I have always been a PC person who wanted to become a Mac person. Maybe I’ve just been lured in by the hype around Mac. I certainly don’t have strong reasons for wanting to become a Mac person other than that the people in my life who have them swear that they never have any problems with them. I’ve had terrible problems with my PCs over the years and when both my desktop and my laptop computer recently died on me I decided that it was definitely time to make the move to Mac. I didn’t really have the money to spend but I also knew that it was worth it to get some good computers since these are the tools of my trade. I went whole hog and bought both a new iMac desktop and a MacBook Pro laptop. And I’m loving both of them.

In fairness, though, I have to say that I would probably have loved a new PC if I’d gotten a high-quality one. All of the PCs that I’ve gotten in the past were on the cheap end. The last several were all HP products and I can tell you from in-depth experience that HP laptops are not worth even their lowest prices. My HP desktop did last a long time but my laptops had to be reformatted more than once and I had to buy new power cords for them every year or so because they burned up from overuse. Frustrating. So any new computer that didn’t have such problems would probably have made me happy. It didn’t have to be a Mac. It just so happens that what I decided to get was Mac and I was glad with my decision.

What I love about the new computers (besides just the fact that they’re new) includes:

• The facial recognition feature in iPhoto. I don’t like everything about how you organize pictures inside of iPhoto but I do love this feature. I’m also going to like the tagging feature (descriptions of photos) once I start using it. It’ll be so much easier to find the images that I want to find now!
• The photo booth. This is a ridiculous little program that shouldn’t be a reason to love a computer but it’s totally a major reason I’m having fun with mine. It allows you to take photos with your webcam camera. But more than that it lets you actually change the effects on the photos before you take it so you can see on the screen what weird shapes you’re making. The photo above is me and my brother in the middle with my dad on the side and my sister sticking her hands in the scene. I can’t tell you how many hours I could spend playing with this feature!
• The little things. I think that it’s really the little things that I like. I like the easy method of ejecting discs with a button. I like the functionality of the design of the machine itself. I like the Magic Mouse that came with my desktop computer (although I’m still adjusting to the tiny size of the wireless keyboard it came with). These little touches are what make these computers so much better than my HPs.
• The idea of the Time Machine. I haven’t used it yet but I think I’m going to like it.
• The fact that there is still more to learn and do. It seems like these machines have a lot of neat functions that I wasn’t using before so I’m looking forward to continuing to play with them.

Tags: apple, mac, move to mac, new computers, smartchick, Technology