Rejoice, O my brothers and sisters, for I have seen the way. Yea, I have been reborn into the light, the truth, the pure effervescent joy of oneness with All That Is.
Three weeks ago, I became the proud owner of a G5 iMac and latest-generation iPod.
Out with my pokey old PC, with its boring beige CRT monitor and boring beige tower and boring Win98. In with a sleek, sexy flat-panel display and an equally sleek, sexy and powerful operating system. No tower underfoot. Oodles of software preinstalled; oodles more available on the Web. And how easy is that software to install? No messing around with installer software. No need to shut down all applications. No need to restart my machine. I couldn’t quite believe it the first time I installed something (Firefox). Just drag and drop the application icon to my machine? Is that it? Seriously? No, seriously? Damn. Seems almost too easy.
I’m still getting settled in, learning my way around, mastering OS X’s little idiosyncrasies. Also, getting used to this one-button mouse. I already knew most of the basics, from playing around with OS X a few times, on other people’s machines, and—way back when—working with the old 128k Mac at our parents’ place (bought in 1984 and still going strong 10 years later, with a couple of upgrades. Ah, those were the days). On the whole, though, the Mac makes things easy. It just works, and gets out of my way so I can work. And if I feel like peeking under the hood (which I do), there’s lots to look at and tinker with. I may one day get used to the pretty UI, but I don’t think I’ll ever take for granted what I can do with OS X.
As for the iPod, I only have two words: Click. Wheel. Forget the cool and stylish exterior. Forget the fact that not only can it hold thousands of songs (far more than I have right now), but it can also serve as a wee little hard drive with twice the capacity of my old machine. It’s the click wheel that I’m most in awe of. Seriously, that is a jaw-droppingly brilliant piece of design. Such a simple concept when you think about it—like the best ideas usually are.
I realize I’m still at the wide-eyed “gee whiz” infatuation stage, but right now I’m seriously smitted with my iGadgets, and I don’t think I will ever, ever get tired of them. The more I get to know my Mac, the more I love it. This is a cult I don’t mind being a part of.