Exactly the Same, Yet Completely Different

I got a brand spakin', high-falootin', schnazzy laptop yesterday.

I haven't had a really good system in years...when I moved to my new place a year and a half ago, the desktop system I had was at least two or three years old (out-of-date by techno-standards), and since then I've had hand-me-downs.  The first one was an old Dell my brother was able to rescue, spiff up with as much buff and shine as you can to something that's a few years old and difficult to spruce up and I used that.  Then his girlfriend, now fiancee, kindly donated the Gateway she'd used all through law school.  It was definitely an upgrade to the Dell, but it has been dying a slow death (two of its four USB ports blew out last summer, and the power cord, despite my reinforcing it with athletic tape and rubber bands, developed loose wires that would make it shudder between battery and AC power) for the last several months.

I've been wanting to get a new laptop of some sort for the last two years, but my car ate that money.  And this year it didn't.

So off went my tax return to Apple for a brand new -- well, refurbished, but with the same guarantee as one that just squeaked out from the factory -- MacBook pro.  The rest of the return sat around to make sure I could take care of my bills and food while being out of work from surgery.

No, I did not cross to the dark side and become one of "those" people that now turn their nose up at a PC because they are now using the "hipper" and "trendier" Macs.  I'm not going to be driving a biodiesel hybrid car made from densely-knit, resin-coated grass grown by monks living in the High Sierra Mountains, or vegetarian (I didn't claw my way to the top of the food chain to go back down to the bottom, as a friend of mine once said).  While I am tired of the continual upkeep PCs require -- they've become far too high-maintenance/drama-oriented for my taste -- I have no complaints in using one.

What drew me to the MacBook was none of the culture surrounding the general populace that you often see using it -- it was the battery life.

I love to write.  But I get tired of writing at home all the time, and have long wanted to be able to slip into a booth in one of our many microbreweries here, enjoy a pint or two -- or perhaps a coffeehouse -- and tap away, but it's hard when your laptop has a maybe-possibly-could be-if-I-squeeze-the-gerbil-a-bit-harder battery life of 20 minutes and you're chained to an AC cord.  The Dell was okay as it was a longer cord, but the Gateway had one that was at least eighteen inches shorter, thus requiring me to also carry an extension cord.  After watching a poor food server with a tray full of beer nearly trip on the cord -- even though I'd tucked it away as best I could -- I gave up.

This MacBook has a battery life of approximately seven hours -- and that's with using it actively.  Writing, surfing (hang ten, brah), etc.Even new PCs can barely boast two or three hours.  And that's usually if it's just sitting there.  God forbid you should try to browse.

Seven hours!  Granted, it would likely be less than that, but that's still way beyond any PC can offer.  That means no AC cord for some food server to tip-toe over.  No AC cord for sitting outside -- anywhere -- to write.  I could go to a park, an outdoor table at one of the 52 gazillion McMenamins brewpubs/restaurants around here.  My own terrace.

It also wasn't because it was the (insert angel choir singing AHHHHHHHHH!) iPhone that I got an iPhone.  When my last generi-cell phone started dying, the thought of another two-year contract with another gener-phone killed me.  So I spent time researching and comparing all the other smartphones out there, and I came to the conclusion the iPhone was the best of them.  Besides, it was the only one to offer the kind of apps I wanted.  It had nothing to do with it being an Apple product and everything to do with functionality.

But it really is true, I think, as Roger Ebert said in a tweet the other day (even though it was about the iKotex -- er, iPad): "Steve Jobs has done it again. One market-changing idea after another, while Microsoft totes that barge and lifts that bale."  It really has been, for Microsoft, the focus of, "How can we make our OS clunkier and more unweildy so people have to spend several hundred dollars on software to make it functional?"  Its like selling a new car for a higher and higher price, but offering fewer and fewer options you have to add on -- like steering.

I really liked that my iPhone was totally self-explanitory for setting up.  I checked the manual maybe three times, though there were a few calls to techsupport when I was stumped.  Before, when I got a new phone, I had to spend at least an hour or two going page-by-page through the manual to (1) unlearn all my habits from the previous phone and (2) learn how the new phone was oriented.  Didn't feel like that at all when I got the iPhone, despite it being totally different than anything I'd ever owned before.

When I got a new PC or Windows-based laptop, there were many frustrating/-ed calls to my brother to figure the damn thing out.  I had this thing up and running in 30 minutes, and that was including the tweakig of personal preferences.

Okay, okay.  So I sound like I'm trying to convert the masses.  No -- really I'm not.  The two platforms -- Windows vs. Mac -- have different functions, different appeals to different people.  It's just a computer, and it's no different than someone wanting a Ford over a Chevy.  Or whatever.  I just changed my mind.  I could very easily go back to a Windows-based computer some day.  Who knows.

But to the purchasing software to make things run, I'm going to spend a total of $53.44 -- and that's for iWorks '09, the Apple version of MS Office.  I found it online for $30 less than what Apple wanted for it.  Everything else, plus some things I may never touch (as happens with a Windows PC, too) are already on here.

I've had to dredge up some long-hibernating Mac knowledge to figure out how to work things (I asked Andrew one question: "What's the Mac equivalent of the control key?"  Answer -- the little curlicued square key, the "command" key), and I've had to look up a few things.  But it's otherwise pretty self-explanatory.

It's also cooler and quieter than the Gateway; that thing could make you sweat on a freezing day when the processor got into a run, and I could hear the cooling fan all the way in the other room.  Neither is happening here...much quieter fan, much cooler body, likely having to do a lot from the fact that the case is made from aluminum, thereby wicking off much of the heat.

I have had to deal with a headache given by the newer, better, and thusly smaller-fonted resolution, but I'll get used to that.  That always happens when I move to a better one.  Always has.  But that's okay.  I waffled between wallpaper of the famous Japanese woodblock of The Wave, to an F-15 (my favorite fighter jet), F-15s, F-15s and F-16s flying over the Iraqi desert after a bombing run that lit up the oil fields (it's a cool picture, and one I tried to have on my old laptop, but it was always clipped).  I finally settled on one that's an homage to a video game Andrew and I have loved called Portal.

Oh, and Daniel Craig, a la Casino Royale when he walks out of the ocean in nothing but a lovely, very tidily-fitting bathing suit that quite marvelously matches his blue eyes.

*sigh*

I can always go back to that one later.  A girl has to have her man-candy/beefcake fix every now and again.

And again.

And...again.  Mmm...Daniel Craig.

Sorry.  I'm straying.

Anyhoo -- I'm loving my new piece of modern technology so far.  iWorks should arrive in a few days and I can finally get down some of these story ideas that have been whapping around in my head like a large yacht in windy waters against a small pier.  It's sometimes like having a room stuffed to the gills with restless, energy-sodden kids itching to get out into the sunshine at recess.

Getting my laptop did involve some adventure.  I realize FedEx, UPS, DHL, UHF, PDQ, XYZ -- whomever -- design their routes by best-fitting, but you would think that with many packages marked "OVERNIGHT" (as was my laptop, a very nice upgrade in shipping given to me by Apple -- they really do have some awesome customer support!) and that -- put on your genius hats, please -- the knowledge that our apartment complex often closes for lunch every day from noon until one (has ever since I moved into this complex ten years ago), the driver/system/packagebot would figure out not to deliver at that time.

I was so excited to get my new laptop, I checked at lunch when I came home on Friday, having also asked the front office to put it in my apartment for me, to see if it was on its way as no package was inside when I got home (I come home for lunch every day...or usually do).  My lunch hour on Friday was from 12:30 until 1:30.

I got home at a little past 12:35.  To my utter dismay I saw that there was a "delivery exception" on the website because nobody was around to sign for it.  When did the driver try?

(Here's where you hold onto your genius hats)

12:33 pm.

Twelve thirty-three in the afternoon.  Thirty-three minutes past the noon hour.  Twenty-seven minutes before one.

Right when the office is (really hold onto your genius hats now) CLOSED FOR LUNCH.

So I had to drive all the way to Lake Oswego to pick the damn thing up.  It was advantageous, though, because I was planning on going to my father's house to have dinner with my grandmother (who lives with my father) and him this weekend, and I was able to do a load of towels in hot water to clean them up from last weekend's water fiasco.

Funny thing was, I'd been thinking just that morning, Gee, it would sure be easier if I could go have dinner today since I get off work early, but I really want to be home fiddling around with my new laptop.

I guess I got what I wished for.

For what I wished, that is, to appease you English-y type people out there.  As Winston Churchill said about ending a sentene with a preposition, "That is something up with which I will not put."

So, to my title -- the Mac is pretty much the same thing, yet it's totally different.  I remember making a similar remark to a friend about England and America (he's from London) -- mostly about the grocery stores and such, but also about the cultures -- "They're exactly the same -- " and here he chimed in "--yet completely different."

Then again, we know which is the right side of the road to drive on --

er --

-- upon which to drive.

-- H

P.S. I'm feeling much better from the surgery.  The scars -- especially the one just below my sternum -- still ache from time to time, and I'm still really tired most of the time.  But that's to be expected, according to all health-type people with whom I've spoken.