Anyone who’s read my previous blogs won’t be surprised to learn that I’ve gone Mac. Those who knew me before 2008, might be.

First some history, beyond computers mainly used for games during my childhood (mainly consoles and an Amiga 600) my first computer was a PC. Running Windows 95, 133 MHz, 4 Mb Ram Packard Bell. It was huge, slow and very offline. Since then my home computer has always been a PC, 1 x Windows 98,  2 x XP and an Alienware water cooled beast running Vista in 2007. But that’s not to say I’ve lived a Microsoft sheltered life, I’ve also used Macs at every job I’ve ever had starting with pre-candy-coloured macs with biege boxes running OS 7, 8, 9 and OS X. Sometimes they were just machines in the office, others they were my main working machine.

Macs did use to look like this.

As I moved more into the programming side of things, using a Mac made less and less sense, and for the past 10 years most of my work has been on Windows, and I got very comfortable doing so. To me Windows is that old pair of trainers, falling to bits, but the perfect fit, slip on in seconds and look right with anything. Macs never came into consideration when replacing my home PC, I had Mini Mac as a HTPC in the living room, rarely used, never even considered using it for much beyond playing videos and testing the occasional website.

What changed? Why have I gone Mac? I guess it started in 2008, with a purchase of a certain new phone, the iPhone 3G. It was a revelation, computing isn’t ment to be this easy. I didn’t need to know about file formats, .dll’s, drivers… I hate to say it but it was strange to have a gadget that “Just worked”. The App store took the risk out of buying/installing software, the apps were very well priced and very well supported. I’m now on my second iPhone, the 4, and the experience has only got better with each new version of iOS.

Pleased with the iPhone, I was sold on the iPad as soon as I saw it. No, I was up-sold from the iPhone. Again the iPad revolutionised my computing. My PC was falling out of use at home. Turning it on became an effort compared to sliding open my iPad. The only time I used it was when I had something “big” to do. Some Programming, writing a long blog, editing some photos, sorting out a new Spotify playlist… Even though it was an Alienware PC gaming was too much of an effort (have you got the latest drivers, the latest directX etc. etc) compared to firing up something new on the iPad or resorting to the Xbox for a proper game. Don’t get me wrong. An iPhone and an iPad cannot replace a PC in my usage case, I imagine it can for some, but as a power user no way can I go PC-less. The comfy trainer was fine, but I was starting to get tired of getting wet feet though the holes.

So a few months ago my beast of a PC starts to take a few tries at booting up, slowing down for no apparent reason, then the network card stopped working… you get the idea. Lots of progress bar not moving and the feeling that multi-tasking is best avoided. So the search for a replacement started and thanks to the iPad and the iPhone, Apple where in the race. Again I’m not a Mac n00b, so I had a better look at the work Macs to see where OS X was, and it had come a long way since I last used it. Not soon after was the announcement of OS X Lion, with the key idea being that Apple are looking to bring what they’d learn’t from the iPhone and iPad to the Mac.

This was all I needed to hear. A few month later new iMac’s arrived and soon after Lion got released. Luck would have it that my PC took a turn for the worse a few days after Lion had come out. Well not really luck, I was planning to save for a few month before purchasing but when my PC couldn’t keep alive for more than 5 minutes at a time my hand was forced.

So I’ve had my lovely 27″ iMac for a few weeks now, I’m going to leave it a few months before putting up my thoughts about how successful the switch has been so I can get past that “justifying you’re purchase” thing. But so far I’m loving it, it just works.

Ashley.