I’ve been a Mac since elementary school, when my geeky gifted class had the distinct pleasure of taking apart an Apple IIe just to see what was inside. But my dad is a computer tech from way back, so I grew up using PCs at home until I was flush enough to buy my own Mac after college. That said, I can understand some of the reasons folks give for sticking with PCs—especially the price issue. Hell, I haven’t replaced my five-year-old PowerBook G4, mainly because I can’t afford to buy the system I really want. (That and the fact that it’s still going strong, and how many PC users can say that?)
Anyway, I met with the lovely folks at Apple earlier this week and got my hands on the new MacBook (above). With a price point of just $999 (the same as it was before the upgrade), a basic 13-inch configuration that includes many of the top of the line add-ons you used to have to, well, add on (think: NVIDIA graphics, an Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 250 GB hard drive) and the features that make the MacBook Pro series great (think: a seven-hour built-in battery, an LED backlit display, the Multi-Touch trackpad), I think it is the machine that could lure PCs over to the intuitive side (perfectly timed to coincide with the Windows 7 launch, of course).
Then there were the new 21.5†and 27†iMacs. They’ve come a long way from the candy-colored boxes in your college computer lab. With a 16:9 aspect ratio, noticeably bumped up blacks (the contrast ratio is now 1000:1), a 178º viewing angle and HD+ resolution, they beg to be used for Hulu days and movie nights (oh, and work, too). I’m not a desktop girl—as a freelancer, I like to be able to take my show on the road—but this is the first iMac that makes me consider having a more permanent setup. The 21.5†starts at $1,199; the 27†at $1,699 with ATI Radeon HD graphics.
But the thing I was most excited to see, the thing that I’m going to buy ASAP, is the Magic Mouse. It brings everything I love about my iPhone’s touch screen to the mouse. So pinching to zoom out, flicking to move around a page, even right-clicking is super simple. It took me a couple minutes to remember that I still had to move the actual mouse, but once I did that, I was whizzing from webpage to webpage and zooming in on pictures in a way that makes my regular mouse pretty darn boring. It’s wireless, comes with a couple AA batteries and has an off switch so you won’t kill it when you travel. For just $69, I’m in love.
Do you like-y? Enough to make you PCs switch teams?
—Kenrya
Check out the rest of Kenrya’s posts below.
Last 5 posts by kenrya
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