The other day I stopped over at Best Buy. I wanted to fiddle around with the iMacs that they have on display. The nearest Apple Store is in Chicago on Michigan Ave. If you think that I am going all that way and into the city just for that, you're nuts. The other option is to drive a couple hours north to Grand Rapids. But why go through all that trouble when you can drive to Mishawaka? Plus Best Buy employees tend to leave you alone when you shoot them the "get the hell away from me" look.
Fortunately the store wasn't crowded and I got to fiddle with the 20 inch model. I did not have problems trying to figure it out like I thought I would. I figured that two different OS's would be somewhat different even though they are supposed to be essentially the same. The only things I really noticed was that applications seemed to be a pain to find even though it probably only took five seconds for me to hit that drive icon and find an application folder. The other thing was the dock. I dunno... I like my desktop to be clean. Having icons present and bouncing around was kind of distracting. If I make the switch to a Mac, I think the biggest problem that I am going to run into is the right-click feature. I tried a word processing program and I missed being able to cut, copy, and paste with my mouse's right button.
I am this || close to being sold on the iMac. The big question is do I really want to spend the money on one? My old computer is not dead yet.
The other Apple product that I looked at was the new iPod Touch. In all honesty, I haven't actually seen one of these new products until that day. The display that they had was functional but they took off all the content. So basically all I did was look through the calendar and have Safari tell me there was no wireless connection. Swell. And I actually went ahead and touched a surface that was all slimy from other people's body secretions. Yech. I had to remind myself to make sure I used some of that sanitizer gel I had in the car.
The iPod Touch does look pretty "sweet," as the Best Buy employee said, but it doesn't give me the bang for my buck in my opinion. Not only is the memory low, but the fact that I still have to restrict myself to certain files types is a major turn off. Most of my music files are WMA and many of them have DRM. I'm just not in the mood to do a mass conversion of probably 4 or 5 GB of data just so I can play it on the iPod.
So right now it is a wait and see approach. I could just save up big and buy the really top end stuff when the next new-and-improved models come out.
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Turning to the dark (Apple) side...? My advice (for what it's worth - don't do it, the pain isn't worth it. Yes, you'll be able to self-righteously talk about how few Mac viruses there are and how your OS is based on Unix - but in the end, you'll be stuck with an overpriced, under-featured machine with an impenetrable user interface, shoddy peripherals, marginally-compatible file formats, and (most irritatingly) a missing mouse button. Oh, and every time you want to eject a CD, you'll have to throw it in the Trash folder.
Yes, I'm a Windows guy. However, I have used Macs pretty extensively (and not by choice) since about 1992 - and not for an instant have I enjoyed it.
^
I thought Windows was the evil one here. The main reasons why I want to switch is because I want a machine that does what I want which is to basically surf the internet, word processing, and graphic manipulation. And it will be able to sit there without having to be updated for the next three or four years. I also want to computer to be stable. Although my WinXP laptop has been the most stable PC I've had since Windows 3.11, I am not convinced that a new PC with WinVista will be. I'm still feeling that burn from Win98.
But yes, I am concerned about limiting myself to the world of Apple and I don't like how restrictive that is.
Like I said, wait and see.
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