Day 1: - It's here!

My new MacBook arrived today. Yay!

Before we get started though I feel that I should confess that although I describe myself as a "Mac virgin" I did actually use an Apple Mac briefly while at Art College some 20 years ago. In the greater scheme of things however, it was little more than a quick snog behind the bike sheds. Certainly nothing for my new MacBook to be jealous of and absolutely no reason that it should assume that I know who is supposed to go on top or what gets plugged in where.

I should also confess that I have had quite a bit of experience with Windows PCs. Having worked as a programer and network administrator, and currently spending a good chunk of my time looking after a couple of rather large websites.

The reason I mention all of that is that although I am a Mac virgin it is true to say that am not entirely clueless. That is to say that I probably have a good idea of what I want to do with this thing, even if I don't yet know how to do it.


So why the move to Mac?

Well at the time of that almost forgotten first encounter the Mac was streets ahead of the PC in terms of its user interface and although the gap has been narrowed, I get the distinct impression that it still is. It's more a question of why I haven't switched sooner and the answer to that it that most of my IT career was spent looking after systems for accountants, production controllers and the like i.e. people who use PCs. If I'd been working for publishers, musicians and the like then I guess I'd have moved years ago. Another factor of course is that a Mac is, and always has been, more expensive than an 'equivalent' PC. Given that in my line of work I was used to dealing with the Windows blue screen of death on other people's computers on a daily basis, it didn't seem too much of a hassle to be dealing with it on my own computer as well.

I no longer work in IT but I do spend a fair amount of my time logged into a LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP) server at the other end of the country playing with the various web sites that I maintain as a hobby. Thus the continued battle with my means of accessing the web has become a great source of irritation. I mentioned this to my brother-in-law (those who regard me as a something of a computer wizard should think of him as a god) and his answer was simple: "Use a Mac". Obviously I did a little more research before parting with 750 quid of my hardly earned cash but that just lead to me getting bored with reading the phrase "it just works" over and over again. Thus I figured that it was probably about time I found out for myself.