What Changed You???

M

mattsuzu

Registered
Thought it might be interesting to start a thread that people can post the reasons they switched from PC to Mac...

For me, i started working in an AppleCentre in Sales last August. I was a die hard windows fan and never thought of even thinking about using, or liking a mac. My boss told me it would only be a few months until i was converted - and stuck a Mac Mini. It wasn't long before selling macs eventually sold me. I've realised the advantages of Mac over Windows - just to name a few stability, no stupid blue screens, security, ease of use, i love the feel of OSX, love the look of Macs - i do a lot of graphic design and i started to see the power of a mac in design/meda situations...

What was your reason for switching?
 
I wanted an IT technician job in the local school board in the small town I lived in. I figured learning Macs would be my in. I ended up getting an iBook, taking a course and enrolled in the Apple courses. I was hooked there on in.

At the same time, I finished my networking program at school and got a job in the city and found that I love what I do, even though its not Mac related. Fortunately, my VP likes Mac's too and let me spend about $20,000 in Apple stuff!
 
I had a MacPlus as a kid. In high school I had Windows 3.1. I couldn't name my files anything coherent. It really, really upset me. :D
 
While I had always been an Apple user (used Apple IIe computers at school and owned an Apple IIc), I hadn't actually used a Mac until about 1987 or so. My father was sharing an office with another guy who did some printing with mimeographs and copying machines. Eventually, this guy got himself what I believe was a Mac 128 or a Mac 512k. I instantly fell in love with it. Some years later I was reintroduced to the Macintosh in a music lab where I would spend time sequencing music through MIDI. This solidified my love for the Mac platform so much that we even bought a Performa 6220CD PPC Mac in 1995. It was a good machine for a long time, despite it's issues (thanks to Apple crippling this hardware at the time). Even during Apple's darkest moments in the 90s, I was a full supporter of the platform. However, due to being a poor student I had no choice but to take a PC with Windows as a computer for some years. Regardless, my love for the Mac would never falter. During this time I would also be introduced to the world of open source and Linux.

I had completely moved from Windows to Linux sometime after my wedding in 2000 (still had Windows for the occasional gaming and for the wife). In 2002, I acquired an old Macintosh Quadra 650 from a Mac-loving coworker who didn't use it anymore. She was aware that I had knowledge and a fondness for Macs (I was running a Power Mac G3 Beige as my workstation). She also realized I couldn't afford a Mac at the time and offered to give me this one. I immediately accepted and had her set up at home running Mac OS 8.1. I had relived a lot of my college years and some of my childhood and later on decided to have it serve web pages for our family.

About two years ago, I acquired another Mac from a guy in a Linux user group. This was a PowerPC Macintosh clone from Motorola, the StarMax 4000. During the mid-90s I had always wanted one of the clones, which at the time were far superior to what Apple had (hence the cannibilization of Apple's market and the inevitable end of the Mac cloning era). I rigged the heck out of that with a USB card, a 3dfx Voodoo3 2000 video card, and some other expansion devices. I finally had my own PowerPC Mac with which I could run OS 9 (and also dabble with PowerPC Linux). It wasn't until later last year that I would finally reach the upper echelons of Mac computing with Mac OS X.

In September, I finally bought myself a revision B iMac G5. I am typing this right now on my lovely iMac running Tiger and I'm loving very minute of it. I still own a couple of PCs for Windows and Linux, and my other Macs are still holding strong, but my iMac is now the machine of choice and the Mac platform will continue to be my choice for many years to come.

Now if only I had purchased Apple stock in the 90s.... :p
 
Bottom line: iPod and iTunes brought me to Mac.

I had been frustrated with Windows for a long time and considered switching but couldn't get past my sticker shock at the Apple store. I thought that I'd wait until the time came to replace my system, but that never happened because I upgrade the Windows box piece-by-piece, building my own.

The final staw came when I added a hard drive. Windows' wizard to move 'My Documents' failed (what a surprise!) and I had to reconfigure every program -- with one exception: iTunes. It didn't hiccup. It didn't pause. It didn't do anything except work flawlessly. "Hey," I thought, "if Apple's software works this well on Windows and the iPod is so great, maybe there really is something to this 'Mac superiority.'" I bit the bullet and bought an iMac G5.

Wow! What a great decision! I don't have daily temper tantrums with the Mac. It really does, just work. I only wish that when I asked the IT guy at work in the mid-80s for a suggestion on buying a home computer, he had sent me to Apple instead of Dell. All those years of frustration I could have avoided...

[Edit to add: I switched early in November 2005.]
 
I started using computers for real in the 80's. I don't count filling in squared paper sheets to send off to punch card operators as computing!! Neither does the "day out with a computer" at uni in the 60's - we played noughts and crosses (tic tac toe) on a valve machine that was installed on two air-conditioned floors!!

There was no computer strategy in the company (12,000 employees) and each office bought its own. I was using a dumb terminal on an early e-mail system, but others were using Sirius and Apricot 256k machines. I wanted to use a computer for work, not be a computer operator, and I refused to learn DOS commands. So I'm not really a switcher, I predate that!!!

We had a demo of a Lisa and persuaded the manager to buy one. It was delivered in the morning and we had a celebratory lunch. In the afternoon I put on 50 records on the Lisa using LisaList (almost a database!!). Manager came back at 4:00 pm and looked at it and said "Right! How long before you get something useful done with that thing?" I said that it was already working usefully and gave a mini demo. His response was " So it's not a complete waste of money like all those other ones we've bought!"

Lisa cost 6000 GBP in the early 1980's with 1 MB of RAM and a 20MB had disc built in. 9 inch B&W screen. 4MHz processor.

I've stayed with Apple at home. I'm still working for the same company, but they went Windows "On professional advice" many years ago......
 
My first computer was a Atari 400, second hand from my cousin who was a computer Tech at GE, in Utica, NY. This computer was way ahead of its time. It had a cassette player back-up. The great thing about this machine was you could swap the cartridges to use either BASIC or your favorites games. Great for a kid, I enjoyed it.
My second computer was a APPLE IIe. This was also a great machine. I continued my BASIC programming skills, and was introduced to word processing, and spread sheet programs. Still have this computer, and it still works.
My third computer was a APPLE 512K. Seen it at Montgomery Wards in the mall. I liked the all-in-one design, and wanted it badly. Few months later my parents got it for me. My friends would come over and thought they had landed at NASA. It was my first computer with a GUI and mouse. I can vividly recall people almost being afraid to touch the mouse and use, including myself :D
My favorite computer of all time was my next. The MAC SE. This was a great machine. Did not have to boot-up with a floppy drive. My friends laughed at me about the small screen size. I did not care. This computer talked, danced, and sang. It was fun to use and extremely productive. Got me through High School. And yes, I still have it, and it still works. :cool:

I could go on. Owned several Macs after this (Quadra, Mac LC, PowerMac 9500).
In late 1997 or so. I needed a new computer. I deviated from Apple and purchased a IBM Aptiva. Seriously, can't complain, IBM service was excellent. The machine came with a AMD processor and run smoothly, with linux that is. Windows 98 was my first experience Windows, and it was not a efficient one. The computer froze frequently, would not recognize the printer consistently, and ran slow. After several reformats and re-installs I was ready for something different. My fellow computer geeks at college told me about Linux. They burned me a copy of RedHat and off I went (much bigger story here though).
Later that year, I won a Imac Revb from the computer club. Took my Blueberry Imac home, and never turned back.
Currently use my PB 15' 1.5.
 
powermac said:
My first computer was a Atari 400, second hand from my cousin who was a computer Tech at GE, in Utica, NY. This computer was way ahead of its time. It had a cassette player back-up. The great thing about this machine was you could swap the cartridges to use either BASIC or your favorites games. Great for a kid, I enjoyed it.
My second computer was a APPLE IIe. This was also a great machine. I continued my BASIC programming skills, and was introduced to word processing, and spread sheet programs. Still have this computer, and it still works.

<snip>
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I can relate on the first computer thing. My first computer wasn't necessarily an Apple, but in fact was a Mattel Aquarius. It was during the time when everyone and their mother tried to enter the infant personal computer market. It was a great little computer in its time (although there were definitely better ones) and I enjoyed the heck out of writing programs in BASIC and saving them to the cassette tape drive (floppy drives were expensive then). Before that, I was using a Commodore PET/CBM computer in elementary school. I just LOVED the green glow from the monitors as we would learn to program ASCII games and save them to cassette. ::ha::
 
In 1984 I bought a BBC computer. Basically it was a keyboard which you connected to a TV. It had no GUI. I did learn a little code at the time, but goodness knows what language it was. Perhaps others on this forum might know.

Exactly ten years later I loaned my father's Amstrad (of Alan Sugar fame) to write up a MSc thesis for a chinese friend who couldn't cope with a QUERTY keyboard. By today's standards it would drive you to drink (all that fiddling around with discs), but it did the job.

In 1998, I was introduced to the AppleMac PowerPC 7600. It belonged to the director of R&D in my hospital who was devoted to Macs. However, the darn thing drove the IT department mad. They eventually won out and he had to switch to a PC (for security reasons they said). It was a disaster. Totally unreliable and out of action for half the time. It left him a broken man.

Even though I have had no choice to use Windows at work ever since, because every hospital and health institution in the UK use PCs, I always knew the Macs were superior thanks to my R&D man and eventually took out a loan and bought my G4 QuickSilver. All history now.
 
I remember an 'argument' with my uncle and my cousin when i first saw their mac sitting in their study. possibly a quadra. i immedietly bombed in with the "a mac! ahahahahahaha no-one uses them they're rubbish get a proper computer!' to which they retorted, and within two days i was theory-based mac zealot, try to gain some practical experience on my cousins eMate, which he (rightly) claimed had been design to drop 12 feet onto concrete without a hiccup. i spent all weekend making the thing talk everything in Fred's voice. this was about 1997 or something

the next phase of my conversion was my brother. he got taught how to use a proper graphics machine, in the college's suite of brand new PowerMac G4 450mhz, all with dual 21" crts, and OS 8.6. i then followed in his footsteps and also learned on the same machine... just how dated 8.6 was... :(

then my brother bought his very own Powermac G4, with the last 17" CRT Studio Display, new. when he upgraded that to Jaguar it was brilliant again. i went to uni, had to use the panther eMacs, before spalshing out all my hard-earned on the computer in my signature. i love this bitch.
 
I had always thought of Mac users as liberal/avant-garde and that really wasn't me. I mean, Mac hardware is more expensive than say, a Dell, and from the outside looking in, it seemed kinda like Mac users were a tight-knit group, kinda uppity and had an "I'm better than you because I use a Mac" mentality.

But, with the popularity of iPod and Apple becoming more..."traditional"? I mean, having computers that look modern but not too "out there" like the old iMacs did. So I bought an iMac G5 and a couple of iBook G4s because I wanted to start publishing documents (i.e. Indesign stuff) and Mac is basically the way to go for publishing.

Anyway, I got them, realized there was no blue screen of death, no need for virus/spyware protection, etc. and I was hooked. There are somethings that bugged me at first (like having to drag everything to the trash can, and having to get stuff like Sharepoints to share your stuff on a network, and it was hard getting used to a one-button mouse (Thank God for Mighty Mouse!))

I don't think I'll ever completely abandon(sp?) PCs though, because I'm a heavy gamer, and Mac's just don't have many games I like (i.e. Half-Life 2, etc.). Other than that, everything is great...

It will be interesting though, to see how Windows Vista compares to OS X 10.5 Leopard when it comes out...
 
Hi, I just joined here, I'd be more than happy to explain my switch. I spent over two hours creating a new Windows XP partition for use as a Windows/Internet development drive. Once I got it up and running, nothing worked - no USB ports, it even got the time wrong. On a new, freshly installed XP with Service Pack 2 and al the drivers, I was not impressed. After half an hour trying to use Internet Explorer to download drivers, I gave up, and decided I'd switch to Apple by the end of the year. By a stroke of good fortune, the new Intel iMac had just been announced, so I ordered one, and here it is!

I'll be keeping the XP box kicking around as it does a few things the Mac won't handle - I use it for 3D graphics with Cinema 4D, and Reason software synth didn't work too well on the iMac, but I'm gradually going to move everything else over.

So far - with two days' experience - I like it a lot!! I just can't get used to the @ being in the wrong place, and the Home and End keys don't do what I expect...
 
I initially switched because I love the look and feel, and the security is really nice. I fell in love because my Mac lets me do what I want, when I want. I don't have to scan for viruses, or spyware, or defragment my drive, or spend time getting networking up and running. All these things, though they may only take 30-minutes here or there, are a problem for Windows, and my time is my time. I shouldn't have to adjust my life to fit my operating system. It should adjust to fit me. Apple puts a lot of though into this.

I also love AppleScript. The ability to script not only the OS (which you can do with Windows and VBScript - but it sucks in comparison) but most of the applications on my system makes life easier. That's what computers are supposed to do - make life easier.

The industrial design. What else can you say here? Apple knows how to design beautiful products.

And by the way, prior to the Mac, I NEVER wanted to use anything to manage my music collection. iTunes changed that. Apple designs beautiful software, and iTunes is not only nice to look at, but is the best application for managing a music collection ever dreamed up. Ever. I converted as soon as I got my external hard drive.

So, there are a few reasons why I love my Mac. Before I bought it, I thought that people who loved their computers (a.k.a. Mac Users) were strange. I thought of the computer as nothing more than a tool. I still look at my Mac as a tool, but I consider it to be a partner in the tasks I want to tackle. I was one of those people who used to mock the Mac users, and now I find myself on the other end of that treatment. But, hey, that's just fine. My Mac is nicer than their Dell.
 
I switched to the Mac several times, somehow. Came to computers through the C64, then saw some PCs in a store and was amazed at all this technology (this was 1983 or 1984 or something...). Then came 1987 (I was 13 back then) and the school I was in had a couple of Macintosh Plus machines. Didn't have the money for my own computer 'til, I guess, 1988 or 1989. Bought an Atari STf 1040, because it was similar to the Mac and the Mac was about double in price (and the Atari had a better display, too...). Then bought Spectre GCR for the Atari (Mac emulator). After that came an Amiga 2000 with an Atari ST emulator called Chameleon (What did I _think_?!) and then an IBM PS/1 with Windows 3.1 in 1992 or 1993, don't remember exactly. Windows was, well, you know. It sucked. Then, finally, Apple had a heart and offered a nice computer for less money. I wanted a notebook, anyway, and so I bought the PowerBook 150. This was my final switch to the Mac (and the first Mac I actually bought myself). Never looked back. (Well, constantly, but in a good way. Nostalgy...) I built some PCs myself, too. Played with Windows versions, SuSE Linux etc., since I was working as a network admin in a mixed environment. But for _my_ work, it was always Macs since then. And mostly notebooks. (PB150, PB180c, PB520c, PB190, PB5300ce, iBook300, eMate300, TiBook500, iBook G3/800, my current PB, iBook G4/1.2.) Mac desktops: I had a Performa 630 with the TV card, a Colour Classic (still have that, actually), a PowerMac 8200/120, a PowerMac 9500/200. That's it. Wow.
 
As I am reading the posts, it is interesting to see what brought people to the Macintosh. Even more interesting is the variety of computers we all had. Apple has gotten a lot of money from us over the years LOL. Don't regret a dollar of it.
 
Well, I _do_ regret _some_ money I've spent. For example, I bought the Newton 120 right before the 130 came out (not much rumours going on back then, so I didn't know...), so I sold the 120 again and bought the 130. Also, the 180c. I shouldn't really have bought that, since it wasn't really a true notebook with its 40 minutes of battery life. ;) (But the screen was gorgeous for the time.)
 
My computer legacy began with the Commodore 64, and shortly there ended. I hated computers and didn't really use them until college. I then bought a cheap machine and upgraded the heck out of it. After building a few machines and supporting machines at work. I was tired of drivers that didn't work, tired of all the Windows issues and just wanted a machine that worked and I didnt have to think about. So in 2003 I happened to be walking by the Apple Store in the mall and decided to take a look. Shortly after I bought my first iBook. So I guess you could say I was a mall convert.
 
One word: Windows ME

Well, it was a bit more complicated than that. But if you had a computer running ME, I'll bet you know what I mean.

Windows always looked like the cheap rip-off that it was. When then Michigan Governor John Engler showed up at my door with a new 2001 iceBook, I was hooked.*

Then I spend $4000 on a couple more Macs. What the heck.

Doug

* He didn't _actually_ come to my door. He got the legislature to pass the TTI -- Teacher Technology Initiative, a computer for every classroom teacher in the state. Excellent. I was a Republican for a WHOLE MONTH.
 
Tired of viruses.
Tired of autoformatting (man, I r-e-a-l-l-y hate Word's obsession with autoformat)
Tired of system crashes.
Tired of incomprehensible user interfaces.
Tired of bizarre and pointless programme shortcomings (why shouldn't I be allowed to start page numbering at, say, page 3, if I want to?)
Really very tired of viruses.
And Spyware.
Tired of being hectored by my Mac friends to get a Mac.
Bought an iBook. Love my iBook. Kiss the iBook. Lovely iBook.
Good for Bill Gates for giving all that money away, but sorry, Mac is the Word, and the Word is Mac.
Still, my flakey old HP Omnibook is better at burning open session CDs than my snazzy iBook G4, but who's perfect? Not me.
Happy switching,
easterhay
 
easterhay said:
Tired of viruses.
Tired of autoformatting (man, I r-e-a-l-l-y hate Word's obsession with autoformat)
Tired of system crashes.
Tired of incomprehensible user interfaces.
Tired of bizarre and pointless programme shortcomings (why shouldn't I be allowed to start page numbering at, say, page 3, if I want to?)
Really very tired of viruses.
And Spyware.
Tired of being hectored by my Mac friends to get a Mac.
Bought an iBook. Love my iBook. Kiss the iBook. Lovely iBook.
Good for Bill Gates for giving all that money away, but sorry, Mac is the Word, and the Word is Mac.
Still, my flakey old HP Omnibook is better at burning open session CDs than my snazzy iBook G4, but who's perfect? Not me.
Happy switching,
easterhay
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well said
 
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