Wonderosity

I know Vista is coming out next week, but from what I’ve heard so far, this isn’t exactly something to get excited about. However, if you, like me, have been considering a switch to Mac (after about 15 years!), this might just be the perfect time to jump ship. Yes, jump before you lay down the bucks for another (most likely) buggy, virus-laden ‘passenger tested’ beta voyage.

Well, I did it. I bought a slightly used 17″ MacBook Pro (3.16 ghz, 1 gb ram, 120 gb Hard drive) AND I LOVE IT! There is no way around it Windows friends, a crispy red apple has been thrown through my windows and I’m loving the fresh air. I have a hunch this switch is going to happen to A LOT of people this year. The machine, and OS X, are absolutely amazing (and it looks like the soon to arrive upcoming OS -leopard- update will be even better.) My favorite things about the switch so far:

1. I haven’t had a single app freeze, “unexpected error” (duh, which ones are?) or blue screen for a whole week (not so with windows, though I admit XP was much better than previous incarnations.)
2. The OS is simple, beautiful - a work of art. You can tell that the MAC OS designers wanted something they could love. From the way windows are handled via Expose on the desktop, to the smooth 3D icons.
   
3. I’m not missing any Windows applications, all the ones I used or freebie equivalents (and some excellent new mac-specific ones) are installed and working solidly. And for the one game I’m playing, which is windows specific, I just switch my mac into windows xp mode using bootcamp or parallels. Two computers in one!
4. FrontRow is an attractive, simpe and fun way to access all my media (photos, music, videos, DVD, etc) -and using a remote to access it all is brilliant as well.
5. The Mac community I’ve been encountering on the net speaks of people who love their macs and who artfully contribute to making it an excellent product.
6. Widgets. Yeah, I know that Vista is going to try and do the same thing, but Macs did it first. I simply press F12 or go to a corner of my screen and ’swish’, all these cool handy widgets on just about anything pop-up.
7. My system boots up faster. This is really important to me. Computers aren’t for patient people. I love how, whether its waking from sleep mode or a cold boot, I can be working from seconds to a minute tops.

Well, I could add quite a bit more (like Spotlight, which has integrated into the OS what Windows Desktop Search or Google Desktop Search attempted to do while bogging down my system), but seven is such a nice number I think I’ll stop now. Besides, I really need to get my bootie in gear and start doing some other work. I know this wasn’t a graphically rich review of OS, which is what its really about, so f you want to see pictures and to be persuaded by the pros –just go on over to www.mac.com now and see things for yourself.