Why do you own a Mac?

Nearly 22 years ago, like the rest of the world, I first heard of the Mac and, like many, I was immediately smitten.

At the time I had a computer. Well, we called them computers but young folks today would probably try to stifle a laugh. I had a Spectravideo SV-328 with 80KB RAM and dual floppy drives - 5 & 1/4” of course. With the hefty RAM and those floppies, this computer gave me bragging rights. I don’t know how much the mark-up from US to Australia was back then, but after I’d added a printer and screen (a TV), it cost me nearly AUD$2000. I was 19 and at the time my annual salary was about AUD$10,000. My mum nearly had a hernia and said it was a waste of money. And why not - would you spend one-fifth of your annual salary on a computer? In my last job my total salary package would, applying the same math, have enabled me to get a PowerMac with dual dual-core 2.5GHz PowerPC CPU, 8GB RAM, dual 500GB HDD, 16x SuperDrive DoubleLayer DVD burner, NVidia GeForce 6600 with 256MB SDRAM, Bluetooth, AirPort Extreme, wireless keyboard and mouse, and two Apple 20” flat panel Apple Cinema Displays. Are you salivating? Well I was over my Spectravideo and it’s character based screen and keyboard driven interface. (Stop laughing!)

And then Steve let the Mac out of the bag. You can watch the video of that momentous day if you look for the videoIt’s great to be out of that bag on that site. Anyone not around then possibly can’t appreciate the significance of that event.

Sure I’d seen write ups in computer magazines of the Lisa. And sure I was mighty impressed with it’s GUI interface. But it was very expensive - more than my annual salary, so GUI’s were obviously just for the very wealthy corporations. Us mere mortals would stick to our character based micro computers. Although the term “personal computer” had already been around a few years, it wasn’t in common usage. And, because the term was hijacked by the DOS world, it was never really applied to the Mac despite it being the most personal computer of all.

And that’s why I was smitten. It had such a powerful sense of personal-ness. It could be my computer - my friend. It could talk to me! It had an intimacy about it. You could pick it up and carry it around - easily and effortlessly. And what’s more, it was almost affordable. But alas I never could. It was still a bit too expensive and it was hard to justify spending almost as much on a computer as I had my first car.

So for many many years I watched the Mac world with envy.

But for all my wants and desires, I never seemed to get a good enough reason to change. And it was getting harder as I invested more in Windows applications. But then one day, I decided I could. I began to work on my wife, but I needed one final “justification”.

Why do you own a Mac?
There’s many reason why people switch to Macs, or continue to use them, but they can placed in three simple categories:

The Hardware: This includes the design, the build quality, the machine specifications

The Software: iLife, iTunes Music Store, iWork, Pro tools, developer tools and so on.

The Operating System:Under this are usability, absence of malware and other security issues, reliability, stability, low maintenance

Apple’s website, on their page dedicated to switching, gives ten reasons to consider, and which all fit in one of those areas (you’ll have to read the spiels for each on their website to see why I’ve categorized them as I have):

• It just works (OS)
• Picture-perfect photos (SW)
• Home movies in HD (SW)
• Join the party (OS)
• It does Windows (OS)
• As easy as iPod (OS)
• It’s a musical instrument (SW)
• Online streamlined (OS)
• It loves road trips (OS)
• It’s beautiful (HW)

It’s an interesting list when you read it, dominated by reasons related to the operating system. I guess maybe for Windows users plagued with both real and mythical issues of which many do revolve around the operating system, switching is an OS centric decision.

Why do I own a Mac?
But me, I switched for software. That was my “justification”. iMovie to be specific. I had always wanted a Mac for the other reasons - especially for their stability and industrial design (I still swoon over the iMac G4) - but when I was convincing my wife - and myself - I said “The best apps for integration with the digital video camera that I just happened to buy, are on a Mac.” Mind you it was still another year before I ended up getting one.

In a sense, people buy PCs just because. There’s no real decision involved in continuing to buy Windows PCs. Folks buying Windows computers don’t go shopping thinking “Ooooh maybe I should really be buying a Mac.” We hope one day they will, but for now they don’t.

But buying or owning a Mac is different. Mac owners and potential customers tend to know exactly why they’ll buy a Mac. They make a conscious choice. Even in this day and age of the resurgent Mac, anyone buying a Mac could still feel they have to justify it - if only to themselves.

And so back to the original question, why do you own a Mac? What’s your reason, your story?