My company laptop has gotten old and weary. So old that I could not even find a replacement battery and some memory for it. I could, but for half a price of a shiny new notebook that is three times stronger. I liked my old laptop, but not that much. So I went looking for a new one. I was hesitating between a Thinkpad and an ASUS since I was pretty content with both of them but the faint voice was already whispering into my ear: “get a Mac, get a Mac”.

I’ll admit the sysadmin side of things is not my favorite part of working with a computer. I have nothing against modifying configuration files, installing software from the command line and the like but I do feel like I am wasting my time when trying to get Skype voice to work for several hours to no avail, make my laptop “soft-hibernate” when I close the lid (I got that one, finally) or set up the wifi hotspot selector icon. I know it is just a matter of time and perseverance and I like the idea that you can get it to work if you finally understand what needs to be tweaked and how. (In fact, most of the time you don’t. You just find the answer by searching on Google, copy-paste something you don’t understand and eureka, it works.). It is just that my priorities lie elsewhere. It has been said a million times but it is still true: time is too precious to spend on anything but the most important things. For me, these are writing code, learning software, discovering new tools and technologies.

There was something more in favor of a Mac: its design. I don’t primarily mean the physical design of the laptop though in my opinion it is the best looking one there is but how everything works so ingeniously and smoothly. Everything is pre-installed so I basically only had to customize a few things like creating a user (it took me a while to realize who the guy on the default avatar picture was since I was not moving too much), setting the time zone and the default keyboard layout, etc. And the fonts. Yes, the fonts above all. I remember how refreshing it was when I switched to a Gnome desktop from Windows XP several years ago. I felt the same but even stronger when I opened Firefox the first time on my new Mac. My heart is filled with joy using iTerm with the Monaco font. I know font types and the look of fonts should probably be a detail for stone-hearted programmers but on the other hand beauty in details is so important. I spent some time thinking whether using nicer terminal fonts makes me a happier developer and it certainly does. I could do without the whizzing windows, sliding workspaces and flamboyant icons but I can not imagine using anything with less beautiful fonts. In three weeks I have become so fond of my precious little fonts I have a hard time imagining abandoning them.

But it is just me. What about you? What made you change to a Mac? What do you fancy most about it? Or if you are not a Mac owner, what do you like most about your Linux/Windows/etc. machine?