Taking the plunge

Tuesday Jan 17th 2006

imacToday is a day of both jubilation and outright being scared out of my wits. I bought a Mac. It’ll arrive in about a week or less. The Mac I decided to get was an iMac with the new Intel Core Duo processor(s). Apple must have received a lot of bitching from the Mac community for doing this.. to the tune of INTEL? In my MAC?! (fall off chair on floor into fetal position) or something similar, but I personally don’t care what processor resides in the box as long as the box works, and at the end of the day that’s all that matters.

I know I’ve said in years past that Macs suck, and to be honest, they did. The first iMac was absolutely worthless. Underpowered, overpriced and too “cliquey”. The iMac was more of a toy rather than a real computer. I give credit to Apple for having the marketing savvy to offer computers in different colors, but all that truly did was take away any credibility of what it could truly do - which wasn’t much. The rest of their lineup was overpriced. While there are some who would say “You get what you pay for” concerning Macs, this was not so with Macs of yesteryear.

Only now have Macs come down in price enough to where you actually do get what you pay for in a package that looks good and performs very well. The fact my iMac will have intel procs in it is a good thing.

Okay, so the big question: Why did I buy a Mac? This is best answered in parts.

1. Easy HD Video Editing

Even though I really like Windows XP (truly), video editing has always led me to outright frustration. It is the one thing I wish Windows would do without having to have a bazillion-dollar PC. I mean, yeah, I could easily build a $5000 PC with all the best-tech gadgetry available for power video editing, but why? The Mac is cheaper and does video much better.

2. Unix based OS

It may be a Mac, but the core of the OS is Unix based - and I like Unix. A lot. I’ve been wanting to use a Unix (or at least Unix based) OS as my primary OS for a long time now and this will fit the bill very nicely.

3. Better display

Mac has always been a very “visual” computer. For some reason, Mac displays look better than PC’s and the color resolution is more “true” (very important for video editing). This particular Mac I got has the 20-inch widescreen display - the largest display I’ve ever had on computer.. well.. one that I’ve owned anyway.

4. Built for visual apps

I first used a Mac IIci back in high school. After that I used a few in college and I remember seeing the baby stages of the Avid video editing system - and it was for Mac. I was very impressed with it. This was circa the early 90’s. It had dual-monitor capability - and this was before Windows 95.

Mac’s tradition hasn’t changed from being very visual, and well, I need that to further do what I want to do with a computer. The iMac has everything in place ready to go for what I want to do with it, while a PC would take many add-ons costing me several thousand dollars (on top of the PC price) that I don’t have.

5. Size

The fact my Mac comes with a 20-inch widescreen display with the computer and everything else built into it is nothing short of astonishing. Add to that it’s compact and doesn’t take up much desk space.

6. Price

I compared the Mac to the PC and the fact of the matter is that I get a lot more for a lot less by buying the Mac. The PC equivalent would have easily costed twice as much.

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I said at the beginning of this that I’m scared out of my wits. Maybe that’s not exactly true. What I’m concerned about is the OS itself. This is not a PC. I’ve never used a Mac full time. Will it actually do what I want it to do? Will it work? Will it be reliable?

Guess I’ll find out soon enough. I’m crossing fingers that I will write many happy posts about my Mac.

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