Mac/PC Identity Crisis
Will I take the red pill or blue pill?
When the line of salt is poured on the hangar deck, will I be on the right side?
Am I a Mac or a PC?
Among the important decisions one can make in life, the Mac vs. PC choice has drawn a hard line since its inception, and there’s little wishy-washiness permitted from either side. The new Mac ads and Microsoft’s response ads reinforce this notion of Identity via Platform. You either ARE or ARE NOT.
So what is one to do with a mixed background? I know that there’s a small percentage of people out there like me, who were not raised with hard-lined indoctrination.
My family’s first computer was a Macintosh 512K in 1985, but in school I was exposed to the Commodore 64 and the Apple IIe. Friends had IBMs with fancy color screens and floppy disks that were actually floppy. My family graduated to a color-screened Macintosh Quadra 610 at about the same time my high school put new 486 PCs in all the classrooms.*
In 1995, I helped my mom computerize her dental office with PCs that ran Windows 95, and subsequently inherited one of those PCs during college. Ben has built all of my computers from scratch since then, and I’ve watched him play around in Linux environments. In my last job, I worked closely with the art team (who of course used high-end Macs) and learned lots of Adobe tricks and developed a minor case of Mac Envy.
So that brings me to my current dilemma: My computer needs a serious overhaul, which under normal circumstances would mean that Ben would buy some new parts and reuse what he could to build me a new desktop. However, I’ve determined that a laptop will suit my needs better than a desktop right now. And Ben doesn’t have the manufacturing facilities available to build one for me.
For the first time in my adult life, I will have to choose a Mac or a PC.
I know the arguments. I’m familiar with the “Mac tax” and of the issues that come with the various PC laptops out there. I’ve recently touched and played with more laptops in-store than should be legal, and I’m trying to keep my biases at bay. I’m trying to be practical. I’m trying not to let the shiny, clever Get a Mac ads affect my choice (which is hard, considering that I am in their target demographic and they nailed it, man).
What it really comes down to is that I feel like my future identity will be shaped by the laptop I choose. Mac people want me on their side. PC people want me on their side. Open source purists chide me for not being geek enough to even consider Linux.**
There are four choices, as I see it:
- Pick a side. Accept the identity of Mac or Windows PC.
- Go underground and choose Linux or some other obscure OS.
- Accept a dual life and learn how to be both a Mac and a PC.
- Choose nothing and become a Luddite.
“Be grateful you even have a choice,” I hear my ancestors whisper from Beyond The Great Divide, because they didn’t have the luxury of choices like these, and they probably also had to climb up a hill both ways in the snow to get the the outhouse, which wasn’t even an outhouse but just a deep pit in the ground that was surrounded by angry bears just waiting to come after them the minute they dropped their pants.
Dear readers, if you’ve been lucky enough to make The Choice, which probably means that a bear never caught you with your pants down, what choice did you make? Did you struggle like me? Has your identity been shaped by your choice? Do you really wish you’d been attacked by a bear just so that you would have been spared reading this whole blog post all the way to the end?
Thanks in advance for your comments.
* Ben was actually a student and an IT employee at our high school who helped install and maintain the school district’s network. I have a cute photo of us together in the high school server/computer repair room. Didn’t know back then that I would marry him and that we’d always have at least one room in our house buried under tangles of cables and scattered computer bits!
** Unfortunately, sometimes majority rules and this is what happens to open source purists who dare suggest that one has to be like them to be a real geek. Comic yoinked from Dueling Analogs.
That’s a tough choice.
First: Linux. If you haven’t tried using Linux as your ONLY desktop I would try that first. Be ready to do a lot of fixing, tweaking, and the occasional compiling. If you like that stuff, Linux is for you. Also, media doesn’t quite work right. You’ll also spend time waiting for companies to release versions of their product for Linux (mac has this problem too, but to a lesser degree). To get the proper Nvidia driver installed for my video card I had to recompile the kernel and follow pages of instructions.
Second: PC. It basically works. Most things are PC compatible. I had a bad experience with Vista but in general you can get by with a PC and you can go uber cheap if you want and still get a machine that runs. You get the benefit of having many third party peripherals to choose from which usually results in lower prices. As you will have a laptop, however, I don’t know if this matters.
Third: Mac. I just made the switch at home and am currently in the process at work of switching to a mac. I am so freaking happy with my mac. I gave up some stuff. Mainly I gave up gaming. If you are a big gamer, you really should go with a PC. Second, I gave up my nice speakers for the form factor of the iMac. This isn’t as mandatory as the gaming but I couldn’t resist the sexy iMac form factor. Overall, I am finding that I get more done faster (and I really enjoy it along the way!). There is some learning to be done and some things don’t work like I am used to. I’ve also done cost comparisons between laptops with mac and pc. The Mac laptops are usually not overpriced. You can’t get the uber cheap varieties but you get a pretty sweet laptop for the money. Also, handbrake. It just doesn’t work as well on a PC or Linux. Mac has done so many subtle things to make their OS look and feel more polished. I really appreciate those kinds of things. For example, animation that doesn’t detract or hinder, icons that actually look nice, and built in applications (iLife) that are really useful. Time machine is fantastic. I don’t know if you have used Norton Ghost before but this is a sigh of relief. Not having to run antivirus or anti-spyware is also great. I really do believe that Macs start with a more secure foundation because it is based on Unix. For example, services are disabled by default instead of enabled like in Windows.
I also used to build my own PCs. It was fun while it lasted but I finally reached a point where I didn’t want to fix anything anymore. I just wanted stuff to work. And when it didn’t work I wanted to take it to someone and have them fix it (aka, warranty).
Well, that’s my experience and rambling 2 cents. Good luck making that decision!
@Yvette: We student-folk had 386es in high school. The teacher-folk had 486es. And considering the horrors of graphics a decade ago — damn you, Trident and CirrusLogic — I’d have chosen a C64 over an IBM clone any day.
I might point out that Mac vs. PC is more of a hardware debate. I think you’re really debating OS X vs. Windows (XP or Vista)…and in that regards, I concur with Kole’s first point and suggest that you give Fedora 10 or Ubuntu 8 a spin. They’re pretty and functional.
@Kole: Ditto to your first and second points. I, too, used to build PCs. (I still do, but much, MUCH less often.) I no longer have the time or money to fix stuff and have grown tired of the keep-Windows-scrubbed-clean and-running-efficiently routine. In adulthood, I’ve found other things that desperately need my time and money. Perhaps I’m subliminally professing my adoration for the perceived reliability that Macs and OS X deliver.
On a side note, I just realized that in the comic above, the Linux guy is wearing a red shirt. Of course something’s going to happen to him!
Maybe someday I’ll try a Linux box… but for now I’m thinking laptop. I’m not a huge PC gamer, so the stability of the Mac OS, the sleek nature of the laptop case, and the fact that I can run Windows in Parallels (or something like it) is making me lean toward a Mac. I am just still trying to figure out if that will push me to identify only with other Mac users or if I’ll still have some love left for the PCverse.
Kole, thanks for your in-depth response and for sharing your switch-to-Mac story. I don’t think I’ve ever heard about someone switching from Mac to PC and being happy about it.
Ben, if you feel like building a Linux box for me that runs Fedora or Ubuntu, I’d be more than happy to give them try.
Seriously, thank you for dedicating your time in the past to build my computers. But am I reading correctly? Are you saying that someday you might consider switching your own computer to a Mac?
I’m in the same spot as you right now. I have looked and looked and think I’m going to get a pc. My main concern is vista. I really don’t like it. Personally I think a pc with dual boot options might be your best bet. Don’t get me wrong macs are sexy though.
On a side note your blog is awsome I’m a huge videogame nerd and love what your doing here. Also You should slip in a spell checker. I was afraid to comment b/c I never was good at spelling. Good luck!
Ben sounds like Brad. It’s going to take him about another 15 years to really give up on bulding PCs, I predict. But maybe he’s more evolved.
Is Ben that guy in the red shirt?! He seems taller in person.
And how about posting that cute photo of you and Benjamin in the high school server/computer repair room?
I know that I’m replying after you bought, but it’s not as big of a deal as you’re making it out to be. You get all the benefits of the free/open-source world, the pleasantness of a generally-vendor-supported world (including full Office document compatibility), and the nicest user interface I’ve experienced.
Glad to hear you bought it.
Your post really brings back some memories – especially the Commodore, how cool Windows 95 (in ‘95) was when your mom’s dental office marketing installed it…
My son loves Linux, hates anything with the name Microsoft stamped on it, but that’s him and he’s a total computer geek. I, for one, feel more comfortable with good ol’ Windows.
I just got a new laptop too, and it’s a PC. I’ve heard graphics artists prefer Macs, but again, it’s a comfort level thing for me. I’m even learning to love the Windows Vista which is the only choice for an OS.
I think we should use the cute penguin as the character for “I am linux”
It will be wholesome.
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Peter from http://www.dealdigg.com