I have taunted Apple Mac users for years for the way they go on about the company\u2019s products with an almost religious zeal. Now it\u2019s their turn to tease me \u2014 I bit the bullet, bought an iMac, and \u2026 I\u2019m loving it!<\/p>\n
Every January, Apple CEO Jim Jon-, err, Steve Jobs, ascends to a stage at the Macworld Conference & Expo in San Francisco. The Mac faithful lap up the Kool-Aid from their jeans and polo neck-wearing oracle. Usually, most of the details that Jobs provides are already known, published on blogs or in the technology press. But it\u2019s never enough to quell the sense of excitement and anticipation ahead of a Jobs keynote.<\/p>\n
Next month\u2019s Macworld has the specialist websites and journals drooling. It seems likely that an ultra-portable MacBook Pro notebook is on the cards, probably with a screen size of between 11 and 13 inches, compared with the MacBook Pro\u2019s bulky 15- and 17-inch models. It may also sport a touch screen, \u00e0 la the iPhone and the iPod Touch. Several Mac fans I know have said they will buy the new machine, without even having seen any details about it.<\/p>\n
Wags are also guessing that Jobs will announce new iPhones with bigger storage capacities, though consensus seems to be that a 3G version, offering faster Internet access, will be unveiled only mid-2008.<\/p>\n
Jobs knows how to conjure up the magic. Under his leadership, the company has grown its market value to more than US$150bn by introducing a raft of new products and software that consumers literally lust after.<\/p>\n
There was the iMac, first introduced in 1998, which marked the start of Apple\u2019s turnaround – the company almost went bankrupt in the mid-1990s before the return of prodigal son Jobs.<\/p>\n
Then came the iconic iPod, which changed the music industry, and now the iPhone, which was named gadget of the year by Time magazine. And let\u2019s not forget Mac OS X, the powerful, Unix-based operating system that underpins it all.<\/p>\n
In fact, it\u2019s the new version of Mac OS X, code-named Leopard, that finally convinced me to make the jump from the PC world. Leopard is the most intuitive and stable operating system I\u2019ve run in the more than 30 years I\u2019ve been using personal computers.<\/p>\n
Anyone remember the arcane, text-based commands in MS-DOS such as dir to bring up a directory listing and mkdir to create a folder? That was just 20 years ago, before mouse-driven graphical user interfaces became commonplace. Compare those early systems with the eye candy in Leopard \u2014 it\u2019s dripping with the stuff \u2014 and it\u2019s clear we\u2019ve come a long way in a relatively short time.<\/p>\n
The world of operating systems has made significant strides in the past two decades. We have Linux, built on free and open-source software which, in many ways, is now superior, in stability, security and usability, to Microsoft Windows.<\/p>\n
For sheer good looks and usability, though, I have to say that Leopard beats all rivals. What I like about it is its intuitiveness. Not once have I had to Google for help.<\/p>\n
Don\u2019t get me wrong. Unlike some technology writers, I don\u2019t think Windows Vista is all that bad. I run it on my laptop and, now that the drivers are available for the machine\u2019s hardware components, I find it to be stable and usable.<\/p>\n
But more than five years after Microsoft released Windows XP, I had expected so much more from Vista. There are plenty of changes under the hood, sure, but I have the impression that the biggest enhancement in Vista is its shiny new interface. If you have XP, it\u2019s hard to justify the cost \u2014 in both software and the additional hardware you\u2019ll need to run it \u2014 of upgrading to Vista.<\/p>\n
Moving to Mac, I now realise, is an entirely different proposition.<\/p>\n