It had been slowing down for a while - the WiFi was going bleak, the network connector was quite dodgy and required a wiggle every now and again to stay connected, and the built-in monitor was shaky at best, and full of interference lines and static when it was feeling poorly. On top of this, my desktop - once a mighty beast of a machine - was also in its last throws of death.
After a recent attempt to upgrade video cards to support a pair of new 22" monitors, it was suffering from a peculiar illness that caused it to suddenly die cold, with no warning other than the horrifying sound of the fan powering down as the power drained away and my unsaved document faded from view. And continuing the theme of technology decay, my DVD/PVR also gave up the ghost in the same week. By itself, that would not be too much of a problem (who gets time to watch TV anyway?) but it is a VERY BIG problem when two small children can't watch their daily fix of Pooh Bear and The Einsteins. So that needed replacing too. Excellent.Part of the reason that I have waited for such a long time to upgrade was financial. Actually - that's most of the reason. But a small part was that I was waiting for Apple's June WWDC before I made any purchases just on the off chance that there could be some spunky new hardware announced. As expected, the WWDC focused on the iPhone, so I went to my local Apple reseller on Tuesday afternoon to put in an order. As an aside, I had contemplated waiting until the Apple store opened in Sydney last week to make the deal, but although I admit openly to liking Apple kit, its not (yet) to the point where I would prostrate myself at the altar that is the new Sydney Apple Store. Not quite ... Well, actually not at all. Certainly not like these kooks [1].
Also, if it's not obvious, my previous suite of IT kit was almost all beige-box PCs running Windows (there was 1 sneaky MacBook that my wife used), plus several even-older cast-off machines that I had managed to rebuild as Ubuntu boxes for a variety of random development tasks like s Subversion repository and a Wiki. This last bit is significant, because for about 15 years - most of my working life, really - I've been using DOS or Windows PCs.Because it had been such a long time since I'd bought new equipment, when it came around to tooling up, I went a little nuts. I needed a new laptop AND a new desktop, and something to replace the DVD, not to mention a new laptop for my wife. So the order looked more or less like this: MacMini, check. MacBook, check. MacBook Pro, check. MacPro, double check. I went hard on the MacPro. Two 3.2 GHz quad-core Xeons, and 8Gb of RAM. In just under a week, it all turned up, which is where i got the title of this post. This stuff is hardware porn. I know that sounds completely ridiculous, but that's the best way I can think to describe it in only two words. Actually, its a terrible title, and its not at all what I mean, but it's catchy, and it probably got your attention. Sorry for the cheap trick.
But back to the MacPro - the thing that stands out for me at this early stage of ownership is Apple's attention to detail. Even the process of unboxing the thing was enjoyable. The box is about double the quality of any other PC box I've ever seen, and the internal packaging is even more robust and well put together. You could look at this cynically and say its all a waste of time and money - I'm sure it's not cheap to put together - but what it says to me is this: if Apple is prepared to put that kind of effort into packaging, then it gives me a lot of confidence that they will put the same effort into their hardware and software too.And I hope that's the case. It's been just under a week now, and I'm loving the new machines on a gut level. I wonder how I'll feel in a couple of
months? Already, I having some serious mental issues adjusting to some simple things like the differences in Control/Option/Command keys. I'm starting to get it, but slowly. Overall, the experience is one of speed, things flow and almost everything is more or less in the place that I expect it to be (something that I can't say about Windows even after 15 years of use). These feelings are all subjective at this stage as I bask in the post-purchase glow that seems to seduce most Apple customers. It will be interesting to come back in 6 months and see if I still feel the same way.M@
[1] New Apple Store is a Glass Act
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