Excuse Me While I Pull My Hair Out

For those Prodigal Mac readers that go WAAAYY back with me to the column's humble beginnings, which was all of about four weeks ago, you've probably noticed my fondness for analogy. I wouldn't dare disappoint both of you by skimping on this installment, so let me take you back to an experience you've probably had (or may currently be having) in some form or another.

Tell me if you've heard this one: You're dating someone, and for whatever reason, this person begins to annoy you. It's not big stuff; maybe some petty things, like the classic Mike Myers "she smells like soup." Over time, though, your annoyance grows like a nasty weed, and everything this person does bothers the hell out of you. It's obvious the relationship isn't going anywhere, so you break it off.

Fast forward a few months, maybe even a few years. You only remember the good things about this person. Nice hair, good smile, stuff like that. Maybe it's a chance meeting, maybe it's a deliberate one, or maybe it's because the person you're currently with is even more annoying, but for some reason or other you decide to give your old flame one more chance, so you get back together.

Again, please indulge me as I fast forward, this time just days (or maybe even hours). However short a period of time it is, you begin to rediscover very rapidly why things didn't work out the first time around. And this time, you have a set of all-new annoyances to deal with. If things are going to work over the long haul, there better have been a lot of improvement in other areas during the time you were apart to offset the bad stuff.

This is where the Mac and I currently stand in our renewed relationship.

Let's put aside for a moment the unsettling and highly disturbing fact that two of my three columns have compared computers to women and focus on the topic at hand: where the relationship is going. If you recall from my first installment of Prodigal Mac, I had to decide if I wanted to reacquaint myself with the Mac OS, specifically Mac OS X, after abandoning the platform in 1998 in favor of (gulp) Windows NT. The column name, as well as the Web site you are reading it on, seems to suggest that I do, in fact, want to transition back to the Mac. Now that we're all caught up, I'm at a fairly important crossroads in what is sure to be a protracted switch from the dark side back over to Steve's Forces of Good and Righteousness. The question that faces me now is a simple one:

How am I ever going to be able to choose the right freaking Mac?

<rant>
Man, I forgot how crazy this made me. I absolutely hated shopping for a new Mac before, and I hate it even more now. How could I possibly have forgotten the pain and anguish associated with trying to decide which Mac is best and at what point to pull the trigger on it? Jeez, it's absolutely maddening.
</rant>

OK, now that I've gotten that off of my chest, let me try to explain my predicament in more rational terms. When I left the Mac lo those many years ago, it was purely a software issue. The Mac OS, then only at version 8.1, just wasn't cutting it, and there was a dearth of professional digital design software. I had no beef whatsoever with the hardware it ran on, nor did I really know or care too much about it. Macs came with what they came with, and that was that. Once on the Windows side, however, one must learn very quickly about all the intricacies of PC-based hardware, lest one become completely unable to work at all. IRQ conflicts, driver issues, missing DLLs, and myriad other inane pieces of Windows technobabble soon became part of my lexicon. In retrospect, that learning process, nasty as it was, did serve a valuable purpose: I finally got over my fear of cracking open my computer's case and fiddling around with the various innards. Do you know why? Because it didn't really matter, since PC hardware is cheap and plentiful. I could fry my motherboard, but big deal! I'd be out the cost of a new motherboard and processor (not exactly trivial, but not a total disaster either). And that's the one aspect I really got to like about being on the dark side. Having the "latest and greatest" meant springing for a single component when it's needed, rather than waiting and waiting until you just couldn't get anything done anymore, and then sucking it up and buying a whole new system.

Now that I'm coming back, I'm finding the exact opposite of the situation that caused me to leave the platform: the hardware, the side of the Mac experience I didn't care about before, is what's troubling me now. And the software seems to be the part that I'm not concerned about at all. While that makes for a wonderful experience working on the Mac, much better than it has ever been, it magnifies the problems I always had when it came time to go in on a new Mac:

1. Which one to buy,
2. When to buy it, and
3. How to live with myself when Steve's next insanely great masterpiece of hardware comes along, which will probably be mere minutes after I buy the old model.

Let's approach these one at a time, shall we?

1) Which one to buy. I now find myself approaching my impending Mac purchase a lot more cautiously than I would have in the past. I know that while Macs are more expandable and upgradeable than ever before, the choice and flexibility of products isn't what it is over on the PC side, and that bugs me a bit. Do I max it out, getting a loaded Dual 800 Quicksilver box and coasting for a few years? Do I go middle of the road, and try to get a couple of years out of it while saving a bit of dough? Do I go low-end desktop, save a lot of money, and not feel bad about tossing it in a year and getting whatever the latest low-end model is? Or do I go portable, where both Macs and PCs share equal footing in that there isn't a whole lot of upgradin' that can be done, period? I honestly don't know which way to go, and it's driving me nuts.

2) When to buy it. "Well, you silly little man," you might be saying, "definitely don't buy anything right before an Expo or Apple Event!" Of course not, unless Apple lowers the prices of the ones they're planning on phasing out. I don't know about you, but the discounted TiBook is looking pretty sweet right about now, despite the rumors of an impending update that are flying around. Which leads me to the other problem: It's NEVER a good time to buy. With all the Mac rumor and fan sites out there in the digital ether, there always seem to be whispers of the next great thing that's definitely worth waiting for. Is the G5 not only real, but also going to be unleashed on the world as soon as January? My God, what if it is? That's right around the corner! Should I wait? What should I do? Ugh. I forgot how much Apple's mystery made me insane.

3) How to live with myself when Steve's next insanely great masterpiece of hardware comes along, which will probably be mere minutes after I buy the old model. I won't be able to. It's a fact of life: in the blink of an eye, my machine will no longer be the latest and greatest. I imagine that beer will help.

The good news is that these annoyances can probably be overcome. The Mac has much more to offer now that we've gotten back together, and I'm looking forward to our bright, shining, happy future. Isn't that just the sweetest damn thing you've ever heard?

So there you have it. But please bear with me through this last part as I make the first of what will probably be numerous personal pleas: HELP ME! What should I do? And when? And why should I listen to you? Please, sound off by clicking on my e-mail link at the top of the page.

Of course, if anyone has a spare Quicksilver Power Mac or TiBook just sitting around, unused...

Filed under: Opinion on October 3rd, 2001

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