Vancouver View Magazine Article

Vancouver View Magazine Article by Buzz Bishop – May 2007

Rebecca’s dad brought home her family’s first PC in 1989.

“We played Spacewars and basked in the orange glow of the monitor,” she remembers.

Over the next 18 years as she moved from MS-DOS to Windows3.1 to Windows 95 to Windows 98 to Windows XP she learned all things Microsoft. Have a problem with your PC? Rebecca claims she can solve it “with my hands tied behind my back.”

Then came a day this March when her Microsoft made world crumbled – she bought a MacBook after much goading from her friends and colleagues.

“Attending various social media conferences around Vancouver I’m always the outcast either being a) the only one with a notepad and paper, or b) the only one who doesn’t have a Mac laptop or a Mac at home,“ says Rebecca, better known online as Miss 604, a popular Vancouver blogger and podcaster.

Even her husband, John, is a member of the Mac Nation. As a child, when asked to draw an apple in class, he would draw the Apple logo, not the fruit. So perhaps the question isn’t why did Rebecca make the iSwitch, but how did she hold out for so long?

I mean, John’s family has a first edition Macintosh with all the signatures of every Apple employee on the inside!

“Yes, you could say I married into Mac,” she finally admits.

So there it is, sitting on her kitchen table. A glistening white MacBook. Crisp and clean and ready to play. And it’s totally comfortable in the kitchen. The MacBook travels well, unlike the big beast of a PC, or “Frankenbox” as Rebecca calls it, dominating her home’s office furniture. Her PC is “an ugly beige tower pieced together with miscellaneous parts that sounds like a harbour plane taking off when it boots up.”

And that description of the ol’ PC rings true with a lot of us.

Business Week Magazine reported last year that close to half a million new Mac owners were expected through sales at Apple retail stores alone. Add in those who buy units second hand, online or through authorized resellers and you’ve got a population surge that is making some noise.

But the iSwitch isn’t always smooth. It’s like learning a new language, it takes time and practice.

Even for a pro like Rebecca, the changes were still hard to deal with. “Being somewhat of a control freak and knowing FAR too much about Windows systems I really didn’t have too much fun during the adjustment period, which lasted about a week.”

“I’ve been used to having a certain file management system – iPhoto has completely turned this upside down and although I should be feeling free of my shackles, it just annoys me. ‘It’s photo management, not file management,’ says my husband.”

But in the end, the ease of use wins out.

“When things are this simple they just blow my mind,” she remarks. “Not to mention everything is just so sleek.”

Yes, the sex appeal of the Mac is very seductive. It’s the cool, good looking person in the bar that must be too good for you, has to be too good for you, but when you get over the intimidation and walk over and finally say “Hello”, you’re pleasantly surprised how friendly and down to earth they are.

Rebecca took the plunge, introduced herself to the Mac and now lives by a new mantra:

“You can do everything on a Mac that you can do on a PC, it’s just easier and looks better.”

“It’s just that “easier” part that I’m still adjusting to.”

You catch Rebecca’s new Mac-made blogs at Miss604.com