don’t.

But buying or owning a Mac is different. Mac owners and potential customers tend to know exactly why they’ll buy a Mac. They make a conscious choice. Even in this day and age of the resurgent Mac, anyone buying a Mac could still feel they have to justify it - if only to themselves.

And so back to the original question, why do you own a Mac? What’s your reason, your story?

Comments

  • In 1986 a friend brought his new Mac 128k to work and gave me a demonstration. Until then I had no interest in computers. Until I saw the Mac computers required that you memorize a jungle of commands to operate the thing, and the software available didn’t meet any of my needs. I couldn’t get excited about a spread sheet program.

    When I saw the graphical interface, Mac Write and Mac Paint, I began to imagine all the things I could create on this computer and print on an image writer. I bought my first Mac, a 512k Mac, that year and I still have it. Occasionally, I pull it out of the closet and show it to my kids along with my Hermes manual typewriter. Since then I have bought one Performa 6300 CD, two iMac 600 MHz computers, and a Rev B G5 iMac. All of them work.

    flyboy had this to say on Oct 28, 2005 Posts: 30
  • Well, I don’t feel old anymore.. hahaha…  my first computer was a Commodore Vic-20, I had been heavily exposed to (but never owned) Apple II before that.  From there I went to Commodore 64, Commodore 128, Atari ST series, and then finally to a Windows 95 PC.  Frankly, Apple never interested me until after the first iMac came out.  During the 90’s it all seemed like such a mess that they practically disappeared off my radar.

    Anyway, during my Atari ST heyday I discovered music composition software, i.e. MIDI sequencing.  I was a nut for it for a long time and the Atari ST was very very good at it.  By the time I went to Windows 98SE and Windows ME I was looking for a way to finally replace the ST and hopefully expand into digital video creation as well.  I spent 5 years and thousands of dollars trying just about everything out there only to find out that the answer was simple…. buy a damn Mac.

    I was hooked on Garageband and iMovie the second I saw them (having only ever seen the iLife ‘05 versions), used them both for a month or two, and immediately went for Logic and Final Cut.

    Now I’m more or less Pro certified across the board - Motion being my most favorite application, with Final Cut certainly being a close second. 

    At some point I really stopped being a computer user this year and became an artist again.  Friends and family have stopped calling me to come fix their PC’s and I work in the A/V industry almost exclusively.  Life with Mac’s has been good, if only because I feel like, in my case, I can focus more on what I need to do and what I want to make instead of maintenance and video games (nothing helps you forget that devastating virus that McAfee missed like a nice long session of Counter-Strike, remember kids, too much Counter-Strike is Counter-Productive).

    I give Apple a lot of credit in the software department.  The PC has nothing that compares to Final Cut, Logic, DVD Studio, Motion, Soundtrack, etc. - not even close.  And when I’m using those applications I forget I’m even “computing”.  It’s more like I’m just making art again.  Sound hippyish?  Yeah I guess so, but it’s what was promised over 20 years ago by the computer industry - they said it would make everything you do easier.  Well, this is what I do and it’s finally easier - 20+ years later.

    dickrichards2000 had this to say on Oct 31, 2005 Posts: 112
  • It pains me to say it, but I used to hate Macs. First computer was in 1998 when my family (finally) got a Packard Bell 350MHz Intel Pentium II with Windows 98. I loved it.

    I also got many PC, and PC gaming magazines. But now I hate those magazines. Why? For the simple fact that they constantly told about how ‘bad’ Apple Mac’s are, and how ridiculously ‘babyish’ the operating system is, and, although easy to use, have hardly any supported applications at all. In fact, I hated them so much, that when my friend (Mac lover) got his new iMac and showed it to me (including the manual - yes, THAT manual) I really didn’t show any interest.

    Cue to 2001, when I built my own computer. Now, I had a lot of problems to begin with. For months and months I had hardware, then software problems making the computer crash and basically not work. Now I know these were my faults for being a hardware n00b, but after I’d completely fixed all these hardware problems, difficulties still didn’t disappear. If it wasn’t hardware it was networking in windows. If it was networking it was a piece of software not running. If it wasn’t a piece of software crashing, it was my wireless card apparently disappearing from my PCI slot (according to windows), and if it wasn’t THAT it was a freaking kernal32.dll error. It was fun problem solving to begin with, but I was getting fed up. When I got into music production and went on an electronic music course we were made to use iMacs. They were only OS9 machines, but I was sold. Within minutes.

    I gave my built PC away and got my 15” G4 PowerBook 14 months ago. I haven’t looked back to microsoft windows since. I’m also finding I have a lot of time on my hands when I’m on my computer =D

    Luke Mildenhall-Ward had this to say on Oct 31, 2005 Posts: 299
  • Strewth, DickRichardson - switching from Commodore to Atari? That was akin to Apple to Dell!

    I was an Atari ST user too - for the same reason - music. It was a great machine. SteinbergPro 24.

    Chris Howard had this to say on Nov 02, 2005 Posts: 1209
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