My PC Journey to Macintosh

It was December 1995, I was a 10 year old boy who, like many at that age, loved gadgets and enjoyed nothing more than to dismantle them and take a peek at what was inside. I had been hinting toward my parents for a while to buy me a PC—to that day, my only recollection of using one was a Windows 3.1 system at my Primary school.

I remember Christmas day approaching and letting my imagination go wild with thoughts of a new PC possibly sitting there, waiting to be used, despite me not really knowing what to do with it other than play games and write stories in Word—my love of writing started at an early age. The butterflies that went through my stomach and the constant giggles can’t really be described, not unless you’ve been in that situation before—and I’m sure many of you have.

Then it happened, Christmas Day arrived and I rushed down stairs to greet my parents with excitement and anticipation, but at the same time with a slight sense of caution that I might have built my hopes up too much. I won’t deny that I was a spoilt, but appreciative child—my parents generally got me a whole load of gifts and then more, knowing that it would make me a happy bunny, and I thank them for that.

After opening up a final present, a board game called Operation I believe, my parents just sat there and smiled at me. A large-ish box was then pushed toward me, it was clearly heavy by the way it dragged across the living room carpet—I remember the noise like it was yesterday. After finally getting off the duct tape, I opened it to see a pretty ugly grey TV with a funny looking cable sticking out the back. It then clicked that I had a computer monitor. Another box was pushed to me, this one was quite obviously larger and heavier than the first—at that point there were probably about 200 or so butterflies just doing their rounds in my stomach.

I had just got my first PC, an Intel MMX 166Mhz processor with about 16MB of RAM and a 5GB hard disk running super-duper Windows 95. Oh the power!

My Dad had to set it up in our dining room whilst I was jumping around behind him. I’m pretty sure he was ready to throw me out the room that day. I must have been so annoying. I didn’t have the internet at that point, nor did I have any games to play.  In fact, truth be told there wasn’t much to do on my computer, but it didn’t stop me from turning it on and looking around everything in awe. I suppose I was a bit of a geek back then (am I still?). I used to wake up in the mornings knowing that after I’d eaten my breakfast, I could go and play on my computer. I still didn’t have a game at that point, but my first one a few months later was called Riven, a first person puzzle solving game that takes place on a beautiful island… Fun, but that didn’t last.

10 Years Later

My first PC was now in a recycling bin somewhere, my second, which my Mum had kindly bought for me to aid in my IT course at school, had been passed onto my niece whilst my third, one I had built less than a year ago—an achievement in itself—was sitting proudly on the desk in my bedroom.

However, despite the hardware (thankfully, because I put it there) working perfectly, I was getting more and more fed up and frustrated with Windows issues. Whenever my friends came over with their laptops, it would take us a good couple of hours to network up. I’d never known it to be this difficult. I was getting angry with the way things just wouldn’t work sometimes: the constant loading of drivers every time I wanted to install a peripheral; the constant checking up of software to make sure it was compatible. Maximum anger! That was it, the time had come for me to ditch this awkward and arduous system and find something new.

I have a good friend who will admit to being more of a geek than I, and it was to him I owe a thanks for making me see sense and opening my eyes. Up until this point, I had no other choice but to put up with the tedious system called Windows, I didn’t know any different. A Macintosh had been mentioned in the past, but everyone used to bash them, so I thought I’d be ignorant enough to join in with the bashing and not even bother to look at the systems themselves.

However, I had been made to eat those words. Ten years after being given my first PC, I was about to buy my first Mac. I spent a good month looking up reviews and articles on the Macintosh system, especially this beautiful contraption called the G5, my first thought being “surely that system has got to cost a few thousand pounds, surely!” Honestly, what system has a computer built into the back of a screen? I was almost sure that it would be for business professionals only.

It wasn’t! I was flabbergasted, bemused and excited, all in the space of about 10 seconds. Checking the Apple website, seeing all the features of this gorgeous operating system on this gorgeous computer system at that sort of price (a few thousand pounds cheaper than I first thought), it was too surreal to me, I knew I had to buy it. I’m sure I annoyed the hell out of my friend with constant questions of what it was all about. Though I owe it to him that I switched to Apple, there were times when I thought it wasn’t worth it, but when he went through the list of advantages over Windows, little-to-no drivers to install, installation a piece of cake, the speed, no viruses, no constant crashing, easy network setup I definitely knew I had to make a purchase. The excitement of buying this machine matched that of when I received my first PC.

One Year On

Has the excitement, the passion, the anticipation and the thrill of owning a Mac died off? Certainly not. At times you begin to take things for granted and lose sight of why something is so pleasant, but not with a Mac. Every time I go back to my Windows machine, which is now a rarity, I remind myself of why I switched in the first place. Going back to my Mac after a Windows session is like waking up in the morning knowing you’ve still got a couple of hours sleep before work.

Until this day, I’ve not had one issue with my Mac. Apple has said it before and plenty of Mac fanatics use it as their key ‘selling point’ when trying to persuade friends to move, but it really does just work.

Would I ever switch back? The answer to that would be no. I’ve spent over 10 years playing about with a Windows system, and although it’s been a great learning curve for me, it’s also been a frustrating one, a phase of my life I wish never to return to.

The excitement I had when I got my first PC diminished after a couple of months, but the excitement I had when I got my first Mac is still there. Of course, not everything on a Mac is perfect, nothing ever is, but it’s a godsend compared to my PC.