My "switch" letter to Apple   

I am a former Windows-centric snob. For years I thought that the Mac was a toy and that anyone who used one wasn’t a real computer user. I could never have been more wrong! I have been a die-hard PC user for almost 15 years, but always curious about different computing environments (despite my attitude). I visited the Apple web site and looked at the Macs off and on for several years but the price of the computers, the lack of space in my home for yet another computer, an unknown operating system, and the fact that I had 5 Windows PCs turned me off (that would explain the lack of space).

    A few years ago I bought an iPod and immediately fell in love with its intuitive interface. Thinking about how easy it was to set up the iPod made me think if the buzz about the Mac was really true. Could it be that easy to work with? Do the hardware and the applications simply, “just work?”

    When the diminutive Mac Mini was introduced, I couldn’t resist. With the Mini you get a powerful computer, the stability of UNIX, and the ease of OS X in an attractive price. I went and bought my first Mac. I plugged in my Mini and from the point of opening the box, setting up my Bluetooth mouse and keyboard, and connecting to my home network via the internal Airport wireless card was less than 15 minutes. Not since I got my first Commodore 64 in 1983 has a computer set up been so fast.

    Yes, its true, the programs and hardware simply, just work. I have a PC web cam and a flash card reader. I plugged them in and they worked—no prompts to download drivers, no fuss no muss. Copying files from the PC is brain-dead easy. I just plugged in the name of my PC, entered my username and password and there were my files. I copied them to my Mac and I was good to go.

    I do it all with my Mac Mini. I recently visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and I used iPhoto ’05 to create the photo album, iTunes to select the musical sound track, and iMovie ’05 to create the movie of my trip. To do something like that on the PC can take an hour or more, but on my Mac Mini, I had the whole thing done in 10 minutes and it looks fantastic!

    While I will always be a PC user (I do technical support for a living), you can count me as one of the many who will get others to “make the switch.” The OS X operating system just simply works and with the security and safety of UNIX, I don’t have to worry if my virus and spyware definitions are up to date since there’s no need to be running those programs. The Mac and OS X—it just works.