Personally, and I know this sounds really stupid, I wanted the "whole package" to compliment my brand new, beautiful iPod Video. That desire to complete the package made me look into mac laptops more. I went into the Apple Store near my place a lot, window shopping. And the laptops always caught my eye, and the demos that the associates showed me always impressed me. I would always tell my girlfriend, "I wish I had one of these." As I looked into the laptops, my habit of buying the "best" version of each one led me to get the 17" Powerbook.
That's how it all started. My first couple of weeks, actually, my first couple of months with Apple were horrible. What kept me going was that I just spent near 3K on a laptop, and to store it away because it was unfamiliar would be stupid.
Than, 2 months after I bought it, the Powerbooks are obsolete, and the MBP is released, with built-in isight, better screens, better battery life, faster processors, and an awesome video card. I was shocked, ******, and discouraged. For the next few months I used OSX for basic stuff, while at the same time missing all my Windows features, like Videora, ability to download something and it would just "work." I didnt even try to learn how ot use it, it was too daunting. Than, i decided to sell the Powerbook, which led me to this site. However, the site doesnt allow you to sell anything unless you made at least 50 posts. So i decided to scan the forums a bit, and saw the "Switcher" forums, and in there started my appreciation for the mac.
I found out that everything I missed on Windows could be fixed and replaced on the OSX, and most of the time, OSX did it better and more flashy too. Im a man of flash, after all, I just spent 3k on a laptop because i thought it looked nice, and it complimented my iPod. The newfound knowledge was liberating; no longer did I feel I "wasted" my money. The next few weeks were exciting, because now I was learning a new OSX, and everything I learned always impressed me. "I can't believe it can do this too, just like Windows!" and "Wow, Windows would never allow me to do this!"
I always dreaded not having a dedicated "Desktop" button, like in windows, but with expose and hotcorners, all i had to do was set "Desktop" to one corner, move my mouse to that corner, and the windows would split to reveal my desktop. It was beautiful.
But what's this? Expose also had "Applications," where it would single out all the windows of a specific application. "Wow, Windows didn't have THIS!" I thought to myself. No longer do I need to find all 8 of my IM windows that gets lost in the cluster of a desktop, with my browser, photoshop, word... I just need to click iChat, move my moue to the edge and all my IM boxes came into view while everything was focused out.
"All Windows" was really useful, whenever I had a clustered desktop, and I wanted to know exactly which window was opened (like how many iTunes windows I had, and how many iChats I had opened) I used this.
I learned that OSX had its own "Alt+Tab" and its flashier too! Basically, everything that used "Alt" on Windows is replaced by the "Apple" key.
I found programs that replaced my essential, useful, and FREE programs on Windows. It took awhile and a lot of experimenting to find the ones I wanted.
Another thing that helped me decide to keep my Mac was something that took time and not discovery. I noticed, that for the 6 months I had my laptop, it never crashed, and it runs just as quick as the day I bought it. I didnt defrag once, I didnt have to run my usual SpyBot, and didnt have to run Anti-Virus programs. With Windows, within 2 months, the system would drag and I would have to do all the usual "maintenance" stuff.
Im really glad I found this website, if I didn't, I probably wouldnt be using OSX and loving it. You guys are what kept me going with OSX, thanks!
