August 12, 2007
The Apple of My Eye?
My flight home from Richmond, Virginia, is bitter-sweet. For today I write my final Hangar post.
Well, it’s my last one using a laptop PC.
What a long journey it has been. It seems like only yesterday that I got my first computer. It was a glistening, white Commodore 128 (which was a significant step up from the Commodore 64).
With it, I entered the personal computer world with a built-in keyboard, lightning-quick 600 baud (bytes per second) speed modem and a beautiful monochrome monitor (although it was more like a black and white security television). It came with a version of the Basic programming language and with it I could write awesome applications such as an alarm clock and calculator!
Wow.
Then I moved into the PC world with an IBM PC XT “clone” which looked something like this:
This powerhouse came complete with an 8 bit processor churning out the answers at the blinding speed of 4.77 MHz (close to 6 MHz in “Turbo” mode!), had a beautiful amber screen monitor and a modem that boasted connection speeds of nearly 1200 baud. It came with Microsoft DOS calculator and alarm clock software, so I no longer had to create my own!
I was truly computing in style.
And then came Dell.
With an amazing array of choices (including a color monitor) and this thing called “Ethernet,” how could you go wrong? It had Windows! Over the years, we've had about 14 Dell Desktops and laptops. Needless to say, I’ve been a faithful Dell PC man ever since.
Until now.
This week there was a dramatic change in the computing force at Holland|Simpson.
We’ve taken a byte of the Apple with the delivery of our Mac Book Pro 17” HD laptops this week… each with its own glistening, white-backlit keyboard. They came while David and I visited Faith Landmarks Ministries in Richmond. During a pre-production meeting this past Thursday, I received this instant message from Brent Evans: “The Mac’s are coming today!!!!!”
I found it difficult to focus.
Of course, I’ll miss the (presumably patented) PC “blue screen of death” (although Mac has its own “beach ball of doom”), the thrice-weekly re-boot ceremony, the always helpful Microsoft Error Reports that follow a software crash and those constant threats of virus-born disease, but it’s time to move on. And we are not alone! Even long-time PC computer commentator and analyst John Dvorak took the plunge and reported that the water is fine.
Actually, for an old PC guy, the new Mac’s aren’t really that much of a risk. After all, I can awaken this beauty’s Intel processor as a PC. For example, I routinely use Adobe’s Audition 2.0 for some of our audio work in the field. (It’s a PC-only application and Adobe has no plan to offer it for the Mac.) That is not a problem for me, though, because I’m toting a double-barreled, willing-to-be-a-PC-if-you-so-deem Mac.
Options… now that’s what I’m talking about!
Of course, Virgil Lynn (our resident Art Director and long-time Mac maven) has vigorously extolled the virtues of the Mac for years. Likewise, many of my Pro Tools toting friends have likewise mumbled the Mac mantra under their breath anytime I would mention Pro Tools for Windows XP. So, the pressure has been on for quite some time now. But with Apple’s clever decision to create a machine that would run XP based programs all my fears fell away.
So off we go… into the promise of enlightened Mac-puting. We’ll see how it goes.