Let me first start off by saying that I learned how to use a computer in command prompt. I didnt start with point and click, I remember what it was like BEFORE cell phones and beepers, and I sure as hell remember what DOSShell was.
My first computer was an IBM clone, made by Winchester Computers. It had a Tandy VGA montior and a 3-button BRICK of a mouse(which really didnt serve a purpose)
My dad as a SU on older UNIX systems when he worked for the Bell system, and he brought his knowledge down to me, though at 7 years old, I had no freaking clue what the Bell System was, let alone UNIX.
I spent my days playing bomberman, snake, avoid the noid, and screwing around with banananoid. My mother needed the computer for invoicing for the business my dad was starting, so my dad engineered a simple menu system that he wrote in basic. I figured out how to modify and edit this menu.
Then BAM! windows 95, AOL, and a 28.8 Modem. screw command line, we had a fucking MOUSE!
I upgraded that badass little compaq’s video card to a 16mb 3dFX voodoo card so I could play Need for speed!
Alast my first taste of computing and my last taste of command line and true power over a machine.
Every once in a while, I had to run a cmd to play a game, but that was far and few between, we had Icons, a UI, and INTERNET
Flash forward to Flash version 5. I got curious. I discovered a few more things about how windows worked, and its shell(explorer) that sat on top of DOS. I played with litestep and a few other shell replacements, and I kept hearing about this thin called Linux. But, It was my moms computer, and I couldnt do anything potentially harmful, because, well… she ran the business off of it.
I Spent my days animating in flash, and playing with this new thing called actionscript. though it wasnt powerful compared to todays standards, it did the job. I experimented with making my own shell in flash, hell all I had to do was replace “explorer.exe” with “myapp.exe” in the boot loader and bingo, I had my own shell. But, then I turned 16, found cars and boobs and I was done for until college. I even played with the ancient BeOS, which, I miss dearly.. 
I toyed in my spare time, upgraded to windows XP Pro, and happily I sat there until now.. I built my first computer about 4 years ago, a Dual Proc AMD rig with 2gb of ram. The thing was a train, and I think it would be hard to touch even now. But.. I parted it out for money, etc, and now im on a laptop drinking my Capt’n and Coke.
During this period of my life, I happily typed/animated/programmed away, in windows. I dealt with the random bluescreen, or missing DLL for my scanner. All was well. Then, in college, I was using an older Mac G4 with os9 on it. It was during my DVD production class, and I had 2 hours and 6 GB of video footage on a portable hard drive. That Mac pissed me off to no end, the backwards interface, archaic icons, and OLD Adobe apps. I didn’t have problems at first, but then I started transferring data between the Mac and my PC at home. HFS+ and FAT32 on the same portable harddrive was a recipe for disaster. The hard drive crashed. I lost all of my work, and the PC couldnt read anything on the drive. I BLAMED THE MAC (i know, i know.. quite naive) I vowed to NEVER buy or use a mac again, unless I absolutely HAD to.
My first Job in the Web/Media Industry, I was programming away in php. I discovered WHM, cPanel, Apache, and LAMP servers. I now had a need to go back to command line when I was using SSH. luckily I had that background. I noticed things ran smoother on our servers than on my dev system. The we hired another designer, and She was more accustomed to a Mac. So, we bought an older G4 from ebay, and loaded OSX on it. Now, I had used OSX, and I didnt hate it, but I was still a windows boy. Over time, I began to notice that old mac ran faster than my brand new PC?!
In the meantime, I started playing with linux again. Back in college I had installed Redhat, and Slackware on my alienware and ran my own FTP server so i could send stuff back and forth from school because, well.. the HD was trash. I liked slackware better for some reason, and I even played with SuSE 9.3
I compiled apache and php from Command Line, and had no issues. So, while rendering away in After Effects on my Dually, I ran a mini web server on the old PC.
Fastforward to 6 months ago. I decided that I had enough with windows, and I decided to Dual boot the latest SuSE distro on the desktop at work. We didnt have the funds for a new windows license, so, Linux it was. We even bought a VMware license and I ran Photoshop under windows 2000. (which was unbearably slow) so, I used the Mac when Gail wasnt in the office.
I then purshased an old thinkpad form my boss. a 600E with 300Mhz and 128mb of ram. I ran SuSE 10.1 on it, and it ran damn near as fast as my desktop when in windows mode (not vmware)!
I then purchased a NEWer thinkpad. an R32. Screw Windows, I went linux for full development. I had had it with MS and their crapware. I dual booted though, because i still NEEDED photoshop and wine just couldnt do it.
Now, for the last 6 months I have run Linux competely on this laptop. I have had to reboot it 2 times due to a power failure and a complete system freeze (my fault… bad programming in an actionscript)
In windows, It bothers me to update, reboot, and fix something about every 10 days.
IE7 was just a DISASTER, and now i run IEs for Linux. Still the same crap, but now i can actually tell the system to kill the process and it listens.
I recently fixed someones computer(well, tweaked it) because they bought a new PC with vista, and it literally made me nauseated.
I even have a G3 sitting next to my desk.
my reasons over that history to want a mac?
- Linux listens. I tell it to kill process 4318, and 4318 DIES. theres no bargaining with the OS. It just does what I tell it to.
- In 5 years I have never gotten my UMAX 2200 USB scanner to work in windows. I plugged it into this laptop 2 nights ago, and without a flaw I was scanning in less than 4 minutes. I kid you not
- My girlfriends scanner was acting buggy on windows XP, its a cannon, should have worked via PlugNPlay (rather PlugNWish) so, I tried it on the laptop, I scanned over 400 pages last night for a yearbook. Not one error.
- Firefox
- Terminal/Bash > Cmd
- sudo
- XGL/Beryl and the OS X interface just flat out OWN vista. theres no comparison. Vista is horrible when it comes to looks/effect.
- Linux doesnt crash. I never had that mac at work crash or freeze on me. while windows was bugging me weekly to restart
- I had to restart the Windows to install IE7. WHY?!?!?!??!?! Its a _FUCKING_ BROWSER
- Mac’s seem to hold value. PC’s do NOT
- I’m afraid of vista. I literally FEAR it
- XFS is coming. droool
- finalcut
- true dual processing and thread processing
- REAL permissions/ownership
- Mac’s/Linux are NOT a target for malware/crapware/viruses/trojans/anyotherpieceofshitscriptiekiddieoutthere
- OSX is pretty
- a TRUE plug N Play OS
- Open source baby!
Now. this list can go on, but then I just elongating the truth. Vista Sucks. and theres no way to deny that. The upgrade cost, the lack of hardware support, the uglieness, etc, etc..
So, now, im sitting and waiting on http://apple.com/store for that refurbished hottie to show up under the 17″ MBP section so I can snag it up.
I’m going mac.
/rant
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