An apple a day...

...makes Mads frustrated.

If you were living under a rock today (ie. away from an internet connection - shock horror!) you might not have heard that Apple made a few announcements today. I have always been a wintel girl: raised on PCs, I can get around a windows environment like... well like some place I know very well. But that still doesn't stop my first reaction to a new Apple hardware announcement being "Oh. Dear. Flying Spaghetti Monster. SO SO BEAUTIFUL, BUY ME ONE NOW." Today's reaction proved to be no exception: you would have to be blind, stupid and have some kind of phobia of white things to not instantly fall in love with the sheer beauty of the new iMac G5. And many an unfortunate has heard me gush about the nano recently, not to mention the stunning new ipod video. Of course I love my ipod mini like it's my first born child (probably more, knowing my attitudes toward children).

But. After the first reaction of "I WANT ONE. NOW." has faded, I often come to the conclusion, particularly when it comes to mac computers, that it simply wouldn't work. When I have to use a mac at uni I work, swear to god!, about a quarter slower than I would on a PC. It's as if the damn thing just can't keep up with me, with it's fancy graphics and windows that will all of a sudden be sucked off to the sides for no discernible reason. I accept that my productivity will of course be better on a type of computer that I've been using since before I could walk. But I work faster on the Linux machines that I use in the computer science labs. So do I have some kind of mental aversion to using macs? Is it just that I'm not used to them? Or is there something bigger here - are macs, *gasp!*, not actually all that cool?

It's a conundrum, and one that I'm happy to ponder while working away on my truly crappy asus laptop (My laptop on a daily basis: "ohmigod, 3 programs opened at once! I think I'll freeze for 5 minutes because I can't cope with the pressure!"). I can't be the only one who's had their working speed seriously curtailed by a mac - your experiences people. It's ok to drool at the alter of mac design, while still being infinitely frustrated by how the damn software operates, isn't it?

(Of course, if someone wanted to buy me a new iMac G5, I'd fully support their decision and get over my very silly and childish productivity issues. I'd even settle for a Mac mini if I had to...)