I am a Mac
Posted by Marijn Rongen on November 25, 2009 in About
My switching from PC to Mac started during my second internship while I was in college. One of the people working at the same office used Apple machines for his design work. It was running Mac OS X Panther (10.3). From time to time I used to watch how things looked and worked, what I saw was very impressive. At the time I still worked exclusively with Windows XP.
Later on I got to follow the update and improvements of Panther to Tiger (10.4). Being more impressed and getting ever more frustrated by the little nags of Windows XP (inconsistencies, slowing down, you know how it goes), I was starting to get curious about the other operating systems available. Being a student with no real income I naturally found my way to Linux, in this case Ubuntu. Ubuntu was fun for a while but never really got my interest, so it was back to Windows.
In 2006 a lot changed. Having graduated I stayed on as a part-timer at the company where I did my internship and I started a company called Active-Bits with a co-graduate. By that time I had some spare money saved up and Boot Camp, still beta at the time, was available.
Boot Camp, as you may know, enables you to natively boot and run Windows on a Mac. My dependency on Windows XP was the last barrier holding me back from going Mac, and now I could run both in one shiny white machine!
The 13" MacBook I bought back then still serves as a workstation on a weekly basis, it wasn't an acquisition to regret. Windows XP was installed, and was still the main OS for me to work with.
I mostly used Mac OS X for entertainment. Using iTunes for my music collection meant an iPod couldn't be far off and soon enough a silver iPod nano (2nd generation) was my music player of choice, it helped me get through many delayed commutes. The iPod nano was retired on the long awaited arrival of the iPhone 3G (first iPhone to be released in the Netherlands). 
Leaving Windows XP completely for my design and programming work took the better part of three years. It wasn't until early 2009 that the switch was complete. Windows has been no more than just a testing facility for several browsers since then.
Tipping the scale in favor of Mac was the release of Mac OS X Leopard (10.5) in 2007 and later the purchase of the beautiful 24" iMac in early 2009. I've since upgraded to Mac OS X Snow Leopard.
Working has never been quicker, a good example is the switching between what sometimes seems like a gazillion screens. This a snap with Expose and saves me a lot of time. Some problems do occur while using Mac OS X but these are so few and far in between that I couldn't mention one from the top of my head.
I can definitely say that I am a Mac, and will be for a long time!
