One of the Cool Kids Now

After (literally) years of anticipation, it has finally happened: I'm one of the cool kids. I have a Mac. Yes, I bought a PowerBook a couple of weeks ago, in anticipation of the new book project I'm starting. Here is a picture of my new baby:



I almost did this about 4 months ago, until Apple announced the Intel partnership. That froze my decision, thinking that I could hold out until the Intel PowerBooks arrived. But, because of this project (which I will talk about more in a future post), I needed it sooner rather than later.


My finger was literally hovering over the green "Buy" button on the Apple web site, but my spidey sense told me not to click yet. The very next morning, I went to the site and was greeted with the "New Powerbooks" banner headline. Because I waited the extra day, I got the video card upgrade for free, a higher resolution display, and generally cheaper machine for the same configuration. I saved enough to pay for the extra 1 GB of memory from Crucial.


I've spent the last couple of weeks getting used to the Mac, and it's a joy. Unfortunately, I now travel with 2 laptops (the ThoughtWorks issued Dell Latitude 610, which I need for work, particularly .NET development) and the PowerBook for everything else. But, it's a small price to pay to hold my head up high when I'm hanging out with the other No Fluff, Just Stuff speakers (mostly Mac guys because they can). When I write Java, I'm living the dream: using IntelliJ on a PowerBook. At least for the short term, my hedonic adaptation is sated.