There was an advertising campaign from Apple from 15+ years ago called I’m a Mac I’m a PC that depicted the personality types of people who used PCs vs people who used Macs. Obviously the ads were trying to get people to buy Macs, so PCs were not depicted in a very positive light.
I was firmly a PC. Except for a few years working on big iron and a few more doing embedded software, my entire software career was working on PC software, under the various versions of Windows. All my home computers were likewise PCs (except for a CP/M machine that I assembled from a kit in high school - yes I’m that old). I was quite content being a PC running Windows. Windows never really annoyed me as I know it annoys some people. For me Windows mostly stayed out of my way and let me get things done. And it continues to do that for me.
I never had anything specifically against Mac computers, other than that they seemed overly expensive given the hardware in them. The main reason that I never had any interest in Macs is that I never felt the need to use something other than my relatively cheap and very capable multi-monitor Windows PCs. That and I didn’t like some of Apple’s ad campaigns…
I think of my phone differently from my computers. While I know the details of PCs and how they function, I was content to treat my phone as an appliance and not really know nor care how it worked so long as it worked. So I have been using Apple phones since they first came out, and for the most part have been content with them. But I am not a demanding iPhone user. I spend only a few minutes a day on my phone, and I basically only use it for communication. I don’t use it for reading, games, photography, social media, or even web browsing, mostly because the screen is too small for my taste. I only upgrade my iPhone when it stops being supported or when it breaks.
Similarly, I have owned a few iPads over the years, I treat them as an information appliance and use them for reading or surfing the web. Without going into details, I keep one in my bathroom. And, Apple also managed to sell me a watch, because I liked the health-related features it provides. So Apple has infiltrated my life, but for my ‘real’ computing needs, I am a PC.
So what changed to make me think I might be a closet Mac? My main hobby is music. I own and play various instruments (guitar, bass, electronic drums and keyboard), and have a home studio where I dabble in music recording and production. I’m not very good at it, but I get enjoyment out of it nonetheless. One of the few things that I did in specific preparation for retirement was to start upgrading my home studio, thinking I would have more time pursue my hobby. The Windows PC that was running my DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) software in my studio was several generations old and needed to be replaced. After shopping around a bit, it became clear to me that Apple’s new Mac M4 Mini would work great as a dedicated studio computer. I only needed the base model plus a cheap external hard drive to meet my needs, so it was actually cheaper than a comparable Windows PC. Apple has a long history of catering to artistic/creative types (going back at least to the I’m a Mac I’m a PC ad campaign), so my DAW software and all the musical gear that I wanted to use were supported very well on Mac silicon. Apart from a few annoyance-level things (like MacOS putting the button to close a window on the ‘wrong’ side of the top bar), I was very impressed with how well the M4 Mini worked out as my studio computer. But in some sense it was still just a single-purpose computer, playing the role of an appliance that powered my studio. I almost didn’t think of it as a ‘real’ computer.
Then retirement happened, and my computing usage patterns changed a bit. Historically I have never had much need for a laptop computer because I don’t travel much, and I’d just go and sit in front of my PC with its multiple large screens if I wanted to do something serious on the computer. But with retirement I found that I was spending more time sitting in comfy chairs or outside on my porch, and doing things that didn’t necessarily demand a lot of screen real estate. So I started thinking about buying a laptop. That is about the time when the MacBook M4 Air laptop was introduced by Apple. It seemed to me that the Macbook M4 Air was very cost competitive with PC laptops, and more than competitive on performance. Most of the software that I used for day-to-day computing (OneNote, VS Code, Warp, ChatGPT, Cubase, browsers) is available on MacOS. Given how much I liked the Mac M4 Mini in my studio, I thought I’d try a MacBook laptop.
And wouldn’t you know it I really like that machine. It is very snappy and has handled everything I have thrown at it, including some coding projects. The fact that it is so portable is nicer and more important to me than I expected, and I found that I can also set it up on a desk and hook up multiple monitors to it to make it into a very usable desktop workstation. I.e. a ‘real’ computer.
Well played, Apple.
