So I think I’m having a faith crisis.
For years I’ve been a rabid apple supporter. From my Mac Plus; to the Mac Color Classic; to the LC520 (I always loved that all-in-one form factor); to the IIci (with 16mb RAM, watchout!); to the PPC 7500 (later upgraded to a 266G3 and a rage Orion video card); to my current G4. Running every single system from 6.0.8 all the way to 10.2.3 (the jury is still out, but I think the favorite has been 8.6).
I’ve been to countless (7? 8?) MacWorld conferences, stood all night in line for the release of jaguar. I was one of those typical apple “cut me, I’ll bleed in 6 colors” guys.
you may notice that I’m speaking in the past-tense. This is not on accident. the love for apple may be fading, and I’m not sure if I’m sad about it or not.
OS X is great. There are so many great things about it. it really is a marvelous OS under the hood. Unix with a friendly GUI; the thing that Linux could never do.
But there are so many damned idiot stupid things about the UI, so many damned un-mac-like things, that it’s really beginning to turn me off. Not to mention the fact that my current machine (a 450 G4), even with plenty of RAM (768MB) is chugging along at a less than reasonable pace. And even though it has been almost 3 years (the average lifespan of a computer) I have no desire to plop down another $2500 (which I don’t have) on a new mac. And to top it off, always having to run 2 computers (mac and windows) is beginning to become real a hassle.
So, it’s making me wonder, if I don’t just want to give up the ghost. And call it quits in Appleville. I’m trying to make a list of the things that I would miss, switching to the “dark side” the only things that I can think of are: iTunes and of course, my iNob (surly there’s a good windows MP3 player), iPhoto (which is being rumored that I may have to pay to upgrade now, and while cool, is honestly is the slowest program I’ve ever used in my life), and the “feel” that illustrator has on the mac (It’s always felt bastardized to me in a windows environment). But other than that, I don’t think there’s anything else holding me back.
We’re going to macworld san fransisco, tomorrow. I think I’ll hold off any judgment until then. Maybe apple really will surprise me.
But some how I doubt it.
And I may just be putting my G4 up on eBay.