What A Personal Computer Should Be.

Hello Crazy World.

Hold on to your hats readers, the Nixons bought a new machine last week. A Macbook to be precise.

OH.

MY.

GOD.

I am in Love. Not that first sex afterglow kind of love, but the real thing. I smile just thinking about how my life has changed.

Let me go back in time...to the first time the Nixons used a "personal computer"...it would have been 1981 or 1982. My 2nd grade classroom in San Diego, California had just received a shiny Apple II computer. We loaded in our 51/4 inch diskette and proceeded to play Oregon Trail...for a grade no less! I remember fondly the II, the IIc, the IIe. I remember the first Mac. I remember thinking, what the hell is this "mouse" for? Oh, but the colors. Really, until then you had green letters, or amber letters. And then came Mac...

The Nixons decided to forget about computers for a while. We were no professional graphic designers and the "internet" was still just a nerdy thing that computer science geeks at major universities used to share databases. Then came the mid 90's...the Nixons, tired of working for a living as an electrician decided to go back to school and become an audio engineer. My wife at the time decided she was going go back to school and become a graphic designer. Of course, all the software we needed only ran on Mac's. Our schools only taught on Macs, so we bought a Mac. It was an awesome machine even then. Two years go by, and armed with couple of AAS degrees in audio engineering, the Nixons were off to find their first "cool" job! How surprised were we when they asked how proficient the Nixons were with computers! Why, we rule, of course! "How good are you on a PC?", they asked. Lying through our teeth, they were told we could practically be an IT guy. Long story short, the Nixons got the job, learned how to use a PC as we went, and thus began going over to the dark side.

Pro audio software began to appear for PC. The price difference began to get farther and farther apart. The Nixons used PC's at work, and at home. The graphic designer wife and our shared mac were long gone. We were lost. Updating drivers, regular crashes, being riddled with spyware and phishing files began to become "normal". And this went on for almost a decade. And then it happened...the quirky PC died. And hard. We left the side panel off while trying to work on it, a cat chewed through a bunch of wires, and that was it. Game Over. Time to start shopping for a new PC, a laptop this time was the thought. But something happened on the way to the market.

Oh, the Nixons began to look at the Apple Store online. We began to remember. Like a prisoner, smelling free air for the first time in 10 years, we began to see the light again. Using a computer didn't have to be like tying 10 cats together and calling it a dog. It could be easy. It could be fun. The f*cking thing could just work.

Did we spend more? Yes. Does that make the Nixons some artsy, mac-snob homos now? Again? Maybe. But think about this the next time you buy a PC and spend the whole night "setting it up", and the next few days getting it to work with your printer, to recognize your camera, to move your iTunes...we took the new Macbook out of the box, turned it on, answered 3 questions in a setup dialog, and that was it.

It powers up in seconds. The internet is...just there. No connecting, no system preferences, no hassle. Just click on the icon, and you are there. We moved a 15,000 song iTunes library, had it organized, and had our 3 iPods (the Nixons like music!) set up within 20 minutes. 19 of those minutes were copying the 100gB of files over. Now how do you think that would have gone if we were trying to switch from PC to Mac? Shudder...

So that's it. If I seem like I'm gushing, it's because I am. I am LOVE. You can't explain to someone really. They just have to know.

A Mac will be the best machine you'll ever own.

It's everything a P(ersonal) C(omputer) should be.

-the Nixons.