Switcher

Posted on by Andy Piper


Should I or shouldn’t I?

Originally uploaded by Aidy Spender.

I was at the opening of the new Apple store in West Quay, Southampton yesterday. I met up with Adrian in the queue. Quite an excited crowd even at 8.15 in the morning… it was a new world to me, overhearing people asking their friends whether they were using iMovie HD or not, were they going to get a Mighty Mouse, etc.

As Adrian noted, the opening itself was slightly embarrassing as it was filled with the staff whooping and cheering, probably induced by beatings 🙂

So I’m now the owner of a 15″ MacBook Pro.

The abuse has started already – one of my friends says I’ve “really sold out now”.

Why did I do it? Partly peer pressure, I must admit – Kelly, Roo and Adrian have all said great things about Macs. Partly love of shiny things. Partly a desire to learn something new, and I’ve always loved the look of OS X and the knowledge that it is based on a UNIX shell. But, mostly the fact that our Thinkpad R40 frankly isn’t going to run Vista after all, and it still has a tiny hard disc which isn’t going to withstand my photographic ambitions…

No time to blog in more detail right now, as I’m busily installing various bits of software to make myself more productive. I’m switching strictly for home use – I’ll still be on Windows on a Thinkpad at work, and I will still have a Linux server and workstation at home too. So I’m going to be nicely multiplatform 🙂

Lots to comment on as a new Mac user, so watch out for more from me over the coming days.

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20 thoughts on “Switcher”

  2. Congrats on the purchase. I knew the opening would be good news.

    I think the first thing I installed on my Mac Mini was VLC, which I highly recommend as a useful media player (and it’s far better than paying the QuickTime Pro tax).

  4. Thanks for the support and advice, folks. I’ll be posting my experiences as a newcomer… currently seeking a good alternative to Windows Live Writer, wanting to know if I can get a VNC client as good as UltraVNC (actually haven’t looked for a Mac version of that yet), wanting a nice Flickr screensaver like Slickr… a good offline feedreader…. the list goes on. And I’m learning about this command key. Keep hitting Ctrl instead!

  7. I love my mac and I don’t think I can ever go back to switching to PC. I am glad that at work, we use macs, too… how will I cope if I had to change to a new school with only a small budget so they go Dell? Sadness?!!

    Ok enough melodrama from missy….

    I love my macs and it does everything I want it to do. It talks to my psp, xbox 360, pda… so happy all around!

  8. @Roo: I’d tried the first of those links (Flickr Screen Saver) and it doesn’t seem to do anything, although I didn’t get as far as the console to debug it. The second one is by the same folks that produced Slickr, so I’m hopeful that it would be more of a success.

    @Adrian: thanks for the recommendation. Problem is, I really want to be able to use UltraVNC to control my family’s PCs (there’s a nice one-click support package thing that they provide, you can run VNC in “listening mode” locally). Looks like that’s one reason for keeping a Windows laptop around.

    @missy: liking it so far, although I’m not sure I’ll keep it 🙁

  9. cant get enough of macs.. our place is full of them.. and I’ve almost downsized on PC’s, with only my work thinkpad being the final PC in the place… you made a good choice… and you wont look back…

  11. Having dropped in to the new Southampton Apple store on Sunday (there’s no way I’d be queuing to get in a shop unless there was some serious free stuff on offer!) I’m not really sure I understand the excitement.

    It’s a shop.

    I’ve seen nicer looking shops.

    Every now and then I think about getting myself a mac mini but there’s already a shop in west quay that sells macs* and, since it’s a shinning beacon of good customer service in an otherwise bleak landscape littered with an incompetence** of companies, I’d probably buy it there instead.

    * John Lewis (the only reason to go anywhere near west quay in my opinion! 🙂

    ** just my suggestion for an appropriate collective noun.

  14. Andy have you installed ECTO (http://ecto.kung-foo.tv) yet ?? very nice blogging client for the mac (also available on windows but much much less functionally rich than its mac version, its also universal binary now as well. I use it on both my g5 and macbook as well as windows (I also use it to post to my internal IBM blog as well – when i rarely post to it!!)

    I use iDVD, iPhoto and obviously iTunes mostly from the iLife suite, I’d be interested to know how you find light room as well..

  17. I love my new MacBook. It runs very well and I have no major complains. I am pretty satisfied. By the way, I was also on ThinkPad R40 for the last three years. I liked my IBM laptop very much and I wouldn’t have bought a Mac had IBM not sold to Lenovo.

  18. I’m still adjusting to OS X.
    Just to be clear, the principal thing that I want to use the MacBook for is photography (but not having got my copy of Lightroom yet, I haven’t had the chance to do so).
    The R40 has been superb – but strictly speaking it is my wife’s machine. I’ve got a Thinkpad T60p that I use for work, plus a Linux workstation too (that is currently out of action due to a failed upgrade).

  19. […] to Mac. Last month, forced by the slowing down of my Acer TravelMate 290 laptop and encouraged by Andy Piper and Eneko Alonso, who had blogged their recent switching experiences, I finally bought a 15” […]

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