So. As of about noon today, I got my first Mac. It’s a white MacBook 2.0Ghz Core Duo (not the Core 2 Duo, alas), with a gig of RAM, and a Superdrive (a combo CD-R/rewriteable DVD drive), with OSX Tiger. I’m sure there’s all sorts of “jargon” mistakes in that last sentence, but I don’t particularly mind.

First impressions:

1.) Holy cow, this is different. Having used a PC for the last … forever, the basic structure of the Mac is just really alien in many respects. It’s like… it’s like doing something that’s sort of vaguely familiar, but while blindfolded and upside-down.
2.) The hardware is absolutely *GORGEOUS*. The laptop is beautiful in almost every way that it could be. The keys feel nice, the screen looks great, and overall, it’s just a very, very pretty machine. Much more so even than the old Vaio I used to have, which was the best looking laptop of its time. Admittedly, that time was something like seven years ago.
3.) Things aren’t as easy-to-use as I might have expected. While they are still *quite* easy to use, because they’re different, I don’t even know the basic hoops through which one can jump to do things differently. As a result, even problems that must be simple still feel complicated. I’m sure this will pass, though, and honestly, I’ve had fewer problems moving stuff between XP and OSX than I did simply installing SP2 on XP.
4.) I have a long way to go before this feels familiar. I’m still at the point where I’m doing things in oddball ways, just because I don’t know the “right” way to actually do them.
5.) It’s really nice having a usable laptop again. The Vaio’s still actually functional (except for the housing for the power cord is completely falling apart), but the 90% keyboard, and 0 battery life do make it a little tricky to get real functionality out of.

At this point, frankly, it’s just strange. I’m still going to be finding random things that I’ll expect to be able to do, but can’t, just because this isn’t a PC. I have no idea whether Flickr has an uploader for the Mac. Maybe I’ll look right now.

…and we’re back.

Yes, indeed, there is an uploadr for flickr for OSX. Hooray.

Yeah. So, so far, I’m liking this quite a bit. I feel like MS is going to have some serious problems with Vista, because right now, there’s simply no compelling reason to use it, but they’ve effectively created this demand for something “new,” but then almost entirely failed to provide it. I wouldn’t say that I was dragged into a new-computer purchase because of MS, but basically looking at Vista, and realizing that it was more of the same, if not worse, and that the next likely update would be in 2010, I began to really seriously consider a substantial change.

So, here we are.

While walking Mobius tonight, I wondered if my decision to switch was at least in part triggered by my move, career-wise, away from something that was more engineering-focused, to something that was more design-focused.

While more engineering-focused, I used to take pride in putting my own computer together, keeping it relatively close to the cutting edge, and knowing the ins and outs, even if to a greatly limited degree, of how it all worked.

Now, I realize that I don’t really give a crap about *any* of that, and the be-all end-all is the user experience. If the user experience is good, I could have a laptop with almost no “power” *as long as that lack of power isn’t completely obvious to me*. With the PC, everything was continually getting slower. Slower, more bogged down… just “dirtier.” Booting up took forever. Starting programs took forever. It was a pain.

Sure, I could reinstall the OS, but basically you’re asking me to invest on the order of a day just to bring everything back to the status quo? And that’s not even counting when things go wrong, like SP2 making my USB drivers no longer work, killing my keyboard and mouse. Fun stuff. No – it’s not, and I’m hoping to minimize my involvement in bullshit like that. I’m sick of the incompatibilities in the open box hardware. I’m sick of needing to futz with stupid crap in the OS that has no effect on anything I actually *want to do*.

I’m hoping this will be different, at least to some degree. That it’s a change from the status quo is a good thing already. Here’s to hoping it continues to get better.