Mac Made

As the economics of decline take hold, I’m sure many are looking at their technology spending very closely. I’ve personally been treading water for more than three years as a small business owner/entrepreneur and can tell you from first hand experience that some things are worth buying!  I’m not a Mac fanboy, but I’d like to explain my reasons for making the leap to Apple and Mac OS X.

PC History

My design and layout experience goes back to the early 1980s in the printing business where I also started using PCs for typesetting and simple layout. The first time I used Photoshop was on a then super fast 486sx PC running Windows 3.1. To make a long story short, I stayed with PCs and continued to amass huge investments in Windows software from Microsoft, Adobe, Macromedia and plenty of others. No doubt, I was heavily invested in Windows applications, literally thousands of dollars (maybe even tens of thousands).

I’ve always appreciated the Macintosh (Apple) systems, but had been too heavily vested in the PC world to ever justify the expense of “starting over”. All of that argument went out the window the first time I got my hands on the Leopard operating system. About the same time, we had some failing PCs and were considering whether to upgrade and move to Windows Vista. We had an opportunity in one of my small businesses to buy an entry level Apple computer  for a very good price right about the time Mac OS X Leopard was released- so we made the leap.

Converting to Mac

It only took me about 2 weeks before I decided I needed a Mac for myself, so I bought a Macbook to “compliment” my regular PC. In less than a month, I had completely stopped using the PC in favor of using my Macbook plugged into an external monitor. This laptop and the latest Mac OS was so much faster and more productive it truly made using the PC feel like a chore. Since those first baby steps, I’ve made a complete conversion to the Apple/Mac platform both personally and professionally. The heavy reinvestment in new software was not as bad as I had expected and came with a few hidden benefits.

One example: In all my PC days, I used the Adobe suite of video editing tools such as Premiere and After Effects which were fairly expensive and in many ways very difficult pieces of software to maintain. The number of crashes, hardware issues and general user interface (especially After Effects) was a huge time wasting event. Since reinvesting in Apple’s Final Cut Studio, I’ve experienced almost zero problems and have been vastly more functional with tools that were completely brand new to me at the time. My abilities in Motion, for example, are far more advanced in less than a year than what took me more than three years to figure out in After Effects. 

The old PCs are still around, mostly used for test platforms to check PC (Internet Explorer) user experience for websites and videos that we produce in either of my small businesses. 

Every time I fire up one of the old Windows XP machines, it’s like watching paint dry and I am instantly reminded of how much time I must save daily just in startup time. My current MacPro boots and I’m checking emails in less than 30 seconds!

It’s really difficult to capture all of the benefits that I’ve personally experienced by working on the Mac OS platform. Some of the most simple and powerful tools such as Quick Look, which allows you to view almost any document, image or video without having to actually launch the application, is an enormous time saver over the span of even just a week. I spend far less time opening and closing applications, restarting or any of the annoying time wasters that typically come with the “normal” PC experience.

Bottomline

Lots of people argue that Apple is overpriced, the cost to convert is too high and right now it’s just not feasible. I said the same thing for years! Not only are the Apple products generally 10x more stable – they look good, they last a long time and age very well. You can buy lesser expensive computers, but I guarantee you’ll waste more of your productive time and ultimately end up replacing that cheaper PC with another one long before you replace a Mac purchased at the same time!

The sheer productivity increase has easily more than made up for the cost, reinvestment and mental switch from Windows to Mac OS. All I can say is, if you’re in Alaska, you really need to go visit MacHaus in Anchorage, Wasilla or Fairbanks. Seriously, they know their stuff, have the expertise and know how to set you up with the right computer including keep you up and running for years to come!

Final thoughts

As much as I enjoy my Apple computers, I’ve still not been able to justify the purchase of an iPhone. As much as I’d love the integration, the mobility of the Mac OS and all the cool factor that comes with it – I can’t endorse the iPhone as I would Apple’s computers. The iPhone has lots of room for improvement including detangling from AT&T, opening the OS, killing the “app store” and letting people develop in a free market environment…but, I digress. The iPhone is an entirely different topic really, but it illustrates that I’m not just a Mac fanatic out to evangelize all things Apple.