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My Turn is Low End Mac's column for reader-submitted
articles. It's your turn to share your thoughts on all things
Mac (or iPhone, iPod, etc.) and write for the Mac web. Email your
submission to Dan Knight
.
I keep coming back to Macs. Surely, there is enough pain and
sorrow associated with these Jobsian things, I say to myself, but a
voice inside always overrides in the end.
I got my first Mac in 1998 when I started my masters program in
microbiology. They were selling shiny new space-cadet-helmet-shaped
iMacs at the school bookstore. I
must admit that it wasn't Apple or the iMac itself that attracted me,
but rather my growing distaste for Microsoft. I had gotten tired of
the constant crashes, blue screens of death, "kernel error blah blah
blah," the bland graphics, the horrid driver conflicts, the IRQ
shuffle, the jumper plays, and so on. But given the complete
dominance that the PC had over the personal computing world, I had no
idea then that many other people had become just as fed up as
I had.
In all honesty, my relationship with the iMac was bittersweet.
First of all, everything was "backwards." I mean, the Start Bar that
resided at the bottom of a Windows screen was replaced by a Menu Bar
at the top of the screen; application switching was from top to
bottom instead of left to right; icons were placed on the desktop
from the right instead of from the left (later I would learn that
Microsoft had simply adapted Apple's ideas, and not the other way
around). But there were more serious problems. The USB system
constantly crashed, my hard drives would spin forever without the Mac
OS giving me control of the desktop, and applications would freeze
suddenly and for no reason (later I would discover that a USB patch
and an extra 32 Mb of RAM solved 90% of the problems). Most
problematic of all, my iMac could not read and write to the latest
.doc and .xls files sent to me by professors, fellow students,
etc.
I came close to simply tossing the Bondi blue out the window. But
I stuck through, committed to finding a workable path around the ogre
that was Microsoft. With the exception of IE and the terrible Umax
1220U extensions, crashes are now minimal (I've tested this by
turning these extensions off - unfortunately, I need them on). This
is not to say that all is rosy with my iMac. I've still got a problem
with a strange, incompatible line level mic-in jack that is
infuriating; MS Office documents occasionally don't translate
properly (even with MacLink Deluxe); games are always half a year
away; I often can't use services like Dialpad to make free or
low-cost voice calls; many Internet sites don't render properly, even
on IE for Mac!
So why do I keep coming back to Macs? I guess I like the look, the
feel, the concept of Macs. The clean, uncluttered, elegant, Zen-like
process that permeates Mac usage. Beautiful curves, soothing colors,
and steady performance (with a few exceptions). I like the fact that
Macs are not something everybody uses. I like the fact that
Macs are not produced by Microsoft.
Need there be more reasons?
Share your perspective on the Mac by emailing with "My Turn" as your subject.
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