I’ve been a PC girl most of my life and still use one for gaming. Mac has just impressed me a lot in the last 10 years. My house is now riddled with Apple products and I’m not ashamed to admit it.

In the Beginning, There Was PC

I grew up with a PC in our house, becoming familiar with DOS and SkiFree at a young age. SkiFree was a pre-installed DOS skiing game where you controlled your skier down an endless hill, avoiding obstacles for as long as possible… or until the game decided you’d gotten far enough, at which point the yeti ran out and ate you because you were clearly too good at frog jumping trees.

(Click the below GIF for the animated version!)

As amazing and wildly entertaining as SkiFree was, I also played a lot of other games on PC, which you can read about in my Gaming History here.

I experienced the early Macintosh systems at my school from the age of 4 and PC was definitely the system of choice back then. Even after the clunky green screen Macintosh systems were phased out for the fancy new rounded back CRT monitors with pastel colors, I wasn’t convinced. I did love Bugdom and Nanosaur though.

I taught myself HTML not long after Dad announced he’d bought us ‘the internet’ for Christmas, and printed off old school Microsoft Word clip art posters and proudly scattered them around the computer for us to discover on Christmas morning. The 90s really was a magical time.

I continued to play a lot of PC games when Windows 95 came out (Windows 95 Game Sampler Disc? BAD. ASS.) and taught myself more about Windows and PCs over the next 10 years, spending much of my high school days using my knowledge to fix technical issues with friend’s computers and remove viruses – something none of my friends knew how to do at that time.

I also took up 2 IT subjects for my Higher School Certificate… mainly because I knew I wouldn’t have to study. SUPER NERD!!!

The Switch to Apple

In 2006, the year after graduating High School, I moved to Melbourne for a year and worked in an eBay store (yes, exactly like in 40 Year Old Virgin). I was looking for a new laptop and my boss at the time now app developer, Danny Gorog, convinced me that Macs were the way to go. As a personal computer they had improved greatly and catered to the creative, which was a big plus for me. I was using a lot of video and photo editing programs at the time. After much deliberation and slightly wooed by the pretty, shiny presentation of the Macbook, I made the move to the dark side.

For the first 6 months I ran Parallels, not wanting to let go of my precious Windows programs. But over time I realised the benefits of transitioning entirely to Mac far outweighed the inconvenience of letting go of some programs that Mac didn’t have a counterpart for. That has pretty much been rectified since 2006.

My current standing on the matter is that I prefer Mac and Apple for these personal reasons:

1. The way the OS works ‘makes sense’. Yes, it may be simplified compared to Windows versions, but functionality is still so in depth these days that I don’t care that my customisation options aren’t. I love gestures, I love how you navigate Finder and your files and folders. Small things like selecting files in a list is crazy intuitive on a Mac. It looks good. Clean. Windows has become more confusing with the upgrade to Windows 8 as far as I’m concerned. The amount on things you have to click to get to very basic settings in the control panel is infuriating.
2. The seamless integration between devices. This just improves with every update. I get all my calendars, notes, messages and Safari bookmarks updated on all my devices. Migrating to my new Macbook Air in late 2014 was the most painless experience I’ve had of this nature to date, due to all my Macbook and Safari data being stored on my iCloud account. Connecting the devices in my house to each other is also super easy.
3. Less technical/compatability issues than PC. In my experience, every PC I have ever bought has a mixed bag of hardware brands with a universal operating system and programs that must be compatible with all of these. I can’t say my Mac has ever crashed due to an incompatibility issue. I don’t have the same ability to pick and choose my graphics card as I do with my PC, but every Mac machine having the same thing in it makes for seamless compatibility and smooth running of all programs. Mac’s ability to ‘plug and play’ peripherals is the best. Driver discs are for pussies.
4. It caters more to personal use. I find everything more personal about the Mac. The GUI, gestures and the ability to customise them to suit you, having your Apple and social media accounts seamlessly integrated into every device and there are more creative and personal programs/apps available. I know Microsoft is trying to be all artsy these days, but to me they are still the choice for corporate business and productivity – Microsoft Office is probably better suited and still more widely used in the corporate world. iTunes will always be better than Windows Media Player. That thing was NEVER good. Also paint is NOT a modern day photo editing program, Microsoft.

PC’s only triumph over the Mac in my opinion is in the gaming department. Nothing will compare to building your own gaming beast, particularly from scratch. Which is why I still have a PC for gaming. This was one thing I couldn’t let go of.

So Mac FTW!!! 🙂

– Geek and Gamer Girl x