houbi.com / blog

On a macro-economic level, in the light of eternity etc. etc. it’s a minuscule step. On a personal scale it’s a huge leap: after some 18 years of computing on Windows-computers (from a floppy-driven MS-Dos, through 3.11, Windows 95, XP, and a quick glance at Vista), I’ve switched to Apple.

Last Saturday, I bought myself one shiny Imac (the 2.4 Ghz, with the humongous 24-inch screen), and I am impressed as ever I was with a new computer! It’s gorgeous, and I was up and running, all network connections configured as I would like them – as a complete newbie on the platform – in about an hour. It simply works, and it works well. Redmond will have a lot of convincing and upgrading to do before I return to Windows!

Actually, I’m a bit in love with my new Imac. I’m not yet an instant Apple-fanboy or a Steve Jobs worshipper. Can see trough their marketing ploys and scary tactics. But I’m in awe with their OS and their computers!

Only two big negative points I’ve seen so far:
– Aperture (digital photograpy management program) is a dissapointment. It crashes. It crashes badly (even the Ctrl-Alt-Del equivalent on the Mac of A-Option-Esc doesn’t react and nothing else but a Power-down helps me). Might give the software a second try if the memory-upgrade I’ve ordered (1 Gb to 4 Gb, but don’t buy the upgrade from Apple as they charge way too much for memory) arrives. But there are other things that annoy me in the program: contrary to about every other Mac-software, it has a completely different UI. Just about every program has a learning-curve of zero, Aperture has a steep learning curve! Lightroom it will be for now…
– Leopard. I’ve bought my Imac on Saturday, a day after the launch of Leopard, but it will be another two weeks before shops carry systems with Leopard out-of-the-box. Worse: although they were selling Leopard-boxes, you don’t get one. Instead I had to order it from the Apple shop, and have to pay 9€ for it.

But those pale in comparison to the whole experience so far. The Paul Dhoore in me advises: buy their stocks. Wait a few months, and with the profit buy yourself an Imac or Ibook (that’s how I paid for it). I am convinced Apple is gonna grow like crazy in the next years. Iphone, Ipod and Itunes are really having a suck-in effect. They sucked me in allright.