Throughout my professional life as a sysadmin I've had multiple short run-ins with Apple and its products. Either I had to install some web software on a customer's iMac or I had to configure their dial-in settings, or some colleague would bring in his tPBook and we would get to toy with it for a little while. As the years advanced my interest in Apple swayed from "mild" to "lusting". Unfortunately I never had the money to make the jump.
Near the end of 2003, my employer offered me what was called a "PC Prive", meaning that you trade in a bit of your vacation time or of your bonus for a computer. So I thought: why _not_? I started a poll on Ars Technica, along with a comic which explained my quandary (it's this one). In the end the choice was made: I was going to buy an Apple G5 tower and make the switch to OS X! ^_^
Since then a lot of things happend! For starters, I've never used Windows at home ever since! Games? That's what I have six consoles for! Firewalling? My wireless router does that! Print serving? My Wifi AP can do that! So ever since then it's been nothing by Mac OS X for me :3
The menu on the left contains a few write-ups that I did way back when I'd just made the switch. Reading through them you can see that, while it wasn't painless, the switch was no struggle. I had the OS and all the applications pat down after a few months and now, after two years, I've become quite accomplished with them! Naturaly Mac OS X still has loads of secrets for me, but they're becoming fewer in number :)
In June of 2005 I started working for Snow who bought me the latest revision iBook immediately. Normaly, consulting agencies will send you down the road with the first crappy Windows laptop they can find! But not Snow! They let me spec my own laptop, along with all the required accessoires! So next to my lovely Powermac G5 1.5 (768MB RAM) was an iBook G4 1.42 (1492MB RAM). I'm so lucky!
Since then we've owned a vintage eMate, a first generation Macbook and we currently have a Macbook for each of us.
I have to say that working with OS X is a joy, both at home and at the office! At home I work on my website, do my stuff for the J-Pop Foundation, play games and so on. And at the office I have all the professional tools that I need! MS Office, PDF creation, Omni Graffle, SSH, E-mail, IM, iCal and so forth. I cannot imagine having such a streamlined work flow with MS Windows or Linux.
Finaly, since that fateful day in 2003 I've converted at least five people to the Light Side! :3 There's Dick, who rigged his Powermac G5 into a _beautiful_ home entertainment center including a huge beamer! Then there's Geert, who is quite happy lugging his iBook to the office and using it at home for some browsing and mailing. And there's Martijn, who started out with a Mac Mini, but who recently splurged on a PowerBook and a 23" Studio Display as well. I hear Martijn's wife is content with the Mini these days :)
All content, with exception of "borrowed" blogpost images, or unless otherwise indicated, is copyright of Thomas Sluyter. The character Kilala the cat-demon is copyright of Rumiko Takahashi and used here without permission.
