It seems I am destined to never use a PC with Windows again. Why not, I wonder? Why Apple is No.1 for me
Years and years ago, probably more than I would care to admit, I had a PC. It was my first PC of any kind. Geez, the experience was awful, but I knew no better and persevered. The endless updates, the slowness, endless seas of plastic and the illogical way in which it seemed to function. Then I spent time in creatives studios with graphic designers and had friends in the music industry. Universally, they seemed to be using these really cool aluminium devices, with amazing displays and NO updates! Welcome to Apple!
Embarrassing, but…
The fact I am about to commit this to a blog is not cool! Whilst I was in that PC abyss, the best I could achieve was…to use a macOS screensaver! Yeah, you read it right! I actually longed for the world of the Apple ‘chime’ so intensely, that I used the Mountain Lion OS screensaver, and just used to dream the good dream.
The first steps
My very, very first Mac was a MacBook Air. Upon arriving home, I learned quickly that it didn’t have enough storage to hold my iTunes music library. That was quickly sorted with an external drive by the lovely people at the store, and subsequently, I was in hook, line, and sinker. So much so, in fact, that I was back in the store every Sunday for a good few months taking lessons in how to get the most from my new machine and world. I wanted, so badly, to experience the Apple ecosystem along with the cool people.
The desire
From a professional standpoint, I was heading for a change. That change would be one where the Adobe Creative Cloud suite of apps would become my best friends as I was started a design company. Although now, you can work just as well on a PC as you can Mac, with the Indesign and Photoshop, back then it was still not common place at all. Files that you’d receive from agencies would be Mac created or with Mac system fonts. To fit in to that world, it had to be Mac, and that was all the excuse I needed.
The sea of silver
Even now, if I visit creatives, and they are not on Mac, then I still, quietly, wonder if they are the team for me. Can I see myself working with them? Silly, I know, but creatives and Macs just seem to work. You want your young, top-knotted, Stan Smith Adidas wearing creative to be working on a Mac, right? Better still if the Mac has stickers on! That’s the vibe I want. This all makes me seem ridiculously one dimensional and shallow, I know. On a good day, I am a pretty savvy businessman, and don’t think I am anybodies fool, but this lust to work with Mac exists until now. In my defence, this phenomenon has even had some studies conducted in which it was looked in to it.
Researchers flashed the IBM logo followed by Apples and measured the neurological reactions. Believe it or not, the side creative side of the brain started to show signs of behaving more creatively on sight of the Apple logo. Interestingly, most reactions resonated in a very similar way, except for two distinct areas, those being competence and creativity. The results, corroborated by an independent set of reviewers, verified the findings.
From day one
As ever, Apple was to be a little different. Apple set out to change the world one person at a time. Even through their dark, barren days, this was still apparent. It was the glue that held the vision together. Merely to produce a product was never the goal, rather the very embodiment of the original mission. To them, the way to change the world was by developing and brighter and more attractive products, ones designed to induce creativity. Have you ever noticed, how you just want to spend more time at a Mac? The lure is still there. Apple has never lost sight of their somewhat personal connection to their end user.
Proven over time
Macs have always put the user experience front and centre. Going back forty years, Mac stole a lead on desktop design and rendering fonts. In fact, through leveraging PostScript and PageMaker, some believe Apple were effectively responsible for creating the desktop publishing industry as a whole. Sure, their marketing campaigns have always summoned emotive reactions. But, they have backed up those campaigns with hardware that delivers. Let’s not forget, it is no surprise that the first attractive, user-friendly GUI (Graphical User Interface), was also found on a Mac.
The experience
This experience was no happy accident. One of their very earliest operating systems, System 7, was achieved by some brainstorming sessions, with index cards used to mark-down ideas. Simple features, like adding colour to the user interface, were written on blue cards. Goals which were deemed a little harder to achieve, such as true multitasking, were written on pink cards, and ideas, that at the time were flights of fancy, were relegated to red cards.
Everything about sitting at, or behind, a Mac seems more engineered and slanted toward to pulling the best from you creatively. Simple things that we now take for granted, such as Air Drop, the class-leading trackpads and Retina 5K Displays, all of which go toward making that next creative challenge a little easier to achieve.
And so, the campaign, Behind The Mac, which I pay homage to with images throughout this blog, was born. Says it all!
Conclusion
The lure and desire to work with and on or Behinda Mac is real. No point in denying it. Think of it this way. You could drive to work in a beaten-up old Mini, or arrive in a pristine Bentley. Sure, you’ll get to the same destination, but I know how I’d rather get there!
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Originally published at https://www.talkingtechandaudio.com/blog on February 23, 2022.
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