Crackbook Pro
November 6, 2006
Even though it took a while, I have finally given in and replaced my old laptop. It was getting on a bit, and I had set my eyes on something new: the Macbook Pro. Yeah, I’ve given in and joined the cult. And it feels good.
So, why a macbook? I mean, the macs have often been pictured as toy computers (remember Control-Alt-Delete, who pictured them as “a Fisher Price My-First-Computer”), and I’ve never been really fond of them from afar. They just seemed not unixey enough, and that turns me off as a diehard linux user.
However, for the past two months or so, I’ve been working right next to Saul, who has a Macbook Pro. And I saw him use it, and gradually my prejudices about Apple began to fade.
And now I’m part of the Cult. An Apple computer owner.
Getting a Macbook was surprisingly easy. I’d always pictured Apple as this online store where you order stuff and wait for two weeks. Actually, that’s what it is if you live in France. But if you live in Silicon Valley, you have Palo Alto two caltrain stops to the north. And within Palo Alto, besides Steve Jobs himself (aka “the man with the reality distortion field”), you’ll find not one, but two Apple Stores, the church of all things Apple.
So it was basically as easy as walking in, greeting the nearest salesperson with “I want a macbook. That one (pointing to the 15" Core 2 Duo Macbook Pro). Show me where I shovel the money to get it.” I encountered a mild annoyance when they refused to give me the student discount (I’m not attached to any US university), but relented when they offered the Google discount instead, which is lower, but still not bad. And, given my current situation, I can afford to spill a few hundred dollars extra if it means walking out of the store with my new computer now, rather than going through a few weeks of dancing around to get other discounts applied.
And this is how I bought my first ever computer from a store, rather than building it from parts myself or slyly having it given to me.
My first day of playing around with Mac OS X has left me fairly impressed. It’s just about as cool as I was expecting it to be, and then some. Expose and Dashboard obviously blew me away, and the sheer just-works-ness of the whole environment is stunning.
I’m a new member of the Mac cult now. Still doesn’t mean I’m letting Steve Jobs’ reality distortion field anywhere near me. (But I hear Leopard is going to plain rock)