I am an anomaly: a long-time graphic designer who has worked exclusively on the Windows platform since the early 90s. It wasn’t always smooth sailing, especially at the beginning when design software was slow to come out for Windows, if it came out at all. Back in the 90s, if you were a print designer, you were generally considered a masochist and/or an idiot to work in Windows. But I was a pragmatist, not willing to dish out loads of extra cash when I knew how to get Windows to work just fine for design– albeit with some jumping through hoops. I churned out thousands of design jobs in Windows, sometimes getting compliments from prepress departments for how well my files were constructed compared to what typical Mac-based designers normally gave them. Occasionally a Mac-centric shop would tell me they refused to take PC files, despite my argument that file formats were identical, and that it makes no sense to discriminate on the basis of an .EPS file’s birthplace. (In those cases I’d compress those same PC-generated files with Stuffit to make it look like they came from a Mac, and… well, whaddaya know… not a peep of protest from the shops.)

Since the advent of Windows XP in late 2001, Windows was finally on par with Mac for a design platform. Fonts were exactly the same (Opentype), final print files started to be delivered as platform-independent hi-res PDFs, Macromedia and Adobe files were finally cross-platform compatible, functionality in design software was the same, and the operating system itself was stable. (Windows NT in the late 90s was rock solid as well). Plus, hardware on the Windows side was typically much faster (Intel and AMD beat Motorola’s) and significantly cheaper. So every time I needed to upgrade a machine, I could never justify the cost to pay double to get something slower.

That was then… this is now. Apple finally realized the folly of sticking with Motorola, and switched to speedy new Intel chips. ("Idiot Inside," you say?) And simultaneously, prices dropped to be more competitive with Windows machines, and they started supporting full installs of Windows through Bootcamp or Windows emulators like VMware Fusion.

So when my 2-year-old Sony Vaio’s hard drive sizzled to its fiery death last Monday (it has been overheating a lot lately, and I am afraid to trust it now as my main machine), I ended up at Best Buy, on the brink of buying a 13" HP Pavilion… and then I walked over to look at the new 15" Macbook Pros. And then I walked out with the Macbook Pro for these reasons:

• I was going to have to go through the hassle of switching to a new OS anyway, either Vista or OSX, so the Macbook let me try what I hoped would be a great OS for designers, while keeping my tried-and-true XP right there when I need it.
• Same price as what I paid for my Sony 2 yrs ago ($1,900 with $100 Best Buy discount)… more than comparable Vista machines, but not ridiculously more.
• Very fast hardware, great video card, great LED-backlit monitor. Those are things I would’ve paid a premium for from other PC manufacturers anyway.
• I finally get to try OSX and see if it’s really "all that". And if not, I still have XP right here under the same hood.

With OSX and Windows XP living in harmony on the same machine, I can hopefully get the best of both worlds, keeping my options open for when I need to get my next computer in a few years. By that time, both Vista and OSX will have matured even more, and I’ll choose the best machine for me when that time comes. In the meantime, I’m keeping my data as platform-agnostic as possible (using Google iMap to keep my mail in the cloud and in sync across platforms, using Evernote to keep all my notes, passwords, and important bits of data in sync, and using delicious to keep my internet bookmarks accessible from any browser on any platform. And of course, all my design software swings back and forth with the greatest of ease.

That’s not to say I haven’t run into some serious hitches. I’ll post more later about my triumphs and tribulations, but tonight got to try to finish some work. (I’m trying to do a website entirely on OSX, and it’s slow going.) I am keeping a running tally of what I love and hate about this new Mac and its shiny happy operating system, which I will tell you about in next week’s installment, "Stop calling me a ‘Switcher’, you fatuous Mac evangelists."