Computer Blew
I started plotting an act of treason yesterday.
My Macbook, my companion on literally every trip I've ever taken as a professional writer, is finally crawling off to the elephant graveyard. Just flipping it open knocks the wind out of it. Its case is pitted and battered by everything from cat fangs to hot coffee cups. I've been putting off replacing it for years, but at last the time and finances are right. And I'm buying a Windows machine for the first time in my entire life.
See, I'm a Mac-ite of an old school. Not the oldest, but sufficiently old, harkening back to the late 80s. My school days were spent playing with the Apple II. In junior high I would stretch a point of my mother's school employee access to a more advanced lab filled with beige box Macs. She even got to borrow one from the district each summer, and much of my earliest coherent writing was done on them (as well as a lot of Chuck Yeager's Air Combat). So I've long preferred to work on the platform with which I'm most anciently and intimately familiar, and as far as my desktops are concerned, that's always going to be the case.
But I've been wanting a token Windows machine, to serve as an operating environment for some stuff I can't talk about yet. And at this point a Windows laptop is more financially responsible than a new Macbook.
But there are... issues with transitioning from the Mac-user mindset to a Windows-buyer mindset. It's perfectly possible to be a savvy, up-to-date, tech-minded Mac user, but the thing is, if you want to be a completely cotton-brained ignoramus, the Mac will accommodate you. You don't have to be able to count to four in order to buy or use a Mac. You don't even have to be able to identify the gas your lungs are metabolizing as you read this. As far as even the most comatose crustacean of a user need be concerned, Macs don't have tech specs. They have fucking mana bars.
Buying a Mac is simplicity itself. You go to the Mac temple store or the Mac site. You pick one that looks pretty. There are drop-down windows that tell you they're powered by baby otter farts or wood nymphs or whatever, but you don't need to care. It arrives at your house, you unbox it, you plug it in, and it just works. It's amazing, how little of a shit you need to give about a Mac's innards most of the time. Here, let me show you my system profiler:
My processor speed is bunny and my RAM is rainbow! This machine will last me for ten years.
Contrast this with the process of constructing a Windows machine prior to purchase... suddenly your components are not installed and magically synchronized by helper elves. You actually have to pay attention to which device pairings will make the goddamn planet blow up. You have to research which video card is standard this week. You have to get the proper RAM chips in the proper configuration, and then get RAM in your RAM because you like RAM, and 64-bit that motherfucker plus an optical drive that doesn't cause cancer in mammals coupled with one of seventeen available versions of the OS, not all of which are supported by your thirty-six choices in Intel Core geometries. Suddenly it's less like using a website and more like that part in Star Trek IV where Spock is getting his fucking brain tested.
And THEN, once you've built and received your new Windows laptop, o Mac-addict, you need to start paying more attention to another serious issue: security. See, while Macs are more popular and numerous than ever before, it's still a truism that most of the jackholes writing viruses can't be arsed to even target such a fringe-y cult when there are vast fields of incompetently-maintained Windows machines planted in neat furrows to be harvested. I've accidentally triggered or opened virus bullshit before, and it's like it just... senses I'm on a Mac, puts the gun back in its pocket, shakes its head, and leaves. Out of pity.
But henceforth, it's like the atmosphere around me will be full of invisible flying dicks all striving to plunge themselves into my hard drive. I look forward to paranoia reversing the progress I've made in controlling my blood pressure.
Now, having to fret about choosing a book-sized portable wonder box containing many times the processing power of the computers used to send Apollo missions to the fucking moon is definitely a "First World problem."
I am just letting off steam with some unstructured grumbling. Please note the following:
Yes, I know about Boot Camp. I still want a separate Windows machine I can set down beside my desktop Macs.
I have already selected my laptop package. I already have supremely knowledgeable friends and associates lined up to assist with it. I do not want advice. I do not care what you think I should be using in place of whatever you think I'm using. Certain parts of my rant may have been exaggerated for comic effect. Mac users should optimally be able to count to eight, not four. My startup disk actually has a rating of strawberry cake, not chocolate.
My Macbook, my companion on literally every trip I've ever taken as a professional writer, is finally crawling off to the elephant graveyard. Just flipping it open knocks the wind out of it. Its case is pitted and battered by everything from cat fangs to hot coffee cups. I've been putting off replacing it for years, but at last the time and finances are right. And I'm buying a Windows machine for the first time in my entire life.
See, I'm a Mac-ite of an old school. Not the oldest, but sufficiently old, harkening back to the late 80s. My school days were spent playing with the Apple II. In junior high I would stretch a point of my mother's school employee access to a more advanced lab filled with beige box Macs. She even got to borrow one from the district each summer, and much of my earliest coherent writing was done on them (as well as a lot of Chuck Yeager's Air Combat). So I've long preferred to work on the platform with which I'm most anciently and intimately familiar, and as far as my desktops are concerned, that's always going to be the case.
But I've been wanting a token Windows machine, to serve as an operating environment for some stuff I can't talk about yet. And at this point a Windows laptop is more financially responsible than a new Macbook.
But there are... issues with transitioning from the Mac-user mindset to a Windows-buyer mindset. It's perfectly possible to be a savvy, up-to-date, tech-minded Mac user, but the thing is, if you want to be a completely cotton-brained ignoramus, the Mac will accommodate you. You don't have to be able to count to four in order to buy or use a Mac. You don't even have to be able to identify the gas your lungs are metabolizing as you read this. As far as even the most comatose crustacean of a user need be concerned, Macs don't have tech specs. They have fucking mana bars.
Buying a Mac is simplicity itself. You go to the Mac temple store or the Mac site. You pick one that looks pretty. There are drop-down windows that tell you they're powered by baby otter farts or wood nymphs or whatever, but you don't need to care. It arrives at your house, you unbox it, you plug it in, and it just works. It's amazing, how little of a shit you need to give about a Mac's innards most of the time. Here, let me show you my system profiler:
My processor speed is bunny and my RAM is rainbow! This machine will last me for ten years.
Contrast this with the process of constructing a Windows machine prior to purchase... suddenly your components are not installed and magically synchronized by helper elves. You actually have to pay attention to which device pairings will make the goddamn planet blow up. You have to research which video card is standard this week. You have to get the proper RAM chips in the proper configuration, and then get RAM in your RAM because you like RAM, and 64-bit that motherfucker plus an optical drive that doesn't cause cancer in mammals coupled with one of seventeen available versions of the OS, not all of which are supported by your thirty-six choices in Intel Core geometries. Suddenly it's less like using a website and more like that part in Star Trek IV where Spock is getting his fucking brain tested.
And THEN, once you've built and received your new Windows laptop, o Mac-addict, you need to start paying more attention to another serious issue: security. See, while Macs are more popular and numerous than ever before, it's still a truism that most of the jackholes writing viruses can't be arsed to even target such a fringe-y cult when there are vast fields of incompetently-maintained Windows machines planted in neat furrows to be harvested. I've accidentally triggered or opened virus bullshit before, and it's like it just... senses I'm on a Mac, puts the gun back in its pocket, shakes its head, and leaves. Out of pity.
But henceforth, it's like the atmosphere around me will be full of invisible flying dicks all striving to plunge themselves into my hard drive. I look forward to paranoia reversing the progress I've made in controlling my blood pressure.
Now, having to fret about choosing a book-sized portable wonder box containing many times the processing power of the computers used to send Apollo missions to the fucking moon is definitely a "First World problem."
I am just letting off steam with some unstructured grumbling. Please note the following: