Why I bought a Mac and why I feel the need to justify it

by admin on November 5, 2010 at 7:43 pm

I have probably chastised more Mac users over the years than most, probably more even than the average Linux user. I now withdraw all such derogatory statements. The following is a really wanky self indulgent post and I would advise you not to read it unless you are the kind of person who spends ages trying to decide on exactly which laptop to buy.

I just ordered an Apple Macbook Pro 13″ (base spec) because I:
1) think they are pretty
2) think that they are far better engineered than the majority of other laptops
3) want an O/S GUI which doesn’t suck (sorry Ubuntu) but is still based on Unix and has a proper terminal
4) want some decent battery life
5) want a laptop which is fairly priced for the spec (I paid £860)
6) want to do what all the cool kids are doing

So why buy a laptop when I have a perfectly good desktop? Simply, I find it far nicer to sit and use one than a desktop. At work I would probably get frustrated being in front of one for 8 hours, but to come home and be able to sit in the kitchen with the TV on, or on my bed, or on the sofa and get things done is far nicer than being chained to a desk. (As a side note, my standing desk experiment failed- I virtually never use my desktop anymore because it is on a standing desk. I never feel like standing to do things after a day of work and a gym workout).

So why a Macbook Pro? Firstly I actually think they are pretty good value. If you compare 13″ laptops from the major manufacturers a 2.4Ghz non Celeron/Sempron dual core 4GB RAM laptop with decent graphics doesn’t come much cheaper. When you consider the fact that it has the gorgeous unibody aluminium shell and the amazing screen, it seems obvious. When considering the switch to OSX (from a Windows/Linux dual boot) the following comes to mind:

What do I use a laptop for?
1 ) typing. Not so much word processing as writing.
2 ) web development + surfing
3 ) C#/WPF/Silverlight development (requires windows)
4 ) CPLD development (requires windows)
5 ) listening to music, watching videos, looking at photos etc
6 ) recording music
7 ) occasional video editing, 3d modeling, graphic design etc.
8 ) Java development.

It seems I am still going to need a windows to do 4. Programmable logic isn’t exactly my raison d’etre though so thats not a problem. Point 3 is interesting- I can see less point in doing WPF development when I wouldn’t be able to natively run the application, but I really like C# and the XAML presentation layer. Still, I guess I get enough of that at work. Both of these development environments can be run in a VM as necessary anyway.

The sound card I own (Emu 1616) is a PCMCIA Cardbus affair so wont work with ANY new laptops without a converter. The software I know and love (Sonar + Emulator X2) is Windows only, and I could run these in a VM, but the former only works with the sound card hardware attached and the former, a sequencer, is not very useful without a multi channel audio interface! Instead I think I will be selling my quad core desktop machine with a PCMCIA -> PCI adapter and the sound card and software, along with my Behringer ADA8000 8 channel ADAT I/O expander as a package, and buying a small firewire interface. My needs for this are much simpler now than when I bought the EMU since I have sold my drum kit (I think only need 1 guitar, 2 phantom powered XLR, and 2 stereo outs over Firewire or USB now).

So why the 13″ base spec model? Well simply it is really cheap! I know it is tempting on the Apple store to pimp out your machine with all of the available options, but I really didn’t think any of them were worth it. £250 for the 2.66GHz rather than 2.4GHz processor, really? £320 for 8GB RAM? £640 for the 256GB SSD? No thank you. The 15″ models start at nearly double what I paid. I can see that they are quite a bit better performing being based on the i5 and with superior graphics but would that really improve my quality of life? I have a 3.6Ghz quad core desktop and I haven’t achieved Zen or anything. The Macbook Air 13″ was tempting, but it seemed like it would be £1500 for a decent spec machine, which again is nearly double what I paid. I do plan on carrying my machine about, but I’m not going hiking with the thing (and the 13″ pro isn’t exactly huge). I nearly went the whole hog of minimalism and bought the plain Macbook but I really wanted the better screen and aluminium body of the Pro.

So I’ve done a pretty good job at justifying to myself why I just spent £860 on a laptop when I have a perfectly functional desktop. I feel better.