Coolest Hottest souvenir ever
In recent posts I’ve alluded to an errand in Barcelona and to a very expensive souvenir of the city. Riddle: what comes from Barcelona, has a çedilla, and can be used to fry tortilla española ? Answer: my souvenir, a direct result of that Barcelona errand:
I’m not actually using the çedilla, nor the ñ, but I am happy they are there as mementos of one of my favorite places, the native city of my shiny, shiny new MacBook.
This marks a long-pined-for return to the fold. My first computer was a Powerbook from circa 1992, and virtually all of my computer experience through graduate school was on the Macintosh platform. As far as I know, no one else in my family has ever used anything else, and whenever I have visited them there has been great envy when borrowing their sleek little machines. Leaving Mac for Windows, concurrent with leaving grad school, was a fairly random decision and one that I have regretted pretty much every day.
So I’m very happy to be back.
After just a few days with the thing I am very pleased. Yes, it runs at least as hot as everyone said it would, and in spite of all the “it just works” hype, there has been a frustrating bit of learning curve (which has by no means flattened out yet). But the sexy seamless solidity of the hardware, and the sheer silkiness of the OS and applications are a cool shower after years of wandering in the wilderness.
I began considering this migration a long time ago but put it off due to frugality, opting instead to replace my Sony’s hard drive (for a second time) when it died two summers ago. I spent a lot of time coming up with justifications for why I needed to replace that six-year-old workhorse with a Mac, some of which were only silly, some downright delusional. I have to say that Apple does not make it particularly easy to buy a machine just anywhere in Europe. The online Apple shops that do exist in neighboring Italy, Austria, and even Croatia will serve only those countries and won’t ship over borders (thanks, EU). Slovenia’s one bricks & mortar Apple store has prices marked well up from Apple’s online European prices, which are already about 20% higher than in the United States. A proselytizer friend even offered to carry a machine back from her monthly commute to Britain, but the London Apple shop was entirely uncooperative with that little scheme. That I had to buy in Barcelona of all places after a long, long time of web shopping, comparing, researching, waiting and cursing, is fairly odd. But buying there vs. here enabled me to triple the installed RAM while still paying less than the same machine would go for in Slovenia, as well as avoiding a very long wait for it to arrive. And it gave me an excuse to cruise around Barcelona for a day. So for a variety of reasons, the Spanish/Catalan keyboard is a joy to me, and familiar enough from my time in Argentina.
Though that tiny return/enter key is taking some getting used to.
I will probably be posting occasionally on the experience of migrating back to Mac from Windows via a brief flirtation with Linux and a tawdry fling with Aquafy. Never having really used OS X before, though, I think we can just call it ‘switching’. So far I’m wondering what the hell took me so long.
Yes! My 12″ titanium powerbook and I salute you.
Comment by Jagosaurus — Friday 14 July 06 @ 14.19 MDT+2.00
We’re sending the daughter off to college this Sept., MacBook Pro in hand. She has been very very happy, having been able to ditch her Toshiba laptop and all that Wintel machine madness. Myself? Due to work obligations, I’ve had to go from Mac to PC a while back; as she smiled, laughed, and hummed a cheery tune while getting to meld with her Mac, I silently cursed my computer situation.
Comment by DarkoV — Friday 14 July 06 @ 22.21 MDT+2.00
I just bought a Macbook Pro. I’m in a similar position to you (Windows to Mac via Linux (which I shall still use)). Agreed about the tiny Enter key, I am still getting used to this keyboard ;-)
Comment by andyp — Tuesday 20 February 07 @ 07.46 MST+2.00