Sunday, November 28, 2010

I wanted my MBA, and got one!

There are a few things which persuade men to pursue their desire, and few things in this world can be as persuasive as new, sexy technology that works, at a price you can afford, and giving you a functional edge to perform what you want done with utmost simplicity.
I am talking about the MBA.
Not the NBA or NFA.
Just the Mac Book Air.
See what I mean?
I got one now and am using it to get this blog entry done. And I really don't care any more who reads this. The whole point is purely solipsistic. I have one. That is all I care.
It was like when I bought the iPhone in 2007 and virtually nobody had one. Every meeting room and conference meeting were hijacked because my iPhone was on the table, looking like a new born princeling.
Now, the phone-menon (get it?) is quite ubiquitous. Even the zanniest folks in town use it on trains, buses, and toilet queues! The Mac Book Air however is just quite something else.
It has the best of the iPad and everything which Apple learnt from creating both these iconic items. Then they created this new generation 11 and 13 inch Mac Book Air.
I have been a PC user ALL MY LIFE, until yesterday. I watched my brother Christopher work on his Sinclair, then his Apple, and the Mactintosh. I worked on the IBM made CPT Word Processor with its 8 inch diskettes,, and got on to the Epson Brother electronic WP typewriter, before buying my own series of desktops and everything which was DOS-PC OS based. Ever since.
I feigned the Mac would be purely inaccessible and difficult to master. Every Mac user I knew loved their experience so much they did not become evangelists as much as they wanted to be part of an exclusive cult. And for the longest time, we PC users were the boring office cubicle executive types while the Mac users were all in giddy open concept offices and dressed in smart casual.
At SITEX, I met Daniel, one of the sales persons at the epi Centre run booths. He was a PC user himself, and then graduated or evolved to Mac. In three minutes he taught me how to use the Mac Book Air. Now, I have absolutely no fear in using it and love it instead. There are just all these little clicks and tabs, and pull-down menus to discover and laugh at. The Mac, you see, is like all Windows based apps, and just made easier.
So, finally I have my MBA. I did not pay S$40,000 or S$15,000 for it. Just S$1488 plus a handful of accessories that subtracted S$600 from my bank account. But this tiny entry level 11 inch, 64GB machine is better than an iPAD any time, and works very well as a personal satellite laptop to my very cool and powerful Acer Aspire ONE.
Now, I feel like I have just gone inside the grid in TRON. Wham, wow!