Born-Again in Mactopia

So…48 hours back on a Macintosh laptop and I am in seriously danger of getting drunk on the kool-aid again. What is it that pulls one back? Having never really left was part of it. I simply was being interdenominational.

I have my iMac in the living room and an HP Media Centre in the den. I conduct most of my daily work on my laptop though. I am a happy user of an IBM ThinkPad X32. I did not come to the X32 blindly. I started using ThinkPads on a daily basis back in 1999. Before that I was that bane of the Windows world: the Mac bigot. I had a 128K Mac in 1984 and journeyed along the Apple path, working for the largest Apple reseller in Canada, winning PowerBooks in contests in Las Vegas and acquiring a small, but respectable computer museum of around 50 machines – mostly Apple. I have since divested myself (involunarily) of most of them – retaining, some of the more exotic – my 20th Anniversary, an Apple II, an Apple III, a Mac clone, a ream of PowerBooks, a few Newtons, a Lisa of disputed ownership etc. But it was 1999 that changed things for me. It was just before the Mac became the visible majority. Clearly Macs were and still are the minority, but they are quite fashionable to wear in public and if you are in education, they have an inflated popularity.

This is not to pass judgement on technical abilities, quality or value, but at some point, we hearty pirates remained so in name, but not in substance. You aren’t taking a chance by buying a Mac anymore. There’s no challenge to fit in. In many cases, the other side makes the effort. Its a real shift, but one that’s even more so apparent when you are on the other side.

In 1999, corporately we had to bridge the Windows and Mac world. So our development desktops stayed Mac, we put a Windows-based machine on each desk (we used WebObjects from NeXT). Our salespeople got Windows laptops. Then so did I. Now, a ThinkPad is about the best you can do if you ‘have’ to embrace the Windows platform. The sleek black slab has the aesthetic appeal – and it screams that you are on the dark side – if you are there, you might as well sing it proudly – it’s definitely the Apple approach to being on Windows.

I started with a T series Thinkpad (T-41). Sleek, slim and powerful. A great machine. After two years I faced the choice of going back to Mac, but after weighing the options, it made sense to get another ThinkPad. I had a fully kitted out G4 Tower at the time and I had a need to run some Windows stuff. Emulation sucked. We lived that lie for a long time – much like the marketing speak that convinced us that PPC architecture could grow infinitely whereas Intel was going to hit the ceiling in 1995 and die a horrible death. Yeah…ironic, eh?

So, unfortunately, I went Windows for mobile and OSX on the desktop. I would argue that Apple makes finer laptops than desktops and I had my usage reversed. But, without the material resources to have one of each, it was one of the other. Over time, I became more mobile and I toyed with smaller laptops. I wanted to stay Thinkpad and I picked up a cheap X30 to play with. Sweet. I weighed off the advantages of the more powerful T40 and the convenience of the X30. In the end I managed to find an X32 that was the perfect compromise. Nearly the power of the T40 in the footprint of the X30. I was stuck with three laptops (a rough luxury – but one I couldn’t afford). Managed to find good homes for the two and moved to an X32-centric universe.

The little black slab has been a trooper (and still is). Earlier this year I pushed it a little too far and have done some irreparable heat damage to it running SQL routines that should have been done on any of the other boxes, but there it chugged for 12-14 hrs at a time handling some monster databases. But it has survived and despite two catastrophic failures, it soldiers on…and then came last Thursday.

A very good friend offered to trade his original 12 inch Powerbook in exchange for some side work. I am stuck on size and Apple doesn’t have an ultra-notebook these days. There are rumours everyday and we hold our breathe, but I knew that the little PB was really the machine that interests me. It’s a few years old. No, its not intel-based so no multiple OS. No, there’s no iSight built in and right now I am running on 384Mb after adding 128. It has a small drive and it’s the original 867Mhz model. But it is one of the sleekest pieces of kit tech that I have touched in a long time.

Why is it so cool? Well, its got to do with the whole experience. Its starts with the superficial. It looks better than anything else out there. No question…nice little rounded mitred aluminium corners, appropriately lit and oriented apple on the hood. It slips in an out of a knapsack as it should. No square corners to make you have to jiggle. It just goes ‘shloooooop’. Perfect. The tactility is supreme. It’s cool and sleek, it’s hot and solid. The little light in the latch that throbs when it is sleeping is the subtle little touches that make a Mac special.
The keyboard is amazingly good. Now, I am coming from the gold standard in laptop keyboards and the one in the Powerbook is pretty close to being as good.

As I gush along through this, I have to comment that finding those neat little OSX only apps that I really couldn’t benefit from over the past few years is a special little secret treat. Stock trade like iLife and IWork are increasingly visually refined, but lets not fool ourselves, they are crack cocaine. Apple uses them to sell hardware and the most recent versions push the limits of this older hardware. But the subtle touches remind you that they are just shy of black magic. The fact that the little mail swoosh was lost on me running on a desktop Mac. With headphones plugged in I sent some mail and it audibly passed right in front of me as it winged it way to destination. That that sound is stereo is just too cool.

There are some negatives. I am still not happy with the trackpad, but I am not as displeased as I thought I would be. I do wish it was one of the later models that allowed for two finger scrolling. I do miss that from the Thinkpad. I still believe that the touchpoint controller is the most natural input device that I have ever used. Similarly, the control key (and that I have to use it to be able to pretend like I have two buttons on the trackpad) is a pain. CTRL/Opt/Cmd is too many modifier keys for me, especially when coming over from Windows. I am used to using CTRL-C there and use CMD-C on the Mac, even though the other key is there. Three is too many. Yeah, its got USB 1.1 rather than 2.0 and image transfers suck, but to be honest, this machine makes you want to work around these shortcomings.

Over the past few years, I have bemoaned the switch to OSX from previous MacOS’s. I called it the primary school pencil approach to interface. Everything too big…visually impressive, but wasteful of precious screen space and indicative of imprecise interaction. Sitting using OSX again (and I am reflecting on NextStep here) there’ more detail than I superficially enjoy on the desktop. On this cute little laptop, I realize some subtlety that I missed by appreciating from afar.

I am typing away on the PB right now, using OSX-only Ecto to compose blog posts and even though I am running 10 main apps under 10.4 in this miniscule amount of memory, its still working. There’s something impressive in that. It’s late in the evening, a satisfying dinner in the belly and am sitting in a buzzy Indigo cafe, typing away and savouring life.

And this brings it all together. The experience is all-encompassing. The feel, the sight, the interaction, the tactility, the sounds bring one into commune with an inanimate object in a very strangely sensual way. This Powerbook 12 is sexy. Its has its flaws, but right now these are what makes the relationship personal.

Have I returned to the fold? Seen the dark side for what it is? Well, time will tell. Right now, the honeymoon continues.