Ten Years on a Mac (1998 to Present)
10/04/2008 14:50 Filed in: Technology
In the summer of July, 1998, I was Associate Pastor of Church Growth and Development at Springdale Church. We had just begun experimenting with a projector and screen during our worship services, something that is very common in churches today. Perhaps because I had a copy of PowerPoint or perhaps because I had a Toshiba laptop that I could take into the auditorium, I had been assigned to work with the worship staff and prepare the slides for each Sunday’s service.
In preparing these slides, rather than working on my laptop’s 10.4” screen, I thought it would be easier to use the brand new Compaq PC in my office and then transfer the PowerPoint file to my laptop. I had only one problem: every week as I prepared the slides, I had to suffer through multiple crashes of PowerPoint ’97 in Windows ’98.
I was also a bit of a Microsoft snob. I knew there were other platforms out there as well as other presentation software packages, but I was certain that Office would surely run better on Windows than anything else because both were Microsoft products. I would learn this wasn’t necessarily so.
I’ve always had a high expectation with computers, regardless of what platform I’ve used. Is it unreasonable to expect them to operate as their promoters promise? With PowerPoint constantly crashing, I felt like I was wasting valuable time. It’s at this point, I decided there had to be a viable alternative. I began looking at other programs as well as other platforms.
Okay, I have to admit that I had tremendous prejudice against Apple and the Macintosh platform--all the regular stuff you hear from hardcore Windows folks. Part of my bias went all the way back to a computer class I took in 11th grade in high school. We learned to program BASIC on both the Apple IIe and the TRS-80 Model IV. The BASIC programming language on both machines was written by Microsoft, but for whatever reason programming on the Apple computers often required extra lines of instruction not needed on the TRS-80s. My bias against Apple came early and was based on experience.
In 1998, Apple was just starting to come out of its darkest days. Steve Jobs had returned after more than a decade long exile from the company he’d co-founded. An exciting new self-contained computer called the iMac had been announced that featured a see-through case and a strange technology known as “USB.” There seemed to be a buzz about Apple all of a sudden, and my interest was piqued.
In spite of my bias against all things Apple, I had to admit that my experience with that particular PowerBook at been positive--or at the very least, I had no major complaints. I couldn’t remember applications crashing on me. But at the same time, I never used the PowerBook 5300cs as intensely as I used my Windows PCs.
So, I started seriously investigating the Mac platform. I talked to Mac users on online forums. They promised me that Macs never crash. That was certainly not true, but ironically, after making the switch I was pleased to discover that Microsoft PowerPoint for the Mac was indeed more stable than the Windows version in Windows 98.
I had three concerns in switching. At the time I was using a number of Adobe apps: PageMaker, Photoshop, and Illustrator. This was before the days of the Creative Suite and they had to be bought separately. I was very pleased to see that all three were available for the Mac. In fact, back in 1998, the Mac versions turned out to actually be a bit better than the Windows version--especially Illustrator. I had already seen that I could get Microsoft Office (Word, PowerPoint, and Excel) on the Mac. There wasn’t a Mac version of Microsoft Access, but I only maintained a couple of databases, which I realized I could manually convert to FileMaker Pro which I later did. For the sake of transition, I could even run Windows 98 on a Mac through VirtualPC from Connectix (later bought by Microsoft). It was pokey, but it worked.
My greatest concern was Bible software. At the time, I was using BibleWorks for Windows, and there wasn’t a Mac version. So in my research I came across Accordance Bible Software, which at the time was partnered with the well-respected Gramcord Institute. The more I read about Accordance, the more impressed I became. As powerful as BibleWorks was, Accordance promised to take things to the next level. In the end, of course, I made the switch, but I always credit Accordance as being the final solution to convince me to go over to the Mac.
The Wallstreet II was the last PowerBook to include the “rainbow” colored Apple at the bottom of the screen. It still relied on serial and ADB connectors even though Apple was transitioning to USB in its desktop machines around this time. However, with the PowerBook’s card slots, I was able to add USB and even Firewire capabilities to it eventually. In many ways, that PowerBook offered the best of old and new technology in one machine.
When I received my PowerBook, it was running Mac OS 8.1 but there was already stirrings in the Mac community about the replacement operating system eventually named OS X. In the end it was OS X that made me give up my Wallstreet II PowerBook in 2001. I was an early adopter of OS X, which the Wallstreet PowerBook could run just fine but with one exception. Initially the first versions of OS X didn’t offer DVD playback. This wasn’t a huge deal because as Apple transitioned to OS X, the user was able to boot into either OS 9 or OS X. However, once DVD playback was finally added to OS X (around version 10.1.5 if I remember correctly), the Wallstreet was left out in the cold. For whatever reason, DVD playback wasn’t included on that particular model. Regardless, I had three very good years with that first Mac.
I still remember after my initial transition to the Mac platform how lost I felt at times. I had been extremely comfortable with both DOS and Windows. I remember sitting in front of my new Mac, sometimes struggling to figure out how to do something I already knew how to do in Windows, wondering if there would ever come a day that I would know the Mac as well or better than I knew Windows.
That day came soon enough, but I’ve never completely taken both feet out of the Windows world. After I left my church position, I worked briefly part time for a computer support company in which 90% of our work was on Windows machines. As I daily fixed problems with Windows machines which would not have been problems on Macs, my decision to switch was confirmed over and over. Later, I would become a chaplain and Bible teacher at a private school where one of my responsibilities was to oversee a computer network consisting of three Windows servers and about 140 Windows client machines. I convinced our headmaster to allow me to buy an eMac which I was able to use to monitor and maintain all three servers and the entire Windows network thanks to Windows Remote Desktop. In fact, when French hackers breached our firewall and set up UNIX directories on our servers, unseen from the Windows Explorer, it was my UNIX-based OS X Mac that was able to go in and delete the hackers’ files.
Even today, now with a couple of Intel based Macs, I occasionally find a need to fire up Windows using Parallels. It’s no longer quite so pokey because emulation is no longer needed since Macs and PC’s share the same Intel processors these days. I’ll admit up front that with the advent of Windows 2000, the Windows platform itself became more stable and less prone to crashes like I experienced in 1998. But on a Mac, I don’t have to worry about viruses, spyware and the like that is a constant threat on any Windows machine.
Could I switch back to Windows? Well, I could if I wanted to with little transition or slowdown. The fact is, however, I have no desire. The old joke someone told me back when I was researching the Mac platform in 1998 was that “Once you go Mac, you never go back.” It’s true. I have no need or desire to go back. And I assume the next ten years will be even better and more interesting than the first.