I started here at OWC a little over a year ago. I’m a Senior Software architect that has worked primarily in Windows and Linux and have a brother who is a designer that works primarily in Macs.
Although I’ve done extensive studio work (I’m also a musician) where the engineers all have Mac computers running Logic Pro or Pro Tools, I’ve always viewed Macs as a ridiculous hipster toy rather than an actual computer. I held strongly to the view that unless it’s a huge oversized box, it’s not strong enough for my needs. I have a dell XPS laptop at home that’s an inch & a half thick and thought that was the best you could get.
On my first day here, I was handed a 17″ MacBook Pro with a 2.6Ghz processor and 4GB of memory, and took on the task of learning to work with this hipster toy. I installed all of the software I needed (Surprisingly, everything I needed was readily available, with the exception of Internet Explorer, which I use solely for browser testing, so I also installed VMWare Fusion to allow me to run windows to test web applications for IE compatibility) and got to work.
For two weeks I worked on this Mac without opening my Dell. Two weeks of learning a completely different workflow.
And then I went home and opened up my Dell:
I was amazed.
I never realized just how kludgy, inefficient and slow Windows is.
I never realized how wastefully bulky that laptop was.
My $3000 prized Dell XPS m1710 gaming laptop felt like a cheap, chintzy waste of plastic running inferior software.
All of my previous conceptions about Apple and Macs had been smashed to pieces.
Since my Apple Epiphany, I have slowly become a Mac Evangelist to my friends, family and colleagues. I am constantly finding new wonderful things about my Apple products (I own several now) that increase both my productivity and personal satisfaction about the machine I spend most of my day with. I am now running a 15″ MacBook Pro unibody with a 2.96GHz processor and 8GB of memory. This thing screams.
At this moment, I am running Mail, iTunes, Zend Studio, Terminal, Adium, Google Chrome, FireFox, Opera, Safari, QuickSilver, SMCFanControl, Growl, Google Quick Search Box, Cord, ExpanDrive, iCal, OmniGraffle Professional and Smultron. I still have 4GB of memory waiting to be used and my processor isn’t anywhere near breaking a sweat. It’s ridiculous how much power these machines have while remaining physically small and absolutely beautiful.
I am now, and will forever be a Mac User and I thank OWC for opening my eyes to this wonderful world. I will never be able to express in words just how much I enjoy working with my Mac (and iPhone… and soon, my iPad).
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“Back in the day” for me was before all the PCs, when we rolled our own in a government IT lab. When the Mac first appeared, it looked really great, but that floppy-based OS just couldn’t cut the mustard as far as performance was concerned. The eye-opener for me was a Mac program written in HyperCard by a colleague to assist a dermatologist in categorizing (and recording) skin diseases. I really blew my mind, so when the Mac II came out, I made sure I got one. It sat on my desk next to the PC-AT for many a year, but the Mac did the heavy lifting of web browsing (NCSA Mosaic, anyone?), word processing (still longing for Word 5.1…), and many other bread-and-butter jobs. I built real-time apps on the PC (in Turbo Pascal) but did the serious other stuff on the Mac (can you say “MacDraw” and “PageMaker”?). Still mostly a Mac guy, with functional a Quadra 630, eMac (1GHz), the last PowerPC mini, and this summer 2008 MacBook Pro. The now 10-year-old $3k Compaq notebook still runs Solitaire ok, but that’s about all. :-)
Aw man…HyperCard was the best! Haven’t thought about that in years…fond memories of that being my first media contact database…worked flawlessly~
I bought my first iMac last October. I keep trying to use OS X workflow on Windows machines. That tells me there’s something more natural about OS X which Windows can’t touch. And I really love having a very polished OS with bash. There are a number of small things that make me happy, and a few quirks that can get in my way, but overall, there’s nothing better (no XWindows desktop environment comes close).
On the hardware side, I’ve never been happier with a company in total control. I simply love not having to do a miserable search for drivers fragmented into a billion places (Dell sure does love letting drivers languish!). So I’m comfortable with Apple calling the shots on updates.
I was there back in the day so to speak…when the highest tech on a desk was either a terminal to a mainframe…or a self correcting typewriter. And that’s not too long ago either lest anyone get smart here ;-)
Then when the first XT’s came out (and I had to market them as well as the only legal Apple II clone to remain on market) I can still remember looking at DOS strings and saying to others, “there’s got to be a better way”…I didn’t have time to learn/remember those…I needed a tool, not a learning curve.
In short, I was part of the original “rest of us” movement…where terms like Gooey and WhizyWig (how they were said, not what they stood for) just made sense.
I’ve read that Steve has gotten his best ideas walking around home appliance departments. Makes sense…do you want to make bread or read a manual and starve in the meantime?
Wow I didn’t realize your Mac Epiphany happened so recently.
Mine was a test iMac I got back in 1999 running OS 8.6 then 9. It was supposed to be a test box but the cool little computer was beating the pants off of my main computer (a PC running Win98 with a 100Mhz faster processor than the iMac.) That PC soon became a test machine, and my iMac and the PowerMac G3 I purchased shortly my Mac Epiphany became my workhorses.
4 laptops, 2 Power Macs, 2 iMacs, 5 iPods, 1 iPhone, an iPod Touch, and all the OS X variants later I’m still a Mac Evangelist. Professionally I’ve supported and worked on G5s, Mac Pros, Mac Books, and MacBook Pros, iPhones, iPods as well…
Others… chime in on what/when inspired your Mac Epiphany?