I don't know about you but I have a perception of certain companies and their products which draws me to choosing them against others.
The same applies to the countries where the products are produced. When I was growing up "made in China" always meant cheap, plasticy and easily broken whereas "made in Japan" was synonymous with high tech quality. "Made in Britain" meant being loyal but putting up with a few teething problems.
I've always had a thing about Sony. We've had several Sony TVs which have all been high quality, reliable, cutting edge products. I now have the same feeling for Skoda -VW quality at a bargain price.
It is the same with computers. Once I'd got over my Sinclair phase (I owned a Spectrum followed by a Sinclair Q) and the limitations of an Amstrad PCW (basically just a word processor) I moved on to an Apple Classic II.
That was my first real computer and I loved it. Whilst the Head of IT at school struggled with Windows 3 and DOS, I could just get on with what I wanted to do. Of course the tiny black and white screen was limiting but the machine took up so little desk space and was a joy to use. I followed that with a Colour Classic - still small in size but with colour! The Apple Performa that followed had a 15inch screen but proved unreliable in comparison. I also had a few Powerbooks which also had faults but still they were Mac OS which suited me fine.
The last Apple I had was in fact a Motorola Starmax. Manufactured under licence to use the Mac OS, it came in a tower case with a separate screen. It felt like a proper computer; grown up like its PC competitors. After a couple of minor glitches it proved reliable as hell and lasted me a good few years.
I wanted to buy another Apple to replace the Starmax but Apple prices were way too high. For a lot less money you could buy a much more powerful PC running Windows. It was too compelling an argument for me to resist moving over to Microsoft.
I don't regret the switch to Windows but still have a great fondness for Apple - once an Apple man always an Apple man. I love the latest Mac OS system and wish that Vista was half as good. I still find myself drawn to the Macs in computer shops and have to tear myself away to look at the PCs. Sigh!!!
Still with all the peripherals and software I have now, buying a Mac would be out of the question.
1 comment:
There is of course a thriving community in the same position as yourself - loving the Mac OS feel, but not being able to afford to hardware. Welcome to the shadowy world of the Hackintosh!
As I'm sure you'll know, since Apple went Intel and Mac OS became Unix based a modern Mac is a PC under the skin, which is of course why modern Macs will happily run Windows in a fully native mode. The less publicised flip side is that you can also cheerfully run Mac OS on a PC.
The lengths that some people go to to make this work well are astonishing, and as a fan I'm sure you'll love to read about it. I wouldn't recommend it though - it's quasi-legal at absolute best and can need a lot of fart-arsing with drivers to get things running well.
And then you're just left with the hassle of having to run Mac software all the time ;)
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