Why I couldn’t go back once I had a Mac

Whenever I try to explain why I’m now a Mac user and why I certainly don’t intend to buy anything different than a Mac (unless something really superior comes along) and even though you could probably get a super duper machine with cheaper parts, I always say that it’s all in the details, and they’re so many that I can’t really answer people which are.

The purpose of this post, is to keep track of those “a-ha” details as I come across them. I’ll update this post as more details come along on my day to day.

• The Power Adapter of the Mac is magnetically shielded. You can put it on top of your computer while it’s still on and you won’t be afraid of loosing data. Not IBM’s Thinkpad’s power adapters are magnetically shielded
• The Ethernet port on the Macbook PRO makes regular ethernet cables work like Cross-over ethernet cables. This really comes in handy if you have another computer next to you and there’s not an ethernet switch nearby. You can just connect directly to that machine, share your internet, transfer files, no need to ask anybody for a cross over cable. This has been this way for years (at least since 2006), I’m not sure if HP or other laptops have these super duper ethernet cards in them.
• Back-lit keyboard. A blessing when coding in the darkness for those of us that sometimes need to look down for a special key. Oh and it will light up when it’s actually dark, freaking awesome.
• Multi touch touchpad (way before many other laptops started implementing it). Double finger tap for right click? can’t live without it
• Awesome battery life, and this is a pretty known fact about macbooks
• I haven’t had my OS crash in … I can’t remember last time it crashed fully
• Very quiet fan
• The power adapter connector has that little magnet, people can trip over it and it won’t pull your laptop to the floor




• The power adapter is modular, basically you can decide whether or not to carry with you a long ass cable or keep the adapter with the smaller patch cord that goes to your computer. Also you can switch it’s connector to the European style connector which comes with the computer. It seems apple knows its user base might travel abroad sometime




• The power adapter has these two ears which can open and close. Their purpose is to let you wrap the thinner cable that goes to the computer. It’s great if you don’t want to have too much cable laying around or when you’re on the go and you need to wrap up things inside your bag. Kudos to the designers of the Power Adapter




• As for the OS goes, I consider it a Linux where everything works right off
• In Mac OSX everything just works as expected or better. Some good examples of things that work better than in other OSes are Wireless configuration, Internet Sharing, Multiple Display configuration is amazingly intuitive to set up
• My last Macbook PRO I’ve been using it for almost 3 years and there’s no real need to get a new one, it’s still pretty fast after 2 major Mac OSX upgrades
• The Sleep and Wake up functionality actually work, I can’t say the same for my Alienware and Vista, where sometimes it will never wake up, or it won’t really be sleeping and it’ll get all hot and kill the battery
• If you ever open the Macbook, it’s a like a “work of art” inside. The way they’ve arranged everything, changing a hardrive or the keyboard is very easy and quite fun
• The native tool for screen shots is really convenient, not only for all the different ways in which you can snap your screen, but it’s also a nice pixel measuring tool for web developers and graphic designers
• Having a console, which comes with all the standard linux tool makes you remember windows and it’s cmd.exe and laugh about how arcaic it is
• Being able to have the Automator to Visually Script things like Resizing a Bunch of Pictures and copying them somewhere else once you’ve downloaded big resolution images from your camera and you want to upload them to flickr… priceless
• /Applications/Utilities/Console.app – a debugging blessing to find out why things might be going wrong with a specific process. I should probably not brag about the software since that’s getting into Mac OSX realm and that’s a whole different subject of why you can’t go back, again Linux that works right off, or Linux for Dummies.
• Pressing Space bar over files on the Finder brings that super fast preview for Images, PDFs, Videos and even audio files
• Being able to Customize the Finder adding and removing buttons to simplify or specialize it (equivalent of Windows Explorer)
• Burning CD/DVDs is amazingly simple, no need for 3rd party software
• Typing on a Mac keyboard is addicting, feels really good on the finger tips, the sound of it is music to my ears
• No more viruses to fear, or antiviruses to slow you down

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