Are you thinking about changing from Windows to Mac?
If this question resonates in you, allow me to tell my journey.
Why should I open my Windows computer, go get a coffee, speak with a few colleagues and then maybe... I repeat, maybe when I arrive at the PC I could start my work?
Like most people, when I used Windows 3.11 instead of DOS, I said to myself - "Finally there's a visual interface allowing me to see something and get it"... WYSIWYG. I never thought about an Apple Computer. In Portugal, they were scarce and most of them at Universities.
I remember being in high-school and helping a friend of mine at the University with some editing work and used a Macintosh for the first time. Honestly? No big deal.
Then came Windows 95... wow! This time we had a colorful system with a program called Netscape Navigator which we used to navigate on this thing called internet. The quality of games substantially improved, and I played Civilization or Age of Empire throughout the night. Mamma mia!
Things evolved, and I realized I could do much more with a PC than playing games. If I could get the right tools, I could perform difficult calculations (Mathematica), great design (Corel Draw), efficient documents (Word), presentations (PowerPoint), data processing (Matlab, or MathCAD), and with sites like Google, searching for anything became easier.
This was until 2010 when Apple launched the iPad. For several years since 2000, I carried with me a bunch of papers related with my research work and - yes! - it was heavy... One time I remember being a gentleman to a colleague of mine and carried her briefcase... full of papers... and when we came back from the conference... my God! Almost two weeks with a pain in my back difficult to bear.
Sometimes I had to print an article twice just because I left my first copy at the University and really need it to work. The amount of paper consumed was embarrassing and quite "un-ecological". So I decided. No more printing. With an external hard drive I can have all the papers in my digital library and read them when I need them without printing. This was 7 years ago.
By then, smartphones were emerging, so I had a Samsung Galaxy with the ability to write on PDF files. Amazing! I started for the first time to correct Master thesis I co-supervised with my phone! But... soon, the phone screen became small. I needed a bigger screen. Hum... this iPad thing seems perfect to do the job... So, I saved to buy one.
Oh... my... God. Cloud services flourished. PDF annotation apps developed. Keynote was tremendous! Taking note was so easy. Reading papers was amazing! Then I went to my computer and... I still had to wait 20 min before using anything, had none of the apps or similar to the iPad and the experience became frustrating.
Ok. I invested in a MacBook Air. I was a bit scared because I remembered my experience when I was young and thought it would be a difficult transition. But it wasn't! Working on a Mac was as easy as working on the iPad. Ok. Some windows apps had no equivalent on the Mac, but I could easily replace them with less expensive apps. The experience was amazing... until I picked up my phone and the world crumbled. No sync.
The step was easy, and I eventually invested on an iPhone. Since then I became an Apple fan because everything is seamless, simple, not time consuming, upgradable, beautifully designed and computer crashes decreased to 1%.
Since that time, I've shared my experience with family, friends, colleagues and several of them now use Apple products. No, I don't earn a commission.
My journey from Windows to Mac is not because Windows is bad (although...it is), but it was a journey from functionality to an experience. From something that worked to making me enjoy working. Steve Jobs noted once that technology is an amplifier of abilities we already have. I changed to the Mac because I experienced that.
How about you? Have you ever changed from Windows to Mac? Or from Mac to Windows? What is your favorite platform when you work on a computer?
