As valentine’s day approaches, I realized that a new love has crept into my life and supplemented the old relationship that I had been so comfortable with for so many years.  Yes, that’s right.  The mac has claimed a piece of my formerly all pc heart.

Against all odds, I’ve been a pc user all my life.  I really shouldn’t have been.  Most of my work involves “design” stuff.  When I was at school, even the programming classes were done off the mac.  I painstakingly made videos before firewire, digital camcorders, and intuitive software made production child’s play and youtube proliferated the genre.  I’m a “designer” and designers use macs.  I should have been a mac poster child.  Somehow, until this current contract I had always used a pc.  I now understand why some people are such hardcore mac lovers.  They’re so nice to use!

Anyway, as I was falling asleep last night, I had an epiphany about the whole pc verses mac argument.  (Yes, yes, I am indeed a geek.  While most people have dreams of Jessica Alba, I ponder about operating systems.)  Windows is unfairly portrayed negatively.  For the same reasons windows has an inherent advantage over the mac, it is made vulnerable in the media.  Think about it.  Windows (and the pc) is hugely robust and flexible.  I mean, have you recently gone to the store and perused through the graphics card aisle?  Omg.  We’re talking hundreds of choices.  Are you a video game player?  Do you need something specialized for architecture?  For all intensive purposes, when you buy a mac, you have like 2 choices or something.  I mean, in its simplest form, from thousands of different kinds peripherals to even more software packages, windows must do what the mac does not which is support everything.

Apple builds the mac computer.  Then, apple writes mac OS. I mean, how many computers does apple make?  … maybe a dozen different permutations between the laptops and desktops?  They have a much simpler problem to solve than Microsoft who must support probably millions of permutations between the hardware that’s available.  Yea, the mac looks really nice (they really do), but the designers are only designing a few models.  Since the hardware and software are built under the same roof, it’s much easier to optimize both for each other.  (and yes, I realize that this is an argument FOR macOS, but it also makes it severely limited in terms of choices)  If you look at the pc market at similarly priced machines to macs (which are more expensive) and you can find that sony and Toshiba make similarly well designed computers.

Yea, there are more viruses for windows… then again, there are millions more users which mean way more hackers.  Plus, there’s no incentive for a genius hacker to get into my mac.  I doubt that he wants to steal the graphics for my website.  But, he certainly has a reason to hack into the windows network at work to steal credit card numbers, social security numbers, back account info, etc. 

Yea, you might have to tape a webcam to the pc’s head, but you can also easily change out the video card, add another harddrive, swap out the processor, etc…  The pc/windows experience is like going to safeway so you can get cheap prices, a wide variety of everything, then complaining about how the lines are long.  The mac is like the local bodega: limited/specialized goods and possibly charming, but severely overpriced.

If I were doing a spoof of the “I’m a mac, I’m a pc” commercial that had a pro pc twist, I might do something like this: they both go to dinner.  The menu for the pc is really long with really tasty food, while the menu for the mac has 1 choice on it b/c he’s vegan or something.  Or they can be on the battle field and each can have their arm blown off (gross).  The pc goes online and orders a new arm and attaches it quickly.  The new arm would be really muscular.  The mac would be armless b/c he can’t find a replacement.  That's ok mac, I still think you're pretty cool - one armed and all.  Ok, I’m a dork and bored at work.  But then again, you too are a dork and bored if you’ve read this.  Cheers.