The first personal computer (PC) that I used was an Apple II, circa 1977. I read about it in an article in Fortune magazine and visited my local ComputerLand store to purchase it. Early adopters of Apple machines had to be comfortable plugging in circuit boards and controllers and handling floppy drives, monitors and other miscellaneous components of the early personal computers. I talked my boss at Pricewaterhouse into buying an Apple III (a more powerful machine) for our office in 1979 and we found that we had to classify it as a word processor (remember those?) instead of a computer since individual offices were not allowed to purchase computers. In 1981, IBM released its personal computer which operated under the Microsoft DOS operating system and the era of personal computing exploded.
Because the companies I worked for standardized on the MS-DOS/Windows platforms initiated by IBM, I didn’t go back to Apple for years. Around 1997, my wife and I purchased the first iMac for home use. Alas, the product didn’t meet our needs for power surfing on the internet, so we gifted it to a local school and purchased another Windows compatible machine for home use.
A year ago, we purchased two MacBook laptops for our daughters. The girls had been using Macs at school for simple applications involving digital pictures and digital books and we thought that the product (now with an Intel dual processor chip) was superior to a Windows machine for its user interface. After debating the issue for a while, I purchased a Powerbook Mac for my personal use when my Windows machine at home started generating problems in managing my collection of digital photos (over 12,000 the last time I counted). After a couple of months, I asked my wife, Sharon, if she wanted to convert from her 2002 Windows-based PC to a Mac. Her answer was “no.”
I am not sure what the eureka moment was, but recently Sharon informed me that she would convert to a Mac if I could guarantee her that she could open all of her original PC-based files on the Mac. I checked with a friend of mine who uses the dual processor function on his Macs (note: since I have a PC at work, I had not attempted to use Windows on my Powerbook), and he convinced me that this was an easy switch. We switched over the weekend. The first part of the conversion (email, Microsoft Office files, etc.) went smoothly. Partitioning the hard drive for loading Windows and Boot Camp (Apple’s program that controls the switch in processors) was lengthy, but in the end, it worked and I did not have to call in the Geek Squad (thank goodness I followed the directions and printed out the Boot Camp manual before I started the partition process).
While over twenty years have elapsed between my first experience with Apple and my most recent conversion, I am pleased with the decision to switch. Apple’s focus on design and functionality has been a huge plus. I can drag a song, picture, or video from the hard drive to a DVD/CD and make a copy much easier than on my old Windows machine. Even the packaging is fully integrated, whether it’s an iMac, iPhone, or iPod, Apple’s designers have attempted to keep the design efficient, modern, and integrated.
The most pleasant surprise of my recent purchase was an email that I received from Apple after I returned home from the Apple store. In the email was a bar code and a note from Apple stating that they would pick up the FedEx charges for up to two cartons containing my old computer and a printer if I wanted to dispose of them in an environmentally sound way. Given that many landfills won’t accept computer hardware, I thought that this was an excellent example of a corporation trying to be an environmentally-conscious good citizen. It did not influence my purchase decision since I did not know about it until after I returned home, but it might influence my future purchases – I even checked out Apple’s stock price over the weekend!
Welcome back, Apple!
